“Does this mean you will give me another chance?” he asked and extended his hand so it overlapped mine. Suddenly his touch startled me and felt wrong. I pulled my hand away.
“Jamie, thank you for explaining to me what was going through your mind that day. It makes me feel a little better about things, but you and I have been over for a long time. I think you are a great guy, and you treated me well. I don’t want you to think you weren’t good enough for me, because I think you are kind and loving and have a lot to offer. I just don’t think we are a good match anymore. I’ve been through a lot and I’ve changed.” I didn’t want to give him the 'it’s not you line it’s me,' but I had no choice. “I’m not the same person I was even two years ago. I appreciate your honesty, but I don’t know what I want these days. There may be a good chance I will go back to New York.”
Jamie’s lips tugged up at the corners but his eyes were sad, “I never pegged you for a small town girl, Vick. You should go and conquer the world.”
“Thanks, Jamie, I think you also have so much potential. You shouldn’t think less of yourself. I could have never built that roller coaster without you. You have real talent,” I said, reminding him of the hardship we took upon us when we built the roller coaster in my parent’s backyard, our senior year of high school. If it weren’t for Jamie, we would have never got the motor running.
“Thanks, Vick, I appreciate that,” he said standing up. He bent down and placed a soft kiss on my head. “Do you want to come back to the house?” he asked.
“Nah, I still think I need some air. I will hang out here a while longer,” I responded with a light smile. It was good to have this closure with him. I didn’t want to tell him that I already met the love of my life, and that I gave him my heart; only he took it and stomped on it, and now I didn’t think the damage was repairable. I watched as Jamie walked down the street toward his car with his head bowed. When he started up the Mustang, I heard its loud growl and then he drove off.
Memories began to flood my mind, I remembered all the times I rode my bike up and down the street. All the times I had fallen off my bike and scraped up my knees. As a teenager I remembered hanging out in the end of our court with my friends. I had a lot of good childhood memories and that’s when it hit me. I’d come full circle. When Mama died I felt abandoned. I didn’t know how to handle the abandonment, and after she died I went running off like the scared little girl I was. The drinking, the parties, it was me lashing out at the loneliness that gripped my heart. I didn’t only lose hope, I felt completely lost to myself and to the person I had become.
I stood up and began to walk around the court touching my stomach lightly. A part of me was almost afraid to acknowledge the baby inside me, and a part of me felt overwhelmed with love that I had the baby inside me.
Of course everything I think came back to my mama. I wondered how she felt coming home and realizing that she was pregnant. She was only eighteen. I was twenty-two, even though I felt like a child. She must have felt just as confused and alone as I did now. Yet she was the best mama ever. A vivid picture of her warm green eyes and dark hair entered my mind and warmed my heart. I felt like she was looking down on me smiling. How proud would she be to know that my baby doesn’t have a father? Of course my thoughts drifted to Papa, as angry as I was at him, I can’t be angry anymore knowing that he was gone. He loved her so much he couldn’t live without her. Who knew that coming home for a funeral would involve so much drama? Joe was a father and I was about to become a mother. The reality seemed fabricated. We were only children ourselves not long ago. We were forced to grow up too quickly. I can’t help but feel that this is what I needed.
Going to New York and meeting Luc brought me back to life. He made me hope again, and now he blessed me with the life growing inside me. I felt overcome by loss that he wouldn’t share in my joy. No, no, I couldn’t do that to him. I couldn’t keep the knowledge of this child from him. He would want to know. I needed to tell him. I suddenly wanted to send him a text message and tell him that we needed to talk. Since I had no pockets in my skirt, so I had left my cell phone in the cup holder of the Tracker. As I turned the corner of the court to head back home, a black Mustang came speeding down the road. Of course I knew it was a Mustang because Jamie taught me everything about cars. The engine was loud and I wondered if it could be Jamie coming back, only I knew he wouldn’t be driving down the street like a bat out of hell. The car slowed in front of my house. I watched the two men in the front seat looking at the house without cutting the engine. Then one of the men looked straight ahead. He made eye contact with me and my stomach dropped. The Mustang came full speed ahead, straight for me. I thought they were going to run me over, and I jumped from the pavement onto one of the neighbor's lawns. I picked up speed, needing to get away, while a sinking feeling told me that these men were after me. The Mustang skidded to a stop scraping the side of the curb. I gasped and began to run toward the neighbor’s house, but the two men quickly got out of the car. One man grabbed me from behind, covering my mouth.
“Don’t fight this. sweetheart, you will only make matters worse,” he snarled. He had the same accent as Luc. He had a French accent. Shit, this is why Luc was drinking. This is why Luc pushed me away. His family must have contacted him. His family knew about me. I was their leverage, or I was going to be used to hurt Luc. As panic surged through my body, I thrashed about needing to flee. One of the men pushed my head down and shoved me in the backseat of the car. I knew these men were too strong for me, so I stopped thrashing while trying to use my head to figure things out, but I was consumed by fear. My heart beat so fast that I could hear each thump in my ears. I didn’t even have a cell phone to secretly send a message. I had nothing. The Mustang rounded the corner of the court briskly, squealing its tires and sped past my house. As I looked at my home with wide lost eyes I noticed Joe whipping the door open and running out to the front lawn.
Chapter 25
Joe
As I flung the door open, I saw a black Mustang speeding down the street like a bat out of hell. The first thing that came to mind was, ‘stupid motherfucker, there are kids walking down this street all the time,’ but then I thought I saw Vicky in the backseat and I didn’t understand. She seemed okay to be walking with Jamie and I had thought I heard him take off in his car a few minutes ago. Then I remembered that Jamie’s car is a midnight blue and that Mustang was black. Who the hell would she have to pick her up? Why would she ditch our houseguests now and leave me to face this on my own? Something about her behavior didn’t add up.
I was DEA, Vicky didn’t know that yet, I returned to university to finish my kinesiology degree, but then I had no interest working in the field. I had gone to university because it was important to Mama. I had always wanted to get into law enforcement. I always spoke about the Secret Service but that always made Mama nervous. She was scared of me dying, so I put my dreams on the back burner permanently until she got sick and passed away. Then I realized that none of us have control over our destiny, so we might as well make the most of our lives while we have the time. If Mama’s death taught me something, it was that life could change or end in the blink of an eye.
After wandering around South America for six months, I came home and signed up for the police academy. Only I didn’t want to stay in Canada, let alone Thunder Bay. It was a small town, and it was hard to escape the ghosts that haunted me there. I graduated from the police academy at the top of my class. I applied for a green card and sent my application to the FBI. The FBI wasn’t known to recruit internationally, but I was fluent in Spanish and Italian and I had skills. They recruited me and did my papers faster than I could have imagined. Only I didn’t realize I would be sent to the DEA, the Drug Enforcement Administration. I didn’t protest though. I was good undercover and grateful to get away from Canada. I didn’t care about getting killed, and I got results. My little sister may not have known where I was, but I knew where she was. I had sources everywhere. I was going to come to New York and reunite with her when Marie called to say that my father was going downhill. I thought I would come home and take care of it myself; only I was a coward and spent a few extra days in Toronto wallowing in self-pity. There are details of my relationship with Eva that I left out when I told Vicky where I had been, but I didn’t want to freak my little sister out. Especially since she just found out she was pregnant. I also couldn’t let on that I knew everything about her life for the past six months. I knew she was working in New York, and I knew she was dating a guy linked to the Blanchard family. The fact that she took off that way was sending all kinds of alarm bells in my mind.