Jilted (14 page)

When my husband left me fifteen years ago, I thought I would never recover from the heartache, but now that he was dead, I felt nothing at all. Hoby had given in to the pull of the bottle one last time and had driven off a cliff before he could make it home where I could help him.

After all those years of bitterness, waiting and angry, I found my life becoming a void of emptiness that swallowed me up more thoroughly than Lake Alan Henry had consumed that wrecker.

I sat on the side of my bed staring at the wall—at that oval-shaped chip in the semigloss—but all I saw was that muddy wrecker being pulled from the water and Hoby's mud-covered skull right there on the driver's side. I whimpered, then toyed with the idea of ripping the Sheetrock from the studs. Getting rid of the old, deteriorating facade in lieu of something fresh and clean.
Wouldn't help, though.
The house would still be old. Things would never change.

A water glass sat on the floor next to the bed, and I bent to pick it up, wrapped my fingers around it, and squeezed, hoping the pressure would shatter the glass so its shards would cut me. When it didn't budge, I reared my arm back and slammed the tumbler against the wall, hoping to trigger my habitual angry feelings. The silly thing only broke into three pieces, though, and for some reason I laughed. I had expected a satisfying crunch, and the pitiful thunk didn't come close to quenching my thirst for emotion.

I searched the room, my gaze landing on a porcelain lamp resting on my bedside table—pink roses against green lace—not my taste at all. My style would forever be wood and iron and denim. Hard, sturdy, usable surfaces that could survive the trials of life. I stood, gripped the lamp with two hands, and jerked the cord from the outlet. When I hurled it against the wall, the lamp merely fell to the floor and lay at an angle, its socket and bulb dangling and its shade askew and bent.

I sobbed once and fell to my knees. The lamp had sat on an end table in my living room when I was a child, and I remembered my mother cleaning it with a feather duster. I picked it up and returned it gingerly to the nightstand, shoving the shade back down like a winter hat on a runny-nosed preschooler. The porcelain hadn't even chipped.

Maybe roses and lace were more durable than they seemed.

The drawer of the nightstand was open, and the letters peeked out at me, teasing, taunting, but I let them be and sat down on the edge of the bed. They would only make things worse. Make me crazier. I slid to the rug and sat with my knees bent, heels shoved against my thighs.

My parents never should have died in that wreck. It didn't take a psychiatrist to figure out that I wouldn't have been so needy had they survived. I would have had a normal childhood and grown into an emotionally healthy adult, and I never would have thrown my mother's lamp against the wall.

A guilty voice inside my head sang a sad song of relief, crooning that I was free from Hoby's memory, but the vise-grip pressure on my chest left me no peace. Before my husband left, I wanted him to trust me and be happy, and after he left, I wanted him to come back. Both times he let me down, and over the years, I grew more and more angry. At life. At myself. At Hoby. I wanted him to pay. I wanted revenge.

But I never wanted him dead.

Dead was final. Dead was hopeless. Dead was incomprehensible abandonment. Dead was my parents.

Slowly I leaned over with one elbow on the hardwood floor. Then I lay down on my side and pulled my knees to my chest, wrapping the lamp cord around the fingers of my empty hand and drawing the other hand to my chest, crushing its contents.

My thumb rubbed across the paper, and I grunted in disgust. Somehow the letters had found their way into my hand, and I lay gripping them against my heart like a numbing anesthetic. An anesthetic called bitterness.

Sunday after work, Clyde pulled out of the Dairy Queen parking lot and decided he had left Lynda on her own long enough. When he dropped by her house to check on her, he was surprised to find reporters in the yard hovering around the property line like vultures around a wounded animal. A few of them approached his sedan, but when he pulled himself from his car, he towered above them with a scowl, and they backed away. In spite of that, he figured they would find out who he was, and his name and his past would be splattered on the news stations right along with Lynda's and Hoby's.

No wonder Lynda hadn't shown up at work.

At lunchtime, Dixie told him Lynda had called in sick, but neither of them believed that to be true, so Clyde had promised to check on her. He tapped on the door and waited, imagining how she would lock herself away. He couldn't leave her there no matter what was going on in the front yard. He knocked louder but still got no answer.

Clyde thought for a second about going by the United and asking Ruthie for a key, but that would only upset the girl. She and Lynda had enough issues without him reminding her.

He pulled his wallet from his back pocket, slipped out his driver's license, and used his body to shield his actions from the onlookers with their cameras. He had the door open in less than three seconds. Lynda might be angry with him, but he was used to that.

“Lyn?” He stepped into the living room, closed the door behind him with a soft click, and then he listened for a few seconds.
Empty silence.
The lights were off in the kitchen, so he knocked on the bedroom door. “Lynda, it's me. You in there?”

