This Heart of Mine

“Do you have plans to play in college?” she asked.

“Definitely,” he replied. “I’ve got a few universities interested in me. Great ones, too. I’m hoping for a scholarship.”

He had so much going for him, so much to look forward to. She owed Riley for that. He’d done a great job with their son. “How exciting!” she said. “I’m sure you’ll get one.”

The waitress came to take their order, so Phoenix quickly added up what the tab would be, after they asked for orange juice with their meals. She didn’t want to embarrass herself when it came time to pay by running short. “Just coffee for me,” she said to be safe.

“That’s all you want?” Jacob asked.

“I don’t usually have much for breakfast.” Hungry though she was, she was too nervous to eat, anyway.

“No wonder you’re so small. Most of the girls in school are twice as big as you,” he said. “And some of them aren’t finished growing.”

“I might be small, but I’m strong,” she teased, flexing one arm.

“I heard. You got into a few fights in—”

“Let’s not start with that.” When Riley interrupted, her son flushed and fell silent.

“It’s okay, he can say what he wants,” she told Riley before answering Jacob. “I was forced to defend myself, but...I managed.” Sometimes better than others. It always depended on how many people jumped her at once.

“What happened?” Jacob asked.

During which incident? She supposed the one that had left the scar on her lip. She didn’t want to get into what life was like on the inside, but she also didn’t want him to feel there were subjects he had to avoid.

“The women in that prison could be...territorial,” she said. “There were times I had to fight or I’d be picked on for the rest of my stay, you know? I’m sure you’ve seen that type of behavior in school.” The fact that she was fighting for her life had given her little choice in the matter, but she didn’t want to make it sound quite so dire.

Jacob wrinkled his nose, clearly doubtful. “So you didn’t start the fight?”

“Would you start a fight if you were my size?” she asked with a laugh, hoping she could get him to smile.

He didn’t, but some of his doubt seemed to slip away. “No. I can’t even imagine how you defended yourself.”

“I told you.” She winked to cover a reservoir of much deeper feeling. “I’m stronger than I look.”

He studied her for a few seconds. “Is that what those scars are from?”

Phoenix’s tongue automatically sought the one on her lip. She’d gotten it just before she was due to be released two years ago—the cut and twenty stitches. The scar had come later. “Yeah.”

“From a fist?” he clarified.

“No, it was a razor blade.” She shifted in her seat, conscious that Riley couldn’t approve of her describing such a gruesome scene. But she wanted to satisfy Jacob’s curiosity so they could move on. She didn’t want him feeling she’d brushed his questions aside.

He frowned at her. “Must’ve hurt.”

It had, but the pain hadn’t been the worst of it. Those women, with the help of one guard who’d always had it in for her, had purposely set her up. She’d been blamed for starting the fight, which had added more than two years to her sentence. That had to be why Jacob was questioning her so carefully. He must’ve been told she was a troublemaker when she didn’t get out.

Although that day had been one of the darkest of her whole life, Phoenix shrugged so he wouldn’t have to know it. “Not too bad. Anyway, I’d like to see you pitch sometime, if you wouldn’t mind having me at a game.” She waved a hand before he could respond. “I’ll sit on the visitors’ side, so don’t worry about that.”

Confusion created lines in his forehead. “Why would you sit on the visitors’ side?”

Because she couldn’t imagine he’d want a mother who’d been in prison for murder showing up where people might recognize who she was and connect them. “I’d rather not cause a stir.”

She looked to Riley for confirmation. He’d used the stigma of her crime as one of the reasons Jacob would be better off without her, so she was hoping to reassure him that she wouldn’t make things difficult. But he didn’t comment one way or the other, didn’t say she couldn’t come as she feared he might. He covered his mouth for a few seconds, rubbed his jaw, then straightened his silverware. It was Jacob who insisted she could sit wherever she liked. But a polite boy would say that.

“Okay, just...just let me know when you have a game.” She figured if he never came forward with that information, she’d have her answer as to whether he preferred she stay away from him in public.

“How am I supposed to let you know?” he asked. “Do you have a home phone or a cell?”

She didn’t. She couldn’t afford either. She had far too many other necessities to buy first. “Not yet. But I have a laptop, and I learned that Black Gold Coffee has free Wi-Fi. I could set up a Facebook page, and you could message me that way—with your father’s permission.” He could also get hold of her through her mother, who lived in a separate trailer on the same property, but she hesitated to suggest that, given Riley’s disapproval of Lizzie.

