On the Ropes (18 page)

“Burned out?”

“That’s part of it. The other part is I look at Jan and think
this
is what I could be coming home to everyday. And I don’t mean walk through the fucking door and fall asleep the moment my nose hits the pillow. I mean, actually enjoying someone’s company—weaving their presence into my life. And then I think further, right? It’s not just about Jan, but I can’t even remember the last time I saw my parents and they’re only an hour’s drive from me. I see Meg and Seth down here a few times per year, but I’m usually doing work in between barbecuing. I miss that little salamander of a nephew of mine like crazy, and Meg’s having two more kids I’ll never see, and it’s like… What’s the good of having family you like if work estranges you from them?”

“Okay. Let me ask you an obvious question.”

“Go for it.”

“Do you have to work?”

“Fair question. My bank accounts say no, but my body says yes. I’ve got to be doing something. I’m not programmed to be idle, and that’s not my residual childhood hyperactivity talking.”

“Perhaps it’s time for a career change.” Derrick pointed to the pile of pots and tossed the scrubber at Stephen.

Groaning, he caught it and stood.

While Derrick itemized the contents of his walk-in freezer, Stephen cleaned pots and trays.

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Stephen said after a while. “Doing something else.”

“Like what?”

“Don’t know. I figured I’d just put in my notice, turn over my work, and move down here until I figured it out.” The last part was only a recent addition to his plan. He could certainly ponder his life while staring out the picture window of his apartment, but that empty, uncared-for house on the beach was one of the reasons he wanted to quit. Maybe that was what Jan had noticed about Bob and Mel’s place. It was lived-in. Homey.

He wanted to have someplace like that, and he didn’t think Meg would mind if he put a bit of personality into the beach house. It meant he’d be around…and he’d have a home base for Jan, if she wanted it.

“Maybe you could take up boxing again,” Derrick said with a laugh.

“Hell, no. Leave that to the younger guys with more brain cells left to spare. Wouldn’t mind doing a bit more coaching, though. I get a kick out of watching kids develop enough confidence to throw a good punch.”

“Don’t let the guys at the Y hear you saying that. They’ve been trying to put a boxing program in place for three years, I think. Pretty sure the pay would be out
standing
.”

“I just bet.”

“So, you coming tomorrow night?”

Stephen tossed the scrubber into the sink and threw his hands up. “Whoops, would you look at the time? Goddamn, how it flies.” He made a beeline to the door.

“Punk.”

“That’s fine. I’ll be a punk. I’ve got enough cash to pay for my meals. I’ll have to be smoking some serious crack before you’ll get me into a mermaid tail to ride your mechanical dolphin.”

“Come on, where’s your sense of humor? Don’t you want to show your girl you have one? I know better, but she must think you’re the most uptight fucker on the entire East Coast.”

Stephen chuckled as he pushed the door into the restaurant open. “Well, if she does, I’ll soon be disabusing her of that notion, and I won’t have to dress up like Ariel to do it.”

* * * *

Jan gripped her cell phone tightly and watched from the rear loft window as Stephen made his way up the sidewalk. He couldn’t have been gone long. She’d woken up around eight to find his side of the bed empty and the bathtub wet from his shower. It was only eight-thirty now. She’d been awake long enough to brush her teeth and take a phone call from Dell.

“Do it today!” he’d said, because apparently, her mother was getting ready to pull up stakes.

Janette needed not only a driver, but a kick in the ass. Now or never.

She ran downstairs and met Stephen at the deck door. A smile spanned his face when she barred him entry.

“Are you giving me a hint of some sort?” he asked.

“Yes. Do you have your keys?”

He patted his pockets, and grunted. “Where do you want to go?”

“Petersburg.”

“Petersburg.” His brow furrowed. “Now? What’s there?”

“My mother. I…I have to go today.”

“Oh. Let me get my wallet, okay?”

She nodded and got out of his way.

He strode through the living room toward the hallway leading to the master bedroom and shouted up the stairs, “Meg? I’m leaving for the day.”

“You going to the library to work? We can keep Toby quiet.”

“No you can’t,” a little voice interjected.

Jan covered her grin and turned her back before the snort escaped.

