Forgiving Jackson (37 page)

“Hey, kid. Where did you come from?”

“My castle house. There’s fairy babies in there.” She pointed to the pantry.

“Really? Living right in the pantry, huh? Who knew?”

“We’re watching her for Gwen,” the woman explained. “Dirk took the baby to get his shots.”

“Sing!” Julie demanded and held her arms up.

He hesitated. He didn’t feel much like singing but he could probably manage a verse or two of “London Bridge” without going completely nuts.

“Can I take her?” He crammed the last sandwich in his mouth and swung Julie into his arms.

The kitchen duo ran all over each other to assure him that he certainly could. Give them six months. They wouldn’t remember who he was.

He carried Julie to the Rose Parlor and sat down at the old baby grand. It didn’t have a good sound. It was a miracle he’d learned to play on it without running from the room screaming, but it would do for “Old
MacDonald.” He ought to learn to play that harp while he had some free time. It had cost enough to buy it back and as far he knew, nobody had played it in about a hundred years. His mother would have probably made her angel twins play it if it hadn’t been sold off by then.

They sang awhile. How long, he wasn’t sure, but long enough that he was getting bored.

“Hey, Julie, what do you say we try to figure out that harp?”

“Huh?” She widened her Dirk-like eyes at him.

“That thing.” He went and sat on the floor and lifted Julie to the stool beside the harp. “See?” He plucked a string. “It makes music. You try.” He guided her little fingers to the strings and showed her how to pluck. It was out of tune but who cared? Julie got into the spirit of things and laughed like a clown had come for Christmas. He lay back on the floor. He could appreciate an enthusiastic musician.

And then a string—and along with it hell—broke loose. Julie began to wail. “Not ’posed to touch! Not ’posed to touch!”

Hell’s bells and damnation. He’d done it now. If Gwen’d had it in for him before, he was a dead man now. He’d allowed—no, encouraged—Julie to do something that was forbidden and something had gotten broken.

He scooped her up and moved away from the harp. “Shh. It doesn’t matter, Julie. We don’t care about that old harp. We can buy more strings. We can buy
all
the strings and hire somebody who does nothing but live here and replace strings. It’s nothing worth making a sweet girl cry.”

Her crying subsided somewhat.

“Hey, let’s write a song.” He began to dance around with her. “Strings get broken and we don’t care! Harps don’t matter, I declare,” he sang. Julie began to giggle. Good. He was getting somewhere. Now for the propaganda. “Mommy doesn’t need to know we broke a string, or Uncle Jack’s bottom might wind up in a sling!”

And he twirled around and danced right into Gwen.

“Uh oh.”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Mommy!” Julie reached out and Gwen took her. “Me and Uncle Jack, we played
that.”
She pointed to the harp. “And it went
pop
!”

“I gathered.” She dropped a kiss on Julie’s nose and set her on her feet. “Can you go check on your fairy babies? Tell Ronnie and Janet I said you can have a cookie.”

Stay here and save me, Julie! Don’t desert me!
But she did.

Gwen assaulted him with her eyes. “You
are
bored, aren’t you?”

He shrugged. “Are you still mad at me?”

“Yes. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love you. People get over being mad. They don’t get over love.”

That was not good news. “Have you talked to Emory?”

“Yes. I talk to her every day.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“How is she doing?”

“She’s doing. I have a favor to ask.”

“Anything.” And anything was what he’d give to get back in Gwen’s good graces, and thus gain access to information about Emory.

“Listen, we’re doing all we can, but Christian and I are not as good at this as Emory is.”

“We all have our strengths,” he said magnanimously. “Emory has the unique ability to make the worst omelet ever produced. And though I couldn’t swear to it, unlike Christian, I doubt if she can play basketball with much, if any proficiency.”

“Stop trying to butter me up, Jackson. You don’t have that kind of skill and I don’t have that kind of time. Christian and I are doing the very best we can but the girls aren’t getting what they would have gotten if Emory were here.”
If you hadn’t run her off,
hung in the air. “They don’t know it but we do. But they
do
know that you’re here. They’ve seen you sneaking down to the carriage house.”

