Just One Day Page 7

  I shook my head, looking back outside, but he wasn’t distracted with tasks anymore and zeroed in. “No, something. What’s up?”

  “Just listening to the time tick by,” I said, not turning around, and hugging my arms across me. “Why is that clock so infernally loud?”

  I heard the rumble of his laugh get closer as he slid into the seat across from me. “I hate to break it to you, Fremont, but you aren’t getting anywhere else today.”

  I took a deep breath and scooped my hair back. It was still damp. He was right. This was the day Brad gave me. It wasn’t going to get better.

  “I know. Just thinking about the other end.”

  Jesse frowned. “Other end of what?”

  “This day,” I said. I watched a tree by the road get stripped by the angry sharp ice, and I closed my eyes when I imagined the car. I may not have a choice to make, after all. Once Brad found out I’d taken off without a note and destroyed his car, he may take the offer off the table. The wind seemed louder than before, or maybe that was the roar of impending doom.

  “So, what’s on the other end?” he asked, his tone soft enough to bring me back to him.

  The old look in his eyes made my stomach tingle for a second. It was warm and familiar, like old friends or lovers would have. But how could it feel that familiar after so much time?

  “A note with a yes or no.”

  * * *

  Jesse leaned forward, knowledge already visibly washing over him. He asked anyway.

  “What’s the question?”

  I bit at my bottom lip and traced a scratch on the wooden table. “Oh, you know the one,” I said, focusing on the long mark. “Involves jewelry.”

  He picked up my left hand by the ring finger. “I don’t see any jewelry.”

  I stared at my hand in his. “Yeah, that would be the quandary.”

  “So, what’s the problem?” Jesse asked, leaning over to make me look at him.

  “I don’t know,” I said, sliding my hand back from his and rubbing my eyes. “On paper, it all makes sense, just—” I shook my head. I didn’t know where else to go with it.

  “People aren’t paper,” he said. “Marriage is hard. You should at least start excited about it.”

  I laughed and ran my fingers along the back of the hand he’d held. It was still warm there from the contact. “I know. And I’ve been down that road. I guess I never really saw myself doing it again.”

  “Are you in love with the guy?”

  Coming from him, those words made my mouth go dry, and he seemed to know that because he shook his head.

  “Take our history out of it, Fremont. Close your eyes so you aren’t looking at me.” I studied his expression for a moment longer and then did what he said. I closed my eyes. “Now,” he continued. “Do you love him?”

  The quiet wasn’t really quiet with the violence of the storm swirling around us, but to me it was deafening. I clinched my eyes shut tighter and forced Jesse’s image away and Brad’s face to mind. His smile and laugh and quirky ways that were mostly funny. His easy way of getting me to calm down when I was angry or see his way of thinking. Damn it, I wanted to say I was in love with him, why was it so hard? Why did it feel more like habit than love?

  I felt a hand on mine again, and my eyes popped open.

  “How long have you been together?” he said.

  “Two years.”

  A look somewhere between disbelief and pity crossed his features, and he sat back in the booth.

  “I knew I loved you in one day,” he said, his voice low. He said it so easy, my skin lit up like a million little candles. He broke eye contact, looking out at the storm. “Say what you want about that, Andie, you knew it, too.”

  My head spun with a thousand questions. Questions that took my voice so I couldn’t ask them. How could we have been so sure in just one day, when here I was running in circles after two years?

  “It was the same with my wife,” he said, still staring unseeing out the window. “I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her after a week.”

  My questions about us would wait. I blinked back the unexpected burn behind my eyes, irritated at the emotion this man I barely knew could pull from me.

  “Tell me about her.”

  The words sounded foreign coming from my mouth since his blatant confession still rang in my ears. It was on long loop, repeating over and over in my head. He took a deep breath and let it out, looking like I’d just asked him to run naked down the highway. He closed his eyes.

  “It’s not something I talk about,” he said under his breath.

  I leaned forward in the seat. “Well, today’s a new day.”

  He opened his eyes and looked hard into mine. In that moment, I was in awe. He was about to dump his most private painful shit out on that table to me. All because I’d crossed his path again mere hours earlier. How did we affect each other like that? Brad was never a friend like that. It took me two months to admit how much I was missing Lanie when she first left. And he never asked.

  “Her name was Beth,” he said finally. So much silence followed that statement, I thought he was done. But then he sat back and then forward again, and I could see the inner struggle. “She was working in a little diner in Corpus, and me and the guys from the shrimp boat would go there a couple times a week.”

