But I needed to know. As much as it hurts, I needed to know.
I look down at my hand, shaking where it rests on my thigh. The air around me feels thick and unbreathable. My head throbs with the need to scream. Or cry. Or come apart.
I clear my throat then take a deep breath, refusing to let my best friend see how deeply wounded I am. She’s seen enough, heard enough. I won’t continue to do this to her.
“Well, in that case, I guess I have some phone calls to make.”
“Jenna, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what… I really thought…”
“Don’t be sorry. We both hoped. And we were both wrong. Turns out neither of us know Rusty very well.”
“Wh-what are you going to do?” she asks carefully.
“I’m calling human resources at those two places I’ve been putting off. If they’ve still got openings, I’m going to set up an interview again. Only this time, I’m going. There’s nothing holding me here. Nothing and no one.”
And, for the first time since I met Rusty, I feel that’s absolutely, one hundred percent true.
“Why don’t you come over tonight? I’ll rent some movies and we can hang out. Or we could go to Lucky’s. Whatever you want to do.”
I smile. Even though I’m hiding it from her, Cami knows me well enough to know I’m dying on the inside. And, no doubt, she’s worried about me.
“Nah. I’ll leave you two newlyweds to your perverted sexcapades. I think I’ll stay here with Daddy. I need to spend some quality time with him since I won’t be here much longer.”
“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”
She sounds a little hurt by my choice.
“Because you know as well as I do that he won’t be visiting me when I move, like you will. The man refuses to leave home.”
“Yeah, what’s up with that? What’s so fabulous about staying in Greenfield all the time?”
“Well, it’s not really Greenfield, it’s this house. It’s where he spent time with Mom. I don’t think he’ll ever love another place as much as he loves this one.”
Cami sighs. “That’s so sweet.”
“I know. Unless it ruins your life.”
“Yeah, love can go either way. If you let it.”
“I guess so. I suppose sometimes you just have to cut your losses.”
“Sometimes you do,” she agrees.
The question is: How?
CHAPTER TWENTY- Rusty
I glance up at the clock on the wall. It’s after seven in the evening. “What are you still doing around here?” I ask Mom when she wanders in. Normally, she visits me several times throughout the day and then goes home to do stuff around the house around six or so.
She doesn’t answer me right away. She just walks toward me, arms crossed over her chest, and sits on the edge of my bed. She looks like she’s deep in thought.
“Did I ever tell you that your father came back after he left that last time?”
I feel like shaking my head to clear it. Talk about out of the blue!
“What? What are you talking about?”
She looks off into the distance, a wistful smile on her face. “Your father had big dreams. And he was a very determined man. Stubborn. A lot like you. He thought there was more to life than small town living.”
I grit my teeth. It aggravates me to think of him, to think of what he did to Mom, to us, much less talk about it. “I know. He was an asshole. You deserved better.”
“You’d get so excited when he’d come home. You were on cloud nine, right up until he left again. Then you’d be depressed for days. Sometimes you wouldn’t eat. I’d get letters from your teachers. It was a cycle. It was hard on you.”
“But once he left for good, we did just fine without him.”
“You’re right. We did. But he came back once, once that you didn’t know about.”
I shrug. “So? What’s one more time?”
“He asked me if we’d go with him. He’d gotten a job with a country singer, on the road crew. Unloading equipment from the trucks. He just knew it would be his big break. And he wanted us to come with him.”
I’m not sure how I feel about this new information, but I’m confused as to why she’s telling me this now. “Obviously you told him no, right?”
“Right. I told him no. I knew nothing would make you happier than to have both of us together, but he wasn’t thinking about you like he should’ve. He wasn’t thinking like a parent. What about school? What about stability? You can’t raise a child on the road, as a hired hand for a country singer.”
“So he left us for his big dream. I already knew that, Mom, even if I didn’t know he came back that last time.”
“Yes, the end result was the same. But you know, I could’ve asked him to stay. And he would’ve. And things would’ve gone on like they always had. But I still loved him, and I wanted him to be happy. I knew he could never be happy around here. And I knew you needed more than sporadic visits or life on the road. So I made the only choice I felt like I could. I told him to stay away. I told him to go chase his dreams, to find what happiness he could out there, but I told him to forget about us. I knew you’d never have a chance to heal if he kept coming in and out of your life.”
Even though I understand why she did what she did, I’m not certain I can see why she kept it from me all this time. She let me think he abandoned us because he loved his dreams more than he loved us. In a way, that was true. But he would’ve kept coming around if she hadn’t told him not to. And I’m just not sure how I feel about it now, how I feel about him. And her.
“Mom, why are you telling me this now?” I ask, my tone rife with frustration.
“Because I could always see how it hurt you when he would come and then go, but I never saw how much it hurt you that he left and never came back. But I’m seeing it now. And I don’t want you to live your life based on a single event when you don’t have all the information.”
I don’t even know what to say to that. I want to ask her what the hell she’s talking about or if she’s been taking someone else’s meds. But I don’t. Because the more I think about it, the more I think I know what she’s trying to say. And the more I think she’s trying to help me not lose someone I’ll regret losing for the rest of my life.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE- Jenna
A loud bark at my right ear provides me with a very rude awakening. After spending a nearly sleepless night tossing and turning, agonizing over the situation with Rusty, I’m not entirely surprised when I roll over to look at the clock and see that it’s almost noon.
Einstein, my eerily intelligent, solid white Labradoodle, barks again, throwing his muddy paws up on the side of the bed and scratching at me with his blunt claws.
“Einstein, no!” I chastise.
He stares me down for several seconds, panting heavily. Finally, he slides his feet off the bed then turns and trots to my closet. He brings back one tennis shoe, drops it on the floor beside the bed and barks again.
“It’s too early to walk,” I tell him, flopping back down on my pillow. I hear his toenails on the hardwoods and a few seconds later the thonk of another shoe hitting the floor. Another bark. “Einstein, I said no!”
Another scrape from a big paw has me up and out of the bed. Angrily, I grab his collar and tow him toward the door. That’s when I hear the sound of a loud engine pulling up in front of the house.