Summer in the South (33 page)

“Come by the shop tomorrow afternoon,” he said, and hung up before she could say anything else.

T
he Traveling Wilburys were playing “End of the Line” on the CD player when Ava stepped into Jake’s workshop. Light slanted through the tall windows set at regular intervals along the brick walls. There was a pleasant scent of pine and cedar in the air. Jake was standing at his worktable in the center of the room, hand-sanding the legs of a delicate-looking chair. He glanced up at Ava as she came through the door.

“So you made it,” he said. His hair was darker, longer than she remembered.

“Yes.”

“Do you want something to drink?”

“No. Thanks.”

“Let me finish this and we’ll go upstairs.” He went back to work, covered, as usual, by a light dusting of wood shavings. Ava wandered around the shop admiring his work, stopping to examine ornate fragments of fretwork and scrap.

Jake seemed absorbed in what he was doing, yet she had the feeling he was very much aware of her, following her progress with guarded eyes.

“I’ll be done in a minute,” he said. His hands moved along the chair legs as gently as a lover’s caress.

This thought made her stir; she roused herself and said, “I don’t want to keep you. Do you have the photo?”

He stood and wiped his brow with his wrist. “Are you in a hurry?”

She raised one hand, vaguely indicating the door behind her. “I have work to do,” she said.

He tossed the sandpaper down and strode toward her, walking in such a purposeful and determined way that she stepped back instinctively, striking the edge of a table with her hip.

He put his hand out to steady her. “Careful,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said politely, formally.

He looked her in the face. “I had thought, after our last meeting, that I might see you again,” he said.

“I had the impression, after our last meeting, that you did
not
want to see me.”

“It seems we’ve misread each other.”

“It would seem that way.”

He let her go, and walked ahead of her toward the narrow iron stairway in the corner of the room. She could still feel the warm pressure of his fingers on her arm.

“Where are you going?” she said.

He turned and looked at her. Their eyes locked. “The photo’s up here. In my apartment.” She hesitated and, seeing that, he grinned suddenly and put his hand on his chest.

“I’ll be on my best behavior,” he said. “I promise.”

S
he followed him up the circular stairs to a small, neat apartment above the shop. The room was filled with his whimsical furniture. A low sofa stood along a brick wall, opposite a galley kitchen. On another wall hung a pop-art print of a beautiful woman’s face. Hadley.

“Very nice,” Ava said stiffly.

“Do you like it? I did it years ago.” She swiveled her head and looked at him but his expression was bland, noncommittal. He went into the kitchen and took two bottled waters from the refrigerator.

Ava stood carefully examining Hadley. She seemed to be staring at Ava with a sly, mocking expression as if she found her presence here highly entertaining. Looking into her eyes, Ava felt as if she was intruding on something intensely personal, as if she was the brunt of some private joke.

Jake tapped her lightly on the shoulder and she startled, taking a bottle from him.

“I can’t stay long,” she said in a wooden voice.

“Oh. Well, then, I won’t keep you.” His manner changed abruptly and he set his water down on the coffee table and went into the bedroom to get the photo.

Whatever ease she had felt between them had disappeared under Hadley’s sly, knowing gaze. Why, despite everything that had happened, had he kept this reminder of her? Was it an act of defiance or one of tenderness? She turned and walked over to the window, staring down at the leafy street.

He came back a few minutes later carrying a faded black-and-white photograph. She sat down on the sofa and he sat down beside her. He passed her the photo. She stared down at it, feeling a catch in her throat. The photo showed a tall, earnest-looking young man with dark swept-back hair. His face was startling in its resemblance to Randal Woodburn, the patriarch. All but the eyes, which were dark and filled with an intensity bordering on mania. He was dressed in evening clothes and there was an air of studied elegance in his pose, something compelling and yet false, too.

“Handsome devil, wasn’t he?” He was so close she could feel his breath on her cheek, warm and sweet.

“Where did you find this?”

“My mother found it in my father’s things.”

“I don’t suppose I can have a copy.”

“Take this one,” he said. “I don’t need it.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. His T-shirt stretched across his wide shoulders, exposing his back, and she could see the faint line of downy hair at the base of his spine.

“What did you mean?” he asked.

“Sorry?”

“Downstairs.” He turned his head and looked at her. “When you said you thought I didn’t want to see you again.”

She was quiet for a moment, thinking how best to begin. “I don’t know. You seemed to change when Will called. As if you were suddenly sorry I was here.”

“Baggage,” he said. “Not knowing if I was stepping in between Will and someone he cared about. Again.”

“I told you we were just friends.”

He smiled, nodding his head. “So you did,” he said.

“I had the impression you wanted me to leave.”

“You were wrong.”

The windows of the room had no shutters or blinds, and the sun fell through unimpeded, the crowns of the tall trees outside making lacy patterns on the glass. Books spilled out of the bookcases and were stacked in piles on the glossy wood floor. There were no rugs. The room was clean and neat but spare. A bachelor space. Ava stared at the photo, aware of the faint traffic sounds on the street and the dense silence that drifted between them. It was shocking, looking into a face she had seen so often in her imagination.

“Have you told Will yet that you’re writing a novel about his family?” He leaned back cautiously, his shoulder nearly touching hers.

“It’s not about his family. Not really. I mean, there are some similarities.”

“Have you told him?”

“No.”

There was a hole in his jeans just above one knee and he poked his fingers in and began to pull threads through the opening. “Because if you’re hoping to build something with Will, if you’re planning—” He stopped and continued to shove his fingers into the frayed hole, pulling loose threads free.

“I’m not planning anything with Will,” she said. “We’re friends. That’s all.”

