The Secrets She Carried (31 page)

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Authors: Barbara Davis

Tags: #Fiction, #Contemporary Women

BOOK: The Secrets She Carried
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Jay slid into the Anytime’s last open booth, the sticky blue vinyl pocked with scars from the days when smoking was still allowed in restaurants. He would have preferred a table away from the window, where they wouldn’t be seen, but this wasn’t going to take long. Behind the counter, Rachel was filling a napkin dispenser, doing her best to avoid his eyes. Jimmy was already late. Jay didn’t care. If the bastard no-showed he’d just drive over to Rachel’s and drag him out by the scruff of the neck.

He looked over the menu, though he’d already decided on the pancakes. Even at a dump like this, the pancakes were usually safe. A waitress appeared, a stack of dirty plates in one hand, a pot of coffee in the other. Jay flipped over his cup, letting her fill it, and informed her that he was waiting for someone. She gave him a
suit yourself
shrug and shuffled back toward the kitchen.

The coffee was drinkable with enough sugar. Jay emptied a second packet into his cup, stirring absently. He glanced up when a man in a plaid flannel shirt came in, pausing to scrape his boots on the greasy welcome mat. It had been too dark last night to get a good look at Jimmy, but this man was much too tall. Getting antsy, Jay checked his watch. Then the door opened again, and he saw Rachel’s spine stiffen.

The man pulling back the door couldn’t be anyone
but
Jimmy Nichols, unshaven, and more than a little worse for wear in a dark green hunting jacket and sagging jeans. A cigarette fumed defiantly at the corner of his mouth.

Jay raised his coffee cup to get Jimmy’s attention. For a moment their eyes clashed, and then Jimmy began walking toward him. He moved like a man used to looking over his shoulder, arms tensed at
his sides, eyes constantly shifting. He slid into the booth without waiting to be invited.

On cue, the waitress appeared with her pot, flipped Jimmy’s cup, and filled it. “No smoking, Jimmy, remember? I’ll bring you something to put it out in. You want the special again? Eggs up?”

Jimmy nodded, hands clasped tight around his mug.

She turned to Jay. “And you?”

“I’ll have the pancakes, and a little more coffee.”

The waitress left and returned with a saucer, sliding it in front of Jimmy with a pointed look at the cigarette fuming between his fingers. He pushed it away, in no hurry to use it. Jay let the silence thicken while Jimmy struggled to get his cup to his lips. He’d seen more lifelike faces in a wax museum. Served the bastard right after last night, though he was surprised the man wasn’t immune to hangovers.

“Why are you here, Mr. Nichols?”

Jimmy glared at him. “Your meeting. You tell me.”

“I want to make sure we understand each other.”

Jimmy spewed a pall of smoke and crushed out his cigarette. “You think I don’t understand you, Hemingway? You think I been back a whole week and I don’t know how you’re all tangled up in this?”

Jay let the remark pass. “Your daughter told me what you want.”

“Did she, now?”

“You’ve wasted your time coming back here. Leslie doesn’t have a cent. And if she did, I’d make damn sure you never saw it.”

Jimmy’s fist crashed to the table, overturning the makeshift ashtray. “Let me tell you something, fancy boy—”

The rest of the threat never came. Jimmy closed his eyes, shoulders hunched as if the weight of his head was suddenly too much for him. The spell lasted less than a minute, but when he finally opened his eyes the anger was gone. His hands shook as he pulled a soft pack of Winstons from his jacket, then tossed it down in annoyance.

Jay looked at his watch, ready for the meeting to be over. “Mr. Nichols, let’s not waste time. Leslie doesn’t want you here. And I wasn’t kidding about the money. She’s broke.”

Before Jimmy could respond, their waitress reappeared. She dropped off their plates, fished a bottle of ketchup from her apron, and left without a word. Jay picked up his knife and began buttering his pancakes, as if he actually meant to eat them.

“I didn’t come for money.”

Jay laid his knife across his plate. If possible, Jimmy had grown paler, sagging now in the blue vinyl booth. “If last night wasn’t about money, what
was
it about?”

“I told you. I wanted to see my daughter. I’ve been…away.”

