Only Her Heart Page 16

  “I’ve heard that they are making all kinds of advances in research,” Jack said, finally breaking his deafening silence.

  Annie felt a rash of relief. Maybe Jack would calm down now. She chanced a look at him, but saw only his profile.

  “My mom, you know, has rheumatoid arthritis, another hereditary disease,” Jack commented.

  “Yes,” Gloria smiled a real, not just a polite smile. “She seemed like a lovely person when I met her.”

  “She mentioned she’d met you.” Jack hunched forward as though ready to throw a punch.

  Annie moved forward on her chair, ready to put her hand over his mouth, anything to stop him from launching another attack.

  But Jack opened his mouth and let the poison flow. “You noticed that my mom’s still living in the rundown little house she was left with after my dad dumped her. Now she’s having to spend a lot of her limited funds for remodeling. If my dad’s second wife hadn’t bled him nearly dry after their divorce, maybe my mom’s standard of living wouldn’t have suffered quite so much—”

  “That’s enough, Jack.” Cliff slid forward also. “I’ve made mistakes in my life and I’ve paid for them. Unfortunately, you and your mother also paid. For that, I’m deeply sorry.”

  Jack tried to respond.

  Cliff raised his voice, talking over Jack, “But if you’ve only come tonight to make my future wife miserable, I won’t let this dinner continue. I may deserve your spite, but she does not.”

  Feeling as though every eye were upon them, Annie wanted to slink under the white linen tablecloth.

  Jack rose, almost knocking over his chair. “You’re right. I’m sorry, Gloria. I have nothing against you except your taste in men. Come on, Annie, we’re leaving.”

  She wanted to remonstrate with him, but not in this public place. She rose with as much dignity as she could muster. “Thanks for the invitation, Cliff.” She shook his hand and then his fiancée’s. “And, Gloria, it was very nice to meet you. I wish you and Cliff all the best.”

  Jack had already turned and was stalking away.

  Annie followed him grimly, her face flaming with an embarrassment she’d done nothing to deserve.

  What caused this, Lord? What do I say to him?

  Standing stiffly out front beside Jack, she wouldn’t look at him while they waited for the valet to bring up his car. She maintained her dignified silence as Jack seated her and then went around to the driver’s side.

  Since Annie didn’t trust herself to speak and feared distracting Jack in heavy city traffic, their furious silence continued until they left the restaurant far behind them.

  Finally, Jack muttered, “Sorry, I didn’t intend to make you feel bad.”

  “How very inadequate, Jack.” Annie couldn’t remember ever feeling so angry that her words burned fiery-hot as they passed over her throat and tongue. “If you didn’t want to meet her, why didn’t you just cancel the dinner?” She glared at him.

  “He’s a manipulator, a controller.” Jack didn’t sound as though he had even heard her. “I can’t stand that. And I won’t be manipulated.”

  “How has he manipulated you?” Annie threw her hands upward. “I can’t understand you. Yesterday, you were fine. What happened in the past twenty-four hours to make you act like this?”

  Jack clamped his mouth shut. A sleek black sports car cut in front of them and Jack punched his horn.

  “You’ve just fulfilled a contract with his medical Board. That’s all. How did Cliff manipulate you?”

  Annie heard the noise of a train rattling in the distance.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” He sped through a yellow light that turned red just as he entered the intersection.

  “Watch your driving.” Annie glanced around for any police cars. “You’ll get a ticket, Jack.”

  “I’m fine,” he snapped.

  “No, you’re not. And you’re not talking sense. I thought you’d made progress since the beginning of summer.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Jack repeated, tailgating an orange delivery truck in front of them.

  She knew what he was talking about, but exasperation flamed in the pit of her stomach, too. “Fine. Please take me home.”

  “I promised you dinner.” Leaving only inches to spare, he surged past the truck and whipped back into the right lane. “We could stop and pick up something—”

  “I have no appetite,” Annie snapped. Jack never drove aggressively like this. “I can’t eat when I’m this upset. Please slow down, Jack.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you,” Jack said, his voice dipping lower, sounding sorry for the first time that evening. He slowed, no longer riding the bumper in front of them.