He knew she was in there. Where else would she be? In the best of situations, she might have gone to stay with her sister, but Velma couldn't handle anything else, and Lynda was still healthy enough to admit it.

He knocked again, this time louder.

“What do you want?” Her voice sounded clear, not as though she had been crying. Clyde realized Lynda rarely cried.

The knob turned easily.
Thank goodness.
Breaking in through her front door was one thing, but her bedroom was something entirely different. “Figured you needed checking on.”

“I don't.”

Clyde paused in the doorway and waited for his eyes to adjust to the dim light. She was lying across the bed wearing an old T-shirt and what looked like oversize men's pajama pants. “Mind if I turn on the light?”

“Why did you come here?”

Clyde ran his fingers through his hair, looked back up the hallway to the living room, and then sighed. Sometimes Lynda could be testy, and she didn't always know what was good for her. He flipped the light switch.

Lynda pulled the pillow over her head and rolled to her side. When she drew her knees up to her chest, her T-shirt crept up, exposing four inches of her spine.

Clyde looked at the floor as he walked to the side of the bed and poked her knee with his finger. “You can't stay in here forever.”

She didn't move, so he pulled the curtains back to let in sunlight.

“Stop it.” Her voice was muffled beneath the pillow.

He sat on the side of the bed. Waited. Looked at her. The way she was lying on her side made her hips curve away from her waistline. He noticed a throw blanket on the end of the bed and pulled it over her, but she kicked at him, sending the blanket cascading to the floor.

“I'm not cold.”

He jerked the pillow from her head, and when she flipped the other one to cover herself, he was faster and caught it in midshift, leaving her pillowless and as irritated as a diamondback on hot sand.

She jerked to a sitting position and scooted herself back. “What?”

“You can't stay in here, Lyn.”

“Give me a break. It hasn't even been twenty-four hours.” Her face wrinkled into a fierce glower, but her hair jumbled on top of her head, and her anger didn't make it all the way to Clyde, who was trying not to smile.

“Twenty-five.”

Her eyes bounced to the clock radio, and then she slumped against the headboard.

A maple dining chair stood in the corner, and Clyde pulled it to the side of the bed and sat. She would talk when she was ready, and Clyde would stay until it happened.

He watched her for a while, but when she didn't move, he took another look around the room. Bare walls. A dresser with a junior-high-aged picture of Ruthie in a frame, and next to it, a pink baby Bible. The bedside table held a fancy antique lamp with a whopper-jawed shade. A pile of clothes had been dumped in the corner—mostly brown diner uniforms—and her Converse tennis shoes were next to it. And near the baseboard, what looked like a broken glass.

So she had thrown a tantrum.

Her head lolled back, and she bumped it softly on the headboard. “Life is just so hard. Will it never ease up?”

He figured she didn't want an answer, so he didn't give her one, but she was right. Life was insanely difficult. So hard it took his breath away at times. So hard he often thought about locking himself in his own house, just as she was doing.

She sighed. “I hate when I whine, but I can't seem to stop.”

“Least you hear yourself doing it.”

“Does that give me extra credit or something?”

“Yep.”

She crossed her arms and stared out the window.

Not wanting to rush her, he lowered his gaze to the floor, but when he did, he noticed crumpled pieces of paper between the bed and the nightstand. One of them stuck out farther, just catching the light from the lamp. They were the letters from Neil that he had seen in the kitchen last week. The letters she had thrown away.

He poked at a few items in her open bedside drawer, pretending to be curious, and then he leaned over and dropped his hand smoothly to the floor. Sliding his palm across the letters, he folded them with one hand and slipped them into his pocket. He looked back at her, expecting her to snap at him for being nosy, but she was still looking out the window, not seeing. “You hungry?” he asked.

“No.”

She needed to eat. She needed to keep up her strength so she could fight off the desperation. She needed to tell him the truth about whatever he had in his pocket.

“I'll make you a sandwich.” He stalked away, but as soon as he got to the kitchen, he flipped on the light and pulled out the letters.

The first was nothing more than a scrawled note.

Since you won't talk to me, I've resorted to the postal service. Lynda, he would want you to let go of the past. You know he would. Let me help.

Clyde stared at the paper in his fist, wondering—no, fearing—when Neil had written it. The paper didn't seem fresh, but it was nowhere near as worn as the longer one. He turned the stationery over to read the words of the letter, and his heart catapulted from the top of a guard tower, landing on an electrified, razor-wire fence.

Lynda, my ladybug.

