Authors: Gwynne Forster
Whatever It Takes (31 page)
Lacette groped for a chair and sat down. “Mama, don't you know where Kellie is?”
“No, I don't. I was wondering if she was with you. She was mad as a hatter when she left here last night. I don't know what's going to happen to that girl.”
Lacette rested her elbow on her thigh and supported her head with her left hand, moving her hand restlessly over her left cheek. “Mama, I haven't seen or spoken with her. I'm the one she's mad at. Remember? Maybe she stayed with Hal.”
“Mad with you? She was furious with me. How can you be so casual about your sister? You want me to believe she'd spend the night with that horrible creature?”
She sensed that her patience was about to snap. Why couldn't her mother face the truth about Kellie? “Slow down, Mama,” she said. “Unless he's committed murder, he probably hasn't done anything worse than some of the things Kellie has done.”
She heard her mother's heavy exhalation of breath, her exasperation. “How can you speak that way about your sister?”
There it is again,
she thought. Her mother's protectiveness of Kellie, closing her eyes to the truth and fooling herself with lapses of memory whenever it suited her.
There it is again,
she thought. Her mother's protectiveness of Kellie, closing her eyes to the truth and fooling herself with lapses of memory whenever it suited her.
“Listen, Mama. You may continue to paint Kellie pure as an angel, but she no longer has me bamboozled, and that has been a liberating force in my life. I'll check back later in case you need me for something, but I'm due to leave for Hagerstown in twelve minutes, and I haven't even had coffee. I'll call you.”
I hope that's the only jolt I get today,
she thought as she sipped the coffee, blowing on the hot liquid between sips. She had her jacket on her arm when Douglas rang the doorbell. She didn't want them to get into a clinch, though she hadn't intended to make that obvious. His eyes widened when she greeted him with a quick kiss, stepped out of the door and locked it.
she thought as she sipped the coffee, blowing on the hot liquid between sips. She had her jacket on her arm when Douglas rang the doorbell. She didn't want them to get into a clinch, though she hadn't intended to make that obvious. His eyes widened when she greeted him with a quick kiss, stepped out of the door and locked it.
He drove until they reached Boonsboro and stopped for breakfast. “You seem a bit sluggish,” he said when she got out of the van. “I'm . . . uh, just kind of tired.”
He stopped walking and looked her in the face. “Tired? You just got up. Maybe you should get a check-up.”
“Oh, heavens no. I'll be fine after I eat. All I had today was coffee.
His expression suggested that he doubted the validity of that explanation, but he didn't put his thoughts into words. “All right, if you say so. Let's have some sausage and waffles.”
“Cereal and juice are more to my liking. I need energy, Douglas, not pounds.”
Arm-in-arm they walked into the restaurant and, to her, their affectionate behavior seemed as natural as clean air after a rain. As she faced him across the booth in a drive-in restaurant on a highway that was little more than a country road, she thought she would like to look at him every morning when she awakened and every night just before she slept. She noticed that he chewed his food slowly and deliberately, so carefully that the muscles of his lean, square-jawed face barely moved.
He put his knife and fork aside, dabbed the corners of his mouth with his napkin and leaned back against the booth. “You're so warm, open and . . . well, so feminine right now. I'd like to know what you're thinking.”
Hot blood heated her face, and she lowered her gaze. He reached across the table and grasped her hand. “Tell me. Look at me and tell me.”
She couldn't force herself to do either. “Please,” he whispered.
She didn't look at him, but she told him, “I was . . . thinking about you. About us, I mean.”
His fingers tightened around hers. “That's what I hoped.”
They didn't talk much during the remainder of the trip, and she supposed that their relationship and its ramifications filled his thoughts.
When he parked the van at his parents' house, Nick ran to meet his father, and they embraced as if they hadn't seen each other in years.
“Aren't you going to greet Lacette?”
“Hi, Lacette,” Nick said, focusing on his feet.
