Something to Talk About Page 21

  “I didn’t know things were that bad for the boys—or even for you.”

  She looked down at her feet. No way would she let him see her cry. “I’m fine. The boys are fine. Go before your burgers get cold.”

  “You know, just because we have this...thing going on, it doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. Friends talk.” He said the words in her ear, which meant he was too close.

  She took a step away. She didn’t want to. There was nothing she wanted to do more right now than lean back into him. Pull his arms around her and just close her eyes—lose herself in the security of having someone else around to help shoulder the burden.

  Instead, she kept her body language unapproachable. “I don’t need any more friends. As you just saw, Dixie has that covered.”

  He tucked the burgers under his arm, watching her. Always observing. Always seeing something she didn’t want him to see. “She loves your boys, Em. So do Caine and Sanjeev. Caine said as much. I think it hurts her that all of this was brought about because Louella used your situation to hurt her. She feels responsible. She wants to make it right.”

  Em stuffed her hands inside her jacket pockets. “Look how right she’s made it. If she would just let it lie, it will eventually go away.” Of course, it would only happen if another big scandal came along. But she could wait.

  Jax allowed her the space between them, but it didn’t stop him from pursuing the subject. “Do you think it’s going to just go away if you don’t address it?”

  “Do you think it’s going to get better when Dixie is screaming and threatening everyone in the PO with her bags o’ money in the middle of the diner?”

  “I hate to say it, but I’m sort of on Dixie’s side here. She’s defending you because she cares about you. It hurts her to see you hurt. That’s not a bad thing in a best friend, Em. If I was your best friend, and I had to listen to the people in this town always talking about your ex-husband or what led him to stray from your marriage, I’d get fed up with all the crap, too.”

  The speculation, the intimate details people thought they knew about why Clifton hadn’t come out to her, were still rampant. After three months, they still talked like it had happened yesterday. Sometimes, she wanted to scream the truth at them. But what would that accomplish? “Then it’s a good thing you’re not my best friend,” she said, thin lips and all.

  He grinned. “Nope. Just your boy toy.”

  “Go home, Jax.” Before I beg you to hold me and make this all go away. Before I lean on you when I need to learn to stand on my own two feet.

  “Because that’s where all good boy toys go when they’re dismissed?”

  “Because that’s where I’m going.”

  “To lick your wounds?”

  “What are you tryin’ to accomplish with this pep talk, coach?”

  “I’m trying to get you to stand up for yourself. I saw the way you reacted when Louella showed up at the school. That woman’s a piranha. I can smell her desperation from a mile away. Add in the fact that she’s pretty horrible, and not a chance in hell I’m going to stand by and let her behave as though you’re not standing right in front of her. Why don’t you do the same?”

  “Chivalry really isn’t dead. And I do stick up for myself.” She did. Maybe not in a screaming fit filled with blackmail and rage, but she took jabs at Louella. Small ones. But they were jabs. They counted.

  Jax called her on that. “You poke at her. But I’d bet you’ve never let her really have it. Sometimes, you have to teach people how to treat you.”

  “Then here’s your first lesson. Leave me alone before everyone’s stickin’ their noses to the window in Madge’s to see what we’re doing out here.”

  “Why would it be such a bad thing if people saw us together, Em? Am I ugly? Do I have a hunchback?”

  Did he ask that because of his ego, or because he really wanted to be seen with her? “Because people will talk about you and Maizy just by association. I won’t have it. I won’t have you and Maizy dragged through the mud because I’m everyone’s target right now. You don’t know the people in this town. They can make a life miserable.”

  “Only if you let ’em. And if you’re going to live your life the way you think other people decide you should, it’s better I’m only your boy toy.”

  Because a man like Jax would only want a strong woman who took no guff. Ouch. “Thanks, life coach. Now that I’m all pumped up and ready to go huntin’ bear, you can go.”

  “I’ll do that. And glad I caught you. I sent you a text. Maizy has a fever. Can’t make tonight. But call me if you want to talk. ’Night, Em.” He reached behind him and brushed her fingers with his before strolling off into the shadows of the square, his long legs eating up the pavement until she heard a car door open and shut, an engine start, and he was gone.

