A Year of You (33 page)

“You don’t understand. I have to.”
West shook his head.

“I won’t let you, Matilyn West.”


“I have to make him go away.” She held his face in her hands and touched her forehead to his. “Do you understand? I have to make him go away for good.”

West shook his head. “You’re not leaving me.”

***

After they’d simmered down, Mattie made lunch. They sat at the table, silent, thinking. Mattie was so sleepy she couldn’t see straight, but they still hadn’t had the important conversation.

“Well?” she asked.
“Hmm?”


“The baby?”
West sighed and put his sandwich down on his plate. “I don’t know, Mattie. I’m still trying to sort everything out.”


“There’s not much to sort out, West. We’ve got to talk about this.”


He took a long drink out of his water bottle. “What happened to your first kid?”


“I gave her up for adoption. There was no way I could raise a kid, especially around--I had to make sure she was safe from
him
. Nobody kept me safe, but I could keep her safe.”


“The baby’s dad. Did he have anything to say about it?”


“He tried to—” She bit the words
beat it out of me
off short. “He didn’t care. He just didn’t want it around to remind him.”


West plucked a little wad of bread off the top piece of his sandwich. “Did he...hurt you anymore after that?”
Mattie shook her head.

“Not like that. He was too scared of his family finding out. He found other uses for me.”


“Why did you stay? I don’t understand that. You’re kind of scary when somebody pisses you off. I don’t see you just putting up with somebody hurting you in any way.”


“I was a kid. I was around really horrible people who didn’t care enough to tell me I was worth more. Carmen got her money from Ruth Ellen every month, and as long as I was still alive, that was all that mattered. He found me at foster homes, group homes, it didn’t matter.” She took a tiny bite of her sandwich. Flavorless. She forced the bite down her throat. “He found out where the baby was and…he’s held her over my head ever since.”

“Ever since?” She watched his face change as the facts clicked into place. “It’s because of him that you’re here, isn’t it?”

“Actually, no. Ruth Ellen’s lawyer came to me and asked me to come. K heard about it and came up with the plot.”

“You’ve know who you are your entire life, haven’t you?”

Mattie shrugged. “Sort of. I didn’t know the extent of it.”

“Who are you, really?”

She looked down at her hands for a long time. War raged inside her head and her heart. Tell him, and she could lose him. Tell him, and she could gain an ally. “My legal name is Evelyn Claire Carruther.”

“Carruther.”

“I’m Karen McKendrick’s oldest daughter. I was born about a year or so before Elaine.”

“Who-who’s your father?”

Mattie shrugged and picked at a fingernail absently. “Nobody really knows.”

“It’s not McKendrick, is it?”

“I don’t know, West.”

He slid his plate with the forgotten sandwich out of the way and folded his arm on the table. “Why did you come here? Just for the money?”

Mattie smiled down at her fingers. West’s engagement ring caught the light and sparkled, throwing flashes of light against the grayish plastic-coated wall. “Family. I would have come if the McKendricks were dirt farmers. I wanted to be part of a real family for a little while.” She twisted the ring on her finger. “I told this girl that I thought was my friend, and K swooped in out of nowhere. I hadn’t seen him or heard from him in two years. Then,
bam
, he breaks into my apartment and trashes the place. He threatened to hurt Molly and her family if I didn’t cooperate.”

“Whoa. Wait. This guy is still in your life?”

“Did you just hear anything I said? I didn’t invite him in. He forced his way in. When I go back, I’m finishing it, one way or another.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m finishing it. I can’t live under his thumb, and I can’t bear the thought of that man even looking at Molly. He know where she’s lives. He knows what school she goes to. He even stopped and talked to her one day while he was on the phone with me.”

West got up and paced the short distance to the sink. “Nothing’s simple with you, is it?”

Mattie shrugged. “Actually, it’s really simple. In a few weeks, I’m going back to Atlanta and I’m going to find some way to…deal with K.”

“You’re a tough broad, Mattie, but I don’t see you killing anybody.”

“I will do what I have to do to protect my kid.”

“You gave her up. She’s not your kid. What are her parents doing to keep her safe?”

“Phil’s a cop. They know K is trying to use Molly to get to me. He’s insane, West. He doesn’t care about people with guns. All he sees is a payday.”

