Someone to Watch Over Me (12 page)

She pulled open the screen door and went through the kitchen and down the hall. There was a weak light burning in his mother’s room and the door, which he normally kept closed, was open.

Jax was standing with his back to the door, arms crossed and tucked against himself like his insides hurt, head down and turned away. She couldn’t see the expression on his face.

Gwen went to his side, put a hand on his arm.

Romeo was in the middle of the bed lying down flat, even his snout pressed flat to the bed, and he was making his crying sound, which always broke her heart.

He’d made a nest of sorts in the middle of the bed. Gwen saw the apron he must have taken from the box in the back room. And there were a few brightly colored scarves, what looked like a nightgown, maybe a bathrobe, a towel, a dress or two.

All Jax’s mother’s things.

He’d gathered them all about him to sleep with him.

Gwen took a breath. “Poor baby.”

She went to Romeo and kissed his snout, rubbed her nose against the top of his head and said, “I’m so sorry, sweetie.”

Then she stepped back to Jax’s side, slipped her hand under his arm and let her head fall against the side of his arm. He pulled his arm out from between them and slipped it around her shoulders, settling her more fully against his side.

“Is that the most pathetic thing you’ve ever seen?”

“He just misses her, Jax.”

“He’s a dog.”

“But he loved her, and now he’s mourning her the only way he knows. All those things probably carry a faint scent of her, and that’s as close to her as he can get now.”

Jax drew in a breath and let it out slow, and then she felt his head come down on the top of hers. “He’s got to go.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Yeah, I do. I have no desire for a dog. Especially one that’s constantly thinking of my mother, who’s gone.”

“You can’t just get rid of him,” she argued.

“Maybe one of my sisters will take him. Of course, they don’t even want a spare set of towels. Not ready, they said. You’d think I’d have asked them if it was okay to just blow the house up, from the reaction I got to the question,
Could you use some extra towels?
My mother’s towels are precious now.”

“It’s just going to take some time,” Gwen said.

“Well, I don’t want it to take all this time,” he said, pulling away from her, his voice rising on every word. “I want it to be over. I want my life back. I want things to be normal. That’s all I want.”

Gwen sat down on the edge of the bed and stroked the dog, who started whimpering again. “Jax, normal is going to be something brand-new, and you’re not going to see it overnight. Or in a few days or a few weeks or even months. Normal is something new that you have to make or that you have to find. I still haven’t found it, and it’s been almost a year since my life blew up.”

He whirled around to face her, his face bleak. “You’re telling me I’m going to feel like this for a year or more?”

“Maybe.” Actually, she was starting to think the problem was that he thought he could skip the grief process all together. That he’d get through it by taking care of everyone else and holding his family together and carrying out his mother’s wishes, and when that was done, he’d have his life back.

No time for thinking of what he’d lost or how everything was going to change.

“It’s like trying to sprint through quicksand,” she said. “You just don’t get anywhere by trying to power through it. If you try, you’ll just keep sinking.”

“I feel like I’m definitely sinking,” he admitted.

“Well, it’s only been a few days,” she said gently.

He threw his head back, like a man ready to shriek at the heavens. “It feels like forever already.”

“I know.” She remembered that part of it, time moving in slow motion, each second excruciating, each minute an eternity.

“I keep finding myself walking into a room and forgetting why I came in there. I know I had a reason, but I can’t
remember what it was. I pick up the phone because I need to call somebody, and in between dialing the number and the person picking up, I can’t remember who I called. It’s the weirdest thing. People mention doing something with me in the last few days, and I have no memory of it. It’s like I’m losing my mind.”

“No, just grieving. I think it’s too much sometimes, and our brains just blank out. It can’t process everything, and the grief is so overwhelming, we just forget,” Gwen said. “It goes away. Slowly.”

“I don’t know how to do this,” he admitted.

“Well, it’s not a test. No one’s giving you a grade—”

“Except my sisters. And I’m flunking.”

“Well, they’re just going to have to stop doing that. It’s not fair.” She’d tell them so if she had to.

“I’m doing the best I can, and I’m afraid it’s not enough.”

“You’re getting through it. I know that. I have faith in you. And, I think I’m starting to have more faith in God, too. In the goodness in this world.”

“I don’t have that, Gwen.”

