Sugar Daddy (16 page)

A casket.

It felt like I hadn’t been here for weeks.

It felt small and cheap, not simply because our house was
small and cheap.

Maybe it was me, this small, cheap, paid-for thing
.

The house stood empty.

No baby’s cries.

No lovers’ murmurs.

Only a small plant pot sat on the kitchen table. One that hadn’t been there before. Blue hydrangeas and a note.

For you, for Delilah’s garden.

Palmer

June 28th. My personal 9-11. The day we were demolished. The day Delilah died. My lost baby, my lost womanhood, my marriage, my dreams of happiness with Palmer. The tragedy that had defined my life, before and after.

I didn’t know how long it took me to pick myself off the floor, where I’d folded like the note crumpled in my hand.

The flowers and the note were the most beautiful thing Palmer had done for me.

I dialed the phone and barely choked out, “I got the flowers, Palmer.”

After a few starts and stops, he asked, “See you tonight?”

“Yeah. I love you.” Because I did, I had, I always would. I just wasn’t in love with him anymore. An unbearable idea made tears fall harder–at least we wouldn’t be one of those couples who stayed together for the kids.

“I know that.” His usual brusque response made me sniffle. His somber, “I love you too,” made me smile sadly.

Hanging up, I fondled the frothy petals of the plant and pondered where to put it. I massaged my flat tummy, the phantom kick hitting me again.

I talked to Momma and cried, talked to Augie and laughed a little when he tried to cheer me up. Both calls hurt.

I couldn’t stay there all day on my own. In a fog, I found myself at The Drugstore.

“Okay now, chile.” Addy soothed me with her big hands. “’S a bad, bad day, yes it is.” She dried my face with her apron, which was tied over a gruesomely flowered housedress. Straightening me out, she pushed me to a seat at the counter, her flip-flops squeaking on her way to the range.

A plate skated toward me. Good old greasy grilled cheese.

“Y’all eat up now,” she demanded, sure in her southern woman’s gospel that home cooking was the cure for all heartaches. That, and crying it out. She shoved a stack of napkins at me.

The lunch crowd gathered. Addy took orders, talked smack, and traded jokes.

I couldn’t handle all those people, so I started for the door. A swish behind me alerted me to Addy with her broom and her scripture. “Nothin’ wrong with you at all, Miss Shay. Y’all remember that.”

My hands hardly fitting around her waist, I hugged her, and the broom.

When I pulled from her bosom, she clasped me harder. “You got plans tomorrow?”

Oh, I knew where this was going.

“It’s stock day.”

Because stocking shelves with her at my back, bellowin’ into her mic, was ten tons of fun.

“I got nothin’ better to do.” Good honest work
.

* * * *

Wednesday brought a raging case of tinnitus–care of Addy and her amplified voice–and more unbearable grief care of the night I’d spent with Palmer commemorating Delilah’s death.

We’d sat in the garden amidst flaring citronella torches, still as the marble statue of mother and child we’d placed for our daughter. For hours, we’d huddled next to one another, hands linked, barely whispering. In the end, I’d dried his face with the backs of my fingers, and he’d handed me his handkerchief. We’d gone to bed on opposite sides of the mattress, and for once our hands bridged the divide our hearts no longer could.

I brightened during the short drive to Reardon’s place. I think I glowed when I spied him leaning against a jacked up Z71 Chevy. Damn if that right there wasn’t a badass country boy truck. Black with tinted windows, it sported a huge CB aerial that on a lesser vehicle owned by a lesser man would’ve been blatant overcompensation for a teeny wiener. Salt Life and Team DNR decals completed this other, other vehicle of his.

Every true GRITS–Girl Raised In The South–knew her trucks.

Reardon helped me out of my car, straight into his body. I scouted for the Land Rover or his sexy sports car. “Tradin’ down?”

“Playing up, more like.” His hands in my hair turned me just right for a long, slow kiss.

Separating so our tongues touched and withdrew, our lips sucked, nudged and parted, I whispered, “Hi.”

He dimpled. “Hi.”

Towing me to the truck, he produced a key on a ring way more swanky than the one I used, mine being unsightly with grocery store discount cards, his being sparkly and pretty.

“Penthouse.” He dropped it into my palm.

I laughed.

He arched his eyebrows.

“Well, baby, who’s to say I’m not gonna case the joint and fence all your high falutin’ merchandise?”

I must’ve lost my street cred because he didn’t look the least bit alarmed. He smiled indulgently and handed me into his monster truck. In the cab, he gave me the once over, and came back for a double take. “You’re looking tired.”

“You ain’t lookin’ so hot yourself.”
Fibber.
He was gorgeous as ever, if a touch rough around the edges. Not fair, because it only lent appeal to his rugged appearance, whereas I had bags under my red-rimmed eyes. My lips were raw from crying, not kissing. I lowered my sunglasses. “Hard couple of days.”

“Palmer do something?” He tensed.

“No.” I knuckled my eyes beneath my sunnies. “Delilah.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“I can’t, not right now.”

My thigh clasped in one hand, he started the engine with the other. Its guttural rumble shook the floorboards, sending a thrill through my body and a surprising giggle from my lips.

Car whore.

