Читать книгу From Bags to Riches - Sandra D. Bricker - Страница 11

Chapter 3

3

Danny couldn’t remember who had said it—just some anonymous Joe at some AA meeting he’d attended during the peak of his recovery.

“Don’t wait until you’re staring down the neck of the bottle to come to a meeting. Grab your jacket and keys the minute you hear the clink of glass in the next room.”

He wasn’t quite sure why, but the news of Stanton’s designs on winning Jessie back had provided just the clink of motivation he needed.

As usual on his way to the downstairs level of the Lutheran church on Ocean Park, Danny sidetracked to Dogtown Coffee for something more satisfying than the bitter, watered-down concoction served with miniature donuts and odd-shaped muffins at the start of the meeting. The woman in line ahead of him ordered a salted caramel coffee with extra sea-salt foam, and Danny couldn’t help thinking of Jessie. She’d asked for “something caramel” the morning they’d met with Chaz to discuss the sale of her Neil Lane rock. She’d managed to build an entirely new life on that ring; a life that—blessedly—had included opening her heart to someone like him.

Jarring him from the throes of sappy nostalgia, the woman turned with her coffee and Danny found himself face-to-face with a familiar fire, eyes blazing with prickly hatred.

“Jackie,” he declared.

Rebecca’s mother had never managed to come to terms with the events that had torn her daughter from the arms of her family. Worse, he understood. Without the grace God had revealed to him after that terrible night, he didn’t know how he ever could have lived with the torment of getting behind the wheel of a car in that condition . . . and worse, letting his wife climb in beside him.

Jackie didn’t actually spit on him as she sidestepped, but she may as well have. Without a single word spoken, she’d let him know that nothing had changed. She despised Danny for what he’d done.

“What can I get you?” the clerk asked.

Shaking away the scales, he braced himself on the edge of the counter between them. “Large black.”

The last time he’d seen Jackie, he and Jessie had run into her and Brent—Rebecca’s father—out at the pier. The memory momentarily pierced his heart with a hot, sharp knife. But as he paid the clerk for his coffee, he grinned at the recollection of Jessie’s reaction to the venom aimed at him, not unlike a mama cat protecting her kittens, hackles raised. “Danny hasn’t had one drop of alcohol since that night. He served his jail time, and he’s changed his life as a result of that horrible thing that happened—”

“Can I give you a slice of advice, Jessie?” Jackie had spewed in reply. “Run away from Danny Callahan as fast as your legs will carry you before he’s the something that just happens to your life, too.”

As he climbed into the Jeep, Danny sent a silent prayer of thanks upward. If he hadn’t been on his way to a meeting already, he sure would have needed to find one now.

Thirty minutes later, he set his coffee cup next to him on the linoleum floor and found himself on his feet amidst a dozen other ever-recovering alcoholics seated on folding chairs. “I’m Danny, and I’m nearly ten years sober.”

“Hi, Danny,” they hummed. The familiarity of those greetings from a room full of virtual strangers soothed his aching heart.

“The last time I drank,” he told them, his focus trained on the comb-over on the otherwise bald head of the guy in the metal chair ahead of him, “I got behind the wheel with my wife in the seat next to me. She . . . died on impact.”

Claire, a middle-aged woman he saw at meetings from time to time, reached across the back of his chair and touched his arm. The empathetic gesture didn’t reveal how many times she’d heard his story over the years.

“I was headed here today. . . . I’m not sure why, exactly . . . but the woman I’m involved with is being pursued by her ex—a scumbag of a guy—and I just . . . felt drawn.” He wiped his palms on the pockets of his khaki chinos. “I stopped for coffee on the way and ran into my late wife’s mother. She didn’t say anything—not one word—but then she didn’t need to. The way she still looks at me, almost ten years later, says it all.”

“What is that?” the leader, Ray, asked thoughtfully as he leaned on the table at the front of the room. “What does that look in her eye say to you?”

He forced a lopsided smile. “All the things I said to myself after it happened. I’m a loser. Everything I touch turns to crap. I mean, I couldn’t even look at my own reflection in the mirror for the longest time. Because of my own selfish and irresponsible choices, Rebecca’s no longer . . . breathing.”

“And now?” Ray asked.

“Well. At first I had no choice but to quit drinking,” he admitted. “Incarceration will do that for you. But the other thing it does for you is give you time to think. And pray. And get a clear picture of who you are in comparison to the man you wanted to be. Sounds predictable I guess, but I found a God who forgave me before teaching me how to forgive myself and start again.”

“You just wish the mother-in-law could do the same,” Ray assessed with a knowing smile.