“Give it time. It’ll come.”

She dared to look up at him then. He had his back to the wall, slumped against it, head down, arms crossed, trying to hold himself together. She knew about that, too.

She saw one tear running down his cheek.

Gwen went to him, touched her forehead to his, blinked back her own tears. She brushed his cheek with the back of her hand, and then both of her hands settled against the sides of his face.

She kissed his cheek, then his closed eyes, and then his arms came around her, catching her in a grip that was painful in its need.

S
he held him until he stopped shaking.

Until, finally, he lifted his head from her shoulder and loosened the death-grip he’d had on her. Looking embarrassed and incredibly sad, he pulled himself up straight and leaned back against the wall, hands shoved into his pockets, eyes aimed somewhere at the floor.

“This is crazy,” he said. “I’m thirty years old. I can take care of myself. It’s not like I’m going to fall apart just because…I’m not gonna fall apart.”

“No.” Gwen shook her head. “But she was your mother, and you loved her dearly.”

He nodded. “I did. I really did.”

“I think you should tell me about her.”

He frowned at her.

“I think you need to. Give it a try. What was it about her that made her so special? What will you always remember?”

“I could talk all night about that.”

“Okay.” Gwen shrugged. “There’s no place I have to be.”

“She was an amazing woman,” he began. “Such spirit and so much happiness inside her, and it wasn’t that life
had been a breeze for her, because it wasn’t. She adored my father. They got married right after she graduated from high school, had me a year later. She was only thirty-one when he died and left her with the four of us. Can you imagine being left alone with four kids to raise at that age?”

“No, I can’t.”

“To find a way to go on and be happy and so strong?”

“No. Here I thought I was so grown up and so capable, and then, life throws something really hard at me, and I just crumble.”

“You didn’t crumble,” he said.

“You didn’t see me. I did.”

“I see you now,” he said. “You can’t fool me. You’re tough. No doubt about it.”

Gwen felt ridiculously pleased, like he’d paid her one of the highest compliments in the world. She was a tough girl, and here she was, alone at night with a man, not scared at all and not even thinking of herself, which was an amazing relief.

She grinned, and he caught sight of it and said, “What?”

“Nothing.”

“I know it was something,” he insisted.

“There’s no way to say this and have it come out right.”

“That’s okay. Just say it.”

“For so long, everything in my life revolved around my own problems. I was so sick of myself, I could hardly stand it, and then—Jax, it sounds so mean, and I don’t want it to sound like that.”

“You couldn’t be mean if you tried. Now tell me. What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking, ‘Wow, a guy with even more problems than me. What a relief.’”

He laughed out loud. The sound rolled though him like waves on a rough sea.

Soon, she was laughing just as loud. “I didn’t mean it like that. Honest.”

He shrugged. “Never thought I’d be appreciated for the problems I can bring to the table in a friendship.”

They both laughed again. Romeo, from his nest on the bed, stared at them like they’d absolutely lost their minds, and then he started barking at them like he was scolding them for disturbing him while he was in mourning.

“Oh, baby. I’m sorry,” Gwen said. She knelt beside the bed and rubbed the dog between the ears and tried to apologize.

He whined and put on his sad face and looked all put out.

“I know. I know,” she said, giving his big furry head a hug.

“Come on.” Jax stuck out a hand to her and said, “If he wants to be miserable, let him. I was planning to drag you off to an early dinner tonight, but we got sidetracked. I’m starving.”

“Me, too.” She held out her hand, and he helped her to her feet. “But it’s late. I bet nothing’s still open.”

“That’s okay. Let’s see what we have to work with here.”

They found an absolute treasure trove of desserts in the freezer. Four cakes, two pies, three flavors of ice cream and an amazing number of toppings.

“Wow. Hard to turn your back on that, isn’t it?” he asked.

Gwen nodded. “Did you tell people you wanted to open a sweets shop or something?”

“No. It’s from one of Mom’s parties for the Bees.”

Jax piled her arms full of nuts, sauce, whipped cream and a crumbled cookie mixture in a pretty, red canister, then pulled serving bowls out of one of the cabinets.

“Your mother fed sweets to bees?”