“Nick!” Douglas said.
The boy raised his head, his facial expression once of unmistakable defiance and said, “How are you, Lacette? My granddaddy is going fishing with us.”
Something had changed since her previous visit, and she meant to speak to Douglas about it. She made herself smile and extend her hand to the boy. “Hello, Nick. How are you?”
“Okay.”
Douglas walked ahead of them and opened the door. When she paused, Edwina appeared, “Come on in. I'm so glad to see you. When Douglas didn't join them, she knew Nick was getting a reprimand.
Lacette acknowledged Edwina's warm welcome, but her mind had remained outside with Douglas and Nick.
“I hope you don't mind if I tag along,” Oscar said. “I love to fish, and we can clean some and eat the catch right on the riverbank. I'll do it, because I don't think Douglas knows how, and he certainly wouldn't want you to do it.”
“The more, the better,” she said, though she figured Oscar's role involved policing Nick so that he wouldn't act out. She looked at Edwina. “Won't you come, too?”
“Not me,” Edwina said. “I never took to fishing.”
Douglas walked in, embraced his parents and asked Lacette, “Ready to go? What about you, Dad?”
“Sure thing. Haven't fished for a while. I hope you don't mind the intrusion, but I'll clean the fish for you.”
“I'd love for you to come with us even if you don't clean fish,” Lacette said to Oscar.
“Then, we'd better get going,” Douglas said. “I'll join you at the van in a minute.”
She got into the van, looked around and saw Nick in the backseat. “Do you like to fish, Nick?”
He took his time answering. “Sure.”
Douglas arrived then, bringing a picnic basket and a guitar. She hadn't known that he played an instrument and figured he was going to great lengths to defuse Nick's attitude and insure them a pleasant outing.
Douglas selected a site along the Antietam River bank, and Oscar built a fire in the hibachi while Douglas sorted out their fishing gear. I'll bait your hook,” he told Lacette, took a worm from a jar and prepared to do that, but Nick ran over to him breathless as if he had an emergency.
“I got my line tangled, Dad. Please.”
“As soon as I finish baiting Lacette's hook.”
“Why can't you straighten out my line?”
Douglas stopped and looked his son in the eye. “I've known you for nine years, and this is only the second time that you've made me thoroughly ashamed. The first time was earlier this morning. One more act like this one and you'll sit in the back of that van until we're ready to leave here. Don't play with me, Oscar Edwin. Your line was not tangled when I gave it to you, so wait.”
The movement of Douglas's jaw was the only evidence of his anger. He spoke gently to his son, but in a firm, no-nonsense way. Nick's face sagged into a pout when his grandfather ignored his efforts at attention grabbing. The boy caught the first fish, a four-pound bearded catfish, which he showed to his father and grandfather, but not to her. She pretended not to notice the child's insult.
The adults caught trout, and when Oscar asked which they should eat for lunch, the word, trout, flew out of her mouth so quickly that Douglas turned and stared at her. If he had asked her, she would have told him why she wouldn't eat any of Nick's fish. While Oscar grilled the trout, Douglas picked the guitar and sang folk songs that she would have enjoyed if she had been happier.
Because her thoughts were elsewhere, she got a splinter under the nail of her right index finger when she attempted to pick up a stick. “What is it, Lacette? What's the matter?” he said when she said “Ow,” and grabbed her finger.
She showed Douglas the splinter, and he began the task of removing it with the pliers in his Swiss Army knife. But from her peripheral view, she saw Nick approach them, and it surprised her to realize that she had expected the boy to interfere.
He did not disappoint her. “Daddy, I think I chewed a bone. See if there are any more bones in my fish.”
“Come here, Nick,” Oscar called, but the boy ignored his grandfather.
Douglas didn't glance toward Nick until after he removed the splinter. Then, he took the boy's hand, walked a few paces from her and stopped. “If I don't find any bones in your fish, you're grounded for one whole month.”