“I’m driving Jan up to Petersburg to see her mother,” Stephen called from the bedroom. “Ignore any calls or deliveries you get from my firm.”

“Wait.” Footsteps creaked on the wooden stairs as Meg slowly descended, cringing at each step. She’d been complaining about her back again. “Does she know you’re going?”

Jan shook her head. “The investigator suggested I just drop in—to not give her a chance to say no.”

“I don’t imagine she would say no, but sometimes folks don’t like being taken off-guard. Good luck.” She pressed her hands to her lower back and arched her spine. Something popped.

Poor little thing.

“Thank you.” Jan wrenched her hands as Stephen reappeared. He’d changed out of his decent-enough T-shirt and put on a polo shirt in its place.

“Ready?” he asked.

“As I’ll ever be.”

They didn’t speak until they were buckled into his SUV and well on their way. She’d learned that it wasn’t because he didn’t want to talk to her, but because he was fine with quiet. It might have been uncomfortable if she hadn’t known that, but for once, she ached to talk. To share.

She cleared her throat and stared at the water as they traversed the bridge to the mainland. “So…are you really not going to do the work your firm sent?”

“No, I haven’t even looked at it. I don’t know what it is. It can’t be anything from my project pile because I put those on ice before I left. It’s gotta be someone else’s bullshit.”

“You take being a team player to the extreme.”

“Considering how poorly I did with lacrosse, that’s probably surprising, right? But, growing up in my house, we always pitched in so everyone would be finished at the same time. Sometimes that meant some of us had more work to do than others, but who did what changed over time. It seemed fair.”

“But the way you’re going about it isn’t fair.”

“No, it isn’t. I should be at a place in life where I could have a couple of kids and know I’ll actually see them more than a few hours on the weekends. That’s important to me.”

“It wasn’t like that for me growing up. After my father took me in, I mean. I went to school, then went home and sat in a quiet bedroom. Mealtimes were for adult conversations. My half-siblings were quite a few years younger than I was and we didn’t engage each other much. Most of the time, home felt like an extension of school. Just another place I was expected to sit still and be quiet.”

He took his eyes off the road briefly to look at her. His expression was one half anger, one half pity. Both made her feel shame. She’d been miserable as a child. There hadn’t been anything she could do about it, really, but she couldn’t help but to feel like her lack of happiness was as much her fault as her father’s.

“That bothers you,” she whispered.

“Yeah. I was a kid who couldn’t sit still or be quiet for a long time, and not for lack of trying. My folks parented around that. Made accommodations for me.”

“I think my mother would have done the same thing. She was very…” She let her lips pinch off the rest, because how could she describe the woman simply? Jan had thought that she was her everything, as little girls should have thought of their mothers at that age.

“She was what, Jan?”

She sighed. “Forgiving. That’s the best way to describe her. She liked giving people chances to show their true colors, and when they did, she didn’t hate them for it. She just…changed her behavior around them if she had to. Or like you said—made accommodations.”

“A woman like you’ve described would want you to come see her.”

“That’s what logic says, but a lot of seeds of self-doubt have taken root in my brain. My father called her all kinds of names. They angered me as a child, but then I heard them so much as I got older that I could hardly keep track of what was truth and what was lie. Things started to blur because the lens I held over my mother had crazed and cracked. And then I hated myself for doubting her, and the cycle would repeat again and again.”

“Break-ups are always hardest on the kids. As much as Meg tried to shelter Toby from her divorce, the fact of the matter was that her ex-husband was and continues to be an asshole. She tries to keep the shit-talk to a minimum for the same reasons you’ve just explicated. She wants Toby to form his own unsullied opinions about his biological father, so if they ever meet again, the shit will fall squarely on who deserves it.”

“I think if you give most people a chance, they’ll form the same opinions you’ve shielded them from.”

“Yeah.”

Quiet settled into the vehicle again as Stephen barreled up 158. His jaw was tight and grip on the wheel white-knuckled.

What she’d said had obviously agitated him. Knowing him as she did now, she understood why. Family was important. Was probably his one hot button. If anyone had insinuated as much about him a year ago, she wouldn’t have believed it. Yet another reason to regret saying no.

