Redemption Road: Jackson Falls Book 5 (Jackson Falls Series) Read online

  “But it’s so embarrassing. So personal.”

  “I know. I remember what it was like when it first happened to me. I didn’t want my dad knowing about it, either. But I had an older sister and a mother I could talk to. Our family was very open about those things. We didn’t talk about it in front of Dad or my brothers, but the three of us talked openly about everything under the sun when they weren’t around. I survived adolescence. Casey survived it. Your mom survived it. And you will, too. But you’ll survive it better if you have the right attitude. It’s pointless to fight it, because it’s not going anywhere. Like it or not, you did just cross a bridge. This is a milestone.”

  Annabel let out an extended, long-suffering sigh. “In other words, put up and shut up.”

  Colleen held back her smile, because in Annabel’s world, this was serious stuff. “I was trying to sugarcoat it,” she said.

  Annabel looked up from beneath a fall of dark hair. The smile hit her eyes first, took its time getting to her mouth. When it finally did, it was worth the wait. “You’re funny,” she said.

  “Nobody’s ever called me funny before.”

  “You are. I like you.”

  Something happened inside her, a softening, a releasing of some poison she’d held inside for far too long. She could feel it happening, an actual physical sensation, something she could no more have stopped than she could stop the ocean from lapping at the shore. They barely knew each other, but somewhere along the line, when she wasn’t paying attention, this kid had stolen her heart.

  “I like you, too,” she said.

  ***

  A half-hour later, she dropped Annabel off at her door. “Got your supplies?” she said.

  Annabel held up the bag from the pharmacy.

  “And you’re clear on what I told you? How everything works?”

  “Yes.”

  “Remember, any time you want to talk to someone, if it’s something too personal to talk to your dad about, or too embarrassing, or you have a question you think he can’t answer, I’m just a phone call away.”

  “I know. Thank you.” Impulsively, the girl leaned over and gave her a hug. While Colleen’s heart thudded and danced inside her chest, Annabel opened the door and got out of the car. She stood there for a moment, all dark eyes and blowing hair. Then she flashed a grin and skipped off toward the house.

  At the kitchen door, she turned and waved. Colleen waved back. And Annabel disappeared into the house.

  Hands gripping the steering wheel, she closed her eyes. Took a deep breath.

  And hated herself for the lie she’d told.

  She’d never intended to get involved in the life of this sweet, trusting young girl. But she hadn’t hesitated when Harley called her. Hadn’t even questioned the advisability of getting involved. All she’d been able to think about was Annabel, who needed her. She should have said no. Should have sent Casey in her place. Casey was the sister who was good at dispensing advice. Colleen was the sister who couldn’t get anything right, the one who could barely run her own life. She certainly had no business advising others how to run theirs.

  She’d told the kid a real whopper. I’m just a phone call away.

  It wasn’t a lie of commission so much as one of omission. She would be just a phone call away. She’d simply left out the important part, that in a few weeks, she’d be gone.

  And when she was gone, this amazing young girl who’d already been abandoned by her mother would be on her own, abandoned once again by somebody she trusted. What kind of monster would do that to a kid?

  Colleen knew what kind of monster. She didn’t like knowing, but there was no hiding from the truth. She couldn’t be trusted. Couldn’t be trusted to keep her word, couldn’t be trusted to not screw things up royally. Couldn’t be trusted to stay in one place for longer than five minutes. It was the way she’d lived her life since she was thirteen years old. She was thirty-five now. It was too late to change.

  She pictured Annabel’s smile. So beautiful, so genuine, in spite of all the kid had been through. A tear trickled from the corner of her eye.

  Escape. That was the only solution. Trying to ignore the knowledge that escape was her default solution, Colleen swiped the tear from her face, raised her chin, put the car in gear, and left Meadowbrook Farm in her rear-view mirror.

  But she wept all the way home.

