Pieces of My Heart (8 page)

“You okay?” I couldn’t understand the concern creasing Caulder’s brow. “You were under there a long time.”

“I was?” It hadn’t felt nearly long enough.

“Kinda. Yeah.” A crooked smile tipped one corner of his lips and I knew he understood. “Amazing, isn’t it?”

I felt a full-blown smile stretching my lips. “Kinda. Yeah.”

I went under a few more times, Caulder allowing me to stay below longer each time until I finally had to squeeze his hands when my lungs felt like they were going to burst. He gave me another ride across the pool, and I even dared to let go and float for a few seconds on my own, Caulder not far away. It was hands-down one of the best days I’d ever experienced. I never wanted it to end. But like all good things, it couldn’t last forever.

A couple hours later, others began to arrive. Rowdy college guys, diving and splashing and making me uncomfortable in my bathing suit. Cal didn’t need to be told. He simply lifted me out of the water and set me on the edge of the pool, heaving himself out beside me. Before I could stand, he opened an enormous towel from the bag and wrapped it around my shoulders.

“Why don’t you go get dressed and I’ll meet you back out here?”

Sounded like a plan to me. “Sure.”

I dressed in record speed, anxious to have actual clothing covering my body again, and wrapped the wet suit in the oversized towel. Caulder wasn’t quite as punctual. Apparently, looking that gorgeous required time and effort. Who knew?

The smell of chlorine was starting to make me lightheaded, so I decided to wait outside. There was a bench positioned along the pathway not far from the entrance to the building. It wouldn’t take a P.I. to find me.

The sun-warmed metal felt good against my chilled back. Ahead of me, a man in slacks and dress shoes chased a blonde haired boy—maybe five-years-old—running and laughing across the open lawn. He could have easily caught him, but measured his steps to allow the boy to stay just out of his reach. Such a small thing to bring his child so much joy.

I wondered if my mother had ever loved me that much, if there had ever been a time when she’d made even the slightest effort. I searched my memories, sorting through the piles of crap, but I couldn’t recall a single instance where I felt that kind of simple happiness.

My life looked a little different when I’d been that age. The memories were foggy, maybe because I chose not to think about them, but they were there. Raiding the fridge for cold hotdogs and slimy sandwich meat, while Mom snored on the couch. The constant headaches and dizziness. My fingers drifted subconsciously to the barely noticeable burn mark on my forearm from the time I tried to teach myself how to make mac-and-cheese on the stove.

Sweltering summer nights inside those suffocating metal collection bins with plastic bags sticking to my legs. Mom would hoist me inside with nothing more than a flashlight as soon as I was old enough to recognize numbers and I’d search through donation bags until I found one or two in my size to toss back out. At the time, it had felt like Christmas. Looking back it just felt . . . wrong.

The stench of alcohol permeated all of my memories. Like playing quietly, out of the way, in my room with the Barbie with the missing leg that one of the girls at school had thrown away.

Dumpster diving for toys
and
clothes. How pathetic was that?

My whole life was pathetic. And now? I’d actually let myself believe that things could change. That
she
could change. I was still pathetic.

“Hey. You alright?”Caulder slid onto the bench, startling me. I hadn’t even seen him coming. “You look upset.” Tipping his head, he studied me through narrowed eyes. “Something’s wrong. What is it?”

“Nothing.”

“Angel . . . you’re welcome to tell me to mind my own business. Probably won’t do you much good . . .” He reached out and gently pried open the fingers I hadn’t even realized I’d fisted in my shirt directly above my heart. “But, please, don’t lie to me.”

I let my hand fall away and dropped my gaze along with it. I
was
lying to him. Hiding. Pretending. It had become so second nature that I didn’t even know when to turn it off, anymore. My problems were mine. I wasn’t going to allow them to become yet another burden for him to bear. But that didn’t mean I had to lie about everything. He was still my friend. Someone I could confide in. Someone I could trust.

