Jilted

by Varina Denman

  “We could go.” Clyde turned to Lynda.

  She shrugged. “Free entertainment, I suppose. What kind of vehicle is it?”

  “A pickup truck,” JohnScott said. “I wonder if it’ll turn out to be an oil-rig worker. Or a wind tech.”

  “I bet not,” Fawn said. “If it was a company truck, it would have been reported missing.”

  “Maybe it was,” he answered. “It’d be hidden on the bottom of the lake either way.”

  Clyde’s mind conjured up a wacky scenario that he wanted to share with JohnScott, but just then another car stopped on the street, waiting for access to the Dairy Queen entrance.

  Fawn bounced around the two cars and back into her seat, and JohnScott lifted his ball cap, then replaced it on his head. “See y’all later.”

  Clyde eased away from the parking lot, turning the steering wheel to head out of town. He didn’t care if they ended up at the lake, or at the windmills, or a hundred miles away where nobody knew them. “This could be our first official date if you wanted it to be.”

  “No candlelight dinner? No romantic movie? No flowers?”

  “Nope. Just me. And a crane pulling a car out of the lake. It don’t get any better than that.”

  Lynda sighed dramatically, looked behind them as if checking for witnesses, then unhooked her seat belt and slid next to him. “Sounds like my kind of date.” She reclicked the middle seat belt, tightening it around her waist and anchoring herself solidly next to Clyde.

  Suddenly he felt as if one of the Tarrons’ grenades had exploded inside him, sending a spray of anticipation and peace through the interior of his old sedan. He chuckled, put his arm around Lynda, and pulled her snugly against his side. Right where she belonged.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Clyde and I were sitting so close together, our bodies touched all the way from our shoulders to our knees, and I thought my pulse might cause a blood vessel to burst behind my ear drums. I hadn’t been on a date since Hoby left—hadn’t really even wanted to talk to a man—but now, suddenly, I felt more attracted to Clyde Felton than I had ever felt to any other man before. And for the first time in years, I thought my cup might be half full.

  “So …” I let the word hang, unable to verbalize my thoughts. Since I had plastered myself by his side and allowed him to pull me into his armpit, anyone who passed us on the highway would get an eyeful. The entire town would know, but I had come to the point that being with Clyde was more important than invisibility.

  “So.” Clyde said the word with finality, with confidence and purpose. He squeezed my shoulders. “You all right?”

  “Feeling a little unsure at the moment.”

  “Unsure? Or exposed?”

  And just like that, he hit the nail on the head, driving a shard of clear crystal into my doubts and allowing a ray of sunshine to penetrate the darkness. We were speeding down the highway, just below the Caprock where the turbines flailed their arms like happy children waving streamers in the wind. Streamers that swept away my concerns.

  “You ever dreamed you forgot to get dressed, and you walked into a party stark naked?” I asked.

  “That’s pretty exposed I guess.”

  “Hester Prynne probably felt that way.”

  “You been reading The Scarlet Letter?”

  “I watched the movie. Got it from the Video Barn.”

  “Hmm. I reckon Hester felt exposed when she was in the stocks in front of the whole village, but Lyn … you’re not her.”

  “Maybe not, but thanks to Neil Blaylock, I was in stocks in front of the entire town for a while.”

  He fell silent for a few moments before asking, “Why do you reckon he told the church you were unfaithful to Hoby?”

  “He said it was because he never stopped caring for me, but I figure it was simple meanness and jealousy.”

  “Sure don’t sound like love.”

  I peered at him then, studying the side of his face. His ear, his jaw, the ever-present scruff on his chin. Clyde had changed since we were young. Now he spoke less and said more. “How do you know the right things to say?”

  He blinked. “I don’t.”

  “You don’t think you do, but you do.”

  He stared down the highway, frowning slightly. “When I read books in prison, it was sort of like I traveled all over and saw lots of different things, good and bad and beautiful and ugly.” His mouth twisted. “But I really didn’t see anything but a cell, so I’m nobody to say the right things.”

