CHAPTER TWO HONESTY
CHAPTER
TWO
Honesty
It was late afternoon by the time Benny pulled into his driveway. He’d barely turned the car off when Gloria came rushing out of her brother’s house next door. He wasn’t ready to see her and felt himself stiffening, knowing he’d have to lie about where he’d been.
‘Hi,’ he said, as she approached. He felt so tired.
She threw her arms around him when he climbed out of the car, hugging him. ‘I was so worried you’d been blown off the road driving back yesterday. Ed said you never made it home.’
‘No, I came back and secured everything,’ he said, draping his arms around her waist. ‘And then I went to check on a friend.’
She raised her eyebrows as her mouth dropped open. ‘In a hurricane? That’s very considerate, but extremely foolish.’ She jabbed at his back. ‘And dangerous.’ Another jab. ‘You could have gotten yourself killed.’
‘I know,’ he said, but if he hadn’t gone, Lee would have died. That part he couldn’t say, so he stroked her back and eased into the feel of her arms around him.
‘I’m glad you’re safe,’ she said.
He looked down at her warm and ready smile and pulled her closer. When he kissed her, she relaxed into him, so trusting and open it made him want to tell her everything, which he couldn’t, of course, and the reality of that carved a hole in his chest the size of a crater.
He hadn’t considered how lonely passing would be, or that to build something new with Gloria, or anyone else, he had to give up Cora and Momma and Lee and Aunt Teen and Patsy and all of them, cutting them out of his life for good. The thought of it was like cutting out his heart.
Gloria told him that with the phone lines down, she’d decided to drive over, dodging fallen tree branches all over the roads on her way.
‘I brought candles,’ she said, flicking the light switch on and off in the darkened room. They weren’t likely to get power back for days.
‘Thanks.’ He unzipped his jacket and draped it over the back of a chair as he watched her light the candles.
One she put on the kitchen table. The other on the counter.
She moved around his space with a confidence that reminded him of the way Cora acted at Lee’s, and he ached with a loneliness that threatened to swallow him.
‘Come here,’ he said, reaching for her. He could imagine her as a permanent fixture.
He could make a life with this girl, the contented years stretching out in front of them like a river.
He would come home at the end of the day to Gloria in the kitchen, ready with a pot roast and an apple pie.
Ed next door. Sunday dinner at her parents’. It could all be so easy.
She wrapped her arms around his waist, but pulled back with a gasp. ‘Your shirt. Is that blood?’
With his jacket off, Lee’s dried blood was unmissable. ‘It’s not mine. I’m okay.’
‘But whose is it? What happened?’ She clutched herself and stood three paces away.
The truth danced on the tip of his tongue.
He could tell her. Hadn’t she said that she didn’t agree with segregation or the way Negros were treated?
And if she knew, he wouldn’t have to give up his family.
It could be their secret, the burden of it shared.
He opened his mouth, hesitating, deciding.
The way she held back from him, gaping at the blood stain, made him feel exposed. And made him lose his nerve.
‘Someone hit a dog, and I had to carry it off the road.’ He hated how easily the lie fell.
‘That’s terrible.’ She took a step closer. ‘But where is it now? You didn’t just leave it, did you?’
‘No, I …’ Falseness was like quicksand. Every time he moved, he sank deeper. ‘Well, that is, I brought it to my friend.’
‘Oh, right. Your friend.’ Her expression softened. ‘And is your friend okay?’
That Lee might never wake up was another truth he couldn’t tell. ‘He’s fine,’ Benny said, his throat closing around his words.
This was no way to live. He needed to tell her.
That was the only way forward with Gloria.
But it was a lot of truth to lay on someone and trust them with.
And if she kept his secret, she would have this knowledge she could never speak about wedged like a glass wall between her and her family. Could he do that to her?
His stomach churned. ‘Gloria, if a person,’ he glanced at her and pushed on, ‘wasn’t telling someone the whole truth about …
something,’ he sighed, frustrated at his own tangled words, ‘but the truth would be hard to take,’ he hesitated at her worried expression and almost faltered, ‘do you think you would … I mean someone … would want to hear it anyways?’
She gaped at him. ‘What kind of truth?’
‘Just in general. Any truth.’ He smoothed the back of his jacket on the top of the chair. He should have thought of how to say this before opening his mouth.
‘If you have something to tell me, then just tell me.’
This was a mistake. ‘No. Never mind.’
‘Are you seeing someone else?’
‘What? Of course not.’
‘Is that where you were? Is the friend you rushed off to help a woman?’
‘Gloria, no. I swear I’m not seeing anyone else.’
‘Well, then, I don’t understand why you’re asking that question. But the answer is, any man I’m seeing should know better than to sneak around behind my back.’ She leveled a look at him that was all daggers. ‘If a man can’t be honest about what he’s doing, he shouldn’t be doing it.’
‘Forget I asked.’
He looked away and she grabbed his arm. ‘I want the truth, Benny. Is there someone else?’
‘No. There isn’t anybody.’ At least not in the way she meant. He took her hands. ‘It was a dumb question. I’m sorry it sounded like something it wasn’t.’
She stared hard at him, squinting, like she was trying to read in his face the words he wouldn’t say. ‘Please be honest with me, Benny. More than anything, I want the truth.’
She had no idea what she was asking for.
He searched her eyes, wondering what he dared tell her and saw the innocence of a girl who couldn’t imagine a bigger transgression than him stepping out to see another woman.
She would crumble under the weight of his reality.
He hesitated, the wanting to tell her replaced by knowing he never could, and his hesitation turned to resolve.
When he said, ‘There’s no one but you,’ with a harder edge to his voice than he’d meant to have, he saw the doubt creep into her.
She drew back her hands and tucked them into the pockets of her skirt.