He was scowling at the menu when Mirabella joined him. It was starting to be a habit, he thought, the way she would show up at his elbow, taking possession of the space around him so that suddenly even the air he breathed seemed filled with her-her presence, her scent, her energy.
She looked different this morning. She’d scrubbed her face and pulled her hair back and fastened it on top with some kind of clip in a way that made her seem even younger than she had before. Not the old-fashioned movie star now; more like a high-school cheerleader. But it was more than that. It seemed to him there was a new kind of quietness about her…
But it wasn’t until she was easing into the booth across from him that he finally put his finger on what was different. It was her arrogance, that uppity tilt to her chin that was missing. And that worried him.
The first thing she said to him was, “How come you’re not on the phone? Aren’t you going to call your son and let him know you’re on your way?”
Which reassured him some, being the sort of bossiness that he’d already come to understand was just her basic nature. So he smiled and said, “Naw, I’ll wait a bit. Like to make it through Texas, first. Then I’ll know I’ve got a shot at gettin’ home by Christmas.”
She nodded and looked quickly down at her menu, but not before he caught a glimpse of shadows in her eyes. That and the tiny quiver of her mouth made him ask, even though it wasn’t any of his business, “What about you? You got folks waitin’ on you?” Like a husband, maybe? That would explain it, he thought, if she was tryin’ so hard to get to him, to be with him for the holidays. He could almost understand that.
“My mom,” she said, still looking down at the menu. She swallowed and added, “And my dad,” in a whisper he could barely hear.
Then he wondered why talking about her daddy made her choke up so, but poking into people’s business, getting them to spill their personal secrets wasn’t something he’d had much experience in or felt comfortable doing. So all he said was, “They’re in Pensacola, you said?”
She glanced up at him and cleared her throat, and he could tell she was back on steadier ground. “Yes-Pensacola Beach, actually.”
“Oh, man.” Feeling for her, he shook his head, picked up his coffee and took a cautious sip. “That’s more ’n a thousand miles. You’re not gonna make that by Christmas.”
She looked at him and he could see the fury in her eyes, wanting to argue with him, not ready to accept it yet. Funny, how clear the workings of her mind were becoming to him, like words and pictures printed on the pages of a book, because somehow, as if he’d known her all his life, he knew what a careful planner she was and how she hated it when things’ didn’t work out her way.
“I thought… if I can just get through Texas-”
Jimmy Joe put his coffee mug down and reached for her hands. He took them and held them gently, making his voice gentle, too, saving all his steel for his eyes the way he did when he needed to get something straight with J.J. once and for all, and no room for dispute. “Don’t you even try it. You take it easy, now, y’hear? Your mama and daddy, they’ll understand. You know they’d rather have you late a thousand times than have any harm come to you or that baby.”
Oh, Lord, he could feel her fighting it. Feel it in the tension in those small-boned hands, see it in the anger burning dark in her eyes. How she did hate to give in! But then he saw the fire in her eyes cool behind a glaze of tears he knew she would die rather than shed, and she took a breath with a quiver in it and let it out along with the words, “I know.”
He waited a moment more before he released her hands. As soon as he let them go she straightened and used them to smooth invisible strands of hair away from her face, which he knew was just a way for her to get her poise back. It seemed to work, because her voice was steady when she went on, “I really wanted to spend this Christmas with my dad. He just had a heart attack-”
“Oh, Lord,” said Jimmy Joe. “I am sorry.” He was thinking of his own daddy, dead long before his time, and the second heart attack that had been his last. It was not an uncommon way for a man raised on Southern cooking to go.
“He’s going to be okay,” said Mirabella firmly. “But he can’t travel, obviously. My mom was going to come and stay with me until after the baby…but she can’t leave my dad, so that’s why I thought I’d go there instead. But I couldn’t get a flight on such short notice, so then I figured I’d just drive. Plenty of time, right? Or so I thought. And now…here we are.” She held out her hands, gamely smiling. “Looks like it’ll just be me and Junior this Christmas.”
Jimmy Joe laughed, although his heart was hurting for her. “Hey, you know, this kinda reminds me of a movie I saw once-funny as the dickens-about this guy tryin’ to get home for…Thanksgiving, I b’lieve it was.” He kept on talking-glib as a traveling preacher, telling her about all the crazy things that happened to the poor guy in the movie, wanting only to make her feel better somehow-until the waitress came to take their order.
While they waited for the food to arrive they tried talking about movies some more, but it was hard to find enough common ground to base a good discussion on. Jimmy Joe liked action movies and slapstick comedies, the kind Mirabella called “brainless.” She went for the type of films critics cooed over and nobody else had even heard of, until somebody in one of them got nominated for an Academy Award. That, and movies based on Shakespeare’s plays and Jane Austen’s novels, which always put Jimmy Joe straight to sleep. Then they found out they’d both seen every Walt Disney film ever made, and got into an argument about which was the greatest cartoon feature of all time that lasted all the way through breakfast.
The waitress came and refilled their coffee cups, slapped down the check and hurried away with a distracted, “You folks have a safe trip, now.” Silence fell. Jimmy Joe reached for the check, but Mirabella got there first.
“Let me buy you breakfast,” she said, although she didn’t sound nearly as bossy as he’d grown accustomed to. “It’s the least I can do, after all you’ve done for me.” She watched him with quiet, unreadable eyes.
Every Southern-bred instinct in him wanted to refuse, but he could see it was important to her, so even though it caused him embarrassment to do it he gave in and let her take the check. He sipped his coffee in uncomfortable silence while he watched her fish in her pocketbook for her wallet, then haul out a bottle of Tylenol and shake a couple into her hand. She swallowed them down without looking at him, but she didn’t have to, or say a word, either, for him to know she was hurting again. He was starting to recognize the signs.
She opened up her wallet and took out a couple of dollar bills and tucked them neatly under her coffee cup, then gave him a bright look and said, “Ready?”
Jimmy Joe said, “Let’s roll,” and scooted out of the booth ahead of her so he would be ready to give her a hand-if she would let him. He had a funny feeling in his chest as if he’d gotten a wad of food stuck way down deep in his esophagus, right under his breastbone. It was the kind of lump he got when J.J. was sick and he had to leave him anyway; the same lump that had been there when he’d left the hospital after visiting his daddy for the last time. He told himself the lady really wasn’t any of his business, that she was just a passing stranger he’d happened to lend a helping hand to, and now it was time to go his way and let her go hers.