Tyler O’Neill’s Redemption (14 page)

“Étoufé is all butter, Dad.”

“When it’s done right, yeah.” Dad looked affronted and Juliette tried hard not to sigh. She spread her napkin over her lap and scooted in closer to the dining room table.

Aside from these weekly dinners, the napkins were usually balled up in a drawer and the table was lost under books and bills. But Dad liked a little pomp and circumstance. Or maybe he expected it. Or maybe she thought he liked it and so she did it.

She didn’t know anymore.

All she was truly aware of was the slight dread she felt about these nights. The apprehension that had long ago replaced any of the excitement she might have felt.

While she’d swept the floors, and cleared off her dining-room table, she’d wondered if this was how every woman of a certain age felt about her father.

Or if she and Dad were just special.

She’d wondered if things would be different if Mom were still around, but somehow she doubted it.

“Butter is off the menu, should have been a long time ago. I’m just trying to help you take better care of yourself.” She dug into her dinner—if he didn’t eat it, fine. Whatever. She couldn’t make him do anything. He was an adult, even though he didn’t always act like it.

“Thank you,” he said, picking up his fork. “I’m sure it’s delicious.”

She gaped at him, watching him spoon a bite of gumbo into his mouth. Man, when he did things like that—criticizing one minute and apologizing the next—it threw her off. She could handle all of Dad’s split personalities—Loving Dad, Suspicious Dad, Grouchy Dad—but every time he switched gears unexpectedly between his many incarnations, she was left flat-footed.

“You all right?” he asked. “You seem…distracted.”

Distracted. Sleepless. Confused. Sometimes hopeful. Usually worried. She was a delightful mix of all the worst emotions and she wanted to climb right out of her skin.

In the past week, she’d attended the first two foster parent orientation meetings and she’d sent off her paperwork with letters of recommendation from Nora, Gaetan and teachers from the Academy. Now she had to wait for the home visit.

But that wasn’t all.

Tyler O’Neill was back in her life, back in her head, and she didn’t know what to do about it, how to get rid of him.

Her father was right. She wasn’t to be trusted around that man, because every day she went and picked up Miguel, and every day she had to tell herself that Tyler hadn’t changed. Not really. Despite appearances. Tyler was a master of reflection—of showing people what they wanted to see.

And apparently she wanted to see a changed Tyler, which was just nuts. Crazy. Suicidal.

Tyler O’Neill turned her into someone else, someone she didn’t know and didn’t like.

I need an exorcism.

“I’m fine, Dad,” she said with a smile, wishing she could tell her father everything and he could make it all go away. “Just tired.”

“You doing some light reading?” Dad asked, pointing to the two giant juvenile psychology textbooks she had stacked at the end of the table.

“Yeah.” She shrugged. “I’ve made myself family officer.”

“Family what?” Jasper asked, setting down his spoon, sitting back with a serious air of disapproval.

She explained, as calmly as she could, the new aspect of her job, all while he sat across from her like a growing storm cloud.

“Is this about that boy you’ve got working out at The Manor? The boy who tried to steal that car?”

“Now.” She sat back, her nerves on edge. “How do you know that?”

“The whole town knows, Juliette,” he said, spearing a shrimp, his fork grating against the bottom of the bowl.

“Yes,” she said through her teeth, bracing for the lecture. “It is about Miguel. It’s about Miguel and the rising juvenile crime rate in Bonne Terre.”

He nodded but didn’t say anything. His thin nose practically twitched with his displeasure, but she took it as a small victory that he managed to keep his mouth shut.

But it couldn’t last. Didn’t.

Within moments, he threw down his fork and glared at her.

“I thought that boy was going to be taken to DOC!”

“Why in the world would—” She stopped, a terrible, terrible idea forming in her head. “No,” she breathed.

“You can’t protect the criminals, Juliette.”

“It was
you,
” she gasped, the fork clattering out of her hand. She couldn’t catch her breath. Anger and hurt obliterated any brain function. “
You
called the Office of Community Services.”

“You couldn’t keep what you were doing a secret forever,” Jasper said. “I was trying to help.”

“Help!” she cried. Her father was insane, there was no other explanation. Somewhere along the way his love for her had gotten completely destroyed by his job.

“I could have lost my job!” she cried, and he brushed away her concerns with an elegant wave of his hand.

“You wouldn’t have lost your job,” he said. “But you would have learned an important lesson about the nature of your job.”

“Tell me,” she asked, “who were you trying to hurt, Dad? Miguel, Tyler or me?”

“Listen to yourself, Juliette. Hurt you? By sending a troublemaking kid where he belongs? You’re too attached. Too damn soft.”