“It’s my mom . . . and Michael. They’ve been . . . fighting.”

Caulder’s face went deathly serious. “Did he hurt her?”

“No! No, no. Not that kind of fighting. Just . . . yelling and screaming and stuff. The things they say . . .”

Caulder waited patiently, his gaze never wavering from my face. “Jade?”

“I tried to intervene once.” I swallowed hard remembering the look of pure outrage on my mother’s face. “I was only trying to help . . . They didn’t want me. They
don’t
want me. They never have.”

My arms slipped subconsciously around my waist, until Caulder brought them up short with a firm grip on each wrist. Slowly, he peeled them away from my body and pulled them around him instead. When his came around me, I stiffened for a moment. But he felt so warm, so comforting. So
safe.
I relaxed into him as his hand ran soothingly up and down my back.

“I’ve got you.” The feel of his words breathed into my hair eased the tension keeping me in knots and I inhaled his scent. Soap, fresh laundry detergent, and something uniquely Caulder. Something strong and powerful, like the scent of ice, if ice had a scent.

“Are you alright, Angel?” He leaned back only far enough to see my face. Whatever he saw there made him shake his head. “Dumb question.”

He tucked me close again and resumed his idle strokes along my spine.

“I don’t want to sound like an asshole, but . . .” Caulder’s jaw worked against my scalp. “Is it possible the fighting’s a good thing? I mean, maybe she’ll kick him out and you can both be done with him.”

I sighed and buried my face deeper in his shoulder. I’d had the same hope at first, until the screaming matches ended with them falling into bed together. “I doubt it. They seem to like to fight.”

Caulder’s arms snaked tighter around me like a python set on crushing its prey and plastered me to his front, removing every last bit of space between us. “Then stay.”

“What?” I tried to pull back for a better look at him, but he didn’t give me an inch.

“Stay with me. Don’t go back there. You’re eighteen, there’s no reason for you to have to—”

“I can’t.”

“You can.”

“No. Cal . . . I can’t.” It wasn’t like the thought hadn’t crossed my mind a time or two . . . or twenty. I just couldn’t bring myself to go through with it. She may have been cruel, and unkind, but she was my mother. She needed me—even if she’d never admit it. “I can’t abandon her.”

Caulder finally pulled back, allowing enough space between us that I could accurately read the incredulity on his face. “The world does not revolve around that woman, Jade. Yours doesn’t have to, either.” 

I shrugged and dropped my eyes to my lap. It didn’t make sense, why I chose to continue to put myself through this when I honestly didn’t have to. But I did, I
did
have to, and why wasn’t something I could really explain other than to say, “She’s my mom.”

Caulder’s sigh washed over me like a wave of irritated warmth. A calloused finger tucked under my chin and gently lifted until I was staring into the deepest blue eyes I’d ever seen. “I’m sorry. I get it. I do. I just can’t seem to stop worrying about you. Every time you leave me . . . Every time I watch you walk back into that place, knowing what’s waiting for you inside . . . It kills me, Angel. The thought of you hurting . . . It guts me.”

Tears welled, setting fire to the backs of my eyes, but I forced them away. He didn’t know the half of it. And that was exactly why he never could.

“You’re so damn strong, and I hate it.” Damp, dark hair flipped across his forehead with a sharp shake of his head. “I know that probably makes me some kind of macho pig, but I’d like nothing more than to go all Neanderthal and toss you over my shoulder and drag you away from there.”

It wasn’t hard to imagine him doing just that and the mental image brought a smile to my lips even as the tears made a valiant comeback. The corner of his mouth quirked up in response and he released my chin to run knuckles over my cheek, brushing away the few stray tears that had managed to escape. A look I couldn’t identify, much less understand, crossed his face and lingered until a deep breath washed it away and he dropped his hand to his side, shifting to put a little more space between us. I immediately missed his warmth and had to fight the urge to scoot closer to him again.