  Colleen

  The house was vibrating, BTO’s Taking Care of Business shaking the walls, courtesy of the massive stereo system Rob had piped into every room of the house. Colleen tossed her coat into the pile on the bed in the guest room, then wound her way past the fire that crackled on the hearth, through clusters of nieces, nephews, in-laws and outlaws, until she reached the kitchen doorway. “Put the crackers on that plate,” she heard her sister saying. “It should take the whole box.”

  “What’s in the Crockpot?” She recognized Trish Bradley’s voice.

  “Meatballs,” Casey said. “Harley, can you stir the pasta?”

  Harley? What the hell was he doing here?

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said in that soft southern drawl. Against her will, Colleen’s toes curled. She paused on the threshold as the music changed. Madonna this time, singing about feeling shiny and new. Wooden spoon in hand, Harley glanced up from his station as sous-chef. Their eyes met, and she saw the deviltry in his. “Well, if it isn’t Mrs. Berkowitz,” he said, “come to join us.”

  Her sister’s face lit with pleasure. Her sister-in-law’s tightened. Trish replaced the cover on the Crockpot and, ignoring Harley, Colleen said, just to twist the knife a little, “Trish. You’re looking well.”

  It was true. Trish was a naturally sweet person, and that sweetness was generally reflected on her face. Trish Bradley loved everyone, and everyone loved her. Colleen had no idea what she’d done to earn her sister-in-law’s hostility, but it was evident on the woman’s face, in the sudden stiffening of her body. Trish had no use for her, and for the first time, regret filled every crevice of Colleen’s heart. The Lindstroms and the Bradleys had been best friends, and their kids had grown up together. Trish and Bill had been a couple since middle school, and Trish had been like a big sister to her for as long as she could remember. All that had changed when she married Jesse. She could understand how Trish might have been protective of her younger brother, especially considering how the marriage had come about. But even after Mikey was born, she’d continued to give Colleen the cold shoulder. Protectiveness was one thing, but her animosity had gone on for nearly two decades. Wasn’t it time to call a truce and end the madness?

  Not that it mattered, Colleen reminded herself. She’d be gone soon, and then Trish could smugly say “I told you so” as many times as she needed to.

  Deliberately overlooking the fact that Trish hadn’t responded, Casey said, “I’m so glad you’re here. Can you help Harley drain the pasta? The colander’s in the bottom left-hand cupboard.”

  Colleen glanced at Harley, who stood watching this exchange with a choir-boy innocence on his face. Irritated, she circled the kitchen island, opened the door, and took out the colander. “I’ll strain,” she told him. “You drain.”

  She held the colander steady in the sink while he emptied the contents of the cooking pot into it. Stepping back to avoid the steam, she bumped into him. Instead of moving politely away, he held his ground. She moved to the side, attempted to step around him, and they performed an awkward pas de deux before she managed to escape unscathed. Shooting him a pointed look, she said to her sister, “What are we putting this in?”

  “Big mixing bowl over the sink,” Casey said from behind the open refrigerator door. “Run a little cool water over it first. That’ll prevent it from turning into a sticky mess.”

  While she rinsed the spaghetti, Harley retrieved the bowl, and together, they managed to move the pasta from the colander to the bowl. This time, she made sure no part of her body came into contact with any part of his.

  Placing a massive dish
of salad on the island, Casey announced that dinner was ready, and all those Bradley-Lindstrom-MacKenzies streamed into the kitchen like zombies from Night of the Living Dead. Colleen grabbed a bottle of Coke from the fridge, found a corner away from the busy traffic pattern and flattened herself against the wall, hoping to remain invisible. She closed her eyes, clutched the soda, and pretended she was somewhere else.

  Her ruse didn’t work, not even on her. When she opened her eyes, a male hand was holding a plate of food in front of her face. She studied that hand, followed it up a long, muscled arm to the man attached to the other end. “You need to eat something,” Harley said. “Since you’re not a drinker, it’s the only way you’ll survive this evening without losing your mind.”

  Trying to ignore the pleasant buzz in the pit of her stomach, she took the plate from him. “Thank you.”

