Keep Me in Your Heart (37 page)

Jodie pulled on Lisa’s arm. “Let’s go. I told you this was a bad idea.”

Nathan saw the scared look on Jodie’s face and realized that Lisa had strong-armed her into coming. He also felt instantly sorry for the girl because he knew what it was to be an outsider. “Did Lisa tell you we’re country?”

“My favorite,” Jodie said. She was a short girl with a round face, short dark hair and brown eyes. She was heavy, but pretty in her way. She kept fidgeting, and Nathan figured Jodie would rather be anyplace but here.

“We should give her a try,” Nathan told Skeet.

Skeet grimaced, but returned to his keyboard.

“How about some classic Patsy Cline?” Nathan picked up his acoustical guitar. It felt funny to be auditioning people for their band, more their hobby than anything else.

“I know ‘Crazy’ and ‘Sweet Dreams,’ ” Jodie said. “Actually, I know all her songs.”

“Let’s try ‘Crazy.’ ” Nathan looked straight at Lisa.

She ignored his look, walked over to the table, plucked a soda from the cooler and sat on an old folding chair.

Nathan played a few riffs. Skeet picked up the melody, and even Larry managed to come in softly with his snare drum. Jodie stepped up, opened her mouth and sang the words with a magical timbre that sent goose bumps up Nathan’s back. Who knew that such a voice could come out of this shy, plump little girl?
Lisa had known
.

They stopped and started a few times, but eventually got through the song. When the last note had faded, Lisa jumped up, clapping. “Didn’t I tell you she was good?”

“You’re good,” Nathan told Jodie, who turned red and shuffled her feet.

Skeet came over. “Yes. But we never planned on adding a singer.”

“It’s all right,” Jodie said, dropping her gaze to the floor.

“You should practice some more together,” Lisa interjected. “See what comes of it. What kind of a band are you if you don’t have a singer?”

“Want to try it again next week?” Nathan asked.

Jodie shrugged. “I—I guess so.”

“Give Skeet a way to get hold of you.”

“What about me?” Larry asked.

“Same thing.” He turned to Lisa. “Take a walk with me.”

“Where?”

“Around back.”

He unlatched the high wooden gate and led her down the path to his mother’s eye-popping backyard of winding trails, clusters of trees, shrubs, and flowers, and gurgling koi pond. Many of the leaves were tinged with the colors of autumn. By November, the trees would be dormant and bare.

“Whoa,” Lisa said when they rounded the corner of the house. “Some backyard, Malone.”

“My mother’s hobby.” He kept his eyes on Lisa. “Why did you bring Jodie over here?”

“To sing with your band.”

“Skeet and I just mess around. We don’t have a serious band.”

“You should. You sounded pretty good to me.”

“Jodie would never have done this if you hadn’t dragged her.”

“So? She’s got a great voice. She just needs confidence. Your band can give that to her, and in the bargain, your band will be better. I’m doing you both a favor.”

“Where do you know her from?” He never saw Lisa hang with anyone at school, and Jodie was the type
who faded into the woodwork in a school the size of Crestwater.

“She lives in my apartment building. I heard her singing out on the playground one day last summer. She didn’t see me. She was sitting on a swing. The place was empty and she was just singing out loud. I told her I thought she sounded great. She was embarrassed, but once we got to know each other, we became friends. She has talent, and your band’s a good start for her. Not everyone can be on
Star Search
or
American Idol
.”

“What do you get out of it, Lisa?” He kept digging for Lisa’s motives, which he figured were present, but he couldn’t grasp what they were. “What exactly do you want?”

She didn’t say anything at first. He kept looking at her, at her violet eyes, at her lips, full and shimmering with gloss. It made his knees weak. “No one can give me what I want, Malone.” She surprised him by looping her arm through his. “Show me around. Where I live we only get flowers planted at the entrance. The place is mostly asphalt, parked cars and a few scraggly trees, watered daily by dogs. I’m telling you, those trees are toxic. No one can go near them.”

