Somewhere Between Luck and Trust

Her heart thundered, and she leaped to her feet. Frantically she tried to think of something to do. Before she could, the door opened and a figure in black slipped inside.

The door closed behind him, and a familiar male voice cut through the silence. “They didn’t teach you anything in prison? Don’t you know better than to leave a door unlocked when you’re in the middle of nowhere, Baby Duck?”

Cristy didn’t speak. She didn’t even chide herself for forgetting to lock the door after dragging the cushions inside. For once in her life there was no time to remind herself she was worthless. She was too busy figuring out how best to survive this encounter.

“Now, is that any way to greet me?” Jackson Ford stripped off a dark hooded jacket, then he stamped his boot-clad feet, as if to shake off the worst of the rain.

She made herself speak and hoped she could sound as calm as her words. “Isn’t there usually a pause between knocking on a door and trying the doorknob?”

“I figured if you didn’t want a visitor, you would be locked up tight. You have to be careful of the messages you send. Didn’t your mommy and daddy teach you that?”

He stepped out of the doorway and into the glow of a floor lamp. His black hair was slightly longer than she remembered, but not unkempt. Of course that made sense, since Jackson paid close attention to the way he looked. The stubble on his cheeks was carefully trimmed to appear rugged but neat, and he was tan enough to look as though he spent time tramping through the woods or casting flies in a mountain stream. He wasn’t thin, but there wasn’t any useless padding, either. Jackson started every morning with fifty push-ups, and even though he had only lasted one season on an Atlanta Braves farm team, he was still the star pitcher in an amateur baseball league.

He was strong and quick and, if he wanted to, he could hurt and even kill her without breaking a sweat.

“I’d like you to leave,” she said. “The unlocked door was a mistake, not an invitation.”

“Oh, I will. Maybe not right away, but I can take a hint. First tell me how you’re doing? I came all this way through that storm just to find out.”

She didn’t challenge him. She knew how foolish that would be. “How did you find me?”

He laughed a little, almost fondly. “Cristy, come on, I could find you anywhere. Streets of Shanghai, some Aborigine’s cave in the outback. Makes no difference.”

Jackson looked as though he was enjoying himself. She was sure he knew how unstrung she was by his sudden appearance, and she also knew any outward reaction would make him that much happier.

“I’m settling in,” she said.

“Are you planning to move back to Berle eventually? Come back to the old hometown where you were so well liked?”

“I don’t have any plans to move back, no.”

“And the baby? He’s doing all right with your cousin?”

Jackson knew everything, and he was here to make that clear. Where she lived. Where their son lived. Who was taking care of him.

She steeled herself. “He’s doing fine. You met my cousin’s husband. You know Wayne’ll make sure the baby’s got everything he needs.”

“A good choice, I’d say. Considering you had so few, what with you going to prison for all those months. Were you glad it was a boy?”

She shrugged.

“Michael—that’s a good name. You have my vote on that one.”

She took a deep, shaky breath. “You should go, Jackson. The storm’s only going to get worse, and you know how treacherous mountain roads can be.”

“Oh, I’m in no hurry. I’ve been driving roads like these my whole life.”

He moved closer as he spoke. She was glad the table was between them, except that she knew it wouldn’t help if Jackson lunged.

“What do you really want?” She was surprised there was only the faintest tremor in her voice. “You know if you try anything, you’ll be the first person they suspect. Everybody knows our history. Even you can’t cover up everything you do like it never happened.”

He stopped at the table’s edge. “I don’t know why you’d say something like that. Me? I’m an open book. It still hurts that you tried to frame me for stealing that ring. You got caught with it, and what did you do? You blamed it on the man who’d been thinking about buying it for you. Did you have time to think about that while you were in prison? Did you wonder if I would have stood by you if you hadn’t told those cops who grabbed you in the parking lot that I was the one who dropped the ring in your shopping bag?”

