Let It Go (11 page)

“The painful process of explaining and defending one’s emotional and sexual recovery,” Willow confirms, having been through a few high-profile divorces in her lifetime. “This would be so much easier if we still burned our bras and proclaimed free love,” she reminisces about her college experience.

Savannah looks at her, slightly awestruck, her reverence for the face of the
Savannah Sun Times
deepening.

“What?” Willow challenges. “You assume I’m too pretentious to have burned my bra?”

“Not at all,” Savannah replies. “Just wish I could have been there to see it.”

“Surely your mother is my age,” Willow deduces. “It was a fine time to be alive.” A rare smile forms on her lips as she recalls her generation. “Research assignment for you. Ask your mother about the sixties.”

Savannah raises her eyebrows, the action calling the lines in her forehead to prominence. “I highly doubt there was any bra burning in my mother’s history.” She considers her mother’s prudence.

“You know what they say, the prim ones are the wildest,” Willow advises. “And refrain from scrunching up your forehead. It’s unbecoming.”

Suddenly feeling as though she is in the presence of her
prim
mother, Savannah relaxes her forehead, running her fingertips over it as if to smooth out the lines.

“Why dip when you can dive,” Willow says, standing up from Savannah’s desk and exiting the cubicle.

“Pardon me?” Savannah inquires.

“That’s your title.
Why Dip When You Can Dive,”
Willow repeats.

“Oh!” Savannah quickly changes her column heading, frustrated she hadn’t already considered such.

Willow stops at the outer edge of the cubicle. “I surmise this will be the
first
and
only
time you sport a shag shirt in this office.” Willow peers at her knowingly over the tops of her bifocals.

Tami Lynn, steadily typing away at her keyboard, swallows an emerging chuckle at the hip verbiage rolling off Willodean’s nearly archaic tongue.

Savannah blushes, her hand subconsciously winding itself into the baby blue material. “Yes Ma’am,” she whispers sheepishly. Willow flits her a shrewd smirk before walking away.

Once the pungent aroma of Willow’s perfume exits their work area, Tami Lynn spins around in her chair, letting loose a bottled-up cackle. “No way in
Helvetica,”
Tami Lynn speaks in her expertise, typography, “Willodean Abernathy knows about shag shirts!”

“Uh, yes way,” Savannah argues, slightly mortified. “You just heard it straight from the canary’s mouth.” Further contemplating, she continues, “Am I that uncool? I didn’t know what a shag shirt was but Willow does.”

Tami Lynn looks at her, finally quieting her laughter, “Speaking of…how is it that you get to call her Willow?”

Savannah shrugs. “I didn’t know we weren’t supposed to.”

“It’s the blonde hair, isn’t it?” Tami Lynn jousts.

Savannah shoots her a pressing glance. “There’s nothing bashful about
Willodean,”
she emphasizes her official handle. “If she didn’t like it, she’d be the first to let me know.”

“You writers. Editors think you’re Cinderella.” Tami Lynn rolls her eyes. “Typographers…we’re the spinster stepsisters.”

“If the shoe fits,” Savannah spars playfully.

“Shoes…feet…big feet…big hands…big
stick,”
Tami Lynn talks herself circularly back to their conversation prior to Willodean’s interruption. “So are you going to see him again?”

“Huh?” Savannah is lost in her work.

“Gym boy,” Tami Lynn exasperates.

“Oh. Yeah. Maybe,” Savannah dismisses, continuing with her work.

“See. This is why you’re uncool. All you do is focus on work.” Tami Lynn throws her hands up in the air. “If you’d slow down and smell the roses, you’d become more in tune with pop culture, Savannah.”

“When pop culture pays my bills and advances my career, I will pay more attention to it,” Savannah partakes of their daily repartee.

“How did you end things? Is he going to call you? Or are you calling him?” Tami Lynn continues. “That has to be substantiated you know, or else you’re both left hanging.”

“Tami Lynn,” Savannah whirls around in her chair, facing her cubicle mate, “you’re giving me a headache. It’s not that deep. It was just sex. Very good sex.”

“Well, did you talk afterward?”

Savannah laughs frustratingly. “I think we let our bodies do the talking.” She taps her pencil against her chin. “Maybe there’s something to that…having sex just to have it…quite liberating, actually.”

