“I can barely button my tight jeans, and I don’t have a slinky halter top. Even if I did, it’s too cold.”
“I imagine I can keep you pretty warm, and don’t worry about buttons.” The deep timbre of sexual promise she heard in his voice made her shiver. He glanced over, and she felt as if he were stroking her with his eyes. He couldn’t have made his intentions any clearer. He wanted her, and he intended to have her.
But the question remained, was she ready for him? Life had always been serious business for her, and nothing could ever make her a casual sort of person. Could she deal with the pain that would await her in the future if she let down her guard with him?
Her head had begun to ache, and she turned to look out the window without answering him. She tried to distract herself from the sizzling undercurrents that vibrated between them by turning her thoughts to his parents, and as the Jeep passed through the silent streets of Salvation, she began sorting through what she’d learned about them.
Lynn hadn’t always been the reserved, sophisticated woman who had entertained so graciously tonight. But what about Jim? Jane wanted to dislike him, but all evening she’d caught glimpses of yearning in his eyes when he’d looked at his wife, and she couldn’t seem to work up a good solid dislike for a man who had feelings like that.
What had happened to the two high school kids who had once been in love? she wondered.
Jim wandered into the kitchen and poured himself the last cup of decaf. Lynn stood at the sink with her back to him. She always had her back to him, he thought, although it didn’t make much difference because, even when she faced him, she never let him see anything more than the polite mask she wore for everyone except their sons.
It was during her pregnancy with Gabe that Lynn had begun transforming herself into the perfect doctor’s wife. He remembered how he’d welcomed her increasing reserve and the fact that she no longer publicly embarrassed him with bad grammar and overexuberance. As the years passed, he’d grown to believe that Lynn’s transformation had prevented their marriage from turning into the disaster everyone had predicted. He’d even thought he was happy.
Then he’d lost his only grandson and a daughter-in-law he’d adored. Afterward, as he’d witnessed his middle son’s bottomless grief and been helpless to cure it, something inside him seemed to have snapped. When Cal had phoned him with the news that he’d married, he’d finally begun to feel hopeful again. But then he’d met his new daughter-in-law. How could Cal have married that cold, supercilious bitch? Didn’t he realize she was going to make him miserable?
He cradled the coffee mug in his hands and looked over at his wife’s slim, straight back. Lynn was shaken to the core by Cal’s marriage, and both of them were trying to come up with a reason why he’d chosen so badly. The physicist had a subtle sex appeal that he’d seen right away, even if Lynn hadn’t, but that didn’t explain why Cal had married her. For years they’d both despaired over his preference for women who were too young and intellectually limited for him, but at least all of them had been sweet-natured.
He felt helpless to deal with Cal’s problems, especially when he couldn’t even deal with his own. The conversation at the dinner table had brought it all back to him, and now he felt the passage of time ticking away so loudly he wanted to shove his hands over his ears because he couldn’t go back to fix all the places where he’d made the wrong choices.
“Why haven’t you ever said anything about that day I bought the cookies from you? All this time, and you’ve never said a word.”
Her head came up at his question, and he waited for her to pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about, but he should have realized that wouldn’t be her way. “Goodness, Jim, that was thirty-six years ago.”
“I remember it like it was yesterday.”
It had been a beautiful April day during his freshman year at UNC, five months after Cal was born, and he’d been coming out of a chem lab with some of his new friends, all of them upperclassmen. Now he didn’t remember their names, but at the time he’d craved their acceptance, and when one of them had called out, “Hey, it’s the cookie girl,” he’d felt everything inside him turn cold.
Why did she have to be here now, where his new friends could see her? Anger and resentment turned to acid inside him. She was so damned hopeless. How could she embarrass him like this?
As she’d brought the buggy with the wobbly wheels to a stop, she’d looked thin and ragged, barely more than a child, a raw mountain girl. He forgot everything he loved about her: her laughter, the way she’d come so eagerly into his arms, the little spit hearts she’d draw on his belly before she’d settled beneath him so sweet and giving he couldn’t think of anything but burying himself inside her.
Now as he watched her come closer, every poisonous word his parents had said shrieked in his ears. She was no good. A Glide. She’d trapped him and ruined his life. If he ever expected to see a penny of their money, he had to divorce her. He deserved something better than a roach-infested apartment and a too-young mountain girl, even one so tender and joyous she made him weep with love for her.
Panic welled inside him as his new friends called out to her. “Hey, Cookie Girl, you got any peanut butter?”
“How much for two packs of chocolate chip?”
He wanted to run, but it was too late. His new friends were already examining the cookies she’d baked that morning while he slept. One of them leaned forward and tickled his son’s belly. Another turned back to him.
“Hey, Jimbo, come on over here. You haven’t tasted anything until you’ve tried this little girl’s cookies.”
Amber had looked up at him, laughter dancing in eyes as blue as a mountain sky. He could see her waiting for the moment he would tell them she was his wife, and he knew she was savoring the humor of the situation as she savored everything about their life together.
“Yeah, uh… okay.”
Her smile remained bright as he walked toward her. He remembered that her light brown hair had been pulled into a ponytail with a blue rubber band, and that she’d had a wet spot on the shoulder of his old plaid shirt where Cal must have drooled.