The scene hadn’t happened that way. At first Cristy hadn’t even considered that Jackson had put the ring in her bag. She’d been sure it was an accident, that someone had unknowingly brushed it off the counter, and it had fallen into the shopping bag filled with socks and dish towels from the Dollar General. Then, when that had seemed like too much of a stretch, she’d blamed the incident on the sales clerk, who must have hidden the ring there for some dark reason of his own. Later, though, with nothing but time to face everything that had happened, she had realized how hard that would have been for the clerk, how nearly impossible from his side of the wide display case.

Only then, sometime later in her first full day in jail, had she finally faced the truth. And only after a sleepless night had she realized that she had to tell the truth to everybody who would listen.

Jackson had never intended to marry her, even though he’d known she was carrying his child—something she had tearfully told him the previous morning. He had taken her to the jewelry store to look at rings, and then he had used her enthusiasm against her. While she had been trying on one ring, he had swept another off the counter, then easily slipped it into the bag she carried, since he was standing right beside her. He had wanted his pregnant girlfriend out of his life.

And now, months later, she finally understood all the terrible reasons why.

Her hand closed over the flashlight she’d set beside her. As a weapon it was probably useless, but the barrel was something to grip and steady her.

“There’s nobody here to hear this conversation except us,” she said. “We both know what happened. But it’s over. I’ve paid the price and it’s behind me.”

“It just confounds me, that’s all. After everything we were to each other, that you could do something like that...” He shook his head slowly. “And now I have to ask myself how I could make so many big mistakes choosing my friends. You, Kenny...” He shook his head again, as if he really couldn’t believe he had ever been such a fool.

Cristy knew better than to respond, but her hands began to shake. That he would use Kenny Glover’s name so calmly, as if it meant nothing that his best friend since childhood was about to stand trial for the murder of another of Jackson’s closest friends. Kenny, a sweet, goofy country boy who’d been known to miss a clear shot at a five-point buck just because the deer looked him in the eye.

Kenny, the man who would have given his right hand without flinching if Jackson had ever said he needed it.

“Please go,” she said.

“I just want to understand, that’s all. How I could have been so wrong. How you could have tried to destroy my name in my own hometown. How you could have thought you might get away with it.”

“That’s the hardest part for me to understand, too,” she said. “I really should have known nobody would listen.”

“But you went ahead and said those things anyway. And now sometimes I think people look at me different, you understand? Like they’ve lost a little respect. Of course maybe that’s just because they know you and I had a little fling before you got thrown in jail. And that lessens me in their eyes, because they know I made such a bad choice.”

“A little fling?”

“I never promised you anything, did I? You call it whatever you want to, Baby Duck.”

“How about a stupid mistake?”

Jackson’s brown eyes narrowed a little. She’d known women at NCCIW who had that same ability to mask their feelings, women with curiously unlined faces because they were so often expressionless. Jackson always looked pleasant, happy, even engaged. But now she saw what she hadn’t been able to see when she was so hopelessly in love with him. Jackson couldn’t show feelings he didn’t have. He could look sad, even contrite, if necessary. But on those occasions he was simply an actor demonstrating emotions for his audience.

He did feel rage, though. She’d seen that more than once and knew that rage, at least, was real for him when someone dared to cross him. A cold, thoughtful rage that was the most frightening kind of all.

With one swipe of his hand, the puzzle pieces she’d so carefully laid out fell to the floor, but his expression didn’t change. “We can talk about mistakes,” he said, as if measuring his words. “You getting yourself pregnant would be one of them. A real classic, wouldn’t you say?”

“I didn’t get myself pregnant.”

“Yeah, I guess you had a little help from somebody or other.”

Anger shot through her, but caution won. She forced herself not to respond.

“I can’t help wondering whose baby that little boy of yours is,” Jackson said. “I’ve even thought about asking for a paternity test. You ever come back to Berle for any reason, I might just have to. Seeing him everywhere, like I would, that could surely make it hard to ignore the possibility he’s mine.”