“That’s not true, Dad. Not at all. I’m good at my job. Damn good. And the world has changed—”

“I know, I know police are supposed to counsel and hold hands—”

“We’re supposed to help! We’re supposed to be reasonable—”

“Reasonable? I suppose that would explain why Tyler O’Neill is still in town,” Jasper said, leaning forward, his words a terrible slap.

Juliette breathed hard through her nose.

“Tyler O’Neill is in town because he’s done nothing wrong.”

“You know, in my day—”

“I know what you did in your day, Dad,” she snapped. “You set Owens on him like some kind of thug.”

“People like Tyler O’Neill need to be shown who’s in charge, otherwise they run around taking things that don’t belong to them. Same as that Miguel boy.”

Juliette tilted her head, her skin cold and prickly with anger. “I’m sorry, are you referring to me as a thing?”

“You had no business sneaking around with him behind my back.”

“And I wonder why I felt like I had to sneak,” she said, sarcasm a sword she was swinging around recklessly. “You would never have found out if you hadn’t come to The Manor that night,” she said. “You let Owens hit him, Dad. Over something he didn’t even do.”

“You can be mad at me all you want,” he said. “But that boy left you without a word. Without so much as a goodbye.”

The pain and embarrassment was a fast-moving storm, taking her by surprise.

“Regardless, Dad, you’re wrong about Tyler—”

“Wrong? Listen to yourself. You think he’s changed? You think a man like that can change?”

The words stuck pinpricks into her secret heart, where she carried that damning belief, that terrible wish that he was changing. She had to battle the impulse to tell her father about the land outside of town, the houses he was going to build, the way he’d helped her with Miguel and Louisa. The way he made her laugh again, when she thought the whole world was dark.

But her father would only use it as further proof that she had no perspective when it came to Tyler O’Neill.

And maybe she didn’t.

“He should be given the chance to,” she said, and stood up, her anger a bright star on a dark night, leading her in the right direction. “And you stepped way over the line when you called OCS about Miguel. I think you need to leave.”

“Leave?” He smiled. “Come on, honey. We’re just—”

“Leave!” she cried.

The silence was stunning, painful, a gauntlet she had to get through, but finally he stood, putting his napkin on the table.

“I have only wanted the best for you,” he said. “And I know you thought it was a secret, but I knew something was happening with you that summer. You were beginning to talk about not attending Oklahoma, about changing your plans for law school. I knew that wasn’t my daughter talking.”

“Go,” she said, and then watched her father’s back as he left her home.

Her father was wrong about so many things, but there was one thing she could not deny.

Falling in love with Tyler was like having her life realigned. And, stupidly, she could feel it all happening all over again.

And that had to stop.

Her father was right. She was making up what she wanted to see, creating a Tyler O’Neill myth, just like she used to, because a man so beautiful, a man who could make you feel so good, couldn’t be bad. Couldn’t be rotten.

But he was. For her, he was all wrong.

And it was time to for him to leave.

“Where’s Miguel?” Juliette asked, yelling over the sounds of bulldozers and jackhammers breaking up the concrete pads.

Tyler pointed to the bulldozer systematically rolling over a brown trailer that used to be someone’s home. From inside the cab, wearing a hard hat and sitting next to a man she recognized as Bill Hartley, Miguel waved.

The smile on the kid’s face could light up the night sky.

Tyler did this,
she thought, amazed. He brought on that smile and he’s actually going to build houses out here.

“Cool, huh?” Tyler yelled, his eyes twinkling in a way that made her knees tremble, her heart pound.

Anger was what she wanted. Anger was safe. Anger was where she belonged.

But she just couldn’t seem to hold on to it.

“Can we talk?” she yelled, unwilling to have this conversation at decibels that hurt.

He nodded and spun on his heel, opening the door of his truck. “Inside,” he mouthed, and she followed suit.

They slammed the truck doors shut and the roar outside was diminished. But now, the air was suddenly too warm. Tyler sat too close. The memory of that kiss a week ago and the thousands that preceded it were now front and center.

Why are we doing this in a car?
she wondered. It reminded her far too much of all the time they’d passed in the back of another car ten years ago.

You are here,
she reminded herself,
for answers. Not to lust.

“You want a cookie?” Tyler asked, picking up an open box from between them on the floorboards. “I got weaseled into buying twenty-five boxes of Girl Scout cookies from Louisa.”

“I’ve got ten at home,” she said, trying not to smile.

“That girl.” Tyler shook his head and dug four cookies out of the box before handing them over to her. “Keep her away from politics.”

She took two that she didn’t want, but was happy to have something to do with her hands besides reach out and brush away the white thread hanging on to his tanned forearm.

