A woman in an SUV pulled up beside Jamie and asked if she was lost.
“No, ma’am. I’m just out walking.”
The woman had beautiful snow-white hair. She stared at Jamie for a moment. “You look awfully hot and tired to me,” she said. “I live just past the cemetery. You and the baby are welcome to rest there for a time. I think I’ll make a pitcher of fresh lemonade as soon as I get home.”
Jamie thanked her again and kept on walking.
Fresh lemonade. She felt light-headed just thinking about it.
The cemetery was on the right side of Coles Road, set among a grove of ancient live oak trees. Just beyond the entrance to the cemetery Jamie sank to the ground by the moss-covered tomb of Moses Crawford, who died in 1857. She leaned against the backside so she wouldn’t be visible from the road and nursed her baby. Then she lay down and, cradling Billy in her arms, curled her body around his and closed her eyes.
Chapter Thirty-one
AFTER JAMIE HUNG UP, Joe stood there for a time with the receiver still to his ear. He felt the anxious eyes of his parents. Still in their bathrobes, they were standing by the sink, his father’s arm protectively around his mother’s shoulders.
It was just three days ago that he had finally talked to his parents. The ship had just docked in the Libyan port city of Tripoli. He could tell the minute he heard his mother’s voice that something was wrong. She was too chipper. When he started asking questions, she insisted that nothing was amiss and that he should continue his trip for as long as he wanted. Then she had handed the phone to his father, who had rambled on about how he wished that he had traveled more as a young man and had seen the world just as Joe was now doing, and experienced the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome, and taken advantage of what only youth can offer, which was a definite about-face from the paternal lecture on responsibility that Joe had received when he’d told his father about his plan to stay on in Europe after he’d finished the course at Oxford.
Joe finally interrupted him. “Dad, what in the hell is going on? Did the house burn down? Is Mom sick?”
“No, no, no. Nothing’s wrong,” his father insisted. “Your mother and I were a little put off when you decided to stay over there, but we do want you to enjoy yourself before you have to settle down.”
Maybe there really was nothing wrong back home, but the phone call had left him with a deep sense of unease, and after roaming through the old city center for a time, he returned to the ship to collect his possessions. He didn’t bother to announce his departure, unsure if international maritime law permitted him to terminate his employment before the end of the voyage. He had flown standby to London’s Heathrow Airport, where he was lucky enough-after running at full steam through three terminal buildings-to arrive at the gate just as the last passengers were boarding a direct flight to Houston. The gate attendant said there was just enough time for him to make a quick phone call before he boarded.
His father answered. Joe blurted out the flight number and the time it was scheduled to arrive in Houston.
When his parents picked him up at the airport, his mother insisted they stop for coffee at an airport restaurant. That was when they told him that they couldn’t talk at home. Or in the car. Just in case the house and car were bugged. They were absolutely certain that their phone was tapped and that they were being followed everywhere they went and were being watched at this very minute.
Bugged? Tapped phones? Being followed? Joe wondered if his parents had gotten senile during his absence.
Then they explained that it had all started with a phone call from Jamie Long.
Their coffee grew cold as they told him about Jamie’s strange calls and how she seemed desperate to get in touch with him. How she behaved as though someone was listening in and wouldn’t say where she was or what sort of trouble she was in. And they told him about the mysterious “agents” who showed up at his grandparents’ house in Georgia in search of information about Jamie, including her relationship with their grandson. His grandparents had called friends in Mesquite and learned that these mysterious agents had been there, too, questioning all sorts of people-wanting to know who Jamie’s close friends had been and implying that she was in some sort of danger and that they were trying to find her so they could protect her. “But the only one who had seen or heard from Jamie since she packed up and drove away from Mesquite was the stonemason at that monument place out by the cemetery,” his mother said. “She had come by sometime in July and ordered a tombstone for her grandmother’s grave and paid him with cash. Everyone says it’s like she dropped off the face of the earth, and since Jamie was adamant that we not tell anyone we’d heard from her, we can’t tell them otherwise. I know you’ve always thought highly of her, Joe. And we are sorry for her, but now that we realize how serious her trouble must be, your father and I don’t want you to get involved.”
Joe quizzed his mother about the phone calls, wanting her to describe each one. She recalled that when she asked where Jamie was, all she would say was that she wasn’t in Texas. And she said that she was in trouble but had done nothing wrong. His mother hadn’t talked to her in more than two weeks.
His father explained that they hadn’t been home at the appointed hour for Jamie’s last phone call because they were delayed when they had to replace the alternator in their car. “Truth of the matter was we were both relieved that something beyond our control had prevented us being there. That way we didn’t have to feel guilty.”
They wanted him to get on the first available flight back to Europe. His mother had even put his name on standby for an Alitalia flight to Rome that left in two hours.
“Not until I’ve had some home cooking,” Joe joked, picking up his duffel bag.
Despite her nervousness, his mother outdid herself with some of his favorites-garlic grits, smothered pork chops, coleslaw with bacon and vinegar dressing, and strawberry shortcake for dessert. He knew that his parents didn’t eat like that anymore and that he shouldn’t either, but once in a while it sure was good.
And it felt good to crawl into his own bed rather than a narrow berth with not even enough headroom to sit up, although he did miss the motion of the ship plowing through the waves. More and more of late his before-sleep musings turned to Jamie.
He had really screwed things up with her.
He’d all but decided it was time to expand the parameters of their relationship when Marcia took his hand and led him out onto a tiny crowded dance floor in a downtown Austin bar and plastered her body against his. At the end of the dance, she led him to the ladies’ room, where she pushed him down on the toilet seat and straddled him. As they walked back to the dance floor, she reached over and shook his hand, then said, “I’m Marcia.”
Joe had been screwing Marcia for almost a year when he stopped at the dry cleaner’s to tell Jamie that he was getting married even though he wasn’t yet officially engaged. But he knew it was coming. Marcia expected it, and Joe felt like she was entitled.
Jamie seemed so forlorn, standing there at the counter in that dreary, steamy dry-cleaning establishment with rows of plastic-covered clothing hanging behind her, her hair damp with perspiration, putting on a brave, smiling face as she wished him well. A few weeks later he learned from his grandmother that Jamie had dropped out of school and gone back to Mesquite to look after the ailing Gladys. Joe knew he should call her. Or drive up for a weekend. But he hadn’t. Marcia would have expected to come with him to meet his grandparents. And he didn’t think he could face Jamie with Marcia at his side. Of course, no words had ever been spoken between him and Jamie. And there had been almost no touching-only high fives and crashing into each other when they grabbed at rebounds. But there was a place in his heart that belonged exclusively to the long-legged little girl whom he’d watched grow up into a lovely young woman with the most beautiful smile imaginable and eyes that glowed when she looked at him. But he felt kind of stupid being hung up on a kid, especially one who considered him a big brother of sorts. And if his thoughts about her turned the least bit sexual, he felt like a pedophile. Then, after Jamie developed into a shapely young woman, sexual thoughts seemed incestuous. She was still in high school when he started law school. And Marcia was gorgeous and funny and outrageously inventive when it came to sex.