“I do not have to sneak on my own property.” Damn. He thought he’d been more careful.

“Whatever. Anyway, we only have two more days with them. The dance is the last night and Emory had that all planned so we’re good to go. The problem is tomorrow night. She was going to teach them about storytelling and tell ghost stories.”

No doubt about the Beauford Bend ghost she’d invented. Hard to believe he’d been so mad about that.

“Christian and I are no good at that. Instead, we’d like to do a little presentation on how to conduct yourself at a concert—”

“A lot of people could use that.”

“—and we’d like you to sing a few songs for them.”

He should have stipulated what
anything
did not cover.

“No band, Jackson. No big venue. No hundreds of people. Just you, Christian, and me—plus twenty teenage girls. And they would be excited beyond belief. It would make up for anything where we might have shortchanged them. We could do it up in the ballroom.”

There was no way out, just like there had been no way out when Audrey asked him to call the band.

“Okay. But not the ballroom. We’ll do it in my music room.” That way, if he couldn’t play guitar without watching adolescent girls go up in flames he might be able to play the piano. No way was he playing that piano in the Rose Parlor for an audience bigger than two or older than three. He might be washed up but he still had his pride. “They’ll all fit in there easy enough.”

Gwen gave a nod. “They’ll love it. For the record, I wouldn’t have asked for that.”

“How’s Emory?” Maybe this time he’d get some kind of answer.

“She’s asking the same question about you. Now, get out of here unless you want to find yourself in the middle of an embroidery class. Allison from Eye of the Needle is bringing her things in and the girls are washing their hands.”

• • •

The impromptu mini concert ended up being for a few more than Gwen had said. Sammy came and Dirk, Jackson supposed, just in case one of the girls decided to try to take him out with an earring. When Gwen told him that the kitchen duo would really like to come, he’d said yes. If he couldn’t hold it together what did it matter if two more lay witness to it?

Christian and Gwen did their little class, covering different levels of acceptable behavior depending on the type of concert. When they asked if he had anything to add, he considered telling the girls not to throw their underwear on stage but thought better of it. He didn’t want to lose what ground he’d gained with Gwen.

He had decided not to chance the guitar but sat at the piano and sang for about thirty minutes—and it was fine, so fine that he got Sammy to wire him up and, for his last number, he did “Habit Not Worth Breaking.”

No smoke. No flames. But he knew better than to think he was okay.

Still, after the girls got autographs and left to go back to Firefly Hall for the night, he picked up his guitar to finish writing a song. He wrote it the way he wished things could have turned out.

He’d never get to sing it for her, though—even if she came back.

It had been two weeks since charm school ended and the first week of August was behind them. If Christian and Gwen were still mad at him, Jackson couldn’t tell. Still, they were giving no information about Emory.

Once, very late at night, he’d tried to call her and found that her cell phone number had changed. He could have found her work number but if she’d wanted to talk to him, she would have kept the same cell number.

But there were some positives floating around.

Beau had called again and was gone again.

Gabe had come off the mountain in one piece and was at training camp.

Rafe was riding bulls and happy to be doing it.

Ginger was better.

He had no idea what was going to happen at the end of August. He supposed he’d have to ask Christian and Gwen eventually.

But not today. He ran through the shower and started down the hill toward the carriage house. He didn’t
need
to go but he’d left his phone charger down there.

He stopped abruptly to verify what he thought he’d seen. Yes. He began to run. The front door was open and the blinds were up. She had come back! He’d known she would all along. He might not have fully admitted it to himself but he’d known. Even though he was so bad for her that they couldn’t be together, she belonged here. He took the steps up to the porch two at a time and burst through the door.

“Emory!”

“What?” a voice answered from the kitchen—a familiar voice, but not Emory’s.

His feet turned to stone but he took them through the kitchen door anyway.

A puzzled Sammy stood on a stepladder with a coffee mug in one hand and a piece of bubble wrap in the other.

“What are you doing?” Jackson asked.

Sammy looked pained. “I’m packing up Emory’s things.”

