Jack nodded contemplatively. “That’s why I figured leaving her with you was the right thing. I would have barged right in and asked what was wrong.”
“Because you’re a guy.” I took a sip from my cup. “Still, I would think that all your experiences with women would have taught you how to handle it better.”
“She’s only thirteen, Mellie. And my daughter. Believe me, when I was a thirteen-year-old boy, girls my age were from a different planet. Apparently, they still are.”
I surreptitiously studied him as I took another sip, imagining that he’d been no less devastating at thirteen than he was now at thirty-five. “Have you sought any professional help?”
He nodded. “Yeah. We went to see a child psychologist, who told me that Emmal . . . Nola is surprisingly well-adjusted, considering what she’s been through, and the best thing I can do right now is to integrate her into my life.” He snorted. “We can’t even live under the same roof, so I’m not sure how I’m going to manage that.”
“You’ll figure it out,” I said, patting him on the arm, my words more confident than I felt as I remembered the bewildered girl he’d dropped off on my doorstep.
We waited while the waitress placed my croissants on the counter between us and added an extra fork. I slid the plate in front of me, along with both forks, then took my first bite. After chewing and swallowing, I said, “You’d better start from the beginning—like who Nola’s mother was, and why I’ve never heard of her or her daughter.”
Jack began to trace circles with his finger on the counter as he spoke. “It’s not what you think, Mellie. I dated Bonnie Pettigrew—Nola’s mother—my senior year in college. She was from Columbus, Georgia—a real sweet Southern girl. I wouldn’t say she was the love of my life, but we had a good time together. We made each other laugh. I was the starting quarterback at South Carolina, but you probably already know that.”
I kept a blank look on my face as I stood by my insistence that I had never Googled him. He regarded me steadily for a long moment to see if I’d crack, and when I didn’t, he continued. “Bonnie was a cheerleader, so we had that in common, too. It was almost sort of expected that we’d date, you know?”
I nodded, even though I didn’t know. My four years in college had been more academic than social, and I could count on one hand the number of football games I’d attended while at South Carolina. And on three fingers the number of dates I’d had.
Jack continued. “Bonnie was pretty musical, too. Used to write songs all the time and play them for me on her guitar. She was good. Real good. Wanted to write music and planned to head out to California just as soon as she graduated. Said it was a great place to be an artist, and the scenery would inspire her. It was pretty much understood that we would part ways then, and I was okay with that.”
“And then there was that trip to New Orleans for Mardi Gras,” I said, unable to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.
“Yeah. There was that,” he said, his voice flat. “We had a good time. I wasn’t a raging alcoholic then, but definitely working on it. We partied a lot. Drank a lot.”
“And apparently didn’t use protection.”
Jack signaled for the waitress to bring him more coffee. “Apparently not. I was young and very stupid. Although I was probably too out of it to even realize, because it never occurred to me that Bonnie might have gotten pregnant. She never even said anything at all. I just remember that about a month before graduation she told me she decided it was time for her to go, that she didn’t need a degree to do what she wanted to do with her life, and that she was moving to California. She just forgot to mention that she was pregnant.”
“And after she had the baby, she never contacted you?”
He shook his head. “Not once. And I had no idea how to get in touch with her—not that we’d really ever planned to do that, anyway. I did write to her mother in Columbus once—her dad had died when she was a baby, and all she had was her mother. Bonnie had never been that close with her mom, and the only thing she could tell me was that Bonnie had made it to California and she hadn’t heard from her since or expected to. It was sad, really, but I figured Bonnie was doing what she wanted to do.”
“So you forgot about her.”
With a hard look at me he said, “I didn’t say that. I just moved on. But I never forgot her.”
I pressed my fork into the remaining crumbs on my plate. “Why do you think she didn’t tell you about the baby?”
He stared down at his cup for a long moment. “Because she knew that I would have wanted us to get married, to raise the child together. And Bonnie would never have settled for that. She would have been miserable being stuck in South Carolina and forced to leave all of her dreams behind. She probably figured she could handle being a single mother if it meant she could pursue her dreams.”
A surprising wave of relief swept over me. The Jack I knew, even though he wasn’t without faults, would never have knowingly abandoned his own child. I drained my cup, leaving it up to my face longer than necessary so that he couldn’t read my expression. He was too good already at reading my mind. Putting my cup down, I asked, “So what happened to Bonnie?”
Jack motioned to the waitress for another refill and I did the same. “She killed herself.”
I coughed on the final mouthful of crumbs. I hadn’t expected to hear that. “Intentionally?”
“It appears so. It’s what’s on the coroner’s report, anyway. Drug overdose, although from what I’ve learned from the police detective assigned to the case, she wasn’t a stranger to OD’ing. She’d been rushed to the hospital at least three times in the last two years for taking various cocktails of prescription and street drugs.”
“Poor Nola,” I said, remembering her expression when I’d met her, of loss and grief and something else that had been unnameable at the time. But now I understood what it was, because I’d seen it for so long in my own reflection: abandonment. “Who would take care of her when her mother was sick?”
“No one, as far as I can figure out. Bonnie had had a long string of live-in boyfriends, and the latest one, Rick something-or-other, had been there for about two years. But I imagine Nola would have taken care of herself. She doesn’t seem the sort to want to have to ask for help.”
“No.” I shook my head, in complete agreement with him for once. “She doesn’t.” I swallowed. “So how did she find her way to you?”
“Bonnie left her an envelope—one of those ‘open only in the event of my death’ kind of things—and in it was my name, the name of my parents’ store on King Street, and a one-way Greyhound bus ticket to Charleston.”