“More than I can tell you.”

“I know just what you mean,” a young guy in the back said as he stood. “I’m Rich, and this is my eleventh meeting in three weeks.”

“Hi, Rich,” they all greeted him.

“My folks have put up with the kind of nonsense from me that . . . well, I don’t know how they’ve done it.” Rich ran both hands through his oily dark hair. “But the thing is . . . they can’t manage to take my sobriety seriously, and every time they look at me I can see it in their eyes. They’re just waiting for me to come stumbling home at five in the morning, reeking of beer and puke. I mean . . . I get it. But still. I’d just love to look into their eyes and see them proud of me, you know? Every morning that doesn’t happen, shouldn’t they be proud of me?”

“Let’s remember,” Ray told them as Danny and Rich took their seats again, “the people in our lives—the ones who have known us through the drunken binges and the bail hearings and one wrecked car after another—they’ve been suffering, too. Just like it takes time for us to look at ourselves in the mirror again, it’s going to take time for the people we’ve dragged through the mud with us to watch us rebuild.”

Danny reached for his coffee before resting his ankle on the opposite knee and taking a long drag from the cup.

“The ninth step of our recovery says we should make direct amends to the people we’ve harmed, wherever possible,” Ray reminded them. “How about we go around the room? Let’s hear what everyone has to say about the challenges of rebuilding relationships, and maybe it will help each of us figure out whether recompense can be made.”

Danny had spent a lot of hours praying for guidance, wondering how he could ever possibly make amends to Jackie and Brent for all he’d taken from them. The second segment of the ninth step included a warning about not doing so if it might cause injury. Just a few random seconds face-to-face with him seemingly ignited the hatred in Jackie’s soul all over again, and he came back once again to the notion that the best way to atone might involve disappearing completely, evaporating from the earth so absolutely that his reminders were incapacitated.

Short of moving to a deserted island somewhere . . .

He suppressed a chuckle. Wasn’t that what Stanton had done? It hadn’t managed to bring much forgiveness for him.

***

Jessie decided to wear her hair down, randomly threading several skinny braids and anchoring them with shiny colored beads. She chose a sky-blue maxi dress and sandals, then grabbed a soft navy blue cardigan with jewel-toned gems embellishing the collar in anticipation of chilly breezes out on the water. When Danny arrived, wearing jeans and a light blue denim shirt, she grinned at him.

“We match.”

“We do,” he said before kissing her softly. “Will you braid my hair, too?”

“Of course. I’ll use rhinestones for yours to bring out your eyes.”

Snapping his fingers, he shook his head. “If only we had the time.”

When they settled into the Jeep and Danny turned the key, an NPR discussion blared from the radio.

“Talk radio?” she said with a grimace.

“Tune to your heart’s content.”

When she recognized a couple of notes of Rachmaninoff and decided on a classical station, Danny shot her a sideways glance. “Rachmaninoff. Really?”

“I like it,” she defended. “And apparently you know his work.”

“He’s one of my mom’s favorites,” he told her with a grin. “And I can see you and Mom sitting in a garden, drinking tea, listening to Mozart or something.”

“Now you’re just”—she chuckled—“What are you doing?”

“Why do I have to be doing something? I thought we were talking about music.”

“Classical music.”

He furrowed his brow. “Right. That’s weird, right?”

“A little.”

“Since Dad can’t take it, Mom and I have a couple of dates each year to the Philharmonic.”

“And you learned to love Rachmaninoff?” she teased.

“Love him?” He shook his head against the notion. “No. Appreciate him? Maybe. You?”

“Jack kind of threw me at classical music like a missile,” she said with a chuckle. “Trying to take the Slidell out of the girl, I think. But I found Rachmaninoff, Bach, and Vivaldi. The rest of it belongs in a bin with bluegrass and rap, as far as I’m concerned.”

As they pulled to a stoplight, Danny tossed his head back and laughed. When the light changed to green, he accelerated and darted a look at her as he did. “Speaking of Jack . . .”

“Must we?”

“Rafe called me today.”

Her heart fluttered. “I planned on telling you about it on the ride over, but . . . I guess I forgot.”

“Are you being straight with me?”

“Yes,” she exclaimed. “Truthfully, I put it out of my head and just started looking forward to tonight. I’m excited to see Steph. Which reminds me: don’t keep calling her Steph Neff. She hates that.”

He quirked an eyebrow and his face turned to stone. “If she didn’t want me to remark on it, she should have married a guy with a different last name.”

“Danny. She kept her maiden name just so people wouldn’t do that.”