“Oh boy,” Tami Lynn huffs. “That’s dangerous territory, Savannah. The divorcée sexcapade.” She flops her hands into her lap. “Giving it up to this guy, then that guy…only to end up empty and all alone. Or worse yet, with a case of
the clap!”

“Simmer down, drama queen.” Savannah shakes her head, chuckling. “He told me he would call. I told him not to. We’re both adults. There’s no need to make a mountain out of a molehill. If it’s meant to be anything more than what it is, it will be.”

“You told him not to call? Savannah,” Tami Lynn scolds, dragging her name out, reflecting all three syllables. “Have I taught you nothing?”

“Savannah,” a voice, that of a male intern, sounds through her desk phone intercom. “You have a visitor. He says he’s your brother.”

“Be right there,” Savannah replies.

“Your brother?” Tami Lynn questions, the first she has heard of a male sibling in the Bondurant family.

Savannah stands up agitatedly, leaving their cubicle. “Jack,” she mutters, rolling her eyes, assured her ex-husband, Jack Brigant, has identified himself as such, another ploy to interrogate her.

“Good luck with that,” Tami Lynn calls after her.

Savannah charges into the lobby, scanning the waiting area for a nonexistent Jack. Looking to the male intern, he points to a man sitting in the recliner across from his desk. Breathing a sigh of relief at the stranger there, assuming he may be an associate inquiring about her column. Savannah chalks the ‘brother’ reference up to a fallible intern. Making her way to the man, she extends her hand.

“Savannah Bondurant,” she greets. “How can I help you?”

The man, seemingly within her same age range (early thirties) stands, offering up his hand as he takes in her presence, looking her over as if compiling notes. Clearing his throat, he introduces himself apprehensively, “Noah Bondurant.”

The familiarity of his features (dark hair, olive skin, substantial height, strapping build) probes Savannah to search her memory bank. “You must be a cousin,” she inquires, her voice malleable.

The man shakes his head, his eyes reluctantly watering up. “I’m your brother.” He smiles, hopeful, an attempt to halt the moisture clouding his vision.

Savannah, empathetic to his emotion, quickly offers him a seat on the recliner, sitting down beside him. Her eyes remain scanning his accustomed characteristics, trying to put her finger on his pedigree.

“There must be some kind of mistake. Misinformation,” Savannah offers, her voice soft and apologetic. “I’m the youngest of three…
sisters.
Daddy always wanted a boy, but it never worked out for him.” With the mention of
Daddy,
she tilts her head, the familiarity in the man’s features quickly surfacing. Her mind clicks like a camera through snapshots, photos of her father in his twenties and thirties.

“Jacqueline, Evangeline and Savannah,” the man rehearses their names, pulling his wallet from the back pocket of his olive drab cargos.

His hands shakily sifting through the wallet’s contents, Savannah notices his picture on an active duty military identification card, Marine Corps. Even his hands mirror her late father’s.

The man pries a photo from a tucked-away area of his wallet―one of her, Jac and Vangie, in their early teens. “It’s a little tattered,” the man apologizes for the dog-ears at each corner of the photo. “It’s been through a few tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.” He smiles at Savannah, picking her out in the picture.

Feeling somewhere between nauseous and bamboozled, Savannah relies on her reporter instincts. “What’s your father’s name, Noah?” she asks, using his moniker for the first time, taking note of the same green eyes reflecting back at her, something only she and her father shared among her immediate family.

Noah nods, understanding her reservation. “The man who raised me, my grandfather, his name is Julius Ainsworth.” Noah looks down at his wallet, continuing, “My biological
donator,”
he speaks the word quietly so as not to disrespect Savannah’s feelings for her
father,
“was Bernard Patrick Bondurant. Guess they called him Bernie.”

Savannah’s ears ring, blocking out the chatter from the lobby, the information causing her sensory overload. Her stomach does somersaults as if she is braving a theme park roller coaster. Bernard Patrick, indubitably her father’s title, no mistaking his namesake Bernard Patrick “Tony” Holm, the first quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Her father’s family originally from the Steel City, migrated to Savannah in the late sixties.

Savannah grabs at her churning stomach, her other hand gripping Noah’s knee. “Please don’t leave.” She jumps up from the coach. “I’m so sorry,” her voice trails frantically from a distance as she seeks out the closest porcelain bowl.

