The Homecoming Queen Gets Her Man Read online

  If he’d been a philosophical man, Jack would have said he was going nowhere fast. Instead he stepped to the side while Meri raised the camera again. Because he didn’t want the moment to end, didn’t want to emerge from these woods and go back to reality.

  “Jack, don’t move.” Her voice was a hushed, urgent whisper. She focused the camera and took a couple shots.

  He glanced to the side, then at the ground. “Is there a snake or something?”

  “No. An indigo bunting. He’s just beside your shoulder. Don’t move. Let me take one more shot. This is awesome. I hardly ever see one of these birds.”

  Jack chanced a glance to his right. The squat bird stared back at him, black-tipped wings tucked tight against its body, the tuft of bright blue feathers on his head seeming almost neon in the light. The blue color extended onto its beak, giving it a silvery tint. The bunting cocked his head to one side, dark beady eyes watching Jack intently.

  “What are the chances?” Meri whispered. “Do you remember how much Eli loved those birds?”

  Hell, yes, he remembered. In their downtime one night in Afghanistan, Eli had drawn a picture of an indigo bunting on the back of an envelope. It had looked so realistic, Jack had half expected it to fly off the page. He could still see Eli’s hands making quick magic with a pencil and a recycled piece of paper.

  Afterward, Eli had tucked the drawing away in his pocket with a little embarrassed grin. Makes me think of home, you know? he’d said.

  Yeah, Jack knew. And when Eli had died, Jack had taken that picture out of Eli’s pocket and put it in an envelope, letting it wing its way all the way back from Afghanistan to Eli’s mother in Stone Gap. He’d thought about writing a letter or something, but there were no words to explain what had happened, no way to make it better. No way to say, I’m sorry Eli couldn’t bring this home himself. And now that drawing was tacked to the wall in Betty’s bakery, beside a single gold star for the child she had lost. Because of Jack.

  “One more picture, Jack,” Meri said.

  He glanced at the bird again. It took two little hops forward, still watching him, turning its head left, right, then left again. Jack raised his gaze and there was the fort, forgotten and tattered now, just a skeleton of what it had once been. It was as if he was watching Eli die all over again, sitting on that hard, dusty ground, screaming in helpless fury for a rescue that was already too late. The bird hopped closer still, until the thin branch began to yield to the bunting’s weight. The bunting leaned toward Jack, its dark eyes inquiring, curious.

  “Get out of here!” He shooed at the bird and it started with a squawk, then flew off. An instant later, it was gone.

  “Why did you do that?” Meri let out a gust. “I had this great shot lined up. I was just waiting for the bird to turn a bit and—”

  “Because he’s dead, goddamn it.” Jack cursed again and turned away, stalking off into the woods. Heading anywhere but where that damned bird had gone.

  Meri hurried up behind him. “The bird wasn’t dead, Jack. He was—”

  “Eli. Eli is the one who is dead. And I don’t need some hearts-and-flowers reminder of what he used to love or what he’s missing. What I need is to be left alone.”

  “Talk to me, Jack.” Meri circled around him and blocked his path. “I miss Eli, too. Maybe if we talk about how hard it’s been to lose him, maybe then we can, I don’t know—” she paused, her eyes filling with tears “—help each other get through it. Because it feels like we’re a triangle that is missing a corner and not talking about it makes it worse. It’s like we’re pretending he never existed. Eli is still here, Jack.” She waved at the woods. “He’s in that fort, he’s in that bird, he’s in these woods. You can’t keep putting the memory of him behind those walls, because you aren’t the only one who is hurting here.”

  The pain in Meri’s face was like a hot poker stabbing Jack in the heart. He had caused that, and God, he would do anything to take it back, to do that day over again. “I can’t talk about this.” He stalked off again.

  “What are you going to do?” She called after him. “Run away for the rest of your life?”

  He kept going. “If that’s what it takes. Yeah.”

  “And what, become a hermit, living in the woods and burying yourself in work because you keep blaming yourself for his death?”

