Tattered Innocence (31 page)

She should have turned Jake away after the
hurricane when their relationship swerved into romance. Inhaling
that breath of happiness set her up to be crushed today. Her lungs
felt like they’d never fully inflate again.

She shifted on the sand, her back stiff from
sitting on the beach all day. A chill crept from the sugary grains
through her jeans and the soles of her feet, but her face and the
backs of her hands felt like fire. Her stomach growled, and she
couldn’t remember if she’d eaten today.

Her phone vibrated, and she flipped it open.
A text from Hall. She clenched her arms across her waist waiting
for the fear that Mama and Daddy were splitting up for good to
pass.

Mama moved back in. Going to work it out.
Counseling. Told you.

Jake glanced up from his just-emptied plate
of macaroni and cheese, possibly the first meal he’d ever cooked
Gabs.

Her lids drooped and she stifled a yawn.

“You’re dead on your feet. Go to bed. I’ll
clean up, take care of Nathan.”

“You will?”

“Give me a little credit. I’ve only been a
father for a few hours, but I can learn. Tell me what to do.”

She handed him the diaper bag. “You can
figure diapers out, read the formula can to make a bottle if you
think he’s hungry. After he eats, pat his back to make him burp.
Lay him on his side to sleep
.”

Gabs took Nathan into her stateroom to
nurse, thank God.

Jake set up the portable crib in the middle
of the cabin from the illustrated directions printed on the nylon
base. Where were the directions on how to put his life back
together? What had he been thinking that night? That if he stopped
and went to the store for condoms, Gabs would have changed her
mind.
Genius. Just Genius.

As he finished the dishes, Gabs emerged and
held a drunk-looking Nathan out to him. “We really need to
talk.”

He took the baby from her. “I can’t make a
decision on a dime. You’ve been thinking about this for the better
part of a year. We’ll discuss it tomorrow.”

Eyes at half mast, the fight seemed to have
gone out of her. She shut the door behind her.

Jake hoisted the baby against his chest and
patted his tiny back. Heat shot against his ribs.

Great.

He fished a diaper out of the bag and laid
Nathan down on the bench. The small legs kicked, and Nathan’s face
screwed up as cooler air touched his skin. Jake stared at his son’s
two-week-old everything. So perfect. The baby squirmed, and Jake
clumsily taped the fresh diaper around the baby’s hips and pinched
the micro-snaps of his sleeper.

Nathan’s face scrunched as he geared up for
full howl, and Jake ducked through the engine room to the aft
cabin. Gabs needed sleep. It was the least he could give her. He
bounced the baby. “Come on, big guy, don’t scream for our maiden
voyage. I’m your dad.” The word felt foreign in his mouth.
“Someday, I’ll teach you to swim and sail. What do you think about
that?”

The baby quieted as he talked.

“Yesterday I was responsible for a boat and
a car. Today I’m responsible for another human being… for the rest
of my life. How do you wrap your head around that?”

The baby peered at him with wizened eyes as
though he understood.

“Will I have to give up sailing? Marry your
ma? She thinks I should.” His gut wrenched. “I love Rachel. How
could that be a good thing for your ma? Maybe it wouldn’t matter
since she’s never loved me. But what kind of home would that be for
you? Look at Rachel, freaking out because her parents may
divorce.”

“So many decisions to make that will affect
the rest of your life—and mine, Gabrielle’s and Rachel’s.”

Jake lay back on his bunk, Nathan on his
chest. “I guess your arrival must be hard on your ma, too. I’ve
never seen her anything less than completely put together.” His
mind skittered away from what he’d done to Gabs’ life.

The baby fussed, turning his head from side
to side on Jake’s chest.

Jake sat up. “What’s the matter?” He filed
through his short list of baby knowledge—clean diaper, full
stomach. He stood, jiggling Nathan, and paced the tiny walkway in
the aft cabin—four paces toward the bow, four paces astern.

Nathan calmed a few notches, but still
seemed disgruntled.

“We’re going out.” He grabbed a clean towel
to wrap the baby in and slid into his sweatshirt one arm at a time,
juggling Nathan.