  “Don’t you realize that when you hurt someone, you damage yourself as well?” Annie turned to glare at him. “I know you go to church with your mom, but I fail to see any of that influence in your rude behavior tonight. Why can’t you see that this antagonism toward your father is eating up your life?”

  “It’s not eating up my life. I have a great life—”

  “You spend your life with your head stuck inside a computer, just like Mrs. Groshky said.” Her words burst loud and harsh from Annie. “You hide from life. You hide from me.”

  A moment of hostile silence passed. With relief, Annie watched her neighborhood come into view——people sitting on their porches and children in bright summer shorts and tops playing in the park across from the church.

  “You don’t understand,” Jack said, defending himself. “You’ve never been, hurt, humiliated. You’ve never been...left behind. Mike never made your mom cry.”

  “I don’t have to have suffered the way you did,” she retorted, “in order to know what’s good for you.” Annie turned to face him, the seat belt restraining her. “If you let your anger and hurt from your father’s errors linger year after year, then he is manipulating you, controlling you. Not because of anything he is doing, but because of what you are doing to yourself. Let it go. Cliff made a mistake. He admits he did wrong and wants to start over. Let him. Start a new relationship with him. Please. For your own sake.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You mean you won’t even try.” Annie swung away from him, hiding sudden tears.

  “I can’t.” The brittle words sounded as though they came from deep in Jack’s soul.

  “Then, at least tell me what triggered this. Why did this evening turn out this way?”

  Reaching Annie’s alley garage, Jack parked and turned off the ignition. He propped his hands against the steering wheel and stared straight ahead.

  “Tell me, Jack. After what you put me through tonight at that restaurant, I have a right to know.” Silence. Annie rolled down her window and the hot, moist summer breeze wafted inside the air-conditioned car along with the voices of neighborhood children playing. She waited, still wiping away a few warm tears.

  “I didn’t go home right away last night.” Jack finally began to let hard-fought words come. “I decided to go through some old files and flash drives leftover from Tom and weed out the stuff we didn’t need. I found an old drive that had some information about how Tom got together the capital for LIT’s launch.” His words ground to a halt.

  “What did you find?” Annie wouldn’t look at him. She stared at the golden fingers of dusk, interlacing the tall green maples high above the rooftops.

  “I found a list of the investors—and one of them was Cliff Lasater.” Jack’s tone turned acid. “Tom knew I didn’t want any start-up money from my dad and he took it anyway and hid it from me.”

  Annie closed her eyes. Why now, Lord? Why did he have to find that just when we’d finally made progress? I don’t understand. Help me help him. “That was wrong of Tom, but why does that disturb you now? That happened years ago.”

  “Don’t you get it?” Jack nearly shouted. “It’s always about him, about how he looks to others. I’m sure he bragged to his friends about getting my com
pany off the ground. And hiring LIT to solve the hacking at Hope. He’s trying to worm his way back into my life—maybe to impress Gloria with what a good family man he is. He’s trying to win me over, put on a good act. It won’t work.”

  “That doesn’t jibe with the facts. All Cliff has done is recommend you to do a job for his Board and try to introduce you to his fiancée. That’s all, Jack.”

  “You don’t get it—”

  “You’re right.” Annie couldn’t keep her voice down. “I don’t get why you’re letting something that happened years ago still make you miserable.”

  “Because he hasn’t changed!” Jack roared. “He showed the kind of man he was the day he walked out on my mom.”

  “You’re wrong. I get it, Jack. You don’t.” Annie got out of the car, slammed the door and hurried through the chain-link gate into her backyard. It clanged shut behind her. Annie felt the sound, almost an echo of the door shutting in her heart.

  Why did I ever think I could make a difference in him? Why did I think he could forget the past and have a future with me? If he can’t forgive, he’ll never be able to open up his heart fully to me. Or God.

