Читать книгу A Memory Away - Melinda Curtis - Страница 13

CHAPTER FIVE

DUFFY WAS A GENTLEMAN.

Not only had he offered Jess a place to stay, but since he’d walked from his house, he’d asked for Jessica’s keys and braved the rain to bring her car to the restaurant’s front door. Jessica waited in the crowded lobby of El Rosal with Eunice and the rest for vehicles to be brought around, hopeful that being stranded meant Baby would have a positive relationship with Uncle Duffy someday.

The sheriff braved the downpour and as vehicles pulled up, he called out the names of waiting passengers. It wasn’t long before he announced, “Eunice and Jessica.”

Eunice held on to Jessica’s arm as they picked their way through the puddles to Jessica’s car. Rain pelted them in big, angry drops, bouncing off the pavement and back at them.

Duffy was scrunched in the driver’s seat, shoulders hunched and knees bent on either side of the steering wheel. “I couldn’t get the seat to go back any farther,” he admitted when Jess noticed. “Good thing it’s a short drive.”

“The last time this happened was 1992,” Eunice said from the backseat. “The roads were flooded for five days.”

Jessica began to feel foolish for ignoring the flood warnings. She didn’t want to be trapped with Duffy for five days. Not to mention, Vera would fire her.

The rain pounded on the roof and the windshield wipers could barely keep their view clear. Duffy drove slowly, but they still created a wake in the rising water.

“When we get rain, we really get rain,” Eunice was saying over all the storm noise, as if she were their personal tour guide. “Sometimes the rain doesn’t stop for days. The clouds can’t seem to make it past the range that starts with Parish Hill.”

Neither Jessica nor Duffy said a word. She could tell by Duffy’s gripping and regripping the wheel that he was having second thoughts about inviting her to stay since it might be for more than one night.

A turn onto the town square, a turn off the town square and they were at Eunice’s house. Duffy pulled into her driveway.

“Thanks for the ride,” Eunice sing-songed. “I’ll see you in the morning, Jessica.”

“Let’s hope we don’t see her while I’m making coffee,” Duffy muttered after he’d escorted the old woman to her door. He waited until Eunice was safely inside her house with the lights on before backing out and parking Jessica’s car next to his truck.

Duffy’s house was a small, old home with gingerbread gables. Most of it was dark and in shadow. The porch light barely reached beyond the front steps.

He waited in the downpour for Jessica to come around the hood, and then took her arm and led her up the stairs to the door. He paused with his key in the lock, gazing down on her with an endearingly sweet smile she’d never have suspected he possessed. “I can’t remember what state the house is in.”

“I don’t care, as long as it’s dry.” She was wet, and starting to shiver.

He opened the door and turned on a light in the foyer. “Stay here while I do a quick run-through.”

“I’m not Eunice. I won’t snoop to see what’s in your fridge or which magazines you keep in your bathroom.”

“I meant...” His grin turned mischievous, making Baby do an equilibrium-busting tummy flip. “I have a tendency to shed my clothes as I come. I usually leave them on the floor like...um, bread crumbs leading to the shower.”

“By all means, pick up your unmentionables.” Jess removed her jacket, hanging it on a coatrack near the door. Next to go were her wet sneakers. She held the damp sweater away from her skin. Baby was hunkered on her bladder. As soon as Duffy gave the okay, she was restroom bound.

The living room had worn hardwood floors and a fireplace with built-in white bookshelves on either side. Beyond that, the main room was classic, out-of-date bachelor pad—a brown leather couch, a black lacquered coffee table and a television mounted over the mantel. The small oak dining room table beneath the kitchen pass-through was in worse shape than Jessica’s. Nothing was hung on the walls, but photos of people were on a couple of shelves.

At the risk of seeming as nosy as Eunice, Jess moved closer.

There were several photos of an older couple with salt-and-pepper hair. The man was in a wheelchair, and had Duffy and Greg’s dark coloring. The woman had their smile, so rarely seen on Duffy’s face. Sometimes Duffy was in the pictures with them, but never Greg. There was only one picture of Greg. He stood with Duffy in front of a Christmas tree. They might have been eight or nine. Slender bodies, pants that were too short for their long legs and T-shirts they didn’t fill out. They were both grinning and holding baseball mitts.

