Flirting With Pete: A Novel (42 page)

Jenny gasped. Spoken aloud, the words were like knives. They cut her up inside and made her bleed through all the old crusted scabs.

She shot Pete another quick look. Her eyes had filled with tears by the time they returned to Darden. “It was self-defense! She would have killed me if I hadn’t stopped her!”

“Hitting her once would have stopped her. Once, and she’d have gotten away with a concussion. You hit her
five times
.”

“I didn’t know,” Jenny sobbed, “didn’t know I was doing it, I was so scared.” Her shoulders were slumped, her arms hung limp. No amount of wishful thinking could change the raw truth. “I hurt so bad all over, and she kept coming at me just like she’d been doing for days and days and
days,
so I hit her until she didn’t move.”

“You killed her, MaryBeth.”

Jenny wrapped her arms over her head. “I know, don’t you think I know?”

“Want me to tell the chief about that? Or Dan? Huh? You want that, MaryBeth?”

Her arms fell away, her head came up. “I wanted to tell him when it happened, only you wouldn’t let me! You made me sit here and tell stories, and feel guilty because you were in jail, and feel
angry
because you were in jail when I wanted to be there, because I didn’t know I could do something like kill someone, and I didn’t know what
else
I could do, and it scared me so I couldn’t think straight, and
still
you wouldn’t let me confess.”

Darden moved closer still. “I was trying to save your hide! You’d never have made it in jail. They’d have raped you a hundred times over and left you filthy and diseased. Hell,
I
wouldn’t a even wanted to touch you then. So I spared you that and did six friggin’ years myself, and this is what I get— you’re
leaving
?”

Jenny fancied Pete was thinking of tackling Darden, he looked that angry. Then he caught Jenny’s eye and the anger eased. He hitched his chin toward the door.

She backed that way. “I’m leaving,” she told Darden again. She simply couldn’t live with what he wanted.

Still he argued, “I took the fall for you. I was punished for a crime I didn’t commit.”

“You did so commit a crime!” she screamed. “You committed a whole lot of them! Over and over!”

“So I was punished. Shouldn’t you be punished, too?”

“I have been.
Have
been. For years and years, in ways you can’t begin to imagine. But I’m tired of it, Daddy.” She backed farther away.

“You
owe
me!”

Shaking her head, Jenny took another step. “I kept the house going. I turned the car around. I waited till you got home and made you the supper you wanted, and I kept telling myself I owed you, but I don’t, I
don’t
owe you more than that. If it wasn’t for your touching me, she wouldn’t have beat me, and if she hadn’t done that, she wouldn’t be dead. She was my mother. You made her hate me!”

“She was a jealous bitch!”

“She was your
wife!
You were supposed to do those things to
her,
not to me. Why couldn’t you have loved her a little? That was all she wanted.”

“She wanted Ethan.”

“She needed you.”

“Well, she sure as hell doesn’t need me now, but I need you, MaryBeth. You’re here, and you’re alive.” He stopped and looked at her, smiling. “You got the best of her, y’know, even with your hair short.”

Jenny knew then that there would be no reprieve. She could talk all she wanted, but he wouldn’t hear what she said, not one word. “I’m leaving now,” she said as calmly as she could.

He started around the table. “Think I won’t be able to find you? Don’t kid yourself. I’ll follow you to
hell
and bring you back.” He pointed to her chair. “So get your ass back over here, and save both of us the trouble.”

She started to cry again, large gulps of pain, because it was all so pathetically simple. “Why can’t you leave me alone?” she begged. “That’s all I want. Just
leave me alone
.”

“Or what? You’ll kill me like you killed her? No way, baby. I can protect myself. But threaten me again, and I’ll tell. So help me God, I will. Hell, if you leave here, you’re no good to me anyway. It’d be no sweat off my back if they did lock you up then.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It will once they cuff you and strip you and stick you in a cell.”

“They won’t. I’m leaving. I have Pete now. He’s taking me away.”

“Pete?” Darden sneered. “Who the hell’s Pete? You’re not going anywhere with anyone named Pete.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Pete said in a booming voice.

