His Best Friend's Baby (8 page)

“No,” she said fast and sure.

Jesse almost smiled at her. Poor kid. “Okay,” he said. He turned away from her and his knee
twinged. He’d need another painkiller tonight at the rate he was going. If he could keep them to every other day and still get the roof done, he’d be in good shape.

“Where you going?” she asked. “Aren’t we going to talk—”

“Hell, no.”

There was a pregnant pause. “You shouldn’t swear in front of your kid niece.”

He eyed her over his shoulder and she grinned like the Cheshire cat, the way Mac said Jesse used to, as if everything was going according to plan. He almost laughed again.

“You shouldn’t break into people’s houses. Now, you can either go or you can give me a hand out back.” He hit the aluminum door and stepped out into the bright sunlight.

Just go,
he thought.
Just head on back to
Mac and Rachel and leave me alone
.

But the girl was right behind him, talking about slave labor and minimum wage. He couldn’t deny it—part of him was more than a little happy.

A
DMITTEDLY
, Julia’s plan to find work had not been carefully thought out. It was day three of her job search. The first day she’d walked down
Main Street looking for Help Wanted signs in the business windows. There weren’t any so she’d grabbed New Springs’ weekly newspaper and yesterday she’d filled out applications at the hair salon and movie theater.

But today she had a new idea. Instead of getting whatever job was available she was going to find the job she wanted.

She had an idea of what that job was. She’d carried the fledgling dream around from base to base since she was a little girl. But how to take that idea and turn it into a career—well, she was more than a little clueless.

“Hi,” she murmured aloud. “I’d like a job planting flowers. Oh, and can you pay me lots of money for that? Oh, and did I mention I don’t have a college degree and I barely passed the GED?”

“Mama?” Ben tried to turn around in his stroller, no doubt trying to see whom his crazy mother was talking to.

“Boo!” she said with a big smile and that started him on a long laughing, babbling monologue.

First, she would try the grocery store, to see if they had a horticulture department. If that didn’t work, she could expand her search.

The sun warmed the top of her head, and her legs stretched and ate up the concrete. It felt good to move, to be going somewhere with, if not a plan, at least an idea.

And the yards in this neighborhood were fantastic, like works of art! These people had some cash and didn’t mind spending it on plants and flowers. Purple and gold and pink lupine was everywhere, as was the ubiquitous eucalyptus. She stopped and stroked the silvery leaf of a plant she didn’t know and accidentally kicked over a small lawn sign. She righted it, sticking its metal poles back beside the hosta and the mystery plant.

Holmes Landscaping, it read.

Julia had that breathless, shaky feeling that accompanied her belief in anything Mitch said was too good to be true.

Don’t count your chickens
, she warned herself.

But she picked up the pace to the grocery store. Once there she skipped the bulletin board and went right to the white pages attached to the pay phone out front.

Holmes Landscaping was located on the highway, close to the Motel 6 where she’d stayed in for all of five hours.

She bought her son some grapes and a bottle of water and thanked her lucky stars that she’d put on her walking shoes this morning.

She headed out toward the highway with her hopes high. She’d love to work with plants all day. Maybe once she’d brushed up on her knowledge she could help customers design their flowerbeds. She had a little artistic flair and getting to use it in her job seemed like a dream.

But her hopes and dreams were smashed under the heavy work boots of Virginia Holmes.

“We’re not hiring,” Virginia, the sixty-year-old owner who sported glasses and spinach in her teeth, growled at her. The faded green shirt stretched across her broad back and shoulders as she picked up a bag of topsoil from the skid as if it were a bag of feathers and added it to the stack under the sale sign.

Julia shaded her eyes from the bright sun.

“I understand, but—”

“Well, clearly you don’t—” Virginia turned, the sun hitting the edge of her glasses giving her glum expression a wicked glare “—or else you’d be leaving me alone, so I could get my work done.”

“I understand you’re not hiring for a cashier position, but I don’t want a cashier position.”

“Well, you look too white and too small for anything else.”

Julia had no idea what to say. Was that a racist comment? Did the woman hire only Mexicans? Virginia Holmes was not the kindly, benevolent job-giver Julia had been expecting on the long walk out here.

“You’re white,” she ended up saying.

Nice one
. She mentally hit herself in the head.

“Not like you.” Virginia heaved another bag of soil from the flat to the pile on sale. “You’re white like you’ve never worked a day in your life. And trust me—” she laughed a big, loud trucker kind of laugh that made Julia feel about two inches tall “—that’s not a nice white.”