Nathan walked with Lisa. He knew the gardens well, since he helped his mother tend them, so he talked about specific plants and apologized for what wasn’t blooming. “You should really come in the spring,” he said. “I’ll bet there are a thousand flowers then.”

She seemed totally into the tour and for once he was glad his mother had taken such pains with the yard.
They stopped at the koi pond and Lisa sat on the bench, leaned out over the water and watched the exotic fish come to the surface in a school of fluttering fins.

“They’re beggars,” Nathan said. “We can hand-feed them.”

“Really? Can I?”

“I’ll have to go get some bread from the house.”

“No, that’s okay. Some other day.”

Did that mean she might actually come again? He’d been trying to get her attention and spend more time with her, and all it might have taken was an invitation to feed some fish.

She sat back, closed her eyes and breathed in the air. She was so beautiful that he wanted to kiss her. Of course, she’d probably push him into the pond if he tried. Her eyes opened and focused on the magnificent magnolia tree in the center of the yard. “Big tree.”

“Mom planted it when I was three.”

Lisa studied the beds around the tree, set off by a meandering row of bricks and Spanish tile. “You know, it sort of looks like there was something else there at one time. Before the flower beds and tree.”

“There was.”

“Tell me.”

His heart pounded and his mouth tasted bone-dry. It was the thing his family never spoke about. “We used to have a swimming pool. Mom liked the tiles too much to rip them out.”

“And your parents covered it over? We have a pool
at my complex, but it’s toxic too.” She wrinkled her nose. “Too many little kids peeing in it. So why did you all fill yours in with dirt? Too much trouble to take care of? Your mom wanted gardens and trees instead?”

The pounding in Nathan’s ears was almost a roar. He wanted to tell her but wasn’t sure if he should. It was their family business, and besides, it might turn her off, one thing he didn’t want to do. Nathan took a deep breath and stared out across the sun-splashed lawn. “We covered it over because it’s where my sister drowned.”

“S
he
drowned
?”

“When she was six. It was a long time ago.” Nathan felt hot and knew color was seeping up his neck. He should have kept his mouth shut.

Lisa stared at him, a range of emotions he couldn’t decipher playing across her pretty face. He knew she had questions, but he hoped with everything inside of him that she wouldn’t ask any. He’d said too much already. “That’s very sad,” she finally said, and reached over and stroked his hand.

He jerked back, but only because it was so unexpected. “We don’t talk about it,” he said, regretting pulling away from her.

She didn’t seem to be bothered by his rejection. The koi thrashed at the pond’s surface, and Nathan
watched Lisa’s reflection undulate in the water. He saw something on her face that he couldn’t describe but that spoke to his heart.
Sadness? Understanding?
More than anything, he wanted to put his arms around her, hold her close. He could have spent forever next to her, imagining her in his arms with this mysterious thread somehow connecting them.

“Forever” ended abruptly when Skeet crashed through the foliage. “There you guys are! Jodie thought you’d run off and left her.” His pique turned to apology when he looked at their faces. “Sorry, dude.”

Lisa jumped up. “I’ve got to get home too.”

The three of them hurried back to the garage, and Jodie looked relieved when she saw them. Larry was long gone. Dusk had fallen and the driveway was dark. Nathan turned on a light and watched the girls climb onto the Harley. “You sing great, Jodie,” he called out. “Next week again, you hear?”

“I’ll be here,” Jodie said.

“You can come too,” he said to Lisa.

“I’ll bring Jodie, but I can’t stay.” Lisa was back to her cool, elusive self.

A wind had kicked up and Nathan watched them drive off, feeling as cold and scattered as the dry leaves tumbling around his feet.

Lisa eased into the dark apartment. “Mom?” No answer. Then she remembered it was bingo night at the Catholic church. Her mother wasn’t Catholic, but she loved bingo.

“Lisa? Back here,” Charlie called.