Duffy wasn’t as heartless as he appeared, which meant neither was Greg. Warmth blossomed in Jessica’s chest.

“All clear.” Duffy returned and removed his boots. “The house is only eight hundred square feet.” He began pointing. “Kitchen that way. The three doors over there are my bedroom, the bathroom and my home office. You can sleep in my room.”

“I’ll sleep on the couch.” Jess sat on it, sinking-sinking-sinking, realizing too late she should have taken a bathroom break first. Otherwise, the sleeping-arrangement standoff was going to be short-lived.

“Yeah. That’s not happening.” The mischievous Duffy had gone, replaced by the resolute man she’d first met. “You’ll take my bed. I’ll change the sheets.”

“No. Really. I’ll be fine right here.” She grunted attractively—not—as she lifted her legs onto the couch. It proceeded to swallow her in the crack. “I couldn’t get up if you asked me to.” But she would if Baby bounced one more time on her bladder.

He leaned on the back of the couch and stared down at her with hauntingly familiar, caramel-colored eyes.

“You were sleeping,” Greg said, leaning on the back of the couch. “I didn’t want to wake you.” She’d reached for him and he’d taken her hand...

“Did you remember something just now?”

“Not enough to be meaningful.” Had she looked at Duffy the way she’d looked at Greg? Her body felt as overheated as an oven set to broil. She tried maneuvering into a more upright sitting position so that Duffy could sit, too. The couch almost won the battle. “Greg had a great couch.” Cup holders and everything.

“Sold it.” Duffy knelt by the fireplace, where there was split wood ready to be lit. Again she noticed his economy of movement, even when he started a fire.

When Greg moved, there’d been bold statements and unleashed energy. There’d been excitement and noise. Drama and passion.

Tired and wet, Jess appreciated Duffy’s calm. “So you went through Greg’s stuff and there was nothing about me?”

“Nope.” He stood, leaning on the mantel and regarding her. Steady. Oh, so steady.

She frowned as an image teased the corners of her mind. “Maybe I’m imagining it, but I think I gave him a picture of us at a...um...a local food festival?”

“Nope,” he said again, not pulling any punches.

The image sharpened. “It might have been in a heart-shaped silver frame. On his mantel.” Or was her memory influenced by the pictures in the room and Duffy next to the fireplace?

“I found a heart-shaped frame, but it was in his desk drawer.” His gaze slid to the pictures on his right. He repositioned the Christmas photo. “The frame was empty.”

Jess felt empty, too, as if someone had carved out her heart. “Why would Greg do that?” she whispered, rubbing her belly, where Baby’s little knee or hip was protruding, creating a numb spot.

Duffy was back to studying her. He would have made a good trial lawyer. “Didn’t you find pictures of you two on your phone or social media?”

“I shut off my social media accounts when I went to culinary school because I didn’t want to be tagged in something that would haunt me later.” The few friends she still had from foster care and high school could be irresponsible and post things that could cost Jess a job. “And since I’ve been on a budget, I’ve had a little cheap phone, nothing fancy.”

“You made it easy for him.” Duffy shook his head. “You said a week before the accident your bank account was drained. Greg probably destroyed everything that tied you two together.”

“I don’t want to believe Greg was like that.” That she’d meant nothing more to him than the money he could take from her.

Duffy sank into the other couch corner, but he was tall and had long legs. He didn’t sink as far as she did. “Why is it so important to you that you meant something to him?”

“Because of Baby. Every child deserves to be loved.” She shifted again, but Baby didn’t like it. A round of kicking ensued, delaying her explanation. “Every baby deserves to be created from love.” Jessica had no clue if she’d been created from love or not. Her mother had abandoned her in a homeless shelter when she was nine.

Duffy stared pensively into the growing flames.

Did he agree? Did he think she was a gullible fool? “Say something.”

“I was just thinking that my parents tried for a long time to have a baby and then they had twins.” His gaze landed on her belly. “Do you want the baby? Are you going to keep it?”