Jackson knew Sammy was waiting for a response but he didn’t have one to give.

“See?” Sammy picked up a sheaf of papers. “I have these lists. One is what I’m supposed to ship to her now and one is what I’m supposed to store in the basement until she gets her own place.”

“She’s not coming back,” Jackson said, more for his own benefit than Sammy’s.

“I wish she would,” Sammy said sadly.

“Me too.”

“I know.” Sammy came down off the ladder. “But the difference is, if I asked her it wouldn’t matter. But if you did, she would.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?” Sammy straddled a kitchen chair backwards and rested his forearms on the back.

There were boxes sitting on all the other chairs so Jackson slid to the floor and leaned against a cabinet.

“The only way I could ask her to come back would be if I was willing to give her something I can’t.”

“So you
don’t
love her?”

Jackson’s head snapped up in surprise.

“Yeah. It always surprises people when I know stuff. Though, honestly, a dog could have figured that out.”

“I’m not surprised when you know stuff, Sammy.”

“You were surprised that I knew that.”

“I never said I loved her.”

“That’s stupid.”

“It’s complicated,” Jackson said.

“
It’s complicated
,
it’s complicated
,” Sammy said in a mocking voice and rolled his eyes.

“You did
not
just roll your eyes at me!” Jackson was incensed.

“Not especially at you. I roll my eyes at the world. Do you know how tired I get of hearing people say, ‘it’s complicated’ when all that means is they don’t want to? It wears me out.”

“I didn’t know anything wore you out, Sammy.”

“You’d be surprised. Though, you don’t wear on me, generally. You didn’t fire me when I should have been fired, when
I
would have fired me. I won’t soon forget it.”

“You’ll always have a job as long as I live, Sammy.”

He shrugged. “Christian said I could work at Firefly Hall if it turns out there’s no Around the Bend.”

What? If Sammy left, he really would be alone—just him, with Dirk sneaking around behind him.

“Do you know what Christian and Gwen are thinking about Around the Bend?” Jackson asked.

Sammy cocked his head to the side and sighed. “They’re still debating. They haven’t said it to me, but I think they’re still waiting to see if you’ll do the right thing.”

“Which, to their minds, is?”

“The thing you want to do, anyway. Go get Emory and leave Around the Bend like it’s supposed to be.”

“I can’t.”

“Yeah, you said. Now, why is that again?”

“I hurt people, Sammy.”

“We all hurt people. I hurt Liza Proctor when I couldn’t love her back like she wanted. I didn’t want to, but I did. But you do love Emory.”

“I’m not good for people.”

“Seems like you were good for Emory. I’ve worked close with her for two years. She was never very happy until lately. You treated her great. And you made sure that bastard that hurt her went to jail.”

“Sammy, I’m broken. I can’t do concerts anymore. All of those people in Los Angeles died because of me.” He swallowed hard. He’d never said this before. “And it was my fault that my parents and little sister died.”

A frown settled on Sammy’s face. “How do you figure that? The last part I mean?”

“The twins and I were camped out. I was supposed to check to make sure the campfire was out. I didn’t. I told Rafe to do it and then I didn’t check behind him.”

“No. That’s not right,” Sammy said.

“I knew if I ever told anybody, they’d say that—that I was just a kid and it wasn’t my fault.”

“No. I don’t know about all that. But that campfire didn’t cause that beach house to burn. It was out.”

“Yeah, right. So now you were there?”

“No. I wasn’t there. I was barely born. I know because Miss Amelia told me.”

“She wasn’t there either. She hated the beach.”

“But she talked to your mother that night. They talked after y’all had gone in the tent while your daddy went to check and make sure the fire was out.”

“What?” Pin prickles covered Jackson’s scalp and worked their way to the soles of his feet.

“Yeah.” Sammy nodded. “Whenever y’all camped at the beach, your daddy helped you build a fire. Then he sat on the balcony and watched over y’all until he was sure you were asleep. Then he would go make sure the campfire was out.”

“But he told me to do it.”

“Yeah. But he always checked.”

“So he didn’t trust me.”

“Sounds like with good reason—at least that time.”