Chapter Twenty-Six
She’d traveled far but still had hills to conquer.
—The Temptress of Pecan Lane, by Mae Daniels
Anna was sleeping so deeply Saturday morning, her lashes didn’t flutter a wink when Jackson nudged her. He dug through the drawers for a notepad and a pen, wincing every time a hinge squeaked, but she kept right on sleeping.
He left a note on his pillow and slipped out of the hotel, phone in his pocket in case she woke up and didn’t see the note, then headed for Louisa’s place.
He had to bang three times on the door of the old manor she and three of her girlfriends rented before she yanked the door open, bleary-eyed in her pajama pants and a white tank top he wouldn’t have let her wear in public. “What?” Her lip curled out. “Not all of us keep military hours.”
He handed her a slip of paper. “You owe Anna an apology.”
Her hair fell in her face when she looked down at the note. “What’s this?”
“Cost of your ticket.”
He didn’t know hair could spontaneously combust, but the temper that shot through Louisa left the tips of her curls smoking. “Excuse you?”
He angled himself in the doorway so he was blocking her chest from view of any passing cars and caught a whiff of something that reminded him of his granddaddy’s moonshine.
It put his own temper on a short fuse. “You disrespected a guest in Momma’s house.
Your guest. You know what Daddy would’ve done to you?
You’re lucky you can walk today. You want to go to that game, find a way to pay for yourself. You got four hours.”
And even though Daddy would’ve whipped his hide for it, Jackson turned his back on his sister’s shocked expression and took himself back to the hotel.
For the first time since coming home, he was finally doing right by her.
Anna had just finished reading Jackson’s note when the hotel door clicked open. She swiped her hair out of her eyes, and an unfamiliar ache in her shoulder made her wince.
Jackson grinned at her. “Feeling that game last night?”
She didn’t bother giving him a dirty look. Because her stomach was growling and he had paper bags in one hand and a box with two to-go cups in the other, and the scents of biscuits and bacon and coffee wafted into the room.
There she was again, holding back a declaration of undying love.
He plopped on the bed. “Looks like you might need some feeding.”
She gave him a playful shove with her left arm.
But she let him help her eat.
Because he liked to reward progress.
Eventually they headed out for game-day activities. But first, she insisted that he take her to his stepfather’s home so she could apologize to his mother.
He gave in to that a mite bit too easily.
His jaw took on a mulish set when his gaze landed on Louisa’s car. He saw Anna into the house, then angled toward a side doorway she hadn’t noticed last night. “Okay for a bit, Anna Grace?”
“Any place I should stay out of?”
He flashed a grin that didn’t reach his eyes. “No, ma’am. Not you.”
“Thanks.”
He pressed a kiss to her temple, then disappeared. She heard the distinct sound of stairs creaking. She guessed he was going in search of Louisa.
Which meant Anna had to search somebody out too.
Deb was in the kitchen, wiping down the sink and humming a tune Anna didn’t recognize. She paused at the island and cleared her throat.
Deb’s shoulders hitched, but she flicked them down and turned. “Good morning.”
“I owe you an apology,” Anna said. “I’m not from around here, but I’ve lived here long enough to know when I’ve crossed a line, and I’m sorry.”
Deb’s lips set in a thin line. Her chin wavered, and her gaze shifted away. “I wasn’t entirely fair to you.” She looked down at the dishrag she was twisting, folded it in thirds, and laid it across the sink. “Jackson’s never brought home a girlfriend.”
Anna tried to swallow, but it felt as if she had sawdust in her mouth. “Louisa invited me.”
“If he didn’t want you here, you wouldn’t be here.”
“Regardless, you don’t need to worry about me.”
Deb merely lifted a well-groomed and spectacularly colored eyebrow.
“I was married to the military once,” Anna said. “I have no intentions of doing it again.”
“My son knows this?”
She flashed a wry smile. “It’s why we get along so well.”
Deb turned and picked up her dishrag again. “Y’all go on and keep saying that, but when you realize you’re lying to yourselves, it’s going to hurt. And I don’t like seeing my children hurt.”
Of course Momma Deb wouldn’t. What mother would? But after the year Anna’d had, she did have some appreciation for what came out of the aftermath of hurting.
Not that she’d offer her opinion to Momma Deb.
She stepped back. “We met over an ant infestation in my car. Jackson wouldn’t let me help clean up my own mess, because he told me you’d have his hide if he left a lady in distress. Even a divorced, undereducated, mess of a lady.”