  “Jack, this is your mother.”

  The next day, Jack squinted at the clock. It was only six-thirty in the morning and he’d had a sleepless, restless night. “Mom?” He yawned into the phone and then a thought nudged him awake. “Is there something wrong?”

  “I want to see you today.”

  His mom sounded funny, stern and mad like she had when he stayed out after curfew in high school. “What’s this about?”

  “Are you working today?” she barked.

  “Yes, I have to go to Oak Park—”

  “Come here as soon as you finish your day there.”

  Suddenly suspicious, Jack fumed. “Mom, did Dad call you about last night?”

  “No, your father didn’t.”

  The phone line clicked.

  He stared at the phone in his hand and then groaned and rubbed his gritty, warm eyes. If his father hadn’t called to tell her about the abrupt end to the dinner, what was going on?

  Chapter 14

  Outside his mother’s back door, Jack heard the whirring buzz as the air conditioner turned on. Heat radiating from the black asphalt drive made his feet burn inside his shoes. Still, Jack hesitated. For the first time that he could recall, he didn’t want to open his mom’s door.

  What did his mom want? Everything that had happened the night before, especially the way Annie had gotten out of his car and fled from him, rolled through him like a very efficient and determined steamroller. What now?

  His stomach churning, he marched inside. “Mom? It’s me, Jack!” He bounded up the three steps into the kitchen.

  His mother looked over her shoulder from the sink where she was washing supper dishes. “Are you hungry?”

  Ready for whatever came, this everyday greeting was a confusing letdown. “No.”

  “Did you eat?” Her voice went on just like always, not the way it had sounded on the phone this morning.

  “No, I’m not hungry.” What do you want from me?

  She frowned at him and then turned to her chore again. “Cold chicken in the fridge.”

  He wanted to argue that he wasn’t hungry, but suddenly he was aware of the scent of fried chicken in the kitchen and his stomach growled...loudly. He hadn’t taken time to eat. How did she know?

  After washing his hands at the sink, he got out the plastic-wrapped plate of cold chicken and sat down at the table.

  His mother poured him a glass of iced tea and set it down in front of him. Then she returned to the sink.

  “Mike was here for supper.”

  “Okay.” Jack pulled out a golden drumstick and took a bite. Was this about Mike?

  “He phoned me at six this morning and told me that you upset Annie last night.”

  Oh. Jack chewed, but the juicy meat suddenly lost its flavor. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. Annie didn’t tell him what you’d said or done to upset her. But he knew that the two of you had gone to have dinner with Cliff and Gloria—”

  “Mike should mind his own business,” Jack muttered. He tossed the drumstick back onto the plate.

  “Annie is Mike’s business. Just as you are my business.” His mother’s sharp tone made him sit up and stare at her back. “And after all the trouble between Melissa and Troy, you should be more sympathetic to him. He’s a good man, a good father.”

  Before Jack could form a reply, she continued, “I’m afraid I haven’t taken care of my business as I should have either.” Mom shut off the water and dried her hands on the faded apron tied around the waist of her jean shorts.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Mom still faced the sink. “I’ve shielded myself from telling you the truth. I’ve always told myself it was better for you if you didn’t know. But now I think it’s time you knew the truth.”

  “The truth? What truth?” Jack wiped his fingers on a paper napkin and tossed it on the table.

  His mom didn’t move, didn’t turn toward him. She seemed to shrink into herself. “I’m so sorry to have to tell you this, but I think you need to know it so you can understand your father better.”

  Suddenly feeling a pinch of fear or caution, Jack didn’t like the way this sounded. “Mom, I—”

  “Your father and I had to get married. I was three months pregnant with you when we married.”

  His mother’s stark words paralyzed him, his mind.

  “We weren’t in love.” She sounded as though she were reading out of a book. “We’d only dated casually. We were in college. Neither of us was religious then and the sexual revolution had happened.”

  Jack couldn’t say a word. His throat had constricted.

