Chapter 18
It had been a slow afternoon at the Yellow Rose, so the cleaning they would normally do after they closed was already done.
The cold weather was keeping more people indoors, which turned out good for Pearl.
She had other plans. It was time for her to visit Jacob.
He was her friend, and not going to see him in person might be construed as a slight.
The second the last customer left the Yellow Rose, she locked the doors and flipped the sign to Closed.
Davey, the grill cook, was nearly finished cleaning the kitchen, and she was making a basket of food to take to Jacob.
Darla and Cheryl had swept up the floors.
When Davey finished, Pearl sent everybody home with a last word to keep warm, then ran upstairs to change.
As always, she showered, fussed a bit with what to wear, and then chided herself for the moment of vanity and put on clean blue jeans and a blue cable-knit sweater, warm socks and a pair of black loafers, and called it done.
Then one look at herself in the mirror, and she wanted to call it off.
She never thought about being older, but the mirror didn’t lie.
Fifty-five was there, and looking back. No more curly blond hair.
It was silver now. Visible wrinkles at the corners of her eyes.
Life lines, she called them. She applied a bit of rose-colored lipstick, her one bow to fashion, and then went to get her things.
The sun set early in the winter, and it was already dark outside when she went out the back door of the kitchen, but it was of no consequence. She didn’t have far to go. Once the security alarm was set, she was off.
Her heart was pounding as she drove onto the street, then turned right on the highway and headed to the Tumbleweed. The gas station was lit up like the searchlight on a lighthouse—the one bright light for as far as you could see—and still doing business as she passed.
But as she took the turn into the Tumbleweed, the darkened building felt all wrong.
Normally, the parking lot would be packed.
The bar would be lit from within with all colors of neon lights, and country music from the sound system would be drifting out into the night.
The bar was closed, but Jacob was alive somewhere inside, and that’s all that would ever matter in her world.
She drove around to the back, saw Jacob’s truck and a car, and guessed the car would belong to the nurse. She parked beside it, got out with her basket and purse, and headed up the steps.
To the house that had been built for her.
She knocked three times, and waited.
* * *
It was the evening of Jacob’s second day home.
He was sitting in the living room watching the evening news.
Benny had just gone into the kitchen to heat up some food for Jacob before he went home for the night, when he heard a car pulling up at the back door, and then a few moments later, three sharp knocks.
“I’ll get it,” Benny said, and opened the door to a fairy-size woman with a turned-up nose and a headful of silver curls, carrying an exceedingly large basket.
“I’m Pearl. I came to visit Jacob. I brought food,” she said, handed Benny the basket, and sashayed past him with her chin up, and her blue eyes flashing. It was all bravado. She was scared to the depths of her soul.
Benny stepped aside to let her pass, then carried the basket to the dining table. He’d been forewarned of Pearl, but thought she was too cute and too little to be much of a threat, and followed her into the living room before she had time to sit.
“Jacob, Miss Pearl brought you supper, so I’ll just take myself on home now, and see you bright and early in the morning, okay?”
“He’ll be fine!” Pearl said. “I’ll make sure he’s settled before I leave.”
Jacob stifled a grin. Benny had just been dismissed.
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you,” Benny said, and left the way Pearl had come in.
Pearl sat down in a chair opposite the sofa where Jacob was sitting, keeping a polite distance between them. It took her a few seconds to realize, except for the night he was shot, she hadn’t been alone with him like this in well over thirty years.
“You sure look better than the last time I saw you,” Pearl said.
Jacob shook his head. “I can only imagine, and I’m really glad you came. It’s hard to find the proper words to thank someone for saving your life, but I will owe you forever that you did.”
“Oh, Jacob… How could I not?” she said.
He nodded. “Understood, but thank you anyway, for being cautious enough not to ignore a gunshot, and for taking the time to come check on my welfare. It is entirely due to you that I’m still here.”
“It was a shock…to see you so hurt and helpless.” Her voice shook a little, but she kept talking.
“I kept packing your bar towels on the wound and threatening you with mayhem if you went and died on me. I kept shouting at you, saying that I’d lost you once, and I wasn’t going to let that happen again. Not like that.”
