Page 23 of The Space Between

It’s such a Vicki thing to say that Jeanie laughs. “I always think of it as hotdogs and scraped knees and falling to sleep on a blanket in the grass because I can’t stay up late enough to watch all the fireworks.”

“Well, it isn’t over yet, darlin’,” Vicki says. “Pull over here.” She points at a spot on the street that runs parallel to the beach. “Let’s get out and watch the big show from the sand, shall we?”

The women park and then look both ways, crossing the street hand-in-hand as they hurry across the pavement and down onto the sand. They both immediately kick off their shoes and find a spot on the hard-packed sand where they can see the lights of the fireworks shooting up into the sky all around them. Jeanie sits down and digs her toes into the cool sand.

“Tell me about it, princess.”

“Tell you about what?” Jeanie asks, letting her head fall back as she plants her hands in the sand behind her and trains her gaze on the sky.

“Tell me why you looked white as a sheet when your friend Bill got that phone call.”

Jeanie stays silent for a long time. When she finally speaks, she doesn’t look at Vicki. “It was my dad. He died in the war. Iwas just a kid, but I’ll never forget the look on my mother’s face when she got the call. It came just minutes before we got a knock on the door, so that was unfortunate. The military apparently prefers to let a woman know to her face that she’s just become a widow, but somehow the timing was off.”

“That is unfortunate,” Vicki says softly.

“It was.” Jeanie chews on the inside of her cheek. “And I understand that Jo Booker wasn’t getting that kind of call tonight, but I think the shock of finding out that anyone has died kind of casts a pall over a party, doesn’t it?”

“Well sure.” Vicki blows out a long breath. “It’s a bit of a wet blanket.”

“And Bill’s face once he finally looked at Jo…it was like he knew instantly that she was going to tell him something horrible.” She shudders now at the memory of Jo standing there, stunned, and no one hearing her as she’d called out for her husband.

“Marriage will do that,” Vicki says. “You get to where you know someone so well that they barely need to speak, and sometimes they don’t need to at all. My husband and I were like that, once upon a time. He could glance at my face and know in an instant whether one of the kids was hurt, whether I needed him to stop what he was doing and just listen, or if something serious was going on. It’s just like that.”

Jeanie is quiet. She has no real clue what marriage is like, but she’d watched Jo and Bill this evening and the way they moved together in a dance that seemed almost coordinated, and all she could feel was…like an outsider.

“I remember my parents being like that,” Jeanie says. “But it feels like so long ago. I can hardly remember. Anyway, the whole thing just took me back to that time, and all I could remember was that palpable feeling of horror. Just knowing that someone was dead and that the news had arrived completely unexpected.”

Vicki puts an arm around Jeanie’s shoulders. “Hey, I get it. It brings back bad memories. I could see it all over your face.”

Jeanie leans her head on Vicki’s shoulder. “I’m okay, I just hated that for them.”

The women sit there for a moment as the people closest to them clap and cheer for a particularly bright and impressive fireworks display. Once it quiets down, Vicki jostles Jeanie slightly. “And what about you and the Lieutenant Colonel?” she asks softly. “You gonna tell me what’s going on there?”

Jeanie pulls away and looks at Vicki with wide eyes. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, come on, Jeanette,” Vicki scoffs. “Anyone with eyes can see that the two of you have some sort of interest in one another.”

Jeanie does all the things that a person who is both surprised and caught red-handed might do: she blinks, she looks away, and she turns pink. “No…it’s not like that. I swear.”

Vicki tilts her head to one side, looking at Jeanie with amusement. “Honey, don’t swear too loudly to that, because it’s clear as day that you’ve got eyes for that man. Does he know? Have you told him?”

Jeanie puts a hand to her cheek. “No, of course not.” She turns to face the water, staring straight ahead. Had she ever thought about Bill in that kind of straightforward manner? Has she thought to herselfI’m in love with Bill Booker? No, certainly not, because sheisn’tin love with Bill. But is she interested in him as more than a friend? Is there a part of her that thinks about him as a man and not just a coworker? Jeanie thinks about this for a long, hard minute. And when she’s done contemplating it, she knows that Vicki is right.

“Oh, princess,” Vicki says softly. “You got it bad.”

Jeanie turns to look at her. “You think so?”

“I think so.”

Jeanie scoots in closer and puts her head on Vicki’s shoulder again. She sighs. “That can’t happen.”

There isn’t much to say to that, so the women stay quiet and watch the fireworks together until the show dies down and they make their way back across the street with their shoes in hand. They drive back to their condo barefoot and Jeanie falls asleep almost the second her head hits the pillow.

CHAPTER 10

Bill

When Bill wakesup on the fifth of July, Margaret is still dead. The woman from Desert Sage who’d called to talk to him had told him in no uncertain terms that his first wife had died. She had no pulse. There was no life left in her.

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