“You ready to go?” He itched at the skin on his neck as his gaze danced over to where the man had finally caught the boy and hefted him onto his shoulders “You don’t have to go home. We could—”

“I should, actually. Go home.” Though it was the last place I wanted to be, I was a good little puppy, crawling obediently back into her cage. “My mom might need—”

“No.”

Umm . . .
“What?”

“Screw what your mom needs.” The brilliant smile lighting up his face soothed the harshness of his words. “Today’s about what you need. What we both need.”

“And what’s that?”

“An escape.”

Seven

“We’re . . . escaping?” The thought was terrifyingly tempting. “From what?”

“From reality. Now, give me your phone.”

“What?” I tightened my grip around the stone-aged piece of techno-crap. The thing was so outdated I was surprised I didn’t have to literally dial
the numbers, rotary style. Still, I wasn’t giving it up without a fight. What if Mom needed to go somewhere and got in a wreck because she couldn’t reach me to drive her? What is she fell asleep with the stove on . . . again? What if a fight between her and Michael got out of hand and she needed my help? “I can’t. What if there’s an emergency? What if my mom—?”

“She’s a grown woman¸ Jade. She can take care of herself for a few hours.”

She doesn’t need you.

Or maybe . . .
I didn’t need to worry about her
all
the time
?

“Hand it over, Angel. We’re taking a mental health day.” The only way Caulder was getting that phone was if he pried it from my fingers. Something he did with disgusting ease. “Shut it off.”

“What?”

“That brain of yours. I see that worry line on your forehead. Put it away. Both of our phones are going in the trunk and neither of us is going to see them again until sundown. No use worrying about it until then. Should some life-altering event occur in the next eight hours, we’ll deal with it tonight. Okay?”

Okay?
I was pretty sure he’d just installed a pause button on my life. Or maybe it was more like a mute button. Either way, things suddenly seemed a whole lot quieter. Cal offered—no,
demanded
—that I stop worrying for an entire day. I wasn’t sure I was even capable of it. But I was willing to try.

“Okay.”

“Good.” He pointed me at the passenger door and then rounded the hood to his own. “Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?” I sank into the soft seat not really caring what the answer was.

“Nowhere.” Cal grinned at me as the car roared to life. “Everywhere.
Anywhere
. The day is ours.”

So was the road, apparently. We drove for miles following one stretch of open road after the next. Moving from one town to another, farther and farther away from anything or anyone I recognized. Or anyone who recognized me. Out there, I wasn’t stuck with who I was. Out there I could be anyone I wanted to be.

A song came on that I recognized and I started humming along to the tune. To my surprise when the next verse started, Caulder belted out the lyrics at the top of his lungs. So maybe there was
one
thing on the planet that he didn’t excel at. I tried to stifle my laugh and failed, which only made him singer louder, rolling down the windows for all the world to hear.

“Sing with me, Angel!” He had to shout to be heard over the maxed out volume of his stereo.

No way. I wasn’t nearly confident enough to do what he was doing. Other drivers were turning to look as they passed us. My face was starting to burn and I wasn’t even the one they were gawking at.

“One day, Jade. That’s all I’m asking for. Just one day where you stop worrying about what everyone else thinks and just do what makes you happy. One day of freedom. Can you give me that?”

Freedom
. It sounded exactly like what I’d been craving. But was I brave enough to take it?

The chorus was coming. I knew the words. The tune. The notes. I’d sung before. In the shower. Quietly. To myself. I wasn’t terrible.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I opened my mouth and let it go. I let it all go. The fear, the embarrassment, the voices telling me I wasn’t good enough. I sang as loud as I could. And Caulder didn’t make me do it alone.

Sailing down the road, the wind in my hair, belting out the words to the newfound soundtrack to my freedom, I’d never felt so light. Like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders and I could suddenly fly. When Caulder broke into drums on the steering wheel, I joined him on air guitar and wondered where this new girl had come from.

