Threading The Needle Part 16

"What time is it?"

"Almost five."

"You want breakfast?"

"Later. I'm going to make coffee." He turned around, looked me in the eye, letting his gaze linger. An acknowledgment. An apology. "Can I bring you a cup?"

I smiled sleepily, relishing the normalcy of a new morning. He sounded like himself again. "That would be nice."

I grabbed Lee's abandoned pillow, added it to mine, and wedged both under my head and shoulders to prop myself up. I blinked a couple of times, easing myself into wakefulness. "I'm going to church later. Do you want to come?"

"Can't. I've got to feed the animals."

"I know," I said through a yawn, "but that won't take more than an hour. I can mix up some pancakes while you're in the barn. We could have breakfast together and drive into town for the ten o'clock service."

He tucked his shirt into his jeans. "Why? So you can pray we win the lottery?"

I pushed myself higher up on the pillows. "That's not why I go."

"Well, that'd be why I was going. And somehow," he said, bending over to lace up his work boots, "I think G.o.d would see right through that. I never asked G.o.d for help when things were going good for me. Don't you think it'd be hypocritical asking him for help now that things aren't?"

"But I don't go to church just to pray for things," I said. "When I'm there I feel better, like everything is going to work out somehow."

Lee frowned. "Well, of course it is. I'm going to do whatever I have to do to keep us afloat. I've never let you down before, have I?"

"That's not what I meant, honey. I was just-"

"We're going to be fine," he interrupted. "You'll see. If G.o.d wants to help, good. Let him. But I'm not going to sit around waiting for him to do it. I got us into this mess. I'll get us out. 'Fear G.o.d and take your own part.' That's in the Bible somewhere, isn't it?"

I pushed back the covers and perched myself on the edge of the bed. "I think that was one of the presidents, a Roosevelt. Teddy or Franklin. I'm not sure which."

"Well. My dad always said it, and it always worked for him."

Lee cleared his throat and sat down next to me on the bed. "Tessa? Listen. About last night. I'm sorry. I just . . ."

I leaned to the left, b.u.mping his shoulder with mine. "It's okay. You're just tired and stressed. We both are. It's fine. You know what else is fine?" I asked, running my hand slowly down his muscled thigh and letting a slow smile spread across my face.

Lee raised his eyebrows, questioning. I leaned toward him, kissed him long and slow on the mouth. He wrapped his arms around me, returning the favor. My palm moved up his back, stroking the ridges of his shoulder blades, then down his side along his rib cage and lower, feeling that familiar thrill I had missed so much. Lee groaned and pushed me gently backward onto the bed, moving with me, shifting his body to cover mine.

A rooster crowed.

Lee made a groan of an entirely different sort and lifted himself up, resting his weight on his elbows. "Darren's awake. Which means the hens are up too."

"Let 'em wait," I said, trying to pull him back down.

"If I don't get out there, Darren will just get the girls all worked up over nothing."

"Better them than me. Come on. Stay here. Ten minutes. Five."

Lee grinned as he got to his feet and tucked in his shirttail. "Can't. Besides, you deserve more than five minutes, way more."

"How about five minutes now and more minutes later?"

He laughed. "I'm flattered by your optimism." He kissed me on top of the head. "Tonight. I promise."

I sighed petulantly. "Fine. But do you know how long it's been? I'll tell you how long. You know the guy who runs the produce section of the market? The one with the paunch and the bald spot? He was starting to look good to me."

Lee grinned. "Tonight. It'll be worth the wait, I promise."

"I'm holding you to that." I sat up and reached for my bathrobe. "Do you want pancakes or scrambled eggs for breakfast?"

"Both. Need to keep up my strength to keep up with you." He gave me another quick peck and walked away, pausing at the bedroom door. "Hey. If you think about it, when you're in church today, say a prayer for me, will you?"

I smiled and cinched the belt on my robe. You can count on it.

25.

Madelyn "If you say six hundred is the best you can do, Mr. Levitt, then I'm sure it is." I switched the phone to my other ear as I steered onto Oak Leaf Lane. "But I'm on a budget and I've got another quote for four seventy-five. . . . Five hundred? Hmm. That's still a bit more than the other fellow, but . . . you've got such a good reputation," I mused, pretending to weigh my options.

"All right, then. It's a deal. Five hundred. I'll see you first thing Tuesday."

I snapped the phone shut, entirely pleased with myself. Four fireplaces cleaned, broken bricks replaced, and a new damper installed in the living room for five hundred. I really hadn't expected him to go lower than five fifty. Either I was a better negotiator than I'd realized or Mr. Levitt was desperate for work. Probably a bit of both.

My self-satisfied smile faded when I pulled into the driveway and saw Jake Kaminski sitting on my front porch steps.

What was he doing here? After our last encounter, you'd think he would have figured out I never wanted to see him again, but there he was, grinning like the Cheshire cat as he pulled himself to his feet. I turned off the engine and smiled as he approached. What else could I do? It was too late to back out and pretend I hadn't seen him.