Chapter Nine

A long tortuous week winds down as a dreary Sunday afternoon arrives. Savannah scurries at her abode so as not to be late for the family meeting at her mother’s house, aptly scheduled Monday evening following her visit from Noah. Work having sucked up the majority of her time this week, the new revelation has gnawed at her daily, hourly. Not exactly information one shares over the phone, Savannah has had to singularly bear this information. No good at keeping secrets, directness and honesty two of her mantras, Savannah is nervous, yet relieved, that she will finally get the opportunity to share with her mother and her sisters Noah’s reveal.

Running out the door of her home, she piles into her Jeep, noticing the yellow and black
Terrible Towel
resting atop her untouched gym bag. Her mind escaping to Brody, as it has done on several daily occasions, she finds herself disappointed that he heeded her advice and did not call after all. Her departure from the gym this past week, welcomed. What would she say to him, anyhow?

Just before turning the key over in her Jeep, she notices a red sports car pulling up in the drive behind her. Her otherwise confrontational ex has been relatively nonexistent this week. No phone calls, no visits at home or at her work, no barrage of harassing texts, nothing.

Letting out a huff, she opens up her door, getting out. “Jack, I don’t have time to argue,” she greets him. “You’re going to have to start calling before you come over.”

He throws his hands up at shoulder level, an uncanny retreat. “I’m not here to argue,” he says through a grin. “Won’t keep you long either. I have someone I want you to meet.”

Savannah looks at him, furrowing her eyebrows, wondering what he’s up to now.

“I met someone, Savannah. I want you to meet her. Well, she wants to meet you. I told her we’re still friends. She doesn’t understand that very well…being friends with an ex.” Jack talks, his tone near bragging. “So, I thought maybe you’d meet us for a drink some night this week. Give her a chance to meet you. Realize you’re not a threat.”

“Um…I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Jack.” Savannah’s initial instinct revolts. “Why don’t you just tell her we’re acquaintances. That’s the truth, really. We’re
friendly,
but I don’t know that I would exactly call us friends these days.”

“Come on, Savannah,” he urges. “You’re moving on. I’m moving on. There’s no reason we can’t be friends.”

His encouraging words slightly detached from his strained facial expression and body language, Savannah is distrustful. “I don’t know. Maybe,” she dismisses. “Really, I have to go. I’m meeting up with Mama, Jac and Vangie. It’s family stuff. It can’t wait.” She smiles at him genuinely, aware her dire circumstance should not nullify his favorable news. “I’m happy for you, Jack. Glad you’ve met someone and that you’re moving on.”

Savannah piles back into her Jeep, forcing a nonresponsive Jack to resign to his beefed-up red Challenger, backing it out of the drive so she can do the same.

Once out on the street, he stops, rolling his window down. Savannah breaks momentarily, the top already off her Jeep, her ears free to his voice. “I’ll call you later this week about that drink,” he confirms with a smile then peels out at breakneck speed.

A short drive across town finds Savannah greeting her mother, Jac and Vangie. After customary hugs and kisses, the women sit around Buffy’s kitchen table. An antique teapot sits on a pewter tray at the table’s center, four cups awaiting their fill, a plate of homemade pecan shortbread cookies accompany the spread. Buffy’s answer to a cool, fall day is hot tea and freshly-baked cookies with homegrown chopped pecans from her backyard.

“Smells delicious, Mama,” Savannah comments.

“I like for my girls to remember the scents of home,” Buffy affirms, diligently serving up cups of tea.

“Can we make this short?” Vangie inquires. “Payton has a team meeting in an hour. I’ve got to get back to Luka and Zoey.”

“I thought you were bringing the girls with you,” Jac rebukes.

“Savannah told me it’d be best not to.” Vangie indulgently sips at her tea, releasing a pleasurable sigh.

“Oh, adults only,” Jac says. “Spill it, baby sister.” She looks to Savannah.

Savannah sucks in a deep breath. “Well, I don’t know how to ease into it, so I guess I’ll just blurt it out.” Cocking her neck from side to side, she reluctantly begins. “This man came by my work the other day. Introduced himself as my brother…Noah Bondurant.” She looks to Buffy for a reaction.

Buffy primly dabs her mouth with the linen napkin from her lap, her eyes purposefully disengaged. Vangie and Jac eye each other, then Savannah, their glances finally settling on Buffy.