Deb’s face was turned, but Anna saw the plump of her cheek when her lips curved softly upward. “He’s a good man.”
“One of the best,” Anna agreed. “Thank you.” She left Deb in the kitchen, found the most comfortable looking spot on the rocks that were the living room furniture, pulled her school notes out of her purse, and sat down to wait for tailgating time.
Jackson found Louisa digging a piggy bank out from under a loose floorboard in her old closet.
“I ain’t ready for you yet,” she said without turning around, the pout evident in her voice.
She’d moved out of the mansion when she started college, but Jackson hadn’t been around enough all the years before that to know if the butterflies fluttering around the walls and the lacy curtains were original to her time in the room, or if they’d been added as a special touch for overnights when Craig and Maura’s girls came.
The Power Rangers bedspread, he knew, was all Louisa.
He made himself comfortable in the doorway and checked his watch to make sure he didn’t leave Anna Grace alone too long. She could handle herself, but that wasn’t the point. “Been thinking about some stuff.”
“So?”
“So got to reckoning you don’t do well in school because you don’t know what you want to be.”
“So?” Louisa’s shoulders bunched so high they blocked her eardrums.
But he kept talking anyway. “So it’s my job to help LTs figure out their career path. Reckon I might be able to help you too.”
She tugged the piggy one last time. It sprang free, and sent her skidding back on her rump.
She gave him the same suspicious eye Momma was probably aiming at Anna Grace right about now.
She pulled herself up, dusted her jeans, hiked the piggy under her arm like a football, and crossed the room.
“Yeah, well, I don’t want your help.” She shoved the pig at him. “Here. Now where’s my ticket?”
He ignored the pig. “How’s your engine running?”
“Slicker’n Momma’s gravy down your gullet. Where’s. My. Ticket?” She poked him in the chest with each word.
He went on and let her. “Craig said you’ve been filtering the oil yourself.”
“What, now girls can’t pump their own gas? New millennium, dummy. Girls can do anything they want.”
“You ever looked into Auburn’s environmental engineering program?”
Her eyes went wide. She punched him in the arm. “Shut up. You don’t get to walk around here like you’re somebody. You don’t get a say in my life. You don’t care about me.”
She was wrong, and he was pretty sure she was being a melodramatic female—perfection, indeed—but her opinion sliced him deep. “You’re too old to be a brat.”
“That what your Anna Grace calls me?”
Well, color him slow on the uptake. She was jealous. “You get me twice as much as she does, but she appreciates it three times more than you.”
Her lips curled into a snide kind of sneer, the kind that usually preceded a slimy comment from a drunkard in a bar.
He cut her off. “Never thought I’d meet a Yankee with better manners than my own sister.
You go on and nurse your mad all day if you want.
I’m gonna go enjoy a beautiful football game. ”
He plunked the piggy bank on the burnished oak dresser, then headed for the back stairs, half surprised, half relieved she didn’t follow him.
When he got to the kitchen, Momma was alone, but he could smell Anna’s shampoo lingering in the air.
That scent stayed with a man.
She had a couple of views on how the world worked that were sticking with him too. Including one or two about his family. She’d been good for him that way.
Momma looked up at him with sad eyes that seemed to be going around the female population in his life. Her mouth settled in a grim line, and she went back to the pot she was washing. “Sweet potato pie’s all gone.”
“Do you love Russ?”
The pan slipped. Water and suds splattered the counter.
She fumbled for a towel, her cheeks taking on a stain, her hands shaking.
She twisted her face to him, but before their gazes connected, she dropped her chin and pointed her nose at the mess.
“Yes.” Her voice was soft but laced with steel, answering both the question he’d asked, and the one that had always lingered between them.
Do you love Russ more than you loved Daddy?
But he’d never asked.
He’d never asked, because he hadn’t wanted to know.
Hadn’t wanted to believe that this woman who’d stood shoulder to shoulder with Daddy—keeping Jackson straight, raising him to understand and appreciate the value of a clean house, of a good meal, of the backbone of a family—could have loved another man more than she’d loved his daddy.
Maybe loved another man more than she loved her own son.
“Does he make you happy?”
He’d never asked her that before either.
Never considered it part of the equation.
But she was more than just his momma. She had her own life as much as he had his, and Daddy was gone, and Momma being happy or unhappy wouldn’t change that.
She might as well be happy.
She should be happy.