“We need to talk,” she said.

“We do,” Tyler said, licking at the cream center of one of the cookies as if he was in a porno or something. “I want to offer Miguel an afterschool job out here. You know, around his counseling sessions.”

She was taken aback, all filthy thoughts fleeing the cab of his truck. “You do?”

“Yeah.” Tyler laughed. “The kid is talented. He’s practically building that porch at The Manor by himself and his geometry skills—” Tyler whistled. “I think Derek and the other trades could really teach him something. You know? Something useful. Of course he—”

Nora Sullivan’s words about Tyler O’Neill being the seed of her community service program whispered in her head.

“When are you leaving?” she practically barked, not nearly as calm as she wanted to be.

He blinked, blinked again, and suddenly all his excitement vanished into cold understanding.

“You going to run me out of town?” he asked. “Like father, like daughter?”

“I’m just thinking you’re probably getting itchy feet.”

Tyler stared out the window and Juliette could see the pounding of his heart under the skin of his throat.

“What if I told you I wasn’t leaving?” he murmured. Juliette went totally and utterly still. She’d come here seeking answers, but had hoped not to hear this one.

Now what are you going to do?
she asked her shell-shocked self.

“I’m sticking around,” he said. “I want to see Katie and Savannah. I want to meet this guy she loves. I…I’m staying in Bonne Terre.”

“What exactly do you plan on doing here?” she asked, the words painful in a too-tight throat.

“I’m rich,” he said with a careless shrug. “I don’t need to do anything.”

“You’re just going to lie around all day? Play piano out at Remy’s all night?”

Tyler stretched his arm across the top of the seat, his fingers inches from her hair. She tried not to notice the distance between their bodies, but her skin was doing its own calculations. Every millimeter between them was mapped out and noted so that she couldn’t breathe without knowing how it brought them closer.

She shifted away and he noticed, his sharp eyes not letting her get away with anything.

“Actually, I thought Miguel and I could start a car theft ring. He could steal them, I’d chop them up for parts.”

“You’re hilarious,” Juliette said. “Be serious.”

“Christ, Juliette, it’s no big deal. I thought I’d play piano at night,” he said. “Get to know my niece and my sister. Help Margot around the house. I’ve given this community a lot of money over the years, and Remy and Priscilla are getting old. It’s hard enough running Remy’s at their age. I think if I want to keep helping people here, I’m going to need to do some of this stuff myself.”

She refused to be moved. Refused.

Sunlight sparkled around them, catching dust motes and turning the air into glitter. Such was the power of Tyler O’Neill, and she suddenly realized much to her sick astonishment he was showing her the real him. No bluff. No sleight of hand.

He wasn’t a mirror reflecting what she wanted.

It was him.

Just him. The real Tyler O’Neill.

And he destroyed her.

“You lied to me,” she said.

Tyler squinted up into the sunshine and nodded. “Several times, but what are you referring to, specifically?”

“You’re not an asshole at heart.”

He was quiet while the crunch and smash of machinery rolling over metal echoed all around them.

“I think,” he said, looking at her, his face utterly composed, his eyes rock solid, “I’m trying to change my ways.”

There was nothing she could say to that. Because, despite the proof he’d offered her to sway her toward belief on one side of the scale, all she had was the cynical proof he couldn’t change—proof that took the shape of heartbreak.

“You don’t believe me?” he asked.

“Do you blame me?” she asked, her throat and mouth a desert.

“No, I don’t. You have every reason to hate me,” he said. “But hating me doesn’t explain why you’re here. Why you care.”

She ignored his implications. “Where’s your girlfriend?” she finally managed to ask. “The French model in all the magazines?”

“Theresa Guerriere,” he said. “She dumped me.”

She didn’t even bother to try and keep her mouth closed. He smiled at her expression. “I’m not kidding,” he insisted, and then suddenly the sparkle drained away and Tyler suddenly looked older. Tired. She was able to see Margot in him, and even Savannah. And not just the eyes and the hair, but the careful side of the O’Neills. The wary side that curled up around their hurts so other people couldn’t see.

It was human. Real. Devastating.

“She thought she was pregnant,” he said, and the air emptied out of Juliette, and she was just a sack of skin and incredulity. “And I…I was so damn happy. So…” He blew out a big breath. “Ready to be a person. A real person. A human with family and a home. I proposed.”

“Marriage?” she squeaked. The concept of marriage and Tyler sharing space in the same sentence practically made her head explode. Jealousy gnawed at her bones.

“I proposed—” he glanced at her sideways, his grin a stab at her heart “—marriage. And she said no because she got her period. And she had no intention of being a person with a family and a home. Not with me.”

