A Woman Like Annie. Inglath Cooper
of lemon Pledge and a bucket of soapy water.
Jack flicked on a light, then stood in the hallway, giving himself a moment to acquaint memory with reality. He ventured down the front hallway, his footsteps echoing around him. It was a sad, no-one-lives-here sound that did not fit his memories of a childhood rich with all the things that make a house a home. Warm cooking smells. Winter evenings spent in front of a crackling fire. Summer afternoons on the back porch drinking lemonade.
The memories stung.
“Jack?”
He swung around, and there in the doorway stood Essie Poindexter. Rounder than he remembered. But with the same smile that connected in a straight line from her mouth to her eyes.
Emotion had a lock on his throat. “Essie,” he finally said.
“Land’s sake, I can’t believe it’s really you, son.”
They stepped forward at the same time, meeting halfway across the room in a fierce hug, he towering over her short, stout frame, she with her chubby arms locked tight about his waist.
When he finally pulled back, tears marked her round cheeks. He reached out and rubbed them away with his thumbs. She hadn’t changed much, a few more lines in her face, maybe, softened, though, by the warm welcome there. The sight of her deluged him with reminders of a childhood in which she had played a more-than-significant part. For as long as he could remember, she had lived in a house his father had built for her at one end of the farm. She’d been hired as a housekeeper to help out Jack’s mother, but Jack had always thought of her as family.
“I saw lights coming up the driveway and figured I better see who it was. Thought you could slip in without seeing old Essie, huh?” she asked, the hurt behind the question barely concealed.
He pulled her against his chest again and rubbed her slightly humped back with the palm of his hand. “Of course I was coming to see you, Es.”
“I’d say it’s about time,” she said, pulling away to squint up at him. She stepped farther back and took a longer look. “I remember your father at thirty-three. You look just like him. Handsome as the day is long. I just wish you two had mended your fences.”
He held up a hand. “Essie, don’t, okay?”
“I expected to see you here for the funeral, son,” she said, her words colored with equal doses of admonishment and disappointment. “I know you never got to know her, but she was your stepmother. She was sick for a good while.”
“I didn’t know. But I’m sorry about it, Essie. I was out of the country when it happened. I didn’t receive word until the day after the funeral. Besides, I wouldn’t have belonged there, anyway.”
She gave him a look of disagreement, then pressed her lips together as if deciding this wasn’t the time to argue. She reached for the cover draped across the closest chair and yanked it off, sending up a puff of dust. “Give me a couple hours, and I’ll have this place looking livable,” she said, tugging at the sheet on the couch. “If you’d have let me know you were coming, I’d already have it done.”
“You don’t have to do that. I’m only staying a couple nights, Es. That’s all.”
Essie didn’t say anything for several moments, the sheet in her hands slumping to the floor. “You’re really going through with it then? Selling the factory.”
“It’s for the best.”
“For who?” she asked quietly. “Surely, not this town.”
“Essie—”
She raised a hand and cut him off. “I know you think you have your reasons, Jack. And Lord knows at the time, I had a hard time understanding why your father did what he did. But sometimes, you’ve got to step a little closer for the picture to come into focus.”
“Dad left the business to Daphne when he died. I think that made his feelings pretty clear. If he had wanted me to have it, he would have left it to me. Anyway, I didn’t come back to rehash the past,” he said, the words coming out harsher than he’d intended. Meeting the older woman’s sorrowful gaze, he immediately regretted his abruptness.
“Then why did you come back? You could have sold off this place and that business without ever setting foot in this house.”
“I know.”
“Then why did you?”
“I’m not sure,” he answered, his tone softening, honest in this, at least. He’d never been able to lie to Essie. Even at eight when he’d raided the kitchen cookie jar before dinner and had the worst stomachache of his life, he’d owned up.
“Could I ask one thing of you then, son? Don’t leave again until you can answer that question for me.”
CHAPTER THREE
ON THE OTHER end of the country, J. D. McCabe had spent the better part of the day stewing. Stretched out now on a lounge chair by the swimming pool in his backyard, he muttered a few curses at the fairer gender’s inability to see reason.
Dadblame Annie’s hide. What in the world had happened to the moldable woman he’d married? There had been a time when he could snap his fingers, and she’d practically run to meet whatever need he needed met.
She was still mad at him for running off with Cassie, that much he knew. But damn it all to hell, two divorced adults ought to be able to work things out in a dignified manner. He wanted to see his son, and she was bending over backward to make sure that didn’t happen. He was no dummy. Women had an unbelievable need for revenge when they considered themselves mistreated, and Annie had decided to use their son as her weapon of choice.
Why couldn’t she just get over it?
He flipped onto his stomach, reached for the Bloody Mary Cassie had brought out to him a few minutes ago and took a long sip. The generous portion of alcohol she had added to his tomato juice burned a gulch down his throat and lit a simultaneous fire under his already well-stoked indignation. He wasn’t going to stand for Annie being so selfish. He had rights. Not to mention he was a celebrity with five commercials running on network TV.
And Tommy was his son. With his genes. His potential to be a great ball player some day.
But not if she brought him up believing ballet was just as admirable as baseball if that was a person’s chosen passion.
Let him decide if that’s what he wants for himself, J.D.
Wrong! On some things, a child had to be pointed in a certain direction, shoved along a little, if necessary. How the heck was a six-year-old supposed to know what he wanted to do with his life? If J.D. wasn’t mistaken, the boy was going to have his daddy’s arm. And if Tommy was told he was going to be a great baseball player like his dad, then odds were he would be.
But Annie was so convinced she was right not to push the boy. In his opinion, this was just one more way for her to pay him back. By denying him the chance to see his own talent reflected back in his son.
Who did she think she was? She’d been nothing more than a starry-eyed teenager when he’d met her in Atlanta. He’d given her a life most girls would have run barefoot across nails for a chance at. But of course Annie had never appreciated it. Had always looked at the few negatives of his career. She’d hated the traveling, the moving around. Why had she never seen the excitement in it? Exposure to new things, new people. J.D. thrived on that. And Annie’s inability to bend even one iota had been the true cause of the end of their marriage. She could be mad at him until the sun turned blue, but the way he saw it, she was the one at fault for their splitting up, anyway.
And now she wanted to keep him from seeing Tommy.
He let that simmer for a while. Sweat began to bead on his nose, causing his four-hundred-dollar sunglasses to slip. He shoved them back in place.
The problem with Annie was that she’d developed way too big an opinion