Broken Things (Faded Photograph Series) (17 page)

“Yes, I do,” she admitted.

“I work at Steelcast on an assembly line.” Bitterness laced Brenda’s tone. “I’ve got a college degree, but I’m in a factory. Go figure.”

Allie studied her stepsister’s face. “What did you major in?”

“English.”

Allie thought of half a dozen occupations suitable for someone with an English degree.

“And don’t start spouting off a list of all the things I could be doing, either. I don’t need anybody telling me my business. Some of us had to make tough choices. We didn’t get everything handed to us on a silver platter.”

Pressing her lips together, Allie watched Brenda take a long drink of her margarita and understood that the latter had been directed at her. While she wished she could talk about her own life’s trials, she said nothing, sensing it wouldn’t do any good at this particular time.

“So, Jack, now that I’m going to be single again, how ‘bout the two of us getting together? You and me?”

Incredulousness gripped Allie while Colleen nearly choked on a sip of her cola. Brenda gave her sister a couple of whacks between the shoulder blades, and Colleen’s coughing abated.

Jack shifted slightly on the padded booth seat.

“Better now?” Brenda shook her head at Colleen before turning her gaze to Jack.

A chuckle rumbled up. “Brenda, I wouldn’t date you if you were the last woman on earth. It’d be like dating a kid sister or something. I’ve known you since you were ten years old.”

“See, Alllie, it’s all your fault.” Brenda’s lament Chafed her. “You ruined my chances with Jack.”

“I didn’t even move to Oakland Park until you were fifteen. That means you ruined your own chances with Jack.”

“I love it when women fight over me,” he muttered with his usual sarcastic flare.

Colleen laughed.

Allie rolled her eyes and smiled in spite of herself.

“It’s still your fault, Allie.” It appeared Brenda had fighting on her mind.

Allie refused to engage. “Oh, fine. I guess we all need someone to blame for our troubles.”

The waitress arrived with their food and Allie closed her eyes, praying for a new topic of conversation while she asked a blessing on her meal.

“So who do you blame for your troubles, Allie?” Jack set his napkin across his legs.

“No one.” She suddenly felt feisty. “I’m the princess, remember? I’ve had everything handed to me on a silver platter.”

Jack had the nerve to chuckle.

“See? She even admits it.” Brenda snorted.

Jack sat back, his food untouched for the moment. Allie’s chest constricted with unshed emotion. This was mistake. Who was she kidding?

He lifted his knife and fork. “Look, Brenda,” he said, “I happen to know Allie hasn’t had it so great, either. So lay off, okay?”

“Good of you to defend her after what she did to you,” Brenda shot right back.”

“Stop it.” Colleen nudged her.

“It’s true.” Allie voice tightened with unshed emotion. “We didn’t get along as teenagers. But we’re adults now. Can’t things be different?”

“No, they can’t.” Brenda glared at her. “Not as long as you sit there without a hair out of place, with your manicured nails, in your designer sweater―”

“I purchased this sweater at a resale shop.” Allie sent a glance upward.

“—and your important job that gets you on TV.” Brenda talked over the explanation. “You’re living the perfect life now, and you came back to Oakland Park to wave your success in our faces.”

“That’s not true!”

“Yeah? Then why didn’t you come back years ago?”

Allie opened her mouth to reply, but couldn’t find a single excuse.

“That’s what I thought.” Brenda tossed her napkin onto her plate and muttered something to her sister who stood up and allowed her out of the booth.

Colleen gave Allie an apologetic look. “She wants to go. I’m…I’m sorry.”

Allie gave a single nod. What more could she say.

“I’ll call you and we’ll get together before you leave, okay?”

“Sure. I’d like that.”

Colleen’s gaze shifted. “Bye, Jack.”

“Bye, kiddo.”

With that, she strode away from the table to find her sister.

Sitting forward, Allie placed her elbows on either side of her plate, her fingers entwined and resting under her chin. Several awkward moments lapsed, the only sounds coming from the other patrons and Jack’s ever-squawking radio.

“Go ahead and say it, Jack. Say, ‘I told you so,’ because my attempt to make amends with Brenda just blew up in my face.”

“I told you so.”

Tears sprang into her eyes. She felt emotionally battered and to think that Jack probably relished the fact hurt her even more.