  I hadn’t meant to send him back to those memories, and already I wanted the smiling Clyde back by my side. “I can’t picture you reading.”

  “Not much else to do.” He turned on the main lake road, tugging my gaze away from the merry children. “Any idea how to get to that spot they were talking about?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “I’ll follow that guy.” He pointed to a white passenger van in front of us.

  “Good Lord. Channel Eleven?”

  “This is breaking news, Lyn.”

  We passed cacti and pastures and curved around trailer parks and bait shops, following the van on a maze of turns. We ended up on a narrow, rocky road, a trail really, that seemed to be leading away from the lake. There were crags and small canyons and bluffs, and then we climbed up one last incline and suddenly I could see the lake snaking thirty feet below us.

  The news van rolled to a stop, and Clyde pulled past it.

  He reached through the steering wheel and shut off the ignition with his left hand, then pulled me closer with his right. “This isn’t a typical first date, is it?” he asked.

  “We’re not a typical couple.” It felt strange to refer to us as a couple, but I supposed that’s what we were.

  The news man opened the back of his van and hurriedly removed a camera and tripod, but we stayed in the car watching him. He ran-walked to the edge of the bluff and popped the tripod open in one swift movement, and within a matter of seconds, he had the camera trained on the ground far below at the bottom of the cliff.

  From the front seat of the sedan, we were too far from the bluff to see what was happening below us, and curiosity whispered to me, but it paled in comparison to the bullhorn blare created from being so near Clyde with the security of his arm around me.

  He focused his gaze on my face, seemingly unconcerned with whatever was happening in the water. “We may never be a typical couple.” He brushed his lips across my forehead.

  The tip of his nose traced a path from my temple, across my cheek, and then he paused with his lips millimeters from mine. I tasted the cinnamon of his breath just before I lost myself in the weightlessness of his kiss. At that moment I didn’t care if the whole town knew about Clyde and me. I didn’t care about anything at all except being with him, in the safety of his arms, knowing he wanted me, too.

  When we pulled apart, the cameraman was looking at us. His shoulders shook gently with laughter before he went back to work, and my soul felt light. That stranger had acted as though we were any other normal couple. So maybe we were.

  “We don’t have to stay here,” Clyde said. “We could just go back and watch the windmills.”

  “The side of the highway isn’t any more private than this.”

  “We could go on up the Cap. Maybe find an access road to get to the wind fields. Maybe even up to the base of a turbine.”

  I felt as if a burst of wind energy swept through the car, leaving me exhilarated. The possibility of being that close to one of the huge windmills charged me with excitement, but even more than that was the thought of being there with Clyde, who knew me well enough to figure I would enjoy it.

  “Surely you don’t want to go parking on our first date,” I teased.

  A surprised laugh puffed from his lungs. “I wouldn’t mind parking on every date, Lyn.”

  My
neck and chest warmed.

  “I love it when you blush,” he said.

  “I don’t blush.”

  “Yes. Yes, you do. When you’re nervous or embarrassed. It’s beautiful.” His thumb rubbed a small circle on my cheekbone. “Because you’re so pure.”

  In a snap, my confidence vanished, and I pulled back just enough to distance myself from the discomfort of his words. I looked away from him, out the window, watching the news guy shifting from foot to foot as he waited for something to film. “How long do you suppose that truck’s been down there?”

  I felt Clyde’s sigh as much as I heard it, almost condescending, as though I were an unruly child he couldn’t control. “Years, I reckon, but they built the lake a few years after I left town, right? So it couldn’t be longer than that.”

  The truck didn’t interest me, and I couldn’t have cared less how long it had been at the bottom of the lake, or how long the lake had been there. The only real thought in my mind was whether or not Clyde’s love was real. Or if it was even love at all.

  “I’m afraid you’ll leave me,” I said, wishing I could manage a first date without bringing up my past lovers.

  “I know you are.”

  “So how do I get over that?”