So much pain. It just radiated off of him, soaking into her skin by osmosis. “Did you love her?” she whispered.

He winced. “No,” he said slowly. “I loved the idea of a baby. But Theresa and I were really more of an arrangement than a couple. In the end, we were lucky she wasn’t pregnant. It would have been a disaster between us.”

She didn’t know what to say, how to process this new man beside her. She twisted a cookie in her hands, tearing it apart and then putting it back together.

“What about you?” he asked.

“What about me?”

“Any proposals?” he teased. The glitter was back, but not completely. She’d seen behind the curtain and the mighty and powerful Oz was just a man with hurts and pains, like the rest of the world.

It was a sickness on her part that it made him even more attractive to her.

“No,” she said. “No proposals.”

“You happy being chief?”

“Sure,” she said.

“What happened to law school?”

“I got impatient,” she said. She pressed her finger down on a black cookie crumb on her pants and touched it to the tip of her tongue. “I wanted to get on with my life, get to work, and law school was going to take forever. I got my masters at night while working.”

He chuckled and looked at his hands. “Patience was never your strong suit.”

“No.” She smiled. “It still isn’t. But it’s something I’m working on.”

“Have you always worked in Bonne Terre?”

“No, I’ve only been here six months,” she said. “I was a lieutenant in Baton Rouge for a long time. I had gotten my masters in Municipal Administration and was thinking about a change when Dad retired and the interim chief they’d hired didn’t work out.”

“So you decided to come home and fill your father’s shoes?” There was a world of sarcasm behind his words, but instead of getting angry, she understood where it came from.

She looked at him, the softness and magic of him, and remembered that night when Owens came after him and how ugly it had gotten. How violent.

She’d told herself she’d never apologize to him for her father’s mistakes, but maybe some of Dad’s mistakes were hers, too.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “That night—”

He put his hand on hers, setting her ablaze from her fingers, across her hand to her arm. Her heart exploded into flames and she had to pull away.

“I know,” he said, quick and earnest. “I remember that night. I remember what you sacrificed for me.”

“Sacrificed?” she choked, remembering the blood on Tyler’s lip, the hate in her father’s eyes. “Telling my father that you were with me and not stealing computers out of the high school wasn’t a sacrifice—I should have told him about us months before.”

“It would have saved me a bloody nose,” he said, his smile holding no rancor, no grudge. Owens, on her father’s okay, had made a mess of Tyler’s face that night, and he didn’t blame her for keeping him a secret. He never had.

Funny that she never realized how noble that was until right now.

She looked at him, everything suddenly so clear, the years of hurt and anger not blurring the focus. And the conversations she had with her father suddenly made sick sense.

“What did my father do?” she gasped.

Tyler quickly shook his head, and that he understood exactly what she was talking about damned her father with guilt. “Nothing, Juliette. I was a kid and I was scared.” His eyes were dead serious. “Leaving you was my mistake.”

His words shook her. “Mistake?” she asked on a weak breath of air.

He stared at his hands for a long time and she held her breath, waiting. When he finally looked up at her, his eyes were as blue and bright as if they were made out of the hottest part of flame.

“I told you the truth the other night at Remy’s,” he said. “I have thought about you almost every day for the past ten years.”

She licked her dry lips with a drier tongue, trying desperately to process all of this in a way that wouldn’t implode her life. But it didn’t seem possible. Nothing was ever going to be the same again, not after this conversation.

“But why did you leave that way?” she finally asked. “Without a word?” She could forgive so much, but that seemed too heartless.

Tyler flexed his fingers and made fists. She ached to touch those hands, to feel them against her skin again, the bite of them in her flesh.

“Because I knew you would have left with me,” he said, and the truth of his words blew a thousand holes right through her. “You would have thrown away law school and your future to be with me. And—” He shook his head. “That would have been your mistake.”

“So you made the decision for me?” she asked, anger overtaking sadness and disbelief. “How dare you? It’s
my
life—you don’t get to make those kinds of decisions for me.”

“We were kids, and you had a future. I had a beat-up Chevy and some luck at cards.”

“Your piano,” she whispered. “The music. You were going—”

“To support us by playing the piano?” he scoffed, and it felt like sandpaper over her heart. “It was better that I left. You may not see it, but that’s the only option we had then.”

“I don’t see it that way, Tyler. I would have stood up to my dad.”

He was silent for a long time before responding. “You know it’s easy to say that, even to think it. But actually doing it?” He looked at her. “Putting aside your blood…it’s hard. It changes you, Juliette.”

“You did it,” she said. “Margot, Savannah. You walked away from them.”