  Jack’s steps slowed. Stopped. The woods seemed to go silent and heavy, Mother Nature holding one long, expectant, judgmental breath.

  “I know, Jack,” she said as she moved forward and closed the distance between them. He didn’t turn around, didn’t face her. “Not everything, but I know you were there that day.”

  He swallowed hard, the bile in his throat burning all the way down to his stomach. “How...” The words jammed and he struggled to loosen them again. “How do you know?”

  “I saw it in your eyes.” She came up beside him and raised the camera, shifting it so the digital screen faced him. An image of himself popped up, zeroed in on just his eyes. Even he could see the dark shadows lingering there, the darkness. His smile was held hostage in the tight curve of his mouth.

  “I’ve taken a lot of pictures since I learned how to use a camera,” she said. “And I know pain when I see it. Yours goes bone deep, and when I thought about how Eli served with you, but you wouldn’t talk about him, and how my grandfather said you had been through a lot over there, it began to make sense.”

  “None of it makes sense, Meri, don’t you get that? He never should have died.” Jack cursed and kicked at a log on the ground, sending it spiraling off into the woods. He kicked another, but it was too big and sent a searing pain through his foot. He let out a scream that came from some primal place deep inside him, a place he had buried for months, then he leaned down and picked up the log and chucked it hard and far into the woods. It landed with a crack against another tree, but still that didn’t ease the pain. He pitched another log into the woods, another, then, when he ran out of logs, he threw leaves, sticks, anything within reach.

  He was a dervish, throwing things without even seeing them, just wanting these feelings out, out, out. “He never should have died!” Jack yelled at the logs, the bird, the woods, the universe. “Never. Should. Have. Died. It should have been me, goddamn it. It should have been me who died that day!”

  Meri watched him tear up the space around them, then, when his breath was coming in heaves and his hands finally stilled, she went to him and put a gentle hand on his shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault, Jack.”

  “Yes, it was! I killed him, Meri.” He jabbed a finger at his chest. “I did it. Not that goddamned IED.”

  “But you didn’t plant that bomb, right? And you didn’t set it off.”

  “That doesn’t matter. I should have seen it. I should have seen the depression in the dirt. Should have known they would bury one there, at the crossroads, where it could hit anyone going any direction. It was my job, Meri. I was the NCO, the one in charge of that convoy. My job was to protect Eli, to protect all those soldiers in those trucks. To think ahead, to expect the worst, and most of all, to keep my soldiers safe. Don’t you understand? I was their leader. And I led them straight into a trap.” He cursed again, wishing there was a boulder to throw, hell, a skyscraper, anything that would release this pressure, that searing, painful pressure, like a valve he couldn’t open. “Cochran lost an arm, and Higgins, God, he lost both legs. Madden may never see again, though she pretends she’s gonna be just fine. And Eli—”

  The word choked in his throat, lodged there like a brick. Jack ran a hand through his hair and let out a breath. The truth bulged inside him, an ugly beast too long confined. “Eli...took the brunt of the explosion. It tore through that truck like it was made of paper. One minute he was sitting next to me, cracking a joke, the next...” Jack shook his head. “I pulled him out of the truck, and I tried to stop the bl
eeding, to save him. But there was too much damage, too much blood. I tried, Meri, I tried, God knows I tried.” Jack lowered to his knees, crumpling just as he had that day with Eli in his arms, but this time his arms were empty, his best friend’s body cold and buried deep in the earth. “I tried so goddamned hard to save him.”

  And then she was there, her arm around him, her head on top of his and that cherry-almond scent coming at him like a rainbow after a summer storm. “I know you did. I know you did, Jack,” she whispered. “You loved him as much as I did. Why would I ever think that you wouldn’t try to save him? That you wouldn’t have given your life for his? You did nothing wrong. Eli wouldn’t blame you for what happened.” She raised his chin until he was looking at her. “And neither do I.”