  “And you won her over with your smile?” I said, lightening the mood.

  A laugh rumbled from his throat. “Huh. No, not quite. I was pretty cocky back then and my methods fell flat.” He smiled at the memory. “I said something smart-ass to her one night and she dumped a whole tray of food in my lap and walked away.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Interesting play.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, I was hooked.” He toyed with a coaster on the table. “We got married four months later.” He locked eyes with me. “I just knew.”

  I nodded, knowing what he was getting at. Lots of things seemed to be getting at that. But then his eyes went darker than dark, and he shut them again.

  “Four years ago, I was out fishing late by myself. Jamie didn’t feel like going, so I went alone. No big deal, did that all the time.” He gripped the coaster tighter. “Fish were hitting after dark so I stayed out a little longer. Didn’t realize my phone had died.”

  He stopped and slid out of the booth, striding around the bar to the big fridge. He grabbed two beers and came back.

  He twisted the top off his bottle and took down half of it before he continued. “When I got home—” He stopped. “No—before I got home, I smelled it. It permeated the inside of my truck before I even knew it was my house.”

  Goose bumps covered my body, and tears sprang to my eyes as the haunted look on his face gave me the images.

  “Lights were flashing everywhere,” he said, his voice going on autopilot as he recited the memories into his beer bottle. “The heat, the noise, the air was acrid. Flames were still—” His voice faltered, and he blinked hard to keep control. “It was so hot, it hurt to breathe. Everything—everything crackled. They had some of it out, but parts were still burning. Trees were on fire. The home I built with my own hands was nothing but sticks.”

  I felt the hot tears travel down my cheeks, but I didn’t move to wipe them away.

  “It was like a bad dream. I only remember running in slow motion, yelling at people who couldn’t seem to hear me,” he whispered. “There were so many uniforms and men running back and forth to get where they needed to be and all I wanted was to find my family.” He nodded. “And I did.”

  Jesse’s whole face tightened, and I feared he’d crush that bottle with his bare hand.

  “Jamie came at me out of nowhere, hitting me like a bulldozer, hoarse and screaming at me,” he said. “He was nearly my height already, even at fifteen, and strong. He nearly took me down. At first, I was just so relieved to see him. He was covered in ash and his hair was singed, and I just grabbed him and held on. But he fought me like a man, and I couldn’t understand
what he was yelling about.” Jesse slugged down the remainder of his beer and dug his palms into his eyes.

  “I asked him where his mother was, and he just started pounding me with his fists, screaming and gagging on smoke.” He took a deep breath. “I finally got a grip on him and heard him cuss me. He screamed at me, “Damn you, Dad! I couldn’t get her out, where were you?”

  “Oh my God,” I whispered.

  “I remember running to the house, calling her name,” he said. “Somebody stopped me. Told me she was already in the ambulance.”

  “Alive?” I asked, knowing the end result but hoping he got some time.

  “No,” he said, angry tears falling. “She was dead. Asphyxiation by smoke, they said. The fire spread too fast. According to Jamie, they made to the stairs and then she collapsed. He tried to carry her but then the stairs started giving way so he got out and called me,” he said through his teeth. “Called 911. Kept trying to get back in, but—evidently he couldn’t get back to her.”

  “Jesse, I’m so sorry,” I said, touching his hand. He met my eyes at the sound of his first name, and looked surprised at my tears. He reached up and brushed one away, then frowned at his fingers as if they’d betrayed him again.

  “Jamie blames me for her death, and I can’t fault him for that. I should have been there. He shouldn’t have had to take that on by himself.”

  “Jesse—”

  He stood up. “His last memory of his mother is leaving her behind in an inferno. That’s something no kid should ever see.”

  Silence ticked between us, and I could hear my heart beating over the wind.

  “Maybe time will change things,” I said finally.

  “It’s been four years,” he said quietly, some of the anger spent. I wondered how long it had been since he’d said any of that out loud. “He wants nothing to do with me.”

  Chapter Seven

  He dug at his eyes again and I saw the doors come back down. “Enough of all that,” he said, his voice ragged.

  He set about checking random things that I had the feeling didn’t need checking, but gave him something to do. I let him be. That was one hell of a roller coaster he lived on, and it broke my heart. I wondered if it was the reason for the old phone attached to the wall—like maybe he didn’t want to be dependent on something that could die and cost him so dearly. Or maybe he just didn’t feel like he deserved the luxury.

  I turned sideways in my booth seat and pulled a knee up to rest my arm on as I watched the wind bend trees across the street. The hail looked to have stopped, but the wind appeared stronger, fiercer. The gusts that hit the windows sounded brutal and the noise was constant.