Jacob heard the hurt in her voice and heard Asher’s words echoing in his head—to tell her the truth about what Brenda had done to the both of them.
“There’s something I need to confess,” he said.
“No. No, you don’t. That was a long time ago and you’re my friend,” she said.
“I need to say it. Secrets are poison. Lies are poison. I am living proof of both, and it needs to be said.” He took a deep breath.
“All those years ago, I never knew what happened. One day we were fine, and then we weren’t.
You wouldn’t talk to me, and it was over so fast it made my head spin.
You wouldn’t answer my calls. You wouldn’t look at me on the street.
I kept wondering what the hell I’d done…
what I’d said. All I knew is that I would never have intentionally hurt you.
” He paused. She hadn’t moved, but her gaze was fixed upon his face, so he kept talking.
“I don’t think I would have ever known if Brenda hadn’t gotten herself staggering drunk one New Year’s Eve.
It was the year Asher turned two. She started talking about what a stunt she’d pulled to ‘get me,’ as she put it.
Laughing at how she’d convinced you I was paying prostitutes for sex.
Making sure you saw what she wanted you to see, but putting another spin on it. ”
Pearl paled, but her gaze never left his face.
“If you remember, I’d only recently opened the bar and moved into the house, and I was overwhelmed by the job.
I didn’t have a good routine and was wearing myself out by the grunt work.
There was a Mexican family who’d moved into one of the trailer houses back then.
The man had a wife and four daughters, but no sons.
They were all looking for work. I needed someone to clean up after closing, and someone to help me move the heavy kegs and boxes of liquor I was trying to get stocked.
When you saw different women leaving the premises after I’d closed, and handing them money as they left, it was me paying daily, to either the wife, or any one of her girls who’d come to clean, and their father, the man I’d hired to help with the heavy lifting, was waiting at the back of the bar to walk them home. ”
Pearl moaned beneath her breath and clasped her hands over her heart.
“You saw what Brenda said you would see, but with her own ugly spin on it. She laughed and laughed while I stood there, so staggered by what she’d done that I couldn’t speak.
In one brief moment, the urge to strangle her was huge.
She said she would have done worse to get what she wanted, which was me.
I yanked the liquor out of her hand and threw it across the bar.
I was so mad I was afraid to even put my hands on her.
My first instinct was to go tell you. But there was Asher…
and I thought, if I left her, I would lose him, too.
That was my slap-in-the-face moment. It was too late.
Water under the bridge. I blamed myself for not dragging your little ass out of that café and making you tell me what was wrong.
It was my bad for not confronting you when it happened.
But the bottom line is that Brenda laid waste to everything she did, except the boys.
She did love them. But she had a mean streak, and she was, in a way, a coward.
She killed herself so she wouldn’t have to face her truth. ”
Tears were rolling down Pearl’s cheeks. She just kept shaking her head no and wiping her face with the sleeves of her shirt.
Jacob hurt for her, and with her.
“I’m just so sorry, honey. So sorry I didn’t see what she was doing.”
Pearl took a deep breath. “And I’m sorry I let the witch she was, poison me as well. I should have talked to you then, but… Ah, well. As you said, water under the bridge.”
Jacob patted the cushion beside him. “Come sit by me. I’m harmless, but I need a hug.”
It took everything she had to cross the distance between them and sit down beside him. But instead of a hug, he reached for her hand.
“Forgive me?” he asked.
Pearl held his hand against her cheek. “If you’ll forgive me.”
He was so near to her, and she was still the woman he’d loved, hiding now behind silver curls and teary eyes. He slid his hand behind her head and leaned toward her.
Her eyelids fluttered shut, and then his mouth was on her lips, kissing her, gently, almost reverently, and she could almost convince herself the last thirty years hadn’t happened.
“You’re so very forgiven,” Jacob said, and handed her a couple of tissues from the box at his elbow. “Now, wipe your eyes and tell me what wonderful things you brought for me to eat. I’ve had all of the hospital food I could stomach. Benny is a good nurse, but a sad cook.”
“Come sit at the table. I’ll make your plate,” Pearl said.
“Only if you’ll eat with me,” he said.
She nodded. “I’ll eat with you, and lay to rest the last of the demons from our past.”