Triple Shot (17 page)

A knock at the door pulled Susan from
the constant to do list that had been running through her mind for the past
week. She shucked off the quilt and shuffled her feet to the door. Like
clockwork, Tessa stood on the other side. Susan opened the door just as she had
every day for the past week at four in the afternoon. And just as she had the
past week, Tessa stood with take-out knowing full well that Susan wouldn’t take
the time to eat if she didn’t bring her food.

Susan neatly folded the quilt and draped
it on the back of the couch as Tessa pulled little white cardboard boxes from
the bags. Ming’s Chinese was on the menu tonight.

Tessa broke the silence they’d come
accustom to as they ate. “Have you talked to Josiah lately?” she asked just
before she shoved a fork full of noodles in her mouth.

Susan shook her head. The calls and
texts had actually stopped after yesterday morning. The last text had come
across her phone at nine in the morning, asking if she needed anything and to
let him help any way he could. She kept telling herself she should be happy he
finally gave up, constantly giving herself reminders that she needed to concentrate
on her father not her own life right now.

“He’s just worried about you,” Tessa
said in between bites.

“I can’t be with him right now. Honestly,
I don’t even know that I ever want to see him again,” Susan responded, angry at
the situation she found herself in. This was not the storyline she’d hoped for
her life. Her life should have been filled with happiness and joy, and parents
who would live to see their grandchildren grow up. She shouldn’t be planning
her mother’s funeral or putting her life on hold because her father couldn’t
handle the loss of his wife. Yet, it was where she sat and she’d be damned if
she’d let her father down again.

“Well, maybe after everything settles
down-”

“And when will that be? After my father
dies? In ten, fifteen years when my life isn’t sucked dry by every shitty thing
that could possibly go wrong?” Susan asked as she stood and walked to the
window overlooking the parking lot. All the anger and hurt that she’d kept
bottled up for months seeped out of her pores and poured out without her
permission.

Susan felt the brush of Tessa’s shoulder
against hers. “No, once you’ve done what you need to do to get through the
funeral and the next few weeks of coming to terms with what’s happened. You
have someone waiting for you to give you some happiness in the midst of the
shitty, you know,” Tessa said.

“I was with him the night she died. Here
in this apartment. He made me forget everything for a short time and it cost me
the chance of saying goodbye to her.”

Tessa turned Susan to face her and shook
her head. “You don’t know that you would have had that chance whether he was
here or not. You said your father didn’t call you until she was already gone.”

“It doesn’t even matter now,” Susan said
stepping away from Tessa. “He stopped trying to contact me, which is really all
the better for both of us.” She lowered herself to the sofa, pushing at the
food before her, unable to stomach another bite. They sat without another word
spoken between them. Tessa stayed as long as she could, her mere presence a
comfort that Susan unapologetically accepted.

When Tessa finally pushed herself from
the sofa to leave, she asked Susan to consider taking a moment to speak to
Josiah. Just to reassure him that she was okay, she’d said. Susan assured her
that she would consider, but pushed the idea from her mind as soon as the words
left her lips. She had a visitation and a funeral to deal with at the moment
and the dread of both weighed heavy on her mind and heart. Susan needed to get
past the next two days before she could put any thought into anything else.

Setting the deadbolt after Tessa left,
she cleaned off the coffee table, placing the leftovers in the refrigerator
then finding the familiar fetal position as she pulled her mother’s quilt over
the expanse of her body and closed her eyes for another day.

Chapter 24

Josiah stood at the rear of the Methodist
church while Susan’s aunt spoke of the beautiful person her sister had been in
this life. A large framed picture of a vibrant woman in her mid-fifties with
flowing long blond hair, much the same as Susan’s, and a quirky smile sat next to
the silver coffin in the center aisle at the front of the church for all to see.
Atop it sat a bouquet of yellow and red roses.

 Susan hadn’t invited him to the
funeral. As a matter of fact, she’d not even returned any of his calls, but
Tessa and Rowan had both convinced him that he should be there. When he’d
watched Susan walk down the aisle and greeted those who came to pay their
respects, he’d wanted to rush up to her and take her into his arms. He wanted,
even now, to be the one sitting next to her with a comforting arm around her as
she wiped at the tears that soaked her cheeks while her aunt spoke. She’d not
asked him to come be the comfort she needed though. So, he stood as far away
from everyone as he could, behind the last row of pews in the shadows he found
there and waited for the service to come to an end.

 Fifteen minutes later, after her aunt
spoke her last words, the song Save a Place for Me, played over the church’s
sound system. As the words “
I have asked the
questions why/But I guess the answers for another time/So instead I pray/with
every tear/And be thankful for the time I had you here”
filled the small
church, Susan’s shoulders shuddered with each note. He wanted to rip the
speakers from the walls, wanted to whisk her away from the hurt and anguish she
felt and to encompass her within the warmth of his embrace. As he stood by
helplessly watching her, an ache welled up into his throat and he was unable to
push it away. The pain of watching Susan deal with her loss without him there
was almost unbearable. He hated seeing her like this, with so much pain that it
racked her body. When the song finally ended, he sent up thanks to whoever
would listen that Susan wouldn’t have to endure another moment of the damn song.
Shortly after, the pastor thanked all who came and reminded them of the service
that would follow at the local cemetery.

