into his arms, the little spit hearts she’d draw on his belly before she’d settled beneath him so sweet and giving he couldn’t think of anything but burying himself inside her.
Now as he watched her come closer, every poisonous word his parents had said shrieked in his ears. She was no good. A Glide. She’d trapped him and ruined his life. If he ever expected to see a penny of their money, he had to divorce her. He deserved something better than a roach-infested apartment and a too-young mountain girl, even one so tender and joyous she made him weep with love for her.
Panic welled inside him as his new friends called out to her. “Hey, Cookie Girl, you got any peanut butter?”
“How much for two packs of chocolate chip?”
He wanted to run, but it was too late. His new friends were already examining the cookies she’d baked that morning while he slept. One of them leaned forward and tickled his son’s belly. Another turned back to him.
“Hey, Jimbo, come on over here. You haven’t tasted anything until you’ve tried this little girl’s cookies.”
Amber had looked up at him, laughter dancing in eyes as blue as a mountain sky. He could see her waiting for the moment he would tell them she was his wife, and he knew she was savoring the humor of the situation as she savored everything about their life together.
“Yeah, uh… okay.”
Her smile remained bright as he walked toward her. He remembered that her light brown hair had been pulled into a ponytail with a blue rubber band, and that she’d had a wet spot on the shoulder of his old plaid shirt where Cal must have drooled.
“I’ll take the chocolate chip.”
Her head tilted quizzically to the side-
“Chocolate chip,” he repeated.
Her faith in his honor was infinite. She waited patiently. Smiled. He slipped his hand in his pocket and drew out a quarter.
Only then, when he held out the money, did she understand. He wasn’t going to acknowledge her. It was as if someone had turned out a light inside her, extinguishing her laughter and joy, her faith in him. Hurt and bewilderment clouded her features. For a moment she only stared at him, but, finally, she reached into the buggy for the cookies and held them out with a trembling hand.
He tossed her the quarter, one of four she’d given him that morning before he’d left for class. He tossed her the quarter as if she were nothing more than a street corner beggar, then he laughed at something one of the other guys said and turned away. He didn’t look at her, just walked away while the cookies burned in his hand like pieces of silver.
It had happened more than three decades ago, but now his eyes were stinging. He set the coffee on the counter. “What I did was wrong. I’ve never forgotten it, never forgiven myself, and I’m sorry.”
“Apology accepted.” She flicked on the faucet, putting a deliberate end to the subject. When she turned off the water, she said, “Why did Cal have to marry her? Why couldn’t they just have lived together long enough for him to see what kind of woman she is?”
But he didn’t want to talk about Cal and his cold wife. “You should have spit in my face.”
“I just wish we’d met Jane ahead of time.”
He hated her easy dismissal of his wrong, especially when he suspected she hadn’t dismissed it at all. “I want you back, Lynn.”
“Maybe we could have changed his mind.”
“Stop it! I don’t want to talk about them! I want to talk about us, and I want you back.”
She finally turned, and she gazed at him out of blue, mountain sky eyes that revealed nothing. “I never left.”
“The way you were. That’s what I want.”
“You
To his dismay, he could feel his throat closing up, but even so, he couldn’t be silent. “I want it the way it was at the beginning. I want you silly and funny, imitating the landlady and teasing me for being too serious. I want dandelions back on the dinner table, and fatback and beans. I want you to start giggling so hard you wet your pants, and when I walk in the door, I want you to throw yourself at me like you used to.”
Her forehead crinkled with concern. She walked over to him and rested her hand on his arm in the same comfort-place she’d been touching for nearly four decades.“I can’t make you young again, Jim. And I can’t give you back Jamie and Cherry and everything the way it used to be.”
“I know that, dammit!” He shook her off, rejecting her pity and her suffocating, never-ending kindness. “This isn’t about them. What happened has made me realize I don’t like the way things are. I don’t like the way you’ve changed.”
“You’ve had a hard day. I’ll give you a back rub.”
As always, her sweetness made him feel guilty, unworthy, and mean. It was the meanness that had been driving him lately and telling him to push her so far, to hurt her so badly, that he’d destroy the icy reserve and find the girl he’d thrown away.
Maybe if he gave her some evidence that he wasn’t as bad as he knew himself to be, she’d soften. “I’ve never screwed around on you.”
“I’m glad to know that.”
He couldn’t let it go at that, giving her only the part of the truth he wanted her to see. “I had chances, but I never went all the way. Once I got myself right to the motel door-”
“I don’t want to hear this.”
“But I backed off. God, I felt good about that for at least a week. Smug and self-righteous.”
“Whatever you’re doing to yourself, I want you to stop it right now.”
“I want to start over. I thought maybe on our vacation… but we hardly talked to each other. Why can’t we start over?”
“Because you’d hate it now just as much as you hated it then.”
She was as unreachable as a distant star, but he still needed to touch her. “I loved you so much, you know that, don’t you? Even when I let my parents talk me into agreeing to a divorce, I still loved you.”
“It doesn’t matter now, Jim. Gabe came along, and then Ethan, and there wasn’t any divorce. It was all so long ago. There’s no sense in stirring up the past. We have three wonderful sons and a comfortable life.”
“I don’t want to be comfortable!” Fury exploded inside him, fueled by frustration.“Goddammit! Don’t you understand anything? Jesus, I hate you!” In all their time together, he had never once touched her in violence, but now he grabbed her arms and shook her. “I can’t stand this any longer! Change back!”
“Stop it!” Her fingers dug into his upper arms. “Stop it! What’s wrong with you?”
He saw the fear on her face, and he jerked away, appalled by what he’d done.
Her icy reserve had finally melted, leaving rage behind, an emotion he’d never until that moment seen on her face.
“You’ve been torturing me for months!” she cried. “You belittle me in front of my own sons. You poke at me and jab me and draw blood in a thousand ways every day! I’ve given you everything, but it’s still not enough. Well, I won’t put up with it anymore! I’m leaving you! I’m finished!” She raced from the kitchen.
Panic welled inside him. He started to run after her, but then stopped just as he reached the door. What would he do when he caught her? Shake her again? Christ. What if he’d finally pushed her too far?
He drew a deep breath and told himself she was still his own Amber Lynn, sweet and gentle as a mountain afternoon. She wouldn’t leave him no matter what she said. She just needed time to calm down, that was all.
As he heard her car peel out of the driveway, he kept repeating the same thing to himself.
She wouldn’t leave him. She couldn’t.
Lynn’s chest was so tight that she had to gasp for breath as she raced along the narrow, winding road. It was a treacherous piece of highway, but she’d been driving it for years, and not even her tears made her slow down. She knew what he wanted from her. He wanted her to open her veins again and bleed with love for him the way she once had. Bleed with love that would never be returned.