“You can drop all the mystery. I know where you’ve been. I also know what happens every time you get out, only this time you’re going to have to find another meal ticket.”

Jimmy jabbed his fork at the congealing yolks on his plate, then shoved the mess away. “Davenport, you can take it to the bank when I tell you a meal ticket’s the last thing I’m worried about. I just want to see my little girl. We’ve got business we need to get straight.”

“And did that business include getting liquored up and embarrassing your daughter in front of half the town?”

Jimmy looked as if he’d been slapped. “She thinks I was drunk,” he mumbled thickly. “Hell, I guess she would. I know what people think, and I know why they think it. But I wasn’t drunk. It wasn’t easy coming back here, you know. I had one, maybe two.”

“For a man who wasn’t drunk, you’re nursing a hell of a hangover.”

“I’m sick.”

“I’m not surprised, considering what you must have put away.”

“I’m sick,” Jimmy repeated, and suddenly Jay knew he didn’t mean hungover.

“What kind of sick?”

“The bad kind.”

“How bad?”

“About as bad as it gets, I’d say.”

The waitress was looming with her coffeepot. Jay waved her away. “That’s why you came back.”

“Yes.”

Jay pushed his pancakes away, suddenly queasy. He’d just accused the man of being hungover when there was a very real possibility that he was seriously ill. There was also a very real chance that he was bullshitting, though it was hardly the kind of thing you called a man’s bluff on.

“You’re saying you’re—”

“Dying? Yeah. Or so the prison doctors tell me.”

“How long?”

Jimmy shrugged. “A year, maybe.”

Jay narrowed his eyes, still not convinced. “What are you supposed to be dying from?”

Jimmy frowned into his coffee cup. “Living,” he said finally. He set his cup aside and looked Jay dead in the eye. “I’ve done a long, awful dance, Davenport. Made a lot of mistakes. Hurt a lot of people. And now my sins have followed me home.” He paused, clearing his throat with a phlegmy rumble. “And that’s why I came back. There are things I have to say, before I can’t say them anymore. I don’t want anything from her. I just want her to listen.”

“You want forgiveness.”

“No,” Jimmy said flatly. “I don’t deserve that. But there are things I need her to know.”

Jay couldn’t think of a polite way to say what he was thinking, so he just came out with it. “You wouldn’t be bullshitting me, would you?”

“I can’t say I blame you for asking, but no, I’m not bullshitting you. I met a man in the infirmary, sicker than me. He told me when I got out I needed to mend my fences with the people I hurt. Most of
them are dead now. But Leslie…well, maybe that’s a fence I can still mend.”

Jay felt his throat thicken as Jimmy’s eyes sheened over. Goddamn the man. Was he supposed to just take him at his word? After last night, how could he let him anywhere near Leslie? But if it was true, did he have the right to block what might be a dying man’s last chance to make things right?

“Mr. Nichols—Jimmy—it pains me to say it, but I think you’re right. Leslie should know.”

“But she isn’t going to know.”

Jay’s brows shot up. “Why the hell not?”

“Because I want her to hear what I have to say as her father, not some sickly old man she has to feel sorry for. I’ve done a lot I’m ashamed of. Coming back to see my daughter isn’t going to be one of them. I’m going to say my piece, and maybe die with a little self-respect. And no one’s going to stop me.”

“I’m not going to try to stop you, Jimmy. But I am going to ask you to wait.”

“In case the dying thing didn’t give it away, Davenport, time isn’t exactly on my side.”

Jay nearly smiled. “I want time to check out your story. And because if what you’re saying is true, I might know someone who can help. A friend of my father’s is head of Internal Medicine at Bristol Medical Center. But if I agree to help you, you’re going to do what I say.”

If Stephen Gates agreed to take Jimmy as a patient, and the fool managed to keep himself out of trouble, there might still be time to heal the scars between father and daughter. He didn’t know if the man was telling the truth or just rewriting history, but he did know something had to give. If not, Jimmy would die with his version of the truth, and Leslie would go on living with hers. And nothing good would come of that.

Jimmy eyed him warily. “Why would you do all this for me?”

“I wouldn’t do it for you. But I would do it for your daughter.”

“You two an item?”

“We’re business partners.”