“You have a laptop?” he asked.

“I do. It was a gift from one of the correctional officers when I was released. It’s an old one, but...it works.”

“So you’ll friend me? You know how to do that?”

She sipped more coffee. The caffeine was making her jittery on an empty stomach, but it helped to have something to do with her hands. “I took some computer classes when I was... I took some classes.”

“Oh.”

“What are your plans now that you’re home?” Riley asked. “Are you looking for a job or...?”

“Not quite yet,” she replied. “I have to finish cleaning out the trailer where I’m living before I do anything else.” She almost expounded on how bad it was, how unsanitary. Her mother’s hoarding was worse than ever. But she caught herself. If her primary goal was to provide a room for Jacob that Riley would deem safe—in case her son ever agreed to stay with her for a night or two—it wouldn’t be wise to regale his father with the gritty details. When she’d first begun cleaning it up, the trailer hadn’t been fit for pigs. Although it was a lot better now, it would be spotless by the time she was done.

“Where will you apply after that?”

“Anywhere there’s an opening.” Riley had also pointed out how difficult it would be for her to make a living in Whiskey Creek, a town of only two thousand. The school had allowed her to graduate in spite of the fact that she’d missed the last three weeks of her senior year, but a high school diploma wouldn’t do much to offset her criminal record. She hadn’t mentioned the business she’d started while she was still incarcerated. She had no idea if it would succeed. But she’d established a small income making leather bracelets for men and boys. The woman who’d given her the laptop, Cara Brentwell, had been putting the bracelets up on Etsy.com and eBay for the past three years. That was where, most recently, she’d gotten the bulk of the money she’d been sending to Jacob. She and Cara had split the profits but, as a free woman, she no longer needed Cara’s help.

“I, um, have a small gift for you,” she told Jacob. “Don’t get excited, it’s nothing big. You don’t even have to wear it if you don’t like it. I just wanted to see if...you know, maybe you’d think it was cool.”

She reached into her bag and pulled out the leather pouch she’d put the bracelet in instead of wrapping it. Somehow that seemed more masculine than paper and bow.

“Thanks,” he said as he accepted it.

She didn’t say that she’d made it. She didn’t want to give him or anyone else any reason not to like it. “If you’d rather open it later,” she began, but he had his hand inside and took it out before she could finish.

“What is it?” Riley asked.

“A bracelet,” Jacob piped up, and the pleasant tone of his voice was slightly reassuring. He didn’t sound as if he hated it.

“So you’ve seen them before?” she said, trying to gauge whether he was just trying to salvage her feelings.

“Yeah, but none quite like this.” He turned it over in his man-size hands. Fortunately, the braided leather she’d embellished with a piece of petrified wood that was carved in the shape of a bird—a play on her name that she wasn’t sure he’d understand—fastened with a tie so it couldn’t be too small. “It’s awesome. Where’d you get it?”

The waitress arrived with their food, and Phoenix pretended she hadn’t heard the question. Jacob became so distracted putting on the bracelet, and then eating, that he didn’t pursue an answer.

From there the conversation became a bit stilted. Phoenix asked about his grades, expressed pride that he was doing so well and encouraged him to continue. Then she asked if he had a girlfriend. He said he didn’t, that he was interested in a few different girls, but mostly just as friends, and then the conversation lagged again. It would’ve been more natural to talk to Riley, too, but Phoenix was careful not to direct a single question to him. She didn’t want him to worry that she might still have feelings for him. Sometimes their brief relationship played out in her mind, usually late at night. Those memories were some of the best she had. But she told herself they continued to matter simply because she hadn’t shared the same kind of intimacy with any other person. She’d been barely eighteen when she went to prison and, although she’d been approached by various male guards over the years, which some of her fellow inmates resented, she’d never even kissed anyone besides Riley. One guard sent her a few letters after he quit his job at the prison, but she never responded. He lived in the Bay Area, and she’d planned to return to Whiskey Creek; she’d realized all along that she’d have a very brief period to get to know her son before he reached adulthood. She didn’t want to waste time on a man, especially considering how fickle and unreliable they could be, judging by the speed with which Riley had fallen in and out of love with her.