West leaned on the sink and peered out the window. He’d taped a piece of clear plastic over the broken pane. It flapped whenever the wind blew.

Mattie looked away from him. “We need to talk about the baby, West. Is it...something you want?”

“I don’t know yet. What about you?”


She wanted to jump up and down and scream,
hell yeah!
“I don’t know either.”
West groaned suddenly and buried his head in his hands.

“You’re pregnant. Pregnant. We’ve used protection damn near every time.”


“All it takes is once,” she muttered.


“Mattie, I’m not sure if I’m ready for it all.”


“You don’t have to be. This can be my problem. I’m not asking you to do anything...I’m just asking if you want to.” Mattie twisted her glass of water, hunched over the edge of the table. She was too scared to look at West. He was so mercurial. An hour ago he’d been part of her. Now he was a world away from her, emotionally. She could do a count down to their next fight.

Ten, nine, eight... “Are you still leaving when the lawyers get done with their stuff?”


“That was the deal.” It made her sick to stomach to say it. It hurt even worse knowing everything he’s said during the heat of the moment was bullshit.

“Yeah. The deal.” Might have been her imagination, but he sounded as sick as she felt. “Damn it, Mattie. I just don’t know how to do this.”


She took a deep breath and steeled herself. “You don’t have to do anything, West. I can do it by myself.”


“You think I’d just let you disappear with my kid? There’s so much shit about you that I don’t know as it is.”


“What, you don’t trust me to take care of a baby?”


“Not right now. I don’t know shit about you. I do know you got some psycho trying to do something to you, and you’re involved in a lie so huge that when the truth comes out, you’re gonna be up shit creek without a paddle.”

“What lie? What the hell are you talking about? I just told you everything.”


“Quit yelling at me, Mattie.”


“Answer me then!”


“You’re a liar.”
Stricken, Mattie shrank back in her rickety old chair.

“You’re getting all the money.”


“You’re full of it. Why would you put yourself through this hell to have nothing when it’s over?”


“I never wanted to hurt anybody. This makes up for all the crap I’ve done in my past.”
West got up and dropped his plate into the sink with an awful crash. “It drives me absolutely insane, knowing nothing about you. How do I know, if you have this kid, that you’re able to take care of it?”

“You don’t. You’d just have to trust me.”


“I’d rather have it taken care of now, than find out you’ve let some pervert hurt it.”
Mattie grabbed a heavy wax apple out of the decorative basket in the center of the table and heaved it at him. It hit him right in the eye. She threw herself at him next, knocking him off balance. She landed a couple of good blows before he shoved her away.

“Bastard!” A huge knot clogged her throat. She fumbled around for more things to throw and came up with his shredded Sketchers and Scruffy’s bowl. The shoes bounced off his arm, but when she reared back with the heavy metal bowl, he pointed a finger at her.

“You throw that at me, and I’ll beat your ass!”

“Good! Make sure you do it hard enough to solve our little problem. Do it. Do it!” She heaved the bowl, but the throw went wide and crashed through the remaining pane in the window over the sink.

West crossed the kitchen in one step and pushed her against the fridge, his hand planted firmly against her chest. “What the hell is your problem?”

“You, West. You don’t want a kid—especially one with me—because it’ll screw up whatever you have with Emeline, or want to have with her. You honestly think she’d ever accept a kid you had with me?”

West raised his hands in confusion. “What does Em have to do with this?”


“When we were having sex last night, you said her name.”
He clasped one hand to his eye. “Damn it, Mattie. I was more asleep than awake. My whole head hurts.”


“You deserve it. You actually think I would let somebody hurt my baby? I went through hell when I was a kid. I’d kill someone if they so much as looked at my child the wrong way.” Mattie swallowed against the huge lump in her throat. All the possible joy in the situation had been sucked right out. The weak fantasies of her happy little family faded, vanished. She shrugged and sat down in her chair once more.

“What do you want me to do, West? Stay here, have the kid, cramp your style a little more?”

He sat and massaged his temples. “What are our options?”


“One, we have it and pretend to be the happy little family, two, I kill it, or three, we give it up.”


He winced. “Do you have to be so graphic about it?”


