them.”
Soon after, a spent Joanna ended the call. Butch had evidently given up trying to call, since the phone didn’t ring again. Sitting in the mall, with the overheated but silent telephone still cradled in her hand, Joanna sat staring blindly at the carefree Sunday after-noon throng moving past her.
And then, sitting with her back to the noisy fountain, Joanna could almost hear her father’s voice. “Never run away from a fight, Little Hank,” D. H. Lathrop had told her.
Joanna was back in seventh grade. It was the morning after she had been suspended from school for two days for fighting with the boys who had been picking on her new friend, Marianne Maculyea.
“No matter what your mother says,” her father had counseled in his slow, East Texas drawl, “no matter what anyone says, you’re better off making a stand than you are running away “
“So other people won’t think you’re a coward?” Joanna had asked.
“No,” he had answered. “So
The vivid memory left Joanna shaken. It was as though her father and Marianne were ganging up on her, with both of them telling her the exact same thing. They both wanted her to stop running and face whatever it was she was up against.
Standing up, Joanna stuffed the phone in her pocket and then headed for the mall entrance. Getting into the Crown Victoria was like climbing into an oven. The steering wheel scorched her fingertips, but she barely noticed. With both her father’s and Marianne’s words still ringing in her heart and head, she started the engine and went looking for the side road that would take her away from the mall.
As she drove, she felt like a modern-day Humpty Dumpty. She had no idea if what had been broken could be put back together, but D. H. Lathrop and Marianne were right. Joanna couldn’t give up without a fight. Wouldn’t give up without a fight. Maybe she didn’t owe that much to Butch Dixon or even to Jenny, but Joanna Brady sure as hell owed it to herself.
It was almost two by the time Joanna returned to the hotel. She pulled up to the door, where a florist van was disgorging a mountain of flowers. Dodging through the lobby, Joanna held her breath for fear of meeting up with some of the other wedding guests. In her current woebegone state, she didn’t want to see anyone she knew.
When she opened the door to their room, the blackout cur twins were pulled. Butch, fully clothed, was lying on top of the covers, sound asleep. She tried to close the door silently, but the click of the lock awakened him. “Joey?” he asked, sitting up. “Is that you?”
She switched on a light. “Yes,” she said.
“You’re back. Where did you go?”
“Someplace where I could think,” she told him.
Rather than going near the bed, Joanna walked over to the table on the far side of the room. Pulling out a chair, she sat down and folded her hands into her lap.
“What did you decide?” Butch asked.
“I talked to Marianne. She said I should cone back and hear what you have to say.”
“Nothing happened, Joey,” Butch said. “Between Lila and me, mean. Not now, anyway. Not last night.”
“But you used to be an item?”
“Yes, but that was a long time ago, before I met you. Still,” Butch added, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Joanna asked the question even though she feared what the answer might be. “If nothing happened, what do you have to be sorry for?”
“I shouldn’t have been with Lila in the first place,” Butch admitted at once. “After the rehearsal dinner, she offered me a ride back to the hotel. I should have come back with someone else, but I didn’t. I was pissed at you, and I’d had a few drinks. So I came back with Lila instead. At the time, it didn’t seem like that bad an idea.”
“I see,” Joanna returned stiffly.