Darden went right on. “You’re not going anywhere with any man but me. You’re mine.
Mine
. Besides, what man’s gonna want
you?
You got your daddy’s mark all over you, baby. What man’s gonna take you when he knows all you’ve done?”

“
I’m
taking her,” Pete vowed as he crossed the kitchen. He opened the door and spoke quietly, gently. “Come on, Jenny. He’s not worth your tears.”

Jenny slipped out.

“Get back here!” Darden roared, but she was already running through the pitch-black rain toward the garage. As soon as she reached it, the motorcycle pulled alongside. She hopped on the back and clung to Pete as he gunned the engine. The machine fishtailed on the wet stones, then shot forward just as Darden ran into its path.

There was a thud and a hideous sound— scream or curse, Jenny didn’t know which— and it nearly sent her right off the road, but she couldn’t stop or even look back. The choice was made. There was no last hope for change, no going back. She was committed.

The enormity of it had her breathing in harsh sobs at first. But the dark of night was a cushiony comfort, as was the rain, which cleansed, and there was Pete, mostly Pete, who had heard the worst and stayed with her. Every few breaths, he took a hand from the handlebars and rubbed her fingers, touched her arm, or reached back to tug her closer.

The rain gentled as they passed through the center of town. By the time they reached the other side, it had washed away her tears and become little more than mist, and a warm one at that. She smiled when she recognized the road Pete took, and was pleased, so pleased. He remembered her dream.

He parked the bike in their old hiding spot and helped her off. Taking her hand, he led her through a maze of pine, hemlock, and spruce to the very top of the quarry. There, from a platform of newly bathed dirt, they looked out over the pool.

It was theirs alone. If humans had been there earlier that day, all signs had been washed away. The air smelled of earth and wet leaves. The woods sang softly of leftover rain dripping from bough to bough to mossy bed. The quarry pool was glassy, save for raindrop circles here and there.

Pete laced his fingers through hers. “So fresh here. A beginning. Are you with me, Jenny love?”

Her throat went tight, but she smiled and nodded.

“Know I love you?” he asked.

She nodded again.

His voice grew husky. “This was what brought me through here, y’know. To find you and take you home.” He kissed her softly.

Jenny buried her face in his shoulder so that he wouldn’t see she was crying again. But he knew. He rubbed her back and pressed her close and whispered gentle, soothing words while, one by one, she wept away her last tiny ties to the past. Finally, with a sniffle and a long, ragged breath, she smiled. When she lifted her head, it was to see his love and know she had made the right choice.

His gaze shifted to the quarry pool. She followed it just in time to see the clouds mirrored in the water shift, then part, exposing a sweet crescent moon.

Let’s swim with the moon,
she thought and looked up at Pete.
Can we?

He grinned.
Don’t know why not. It’s warm enough. It’s your dream.

They peeled off clothes that were already wet. Jenny folded hers in a neat pile and would have done the same for Pete’s if he hadn’t grabbed her hand and drawn her up. He wove his fingers into her hair until the heels of his hands framed her cheeks.

You are the sweetest, purest, prettiest woman, Jenny Clyde. Come swim with the moon and me.

She ran her hands up his body. Standing on tiptoe, she held his face as he held hers. Eyes wide in anticipation, she nodded.

He positioned himself on the very edge of the platform, a precious vision in Jenny’s mind. His body was sculpted, long and lean, dark hair, fair skin, all man. Moonlight glittered in his hair and his eyes, and lit the tiny diamond stud that he had put in his ear for her, just as surely as he had placed the crescent moon overhead.

He stood with his toes curled over, held his arms out for balance, lowered them to his sides. Then, in a motion so graceful as to take Jenny’s breath, he soared up, over, and down. He entered the water with barely a splash, and surfaced moments later to gesture Jenny along.

She stood on the very edge of the precipice with her toes curled over, held her arms out for balance, lowered them to her sides. Then she paused. She couldn’t duplicate his grace, but this was no time to worry about what she would look like, where she would land, and what pain she might feel. She had come this far; there was no turning back.

Below, Pete was waiting, smiling, with the light of that crescent moon rippling around him and his arms open wide.

