Stumped #2
I stood and assessed the scene at first, the way I was built.
“What the hell has she been drinking?” I asked Smitty.
“Peach schnapps.”
“Christ.”
“I cut her off. She’s been running on fumes and heartbreak ever since.” He slid her keys and purse across the bar to me. “Whatever found her today, Jake—it scared her. I’ve seen that girl handle drunk cowboys and rowdies and a small grease fire in the kitchen. I’ve never seen her scared.”
Autumn spotted me then. Her whole face opened up, the spotlight catching it, and she leaned into the dead mic so her voice would carry, which it did, seeing as the mic was dead and the room was empty.
“Jake.” Sunshine and slur. “My buddy. My protector. My—” a hiccup rang out into the dead mic with startling clarity “—Jake.”
“Come on, sweetheart.” I crossed the floor easily, hands where she could see them. “I’m taking you home.”
“But I’m singing.” She swept an arm around the room like she had adoring fans. A rancher by the door raised his beer in solemn tribute.
“That’s my girl,” I said, and meant every layer of it. Then I made an executive decision. I took the mic out of her hands, set it on the stool, and put her over my shoulder.
The Sapphire broke into applause. The rancher whistled. Autumn, upside down over my shoulder, addressed her fans with what dignity remained.
“Thank you,” she called to them, hanging down my back. “Thank you. Goodnight. He’s very strong.”
“Get her home, Jake. Tell her to take the weekend off,” Smitty called, and sounded relieved.
Avery met us at the apartment door with her homework in one hand and her eyes big as saucers. I had Autumn upright by then, more or less, my arm doing most of what her spine was supposed to.
“Is she okay—”
“Long night. She’ll be fine.” I steered Autumn to the bedroom, and got her lying on the bed. I peeked at Stetson, sound asleep, and came back out to deal with Avery. “Did he go down all right?”
“He stood up in the crib and yelled ‘Baba’ at me for five minutes, then dropped like somebody unplugged him,” she chuckled.
I dug money out of my wallet and gave it over.
She pocketed it, and gathered her books, with one last look at the bedroom door, hesitant.
“Jake? A man called the apartment phone tonight on the landline. He asked for her, but I told him she was at work.” She shrugged uneasily.
“Probably spam. But Mom says tell you stuff, so.”
“Your mom’s right. Thanks for telling me. Be safe driving home. Text your mom you’re coming.”
I watched from the landing until she got into her car. Then I locked us in, and that’s when I heard Autumn make her run for the bathroom.
She beat me to it by a step, hit her knees at the toilet like a runner sliding home, and everything came up—the schnapps, the night, the worry, and somewhere in the middle of it, the crying.
I did the only job there was. I knelt behind her, gathered that pretty hair back off her face in one hand, and rubbed slow circles between her shoulder blades while the storm took its course.
“There you go. Get it all out, girl.”
“I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t see this—”
“Nowhere else I’d rather be. You know that by now.”
“They think I’m weak. Unfit…” She sagged back against me between rounds, sweaty and wrecked, and cried at the ceiling.
“Who, sweetheart? Point me at them and I’ll tell them otherwise. You’re the bravest woman I know.”
“What would I do without you, Jake? Such a good friend.”
Any other night that word would’ve shot me under the ribs, same as always. This night I just held her through it.
“But it’s all crashing down now.” Her eyes closed. Tears came out from under the lids anyway. “You can’t fix this one. Not even you can save me from what’s coming.”
“What do you mean?”
She shook her head, and the shake turned into round three with the porcelain god.
By the end of it she was done—a rag-doll in my arms, practically asleep while I wiped her face with a warm cloth, gentle. I carried her to bed, got her boots off, and put her under the quilt.
For a minute, I stood there in the dark while she burrowed in, one hand curling up under her chin. My heart went out to her.
I bent and pressed a kiss to her temple. She didn’t stir.
“I’ve got the watch. You rest, little Mama,” I whispered. Even now—wrecked, hair stuck to her cheek—she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever stood guard over. I kissed her temple once more and let my lips stay a second longer than a friend would.
I checked on Stetson—flat on his back in the crib, arms flung wide, king of everything, breathing those big honest baby breaths.
His blanket didn’t need it, but I straightened anyway.
Then I brought a kitchen chair into her room, set it by the bed where I could see them both, and settled in for the night, replaying the events in my head.
That’s when I noticed the manila envelope on the nightstand, half under a book from the library about parenting. The flap open, court papers half out. One peek and I made out a law firm’s return address on the outside.
A bad man found her today.
It all fell into place. The stranger from the Copper Cup had been looking for her for somebody so that today they could put an envelope in her hands, and turn a whole summer of laughing again into peach schnapps and bad karaoke.
She’d been served.
I sat in that chair for a long time without looking at it. It was hers. Her business, her fight, her right to tell me or not tell me. I made that argument to myself over and over—and finally lost.
I reached for it and slid the papers out, because she was going to wake up tomorrow ashamed and scared and armored up to her chin, and tell me it was nothing. But I could not protect her against a thing I’d never seen.
The caption did its cold legal talking—district court, suit for full custody. I shook my head because there was no way she’d ever give up Stetson.
There, typed plain in the middle of the page, was finally a name I could attach to her enemy.
Petitioners: Mr. And Mrs. Stuart Eaton.
No mention of the father.
My heart dropped through the floor around page two.
Somewhere around page twenty it came back up different.
Harder. I squared the papers, slid them back in the envelope, set the book over it the way I’d found it, and sat back in the kitchen chair in the dark.
I counted her breaths, while the machine in me that had planned harder missions than this before, began quietly to turn.
They served her today, probably figuring she’d spend the weekend coming apart.
But they had no idea who was sitting in the chair beside her bed, watching over her.