  Just like that.

  Then she was alone, standing outside of Madge’s, the cold air biting at her cheeks, Jax’s words pounding in her ears.

  * * *

  “So as if it’s not bad enough my daughter runs a company where fornicatin’ with your words outside of marriage is accepted, today, while I’m mindin’ my own business at Brugsby’s, Blanche Carter tells me she saw you drivin’ around late at night with that new man in town. Jack, is it?” Her mother’s continual state of disapproval glared at her over the island in her kitchen.

  Dressed in a gray sweater buttoned to her neck, sensible shoes on her feet, Clora worked with purpose, wiping down the messy counter after breakfast.

  Em sucked in a breath of air and reached for Gareth’s lunch box. “Jax, Mama. His name is Jax Hawthorne. He’s Miss Jessalyn’s nephew.”

  Clora sucked in her cheeks and grunted. “I don’t give a hoot if he’s Pontius Pilate’s nephew. You shouldn’t be driving around with him late at night alone in a car.”

  “Jeep. It was my Jeep.”

  “That matters how, Emmaline? Is the make of the car necessary when the deed’s been done?”

  The pressure of her recent uncharacteristic behavior, coupled with the idea that she’d have to face Jax this morning at work, that she’d see every shade of disgust on his face when she apologized to him for shunning his advice like it was no more valuable than day-old bread, forced her to clamp her lips shut.

  “Are you hearin’ me, Emmaline?” her mother prodded, handing her a juice box to load into Gareth’s lunch pail.

  Heard. But it was vague. She’d tuned out after her mother said she’d been minding her own business. That was ludicrous. Clora minded everyone’s business like she was in charge of the righteous stick. “I heard you, Mama.”

  Clora’s lips formed a flat line. Scolding complete. Reminder number one million, Em would never do anything right accomplished. “Good. So no more runnin’ around town like you don’t have a reputation to protect. I can’t have people talking about you and the boys any more than they already do these days.”

  Em jammed Clifton’s cheese sandwich into a Ziploc bag to prevent hurling it against the wall. Lately, her mother’s disapproval didn’t just make her sad it infuriated her—suffocated her. Drove her almost to the point of violence.

  Used to be, she took her licks from her mother rather than suffer the tight knot of fear a confrontation with her brought. She’d spent most of her childhood either looking for ways to please her, or hiding from Clora’s stifling anger. She didn’t know why her mother was always so angry. She didn’t know why she took pleasure from almost nothing.

  Maybe it had something to do with whatever Louella was insinuating last night. She’d been very specific. She’d said Em was sneakin’ off to see her boyfriend just like her mother.

  That made no sense. Her mother never had a boyfriend. She’d had a husband who’d left when Em was an infant. Boyfriends implied fun and dates at Madge’s, ice-cream sundaes and secretive gi
ggling. None of which applied to her mother.

  Growing up, there were far more chores and lectures than there were kisses and hugs or cookies and milk. There was also little laughter. Em had vowed, when she had children, things would be different. She’d give them all the things she’d craved and lacked in her childhood.

  But lately, she noticed the boys had begun to adopt some of her old habits around their grandmother, and it wasn’t sitting well with her. In fact, at one Sunday dinner, she’d come close to telling her mother what a horrible downer she was—how oppressive and depressing her very presence was. But the words wouldn’t come.

  The knot of Clora fear tied itself tight in Em’s belly, and instead of defending her sons and their silly dinnertime banter, she’d hushed them with a stern frown. These days, she wondered if the help her mother offered her with the boys was worth exposing them to her negativity.

  “Did you hear what I said, Emmaline? I can’t have people talkin’ about you and the boys.”

  Crack. A little crack in her emotional dam fractured. “Of course not. People talkin’ about me and the boys is the worst thing that could ever happen to you, Mama.”

  Clora didn’t even look up at her. She didn’t have to. Her dissatisfaction dripped off her in invisible drops. “Is that sarcasm I hear comin’ from your lips?”

