Because You Loved Me. M. William Phelps
after checking his e-mail, Chris pushed himself away from his desk and decided to buzz Jeanne at home one more time. It was a few minutes after seven.
But she still wasn’t answering.
She’s probably busy cleaning up, thought Chris. No big deal.
When Chris reached his car, he picked up his cell phone, which was sitting on the front seat, where he had left it. It was 7:15 P.M., he knew, after looking at the LCD time display on the phone. He was hoping to see a message from Jeanne. But, instead, Billy’s number was staring back at him.
Nicole?
Indeed, it was Nicole; she had called five minutes before, at 7:10 P.M.
Odd, thought Chris. Nicole calling him.
“I had always told Nicole,” said Chris, “that it was important to leave brief, short and sweet voice mails. I don’t like long, drawn-out messages, and she knew it. Although, it wasn’t unusual for her to leave a detailed message; however, I always told her not to be so winded. That is the only reason why I saved that particular voice mail.”
For whatever reason, Nicole’s message was tedious to the point of rambling. Instead of being pithy, as Chris had explained to her more times than he could recall, Nicole began, “Chris…I was unable to reach anyone at home. I just tried calling the house. My mom’s not home yet. It’s getting late. I figured she’d be with you. Just wanted to let you guys know me and Billy will be late for dinner.” As if Chris didn’t know, Nicole added, “It’s Billy’s last day here…. He’s going back to Connecticut tomorrow….” She was calm, recalled Chris. Not one imperfection or stumble in her sweet teenage voice. Chris could even hear Billy in the background telling Nicole to let Chris know where they’d be and how long they’d be out.
“Give him my number,” Chris heard Billy shout.
Then Nicole spoke again: “It’s getting kind of late”—according to Chris, Nicole sounded “cool as a cucumber” here as she spoke—“so we are just wondering if she (mom) was with you. We really don’t know when we’ll be back. Call us on Billy’s cell phone if you need me.”
Sitting in his car listening to Nicole’s voice mail didn’t affect Chris one way or another. It was typical Nicole speak. She had always been good about telling Jeanne where she was and when she’d be home. Obviously, she couldn’t reach Jeanne and figured she’d call Chris and fill him in so he could relay the message to Jeanne when he saw her. Nicole was good like that. It wasn’t until Billy entered the picture that she’d started to fall back on communicating with Jeanne regularly, and even then it was spare. Still, Chris accepted that Billy and Nicole were kids, and tried to explain to Jeanne more than once that it was in their nature to break the rules.
“He’ll be gone soon, Jeannie,” Chris told Jeanne earlier that week. “Let them have their fun. It’s almost over. She’ll find another boy soon enough.”
Jeanne couldn’t keep watch over Nicole 24/7. She knew that. She had to trust her on some level. Nicole’s relationship with Billy, as far as Jeanne saw it, was going to fizzle soon enough. Nicole had her junior year of high school ahead of her. She needed to redeploy her mind back to schoolwork. If Billy loved her the way he said he did, he was going to wait until she graduated. No two ways about it.
Before pulling out of his driveway, Chris saved the voice mail and decided to phone Jeanne once more. Maybe she wants a bottle of wine?
Once again, no answer. But Chris wasn’t alarmed by Jeanne’s sudden absence from the house. “I truly thought that she was just busy. Drew was always going somewhere, doing something. It occurred to me that Jeannie was perhaps dropping him off at a friend’s, or taking him out somewhere in town.”
She could also be across the street or at a neighbor’s house next door talking. Maybe she took off to the store.
The road to Jeanne’s was an autopilot drive for Chris—one he had traveled so many times throughout the past three years he couldn’t count. His car, he jokingly said, drove him there; he didn’t have to think about where he was going.
Closer to the house, Chris stopped at a 7-Eleven convenience store located directly in back of Jeanne’s house. He picked up a bottle of soda. It took him approximately four minutes to walk into the store and get back to his car. More out of habit than any other reason, he picked up his cell phone one more time to check if Jeanne had called.
She hadn’t.
Chris looked out across the street from the 7-Eleven. Huh? From the parking lot, he could see Jeanne’s car parked in her driveway.
She was definitely home.
CHAPTER 7
Nicole and Billy didn’t stay too long at Leda Lanes playing pool. Nor had they hung out at Bruster’s Ice Cream shop down the street for more than a few minutes. At intervals between 6:00 and 7:00 P.M., they sat in the parking lot of 7-Eleven directly behind Nicole’s house, wondering how they were going to convince Jeanne that Billy wasn’t leaving New Hampshire alone.
Two kids desperate to be together. Beneath the adolescent image of their relationship, there were perhaps frames of good intentions, yet they just couldn’t get around their own selfishness. They focused on the negative, regularly asking themselves why nobody understood the love they shared wasn’t some sort of fleeting high-school romance that could end with a simple good-bye peck on the cheek? Nicole wasn’t about to stand there like a “good girl” at the end of her driveway and wave to Billy as he left for Connecticut, not knowing when or if she’d ever see him again. Jeanne had to understand. Why was she being so darn stubborn about it all? How many kids could say they found true love? Billy had spent the past five days at the house. Besides a few arguments Nicole and Jeanne had had, Billy’s stay had been pleasant. Jeanne had even mentioned to Chris how uncomplicated the week had been. He wasn’t John-Boy Walton, but he wasn’t a bully or punk, either. Billy Sullivan seemed “OK.”
Jeanne adored Nicole and wanted only what was best for her. It was never about Billy’s attitude, behavior or goals in life. It hadn’t mattered that he was set to graduate from high school next year with honors and continue a career at McDonald’s as a line-cook manager. What mattered more than anything to Jeanne was that Nicole had two years of high school left herself—and she was going to damn-well finish them without complication or meddling from some kid living one hundred miles away in Connecticut. It was that simple.
Throughout the early part of that evening, while biding Billy’s time, Nicole was entirely confused and torn about what to do. She wanted to approach her mother one last time. Confront her and plead with her. Ask her why she was being so bullheaded. This last night together with Billy was perhaps reminiscent of the first time Nicole met Billy in person, after speaking to him online and over the phone for two months. It was August 2002. Nicole had somehow managed to convince Jeanne to drive her to Willimantic. Jeanne agreed, giving into pleas of “Please, Mom…I need to see him,” but demanded she chaperone the eight-hour visit. When they left Connecticut later that day, Nicole knew then what she had always believed: Billy was the one. There was no doubt. She was hopeless when they pulled out of Billy’s driveway. “Hysterical” during the two-hour ride home, she said later.
“I couldn’t stop crying the whole way home. I didn’t know what to do with myself.”
From that day on, because Billy didn’t have a license or a car then, Nicole and Billy rarely saw each other. But now he had his own vehicle. When he arrived the previous Friday, it was a surprise to Nicole. As far as Jeanne and Chris knew, Billy hadn’t told Nicole he had gotten his license or a car. Now, though, the surprise was over. Billy was leaving. There was nothing they could do about it. Rules were rules. Nicole was a minor. “I knew the cops would be at my door in two days,” Billy said later, “if I just took off with Nicole and brought her to Connecticut…. The way we saw it is, we could be married on the side of the street in a cardboard box with no clothes and no food and we’d be happy.”
As they sat at the 7-Eleven and talked over