She twined her fingers and pointed her gaze out her window. “I hadn’t given thought to having children until recently,” she said. “All the girls I’d gone to school with got married years ago and most have at least one child by now.”

“Sweetheart, you’re hardly an old maid.”

“I know, but sometimes I feel like I got left behind. Having a career and being able to provide for myself was nice, but…lonely.”

“Well, you won’t have to worry about lonely anymore.”

“Are you volunteering to cure me of that condition?”

“You know as well as I do that I’ve offered to absolve you of it countless times. I was starting to think that you thought the only person good enough for you was
you
.”

She slapped his arm across the console. “Asshole.”

“Oh, I can be one and often am one at work. That’s why I’m quitting.”

“You’re not.”

“I am. And you’re to blame.”

“Me?” She bolted more upright under the seatbelt. “How am I to blame?” She was used to getting a lot of bogus shit pinned on her, but this was unexpected.

He grinned. “Yep, you’re to blame. You see, when I look at you, I think about the hard time you’ve given me, and it bolsters me. It makes me want to press on because the rewards would be so great.”

“You’re confusing me.”

“Lawyer thing, I guess. I’ll rephrase. I see my future being you and me with a few kids in a noisy house someplace we both adore. I see being home by five-thirty or six every day and having relaxing weekends in front of the television or grill or who the fuck cares where. How do you feel about that?”

She closed her gaping mouth and stared at the road ahead. He wanted kids with her? A house?

“Don’t you have anything to say?” he asked.

“You want that from
me
?”

“I absolutely do. I may have dogged you for telling me no, but I want you because of all the reasons you had to. You’ve been put through the wringer, honey, but here you are.”

“A mess.”

“And holding it together in spite of it. I want that in a woman. I want
you
.”

“What if I’m not fixable?”

“Maybe you’re not, but you don’t have to be whole to be desirable. Flowers are still beautiful after they’ve lost a few petals. You just have to handle them gentler.”

She dug her nails into her palms. The sharp pain kept the tears at bay.

She wouldn’t cry. Couldn’t. Because if she allowed one tear to fall, she wouldn’t be able to stop. Maybe she owed herself a good cry, but not now. She couldn’t have Stephen thinking he was the cause, when in fact, he was part of the cure.

When she was behind the concierge desk at the resort, Jan didn’t cow to anyone. She knew her job and did it damned well. Guests never intimidated her because she’d been confident in her proficiency and regularly went above and beyond to ensure excellent customer service.

But now, she was like a timid little girl afraid to walk into a new school for the first time. Lost.

A woman in floral print nurse’s scrubs stepped out of the apartment’s front door and closed the door softly. Turning, she pushed her glasses up her nose and smoothed her hands over her wrinkled top. “I didn’t say a word to her, but I know who you are,” she whispered. She held a hand out to Jan, and Jan shook it. “I’m Mary. I’d recognize you from anywhere. You look just like your momma.”

Heat flooded Jan’s cheeks. Her father had said as much. She’d hated knowing that she so resembled a woman he obviously despised.

“I take it she’s here,” Stephen said.

Jan gave his wrist a squeeze of thanks. Her brain had devolved into mush the moment they’d passed into Petersburg’s city limit, and hadn’t improved any during their quick lunch. She’d tried to stall, but apparently, Stephen knew her game and wouldn’t let her play it.

“Yeah, she’s in the back packing up the last of the little things. I think she’s actually excited to be moving on, regardless of why she’s had to do it.”

“How do you…think she’ll respond?” Jan asked.

“To seeing you?” Mary pursed her lips and shook her head. “I can’t even guess. I’ve minded her for a long time, but she’s never once brought you up.”

“That’s what Dell said.”

“I’m sure she has her reasons. Whether they’re good or bad, that’s not for me to decide. Tell you what. I’ll go in and let her know some friends are here to see her. Come on in and sit in the living room while I fetch her. I won’t say who it is.”

Jan looked to Stephen.

He tipped his head toward the SUV. “You want me to wait in the car? I’ll understand if it takes a while. I can even go for a drive. Just text me when you’re ready for me to get you.”