We drove and sang and laughed for miles. With no particular destination in mind, it didn’t matter where we were. Questions of how far or how long didn’t exist. We were exactly where we were supposed to be.

Hours passed by more quickly than the miles we traveled, and before I knew it, Caulder was pulling off in a cloud of dust.

“Dinnertime.” Cal shut off the engine as I waited for the dust to clear to see where exactly it was he thought we were eating.

Ahead of us, the bright sun glinted off of a small metal trailer. A hand written sign on a white board by the side of the road read, ‘Janine’s Hotdogs and Ice Cream’.

“Why don’t you go grab us a table?”

It wasn’t exactly standing room only. The place was nearly deserted. Only a couple of men in orange vests, covered in a fine layer of dirt, sat near an old beat-up pickup. More than enough tables remained empty. It was Cal’s way of making sure I wasn’t going to try to pay for anything, which worked for me, seeing as I hadn’t brought any money with me. I’d been planning to go swimming, not run away from home.

“Sure.”

He placed our order with a wiry brunette woman—Janine, I assumed—while I staked out a table near the back of the bunch. Nothing as far as the eye could see but dirt, grass, and blue skies. Good thing we were headed nowhere because we appeared to be right smack in the middle of it.

I could hear the faint conversation of the two men, paying us no attention. The sound of Caulder’s voice carried on the breeze. A rare Indian summer day had the sun warming my shoulders. It was peaceful. Shutting my eyes, I soaked it all in.

“Let’s eat.” Caulder sat across from me, kicking out his legs so that his feet nearly brushed mine beneath the table.

Foot-long franks and a basket of fries never tasted so good. Drowning a deep fried potato in ketchup, I popped it in my mouth and had to hold back a groan.

“No music.”

I choked down the food in mouth, wracking my brain for a coherent response to Caulder’s random statement. The best I could come up with was, “Huh?”

“Music. We’ve been doing nothing but listening to it for the past few hours. There’s none here, so it looks like we’re going to have to actually talk to each other.”

“Oh.” Because I was such a great conversationalist.

“So . . .”

Please don’t ask about home. Or Mom. Or Michael. Or—

“How’s work going?”

Holding my relief to a minimum, I offered up a token frown. “It’s work.”

“Right. So not exactly balloons and parades, then?”

“Not exactly. What about you? How’s school going?”

Caulder had his dog halfway to his mouth when I threw out the question. Pausing, he grimaced at it and dropped it back in its sleeve. “It’s going.”

Somehow that didn’t seem genuine. “Really?”

He sighed and tossed his hair from where it was falling over his forehead. A lethal maneuver I was certain he was completely oblivious to. “It’s going . . .
slowly
.”

“How so?” I chewed another bite, barely registering the hot grease in my mouth as I awaited his thought-out response.

“I’m only taking online courses right now. Making up work and retesting for classes I should have completed last year. I tanked them, but the school is giving me ‘special consideration due to traumatic experiences’. Evidently, watching your brother die earns you a second chance.”

My shoulders sank almost as deeply as my heart, watching him sit there, frowning at the table. Neither of us touched another bite until he blinked up at me and shook his head.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to take it there.”

“No. It’s okay.” There were things he needed to talk about. Things he needed to get out. Things I could be there to listen to. “How’s the second chance working out?”

“Better than the first. But I’m already so far behind. I wasted freshman and most of sophomore years on business classes I thought I’d need. Then Kiernan got diagnosed and Dad . . .” He swallowed hard though he hadn’t touched his food and took a steadying breath. “I had to transfer schools when we moved and not all of my credits transferred with me. What was supposed to be my senior year was spent retaking mostly sophomore and junior level classes. And now, here I am, a super senior relearning the same stuff yet again. Then there’s medical school, residency, licensing . . . At this rate I’ll be a corpse before I’m a doctor. Sometimes I wonder if I should even bother anymore. Maybe medicine just isn’t where I’m meant to be.”