  “From our Em’s lips?” Dixie chimed from her front doorway, breezing in with two foam cups of coffee. She handed one to Em and teased, “Never, Clora.”

  Em breathed a sigh of grateful relief, wrapping her hands around the base of the cup, letting the warmth seep into her frozen fingers. Dixie—ever her savior. Dixie understood better than anyone what it was like to live under the constant scrutiny and censure of your mother.

  Dixie smiled over the rim of her cup at Em. “Still your person?” she mouthed.

  Em nodded and smiled back at Dixie. “Always,” she returned. After a sleepless night of contemplation, she’d decided Jax was right. Dixie loved her and the boys, and she felt responsible for the pain they were suffering. She’d done what she did best. Put people in their place.

  It wasn’t Dixie’s fault Em was too much of a coward to do it for herself.

  Em turned her back on the flare of Clora’s nostrils and her sour eyes. Clora didn’t like Dixie, but Em was never sure if it was that she didn’t like Dixie, or if it had more to do with Dixie’s mother, who’d once ruled Plum Orchard like a queen and had dubbed Clora unworthy as one of the Magnolias’ subjects.

  Like mother like daughter.

  Dixie flung an arm around Em’s shoulders and aimed her mischievous smile at Clora. “So what are we talking about, ladies?”

  Clora’s lips thinned again. “Emmaline’s disreputable behavior and how it affects her and the boys.”

  Dixie widened her eyes to the point of exaggeration. “You? Are you sure we’re talkin’ Emmaline Amos here? The Em I know, my best friend Em, would never behave badly. Surely you’re mistaken, Clora? My Em is amazing and smart and has impeccable manners. So many good things about her, I’ve lost count.”

  Em bit back a snort, zipping up Clifton’s lunch box and wincing while she waited for Clora to react.

  “Your best friend was in a car with a man.”

  Dixie gasped, propping a hand on her hip. “Oh, that’s dreadful. Deplorable. I mean, with all the murderers running loose these days, how could she?”

  Clora bristled, narrowing her gaze in Dixie’s direction, her finger raised. “You’d do well to watch your tone, Dixie Davis. You’re just not happy unless your smart tongue is waggin’ and causin’ nothin’ but trouble. I heard all about your screamin’ fit in the diner last night. Haven’t you tainted Emmaline’s name enough by association?”

  Confrontation. That’s where this was heading. Divert, avoid, redirect.

  Em plunked the boys’ backpacks on the counter in front of her mother, giving Dixie the warning sign with her desperate eyes. “Mama, Dixie didn’t taint me. I tainted me. Me. Nobody else. By choosin’ to run a place that promotes fornicatin’ with your words and marryin’ a man who likes to wear lipstick. Now, I have to get to work. Are you sure you’ll be all right droppin’ the boys at school?”

  Clora yanked the kitchen towel from her shoulder and slapped it on the counter with a snap. “We’ll be fine.”

  Disaster averted. “Thank you, Mama. Boys!” she bellowed. “Time for school. Grandma Clora’s waitin’.”

  Dixie turned her back on Clora, opening her arms to Clifton and Gareth, who ran into them willingly, like anyone who wasn’t female did. She plopped kisses on their dark heads, and the picture of the three of them together in a huddle struck Em as ironic that her best friend showed more affection to them than their own grandmother.

  So many things were wrong with that picture. When her children received more outward love from her friends than they did from their own flesh and blood, it might be time to reevaluate.

  Clora gathered the keys, the jingle of them rousing Dora from her dog bed on the far side of the kitchen. “I’ll warm the car,” she said, gathering her coat, frowning again at Dora’s bulk, filling up the kitchen, leaving clumps of hair all over the place.

  Dora nudged Em’s hip with her big, wet nose. She’d never been allowed to have a pet when she was a child. Dora had been an act of passive-aggressive payback to her mother, a silent eff you.

  She recognized it for what it was now, though, over the past three years, she’d no sooner part with Dora than she would one of her children. The act of adopting her was a ridiculous way to show her mother she was going to give her children all the things she’d lacked as a child.