“I’ll take the chocolate chip.”
Her head tilted quizzically to the side—You goof, when are you gonna tell ’em?—but she continued to smile, continued to enjoy the joke.
“Chocolate chip,” he repeated.
Her faith in his honor was infinite. She waited patiently. Smiled. He slipped his hand in his pocket and drew out a quarter.
Only then, when he held out the money, did she understand. He wasn’t going to acknowledge her. It was as if someone had turned out a light inside her, extinguishing her laughter and joy, her faith in him. Hurt and bewilderment clouded her features. For a moment she only stared at him, but, finally, she reached into the buggy for the cookies and held them out with a trembling hand.
He tossed her the quarter, one of four she’d given him that morning before he’d left for class. He tossed her the quarter as if she were nothing more than a street corner beggar, then he laughed at something one of the other guys said and turned away. He didn’t look at her, just walked away while the cookies burned in his hand like pieces of silver.
It had happened more than three decades ago, but now his eyes were stinging. He set the coffee on the counter. “What I did was wrong. I’ve never forgotten it, never forgiven myself, and I’m sorry.”
“Apology accepted.” She flicked on the faucet, putting a deliberate end to the subject. When she turned off the water, she said, “Why did Cal have to marry her? Why couldn’t they just have lived together long enough for him to see what kind of woman she is?”
But he didn’t want to talk about Cal and his cold wife. “You should have spit in my face.”
“I just wish we’d met Jane ahead of time.”
He hated her easy dismissal of his wrong, especially when he suspected she hadn’t dismissed it at all. “I want you back, Lynn.”
“Maybe
we could have changed his mind.”
“Stop it! I don’t want to talk about them! I want to talk about us, and I want you back.”
She finally turned, and she gazed at him out of blue, mountain sky eyes that revealed nothing. “I never left.”
“The way you were. That’s what I want.”
“You are in a mood tonight.”
To his dismay, he could feel his throat closing up, but even so, he couldn’t be silent. “I want it the way it was at the beginning. I want you silly and funny, imitating the landlady and teasing me for being too serious. I want dandelions back on the dinner table, and fatback and beans. I want you to start giggling so hard you wet your pants, and when I walk in the door, I want you to throw yourself at me like you used to.”
Her forehead crinkled with concern. She walked over to him and rested her hand on his arm in the same comfort-place she’d been touching for nearly four decades. “I can’t make you young again, Jim. And I can’t give you back Jamie and Cherry and everything the way it used to be.”
“I know that, dammit!” He shook her off, rejecting her pity and her suffocating, never-ending kindness. “This isn’t about them. What happened has made me realize I don’t like the way things are. I don’t like the way you’ve changed.”
“You’ve had a hard day. I’ll give you a back rub.”
As always, her sweetness made him feel guilty, unworthy, and mean. It was the meanness that had been driving him lately and telling him to push her so far, to hurt her so badly, that he’d destroy the icy reserve and find the girl he’d thrown away.
Maybe if he gave her some evidence that he wasn’t as bad as he knew himself to be, she’d soften. “I’ve never screwed around on you.”
“I’m glad to know that.”
He couldn’t let it go at that, giving her only the part of the truth he wanted her to see. “I had chances, but I never went all the way. Once I got myself right to the motel door—”
“I don’t want to hear this.”
“But I backed off. God, I felt good about that for at least a week. Smug and self-righteous.”
“Whatever you’re doing to yourself, I want you to stop it right now.”
“I want to start over. I thought maybe on our vacation… but we hardly talked to each other. Why can’t we start over?”
“Because you’d hate it now just as much as you hated it then.”
She was as unreachable as a distant star, but he still needed to touch her. “I loved you so much, you know that, don’t you? Even when I let my parents talk me into agreeing to a divorce, I still loved you.”
“It doesn’t matter now, Jim. Gabe came along, and then Ethan, and there wasn’t any divorce. It was all so long ago. There’s no sense in stirring up the past. We have three wonderful sons and a comfortable life.”
“I don’t want to be comfortable!” Fury exploded inside him, fueled by frustration. “Goddammit! Don’t you understand anything? Jesus, I hate you!” In all their time together, he had never once touched her in violence, but now he grabbed her arms and shook her. “I can’t stand this any longer! Change back!”
“Stop it!” Her fingers dug into his upper arms. “Stop it! What’s wrong with you?”
He saw the fear on her face, and he jerked away, appalled by what he’d done.
Her icy reserve had finally melted, leaving rage behind, an emotion he’d never until that moment seen on her face.
“You’ve been torturing me for months!” she cried. “You belittle me in front of my own sons. You poke at me and jab me and draw blood in a thousand ways every day! I’ve given you everything, but it’s still not enough. Well, I won’t put up with it anymore! I’m leaving you! I’m finished!” She raced from the kitchen.
Panic welled inside him. He started to run after her, but then stopped just as he reached the door. What would he do when he caught her? Shake her again? Christ. What if he’d finally pushed her too far?