  In that moment, that unexpected moment of forgiveness and empathy, the wall in Jack’s heart crumbled. The tears he had held back for over a year surged to the surface. A wave of grief washed over him, a tidal wave that racked his body, tore through his throat, exhaled with Eli’s name.

  Meri held him tight while the woods held their peace, silent sentries watching two people grieving a life gone too soon. Above them, the torn end of the fort’s tarp flapped in the breeze. Maybe, yes, the bird and the fort had been a message, that Eli was still here, still in these woods. Still part of their lives.

  When Jack was spent, he got to his feet. Meri gripped his hand. He gave hers a squeeze back, and she lifted a smile to him. Then she let out a gasp and pointed behind him. “Look, Jack. The bird is back.”

  The indigo bunting bloomed bright among the green trees around him. His head turned one way, another, then he seemed to dip his beak in their direction before lifting off and disappearing into the woods. “It’s a sign,” Jack said. He raised Meri’s hands to his lips and gave them a kiss. “A sign that I’m not ready to move forward. Not until I take one more step.”

  Then he released her hands and headed back into the woods.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The next morning, Meri found her grandfather in the kitchen, standing at the stove, scrambling eggs. After the moment in the woods with Jack yesterday, she’d watched him go and returned to her cottage. She’d looked around at the small space and realized she couldn’t hide here anymore. She needed to move forward, and if that meant moving on without Jack, so be it. She just had to wrap up a few things here and then she could go.

  “Grandpa Ray, what are you doing?”

  “Fixing breakfast.”

  She took the spatula from him and waved him toward a seat at the table. “Aren’t you supposed to be taking it easy? What did the doctor say?”

  “That I was fit as a fiddle. Well, as fit as a fiddle that’s been playing ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia’ one too many times, but still, good to go about my business.”

  “Wait. What?” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I thought you were sick. When I talked to you a few weeks ago, you said you were ordered to rest, take it easy, and that you needed help. You told me you were dying.”

  “An exaggeration. I was sick, but not dying. Yet.” He shrugged. “I lied.”

  “Lied? But, Grandpa—”

  “I wanted to see you. And you needed to be here. Last few times I talked to you, you sounded lost, Merry Girl, and you needed to come home to find yourself.”

  Her grandfather knew her well. If he hadn’t called, she would have stayed in New York, aimlessly trying to get past the mugging, leaving the wounds of her past unhealed. She glanced out the window at the lake she loved so much, a lake that had brought her home, in more ways than one. “You’re right. Kind of ironic that the first picture I took after the attack was of this lake.”

  “Not ironic at all. It’s fate.” He took the spatula back and flipped the eggs. “You’re meant to be here.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that. I don’t fit here.” The toaster popped, so Meri buttered two slices of wheat and laid them on a plate. “I’m that runaway beauty queen with the scar on her face. People are never going to see me as anything else.”

  “They will if you do.”

  Was it really that simple? She changed her perspective and in the process, changed what others thought? She thought of the label on her camera. Photography by Meri Prescott. The day she’d affixed that to the camera’s body had been a day like any other. It was the act of stamping herself a professional that changed how she felt inside.

  “You may be right, Grandpa.”

  “I’m always right. It comes with age.” He took a seat at the table and dove into his breakfast. “Now, what about Jack?”

  “What about Jack?” Meri poured a cup of coffee and leaned against the counter. It was the same question she’d been asking herself since yesterday. What about Jack?

  “Have you married him yet?”

  She spat out her coffee. “Married him? Where did you get that idea?”

  “You have been in love with that boy your entire life, and don’t you deny it.” Grandpa Ray wagged a fork at her. “He’s been in love with you, too. It’s about time the two of you said it out loud and made it legal.”

  “We’re just getting to know each other again. We’ve been apart a long time and...” Her gaze narrowed. “Wait. Have you been trying to push us together? The fishing trip you were too tired to go on? The dinner at the Barlows that you skipped? All those times you were napping and we were left alone?”