She took a deep breath, bent her knees for the gentlest of boosts, and left the platform on a prayer. Incredibly, the prayer was answered. Her body rose in a perfect arc, descended in a sleek silver line, and slipped neatly into the water, not an arm’s length from Pete.

She came back up along his body, surfaced to his applause and a hug, then, led by his hand, dove again. He took her deep, in and around blocks of granite lit by the moon that shimmered on the surface high above. They chased their shadows and each other, and found a sweet playmate in the quarry monster, then shot to the surface with a burst of air and laughter, and clung to each other through bobbing kisses.

Next dive’s the one,
Pete finally gasped. His eyes were expectant, his smile divine.
Are you ready?

His face was a stained-glass vision in the night— new places, new people, new love— she saw them all there. Plus kindness and gentleness. And friendship and fairness. And hope.

Was she ready? She took a last look around the quarry, raised her eyes in a silent farewell to the tallest of the evergreen boughs and the moon’s sweet smile. Then, etching these in her heart as the best of one life, she looked at Pete and nodded.

Boston

Heartsick, Casey stared at the last page of the journal before finally setting it down with the others on her lap. But she could not get the last image out of her mind. She remained at the quarry in Little Falls— and unaware of the leather chair where she sat, or the cup of tea that Jordan had made her that waited now on the rattan coffee table alongside a half-eaten slice of pizza, unaware of Jordan himself, sitting halfway down the long sofa diagonal to her chair.

From the quarry, she mentally reran earlier installments of the journal, picking out things like the haircut that Pete had evened up but that hadn’t been even at all when Miriam had done repairs, the tray of hors d’oeuvres that Pete had devoured but that Jenny had carried intact to work the next morning, the motorcycle that no one in town had heard, and the visit to Giro’s that no one had seen. She recalled the man in the diner talking about a single set of footprints up there at the top of the quarry by Jenny Clyde’s clothes.

The pieces fell into place. She raised stricken eyes to Jordan’s. “There was no Pete.” The psychotherapist in her knew it; the woman couldn’t argue. Pete had been too good to be true. Literally. “Jenny Clyde was delusional. She was so desperate for love that she conjured him up. He was her savior. He gave her the courage to leave Darden, leave Little Falls, leave life. She made him real, so that committing suicide became a palatable option.” Feeling the bleakness of it, she took a shuddering breath and sat back.

Jordan rose. He didn’t leave the room this time, simply went to an oak sideboard that stood against a wall and returned with a handful of pages. “But you were right to question what really happened. She didn’t die,” he said, and offered her the pages.

Fearful, Casey held his gaze. She wanted to hope, but only one image came. That image had Jenny Clyde in a rehab center much like Caroline, disabled for life after the fall from the top of the quarry.

“Take it,” he urged gently.

She had no choice. Not knowing would be worse than anything on paper. Putting the pages on her lap, she began to read.

The pages described how Dan had found Jenny in the woods, bundled her up, and driven her to a place far from Little Falls, where she would be safe— leaving everyone in town, most importantly Darden, believing she was dead.

The reading didn’t take long. It left Casey first with relief that Jenny had lived and was physically intact, then with admiration for Jordan. It also left her with a slew of new questions.

Her eyes found his. He was still seated on the sofa, where he had remained, patiently, she realized, for the entire time she had been reading, save short breaks to bring her food and drink.

“Your friend was a therapist?” she asked.

“Yes. He works at the Munsey Institute. It’s a private mental hospital in Vermont. He met me halfway, took Jenny, and returned to the hospital.”

Casey was familiar with Munsey. She also knew that the cost of private hospitals often exceeded insurance coverage, and wondered if Jordan had saved Jenny there, too. “Did you pay?”

“No. I would have, I felt that guilty. I let Jenny down, just like the rest of the town. But the hospital always takes in a few patients for free. Jenny was one of the lucky ones. She needed a place like that if she was to have a chance to recover. It was safe. The doors were locked. Ironically, where most patients there saw themselves as being locked in, Jenny saw those locks as keeping Darden out. Her greatest fear, still, is his coming after her.”