  “Maybe just let me prove it to you.”

  I scooted to my side of the seat, feigning interest in the lake. “That could take a long time.”

  His gaze fell to my hand gripping the door handle. “We’ve got the rest of our lives, Lyn, and I’m in no rush.”

  “But you said we’re not kids anymore. You said you don’t want to dillydally around.”

  “I don’t mean to dillydally, but I’m not going to rush you either.” His smile sent another wave of heat across my skin. “Not much at least.”

  The intensity of his meaning compelled me to flee, and I yanked the handle. “Let’s go see what’s going on down there.”

  Clyde followed me to the front bumper of the sedan. “Do you know this place?”

  I studied the terrain, the jagged cliff edge, the way the road curved past two pump jacks, the rocky bluff on the opposite side of the chasm. Yes, I knew this place. “Neil used to bring me here. Before you went to prison.” I blinked away the stupidity of that last statement. Neil and I had roasted marshmallows and sat on the edge of the cliff tossing pebbles over the side and watching them fall to the rocks below. That was way before the lake was here.

  I grunted, disgusted with myself. “You think we’ll ever be able to have a conversation without mentioning Hoby or Neil?”

  “That might take a while, too.” Clyde slipped a finger into my palm and pulled me toward the edge.

  I followed him willingly, stepping over devil’s-head cacti as the knee-high grass itched my shins, but I wasn’t prepared for what lay below us. The lake came right up to the bluff beneath, but an arc of dry ground formed where once there had been water. Police cars and news vehicles scattered near the waterline, and a crane lay to our left, its highest pulley almost even with our feet. People were everywhere: officials in uniforms, Boy Scouts, townspeople. Several cameras were already rolling, and reporters jabbered in front of them.

  I glanced at the man just down from us. “Isn’t he the clever one?”

  “We got lucky with him as our guide.”

  Two scuba divers surfaced in the middle of the lake, swimming to the shore, and I noticed a metal cable traveling from the crane into the water, where it disappeared into the depths. The smell of the lake, stronger than usual, wafted toward us as the sun shone across the surface. Everything seemed to be happening in a flurry of activity, but from our perch above it all, I felt like a spectator watching a movie, uninvolved and distant. I squeezed Clyde’s finger. “What did you read?”

  “Read?”

  “In prison.”

  “Oh.” He shifted his feet. “Everything. Anything.”

  “We’re on a date. You should answer my questions.”

  He chuckled. “The Firm … Anna Karenina … Mein Kampf … 1001 Ways to Stuff a Turkey … Harry Potter.”

  A man below yelled orders, and the engine of the crane revved and began to move. The line grew taut, but I turned to Clyde, more interested in him than all the turmoil below us. “That all?”

  “Not hardly.”

  “Clyde Felton, you just rolled your eyes.”

  He smiled down at me. “You’re a bad influence, I guess.” Slipping his arms around my waist, he leaned over and kissed me right there in front of half the town. His bravery sent a jolt of rebellion across my heart as I realized that any of those people would see us … if only they looked up.

  He pulled away, chuckling, and his breath brushed against my cheek.

  “So those are your favorite books?” I asked.

  “I wouldn’t say that, no.” He left one arm around me.

  “So what’s your favorite?” The crane jerked and strained when it began supporting the weight of the vehicle, and the commotion on the shoreline calmed, but the activity happening below us seemed insignificant compared to the scene playing out next to me. Clyde was talking about himself, sharing secrets, and enjoying it.

  “Favorite book?” He pulled me a little closer. “That would have to be the Bible, I suppose.” The corner of his mouth lifted, and I could see a hint of his teeth, but then his gaze slipped toward the waterline, and he frowned.

  I followed his gaze to see a muddy automobile bumper just breaking the surface of the water. Gooey, brown sludge cascaded from the vehicle, leaving a silty circle in the lake as it revealed two rear tires and a red towing mechanism. “The Bible?” I whispered.

