Chapter 25Hennessy
Chapter Twenty-Five
HENNESSY
“So, what’s the latest with you and Truitt?” Jameson asks as she flits around her big, white country kitchen making us some tea.
“Are we not saying his name now?”
My sister nods in the direction of Jackson, who’s playing with his toy cars on the kitchen floor.
“No, we’re not. Because every time his name comes up, that one yells you-know-what.”
“What is it with this kid and the curse words?” I marvel. “I’ve never seen a child with such an aptitude for profanity.” “I know, right?” she mutters, pouring boiling water into mugs and setting them on the island. “Some kids start reading before they’re two. Others can play the piano, or hit a golf ball. Not mine. He’ll probably have mastered every obscene word in several languages by the time he gets to preschool.”
“Ah, well, they like for kids to be bilingual,” I tease and am rewarded with the smack of a tea towel on my arm.
Once she sits down, we make up our respective cups, and I reach for an especially delectable looking piece of shortbread she’s plated and set out for us.
“All right, already,” she coaxes. “You still haven’t told me what happened after you guys left yesterday afternoon.”
I shrug as I nibble.
“Well, let’s see…I offered him something to eat at the apartment, since we were still hungry after the great potato massacre in your dining room. So I had Donovan bring up a shepherd’s pie and salad. We cracked open a bottle of wine. It was really…nice.”
“Hmmm, sounds nice.”
“It was nice,” I agree. “I can’t even remember the last time I thought about strangling him.”
“That is progress,” Jameson agrees, picking up her own cookie and starting to chew.
“Of course, there was the kiss. That made things a little… weird,” I mention casually.
In a rare moment of lost-decorum, my very classy sister proceeds to spray crumbs from her mouth all over the island. And me.
“What? Kiss? Tell, tell, tell!” Jameson shrieks, making Jackson look up curiously from where he’s rolling his big red plastic car on the carpet. She slams a hand over her mouth but can’t contain the shocked laughter behind it.
She grabs my other hand and pulls me out of the kitchen and into the hallway, away from the little guy’s big ears.
“Okay, let me see if I’ve got this straight. Bryan went back to the apartment with you. You talked the friendly talk, and he…he kissed you? Are you sure?”
“Am I sure he kissed me?” I echo.“Yes, James, I’m pretty sure. Either that or he slipped, and his tongue just happened to fall into my mouth.”
“Oh my God!” she squeaks, now jumping up and down and clapping her hands like an excited schoolgirl. Suddenly she stops and puts her hands on my shoulders. “Henny, be honest with me. Were you…you know… naked ?”
“I was not naked,” I insist, but she waves it away, preferring, I’m sure, to put her own sordid slant on the story. “Were you on the way to naked?”
“Jameson, quit it,” I hiss and give her arm a playful slap. “No one was naked. No one was on the way to naked.”
“Oh,” she says, disappointment filling her features. “I suppose there’s always next time.”
“Next time? What next time? I can’t kiss him again.”
“I thought you said he kissed you.”
“He did kiss me. But maybe I kissed him back…you know, just a little.”
“Hey, is that like being a little bit pregnant?” Jameson asks.
“Hey, how about less snark and more support,” I suggest, elbowing her in the ribs. She rolls her eyes and sticks her head into the kitchen to check on Jackson.
“Come here,” she whispers back at me, waving her hand. I move to stand behind her, looking over her shoulder to where the pudgy little boy has sprawled out on his blanket on the kitchen floor, sound asleep and clutching his toy car.
“Ouch! Isn’t that floor a little hard under the blanket?”
She shakes her head. “Nah, my boy can sleep anywhere, anytime. He gets that from his father.”
I’m thinking that this is certainly one of the more harmless traits he can pick up from his father, but decide it would be unwise to point that out to my sister right now.
“I love that child so much it makes my heart hurt,” she says. And when she turns back around to face me, there are tears in her eyes. “Am I doing the right thing, Henny? Thinking about leaving Win? He’s Jackson’s father…”
I consider what Bryan said to me in the car about the reasons why men cheat.
“Hey, James…is it possible that Win’s depressed?”
She shoots me a look filled with so much surprise that I realize she’s also had this thought.
“Maybe,” she whispers. “I’ve tried to get him to go to counseling again. Alone, together—whatever he wants—but no go. I think he’s afraid that it might hurt his reputation if it got out. But yeah, I’ve had that thought before. Thing is, if he refuses to get help, then he’s not leaving me with any alternatives. I have to do what’s best for Jackson. I mean, he’s young enough now that he doesn’t have any sense of discord, but it’s just a matter of time before that starts to filter down into his sunny little world.”
I put my arms around my sister and pull her to me tightly. “James?”
“Hmmm?”
“I still get goose bumps every time I think about it.”
“About what?”
“The kiss.”
“Oh,” she says with an understanding chuckle. “Must’ve been some smooch, then.”
“Best damn kiss of my life,” I whisper. “And all I can think about is how nice it would be to get another one of them.”
She pushes away from me just a bit so we can look at one another’s faces. Her pretty, full mouth quirks up in amusement on one side, and her green eyes glitter.
“Well, then, I guess we’d best figure out how to get you another one. And a naked one at that!”