She flipped on a lamp, tossed her book bag on the sofa and went down the hall to the apartment’s third bedroom, where Charlie had set up the television, DVD, his recliner and an over-the-hill couch. He muted the TV with the remote control and waved her over. He was freshly showered, his long hair pulled back in a ponytail. He smelled of leather and lime soap. “I made some soup for us,” he said. “It’s on the stove. You hungry?”

“Jodie and I stopped for a burger.”

“How’d her audition go?”

“She wowed them.”

Charlie grinned. “So you were right about them needing her, weren’t you?”

Lisa tugged off her boots, propped her feet on the old scarred coffee table. “They asked her back next week.”

“They any good?”

“They’ve got a ways to go before they can play in public.”

“And the young man?”

“What about him?” She kept seeing Nathan’s face, almost expressionless, when he told her about his drowned sister. Lisa was intensely curious about it, but knew how it felt to have someone pile on questions you didn’t want to answer. Some secrets were best left buried.

“You still like him?”

“I don’t like anybody, Charlie. Not in the way you’re thinking. You know I can’t.”

“That’s all in your head, little girl. You told me you wanted to try out everything, remember? Well, loving somebody is part of the trying-out business.”

“Not for me.” She stared at the figures on TV, characters running around wildly in some movie, looking extremely stupid without a sound track. “Why do you stay, Charlie? Mom’s never here. I’m—well, you know how I am. Why do you waste your time on us?”

“Your mom’s not a strong person, Lisa,” Charlie drawled after a minute of reflection. “Not all her fault,” he added. “Life’s just worn her down. You and me
are
strong. So we pick up the slack, make it easier for those who aren’t strong. This young man—”

“Nathan Malone,” she said, hating to say his name because a name made a person real. It breathed life into someone who otherwise remained in the shadows.

“This Nathan, is he strong?”

She thought about that, about the way he’d looked at her when she told him to get off her bike that night in the woods, about how he’d cornered her in the parking lot and forced her to listen to him, about the look on his face when he’d told her about his sister. “He doesn’t discourage easily. Yes, he’s strong.”

Charlie leaned back in his recliner. “That’s good, Lisa. ’Cause you’re going to need a strong one.”

The Saturday jam sessions proved to be the highlight of Nathan’s weeks. Not only was their band improving, their sound maturing, but it was also when he could
see Lisa without the clutter of the classroom surrounding them. She had proven standoffish, and he’d been unable to connect with her as he had that night in the bookstore or the afternoon by the koi pond. Every day she rushed out of Fuller’s class, offering Nathan a breezy goodbye, acting as if they’d never shared a moment together. On Saturdays, she brought Jodie to Nathan’s garage and either waited for her to finish or left and returned for her later. By November, when the first cold snap hit Atlanta, Nathan was desperate to be alone with her again.

“Keep Jodie and Larry busy,” Nathan instructed Skeet one Saturday before the others arrived.

“How?”

“Figure it out. I want to get Lisa off to myself for a little while.”

“You’ve been making cow eyes at her for a month and she hasn’t taken the hint,” Skeet said. “What makes you think a few minutes alone with her today will make a difference?”

“If I wanted an argument, I’d have asked my mother,” Nathan growled. “She’s out with the twins. Dad’s playing golf. I want a chance to be alone with Lisa. Are you going to help me or not?”

Skeet bowed from the waist. “I’m your servant.”

The practice went well, and as soon as it was over, Skeet stepped up to Jodie. “Hey, can you and Larry take a sec to go over some parts of the last number with me?”

“What about Nathan?” Jodie asked.

“Don’t need him for this.”

Nathan set his guitar aside. “Mom left a plateful of cookies for us in the kitchen.”

Larry whooped. “I
love
your mother’s cookies!”

“It’s cold out here,” Lisa said. She’d been sitting in an old lawn chair, flipping through a magazine.

“I’ll brew some hot chocolate,” Nathan said.

“That would be good,” Jodie said eagerly.

Nathan turned to Lisa. “Could you help me carry stuff?”

She hesitated, but Jodie gave her a pleading look. “All right,” she said, not sounding happy about it. She followed Nathan indoors.