Well, you’re not a nice woman
. She almost said it, but Virginia Holmes or not, Julia wanted a job. And she wanted a job here, amongst the bags of dirt and flats of jade plants, the blossoming dogwoods and cherry trees. She wanted to water the pine trees with their burlap-covered root balls and the rose bushes in their black planters that lined the asphalt.

She wanted to take care of the damn plants.

“Mama?” Ben asked from where she’d parked him about five feet away next to the hose equipment.

“And another thing—” Virginia jerked her gloves higher on her wrists and then plunked her hands on her thick waist “—who brings their son to get a job?”

“A woman who doesn’t know any better!” Julia finally said between clenched teeth. “A woman doing the best she can. And I wouldn’t mind doing the best I could for you, but if you want to be a racist jerk, that’s fine. I don’t need this job.” She stiffened her sagging spine and stopped her runaway mouth. Her fingers tingled from the adrenaline that flooded her system.
That’s a first
. She took a deep breath and shook out her hands. She almost laughed—the first time in her life she actually stands up to someone and the woman clearly couldn’t care less.

“Thanks for your time,” Julia managed to say politely.

She turned away, hoping that Vons had a flower department and that the manager didn’t care how small she was. She and Ben were halfway past the annuals when Virginia’s rusty bark called out after her.

“Fill out an application and leave it with my daughter, Sue, at the cash. We’re not hiring right now, but you never know.”

Julia turned to thank her, but the cantanker ous old woman had already moved on.

“Great,” she muttered.

“Great!” Ben echoed, clapping his hands and the poor sweet boy really meant it.

B
EN KNOCKED THE TOWER
of blocks Julia had built to the ground. The clatter and minor destruction startled then thrilled him. He clapped, laughing and looking to her to join in the fun.

She applauded and started to rebuild, but her heart was a million miles away.

It was Wednesday morning and a week had gone by since she’d started her job search. She’d applied to five jobs and so far, nothing.

Things were not going as planned. She’d used up much of her savings to get here and the check from the army wouldn’t come until the end of the month. There would be an insurance settlement, but she didn’t know how much or when it might arrive. All the paperwork she received made vague promises about “settling in full after the inquiry.” The thought of receiving money for Mitch’s death made bile rise up
in her throat which meant that money would be for Ben, for college. It was only right.

Agnes’s open hospitality had evolved into a hovering kind of tyranny. Every decision Julia made—whether to give Ben applesauce or yogurt, to let him have juice or water—had become a platform for Agnes’s opinion on what was bad for her grandson.

Every time Julia left for a walk, or returned minutes later than she’d said she would, Agnes expressed her disapproval in the icy turn of her shoulder, the superior lift of her nose.

Julia couldn’t win with Agnes and she didn’t know if the change in treatment was the result of something she’d done or if it was simply just the way Agnes acted. Certainly Julia’s previous experiences with Agnes would support the latter. But as long as Julia was dependent on the Adamses’ hospitality, she was forced to be polite.

That pressure fueled her desire for a job, a place of her own. Food she’d bought and provided for her son. She needed to stop feeling like a guest in her own life.

Her train of thought was interrupted by the phone ringing in the other room. Her cell phone number was long distance so she’d given all the
prospective employers the Adamses’ number. Her heart jumped into her throat—maybe this was the call she’d been waiting for. It was stupid and foolish but the prayer was there just the same.

Please be Holmes Landscaping. Please be
Holmes Landscaping
.

Someone picked up the phone midring. Moments later Julia heard footsteps and then the soft swish of the door opening.

“Julia?” Agnes said. “Phone’s for you.”

“Thank you,” Julia said past dry lips. She reached for the extension beside the couch.

“Hello?”

“Julia? This is Lisa down at Hair Expressions.”

“Hi, Lisa,” Julia said into the phone, her stomach in minor knots. They’d been looking for an afternoon receptionist with experience. Julia had lied about the experience.

“I just wanted to let you know that our usual summer receptionist decided not to go away to band camp this year, so we aren’t considering anyone’s applications.”

Band camp?
Every job she’d applied for had been filled by one of the two hundred high school students starting summer vacation in a week.

It was disheartening to be turned down in favor of a band camp dropout. Not the most disheartening thing in her life, but quickly climbing the charts.

“No problem, Lisa, thanks for giving me a call.”

“Hey, are you really Mitch Adams’s widow?”

“I am.”

“I went to prom with Mitch,” she said and Julia sighed. Everybody had a Mitch story. “He was a great guy, I’m sorry for your loss.”

Everybody in this town loved him, but no one
really knew him
.

Jesse’s words echoed around her.