Softening, he said, “Fine.”

“They’re really sweet together, don’t you think?”

He shrugged. “Vince is the first guy, in all the years I’ve known Steph, that has nudged her toward the awkward side of giddy.”

“Danny.”

“What? I’m saying he suits her.”

She sighed. “There,” she said, lifting his hand to her cheek and nuzzling it. “That was good.”

Danny faced her for a moment, a warm smile melting slowly over his handsome face. “I’m glad you approve.”

“More than approve.” She kissed the bend of his fingers before releasing his hand. “I love you, Danny.”

“Do you?” he asked, his steel-blue eyes fixed on the road ahead.

“Do you doubt it?”

“Maybe a little.”

“Danny,” she exclaimed. “How could you?”

“I guess I’m just in a holding pattern on that particular subject.”

“What? Why?”

His jaw tightened, and he took his time about answering. “When you put that ring on your finger and say you’ll marry me, I suppose I’ll feel more confident about your feelings.”

She sighed and stroked his elbow. “My feelings about you are not in question. My feelings about me—specifically, in regard to matrimony—are a massive problem in giving you an answer.”

Half a mile passed in silence except for the strings of a canon she knew but couldn’t identify. Finally, Danny muttered, “I love you, too.”

Relief washed over her in a soft, sprinkling downpour. “I know,” she replied.

“Oh, you do, huh?”

“Yep. I’m just a better person than you are.”

He laughed again, hearty and strong. “You sure are.”

As they arrived at the marina the sun had just begun to set for the day, leaving the sky with the appearance of a pastel watercolor painting bleeding down into the water. She grabbed her sweater and bag, and Danny guided the way to Steph’s dad’s boat—the one they’d taken out for a cruise the day they met Steph’s fiancé. They’d had such a wonderful and relaxing afternoon on the water, and it seemed to Jessie now like a lifetime ago.

Strings of white lights outlined the deck of the fifty-some-foot yacht, and soft blue electric candles flickered from a table set with linen napkins, fine china, and shimmering crystal. When they spotted a uniformed waiter conversing with Vince, Danny turned to Jessie and quietly asked, “Am I underdressed?”

She giggled as Steph emerged—wearing denim shorts and a pullover sweater—and waved at them. “Welcome aboard,” she exclaimed, and she planted a kiss on Danny’s cheek before tugging Jessie into an enthusiastic hug. “Good to see you guys.”

“You too,” she replied, reaching into her bag for the CD she’d burned with their dinner in mind. “I didn’t know what to bring, so I made dinner music.”

Steph snatched the CD case out of her hand. “It’s perfect.”

“Welcome aboard,” Vince repeated his wife’s greeting. “Callahan and Hart, party of two. Your table is waiting.”

“Hi, Vince,” Jessie said, embracing him.

“Glad you guys could come,” he said, and he reached out to share a handshake with Danny.

“Honey, Jessie made us some music. Can you queue it up while I get them something to drink?”

“You betcha.”

She took Jessie’s hand and led her to where a small bar had been set up. “Name your poison, Jessie. Then tell me all about this ex-nutcase of yours.”

She chuckled. “Ah. Okay. Mineral water with lime?” Steph nodded. “And about Jack, I wish I had some insight for you.”

“It looks like he has a pretty impressive team of attorneys. Any idea how he’s affording that?”

“Does he?” She took a gulp from the glass as soon as Steph handed it to her. “I think you know more about him than I do then. Honestly, I don’t know anything except that he keeps defying a court order to keep his distance from me.”

“He’s like one of those Super Balls Frank likes to chase,” Danny said as Steph handed him a glass. “He bounces higher every time, but he always comes back afterward.”

Jessie smiled at Steph. “Isn’t there something we can do about that?”

As they strolled toward the table, Steph looped her arm through Jessie’s. “What, you mean you’re not enjoying the return of the prodigal husband?”

“What husband? I don’t have a husband.”

Steph chuckled. Leaning closer, she softly remarked, “But I hear you could if you really wanted one.”

Her heart thumped. “He told you.”

“Marg told me he stopped over and got the family ring. So I inquired.”

Jessie giggled. “There are no secrets among you people, are there?”

“Afraid not.” Just as Jessie pulled out a chair, Steph tightened the lock on her arm. “I don’t suppose I need to tell you what an amazing guy he is.”

“No need,” she replied with a grin. “I am aware.”

“Can I just add one thing?”

Like I have a choice?

Jessie nodded. “Of course.”

“You’ve changed him, Jessie. He adores you. And I promise you: he doesn’t have a Jack-like bone in his body.”