The phrase jolted Clyde back to a night years ago, when he'd been sitting at a card table in the bay of Hoby's mechanic shop. Neil had leaned over and made Lynda giggle with his absurd words. “Lynda, my unlikely little ladybug, I love you and like you and lust you, and I long for later when a license makes us lawful.”

Clyde could almost hear the dominoes clink against each other as Hoby shuffled them. He and Hoby had moaned while Neil and Lynda laughed. That was before Susan. Before everything. The four of them had been such good friends.

And Hoby had loved Lynda as long as Clyde had.

They even talked about it once their senior year. The two of them were on the offensive line, protecting the quarterback, and they joked about how easy it would have been for Neil to get hurt. But letting Neil get injured wouldn't have solved anything. They both knew neither of them stood a chance against Trapp's golden boy. Besides, Neil was their friend.

Lynda coughed in the other room, and Clyde snapped back to the present. He yanked food items out of the cabinet while he skimmed the rest of the letter.

… still love you … can't live like this … miss you so much I could die … Susan will never know … wasn't what I wanted … had no choice … please forgive …

A deep burn ignited beneath the soles of Clyde's feet, and it gradually grew stronger, engulfing him in flames until he thought he might explode into a hundred fireballs. He looked at the top corner of the paper to the date scrawled in Neil's handwriting. The letter had been written during Clyde's trial, just a few weeks after Neil married Susan.

There was another letter with different handwriting and an old church bulletin, but Clyde shoved them into a pile. The hate he felt for Neil Blaylock was so intense, it pressed on his shoulders, and he carried it back to the bedroom, supporting its weight as if he were carrying an invisible iron yoke.

Lynda had insisted she had no feelings for Neil, and Clyde believed it. She couldn't fake that kind of hatred. So why did she hang on to these letters after so many years?

When he entered the bedroom with a paper plate of peanut-butter sandwiches, she was running her fingers through her hair, releasing the tangles. Well, that was an improvement. His burden shifted slightly but didn't ease.

He held the sandwiches toward her.

“Not hungry.”

He stood like a statue, the plate extended. He wouldn't leave until he saw her eat at least half a sandwich, and if Lynda thought about it, she would know as much.

“Fine,” she snapped.

He set the plate on the foot of the bed and raised a sandwich to his lips, and they ate in silence. Staring. Chewing. Thinking. And then he slipped into the kitchen and brought back two cups of ice water, having avoided the pitcher of cloudy tea on the counter.

Lynda had sneaked another sandwich while he was gone.

Clyde reached for another and took a large bite, then settled back in his chair. He swallowed. “Might serve you well to get out of the house.”

She lowered her arm, letting her sandwich rest on her thigh.

He took a swig of water and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “Not all at once, but a little farther every day.”

“A little farther?”

He motioned to the hallway. “Take on that door first.”

She glared at the door as if it were a demon in need of a thrashing. “I guess Hector will come by.”

“I asked him to give you a couple days. He said he had information for you, but he didn't say what.”

“Hmm.”

Clyde leaned forward and dropped the letters back on the floor. “You talked to Ruthie?”

“A few minutes last night.”

“She needs you.”

Lynda pulled her knees up to her chest and curled her toes into the quilt. “I know she does, but what do I have that she would want?”

“Just you.”

Clyde anticipated how the conversation would play out. He had read enough novels to know this was where she was supposed to break down into tears, but Lynda wasn't a typical woman, and right at that moment, she gritted her teeth in a calm fury.

“Ruth Ann hasn't needed me in a year or more, if she ever did.”

“The girl clearly needs you. Especially now.”

“But she left me, just like the rest of them.” Her eyes opened wide, searching his, as though she might find a solution to a problem there.

“No … now. She didn't.” He shook his head.

“Yes, she did.” She clawed her fingers through her hair until she held handfuls tightly in her grip.

Clyde shifted on the chair, realizing she had a point. Even if it hadn't been Ruthie's intention to abandon her momma, she had—sort of—left Lynda alone when she married Dodd.

Just like Lynda's parents. Just like Neil. Just like Hoby.

And now Hoby had left her all over again.

No wonder Lyn was a mess.

He moved to sit next to her on the bed and worked her fingers out of her hair. When her arms dropped limply to her side, he held the glass of ice water toward her and waited until she took it and drank.

Clyde knew she was in a deep, dark place, but he also knew she could dig her way out. “That door, Lyn. Start with that door.”

Her eyes followed his arm until she was gazing blankly toward the hall, and then she looked back at him, her eyes childlike and wide. “If you say so.”

He slid his palm into hers, but this time, her hand wrapped so loosely around his finger, he could hardly feel it. As though she were barely there.