Mad River Road (18 page)

“You don’t look anything like I pictured,” her mother-in-law said, stiffening inside Jamie’s embrace.

“It’s great to finally meet you,” Jamie ventured, pulling back. “Can I call you Laura?”

“I’d prefer Mrs. Dennison,” came the chilling reply.

“You just went a little too fast,” her husband advised as they were settling into his old bedroom. “My mother has never been overly demonstrative.”

“She hates me.”

“She doesn’t hate you.”

“ ‘I’d prefer Mrs. Dennison,’ ” Jamie repeated in her mother-in-law’s steely voice.

“Give her time,” her husband urged. “She’s still a little shell-shocked. Just take it nice and slow. Have a little patience.”

“I’m going as slow as I can,” Jamie said with a mischievous smile, her arms reaching out to encircle her husband’s waist, her hands dropping to his buttocks, pulling him closer.

“This probably isn’t a good idea.” He pointed with his chin toward the closed bedroom door.

“It’s okay. I locked it.”

“You locked it? Why?”

“Thought we could use some privacy.” She brought her hands around to the front of his pants.

He smiled, began nibbling the side of her neck. “Oh, you did, did you?”

And then he kissed her, and she remembered what it was about him she’d found so appealing. She’d always been a sucker for a good kisser.

They were halfway out of their clothes when a knock on the door interrupted them. It was followed immediately by a second knock, then the frantic turning of the doorknob. “Mark.” Mrs. Dennison’s voice cut through the solid wood. “Mark, are you in there?”

“Just a minute, Mom,” he said as he began struggling back into his clothes.

Jamie wrapped her arms around his slender hips, tried pulling him back toward the bed. “Tell her you’re busy,” she whispered.

“Get dressed,” was his response.

“Is something wrong?” his mother asked, still twisting the doorknob back and forth.

Mark broke free and walked to the door, stealing a last look back at Jamie. “Your buttons,” he scolded, pointing to her half-open blouse.

“Why was the door locked?” Mrs. Dennison stared accusingly at Jamie.

“Force of habit,” Jamie said, forcing a smile onto her lips.

“We don’t lock the doors around here,” Mrs. Dennison said.

“Is something wrong?” Jamie wondered what was so urgent.

Mrs. Dennison looked both confused and conflicted, as if she were debating with herself over what she was about to do. “I thought you should have these,” she said after a long pause. She held out her hand. Inside it were the most exquisite gold-and-pearl earrings Jamie had ever seen. “They belonged to my great-grandmother, and I always promised my son they’d go to the woman he married.” She pulled back her shoulders, cleared her throat, spit out the last few words. “So now, I suppose, they’re yours.”

“Mother, that’s so thoughtful.”

“They’re beautiful,” Jamie agreed, feeling suddenly light-headed and grateful. Her husband was right. His mother was a wonderful woman who just needed a little time to adjust to her son’s surprise wedding. She just had to be patient. “I’m so touched.”

“You understand, of course, that if this doesn’t work out,” Mrs. Dennison said matter-of-factly, “it’s your duty to return them.”

That was the second time in two days of marriage that Jamie considered leaving. Instead she again allowed herself to be cajoled into giving her new mother-in-law the necessary time to adjust; she told herself that it was her fault for expecting too much too soon, that she was the one who’d rushed into this marriage, and now it was up to her to slow things down. She’d had unrealistic expectations. You don’t marry a man you barely know and move
with him to another city and expect everything to just fall into place.

Except that’s exactly what she’d been expecting.

That the tall young man with the shy dimples and long, aquiline nose whom she’d met at an automobile show—he was there for a convention of car salesmen; she was there to view the display of antique cars—wasn’t the sexy, knight-in-shining-armor he’d first appeared to be, but was rather a timid and insecure mama’s boy still living at home, was a thought too painful to dwell on.

Everything will be all right as soon as we get our own apartment, she assured herself. Things will be different. He’ll change back into the man I married—the man I
thought
I was marrying—as soon as I get him away from his mother.