Hanging over him like symmetrical tulips,
dock lights spilled yellow light as he paced. Nathan dozed against
his sweatshirt. Whenever he stopped, Nathan woke. Jake nuzzled the
red fuzz on his head, inhaled baby scent, and pulled the thick
towel back over him.

“I love you, Nathan.” He spoke the words as
though speaking them would usher in the emotion. But he felt only
responsibility, guilt, anger at himself tethering him to his
son.

His eyes focused on the boards he crossed
and his mind latched onto Rachel, all muscle and bone, but soft in
his arms. If he’d chosen to spend that summer with Gramps, his
relationship with Gabs would have short-circuited. Gramps might
have lived. They would have hired Rachel, maybe even before things
heated up with Bret. Gabs would be married to an Arizona blue blood
and Nathan, a flash of lust never consummated. Jake would be
marrying Rachel with Gramps as his best man.

Now, he understood what Rachel meant when
she said guilt came in like an avalanche.

He came to the T at the end of the dock and
turned back toward land. His three swings had struck out, and
Rachel had quit crewing for him—evidence enough that she didn’t
want him. He should accept reality, but something in him couldn’t
give up hope.

Exhaustion from the shock of Rachel’s
resignation, seeing Gabs again, meeting Nathan, and lapping the
pier too many times to count sunk into his bones. He slowed to a
stop in front of the
Queen
. The baby had scrunched into a
ball that rose and fell with Jake’s breathing. The hope of sleep
drew him below deck.

He eased Nathan into his crib, and the baby
squirmed. Jake sighed and dug the formula can out of the diaper
bag. He scanned the directions with an eye on Nathan.
Just don’t
wake your Ma.
He snagged the baby as Nathan wound up for a cry,
shaking the bottle in his other hand. He took Nathan aft and sunk
to his bed to feed him.

The baby toyed with the nipple, but didn’t
drink much. Jake’s head dipped over the baby, and he shook himself
awake.

“Come on, Nate, I don’t blame you being
underwhelmed with the bottle after the real thing, but cut me a
break here.”

The baby sucked on the nipple, his eyes
doing a slow-lidded blink, as he downed almost an ounce.

He changed Nate’s diaper and slumped back
against the hull, jamming a pillow behind his neck. The baby curled
on his chest and drifted to sleep.

The next thing Jake knew, Gabs was pulling
the baby off him, wet circles on the front of her mint green
pajamas.

Sun sliced through the porthole, piercing
his aching skull. Morning breath and guilt moved in and out of his
lungs, more pungent than last night. He scrubbed the grit from his
eyes and headed for the john.

The flush of the head filled his ears, and
he dug his phone from the jeans he’d been wearing since yesterday
morning.

Tell me what to do with the guilt,
he
texted
.
If anyone had the answer, Rachel did. He pressed
send,
twisted on the shower faucet, and stripped down
.
At seven a.m., Rachel would be in a coma, but regardless
of their drama, he knew she’d respond.

One foot in the shower, his text alert
pinged.

Meet u in an hour at Sugar Mill Ruins.

Ruins, like his life and their relationship.
But he doubted Rachel had been coherent enough to ferret out a
symbolic location.

Despair pulsed at him with the water,
flickering the spark that sprung from Rachel’s quick response. At
least he’d get to see her one more time.

Jake held his throbbing head, damp from the
shower, and watched with bleary eyes a freshly blown dry Gabrielle
reach for the Wheaties.

Her blouse strained across an enlarged bust
and slipped free from her slacks.

His body responded on autopilot, and he
choked on the guilt. He focused on the baby who lay in his crib.
“Nathan only slept four hours.”

“Welcome to parenthood.”

He met her gaze. “I’m sorry for everything
you had to go through.”

Gabrielle’s face contorted. “No one looked
at your stomach, your empty ring finger, back to your stomach,
writing your life in their head. You didn’t have to face your
parents’ disappointment, stretch marks, back pain.”

“It was your choice not to marry me. I woke
up every morning for months wishing you’d shot me.”

“I almost died in the delivery room.”

Jake’s brows shot up.

“Asthma.”

He blanched. “I’m sorry, I had no idea.” He
stared at her, then down at the Wheaties congealing in the bowl
between them. “I thought sex was a small thing—everybody does it.
But it wasn’t.” He reached for her hand. “What can I do?”