  “I didn’t want to have an abortion.” The matter-of-fact recital continued. “The women in my family aren’t very fertile. I was an only child of an only child. I was afraid that you might be the only baby I’d ever have. And as it turned out, I was right.” She brushed this aside. “Anyway, I told Cliff, but I didn’t expect him to marry me. We weren’t in love, but I thought he should know.”

  Jack’s heart pounded and his ears buzzed. He could hardly believe what his mother was saying.

  “Cliff insisted that we marry. He said he wanted to be a part of his child’s life. His parents had divorced when he was little and he’d never seen his dad except for a couple of weeks each summer. He said they were always polite strangers to each other.”

  Jack closed his eyes. His mother’s voice had softened now. He could hear the pain there, and also the sympathy for his dad.

  “So we got married.” She finally turned away from the sink and faced him. “And you were born. I thought we did pretty well. I worked. Cliff continued pre-med and helped out with child care, watching you when I worked evenings. He loved you, Jack. He still does.”

  “Then, why did he leave us?” His own pained words shocked Jack. He hadn’t meant to speak them.

  “He didn’t leave you, Jack. He left me. And I didn’t blame him.” His mother turned from the sink and sat down across from him. “Don’t you see? How could I try to hold on to him when he’d only married me because of you? We were good friends. We both loved you, but in the end, that wasn’t enough for him. And unfortunately, someone took advantage of those feelings. Our marriage ended and he walked right into a very bad second marriage. I felt responsible for that, too. You see I saw what was happening but couldn’t think of a way to caution him that he’d believe. After his divorce, Cliff told me I’d been right and not to blame myself.”

  Jack felt tears sting his eyes. He blinked them away. His world had titled on its axis.

  “This is a lot to dump on you. But it’s time you knew the truth. I don’t want my mistakes to mess up the good that’s been happening between you and Annie this summer. Do you know how long I’ve hoped that you would wake up and notice how much in l
ove she is with you?”

  Jack stared at his mom. “Annie...in love with me?”

  Mom shook her head at him. “She’s good at hiding it from you, but I noticed it right away, and so did Tom, I think. She’s so good for you, Jack, so down-to-earth and she has such a big heart. She would make an excellent wife, a lovely mother too.”

  Jack’s insides felt like a dozen yo-yo’s being spun up and down and in and out. “Mom, I...”

  She reached and pulled over a hand-size photo album he hadn’t noticed before. “Here. I was looking at this today, remembering. I want you to look through the photos and tell me that your dad didn’t love you—and then try to make me believe it.” She opened the album and pushed it toward him.

  Glancing down, he saw a photo of his dad holding him as a baby. His father was beaming with obvious pride.

  His mother stabbed the air in front of Jack’s nose with her index finger. “You are the one who’s pushed your father away. Cliff deeply regrets hurting you and was humiliated over his marriage to that woman. But in Gloria, I think he’s finally found someone he can spend the rest of his life with happily. She’s a good person.

  “Maybe, if I had been a Christian when he wanted to leave,” she continued, “I would have fought harder and longer to keep him. Maybe we could even have managed to stay married. But I didn’t. I felt that he’d done right by me and you but if he wanted to leave, how could I say no? I hated the divorce and how it hurt you. But a decade has passed. God can forgive us, your father and me. Why can’t you, Jack?”

  Jack stared down at the photos of his father and him. He flipped the page to one of his dad helping him, a toddler, walk and then one of his father holding his hand at the beach along Lake Michigan. His father was beaming with pride and happiness—unmistakable.

  “And I know you want to pay for the remodeling—” His mom sounded like she was slowing down, nearing the end. “But Cliff has already insisted on taking care of it for me. I’ve accepted his offer and will pay off the home equity loan I’d taken out. But I intend to repay him the principal over the next few years, even though he insists it isn’t necessary. Oh, and I might as well tell you that Mike proposed to me last night. And I’ve accepted. We’ll marry after the renovation is done and he’ll move in here.”