Jake came around to the driver's side of the car and opened the door for me. "You can unglue that fake smile from your face, Madelyn. I know you're not happy to see me. But you will be, when you see what I brought you."

He jerked his chin toward the front porch and the two big cardboard boxes that were sitting there.

"Paint," he said. "Twenty gallons of premium interior eggsh.e.l.l white. Enough to paint the whole house, and I'm going to sell it to you at cost because I am a good guy. And because the company has repackaged the line and I've got to get rid of all the cans with the old labels."

"Really?" I did a little calculation in my head. Jake had just saved me about three hundred dollars.

"Really. Now are you happy to see me? Let me help you with your bags," he said, walking to the back of the car. He opened the hatchback before I could stop him and stood there, shaking his head. I felt the color rise in my cheeks.

"Home Depot," he said flatly, then made a tsking noise with his tongue. "Madelyn, how could you? And after I gave you my whole 'doing business with your neighbors' speech."

He threaded his muscular arm through four of the plastic shopping bags, leaving nothing for me to carry.

"Jake. Wait. You don't have to . . ."

Ignoring my protests, he walked to the porch and climbed the steps. "Do you have any coffee?"

Jake put his hand over the top of his coffee mug. "Three is my limit. Otherwise, I don't sleep. But I wouldn't say no to another one of those m.u.f.fins. I didn't know you could cook, Madelyn."

I put the carafe back into the coffeemaker, sliced another raspberry m.u.f.fin in half, spread it with b.u.t.ter, and carried it over to the kitchen table.

"Neither did I. But since I'm opening a bed-and-breakfast, I figured I'd better learn the breakfast part at least. I found an old recipe box that belonged to Edna up in the attic. At least, I think it was Edna's. Looks like her handwriting, but I never remember her being much of a cook. She never made anything besides overdone beef and underdone potatoes. And I never saw her bake, not so much as a cookie."

"Maybe she did before. Back when your dad was still alive."

"Maybe." I sank down into the chair opposite Jake's and shrugged.

"What? You don't think it's possible that once upon a time, Edna was a kind, young, m.u.f.fin-baking mom?"

"Somewhat hard to picture."

"Well, people can change-sometimes for better and sometimes for worse, but they can. I did," he said.

It was hard for me to return his gaze for more than a moment, to pretend not to notice the unseeing stare of his gla.s.s eye. Did it hurt him? I wondered. I supposed it didn't, not now. But at the time the pain must have been excruciating.

Over the course of the previous two hours and three cups of coffee, we'd filled each other in on most of what had happened since the night of the accident. After his uncle fired him and his parents refused to let him move back home, Jake had been forced to drop out of college and go to work. He found a job as a bartender, but quickly lost it for drinking up the profits. About a week later, he got a draft notice and soon found himself patrolling jungles in Vietnam. Shrapnel from an enemy grenade explosion ended up in his eye and cost him half his sight.

"Jake," I said, looking down at my hands. "I'm just so sorry. . . ."

He tipped the kitchen chair back onto two legs and crossed his arms over his chest, staring at me. "Why? You didn't do anything."

"If you hadn't gone out with me that night you wouldn't have wrecked the car, lost your job, your deferment, and your eye."

Jake's mouth split into a grin and he shook his head. "Boy, you sure think a lot of yourself, Madelyn. Sure, I was crazy about you, but I was perfectly capable of destroying my own future, thank you, and I was h.e.l.l-bent on doing it. You didn't hold me down and pour liquor down my throat that night; I did that all by myself. Then, drunk as a skunk, I got behind the wheel of a brand-new borrowed sports car and I crashed it into a tree.

"After that I got myself fired from a bartending job for drinking too much. Do you have any idea how much you've got to drink to make that happen? A lot. Next, I went to Vietnam, drank a lot more, did a lot of drugs, and practically got my brains blown out. If I hadn't been stoned out of my mind when the grenade was lobbed, I'd still have my eye. Instead, I probably stood there for a full three seconds before I reacted. You'd think I would have figured out that alcohol, drugs, and me were a bad combination a long time before, but nope.

"Took a grenade blast to finally shake some sense into me," he said, rapping his head with his fist. "Maybe I got hit with too many hockey pucks as a boy. Or maybe I'm just stubborn. Probably that. But whatever I am, whatever I've done, I've done myself. So quit trying to hog all the credit, will you? Besides, I'm glad things happened the way they did."

Seeing my open mouth, he laughed. "Don't look at me like that, Madelyn. I mean it. I like my life. I wouldn't change a thing about it."

"Oh, come on," I scoffed. "Not even your eye? Given a choice, wouldn't you have preferred to go through life with two of them?"

"Yes, but it couldn't be that way. I told you, I was absolutely h.e.l.l-bent on destroying myself. Sooner or later I'd have succeeded. But, lucky for me, G.o.d arranged for a grenade to drop into my path and get my attention. I don't think anything else could have. All told, living with one eye seems like a small price to pay."

"G.o.d. You think G.o.d threw a grenade at you. And you're grateful for this." Now it was my turn to laugh. "Right."