  “Like I said, you don’t get to be my age without getting a few extra brain cells in your noggin.” He tapped at the white hair on his head.

  She leaned over and pressed a kiss to her grandfather’s cheek. “You are a hopeless romantic.”

  He waved off her words. “Don’t let that get around town. Before you know it, I’ll have every single woman over the age of sixty trying to be my girlfriend.”

  “I think you deserve that. And you need a woman to keep you in line, you matchmaking faker.”

  “Ah, I really was sick, but I really didn’t need you to do all that you did.” He reached out and grabbed her hand. “And I was selfish because I missed having you around.”

  “I’ve missed being here.” She squeezed his hand. “You’re totally forgiven for lying.”

  “Exaggerating.” Through the open window, they heard the crunch of tires on the driveway. “Speaking of people you should forgive...I think that’s the sound of your mother’s car out there.”

  Meri rolled her eyes, then got to her feet and dumped out her coffee. “If she’s here to yell at me again for messing up her perfect party, just tell her I left.”

  “Sorry, but it’s time for my nap.” Grandpa got to his feet, then turned back at the doorway. “Besides, it’ll do you good to talk to her. She’s a difficult woman, your mother, but she loves you.”

  Meri scoffed, but headed outside anyway. Her mother was just stepping out of the Cadillac, wearing a butter-yellow pantsuit and cream-colored heels. Her hair was swept into a bun and she had on oversized sunglasses.

  “I wanted to talk to you.” Her mother’s tone was clipped and tight.

  Oh, joy. Meri crossed her arms over her chest. “Then let’s talk.”

  “Not here in the middle of the driveway.” Anna Lee’s nose wrinkled. “Somewhere...quiet.”

  “It’s too beautiful to stay indoors,” Meri said. “Let’s go down to the lake.”

  Anna Lee readied a protest, then bit it back and gestured to Meri to lead the way. In her flip-flops, Meri easily navigated the path, but her mother had to take her time, picking her way across the roots and divots in the earth. An ironic twist to the garden party, when Anna Lee had been at home in her heels and Meri had been the one out of place. Maybe for once her mother understood what it felt like to be the one out of place. Instead of rubbing it in, Meri reached out a hand and helped Anna Lee over the last bit of rough terrain.

 
; “Thank you,” Anna Lee said. She cast a dubious look at the wooden bench facing the lake, but settled on the seat beside her daughter. “I wanted to talk about the party,” her mother began.

  “If this is another complaint about how I behaved and what I—”

  “It’s not.” Anna Lee put up a hand. “I want to apologize.”

  Meri stared at her mother, sure she was hearing things. “Apologize?”

  “For pushing you into those pageants. I should have listened to what you wanted instead of making you do them. I never realized how much you hated it.”

  “I didn’t always hate it, Momma. There were times when it was fun to get all dressed up and to walk down a runway with a spray of roses and a shiny crown on my head. I just didn’t like it becoming my whole life. What I ate, what I wore, what I did in my free time. Everything was about how it would impact a pageant.”

  “I’m sorry. I thought I was giving you a future.”

  “How would pageants give me a future?”

  Anna Lee laid her hands in her lap and lowered her gaze to her French manicure. “I was never an especially smart or talented girl. I didn’t excel at anything, really, except being pretty. I grew up poorer than a mouse in a basket, and my mama always told me that I had to do whatever it took to preserve my looks because they were going to be my future. The only way I could support myself.”

  “By marrying well.”

  “And I did. I told myself I was happy.” Anna Lee’s voice held the poignant note of might-have-beens. “For a while, I was, I guess. But the thing about relying on your looks is that they eventually go away and then you’re left with...nothing.”

  “You don’t have nothing, Momma. You have done more charity work than anyone in Stone Gap. The money you raised helped build schools, start that community garden, renovate the animal shelter. You’ve left a legacy, Momma. That’s something and not something everyone does.” Meri reached out and covered her mother’s hand with her own. “I’m proud of you.”