many. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry—he loves making them. If he makes them, he has to eat them. It’s fun—sometimes that’s more important than nutrition.”
“I’ll do whatever you say,” Preacher said. “I could cut him back. He likes ‘em though. He especially likes burning his mouth on them. He doesn’t wait so good.”
“I know,” she said, smiling. “You have anything like… tea?”
“Sure. Aside from sportsmen, I serve mostly little old ladies.” He took on a shocked look. “I didn’t mean.”
“A cup of tea would be nice. Good.”
“Great,” he said, turning and preceding her down the stairs, looking almost grateful to get away.
He got busy brewing tea in the kitchen, so Paige went into the bar and sat at the table where she saw his drink by the fire. When he finally brought her that cup of tea, he said, “You have a good time with Mel today?”
“Yes. Was Christopher a lot of trouble?”
He shook his head with a chuckle. “Nah, he’s a kick. He wants to know everything. Every detail. ‘Why is it a quarter teaspoon of that?’ ‘What does the Crisco on the tray do?’ And man, yeast blows him away. I think he has a little scientist in him.”
Paige thought, he couldn’t ask his father questions. Wes didn’t have the patience to answer them. “John, do you have family?”
“Not anymore. I was an only child. And my folks were older, anyway—they didn’t think they were going to have kids. Then I surprised ‘em. Boy, did I surprise ‘em. My dad died when I was about six—a construction accident. And then my mom when I was seventeen, right before my senior year.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, thanks. It’s okay. I’ve had a good life.”
“What did you do when you lost your mother? Go live with aunts or something?”
“No aunts,” he said, shaking his head. “My football coach took me in. It was good—he had a nice wife, good bunch of little kids. Might as well have lived with him. He acted like he owned me during football, anyway,” he said with a laugh. “Nah, kidding aside, that was a good thing he did. Good guy. We used to write—now we e-mail.”
“What happened to your mom?”
“Heart attack.” After a moment of respectful silence, looking into his lap, he laughed softly. “You won’t believe this—she died at confession. That really tore me up at first. I thought maybe she had some deep, dark secret that threw her into a heart attack—but I was tight with the priest—I was his altar boy. And it was hard for him, but finally he leveled with me. See, my mom was the parish secretary and real… how should I say this? Kind of a church lady. Father Damien finally told me, my mom’s confessions were so boring, he used to nod off. He thought they’d both just fallen asleep, but she was dead.” He lifted his eyebrows. “My mom, good woman, not a lot of excitement going on there. She lived for that job, loved the clergy, loved the church. She’d have made a great nun. But you know what? She was happy. I don’t think she had any idea she was boring and straitlaced.”
“You must miss her so much,” Paige said, sipping her tea in front of the fire, trying to remember when she last had a conversation like this. Unhurried, nonthreatening, warm in front of a friendly fire.
“I do. This is going to sound stupid, especially since I’m no kid—sometimes I pretend she’s back there, in that little house we lived in, and that I’m just getting my stuff together to go see her.”
“That doesn’t sound stupid….”
“There anybody you really miss?” he asked her.
The question caused her to suddenly go still, her cup frozen in midair. Not her dad, so scrappy and short-tempered. Not her mom who, without knowing or meaning to, had trained her to be a battered wife. Not Bud, her brother, a mean little bastard who had failed to help her in her darkest hour. “I had a couple of really close girlfriends. Roommates. We lost touch. I miss them sometimes.”
“You know where they are?” he asked her.
She shook her head. “Both got married and moved,” she said. “I wrote a couple of times… Then my letters came back.” They didn’t want to be in touch with her; they knew things were bad. They hated Wes; Wes hated them. They had tried to help, briefly, but he ran them off and she rejected their help out of pure shame. What were they supposed to do? “How’d you get so close to Jack?” she asked him.
“Marines,” he said with a shrug.
“Did you go into the military together?”
“Nah.” He laughed. “Jack’s older than me—by about eight years. I’ve always looked older than I was—even when I was twelve. And Jack—I bet he’s always looked younger. He was my first sergeant in combat, back in Desert Storm.” And for a split second he was back there. Changing a tire on a truck when the tire exploded and the rim knocked him back six feet and he couldn’t get up. He remembered it like it was yesterday—he had always been so huge, so rock hard, so strong, and he couldn’t move. He might’ve been unconscious for a little while because he saw his mother leaning over him, looking right into his eyes and saying, “John, get up. Get up, John.” Right there in that paisley, high-collared dress, graying hair pulled back.
But he couldn’t move, so he started to cry. And cry. Mom! he’d cried out.
Yeah, you have a lot of pain, buddy? Jack asked, leaning over him.
And Preacher said, It’s my mom. I want my mom. I miss my mom.
We’re gonna get you back to her, pal. Take a few deep breaths.
She’s dead, Preacher said. She died.
She’s been dead a couple years at least, one of his squad members told Jack.
I’m sorry, Sarge, I couldn’t help it. I’ve never done this before. Cried like this. We ‘re not supposed to cry…. I never did before, I swear. But he cried helplessly even as he said that.
We cry over people we lose, buddy. It’s okay.
Father Damien said, remember she’s with God and she’s happy and don’t soil her memory with crying about it.
Priests are usually smarter than that, Jack had said with a disapproving snort. You don’t cry over something like that and the tears turn into snakes that eat you from the inside out. The crying part—it’s required.
I’m sorry….
You get it out, buddy, or you’ll be worse off. Call her, call out to your mom, get her attention, cry for her. It’s damn past time!
And he had. Sobbed like a baby, Jack’s arms under his shoulders, holding him up a little. Jack rocked him and said, Yeah, there you go. There you go…
Jack