 Josiah exited the church before the
pastor spoke his last word and waited by Rowan’s car for the rest of the group
to arrive. As he watched people file out of the small building, he was
surprised when he saw Susan walking across the parking lot to Rowan’s car. She
had her arm tucked into the crook of Rowan’s elbow with her chin to her chest, yet
she spoke to him and Tessa as they walked. He even saw a faint smile make a
brief appearance. When the group reached him, he pushed himself away from the
car and shoved his hands into the pockets of his navy blue slacks. The black
dress Susan wore pretty much epitomized the emotions of the day, and though he
shouldn’t have let the thought slip through his mind, he couldn’t help but
notice how beautiful she was, even on a day such as this. Rowan and the others
quickly slid into the car, giving the two of them a moment alone, yet there was
no sound of an engine starting. Or at least Josiah hadn’t noticed if it had. His
focus was solely on Susan.

“Tessa told me you showed up. Thank you
for coming,” she said, her eyes never meeting his.

“I know you didn’t invite me, but I
wanted to be here,” Josiah clenched his fists in his pockets, wanting
desperately to reach out to her, to draw her into his embrace and to promise
her that things would get better.

“Well, I have to head over to the-”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you,”
Josiah interrupted.

Susan shook her head. “Don’t apologize.”

“Had I known, I would have-”

“Had known what?” she asked.

Josiah kept his gaze on her. “If I had
known your mother was sick…” his voice trailed off when her gaze slipped to the
coffin being ushered into the white hearse.

“You would have what?” Susan said on a
sigh. “Not gotten involved with me? Not had sex with me that night? Not stayed
the night? I don’t blame you, I wouldn’t have either,” she said offering her
back to him.

Josiah slid his fingers down her arm as
he walked around in front of her, not caring about the cars driving by or the
people still exiting the church. He cupped her face in his hands, his gaze
never wavering from hers.

“No. I would have gone with you. That
morning you got the call, I wouldn’t have let you leave by yourself. I would
have driven you myself to the hospital and been at your side.”

Susan stepped away from his touch. “I
should have never been with you. I should have been with her instead of you,”
she said while the tears she no longer fought spilled from the corners of her
eyes.

Josiah felt the stab at his heart as her
words rang over and over in his mind.
I should have never been with you.
He
watched Susan walk away and he knew the pain he felt in his chest at the words
she spoke should not have even found root there. He knew more than anyone that
people who were grieving a loved one said things they didn’t mean, but the
words stung because of the convictions with which she spoke them.

****

Josiah opted to sit in the car and wait
while the others gathered around the gravesite. He should have never come with
them. Hell, he should have never even spoken to her. Susan didn’t need him
around, he realized, because he would only be a constant reminder that she’d
not been at her mother’s side when she passed away, but instead had been in his
arms. He didn’t want to be that source of pain every time she looked at him,
and quite honestly, he felt as if this were the sign he needed to figure out
what to do with his life. The decision he’d been putting off since he arrived
in California came to him on the lips of the woman who tugged at his heart.
I
should have never been with you
ceased his wondering as to where he should
call home. Rowan and Cade were doing fine without him and the only other reason
he’d even considered staying had just shut the door to any possibilities.

Thinking over the past two months,
Josiah sat amazed that the one woman he didn’t want just one night with would
be the one he would only be granted the one night with. He pulled his cell
phone from his back pocket and dialed the only woman who’d never disappointed
him. On the third ring, she answered with the cheery voice he’d heard since his
earliest memory.

“It’s a great day in the Hunter Home,”
his mother’s voice chirped in his ear.

Chapter 25

Susan sat watching her father as he
dusted off his second baloney sandwich and downed the last of his sweet tea
with a smile on his face. It had been so long since that smile had reached his
eyes, but now watching him across the table as she picked at her own lunch, the
sparkle she remembered growing up and well into her adult life was evident not
just in his face, but in his body. Over the past two months, she’d watched his
body heal from the beating it had taken since he’d started taking care of her
mother and even the natural bronze coloring of his skin had returned. With each
passing day, he was returning to the father she remembered. He still has his
days of grief for the loss of her mother, those days were expected, but they
were becoming less and less as the days passed.

Susan, unfortunately, had not recovered
as quickly. She’d taken a leave of absence from work for the past two months,
which would be coming to an end this time next week, and had not done much but
moped around her apartment. The only time she’d take to get out of the confines
of her apartment, was either to come over to cook for her father, who insisted
that he didn’t need the help, or to hang out with Tessa at Rowan’s, which
proved not to be healthy for her. About a week after her mother’s funeral,
she’d finally accepted Tessa’s invitation to hang out with her and Madison at
the beach near Rowan’s house and had gotten a surprise she’d not expected. Josiah
was gone. A part of her had wished to get a glance of him and had been
disappointed at the news of his leaving.

After their conversation at the church,
Josiah had made his decision to head home to Texas instead of staying and going
into practice with Cade and Rowan, even though they’d tried to convince him to take
some time to think things over. The following day, he packed up his things and
took a flight from LAX to Dallas, without even a word to her. But then again,
what did she expect? She pushed him away when he’d reached out to her. She had
avoided him at all cost and not given him one damn good reason to stay. Hell,
she would have packed up and left, also without giving it another thought. Susan
picked at the half eaten sandwich sitting in front of her, pushing at the moist
bread with her fingertips like she had when she was a child, while lost in her
thoughts. Her father’s voice quickly ushered her from her reflective state to
present.

“Baby girl, your mother gave me a lot of
wonderful years,” he said when Susan lifted her eyes to him. “And a beautiful
daughter,” he said with a wink. “I don’t want you missing out on that kind of
happiness.”

“I’m not missing out-”

“You will if you keep secluding yourself
from the outside world. These walls had you long enough,” he said his arms
spanned the room. “They don’t need you making an appearance so often.”