Give up Baby? If she could’ve launched herself out of the couch, she would have. “I’m excited to be a mother. I can’t wait to swaddle this baby with love.”

“But children are such a huge responsibility in terms of time and money.” There was more than a note of caution in his voice. There was certainty. And rejection. But not of her.

“Are you saying you don’t want kids because they’re inconvenient and cost a lot?”

He hesitated, staring at her as if weighing how much he should admit to, and then he nodded.

Jess glanced from the pictures of his family, and then back to him. “You never want kids or a family?”

He didn’t so much as flinch. “I might get married someday, but no. I don’t want any additional responsibilities. I don’t even have a dog.”

“Or a cat,” she murmured, inexplicably saddened. “Why not?”

* * *

BECAUSE DUFFY WANTED a break from responsibility. Permanently.

After fifteen years of struggling to make ends meet, the thought of having a child, of being responsible for another life for eighteen years plus, had Duffy’s muscles drawn tighter than a guide wire strung from post to post in the vineyard.

He didn’t have to answer Jessica, but he felt compelled to.

“When I was fifteen, my dad was in an accident at work. It put him in a wheelchair.” Duffy gestured toward the photos on either side of the fireplace. “He qualified for worker’s compensation. And he got a lawyer who sued the company for a long-term settlement. But it took years for that money to come in. Years.” In the meantime, for a teenager there’d been uncertainty, fear and shame as little by little everything he’d taken for granted had been stripped away—nice clothes, dinners out, the promise of a car when he earned his license. “My mom had to hire someone to care for Dad so she could work. I got a job to help out. And Greg... Well, he always said he had a job, but he never contributed money to the household.” The words stung. “He’d come home with things he’d found ‘by the roadside’—a new television still in the box, a microwave when ours broke. You get the idea.”

Jessica frowned, palms cradling her baby bump.

“When Dad’s settlement finally came in, I was incredibly relieved. I’d been accepted to college and I was on the brink of not going because money was just too tight.” Duffy had lost ten pounds worrying about his future and theirs. “But the check came in. Dad paid for my first semester of college and off I went, leaving my brother behind to take care of them.” Or so he’d hoped.

Jessica bowed her head, as if steeling herself to hear the worst.

“Greg offered to help run the household by paying the bills. Dad gave him access to his accounts. Greg said he had a new job, and he bought a new car. Soon he had the latest cell phone and a new wardrobe.” Duffy swallowed, wishing there was a different ending to the story. He hadn’t been smart enough to protect his parents at eighteen, but he could protect Jess by being honest so she’d never get swindled again. “Greg told my parents he was being sent for training in San Francisco. He left the week before Thanksgiving, and then he disappeared, along with the money in my dad’s bank account.” Duffy couldn’t look at Jess anymore. But he had to finish. She had to know. “We didn’t have a lot to be thankful for that year.”

Jessica sat very still. “He wouldn’t.”

“He did.” Duffy forced himself to meet her gaze, to keep the emotion out of his voice, to pretend he was over Greg’s betrayal. “Dad didn’t believe it, either. He refused to file a police report. He thought it was all a big mistake.” That went on for about a year, until his old man could no longer avoid the truth—Greg was a thief. And not even a principled thief like Robin Hood. “I found a job working at a vineyard and kept going to school. I lived frugally—no cell phone, a car I was constantly working on to keep running, borrowing books from friends taking the same classes. Because my parents still needed financial help.”

Outside, thunder rolled. Inside, a log popped. Between them, tension crackled.

It had to be done. If she continued to romanticize Greg, she’d be an easy mark for the next guy. She had to hear all of it.

“I tried to find Greg after I graduated from college. I never located him, but I learned he was quite the ladies’ man, seducing women and taking their money.” Most of the women had been married and didn’t want to admit they’d been played. “I have no idea why Greg filled out next-of-kin papers on his bank accounts or created a living trust for his assets. That’s the only way we found out he’d died.”

“You really think he stole from me?” she asked in a small voice, staring at her baby bump.

“I know he did.”

“So...” Those dark, trustworthy eyes lifted to his. “Some of the money you recovered could be mine.”