So he
was
studying medicine. No real surprise there.

“Well, it’s your life, but as someone who’s been your patient already . . .” My thumb ran over the single scar left behind on my palm, remembering the way he’d drawn me back from the edge that night with his quiet confidence. “I think you’d make a really excellent doctor. Is that what you’ve always wanted to do?”

Picking at the remaining fries at the bottom of the baskets, I swirled one in the puddle of ketchup with no real interest in eating it.

“Not always.” Cal’s hands dropped from the table to scrub his fashionably faded blue jeans. “I don’t know how much you know about my family. My father, in particular.”

“Not much. Other than he’s a grade-A jerk.”

The corner of his mouth tipped up in a barely there smile. “Well, prior to being a jerk, he was, and still is, the CEO of an international corporation known as
Parks and Steiner
.”

“Never heard of it.”

“I’m not surprised. They own parts of different companies that make lots of different things. They’re more a ‘behind the scenes’ type company, buying and selling. You won’t see their name on anything and I doubt anyone outside the business world really knows much about them.” He shook his head, that smile turning to a look of disgust. “I always thought I’d work for him one day. Follow in his footsteps, ya know?”

“And now?”

Despite his attempts to mask it, the pain he was in was almost palpable. “Now, I don’t want anything to do with that man, or his company, or his money. Though he does keep sending it, which I’m thankful for, for Mom’s sake. She doesn’t need anything else to worry about.”

“How has she been?” Missing her was an ache I was constantly aware of in the back of my mind. How many moments had come and gone where my first inclination was to talk to her about them before I remembered that it wasn’t an option?

“About the same. She was disappointed that she missed you the last time you came to the house, though. Made me promise to bring you over again soon. She’s actually off tomorrow if you . . .”

He trailed off, reading my hesitation loud and clear. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see her. I just—

“I get it. You don’t know what to say to her.” He got it. “You’re afraid of saying the wrong thing. Of making things worse.” He
really
got it. “I don’t know what to say to her, either. She lost her son. How do you make that better? And you. You lost somebody you loved. Somebody you counted on. I don’t know how to make that better, either.”

“Cal.” He was struggling with a problem that simply had no solution. “It’s not your job to make it better. I don’t think it’s even possible.”

A cloud seemed to settle over him, though the day remained clear and bright, as he twisted his napkin until it tore in half. “She hasn’t . . . Jade, she hasn’t cooked once since the funeral.”

That was . . . shocking. Mrs. Parks loved to cook. It was her passion. Things were worse with his mother than Cal had let on. He knew it and now so did I.

“What if . . .” Was I being too presumptuous? But I couldn’t do nothing. “What if I gave her a reason to?”

“Dinner?” Hope sprung in his eyes that made my fingers strain towards his. I wanted to hold his hand and tell him everything would be alright. “Tomorrow night?”

“Do you think she would—?”

“I think she would love that, Angel. Thank you.” His relief was like the passing of a storm. “I can’t—”

“I don’t wanna eat!” A little brown haired boy plopped down at the table next to us and dropped his head to the splintered wooden surface.

“You have to eat something other than cotton candy and popcorn.” A tall, thin woman in a maxi dress slid in beside him with a smile. “It’s just a hotdog, not the end of the world.”

“But we wanna go to the carnival.” A girl joined them, shoulders sagging dramatically with a pout only a pre-teen could pull off.

“We will.
After
you eat.” The woman caught us watching and rolled her eyes with a good natured laugh. “You’d think they’d never seen a carnival before.”

I could feel the kids’ pain. A carnival. Who would want a hotdog over that?

“Where is it?” Caulder startled me, speaking loudly enough to be heard over the children’s continued grumbling.

“Not far.” She hushed her kids before pointing down the road in the direction we’d been heading. “A few miles down. You can’t miss it.”

“Excellent.” Caulder balled up his napkin and dropped it on the tray. “You ready?”