“Thanks,” she murmured, the words sticky in her throat.

“They’re looking for servers out at the Petro by the highway,” Lisa’s voice wasn’t patronizing, just helpful. “You might try there.”

“I will,” Julia said, swallowing. “Thanks.”

She hung up, all too aware that Agnes had stood behind her during the conversation, listening to her further failure.

“Honey, I don’t know why you’re so set on getting a job.” Agnes sat in the stiff wing chair to Julia’s left. “There’s no need for you to do that.”

Julia bit her lip to stop the fast and ugly retort that expressed all the frustration she felt.

“I stayed home with Mitch. That’s what mothers do,” Agnes said.

That’s what good mothers do, was what she meant.

The words hung in the air solid and tangible.

Good mothers, the kind you clearly are not
.

“I would feel better,” Julia said, slowly turning a yellow block in circles on the faded flowered rug she and Ben sat on, “if Ben and I could support ourselves.”

“What about the money from the army?” Agnes asked the personal question as though she had the right and Julia burned a little hotter inside. “I’m sure Mitch made provisions for his son.”

Julia faced Agnes, incredulous. Surely the woman had to be joking. This whole town and their hero worship had to be joking!

“Mitch left debt for his son.” The words came out before she could stop them. She’d never intended to tell Agnes this.

Agnes’s gray eyebrows clapped together. “What debt?”

Julia debated her response for a split second. The truth would only hurt Agnes—no mother wanted to hear about her son’s mistakes.

“Mitch wasn’t that kind of man.”

Agnes had no
clue
what kind of man her son had been, and Julia felt a small amount of pleasure enlightening her.

“He made two bad investments while in California before the war and…” Agnes blanched and Julia swallowed, suddenly uncomfortable with her vindictiveness. “He gambled. Not a lot, but…enough.”

Enough that she’d had to max out her credit card with cash advances to pay just half of his outstanding losses. A significant portion of her monthly check from the army went directly into a bank account set up to pay back Mitch’s “buddies” in the army.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Agnes laughed, but there was no humor in it, only sharp anger aimed at Julia. “Mitch was never a gambler.”

“Maybe not when he was eighteen but he sure was the last few years.”

Agnes stood, bristling with anger. This was the woman Julia had met when she and Mitch had gotten married. This judgmental woman glaring down her nose was the woman who’d called her a gold digger.

“Perhaps he needed a diversion out there in that desert. Maybe he needed to be distracted
from the fact that he was so far away from his family. Maybe he was under too much pressure having to support a wife he hadn’t planned on.”

Julia could only blink at the venom in Agnes’s voice. There was no way Julia could battle a mother’s untarnished image of her dead perfect son.

“Perhaps, you’re right,” she lied in a vain attempt to restore the peace. She bent to the task of rebuilding unstable towers for her son.

Agnes left the room, slamming the door behind her. Julia shut her eyes as the vacancy surrounded her. It seemed as though Agnes had sucked all the vitality from the room with her blind defense of a man who didn’t deserve it. Julia’s heart felt too heavy to be borne.

The one person who would understand the burden of Mitch’s memory, the man who she longed to talk to, refused to see her.

A
MANDA CAME BY
Jesse’s house on Wednesday afternoon. Again. It had been a little more than a week of Amanda stopping in after church and after school. She was like lice. Lice that never shut up.

Oddly enough, when she wasn’t there, however, he missed her.

“So, Uncle Jesse?”

“Yes, Niece Amanda?”

They were in his backyard cleaning up the last of the old roof. He’d stripped it of the ruined shingles and it was now ready for new ones. He’d worked himself raw getting to this point and still managed to take the painkillers only every other night.

“Considering I’ve been working my butt off for a week now and not getting paid…” she said.

He smiled.

“I think it’s time we start talking about how exactly you are going to reimburse me for my efforts.”

“No interview, Amanda.”

“Okay, we can talk about something else.”

He looked at her over his shoulder. “No more stories about your friends’ love lives. I can’t take any more.”

“Fine.” She arched one eyebrow and picked up a shingle. “But there have been some very interesting developments between Christie and—”

“Enough!” he cried.

“How about you tell me about your love life.”

He shook his head.

“Well, I heard that when you were in high school—”

“I already told you I never got anyone pregnant in high school and I never beat anyone up for their shoes and I never sent anyone to the hospital.”

“Fine.” She harrumphed and silence filled the lawn. He waited patiently for her next effort to get him to talk about the war. Fending off her clever and wily attempts to engage him in conversation.

“Let’s talk about your dad.”

