Fix You (13 page)

             
She hadn’t asked him anything so ludicrous since before they were married. He’d known it was her hormones getting the better of her, that she was too emotional and self-conscious, but even he, who loved her so much, couldn’t cut his way through her barriers of anxiety with any sort of grace anymore. Not when he was sex-starved and pushed away and rejected every second of every lonely evening.

             
“Are you kidding me?”
he’d asked, and had reached over and snapped the lid of her laptop shut, her fingers barely pulling away in time. She’d glanced up at him with an outraged gasp and wide, silver teacup saucer eyes.
“You know exactly how much I love you,”
he’d bit out, not lending the statement even a shred of warmth,
“how gorgeous I think you are. If you can’t stand to be near me, that’s not my fault.”

             
She’d stared at him, eyes going liquid and soft, frown wavering like it did before she cried.
“I’m so huge right now - ”
she’d started, and he’d cut her off.

             
“Do you think I care? Trust me, you give me the go ahead, and I’ll find a way to get it done.”

             
She’d dabbed at the corners of her eyes with her fingertips.
“Of course you could,”
she’d said,
“Marathon Man.”

             
The nickname was so unexpected, Jordan had sat back, speechless.

             
“I met your friend Janet at the doctor,”
Ellie had said, and it had been an accusation.
“Don’t tell me how gorgeous you think I am.”

             
It was all Dylan’s fault. Fucking Dylan. He’d burned Jess so badly that now hyper-sensitive Ellie was seeing betrayal and infidelity where there was none. The girls had all talked and gossiped and fretted over it until Dylan’s betrayal didn’t seem like such an anomaly, but an inevitable: something that would happen to all of them. Or, at least, that’s how it seemed in El’s mind.

             
It didn’t matter that he was almost twenty-nine and married; the rejection still stung. Had she been in pain, had she even just calmly and rationally talked him through the reasons why she didn’t want him right now…but no, she shrank away from him, and Jordan was fifteen, all knees and elbows and awkward as shit again. The skinny kid brother who looked nothing like his towering older siblings. Rejected. It was driving him insane.

             
Patience already a frayed, fragile thing, he didn’t have so much as a thread to spare for Walt as he came looking for a fight.

             
“Hey, jackasses. Dad wants you up front,” Walt said behind them, and Jordan caught the flicker of tension that rippled across Tam’s face before he turned around to face his brother.

             
Whatever caustic, witty retort he’d planned to throw got caught in his throat, all his pent up frustration stripping the cleverness from his mind. “Shut the hell up, Walt,” he said lamely.

             
Walt played indignant, his hands coming up, defenseless. “I’m just telling you what Dad said. You don’t have to be a little bitch about it.”

             
Wrong thing to say.

             
Jordan opened his mouth but was stayed by Tam’s light shoulder slug as the guy set down his shovel and turned to face Walt. “Don’t worry about it, Jordie. He’s still sore about his marriage falling apart.”

             
Walt’s features compressed into a series of harsh lines, his face turning a lovely shade of magenta.

             
“And he just hates,” Tam went on, a tight edge undermining the calm he was trying to lever into his voice, “that Dylan turned out to be the cheating sociopath and not me.”

             
Jordan shoved his frigid wife to the back of his mind as he recognized the coiled aggression in his brother and brother-in-law. They were going to fight.

**

              There was a very old, very gnarled and twisty dogwood tree outside the kitchen window of Jo and Tam’s new cottage, and an old stone bench beneath its shade was where Ellie had finally eased herself down as she watched her charges play. Walt’s wife Gwen hadn’t come, so it was only Tyler, Willa and Evan that she watched. Tyler was using blocks and mud and sticks to construct a fort for his little green army men. Willa and Evan were in the portable, plastic, turtle-shaped sandbox shoveling aimlessly like two-year-olds did. Ellie watched them and it was no longer an abstract vision of the future, but a forthcoming reality that at some point not too far from now, she’d watch her own children play with sand and mud and sticks. Her girls. And maybe, just maybe, if she could stop screwing things up so badly, she’d even have a husband coming home to her and wouldn’t be off picking out kitchen sinks with a contractor like Jess was.

             
She hated what she kept doing to Jordan. Hated it right up until he came home every night, and then she was flooded with self-conscious shame and an inexplicable anxiety that turned her into this bitch who pulled away from him. In her mind, she kept seeing Janet Jennings’ smile, kept punishing herself with the idea that Jordan was disgusted by her pregnant body and that his eyes were roving; that sometime soon, it would be more than his eyes…

             
She lifted her head and glanced across the weed-choked lawn that Randy was mowing, down toward the path to the lake and the gazebo that Tam and Jordan were trying to unearth from a mound of kudzu vines. Her gaze went to Jordan first – she could have spotted him at three-hundred yards – but then she noticed that Walt had joined them, and that he and Tam were squared off from one another.

             
“Oh, no,” she groaned, and started to rise, but the crunch of gravel reached her ears over the drone of the lawnmower and she looked toward the drive where it crested the final hill.

             
A silver Infiniti coupe came sliding into view, fishtailing in the gravel, and moved past her to the circular turnaround that looped the fountain between the house and cottage. She knew it was Dylan before he braked to a halt and climbed out of the car, but the knowledge wasn’t comforting.
“He stared at you like you were a piece of meat,”
Jordan had told her, and she knew her husband hadn’t been exaggerating.