He gunned the gas. “Shall we?”

“Yeah.”

His hair was wilder than usual, begging to be grabbed. His t-shirt was so threadbare it tucked itself to all his muscles. His cut-offs were ridiculous, the frays lying in feathery lashes on thighs straining with every press of break and clutch and gas.

He caught me mid-lip-bite. “What?”

“Nothin’.” I leaned toward him, licking the line of his throat, his pulse jumping under the flat of my tongue, until I found his earlobe. After I sucked it, his entire ear was burning red, his cheeks flushed, his mouth parted like his thighs.

Couldn’t resist the invitation, could I?

At the next red light, Reardon grunted and craned his neck, his body moving with my fingers strolling up his cock.

The light turned green. Horns blared.

“Jesus, Shay, what you do to me.” He removed my hand, braiding our fingers together on the console, weaving us toward Patriot’s Point Marina.

On the docks, we strolled past yachts, each one grander than the one before. Of course, his slip would be the last one, holding the piece de resistance–

I shaded my eyes, looked up and saw...nothing.

Looking down, I found…a skiff?
The fuck was this?

“I use this…” He rubbed the hull of the drab green boat. “To get to that.” He pointed across the many-mirrored waves to a yacht so majestic it had to be moored at open sea.

Struggling with the enormity of his wealth, I frowned at the almost-rowboat, seeing its name in bold black letters on the stern:
Ransome I
.

“For your brother.”

“Yeah.” He hoisted me in. “This is the quickest way to get to the shrimper. Whistler and Badger are waiting for us.”

Hang on, what happened to winin’ and dinin’ and some raunchy sixty-ninin’? Romancing? Replaced by a dinghy, a shrimp trawler, Whistler and Badger?

Reardon pulled the engine’s cord and yelled over the outboard’s roar, “They haven’t really met–” He shut up, but I knew what he was saying.

Another first for Reardon.

“You sure?”

“Yes, darlin’. You’ve already met Whistler and made quite an impression.” His brow furrowed. “And I’ve known Badger since I can remember. They’re family.”

I joked to cover the triumphant jolt to my body. “I meant, y’all sure this thing is seaworthy?”

He threw his head back as the waves sprayed over us. Damn, there was nothin’ finer than Reardon laughing
.

Except maybe the very pretty sailboat out there, winds wafting its white sails.

“She’s mine too.”

I gawped when we putt-putted past
Ransome II.
“This was your first?” I slapped the creaking sides of our vessel, then held on for dear life.

“Yeah, me and Ransome used to take her out on the creeks, back when I was a teenager.”

I was consumed staring at him–a magnificent captain even in this sure-to-sink boat.

A monstrosity bore down on us until a massive shadow darkened the water all around.

“Shit,” he swore, the ship sidling too close.

A large ruddy faced man leaned over a railing. “You playin’ hooky two days in a row, Reardon?”

“Slaughter.”

Slaughter? His business partner?

Slaughter leered at me, smacking his fat-slug lips.

I sat straighter, even though I wanted to slink beneath the bench.

“Shepperd Slaughter, Shay Greer.” Reardon curled an arm around my shoulders.

“Yeah, playin’ hooky with the hooker.” There was no mistaking his meaning.

Punching to the balls of his feet, Reardon reacted with murder in his eyes. “What did you say?”

I tugged on his arm. “’S okay. Technically he’s right.”

“Like hell he is.” He stepped in front of me. “You insult Shay again, and I will fucking end you.”

Meaty hands spread before him, Shepperd didn’t exactly apologize. “No harm, Reardon. Give your momma my best. See you at the board meeting tomorrow.”

We sped in the opposite direction while SS Slaughter wallowed in our pathetic backwash. The ship no more than a speck behind us, Reardon slowed, bringing me to his side.

He insisted I look at him. “You do not see yourself like that, you understand me? You are not my–” His mouth tightened. “You’re not.”

I needed to defuse his anger, distill my pain. “Let’s just go meet Whistler and this Badger of yours.”

We floated aside the trawler branded the
Sea Witch
–outfitted with long arms of netting draping over the ocean like huge dragonfly wings–and the boys above helped me up, while down below Reardon took his station as rear guard very seriously.

Aboard, beers cracked open, bottles clanked, and I got my first eyeful of Badger.

“Where ya been, boy?” He hauled Reardon against the bulkhead, giving him a good hiding. Hulking linebacker muscles, legs like steel girders, a grid-iron chest, he strutted around at having laid Reardon low. Until Reardon toppled him to the deck in a headlock that turned his face such a shade of purple it set off his black and white crewcut.

“Make nice to the lady,” Reardon commanded.

Battling for air, his hand shot out. “Beggin’ your pardon, Miss.”

“Nice to meet you, Badger.”

His palm swallowed mine.

“Miss Shay, pleasure to see you again.” Ooh, that Whistler
.

“Ass kisser,” Badger whispered.

I liked him too.

We drank beer and chatted for a long while before Reardon noticed my pink tinged shoulders.

“Sunscreen?” He scooted behind me, offering to oil me up.

Whistler scrambled to his feet. “Gotta go check…”

“The course.” Badger scooted right after him, shooting oh-so-obvious winks at Reardon.