“Not
bees,
Bees. Her cancer support group. She called ’em the Bees. They mostly just laughed when I asked what it stood for. Bald, bold, beautiful babes. I’ve heard all those words at one point or another.” He frowned. “But that couldn’t be it. Not all of them had lost their hair…I don’t know what the name stood for, fully, but she threw parties for them and served the most decadent things she could find. It was really hard to get some of them into eating, and they were just skin and bones. She tried to take care of them all, even when she was so sick.”

“I can see her doing that.”

“A few weeks before she died, one of the women in her group got the news that she was in remission, finally, and Mom insisted on having a party.” He set the bowls down on the counter and dug in a drawer, coming up with spoons. “It was one of her last really good days.”

Gwen emptied her arms of goodies onto the counter beside him and said, “She had a lot of good days, Jax. I know that about her from all the things everyone told me about her. Including you.”

“I know.”

“But it doesn’t help?”

“Seems like it would, but…All that time, it just wasn’t enough, you know? How is it ever enough? She was only fifty. Fifty’s nothing these days. She should have had so much more.” He looked up at her and frowned. “Sorry. We were doing really well for a while, weren’t we?”

Gwen nodded.

“We’ll get it back,” he said, flipping open a carton of ice cream and scooping out a swirly mixture of chocolate, vanilla and some dark, chunky stuff. “You like this?”

“Sure,” she said agreeably.

He fought until he’d managed to empty a hunk into one of those huge bowls he’d gotten out of the cabinet.

“Can’t find the ice-cream scoop,” he said. “I think we packed every one of them. Million memories in all three of ’em, you know? No way we can get rid of them.”

She laughed. “Of course not.”

He laughed harder. “Katie actually said she remembered Kim having her first taste of ice cream out of that Mickey Mouse scoop we found.”

“She did not.”

“I swear, she did.” He was shaking with laughter again, leaning against the counter. “It was even more of a treasure than the eggbeaters. Do they even make eggbeaters anymore? I’ve always just used a fork.”

“No, you use those little wire things. You know? Whisks! That’s it. You use a whisk.”

He frowned. “I thought that was a laundry detergent.”

“It is, but it’s an egg thing, too.”

He shrugged. “Then we’ll probably find six of them in a drawer, and we can recount the Cassidy-family history as told through its six whisks, three ice-cream scoops and three eggbeaters.”

“I’d listen to that story.” He slid a huge bowl of ice cream in front of her. “What is that?”

“Yours.”

“Jax, that’s enough for three people.”

“No, it’s not.”

“That’s a serving bowl. One you fill up and put on a table and pass around to everyone so they can each have some.”

He shrugged. “It’s a bowl. I eat lots of things out of these bowls. I could recite recollections of at least a dozen fabulous things I ate in these bowls. Cereal. Soup. Pasta. All sorts of things on all sorts of momentous occasions.
We can never get rid of these bowls. Should we even be eating out of them?”

“You eat out of that one. I’ll find my own,” she said, pulling out a much smaller one from the cabinet behind him.

“It’s gonna go on like this for a long time, isn’t it?” he asked soberly.

“Probably. But you laughed a lot tonight. We both did. It wasn’t all bad.”

“No. It wasn’t.”

They topped their ice cream outrageously, then went and sat on the front porch to eat it, because Jax said when he was younger, his family ate ice cream on the porch.

It was quiet on the street, and yet they still saw two neighbors walk by and stop to say hello. Three people in cars slowed down and waved as they went by.

“Uh-oh. My sisters are going to hear about this, too. I can practically hear the phone lines buzzing with the news that you and I are sharing ice cream on my poor dead mother’s porch—”

“Jax—”

“Like she’d care,” he added. “She’d love you. She’d be thrilled to see me with a woman like you.”

“A woman like me? What do you mean, like me?”

“A nice woman,” he said.

“Oh.”
That.

“No. I didn’t mean it like that. I mean, someone who’s kind and generous and not afraid to stick by someone through the tough times. Although she’d be happy that you keep me at arm’s length, too, unlike most women I’ve known. My mother wasn’t very happy with that part of my life. Thought I’d made some bad choices.”

“Oh.”

He laughed. “Nothing to say to that? Just a very careful, completely noncommittal
Oh?
”

“Honestly, I don’t know what to say to that. I don’t want to sound like I’m judging you—”

“But you are—”

“No. I mean, I’m trying not to. I don’t understand the choices you’ve made, but then I don’t really know about the choices you’ve made. I just know a few things I’ve heard and things you’ve told me, and I don’t think it would be fair to judge your actions or your choices based on nothing but that.”