“But you love her.”

Jay squirmed under his narrowed gaze. “We’re friends,” he said evenly. “And I’d like her life to be easy for a change, which isn’t likely with you hanging around looking like you’ve just come off a ten-day drunk. Maybe if you cleaned up your act she’d at least listen to you. When was the last time you saw a doctor?”

“A week before I got out. Almost three months ago now.”

“If I decide to help you, you’re going to have to spend some time up north. I’ll call my father and see if he can help me set something up.”

Jimmy put a hand up, cutting him off. “I appreciate all this, but I don’t have money for any fancy doctor.”

“Let me worry about that. Right now you’re going to tell me why you deserve a second chance with your daughter. If I’m satisfied, I’ll make that call. Your end of the deal is to walk the straight and narrow and do what you’re told. If you don’t, I pull the plug and you kiss your chances with Leslie good-bye. In the meantime, make yourself scarce until you hear from me. And I promise you, if it turns out you are bullshitting me, I’ll bury you under the grapes where they’ll never find you. Do we understand each other?”

Jimmy surprised him by smiling. “You sure you don’t love her?”

Chapter 30

Adele

H
enry has a son.

Minnie Maw lays him across my middle, a small slippery stranger, and yet familiar somehow, part of me still, despite the midwife’s neat work with her scissors, as if the cord that has bound us all these months has not been severed at all and is never likely to be. Something wells up in me then, something fierce and almost feral, as I look into those tiny unseeing eyes. His name is Jemmy, and whatever comes, he is mine.

It is all I can do to let him out of my arms when Minnie Maw takes him from me and passes him to Henry.

“A boy,” she murmurs gruffly, then jerks her chin at Annie Mae, who has gone faintly green and stands cowering behind Henry. “Bring the basin, girl, and stop fooling. It’s all over now but the mopping up.”

Henry’s eyes are wet with joy, his face shining as he stares down at the life we have made. If he cares that his son is more Laveau than Gavin, he gives no sign—there is only love on his careworn face. His Adam’s apple wobbles as he glances up at me, lying spent against my pillows. His expression is a mixture of wonder and relief, and I see that he’s as worn-out from worrying as I am from hollering. But that’s
what comes, I guess, of sitting helpless in some other room, waiting for the storm to pass.

I sleep for a while, the dense and dreamless sleep of the bone weary. When I wake, Minnie Maw is gone and Henry is dozing in a chair, one hand draped over the edge of the bassinet in case the baby stirs. I lie quiet, watching a while and reveling in the goodness of the moment. The sunlight has mellowed, leaving deep yellow patches on the floorboards, glinting where it touches the heavy stubble on Henry’s chin. He has been with me all day, I realize. It is only the second time I’ve ever known him to miss a day’s work—the other was the day Maggie was born. He has always been a good father to Maggie, and he will be a good father to our boy.

As the months skim past, it becomes plain Jemmy will not favor Henry. He is cut from my kin’s cloth, a sturdy, honey-skinned boy with russet eyes and a head of curls like spun copper. It’s a strange thing to look at your child and see the echo of a man you’ve never met, but one day while I’m peeling potatoes I look down where he’s crawling around my ankles, and there it is, staring up at me, a younger version of the photograph Mama keeps on her dresser and dusts faithfully every Saturday morning. The realization knocks me back a little, because somehow I have never noticed it, and because I know the time has come to write to Mama.

It is a letter I am loath to write, but one I know I must. God knows I have waited as long as I can before finally picking up my pen, but it’s time now to confess what a mess I’ve made of all her careful plans. Time, too, that she knows she is a grandmother. She will take little pleasure in the news, or in the life I have chosen. How can she, when the same mistakes have brought her nothing but heartache?

I wait until Henry is out in the fields to sit down with my paper and pen. I am ashamed as the words begin to spill onto the plain white page, but there are things that must be told, and so I keep my hand moving, each tear-blotched line a testament to my sins, each
word a fresh wound. My belly knots as I picture her face when she reads that I am unmarried, that the man I love, and whose son I have just borne, is not free. I can only hope the news that Jemmy favors my father will somehow soften the blow. It will not atone, I know, but it might help her forgive me a little.

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