He drew a deep breath and told himself she was still his own Amber Lynn, sweet and gentle as a mountain afternoon. She wouldn’t leave him no matter what she said. She just needed time to calm down, that was all.
As he heard her car peel out of the driveway, he kept repeating the same thing to himself.
She wouldn’t leave him. She couldn’t.
* * *
Lynn’s chest was so tight that she had to gasp for breath as she raced along the narrow, winding road. It was a treacherous piece of highway, but she’d been driving it for years, and not even her tears made her slow down. She knew what he wanted from her. He wanted her to open her veins again and bleed with love for him the way she once had. Bleed with love that would never be returned.
She struggled for breath and remembered that she’d learned her lesson years ago when she’d been little more than a baby, naive and ignorant at sixteen, utterly convinced that love could conquer the enormous gap between them. But that naïveté hadn’t lasted. Two weeks after she’d told him she was pregnant with Gabe—Cal had only been eleven months old—her innocence was shattered forever.
She should have seen it coming, but of course she hadn’t. When she’d told him she was pregnant, she’d bubbled over with happiness even though Cal wasn’t yet a year old, and they were barely managing as it was. He had sat frozen as she’d babbled on.
“Just think, Jim! Another sweet baby! Maybe it’ll be a girl this time, and we can name her Rose of Sharon. Oh, I’d love to have me a girl! But a boy’d might be better so Cal’d have somebody to roughhouse with.”
When his expression didn’t change, she’d started to get scared. “I know it’ll be a mite hard for a while, but my baking business is goin’ real good, and just think how much we love Cal. And we’ll be real careful from now on to make sure there ain’t no more. Tell me you’re happy about the baby, Jim. Tell me.”
But he hadn’t said anything; he’d just walked out the door of their little apartment, leaving her alone and frightened. She’d sat for hours in the dark until he’d returned. He hadn’t said a word. Instead, he’d pulled her into bed and made love to her with a ferocity that had driven away her fear.
Two weeks later, while Jim was in class, her mother-in-law had come to see her. Mildred Bonner had told her that Jim didn’t love her and wanted a divorce. She’d said he’d planned to break the news to her the same night Lynn had announced that she was pregnant again, but now he felt honor-bound to stick by her. If Lynn truly loved him, Mildred said, she would let him go.
Lynn hadn’t believed her. Jim would never ask for a divorce. He loved her. Didn’t she see the evidence every night in their bed?
When he came home from studying at the library, she told him about his mother’s visit, expecting him to laugh it off. Only he didn’t. “What’s the use of talking about it now?” he said. “You got pregnant again, so I can’t go anywhere.”
The rose-colored world she’d built shattered at her feet. Everything had been an illusion. Just because he loved to have sex with her didn’t mean he loved her. How could she ever have been so foolish? He was a Bonner and she was a Glide.
Two days later his mother came to the apartment again, a fire-breathing dragon demanding that Lynn set her son free. Lynn was ignorant, uneducated, a disgrace to him! She could only hold him back.
Everything Mildred said was true, but as much as Lynn loved Jim, she knew she wasn’t going to let him go. On her own, she could have managed, but her children needed a father.
She found some hidden reservoir of strength that gave her the courage to defy his mother. “If I ain’t good enough for him, then you’d better fix me up so’s I am, because me and my babies ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
It hadn’t happened easily, but gradually the women had formed a fragile alliance. She’d accepted Mildred Bonner’s guidance in everything: how to talk, how to walk, what food to fix. Mildred insisted that Amber sounded like a white trash name, and she must call herself Lynn.
While Cal played at her feet, she devoured the b
ooks on Jim’s English reading lists and exchanged baby-sitting with another woman so she could sneak into some of the larger lecture halls and lose herself in history, literature, and art, subjects that fed her poet’s soul.
Gabe was born, and his family loosened the purse strings enough to take over Jim’s school expenses and her medical bills. Money was still tight, but they were no longer desperate. Mildred insisted they move into a better apartment, one she furnished with Bonner family pieces.
Lynn’s transformation was so gradual that she was never certain when Jim grew aware of it. He continued to make love to her nearly every night, and if she no longer laughed and teased and whispered naughty words in his ear, he didn’t seem to notice. She grew more restrained out of the bedroom as well, and his occasional approving glances rewarded her for her self-control. Gradually, she learned to keep her love for her husband locked away where it would embarrass no one.
He finished his undergraduate work and entered the grueling years of medical school, while her world was defined by the needs of her young sons and her continuous efforts at self-improvement. When he finished his residency, they returned to Salvation so he could join his father’s practice.
The years passed, and she found contentment with her sons, her work in the community, and her passion for the arts. She and Jim had their separate lives, but he was unfailingly considerate of her, and they shared passion, if not intimacy, in the bedroom. Gradually the boys left home, and she found a new serenity. She loved her husband with all her heart and didn’t blame him too much for not loving her back.
Then Jamie and Cherry had died, and Jim Bonner had fallen apart.
In the months that followed the deaths, he’d begun wounding her in so many countless ways she sometimes felt as if she were slowly bleeding to death. The unfairness left her reeling. She’d become everything he’d wanted, only now he didn’t want that. Instead, he seemed to want something that she no longer had within herself to give.