“But, Daddyâ”
“You and I both know that your grandfather never leaves a bone in a fish that he filets. If you lied, you're grounded. You did not obey your grandfather, so you lose one week's allowance. As for your behavior toward Lacette, you're on the verge of losing my respect. Bring me your plate.”
“Maybe I already chewed the only bone.”
“That doesn't cut it. You asked me to check, and that's what I'm going to do.”
She didn't want to hear more, so she went over to Oscar, who was resting on a boulder, and sat beside him. “Nick is usually a good boy,” Oscar said, “but today, he seems to have taken leave of his senses. He's not like this.”
“I'm sure of that,” she replied, and his head snapped around so that he faced her. His eyes narrowed and he moved his fingers back and forth across his jaw as she once saw Douglas do. Finally, he said, “I don't know what's gotten into him.”
She nearly said, “I know,” but didn't, because she didn't want Oscar to know that Nick's behavior distressed her.
Douglas drove Oscar and Nick home, told his mother good-bye and prepared to leave Hagerstown. “I enjoyed seeing you again,” She told Douglas's parents, and she spared Nick a reprimand for more bad behavior by calling goodbye to him rather than going to his room where he'd been banished. She didn't consider that either bad manners or cowardliness; she'd had enough of the boy's antics and accorded herself the right to avoid more of his insults.
“I'm sorry for Nick's behavior,” Douglas said as drove them back to Frederick.
She didn't want to discuss it, although she knew he would think he had to do that. Her silence would be like wind-driven sleet in his face, but she wasn't adept at pretense.
“I wanted the three of us to . . . to do some serious bonding, but . . . well, I'm sorry.”
“Don't be,” she said, aware that both her voice and her demeanor bespoke resignation and disappointment.
Douglas glanced to his right, switched to the right lane and reduced his speed, as if speaking of something important required more concentration than he could muster while driving at seventy miles an hour. “I suppose he's jealous; you're the only woman he's seen me with since he was six years old.”
She closed her eyes, leaned back and tried to speak calmly. “Douglas, you have to accept that Nick does not like me, and I would find it hard to love a child who behaved toward me as he did today. I'm sorry, but as much as I care for you, I know it isn't going to work out.”
“I don't want to hear that. Let's leave this topic until a time when I'm not driving, or maybe we ought not to discuss it until you've had time for reflection.”
When they reached her house, he parked, locked the car and walked with her to her door. A warm breeze caressed her face, the moon dominated a cloudless, star-speckled sky, and the night insects and other animals broke the silence. On any other such night, she would have been caught up in the magic, captivated by it and the man at her side, but her heart was heavy as she opened the door.
“I want to come in,” he said.
But she shook her head. “I'm too troubled to be good company. Thank you for the day. For all our sakes, I wish it had turned out better.”
He stuck his hands in his trouser pockets and looked at her, saying nothing, and she didn't know how to say good night. He stepped closer. “Can we have lunch together tomorrow?”
“Douglas, Iâ”
He grabbed her shoulders. “I'm not giving you up. You hear me? Never! Kiss me.”
She gazed into his eyes, eyes that reflected the pain he felt, and he locked her to his body. As if by rote, she parted her lips, and he drained her of every emotion, every thought that didn't concern him. “I'll see you at twelve-thirty, and I'm buying.” He flicked his index finger across the tip of her nose and left.
Lacette awakened the next morning groggy and feeling as if she had just run a marathon and realized that the noise she heard was the ringing of the phone. She reached for it and nearly knocked over the lamp on the night table.
“Hello.”
“Lacette, were you asleep? What are you doing in bed this time of day? It's ten-thirty.”
She sprang out of bed dragging the bedding with her. “What? Douglas?” She glanced at the clock and slapped her hand over her mouth. “Good heavens, I overslept. No wonder I feel as if I'd run a twenty-six mile obstacle course.”
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