He forked a bite of food into his mouth and several moments past. “Allie, you couldn’t have been so ignorant to think that everyone would be happy to see you again.”

“No,” she said, sitting back in the seat and dabbing her misty eyes with her napkin, “but I thought they’d give me a second chance.”

“Not everyone believes in second chances.”

“I guess not.”

Jack continued to eat his dinner. “I don’t think you know how you appear to others.” He spoke the words in between mouthfuls. “It’s like Brenda said. You look like you’re living the perfect life and you’ve come back to gloat.”

“That’s not true.”

He took a drink of his cola. “It’s a sin to waste that steak, Allie.”

She shrugged. “Seems I’m not very hungry.”

“Well, in that case, you’ll have to pardon me for eating in front of you. But this is the only supper break I get.”

Allie understood. “Please, go ahead and eat.” She drank some of her iced tea, then picked at her salad, hoping her appetite would return.

“I felt a little like Brenda does,” Jack admitted, “until Labor Day when you told me how you got that scar on your cheek.”

Allie gave him a curious glance. But instead of expounding on his remark, he devoured another forkful of Mexican food. She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t how you can eat that stuff.”

A wry grin pulled at one corner of his mouth. “Tastes great. I love this place.”

“You and Brenda have more in common than you know.”

“Don’t start, Allie.” Jack sent her a severe look. “I might think you’re jealous or something.”

“And if you did, you’d be another typical male.”

He had the good grace to smile at her quip.

Cutting into her broiled meat, Allie decided she felt a little hungry after all. “So am I correct in assuming that you don’t hate me anymore?”

“No, I don’t hate you.”

“Can we be friends?”

“Friends?” Jack hurled the word back at her and it stung.

Allie set down her utensils and wiped her mouth with her napkin. She tried to tamp down the hurt inside. “Guess not, huh?”

“Don’t push your luck, Allie.”

Gazing out over the restaurant, she blinked back errant tears. Steadying her emotions, she took a deep breath and forced herself to concentrate on her dinner. “Okay…”

Several moments of strained silence lapsed in which Allie chose to give up eating and take home the remainder of her meal.

“Let me ask you something.” Jack turned her way. “You were never the kind of female who’d tolerate a guy smacking her around. Why did you stay with your husband if he was abusive?”

“It’s like I told you on Labor Day, Erich said he’d take my son away if I divorced him, and I knew he had the money and the means to do it. Then, after…” she inadvertently touched her cheek. “…after he cut my cheek―”

“Were you arguing?” Jack interrupted.

“Sort of. I had a tendency to, um, talk back to my husband. I know you find that hard to believe, Jack―”

He grinned.

“―unfortunately it’s true, and it really irritated him. At the time of the…
accident
, I was cooking dinner for our fifth anniversary when he told me to do something and I sassed him. Erich picked up the knife I had just set down and swung. I correctly refer to it as an ‘accident,’ because I believe he intended to slit my throat, but I ducked. He got my cheek.”

“And you stayed with the guy? What’s wrong with you!”

The question came with force, but Allie didn’t flinch. She’d heard the same thing asked many times before. “As I said, God got a hold of my heart during that time. I strongly believed He wanted me to live out First Peter, chapter three, verse one. I obeyed, and the Lord protected me through the years until Erich’s death.” She sipped her tea and set down the glass. “Of course I don’t go around advising women to stay with abusive spouses as I did. It’s simply what God wanted
me
to do.” There was a intermittent pause, so she added, “God blessed my obedience. He kept Erich away―overseas. I rarely saw him after the…
accident
.”

Jack tossed his napkin onto his now-empty plate. Sitting back, he stretched an arm over the top of the booth’s seat. Allie suddenly realized she’d never moved over. Why did she feel so comfortable with his arm behind her shoulders.

“When did he die?”

“About eleven years ago.”

“Long time to be widow.” Suspicion flicked in his gaze. “How come you never remarried?”

“Are you kidding me? It’s not that easy.”

Jack didn’t appear assuaged by her reply.

“Most eligible men my age either have young children or want someone to take care of them, like your brother’s neighbor.”

“Pitiful guy.”

Allie genuinely felt for the poor man. “I didn’t feel called to an additional motherly role. Plus, I wanted to devote my time to raising my own son.” She considered Jack for several long seconds. “What about you? You’ve been divorced longer than I’ve been widowed. Why didn’t you remarry? Personal conviction?”