  I stopped checking the time. Nothing was going to matter for a while. Even my phone was still upstairs, although I doubted that Brad had called or texted. He wasn’t a fan of phone conversations and he’d promised me the day, so I knew he’d be true to his word. All the little voices of reason were talking at once and I knew what they were saying. I just didn’t want to hear it yet. And Jesse’s words—and the fact that I was thinking of him as Jesse instead of just Montgomery—was working on me.

  “How long were you married?” said his voice to my right, making me jump. I hadn’t seen him walk up, and then there he was gazing down at me.

  I cleared my throat. “Fourteen years.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “What happened?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. Boredom, I guess. We stopped talking to each other, and all we had in common was Lanie.” I traced the condensation on my unopened beer. “One day he said he wanted out, and I said okay. I didn’t even argue.” I looked up at Jesse with a small shrug. “I figured if it was that easy to end after fourteen years and a daughter together, then something was definitely missing.”

  He leaned against the booth. “Maybe that’s why you’re balking this time around,” he said. “Maybe you’re afraid of hitting that rut again.”

  It made me itchy. “Maybe I just—”

  My words were severed by the sound of glass shattering upstairs. He sprung off the booth and was already on the stairway when I scrambled out and turned to look outside as I followed him. What I saw glued my feet to the floor.

  “Jesse,” I said, the name slow and purposeful, only because I had to force my mouth to work. My guess is that it caused alarm, because it turned him back.

  “What?” I heard behind me, but I knew he’d see it from where he stood at the bottom of the stairs. “Holy fuck,” he said under his breath, as more glass broke above our heads.

  The wind outside was sideways and swirling, pieces of limbs and debris were flung randomly. But what was driving that was about two blocks away. Where there used to be trees. A thick, barrel-shaped funnel of swirling dirt and debris and water was ripping up the ground. And coming our way.

  It was terrifying and mesmerizing all at the same time. I could even feel the rumble under my bare feet, like standing next to a train going by. Only this train was about to mow us down.

  “Get in the pantry!” Jesse yelled, his voice cracking. “Now!” When I didn’t move, he yanked me by the arm and pulled me behind the bar and opened a section of wall I didn’t even know was a door. The movement stunned me into action and I ran in. Shelves of canned goods, bagged goods, paper products and boxes lined the walls. An old twin mattress leaned against the back, along with some folded cardboard containers.

  “Get under that mattress and stay there, I’ll be right back,” he yelled, the deafening noise nearly drowning him out. I could see behind him to the tornado bearing down.

  “Back? No! Get in here,” I screamed, feeling the panic rise in my chest. “It’s coming!”

  “I have to get something upstairs, get under there now, Andie!” he yelled, shutting the door in my face. The little room went dark.

  “Jesse, no!”

  I opened the door just as Brad’s car tumbled and crashed across the parking lot like a child’s toy. Any other words froze in my throat. I slammed the door and scrambled to my knees in the dark, groping for the cardboard boxes and flinging them aside. I crawled behind the mattress and stuck three fingers in a ripped place to hold it.

  “Oh God, oh God,” I cried. “Oh my God, please help us.” Adrenaline rushed through me so fast I could hear my own blood moving. “Please, Jesse, get back here.”

  In the dark, everything intensified. I felt the rumble beneath me as if the earth were cracking open. Glass shattered outside my little world, something I assumed was furniture slammed against my door, making me scream. Horrible groaning sounds of metal bending against its will filled my ears. Walls collapsed over my head and cans of food fell all around me, bouncing off the mattress and slamming to the floor. I pulled my soft shield against me as tightly as I could, and something flat and heavy landed on top of me. I squeezed my eyes shut, my cries becoming wails. I’d never felt so utterly terrified and helpless, and as the roar got so loud I feared my eardrums would burst, it got worse. Leaves and sticks were hitting the floor around me, sweeping under the mattress into my face. There was only one way those things could get in.

  “Oh God, please,” I sobbed. “Jesse.”

  I wanted to vomit from the piercing fear and the images I held in my head of what might have happened to him. I screamed out his name again and again as the planet caved in around me. That’s what it felt like. I thought of my daughter and couldn’t remember the last time I’d talked to her or when I’d told her I loved her last. No one even knew where I was. No one would know if I died there. Something else flew across the room and shattered against the wall, and I concentrated on my daughter’s face and the funny way she scrunched it up when she laughed, hoping I’d see it again. Hoping she’d never know fear like that.