  “I don’t want to eat standing up. Let’s find a place to sit.”

  Following him blindly, she tried to conjure up Irv’s face, but his visage was watery at best. Harley led her past the living room, with its standing-room-only crowd, and into the front hall, where they perched side by side on the wide oak staircase that led to the second floor. “This okay?” he said.

  “This is fine.”

  They ate for a time in silence before Colleen dabbed at her mouth with the napkin she’d managed to snag as she left the kitchen. “How’s Annabel?” she said.

  “Annabel’s fine. She’s spending the night with a friend from school. I didn’t get a chance to thank you for what you did, but I want you to know I appreciate it. Sometimes I feel like a fool. Utterly lost, trying to raise a girl on my own.”

  She raised a forkful of spaghetti and studied it ruefully. “Parenting,” she said. “It’s a laugh a minute.”

  “Mikey giving you a hard time?”

  “Right now, he’s mad at the world, and me in particular. I cooked breakfast for him the other day. He took one bite, complained that the eggs were cold, and tossed them in the trash.”

  “Ouch. That’s cold.”

  “Arctic. And I can’t blame anybody but myself. If I’d been a better mother—if I’d been a mother at all—oh, hell.” She set down the fork, her appetite gone. “It’s pointless to speculate about might-have-beens. The past is the past. I can’t change it. I’ve made mistakes, and it’s too late to rectify them. I can only move forward. There is no other direction.”

  “We all make mistakes. At least you take responsibility for yours. My ex-wife still blames me for everything that went wrong between us. I might not be a saint, but I didn’t push her into anybody else’s bed.”

  She shifted position, settled herself more comfortably on the hard wooden stair tread. The music blasting through the house came to an abrupt halt. Above the buzz of conversation, a couple of juvenile voices were raised in some kind of good-natured squabble. Rob said something in the no-nonsense tone she’d heard him use with Paige, and they stopped arguing. A moment later, the music started up again, but this time it was different music. Background music, with no vocal track. Then a young, off-tune voice began warbling into a microphone, and she sighed.

  The karaoke portion of the evening had begun.

  “I should get in there,” she said. “There’s this thing I’m supposed to do.”

  “By all means, don’t let me hold you back from doing your thing.”

  “Funny, Atkins.” His face, wearing an expression of rapt interest, was just inches from hers. Colleen cleared her throat. “I’m supposed to sing with my sister. Except that she doesn’t know about it.”

  “Of course she doesn’t.”

  “Stop making fun of me.”

  She could see him trying, and failing, to rearrange his face into a somber expression. “I would never make fun of you.”

  “She doesn’t know about it because my lunatic brother-in-law came up with this crazy notion that deep down in her soul, she needs to be heard. Don’t ask me why I went along with it. And promised to make it look like it was my idea.”

  “Because you’re a good sister?”

  “I’m a terrible sister. That’s probably why I agreed to do it. Guilt.”

  They sat in a companionable silence, while some teenage Bradley-Lindstrom-MacKenzie relative brutally butchered Wind Beneath My Wings. “You’re still here,” Harley said amiably when the kid was done.

  “Oh, shut up.” But there was no venom to her words.

  “No matter how awful you are, you couldn’t be any worse than that young lady.”

  “We’re not awful.”

  “No?”

  “Casey and I used to sing together when we were kids. Mama was a bit of a stage mother. People said we sounded good. Of course, that was a million years ago.”

  “I see. So which one of you is Julie Andrews and which one’s Dolly Parton?”

  “Atkins?”

  “What?”

  “Bite me.” She handed him her plate, stood, and took a final long swig of soda. “The last time I did anything this stupid, I was drunk off my ass.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “I thought you didn’t drink.”

  “I don’t,” she said, “anymore.” And she left him to puzzle that one out on his own.