The two women stared into each other’s eyes, and Jessie softened. “Thank you, Steph.”

“For what?” Danny asked out of nowhere. They turned like choreographed swimmers, both of them smiling at him as he approached.

“Girl talk, Callahan,” Steph cracked. “Mind your own beeswax.”

“My beeswax?” he repeated, slipping his arm loosely around Jessie’s shoulder. “What are you, ninety? Who says that?”

“You just compared my mother to a ninety-year-old woman. I’m telling!”

Danny sniffed. “Please don’t.”

On the first note of the first song on the CD Jessie had brought along—“Play Me” by Neil Diamond—Vince emerged from the stairs and clapped his hands once before rubbing them together.

“Oldies that are older than we are,” he exclaimed. “Nice work, Jessie.”

Steph greeted him with an open arm. “My husband loves him some classic oldies. If his car radio has ever been tuned away from K-Earth, I don’t know when it was.”

“That’s the station I was listening to when I decided to burn the CD,” Jessie stated. “The music was so good that the mood just struck me to share.”

“And I’ll bet there’s some James Taylor somewhere on that CD,” Danny said.

“You’d win that bet,” she replied, carefully guarding the flutter of emotions behind her own casual smile.

“Why don’t we sit down and have some grub to go with our Neil Diamond,” Vince suggested.

Danny pulled out a chair for Jessie, kissing her temple once she was seated. The simple act sent a flush of warmth through her entire body, kicking up the pace of her heartbeat several notches.

“After dinner, we thought we might hit the open seas for a bit if anyone’s interested,” Vince said as two waiters appeared with domed plates they set before each of them.

“Sounds like a plan,” Danny commented.

As the domes lifted, the sweet aroma of the food beneath wafted quickly past Jessie’s nose like a thick ribbon floating on a passing breeze.

“Maple-glazed salmon filets,” the waiter announced. “Asparagus spears and red potato wedges garnished with diced scallions and halved grape tomatoes.”

“Oh, guys,” Jessie whimpered. “This looks amazing.”

“Well, it should,” Vince said. “I’ve been slaving over the stove all afternoon.”

“And by stove,” Steph cut in, “he means phone.”

“Hey, it took a lot of energy and focus to do all this ordering.”

“Cheddar biscuits,” the second waiter added as he placed a metal basket at the center of the table. He’d barely peeled back the linen cloth before Danny reached in and grabbed two biscuits, one for himself and one that he deposited on Jessie’s plate.

“Pace yourself, Danny,” Steph teased. “There’s plenty of food.”

“Sure, but how many cheddar biscuits are there?” Danny followed his reply with a soft moan at first bite, not caring in the least as his dinner companions laughed at him.

A few moments later, as the first guitar chords of a familiar song plucked Jessie’s heart, she turned toward Danny to find his eyes already fixed on her. She knew they shared one train of thought. He’d revealed to her recently that “Something in the Way She Moves” by James Taylor had been their unofficial song—“At least in my mind,” he’d told her—ever since the first time they’d heard it together while riding in his Jeep. Even after the dozen or more times she’d listened to the song since his revelation—analyzing every lyric, imagining his reaction to it—her heart still beat in unison with the rhythm of the song. She wondered if he felt it too, but the fire ablaze in his eyes now told her he shared the same exhilaration at first note. She had to admit—if only to herself—she’d added this particular song to the CD with hope for just such a reaction.

“Pretty song,” she muttered, and Danny grinned.

“Very.”

“Why do I get the feeling we’re missing something here?” Steph interjected, and they peeled their gazes free from each other.

“What do you mean?” Danny asked.

She gripped the edge of the table with both hands and leaned forward, both sides of her mouth lifted into a comical grin. Drawing the words out for dramatic effect, she teased, “Is this a special song for the two of you?”

Jessie felt crimson heat spill over her entire face and neck, averting her eyes to the salmon before her. “It sort of is, yes.”

“Do tell,” Vince said past the mouthful of potatoes.

“It’s just always . . . reminded me of Jessie.”

Vince and Steph looked at each other, back at Jessie and Danny, then back again at each other.

“Danny and Jessie have a song,” Steph said.

“Isn’t that precious?” Vince replied.

“Okay, okay,” Danny exclaimed. “Enough of your nonsense or we may have to start recounting stupid grins of another sort.”

Steph cackled. “He’s right. Let’s quit while we’re ahead.”

“Agreed. Just after I say this—” Vince joked. “I can go grab a pad of paper if anyone has the inclination to doodle anyone else’s name.”