But Mark Dennison had proved remarkably resistant to severing the apron strings. “I don’t understand why you’re in such a hurry to leave,” he told her. “She cooks for us, she does the housework, the laundry. She knocks herself out, for God’s sake. Why can’t you just appreciate it? What’s wrong with you?”

“I just think it would be nice to have a place of our own. You know, where we could have a little more privacy. A little more sex,” Jamie whispered, stroking his thigh. A lot more sex, she was thinking, aware that their love life had dwindled to almost nothing in recent weeks.

“Is that all you ever think about?” he asked accusingly. “Why don’t you get a job?” he suggested in the next breath, as if one were a viable substitute for the other.

She did. It was as an administrative assistant for a property management company, and it bored her to tears. She quit after less than a month, took another job
as a receptionist to a busy developer, lasted barely six weeks. She talked about going back to college, getting her MSW.

“Why would you want to be a social worker?” her mother-in-law asked.

Her husband became even more withholding until she dropped the idea of college altogether, found another job as an administrative assistant, this time for a small insurance company.

Her husband finally agreed to at least
look
at some apartments in the neighborhood, but then his mother got sick, some vague problem the doctors couldn’t quite pin down, probably stress-related, they said, so how could they leave her until she was well again?

She’ll live to be a hundred, Jamie thought, realizing she would never have any chance of a normal life until she took matters into her own hands. So she found an apartment, signed a lease, and told her husband she was moving out at the end of the month, with or without him. Reluctantly, he agreed to the move. They’d been married one year.

Year two was more of the same.

She was working at a job she hated, married to a man she barely knew and rarely saw—he’d taken to stopping by his mother’s every evening after he finished work, sometimes having dinner there without even bothering to call her—and cut off from her family and old friends. She tried making new ones, found a circle of girlfriends in whom she could confide and commiserate. They told her to cut her losses and run. “All you’ve done is exchange one overbearing mother for another,” they told her.

They were right. After fortifying herself with several glasses of wine, she’d called him at his mother’s to tell him she was moving back to Palm Beach. An hour later, he showed up on their doorstep with flowers, apologies, and tears. “Please don’t leave,” he begged. “This is all my fault. I’ve been a complete idiot. I promise you that things will be different. I’ll change. Please, give me another chance. Things will get better. I promise.”

He was right. Things did get better. For a few weeks anyway.

Then they got worse.

That’s enough of that, Jamie thought now, turning over onto her side in bed and coming fully awake. Once was more than enough, she was thinking, refusing to relive those last agonizing months. It was over. She never had to see Mark Dennison again. She had a new life now, and after several false starts, a new man. She reached over to stroke Brad’s back.

He wasn’t there.

“Brad?” Jamie climbed out of bed, her eyes searching the obviously empty room, her ears straining above the air-conditioning unit for sounds of a shower running, a shaver humming, a toilet flushing. There was nothing. She ran to the window and pulled back the drapes. The sun exploded in her face, like a camera’s sudden flash, temporarily blinding her. But even through the ensuing blur of white light and purple dots, she could see the parking space outside her motel room window was empty and her car was gone. Had last night’s unsavory trio somehow discovered their whereabouts and returned, lying in wait to ambush Brad?

And then she saw it, a large piece of white paper
hanging over the blank TV screen and held in place by the Holy Bible. The note read:

Took the car to the auto body shop. Back soon. Grab some breakfast in the lobby. It’s included
.

Jamie smiled, held the note against her chest, like a shield of armor, using it to still the wild beating of her heart. You see, she assured herself. I told you you have nothing to worry about. He’s safe and sound and thinking of your welfare. As always.

Jamie quickly showered and washed her hair, then got dressed, choosing a white shirt and a pair of pink capris. Then she packed her overnight bag so that she would be ready when Brad returned, and, after taking a cautionary look around, proceeded to the hotel lobby. “Are you still serving breakfast?” she asked the prematurely balding young man behind the reception desk. The clock on the wall above his shiny head said it was already 9:36.