  She made her way to the karaoke machine, dodging and ducking, enduring the occasional unavoidable hug from some niece or nephew she hadn’t seen in a decade. A couple of teenage boys she didn’t know were on their knees on the hardwood floor, looking over the songbook. “Let me see that,” she said. One of the boys looked up, exchanged glances with his companion, then solemnly handed the book to her. Colleen skimmed the list of songs, debated momentarily, then made her choice. She glanced up at Rob, who surreptitiously tilted his head in the direction of the kitchen.

  “All right, then,” she said, “let’s get this done.”

  Casey was at the sink, rinsing dishes and stacking them in the dishwasher. When the hell was Casey not washing dishes? Colleen grabbed her sister by the elbow and said, “Come on. You and I are singing together.”

  Her sister gaped at her. “What are you talking about?”

  “We’re singing together. Karaoke. I have the song picked out already.”

  “We haven’t sung together since you were eight and I was ten. The Bradley Sisters died a long time ago.”

  “We’re resurrecting them tonight.”

  “I can’t—”

  “Yes, you can.” She tugged at Casey’s arm. “Come on.”

  “But…why?”

  “Because I said so, that’s why. Take that stupid apron off, fix your hair, and let’s do this.” She strode into the living room, half-dragging her sister behind her, marched up to the karaoke machine, and practically ripped the mic away from the kid who was holding it. “Thanks,” she said. She looked out over the assembled multitude, tapped the mic, and said, “Hello?”

  Nobody paid her the slightest attention. She tried again. “Hello, people?” One or two heads turned in her direction, then went back to their conversations. Screw this. Colleen put two fingers to her mouth and let out a long, ear-shattering whistle, loud enough to be heard in the next county.

  That worked. Silence reigned as everybody in the room turned to look at her. “Thank you,” she said. “For your entertainment pleasure tonight, my sister and I are going to sing for you. We haven’t sung together in three decades, and we’re a little rusty. So cut us some slack, and keep the negative comments to yourself.”

  She glanced over at Casey. “You ready?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “That’s the spirit. Okay, then. Hit it, Maestro.”

  Her brother-in-law tossed his wife a second microphone, clicked a button, and the music started, steamy and sultry and bluesy, a story about a southern boy who made good. Tapping her foot and clutching the microphone, Colleen growled out the first lines of Black Velvet. Half a beat behind her, Casey joined in, both of them moving in time with the insistent rhythm of the music. It might have been thirty years, but they stil
l knew instinctively how to blend their voices, Colleen singing in a throaty alto, Casey in a sweet soprano. Her brother Bill let out a wolf whistle. Across the room, Harley Atkins leaned against the door frame, arms crossed, a silly grin on his face. The younger members of the family stood with mouths hanging open, undoubtedly seeing these two old broads in a whole different light. Colleen closed her eyes, found her groove, and let the music take her away. When they hit the chorus and their voices blended in sweet harmony, applause thundered throughout the room. Colleen clasped her sister’s hand and they swayed together to that magic, seductive rhythm. She glanced at Rob; her brother-in-law was watching his wife intently, pride shining from his eyes. By the time they reached the final chorus, there wasn’t a foot in the room that wasn’t tapping.

  Still holding hands, they took their bows to thunderous applause, punctuated by hoots and cheers and cries of “Encore, encore!” She glanced over at Casey. Their eyes met, and they shared a wide grin.

  “What do you think?” she said.

  “Maybe one more?”

  “Roberto,” Colleen said into the mic. “Let’s take another look at that songbook.”

  Dark heads close together, she and Casey went over the list, conferred, argued, and compromised before coming up with the ideal song to end their impromptu little duet. Rob leaned over their shoulders, an arm around each of them, and nodded his approval of their choice.

  “Okay,” she said into the mic, “for our final song, we’re going to get this room moving with a little something by the B-52’s.”

  The music started, and hand in hand, with deliciously outrageous attitude, they sang and danced their way through Love Shack. Halfway through the song, she invited the audience to join in. The response was loud, off-key, and raucous, and in the midst of the love fest, she found tears streaming down her face. Casey glanced over, noticed the tears, and paused in her singing long enough to embrace her with surprising strength for such a small woman. “I love you,” she said.