Chapter 12 #2
“She landed herself in prison by passing bad checks all over the island for years. Hell, I wrote off more than five hundred bucks in bad debt with her name on it.”
“You didn’t press charges?” Mac asked, incredulous.
Joe shrugged. “Would’ve just been piling on at that point, and I wouldn’t have gotten the money back.”
“Sometimes I wish my mother could’ve seen it that way, too,” Mac said.
“She had no way to know you’d end up marrying the woman’s daughter.”
“Still. . .” Mac’s face was set in a pensive expression that Joe didn’t often see from his usually confident friend. “I just hope she doesn’t cause any trouble. Maddie is so happy, and after everything she’s been through, she deserves a beautiful wedding with no complications.”
“You both deserve that. Leave it to your best man and your brothers to run interference.”
Mac smiled. “Gladly.”
Kay Lawrence rushed by them, casting a menacing scowl at Joe before she left the diner.
“Whoo,” Mac said, whistling. “Mama Bear is not happy with you.”
“Her baby bear got exactly what he deserved.”
“You won’t hear me arguing.”
Linda approached their table. “Scoot over, you two,” she said to Mac and Thomas.
Pretending to be put out by her, Mac made room for his mother.
“Now, give me that baby.”
Smiling, Mac handed Thomas over to his new grandmother. Joe marveled at how far they’d all come, from Linda not approving of Mac’s relationship with a woman unfairly branded the town tramp to Linda holding the woman’s child like he was her own flesh and blood.
“How’s my little man today?” Linda cooed, kissing the baby until he giggled with delight.
“I’m here, too, Mom,” Mac said with a petulant pout.
Never taking her focus off the baby, she said, “Yeah, yeah. Good morning, my darling Malcolm. Better?”
Mac scowled at her use of his dreaded first name. “Go back to ignoring me. Please.”
Joe laughed at their banter. “So,” he couldn’t help but ask, “what were you and Kay up to over there?”
“She thinks we need to try to get Janey and David back together.”
The news hit Joe like a punch to the gut, and it was all he could do to refrain from sucking in a sharp deep breath.
Apparently tuning in to his dismay, Mac met his gaze and rolled his eyes. “Tell me you didn’t agree to be part of that, Mom.”
“I agreed to think about it.”
Mac’s eyes bugged out of his head. “You gotta be kidding me! The guy cheated on your daughter! You can’t still want to see her married to him!”
Linda sighed and seemed to sag a bit. “Kay makes a good point about how long they’ve been together. I don’t want Janey to have any regrets.”
Mac snorted. “The only regret she would’ve had is if she’d married him and then found out he’s a cheating scumbag.”
“He swears it only happened once.”
“And you believe that? Come on, Mom. Get real.”
Paralyzed, Joe listened to their back-and-forth with a growing sense of dismay.
“Is that Janey’s mug?” Linda asked Joe. “She has one just like it.”
He looked up to find Mac zeroed in on him, but before he could say anything, Thomas let out a lusty wail, demanding his new daddy’s full attention.
Joe took that as his cue to escape. “Gotta run, folks. I’m on the nine.”
Distracted by the baby, Mac and Linda uttered hasty good-byes.
Outside, Joe took deep, gulping breaths of fresh air, hoping to slow his charging heart.
Here they were trying to keep their relationship a secret, and a stupid cow mug had nearly undone the whole thing.
Mac might’ve been distracted by Thomas, but later, when he had time to think about it, he’d wonder what Joe was doing with an odd mug that was exactly like one his sister owned.
“Shit,” Joe muttered as he made his way to the ferry landing.
And Kay Lawrence, determined to fix things for her creep of a son.
. . That news didn’t exactly make Joe’s day, either.
“You gotta have faith in Janey. She knows what he is. It’ll take more than a couple of scheming mothers to undo the damage he did. ”
“Having a nice chat with yerself?”
The voice startled Joe out of his musings. Big Mac McCarthy’s best friend, cab driver Ned Saunders, leaned against his battered woody station wagon waiting for his next fare.
Joe shook his hand. “How goes it, Ned?” The grizzled old man wore tattered khaki shorts with a T-shirt that read, “Squeeze Your Lemons on a Lobsta.”
“Getting tossed in jail and talking to yerself. What’s going on with ya, boy?”
Joe released a huff of laughter. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Never known ya to be one to take care of things with ya fists.”
“Your buddy Big Mac has already given me the same lecture.”
“I heard he didn’t make ya spend the night this time,” Ned said, chortling with laughter.
“Now that you’ve had your entertainment for the day, I gotta boat to catch.”
Ned went back to perusing a copy of the Gansett Gazette. “Give her some time, boy. She’ll come round.”
Startled, Joe stopped and turned back to stare at the older man. “What’d you say?”
“Ya heard me right the first time.” Ned nodded to the ferry landing. “Looks like they’re gonna leave without ya.”
Questions cycled through Joe’s mind: how did Ned know?
What did Ned know? Who else knew? But the questions had to wait, because the ferry wouldn’t, and Joe needed to get back to his office on the mainland.
As much as he hated to leave the island—especially with David still in town—Joe had a business to run, and last time he checked, it didn’t run itself.
Jogging down the hill to the ferry landing, Joe felt torn in a thousand different directions.
His love for Janey had always been one of the simple truths in his life.
How, then, he wondered as he dashed aboard the boat just as the final warning horn sounded, had the simplest thing become so damned complicated?