I raised my eyebrows. “She traveled cross-country on a bus all by herself? I can’t even imagine what kind of guts that took. She looks much older, but she’s only thirteen, for crying out loud.” I shook my head.
“She hid at a friend’s house and then slept on a park bench for a night to evade child services before deciding that finding me might be a better option.” Jack kept his voice level, but I could tell it was hard for him.
“Why didn’t she call you first to let you know she was coming?”
Jack pushed away his empty mug. “Nola’s not very talkative about a lot of things—especially about her mother’s death—but she was very clear about this one thing: Bonnie had always told her that I knew about the pregnancy but chose to give them both up.” He looked up at the ceiling and blinked hard, and all I could do was place my hand on his arm and squeeze. After a moment, he said, “I believe she did that so Nola would never be tempted to leave her. And from what little I can get out of Nola, they had a good relationship when Bonnie was clean. Bonnie even taught Nola how to play the guitar, and they’d play together sometimes for extra change. Not that Nola will let me hear her play. She dragged that beat-up guitar all the way from Los Angeles and yet refuses to play a note.”
I remembered how I’d developed an aversion to opera music after my own mother, a famous opera diva, left my father and me. “She needs time,” I said, hoping that she would require less than the thirty-three years it had taken me to get over it, and then only because my mother was still alive to explain that she’d left me to save my life. With Bonnie’s death, her reasons would always remain unspoken.
“I know. That’s why I had to bring her to you. Sophie said you’d understand.” He gave me an apologetic smile. “No matter how many times I tell Nola that I didn’t even know she existed until I saw her on your front porch, she won’t believe me. And we can’t forge a relationship until she accepts that—which she won’t if we’re living under the same roof and continually banging heads.”
I frowned. “There’s only one problem. I’m happy for her to stay with me as long as you think this will take, but I’m about to be kicked out of my house again.”
Jack quirked an eyebrow.
“Sophie and the plumber were yammering about it this morning, but it all comes down to a cracked foundation. I haven’t asked my mother yet, but it looks like I’ll be moving in with her for about three months. I’m sure she’d love to have Nola, too, but I’ll need to check with her. She’s always going on and on about someday having a grandchild, so maybe having her best friend’s granddaughter living with her might cure her of that for a while.”
“Or cure her of ever wanting one of her own,” Jack said with a strained look. “Teenagers aren’t for wussies.”
“Then it’s a good thing my mother and I aren’t.”
The waitress brought our checks and I could see her straining to see if Jack wore a ring on his left hand. She sent me a smug glance when she caught me watching her. Jack shoved his hand in one pocket of his jeans and then the other. “That’s odd. My wallet’s missing.”
Calmly, I reached into my purse and pulled out the wallet General Lee had found on my dresser. I’d left it on the hall table and had picked it up on my way out of the house that morning. “Is this it?”
He took it from me and flipped it open. “It’s definitely mine. Where’d you find it?”
“In my bedroom.”
He furrowed his brow. “Not to be coy, but if my wallet was in your bedroom, wouldn’t I have had to have been there, too? And believe me, I would have remembered that.”
I swatted his sleeve. “I have no idea. All I know is that I got one of my calls from a disconnected phone right before I found it. I’m sure they’re related.”
“Your grandmother again?”
Jack was one of the few people who knew about my sixth sense. Although it had been a closely guarded secret for most of my childhood and adult years, the idea that it was more of a gift than a curse was gradually growing on me at my mother’s urging. But only gradually.
I nodded.
“Did she say anything?”
I thought about her words—
listen to your heart for a change—
and knew better than to tell Jack. He’d find some way to embarrass me or bribe me later if he knew. “Not really,” I said. “You know it’s never clear.”
“True, but we’ve also learned that there’s no such thing as a coincidence. If she’s responsible for my wallet being in your room, then she wants to tell you something about me.”
I dug into my own wallet to hide the color rushing to my face. “Maybe. Like ‘don’t answer the door.’ If only I’d listened.” I smiled up at him but he wasn’t looking. Instead he was looking inside his very empty wallet.
“I had fifty dollars in here. Any idea what might have happened to it?”
I shook my head. “It was there when I found it last night. I didn’t check it again before I slid it into my purse before coming here.”
Our eyes met as a mutual understanding dawned. “Don’t jump to conclusions, Jack,” I said. “I’m sure there’s a logical explanation. Maybe it fell out and it’s still on the table. I’ll ask Mrs. Houlihan as soon as I get home. Just don’t do anything until you hear from me, okay?”
He pressed his lips together, then relaxed. “Fine. But I want you to call me the second you find out.”
“I will.” I stood and picked up his ticket. “My treat. You can get the next one.”
“Already asking me for the next date. That’s sweet, Mellie.”
Before I had a chance to respond his cell phone rang, but when he looked at it he just frowned and turned off the ringer.
“Bill collector?” I asked as I pushed open the door.
“Rebecca, actually,” he said, following me out of the café.
I wanted to ask him why he wasn’t taking her call, but I held back. I didn’t want him to think that I cared. As I slid on my sunglasses I said, “There’s something you should know, Jack.”
He folded his arms and gave me his famous half grin. “I already know you think I’m pretty hot, Mellie. Tell me something I don’t know.”
This time I gave in to the temptation to roll my eyes. “Nola didn’t come alone, if you know what I mean.”
He straightened, his face serious. “Bonnie?”
“I have no idea. Whoever it is stuck the guitar in Nola’s bed last night and opened her window. All I know is that it wasn’t me or General Lee.”
“Did you tell Nola?”
I shook my head. “She’s already having a hard enough time adjusting, so I don’t think it would be a good idea right now—or ever. At best it would freak her out, and at worst she’d never believe another word I said to her. Which could be a problem if you’re using me to help build her trust.”