  The boys had been so taken with her, sticking their fingers in her cage, giggling and cooing at her, it made Em smile wide. She loved to see them happy.

  She’d adopted her at an adoption fair right in front of Clora while the boys looked on—defiantly holding up the squirming brown-and-white puppy like some trophy, as if to say, “Look at me not taking your advice. Hah!”

  Clora had griped that Dora would only add to her workload, already pushed to its limits with a full-time job and a husband who wasn’t always present, even when he was in the same room. The more Clora protested her decision, the more Em was determined to pay the adoption fee.

  Dora whined. She didn’t like Clora, hid from her every chance she got. Half St. Bernard and half something no vet from here to Johnsonville could identify, her big body harbored a total chicken.

  Em ran a hand over her vast head and smiled. Dora was a good decision, clumps of hair, swamp breath and all. “How would you like to gnaw on some grandma for breakfast? I hear disapproval and cranky taste good in the mornin’.”

  Dixie blew out a breath of air, shooting her a look of apology. “Sorry. She gets under my skin. I hate the way she talks to you, Em. Sometimes I forget my manners when I’m around her, but she makes me so mad.”

  “Who makes you mad, Aunt Dixie?” Clifton asked, his blue coat still unbuttoned and half hanging off his shoulders.

  “Button up, please, Clifton. You’ll catch your death. And I was talkin’ adult things with Dixie. Never you mind,” Em scolded, watching his face change from a half smile to put upon the moment she began to speak.

  Sunlight streamed in from the trio of arched windows in her breakfast nook, glinting off Clifton’s hair, dark and thick, making her want to ruffle it. But that would only make him mad. Everything made him mad, just like her mother.

  With that in mind, Em latched on to his chin and planted kisses on his rounded cheeks until he tried to pull out of her embrace, but he’d lingered for a moment. It was only a moment, but it was. “Now, go to school and learn something you can teach me when you get home tonight.”

  “I hate school. It’s stupid.”

  Em’s heart wrenched. She didn’t blame him for hating school. Clifto
n endured painful taunts because of what Louella had done. Her hope that the incident would die down was proving futile.

  “So stupid!” Dixie agreed. “I say we skip stupid school forever, stay home and watch lots of TV until the cable man comes and turns it off. Because he will, you know. They do that when you don’t have a good job that pays you enough money for your bills. If you don’t go to school, that’s what happens. But I’m game to see how long we can last. You get the chips, I’ll get the beer.”

  Clifton warred with a smile, but he managed to wrangle it in and scowl instead. “That’s so lame, Aunt Dixie. I’m not old enough to drink beer.”

  “Or quit school—so get a move on, mister!” Dixie’s sympathetic eyes met Em’s over Clifton’s head.

  Dixie understood the kind of torture the boys were experiencing at the hands of Louella’s quest for revenge. After last night, now Em understood, too.

  “To the car, young man.” Em pointed to the door, blowing him a kiss.

  He made a face at her and did what he was told, blissfully without protest.

  Dixie clapped her hand on the counter the moment Clifton was out of earshot. “And that’s why I said what I did last night, Em. You can be as mad as a hornet at me, but someone’s got to speak up. Because I won’t have Clifton Junior hate goin’ to school. Does this happen every day? Still?”

  “Not every day, but often enough. I’ve talked to the principal and the teachers until I’m blue in the face, and they keep a close eye out. I’ve watched Clifton like a hawk for all the signs his therapist said to watch for when a child is teased the way he’s been teased. But you know what children are like. Somehow, they still find a way to niggle you.” It was as much torture for Em as it was Clifton. Once the object of Dixie’s cruel taunts throughout high school, she understood how much it hurt to be singled out.

  “I’m sorry I made you the center of attention. I know you hate it, but I’m not standin’ by and watching Louella take her licks out on you anymore. So if you want to keep bein’ friends, you’d better get ready for some fireworks. No more, Em. She will not get away with this. If you’d just let me, I’d gladly wring her neck for you. We could have a party. Invite all the Mags—maybe make some pink punch?”