“Baby, I need to go meet my client now. The painting will have to wait.”
Then, on an impulse, Jacquie threw her arms around Drew, kissed him soundly on the mouth, forcing herself not to linger and taste, to get her body revved up for nothing. The kiss wasn’t for Drew’s sake, or even her own. It was to show Lucy Carpenter this man was off-limits.
Jacquie stepped away from Drew and felt Lucy’s gaze on her. She smiled an internal smile of smug satisfaction. Especially when she lowered her eyes to the fly of Drew’s pants and saw that her little “goodbye” kiss had awakened him with a little “hello” that only she would notice.
“Well, it was nice meeting you,” Lucy said, then took her two boys and guided them to a booth.
Walking outside, Jacquie found her Jaguar in the lot and took one last look at Drew, who was headed for his Hummer.
If she didn’t love him so much, she would have cared that he walked away without saying much more to her other than he’d see her around, call her later.
Fingering a cigarette out of the soft pack, she lit up.
But she did love him, and damn if it didn’t hurt like a bitch.
Journal of Mackenzie Taylor
I met Drew Tolman for the first time when I was twelve years old. Momma and I were sitting on the porch sipping Dixie Colas when a big, shiny car pulled up to our curb. She wasn’t expecting him and she just about dropped the glass in her hand.
I remember him staring at me, then looking at Momma, then back at me and looking at me as if he wanted to turn me inside out, to have a better look.
I remember him saying he wanted Momma to take a test. She told him to go to hell.
I figured out something right then. If Drew Tolman was going to hell, I’d likely be going right after him. He was my kin, and I knew it.
I looked just like him, and the face in the mirror that stared at me every day finally made sense. We had the same muddy brown hair, the same hazel eyes, same mouth, and same skin color.
Before he came to see Momma that day, I knew his name was listed on my birth certificate.
I wanted to be his daughter, but he wasn’t ready to be my daddy. I heard him tell Momma that he had to figure out what he was going to do, that he wasn’t convinced on words alone.
Meeting him, I was convinced. I knew what he couldn’t accept.
I didn’t see him again until I was fourteen. By then, it was too late.
I didn’t want to be his daughter anymore.
There are things about a person’s biological composition that my teacher, Miss Oldenburg, says are genetics. You simply can’t change what the good Lord gave us. Miss Oldenburg is of the theological theory, not Mr. Darwin’s, when it comes to man’s creation. I’m of the same mind.
Ever since I was a little girl, I liked playing softball. I don’t know why I took to throwing a ball like that. I asked my momma and she said I was born to it. I never knew what she meant by that because my “daddy” was a long-haul truck driver and Momma didn’t have an athletic bone in her body.
If only I hadn’t found my birth certificate, Momma wouldn’t have had to tell me the truth and I’d still be thinking Bobby Wilder was my daddy.
Before I knew he was my dad, I’d heard of Drew Tolman. When I was seven, Momma took me to Vero Beach to watch the Dodger’s play a spring training game. After the last inning, she left me in the stands with my aunt Lynette and said to wait for her. Momma came back and I could tell she’d been crying. Her and Aunt Lynette spoke in quiet tones and I couldn’t understand them. Momma never took me to Vero Beach again.
Now I know a little bit of what happened on that day. She told Drew she’d brought me with her and she wanted him to see me. He wouldn’t do it.
What pain Momma must have felt….
If Bobby Wilder hadn’t left Momma and me, things might have been different.
Bobby was nice to me and Momma for a time and I liked him. Then he took off one day and we never heard from him again.
After Bobby left, I decided to make Momma a “feel better” card. She kept a big album of cutouts for scrapbooking. Pretty pictures from magazines. I looked in a book I thought had more clip outs, but it wasn’t for scrapbooking. It had some records in it. Important documents.
And my birth certificate where I read “Andrew Tolman” for the Daddy part.
I called Momma up at work and told her she had to come home right away. She did and I asked her why she lied to me about my daddy.
She said she never wanted me to find out this way. She was going to tell me. One day.
I asked Momma if Bobby knew he wasn’t my daddy and she said yes. I’m surprised Bobby went along with it for as long as he did. He wasn’t a bad father, he just had his own set of troubles and he hated living in Florida. He drove trucks for a living and I heard Momma and Aunt Lynette talking that Bobby had a woman in Georgia who he’d been seeing on the side.
Aunt Lynette would say, “Now, Caroline, you always knew nobody could tame Bobby Wilder into the married life and you had him for ten years.”
I don’t know if Momma ever really loved Bobby. I thought she did. And now I can’t ask her. She’s gone.
I miss my mother more than anything.
In February, when Drew came to Florida, I asked him two questions.
1. Why didn’t you want to see