Jesse paused for a moment, stunned.
Never
expected that one
.

Wain barked at his ankles and Jesse took the opportunity to stall as he winged the board in his hand toward the garage. Wain, old but still game, trotted after it.

Jesse’s father, the memories of him, no longer hurt—those scars were old and faded. But the times with dear old Dad were not things he ever talked about.

“Why would you want to talk about him?”

“He’s, like, my stepgrandpa.”

“He’s dead.” Jesse pointed out the obvious.

“Would he have liked me? Eva liked me a lot.”

Jesse almost choked on the sudden wave of emotion. Of course Eva had liked Amanda.
He’d
been trying hard to not like Amanda and had failed pretty miserably.

But his father would have been a different story.

“Dad didn’t like much of anything.” That was a ludicrous understatement.

“Mom said he drank a lot.”

Jesse nodded.

“She said he was mean.”

“I can’t really argue with that,” he muttered, grabbing shingles from the grass with a bit more speed than he had before.

“She said he hit you two.”

“I think I’d rather talk about your love life some more.” He tried to joke, but she didn’t laugh. And he didn’t, either.

“My mom was mean, too,” she said. “Not Rachel, but my birth mom.”

Jesse realized again with a sudden pang that despite her bold words and bravado, she was still young and, therefore, frail, this niece of his. He hated the idea of her being hurt by a callous parent. He knew first hand how painful that could be.

“She didn’t hit me or anything, but she wasn’t very nice.”

“I’m sorry,” he said lamely. He didn’t look
away from her eyes, and she didn’t flinch from his. In the midst of this intense honesty she wormed her way deeper into his heart.

“Yeah, it sucked.”

The air in the backyard felt heavy.

“Hey.” He tried again to joke the soberness away. “Is this your way of softening me up for your article or—”

“I told you because I wanted to. Because you’re my uncle and I like you. You can tell me what happened in the war and I won’t write the article if you don’t want me to. We could just… talk, you know?”

He didn’t. He had no clue. But he nodded anyway.

Wain trotted back from the garage with the board in his mouth and dropped it at Amanda’s feet. She grabbed it and tossed it toward the garage. Jesse returned to picking up shingles and the moment passed as though it hadn’t happened. Except that he felt a little lighter or cleaner or something. He felt closer to his effervescent niece and that, in turn, made him feel good.

They worked their way around the corner of the house, past the giant trumpet plant, picking up shingles and tossing the stick for
Wain, who fetched with less and less speed until he finally collapsed in a patch of sunlight to gnaw on the stick.

In front of the porch, Jesse finally straightened, ready to call it a day. Maybe he could convince his niece to run down to the Dairy Dream and bring back a pint of rocky road ice cream. He turned, ready to make his pitch to Amanda, and saw Julia Adams on the opposite corner wrestling her screaming son out of a stroller that listed precariously to one side.

His body turned to stone, while his heart ran to liquid, the way it always did when he saw her.

At the sound of the boy’s cries Amanda dropped her garbage bag and ran past him toward the corner, ready to offer her assistance.

“You gonna come help her?” she paused to ask.

Julia had walked past his house twice a day for days. Every time he could feel her eyes on his back, on his legs, on his chest like a caress. But when he turned to face her she’d stare straight ahead, pretending the air between them wasn’t on fire with her desire—that same desire that filled him and spurred dreams of her. And when he wasn’t dreaming of her, he dreamed
about the crash. The situation would be laughable if it wasn’t such agony. And now he was supposed to play knight in shining armor?

“No.” He leaned down to grab another armful of torn shingles. The rough asphalt bit into his arms and hands and he pressed his flesh against the pain as hard as he could. It reminded him he was here only to finish this house, not to spin wonderful dreams about his best friends wife and her son.

“Mom was right. You can be such a jerk, Uncle Jesse,” Amanda said, without much heat.

The words still stung even after she went running across the lawn towards Julia. Jesse dumped the shingles in the bag and continued working.

You don’t know the half of it, kid
.

J
ULIA MANAGED
to get Ben, screaming as if he’d been attacked by bees, out of the collapsed stroller. The screw holding the two crossbars in place had vanished and the whole damn thing had given up the ghost.

Ben had one long scrape across his shin, but most of the commotion was because the poor kid had been startled out of a sound nap.

“Sh, sh, sweetheart. It’s okay.” She murmured
nonsense into his ear until the screaming faded to whimpers.

She wished she could scream. Just lie down on the ground and have at it until all her stress, worry and frustration were gone, or until someone picked her up, comforted her and whispered soothing nonsense into her ear.