             
Dylan walked around the nose of the car and opened the passenger door, extended a hand that was filled with a slight, delicate, feminine one, and pulled a blonde out into the sunlight. She was not, Ellie thought, as pretty as Jessica. She had breasts and hips, but the legs visible beneath her short skirt were thick and shapeless. She had none of Jess’s elegance, none of her grace or poise. Her features – as she glanced over toward the cottage – were smooth, but plain, and she was very, very young. Not as young as Ellie’s tender twenty-one years, but young enough for her age to be a nasty sting to Jess’s pride. She was dressed a little bit like a hooker in a miniskirt and tube top, and she had a certain deer-in-headlights look about her.

             
Ellie’s eyes cut over to Dylan and she realized, with a sudden lurch, that he was staring right at her. He said something to the girl and wrapped a hand around her upper arm, starting toward Ellie and towing his plaything along with him. Ellie wasn’t afraid of him in the least, but she didn’t want to talk to him; she had no patience for adulterous assholes.

             
Tyler – poor little confused and heartbroken Tyler – spared her, though. “Daddy!” he yelled, and Ellie kicked herself for not having paid more attention. Pregnant as all hell, she couldn’t do anything but watch as the six-year-old leapt to his feet and ran toward his father.

             
Dylan was in a crisp blue oxford and khakis, spotless and polished, and for a moment, Ellie wondered what would happen when dirt-sprinkled Tyler reached him. With a sharp pang of sadness, she watched father catch son by both shoulders, tousle his hair, but not offer or accept a hug; clearly, Dylan couldn’t stand the thought of getting mud-spattered in front of his tart.

             
The lawnmower quit and Ellie flicked a glance toward her father-in-law, saw Randy’s heavy scowl as he started in their direction. She looked beyond him, down the path, and was relieved to see that Tam and Walt no longer looked on the verge of fisticuffs; they and Jordan were moving her way now, too.

             
None of them reached her before Dylan.

             
“Noelle,” he greeted her with a fast, flashy smile like he knew how handsome he was.

             
Inwardly, Ellie shivered. She liked her given name alright, but it wasn’t often used. When Jordan said it – every great once in a while – it was a sweet censure, a gentle breath right in her ear when he told her to quit being stubborn and accept that he thought she was more beautiful than anything. When he said
Noelle
, it was like he knew some secret about her no one else did; he knew the real her and her real name. Dylan saying it was like her mother saying it, and that wasn’t a compliment.

             
“Hello,” she greeted coolly, hating that Tyler was plastered to his leg, smile exuberant, while the vacant-eyed trollop stood at his other side. “Did Jess know you were coming by?” she asked, and couldn’t keep the frost from her voice, not even for Tyler.

             
“No.” His smile didn’t falter, but a dangerous glint came into his dark eyes. “Kim and I are on our way to the mall and thought Tyler might like to come along.”

             
A crooked grin stole across Tyler’s face; he was willing to accompany his dad anywhere right now, even the mall.

             
“Kim?” Ellie asked, and glanced at the girl. Her eyes were on the toes of her spike heels and it was Dylan who answered.

             
“Yes,” he said. “She’s - ”

             
“I know what she is.” Elli gave him a tight, humorless smile, saw a frown tug at the corners of his mouth, and was thankful that Randy had finally reached them.

             
The Walker patriarch slapped a massive hand down on Dylan’s shoulder and Ellie had the pleasure of watching his brown eyes bug out of his head at the contact.

             
“Dylan,” Randy boomed a greeting, “my favorite cheatin’-ass son-in-law.”

**

              At some point, the massive crystal chandelier in the dining room had been spectacular; when lit, all the dangling crystal panels would have fractured the light, sending thousands of tiny prisms down on the high-gloss wood of a table that was no longer in evidence. Now, though, it swayed like a drunk from screws that were coming loose in the ceiling. Vandals had snitched more than half the crystals and it was a forlorn and broken thing now. Jess wanted to have it refurbished, but before that could happen, it had to come down, and it was Mike up on the ladder taking out the remaining screws.

             
His attention, though, was on the possum his wife had unearthed beneath a tiny mountain of discarded newspaper in the corner.

             
“Oh my God, Jo,
do not
touch that thing!” Delta’s voice was fast becoming a shriek. “Mike, get down here and do not let you sister touch it!”

             
“Joanna,” Beth warned. “That thing’s got ten different kinds of rabies!”

             
Still wearing the thick leather yard gloves she’d been using to gather trash inside the house – and dear God, there were bags and bags of trash – Jo ignored both of them and dropped at the waist, hands on her knees as she studied the fat, mottled-gray marsupial that was playing, appropriately, possum at her feet. He was either alive, or very freshly dead, and her money was on alive.

             
“Jo,” Delta was as close behind her as she dared to get, “let’s just call animal control.”

             
“Or shoo it into a bucket and carry it outside,” Beth suggested.

             
“Or hit in the head with a shovel,” Mike said cheerfully.

             
“
Or
,” Jo said, “I can pick him up by the tail - ”

             
“No!” Delta and Beth said in unison.

             
But she reached down and took a firm hold on the thing’s pink, naked tail, and hefted him up. He – it- was heavy, and Jo wrapped her other hand around its tail as she straightened. “Okay, someone go open the back door for me and…”

             
It hissed.

             
Delta and Beth screamed.

             
“For the love of - ” Mike climbed down off the ladder and headed for the kitchen. “Come on,” he snapped over his shoulder. “Before it eats your face off.”

             
As she hurried after her brother, eyes trained on the hissing possum with its needle teeth bared, Jo wished her arms were longer and that it was dangling a little further from her face. She’d been forced to endure the series of rabies injections before when a stray dog brought into the vet clinic had snapped at her, and she really didn’t want to have to repeat the experience. The possum started to twist and she lengthened her stride, arms straining under the weight. Mike was at the back door, holding it open.