Page 94 of Jessica, Not Her Real Name
Okay. Choir boy, maybe not.“So your parents made you get married?”
He shook his head. “Not mine. My daddy gave me three hundred dollars, the keys to his truck, and directions to a clinic in Knoxville.” He glanced at her quickly. “Only if she’d wanted too, of course.”
“But she didn’t?”
A deep wail, precursor to another massive gust, interrupted him before he could answer. It sounded like an incoming freight train, and it hit the house with about as much force. She grabbed Inglis’s arm as the room buckled sideways. Outside, she heard things falling and hitting the ground. Crockery, the tins of food, the kitchen chairs. The door to their room rattled like the hurricane herself was trying to get in.
They both stared at the door and then at each other. She swallowed, letting go of his arm. Then she nodded at him, wanted him to go on with his story, wanting to think of anything else but the storm outside.
He inhaled deeply. “Her folks wouldn’t let her get a termination. Her daddy was a pastor. Of the fire and brimstone variety. Threatened to disown her if she went through with it. Threatened to come after me with a twelve bore if I didn’t do right by her.”
“Seriously?”
He nodded. “I had to go hide out in my daddy’s hunting cabin in the mountains till he calmed down.” He said it with a smile that quickly faded. “We didn’t seem to think getting married was the worst idea at the time. We were young. And dumb. And in love.”
“Yeah,” she said softly. “I know how that goes.”
He didn’t respond, and they were both quiet for a spell. “So…” she drew the word out, “you have a kid?”
The ball of his jaw tightened again. He forked his fingertips through his hair, then gave his head a quick shake. “No. She lost the baby. She was nearly full term, eight and a half months. But there was no heartbeat. So, she had to go through labor, the whole birth and everything. But the baby was…” He swallowed hard and didn’t continue.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
He dropped his head, pressed his fingertips to his eyelids. “It was awful. For everyone. But mostly for her. Her daddy told her it was God punishing us for having been so ungrateful of His gift in the first place.”
Her eyebrows flew up, and he gave her a wry look. “Oh, yeah. Randy Hyssop was a mean son of a bitch on a good day.” He sighed, looking down at his lap. “I’d just turned eighteen. I had no idea how to deal with any of it. All I could think was that I wished we’d taken the three hundred bucks and the trip to Knoxville.”
He glanced at her, right in the eyes, like he expected to see some judgment reflected in them. She took his hand again and squeezed it, like he’d done to hers earlier.
“We tried to make it work,” he said. “Moved west, to Memphis. I went to college; she went to nursing school. But she wasn’t coping. She had a lot of guilt, I think. Over the baby. She seemed to think it was her fault somehow. Like she actually believed what her daddy said about the miscarriage. She’d started taking these antidepressants, and then she started taking pain pills. Then she started stealing scrips and meds from the hospital where she worked.” He looked down at his lap. “She just spiraled. I found out she had a dealer. Then I found out she was screwing her dealer.” He inhaled, then shook his head. “So, yeah. That ended that.”
He stared down at their joined hands, like he expected them to enter the conversation. “We never actually got divorced. We just kind of stopped being married. She took off up north somewhere.” He shrugged. “I think she has a kid now. A boy.”
They were both quiet again. Listening to the heavy beat of the rain and the soft hiss of the candle. The building continued to sway with the wind, like a ship at sea. She’d gotten so used to it now that she expected when the storm was finally over, she’d have trouble walking on steady ground.
“You don’t still keep in touch?”
“Oh, she still calls and texts me occasionally.” His jaw tightened. “When she wants something. Money, usually.” He shook his head and sighed. “But whatever else we had is over. Which is for the best.” He paused, then added, “Relationships are like glass. Sometimes it’s better to leave them broken than to hurt yourself trying to put them back together.”
She smiled at him. “That was deep.”
He returned the smile. “It’s something my mama said to me once. I never forgot it.”
“She sounds like a wise lady.”
He nodded, his smile turning sad. “She was.”
She looked up and, without thinking, reached out a hand to smooth the back of his hair, at the place he was constantly fidgeting with. “But your wife knew, right? That you loved her?”
He shook his head, although she knew he wasn’t saying no. “Yeah. Kylie knows.” The way he said it, in the present tense, made her think he did still love her. And that maybe she loved him, too. He turned to look at her. “But it’s not enough, you know. Love.”
No, she thought.Sometimes it’s not.
THIRTY
In a sudden draftfrom under the door, the candle guttered and nearly went out. Ryan sat up and adjusted it in its mug, making it flicker and casting eerie shadows onto the walls.
Everything felt strange. That they were stuck in this one small room in a house in the middle of nowhere. In the middle of a hurricane. That she was sharing deeply personal stories with this man, who was basically a stranger.