“What?”


“The second option.”


“What, about abortion? That’s what I think it is. But, hell, if you want it that way, whatever. I’m past the point of thinking anything that has anything to do with me matters at all to you.”


“Our deal was about money and sex. Nothing else.”


“I know that. But things have changed so much between us. We don’t have to actually openly admit it, but there’s so much more than sex and money here. And my past shouldn’t matter to you. It’s not like you’re asking me to stay. If you were...it would be different.” In the heat of the moment, an hour earlier, the words he’d said bounced around her head. “You didn’t mean what you said, did you?”

West paced to the sink and started picking up the few shards of glass that had fallen into the kitchen rather than flying out the window. “It’s complicated.”

“Not really. When it’s about your dick, you’ll say anything.”

“I can’t take this, Mattie. This vicious circle. We have moments that blow my mind; then you’re going at me, and the sound of your voice is like nails on a chalkboard. This is why I’m not begging you to stay.”

Hurt, Mattie looked away, out the window behind the table. Heavy clouds blocked the sun. The overcast sky matched her mood, except that while behind those clouds, a vibrant sun waited, behind her clouds, there was nothing but the coldness of space.

***

She dreamed of Elaine and West as children, playing in the orange grove. They were in a hole that was deeper than they were tall, playing ‘dead.’ West would laugh every so often, and Elaine would sling a clod of dirt at him and tell him to hush. Above them, a puppy yipped and danced on the edge of the hole, sending particles of dirt and foliage down into their faces.

“You should get out of the hole,” she told the kids. Water poured out of her mouth, puddling around their bodies. Young West looked uncertain. Elaine giggled and shook her head, nestling her head deeper into the mud.

Mattie tried to speak around the torrent gushing out of her mouth. The water was getting deeper. West scrambled up and climbed out of the hole. When he reached the top, he was his older self, with his agonized, dark blue eyes full of muddy tears.

“You’re mine,” he whispered, reaching down into the hole. She couldn’t see herself, but his hand was right in front of her face. “Be mine, Mattie. Be my Elaine.”

“I’m not Elaine,” she cried. The water flowing from her mouth turned into blood, and she gagged on the hot, rancid-metallic flavor. Little Elaine lay as still as death in the hole, her white nightgown now dark red. The bed of mud she lay in began to suck her down. Two fingers of mud trickled over her throat. Her bright eyes flew open and she flung her arms up.

West cried out and grabbed for her, abandoning Mattie. The mud claimed Mattie for its own, sucking her down with a vengeance. Elaine became Emeline, and West scooped her up and out of the hole. The mud was up to Mattie’s armpits now.

“I’m all you got,” K said, staring down at her from the mouth of the hole. “Lover-boy’s busy.”

Mattie could see over his shoulder as West pinned Emeline to the tree. Fiery pain shot through her heart, and she screamed for West.

He looked over his shoulder, his eyes cold and hard. He sneered at her and turned back to Emeline.

“See? I take care of you, Mats. I’m all you have.” K’s smooth, manicured hand was right in her face, open in invitation.

“West!”

He and Emeline were gone, but she could see a big heart carved into the tree with surreal clarity.

B.W. + E.M. 4 Ever.

The heart wasn’t right. The lines of the letters blurred and blazed back into focus. She couldn’t read what they said.

“I’m all you got, babe.” K smacked her cheek. The mud was up to her chin. “I’m all you got.”

“No.”


“I’m all you got.”


“No!”

“I’m all you got, forever and ever. You’ll always be mine.”


“No!”
Mattie surged awake, sitting straight up in bed. Music filtered through the narrow trailer, the soft strains of an acoustic guitar, flavored with West’s amazing voice. The bedroom was still midnight-black. Light shone through the crack at the bottom of the door.

Needing West’s company even though he’d made it abundantly clear she’d crossed some sort of line earlier, Mattie padded to the living room. West glanced up when she paused at the edge of the carpeting. “Can I come in?” she asked softly.

He nodded, not losing a beat in his slow, sad song. She sat cross-legged on the edge of the living room carpet, back against the low wall/breakfast bar, eyes closed, absorbing his music. She couldn’t place the song. With a jolt she realized it was one of his original ones.