  The wind that had been nudging me now vanished, leaving me stifled in the heat of the late-afternoon sun. Water and mud poured from the windows of the truck as the crane pulled it farther out of the water. It wasn’t a pickup. It wasn’t the truck of an oil-field worker or a wind tech. I knew without a doubt it was the truck of a mechanic.

  It was Hoby’s wrecker.

  Emptiness welled up from deep inside me, gently expanding like a hot-air balloon to suffocate me with its nothingness. “I should have known,” I said.

  The water around the truck swirled, and the shoreline slid away, and the people became foggy and blurred. When the ground beneath me began to spin out of control, I felt Clyde’s arms around my back and under my legs. He swooped me up and held me tightly against his chest just before the world went black.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  When my husband left me fifteen years ago, I thought I would never recover from the heartache, but now that he was dead, I felt nothing at all. Hoby had given in to the pull of the bottle one last time and had driven off a cliff before he could make it home where I could help him.

  After all those years of bitterness, waiting and angry, I found my life becoming a void of emptiness that swallowed me up more thoroughly than Lake Alan Henry had consumed that wrecker.

  I sat on the side of my bed staring at the wall—at that oval-shaped chip in the semigloss—but all I saw was that muddy wrecker being pulled from the water and Hoby’s mud-covered skull right there on the driver’s side. I whimpered, then toyed with the idea of ripping the Sheetrock from the studs. Getting rid of the old, deteriorating facade in lieu of something fresh and clean. Wouldn’t help, though. The house would still be old. Things would never change.

  A water glass sat on the floor next to the bed, and I bent to pick it up, wrapped my fingers around it, and squeezed, hoping the pressure would shatter the glass so its shards would cut me. When it didn’t budge, I reared my arm back and slammed the tumbler against the wall, hoping to trigger my habitual angry feelings. The silly thing only broke into three pieces, though, and for some reason I laughed. I had expected a satisfying crunch, and the pitiful thunk didn’t come close to quenching my thirst for emotion.

  I searched the room, my gaze lan
ding on a porcelain lamp resting on my bedside table—pink roses against green lace—not my taste at all. My style would forever be wood and iron and denim. Hard, sturdy, usable surfaces that could survive the trials of life. I stood, gripped the lamp with two hands, and jerked the cord from the outlet. When I hurled it against the wall, the lamp merely fell to the floor and lay at an angle, its socket and bulb dangling and its shade askew and bent.

  I sobbed once and fell to my knees. The lamp had sat on an end table in my living room when I was a child, and I remembered my mother cleaning it with a feather duster. I picked it up and returned it gingerly to the nightstand, shoving the shade back down like a winter hat on a runny-nosed preschooler. The porcelain hadn’t even chipped.

  Maybe roses and lace were more durable than they seemed.

  The drawer of the nightstand was open, and the letters peeked out at me, teasing, taunting, but I let them be and sat down on the edge of the bed. They would only make things worse. Make me crazier. I slid to the rug and sat with my knees bent, heels shoved against my thighs.

  My parents never should have died in that wreck. It didn’t take a psychiatrist to figure out that I wouldn’t have been so needy had they survived. I would have had a normal childhood and grown into an emotionally healthy adult, and I never would have thrown my mother’s lamp against the wall.

  A guilty voice inside my head sang a sad song of relief, crooning that I was free from Hoby’s memory, but the vise-grip pressure on my chest left me no peace. Before my husband left, I wanted him to trust me and be happy, and after he left, I wanted him to come back. Both times he let me down, and over the years, I grew more and more angry. At life. At myself. At Hoby. I wanted him to pay. I wanted revenge.

  But I never wanted him dead.

  Dead was final. Dead was hopeless. Dead was incomprehensible abandonment. Dead was my parents.

  Slowly I leaned over with one elbow on the hardwood floor. Then I lay down on my side and pulled my knees to my chest, wrapping the lamp cord around the fingers of my empty hand and drawing the other hand to my chest, crushing its contents.