“Try again, Gwen. Your voice is all but dripping with disapproval.”

“Okay. How about, I’d love to understand better why you are the way you are with women.” Because that might tell her how likely it was that he might change. And because she knew him better now. He was a very nice man in a lot of ways. The way he was with women didn’t make sense. “I think it’s got to be much more complicated than the most obvious reason—because you don’t want anything but a quick, short-term relationship with anyone—”

“That’s what I want,” he claimed.

“Okay, if that’s what you want, then why do you want only that?”

“Why should I want more?”

“Everybody wants more than that.”

“You’re not listening, Gwen. I just told you I don’t, and I meant it.”

“You may think that’s the only kind of relationship you’ll ever have that will work out, so those are the only kind you even try to have anymore. But you’d love to have more than that.”

“I don’t—”

“Jax, who wouldn’t want a relationship that really works out long term?”

“That’s the thing. They never really work out for long. They don’t last.”

“Okay. There we go. There’s a reason you are the way you are with women. You don’t think you have a chance of anything more than a short-term relationship, so you won’t even try to have one that lasts.”

“Gwen, nothing lasts.”

“Of course it does.”

“Name one thing that truly lasts,” he challenged her.

“Your love for your mother.”

“She’s dead.”

“But you still love her. You’ll never stop loving her.”

“What does the fact that I loved her get me now that she’s gone? It just means it hurts even more. That I miss her even more. That life has messed things up for me and my sisters one more time. Love is no help in a situation like this.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“Look at me,” he said. “Look at what’s happening right now. There’s all that’s left of her life inside that house. Eggbeaters and ice-cream scoops and sets of towels. Me and my sisters and the stupid, whining dog all missing her like crazy. What is that? It’s nothing. I mean, what was the point? She was here. Now she’s gone. She had to live through losing my father and struggling to raise me and my sisters and then this horrible, horrible disease. All of the pain and the fear and the fight she put up. You can’t imagine the way she fought, and for what? To lose? What was the point in that? What’s the point in any of this? Tell me, because I’d really like to know.”

“I don’t know,” Gwen said. “I’ve asked myself the same thing dozens of times since…Well, you know when, and I don’t know the answers. But I started to think I was figuring out some of it since I came here. Maybe someone is watching out for me…”

“I’m definitely watching out for you.”

“I know—”

“But that’s not what you mean?”

“No. I’m thinking that, all that time I was wondering where God was, when I was so lost and so sad, and maybe He was there all along, watching out for me. Maybe He sent people to me, to help me. Maybe…you, I thought…Well, I guess it doesn’t matter what I thought.”

“No,” he said. “Don’t do that. Don’t forget who I am. Don’t forget what I am. What I’m like. Because all those things you’ve heard about me and the other women. It’s true, Gwen. All of it. I just told you myself a minute ago. Don’t go thinking I’m going to change or that you’re going to change me, because it won’t happen. I appreciate all that you’ve done. Really, I do. More than I can say. But I won’t lie to you. This is all there is to me. If you expect more, you’re going to be disappointed.”

She stood there and stared at him, her mouth hanging open, having trouble believing all he’d said and even more trouble accepting it.

“You’re wrong,” she said finally. “There’s so much more to you. You just won’t even try to have a lasting relationship with a woman, because you’re afraid. That’s all. You’re just too scared to even try to have anything that lasts.”

He thought she was going to stay and argue long and loud with him, but instead she looked surprised and then
hurt and then just got up and walked away, off his porch and down the sidewalk.

Jax had the ridiculous urge to stand up and yell after her, “Am not!”

He was feeling really mature and rational at the moment.

“Gwen?” he called out instead, heading down the steps and down the sidewalk after her.

“Forget it. I’m going home.”

“You don’t walk home alone at this hour. You’re afraid of the dark,” he reminded her.

“Well, I guess it’s time I got over that, too, isn’t it?”

“Just gimme a minute, okay? Please?”

She kept right on walking.

He was steaming, his head kind of fuzzy. How had this gotten so out of hand so quickly? And why wouldn’t she just slow down?