“Marry me.”

He shot back against the seat cushion,
dropping her hand. “That’s what you want?”

“It’s best for Nathan.”

“This is crazy. We don’t love each other….”
Nathan fussed, and Jake bent and lifted him against his chest
feeling like he’d been a father for a month instead of a night.
Nathan rooted for food, and he handed him to Gabs.

As she reached inside her blouse, Jake’s
eyes darted away and he headed for the companionway.

“Nothing you haven’t seen before.”

His jaw tensed as he climbed up the steps
and grabbed his keys off the hook beside the hatch. “I’ve got to
think.”

Jake pulled into the sand lot in front of
the Sugar Mill Ruins beside Rachel’s Escort. He stepped out, guilt,
despair, and exhaustion warring against hunger to see her. He
surveyed the gray coquina half-walls and arches left over from the
early nineteenth century for a splotch of color. No sign of Rachel.
Treetops rustled, but thick foliage protected the low-slung ruins
from the cool wind.

He hiked around the corner of a
shell-encrusted wall.

Toasting in the winter sun, Rachel sat on a
crumbling block framed by the arch behind her. She turned her face
toward him, and the hoodie slid from her hair.

Air caught in his throat, her beauty
slamming him like he hadn’t seen her in a week. But she’d stood
across the dock from him just yesterday. He sank down on a
half-wall across from her, aching to touch her, but not having the
right.

“I didn’t know I had a son. I wouldn’t have
kept something like that from you. I’m sorry. More sorry than you
can imagine.”

Rachel stared at him, her pupils wide with
emotion she didn’t put into words.

Silence hummed back and forth between
them.

Jake cleared his throat, guilt driving him
to unburden himself, but shame keeping him silent. “I had no idea
that one selfish choice would cause so many people to suffer. My
son, Gabs; me, you, our families.”

“What about Gabrielle’s choice?”

“Gabs didn’t want to have sex before the
wedding. I wore her down. It’s more my fault than hers. Gramps
always said the rules were good for me. Now, I get it.”

He buried his face in his hands. He couldn’t
look Rachel in the eye and dump what he had to say. “If I had gone
home and spent that summer with Gramps like I promised, instead of
staying in Florida because I met a girl with a BMW, I would have
been there when Gramps had his heart attack. He wouldn’t have laid
there for twenty-four hours till Aunt Zoni went to the farm to see
why he didn’t answer his phone. He—he might still be alive.”

“He could have died anyway.”

“But at least he wouldn’t have died alone.”
He peered up at Rachel. “The truly sick part is I’m glad Gramps
isn’t here to see that I have a son. I wouldn’t want to face the
disappointment in his eyes.” He leaned toward her. “Help me,
Rae.”

She spread her hands. “There’s only one
place to get rid of guilt.”

“Where?”

“Jesus.”

Anger flashed through him. Why hadn’t he
seen that coming? “No one’s running my life but me.”

Rachel stood. “How’s that working for you?”
She stared at him as seconds ticked by. Pivoting, she stepped over
a shin-high coquina slab and disappeared around the corner of the
mill. A few minutes later he heard a door shut and her car drive
across the sand onto Old Mission Road.

That was it—all the help she would give him?
Thanks for nothing.

He picked up a hunk of rock and hurled it at
the wall. It smacked against the coquina, spitting a few
shell-fragments and thunked to the ground, intact. Like his
guilt.

Rachel rolled her Escort to a stop in the
back corner of the Walmart parking lot to pull herself
together.

Jake’s text had pinged her after a night
spent nose-to-nose with grief, sucking its sulfur breath in and out
of her lungs.

He’d needed her.

She’d hardly kept from flinging herself into
his arms when she saw him round the corner of the crumbling wall at
the ruins. But he hadn’t touched her, hadn’t uttered a romantic
word—couldn’t with Gabrielle back in the picture.

A metallic taste filled her mouth. She
scrunched her eyes till gray spots danced between her and the
windshield. Echoes of their angry exchange clanged around the
cavern inside her. Where had things gone wrong?

Jake’s ire had touched off hers, and instead
of coming up with something spiritual, or at least, kind, to answer
his guilt, her words turned snarky. Add that to her list of
failures.