“They’ll consider a novel about Charlie Woodburn a betrayal,” he said calmly, as if he hadn’t heard her. “It doesn’t matter how you write it or how it ends. They’ll blame you for bringing up the buried past.”

“I know that.”

“No matter how pretty and charming you are.” There was a faint cleft in his chin, visible through the stubble of beard. “No matter how fetchingly you blush.”

“I’m not blushing.”

He grinned slowly.

“Besides, isn’t it hypocritical of you to warn me about betraying the Woodburns, given your past history?”

“Do as I say, not as I did.” He leaned over and drank from his bottle, then set it down again on the coffee table.

Neither one moved, sitting companionably in a silence that seemed less awkward now. Outside the window the sun slid behind a ridge of clouds, causing a swift succession of shadows to fall across the floor. On the wall to their left, Hadley stared benignly, smirking.

“She was very pretty,” Ava said.

“I suppose so.”

Jake put his arm across the back of the sofa. She could feel the warmth of his hand, just inches from her skin. “Does Will ever mention Hadley?”

“He doesn’t like to talk about her.”

He smiled, his eyes fierce and black. “No, he wouldn’t. He’s not much of a talker.”

Ava felt disloyal talking about Will. “I don’t think he’s particularly happy about your—estrangement, as Josephine calls it.”

“Well, he hasn’t exactly tried to do anything about it.”

“Have you?”

“Yes. At first. I tried for years.”

She was quiet for a moment, looking down at the photo of Charlie. “I think he feels guilty, not only over the trouble between you and him, but also over Hadley’s death.”

“That wasn’t his fault. That wasn’t anyone’s fault but Hadley’s.”

She slid the photo into her purse. “Did you love her?”

He sighed and shook his head. “I suppose I did,” he said.

“So you weren’t just going after her because she was Will’s girlfriend?”

He met her gaze, giving her a long, searching look. “If you believe that you must not think very highly of me.”

She could feel the heat of his arm like a phantom limb, an extension of herself. “Sorry,” she said, looking down. “I know you wouldn’t do that.” The sun was back, glittering along the floor. In the street a truck passed, rattling the windows. “What was she like?”

“Hadley? Well, there was the person she wanted you to see and then there was the other one.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“No. You wouldn’t,” he said fondly, and he touched her now, lightly squeezing her shoulder. The shock of his touch was palpable, arousing. “She was from Birmingham, the youngest of six. Her father was a housepainter.”

“A housepainter?” She gave a half-laugh, an expression of surprise. “She went to boarding school. I would have thought she was part of the ruling elite.”

“She was a scholarship kid. Like me. There were a lot of us, and we tried desperately to fit in but in the long run, of course, we didn’t. I was lucky. I could bring friends home to Woodburn Hall. Will and I told everyone we were orphaned cousins being raised by our great-aunts, and of course that was true except for the fact that my mother was still alive. I saw her when I was home, but I never took friends from school home with me. You know how you care about things like that when you’re fifteen. I was lucky Will and Fanny and Josephine let me pretend to be one of them.”

“You
are
one of them.”

He laughed. “You haven’t been here long enough to understand that I’m not. I’m an impostor. A cuckoo in a magpie’s nest.”

“Fanny and Josephine are genuinely fond of you.”

“And I so wanted to be one of them.”

“Did they like Hadley?”

“Of course, everybody liked Hadley. She made herself very—agreeable. It was a knack she had. And she was impressed by the Woodburns, too, the family, the history, the money.”

“So what happened between you two?”

He put his head back against the sofa and looked at the ceiling. His profile in the slash of sunlight was strong, austere. “Have you ever been in love?”

“Yes.” She hesitated. “Twice.”

“In the beginning we were just friends. When she first came up to Sewanee that’s all it was. But over time, things changed. There was an attraction that we both tried to ignore. Things had always been rocky between her and Will. From the very beginning. So when she came to me and told me they had broken up, I believed her.”

“And you started dating her then? Thinking she and Will were broken up?”

“Yes.”

“You can’t be blamed for that.”

“I never asked Will. I never saw fit to question what Hadley was telling me. I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t want to know.” He lowered his chin, gazing out the window. “That night at the Christmas party at Longford when they announced their engagement, I was shocked. She hadn’t told me anything, she hadn’t warned me. We’d never dated openly at school. She’d been very careful about that. She knew I wouldn’t tell Will. She was very matter-of-fact about the whole thing. It was the money, of course. She’d grown up poor, and the money meant a lot to her. And the funny thing is”—here he stopped and looked at her with bitterness—“the funny thing is, I didn’t blame her. I could understand the lure of power and wealth. I felt complicit in the whole thing, and it made me sick with shame. That’s why I couldn’t stay around. I dropped out and headed to California.”

“But if you kept your relationship secret, then who told Will?”

They exchanged a long look. “I did,” he said. “After six months out in California I began to see her differently. I realized she wasn’t the girl I had thought she was. The girl Will thought she was, and I knew he deserved better. So I called him.”

“You did the right thing.”

He shook his head. “Will didn’t see it that way,” he said. “He probably thought I still had feelings for Hadley and was hoping to get something out of it. The truth was, the only thing I felt for Hadley, and myself, was disgust. Will was too proud to ever forgive her. She begged him not to, but he broke it off with her, and then six months later she was killed and he couldn’t hold on to all that rage and hurt he felt for her. So he put it on me.” He stared at the print of Hadley. A muscle moved in his cheek. “I guess I don’t blame him,” he said.

A hummingbird hung suspended outside the window, its delicate beak tapping the glass.

“So why do you keep her face on your wall?”

“To remind me of my fucking mistake.”

He put his hand on her shoulder and she let it nestle there, warm and comforting.