“Around the corner.” He pointed with the index finger of his right hand. Jamie noted he was missing the tip of that finger and wondered what had happened to it. She walked around the corner to the designated breakfast area. The green-carpeted space consisted of several small tables and chairs as well as an old beige canvas sofa and a large-screen TV. A narrow food table ran along one wall, filled with an unappetizing display of cold bagels and slices of dry, white bread for toast. There were a couple of danishes, one whose center was filled with cheese, the other with strawberry jam. Jamie selected the one with cheese, then filled a Styrofoam cup with lukewarm coffee and carried both to the nearest table, realizing she was the only one there.
Well, it’s late, she thought, taking a sip of her coffee and turning her attention to the TV screen, where a man in a big-brimmed cowboy hat and blue-and-white-checkered shirt was lovingly embracing an assault rifle and passionately defending his right under the Constitution to bear arms. Did that include a knife? she wondered.

“What do you think?” a male voice asked from somewhere beside her.

Jamie looked up as the balding young man from the reception desk helped himself to a cup of coffee, then sat down at the next table, stretching his long legs out in front of him and taking a long drag of an unlit cigarette. A sign on the wall next to the television announced that smoking was prohibited. “What do I think about what?” Jamie asked. The ban on smoking? Gun control? Switchblades?

“The coffee,” he answered. “We’re trying a new brand.”

“It’s okay.”

“Just okay?”

Jamie took another sip. “Just okay.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking,” the young man agreed, scratching the side of his short, pug nose and lowering his Styrofoam cup to the small, round table before taking another drag of his unlit cigarette. “Nothing special. Name’s Dusty, by the way.”

“Jamie,” Jamie told him. “Danish is really good though.” She took a bite, as if to emphasize her point.

“Yeah? I like the cinnamon rolls best. They got lots of raisins.”

“I didn’t see any of those.”

“Nah, you wouldn’t at this hour. They’re always the first to go.”

Jamie took another bite of her danish, another sip of her coffee. Dusty took another hit off his unlit cigarette. The man in the cowboy hat on TV was explaining that guns didn’t kill people. People killed people, he was saying. Would Brad really have slit that boy’s throat? she wondered.

“So, where you headed?” Dusty asked.

“Ohio.”

“You from there?”

“No. I’ve never been there before.”

“Me neither. Never been out of Georgia.” Dusty’s small brown eyes narrowed, as if he wasn’t quite sure why that was. “So what’s in Ohio?”

“My boyfriend’s son,” Jamie said, loving the feel of the word
boyfriend
on her tongue, the sound of it in her ear. No way he would have used that knife.

Dusty tapped his fingers on the table. Charlton Heston had replaced the man in the cowboy hat. He was speaking at some sort of rally. “From my cold, dead hands,” he was shouting to thunderous applause.

What does that mean? Jamie wondered. “What happened to your finger?” she asked.

Dusty held up his right hand, examining his index finger as if he couldn’t quite remember. “Accident with a lawn mower,” he said after a lengthy pause.

Jamie flinched. “Yikes.”

Dusty laughed. “Yikes?”

“Must have hurt like hell.”

“Nah, not so much. At least not till later. I didn’t even realize what had happened until I looked down and saw all the blood.” He shook his head. “There sure was a lot of blood.”

“They couldn’t reattach it?” Jamie asked.

“Couldn’t find it. Damn thing just took off.”

Jamie pictured Dusty’s fingertip flying through the air in the same arc as Curtis’s severed ponytail. She heard the sound of laughter, realized with horror it was her own. “Oh, my God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh. That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be. It was pretty funny.” Dusty laughed with her.

“You never found it?”

“Not till the next day. By then it was too late. I still have it though.”

“You have it?”

“Not with me.”

“Thank God,” Jamie said.

“Yikes,” Dusty said, and they laughed again.

A shadow fell across the TV screen. Jamie looked over, saw Brad leaning against the far wall. “What’s so funny?” he asked, his eyes darting between the two.

Jamie was instantly on her feet. “Long story,” she said, still chuckling.

“We’ve got lots of time,” Brad said. “Seems the mechanic can’t work on the car till this afternoon.”

“You can probably keep your room till around four,” Dusty offered. “That’s when we start to get busy.”

“Appreciate it,” Brad said as Dusty returned to his desk.

“Well, we can just relax then,” Jamie began. “Maybe go for a walk. There are those churches—”