“Hardly.”

He gave her a stony glare and Allie thought he might tell her to mind her business, although he wasn’t exactly minding his.

“I found out marriage isn’t so great an institution after all.”

“If you’ll recall, I told you so.” Allie smiled a challenge.

“Very funny.”

Her smile broadened, except she really hadn’t intended to be “funny.”

As the waitress passed, Allie waved her over and requested a box for the rest of her meal. Nodding, the young woman took Jack’s plate away.

Silence ensued until the server returned. She handed Allie a Styrofoam box and set down the check, thanking them for their business.

Allie reached for the bill, but Jack snatched it up first.

“My male ego won’t let you pay,”

“Fine.”Allie began to empty her plate into the box. “My female sensibilities are more than happy to let you get the tab.”

Wearing a smirk, Jack crawled out of the booth and for the first time, Allie saw him limp when he took a few steps forward. She remembered what Logan said about the gunshot wound and how Jack tried not to let anyone see…except his higher-ups noticed and now they were trying to force him into retirement.

Retirement or checking parking meters, perhaps.

Allie gathered her purse and Jack politely helped her out of the booth with a hand at her elbow. Next, he motioned for her to go on ahead of him, which she did. While he paid for their meals, she stepped outside. Darkness had descended and the wind had turned cold. A fitting ending for a dismal evening.

Minutes later, Jack walked out of the restaurant. “I’ve got to get back to work.”

“I understand. Thanks for dinner.”

“Sure.”

Neither of them moved.

It seemed like an eternity before Allie found her voice. “Good night.”

“See you, Allie.”

After a parting smile, she forced herself to turn around and make steady strides up the block to her car. She felt Jack’s gaze on her back the entire while.

Chapter Thirteen

A northwest wind whipped around Logan as he sat in the hospital parking lot on the trunk of his maroon Mercury
Sable
. One foot on the bumper, and leaning on his blue jean-encased knee, he welcomed the brisk air after a night in the much-too-warm emergency room. But one glance at Marilee, standing beside his car, let him know she was freezing.

He shrugged out of his jacket and tucked it around her shoulders. “Better?”

Beneath the white beam of the streetlight, she gave him a dimpled smile. “Much better. Thanks.”

He studied her face for a long moment, thinking she was the prettiest young woman he knew.

“You were a real blessing to the Rushfords tonight, Logan.”

“Couldn’t have done it without you.” He meant every word, too.

Her smile broadened. “We make a great team.”

“Yeah?” He grinned. “So what’s your point?”

After a cluck of her tongue, she gave him a playful sock in the arm.

He laughed, glancing around the sparsely populated lot. If she only knew what he’d planned tonight.

Disappointment welled up inside of him. He ached to propose, but he wanted the perfect setting in which to ask Marilee to be his wife. A hospital’s parking lot just wouldn’t do.

“Want to grab something to eat?”

Marilee shook her head. “I’m still full from that cheeseburger I ate earlier.”

“Okay.” Logan didn’t feel hungry either. His stomach had been somersaulting all week from a good case of the nerves as he anticipated this very night. If he waited any longer, he’d probably have an ulcer.

“Want to go for a walk?”

“No, I’m tired. It’s almost eleven o’clock, Logan.”

“Mmm…”

“Aren’t you tired?”

“No. I sort of have…um, unfinished business. I probably won’t sleep until it’s taken care of, either. If you haven’t noticed, I’m one of those obsessive-compulsive people.”

“I’ll agree with the obsessive part.”

Logan chuckled.

Marilee snuggled deeper into his jacket. “Is it about finding your birth mother?”

He shook his head. “No…no, it’s not about her.”

“Oh? Then what’s on your mind?”

Logan looked her way, and explained, at least in part. “My dad and I had a couple of heavy conversations this week. He answered every question I threw at him.”

“I’m so glad to hear that. It’s time the two of you talked.”

“Sure enough. But what’s sad is that my mother heard the gospel and rejected it. She could have had a husband who probably would have grown to love her―and vice versa, had she given their marriage a chance. But she rejected that too. My father told me why she never tried to contact me―she was in trouble with the law and was afraid of him, since he’s a cop. But I still think she could have at least sent me a lousy birthday card each year.”