Jake shifted his weight forward, letting the two front legs of the chair hit the floor with a thunk, and tore off a piece of m.u.f.fin before going on. "Well, I don't think G.o.d was crouching in the bushes and throwing grenades, but I do think he used the situation to help me realize that my life had become unmanageable, that I was powerless to restore myself to sanity, and that I needed to turn my life and will over to G.o.d."

"Oh, Jake, you sound like a walking AA commercial."

"Only because I am," he said and popped the last piece of m.u.f.fin into his mouth. "Alcoholics Anonymous changed my life."

"Yeah," I said and rolled my eyes. "That and the lucky grenade."

"Everything depends on your outlook. I was spiraling out of control way before the accident. Took my first drink at fourteen and didn't stop. I was never loud, never a real troublemaker. I wasn't looking to rebel, I just wanted to drink and I did it quietly. The teachers never took much notice of me. Wrote me off as shy, none too bright, and pa.s.sed me along. But my coach knew what was up. If I hadn't been such a good hockey player, he'd probably have kicked me off the team, but instead, he kept giving me 'one more chance.' That just made things worse, made me feel like I could get away with it. But it cost me.

"The college coaches wouldn't touch me. That's why I didn't get a scholarship; they found out about the drinking. My uncle gave me a couple of chances, too, but the car was the last straw. I don't blame him for firing me, though I felt plenty sorry for myself at the time. I made quite a habit of blaming everybody else for my mistakes. But when I ended up in the hospital after the blast-that kind of forced me to dry out."

I smiled. "The army doesn't supply martinis to recuperating soldiers?"

"They don't even supply olives. Lucky for me, I had a doctor who saw right through me. He'd gone through AA himself, so he knew the signs. Of course, that time I got caught trying to steal extra pain pills may have given him a clue too. Anyway, he got me off the pain meds but quick. Then he read me the riot act and forced me to admit the truth: I was an alcoholic. I joined an AA group while I was still in the hospital.

"When I got out, I came home to New Bern and moved in with my folks. They weren't exactly thrilled about having me back, just waiting for me to fall off the wagon. I came close, plenty of times. I got a job on a construction crew, carpenter's apprentice. Let me tell you, the guys on that crew could pound them down. Every night, as soon as we'd close down the job site for the day, they'd head to the bar and razz me for not coming along."

"Didn't they know you were an alcoholic?"

"Sure they did. A couple of them were, too, they just hadn't admitted it. That's part of why they tried to lure me back to it, so they would feel okay about their own drinking."

"That must have been so hard. How did you resist the temptation?"

"I almost didn't. But my AA sponsor suggested I find something to do at night, something that would give me an ironclad excuse for not going to the bar with the rest of the guys. So I enrolled in night cla.s.ses up at the community college. I was nervous about going back to school. I'd barely made it through high school, and my first stint at college hadn't gone too well. I was on academic probation when I dropped out. Even if my uncle hadn't fired me, I'd probably have flunked out anyway."

He leaned forward, pressing his stomach against the hard edge of the table to get closer, his voice low but intense. "But this time, it was different. I did really well, got Bs. At first I thought it was the teachers, that they were better, or that the material was more interesting. But one day, while I was sitting in my algebra cla.s.s, listening to and actually understanding a lecture on the quadratic formula, the lightbulb went on. It wasn't that the teachers were better or that I'd suddenly gotten smarter. It was that, for the first time in years, I was sitting in a cla.s.sroom and I was sober!"

He threw back his head and laughed. He had nice teeth.

"Yes," I said. "I can see how it'd be hard to get through algebra with a buzz on."

"Yeah. Funny how I didn't figure that out before. I thought I was stupid. Partly because I wanted to. It was easier to give up on myself than make any effort. But I . . ."

He stopped himself in mid-sentence, looked at his watch. "Sorry, Madelyn. I've been going on and on. You must have a million things to do."

I did, but I wasn't anxious to see him go. This was the first real conversation I'd had since coming to New Bern. And I was intrigued by Jake's story. He was the Jake I remembered, but there seemed to be more of him, and better. He really had changed, and, as far as I could see, all for the good.

Jake brushed the stray crumbs from the table onto his plate and took it to the sink.

"Jake? One more thing. The hardware store. Did you go into business with your dad?"

"No," he said, rinsing off his plate and cup. "After I came back, Dad lived six more years. I wanted to come into the business with him, but he never did trust me."

"Even after six years? That's so unfair."

He pulled the dish towel off the refrigerator door handle, turned around, and leaned against the counter, drying dishes as he talked. "Oh, I don't know, Madelyn. He had reason to be wary. For alcoholics, sobriety is one day at a time. Even after I got sober, I still had issues. Especially with women. I have terrible luck with wives."

"Oh. You're married?"

He shook his head. "Was married. Three times. First time was to one of my nurses in the hospital, Janie. That lasted six months. She ran off with an orthopedist. I met Number Two at an AA meeting in New Bern. She was the jealous type, always accusing me of cheating on her."

"And were you?"

"No, ma'am. I have very many bad qualities, but infidelity isn't one of them. But every time a woman looked at me sideways, Rhonda thought the worst."