Jacob stifled a grin. Benny had just been dismissed.
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you,” Benny said, and left the way Pearl had come in.
Pearl sat down in a chair opposite the sofa where Jacob was sitting, keeping a polite distance between them. It took her a few seconds to realize, except for the night he was shot, she hadn’t been alone with him like this in well over thirty years.
“You sure look better than the last time I saw you,” Pearl said.
Jacob shook his head. “I can only imagine, and I’m really glad you came. It’s hard to find the proper words to thank someone for saving your life, but I will owe you forever that you did.”
“Oh, Jacob… How could I not?” she said.
He nodded. “Understood, but thank you anyway, for being cautious enough not to ignore a gunshot, and for taking the time to come check on my welfare. It is entirely due to you that I’m still here.”
“It was a shock…to see you so hurt and helpless.” Her voice shook a little, but she kept talking. “I kept packing your bar towels on the wound and threatening you withmayhem if you went and died on me. I kept shouting at you, saying that I’d lost you once, and I wasn’t going to let that happen again. Not like that.”
Jacob heard the hurt in her voice and heard Asher’s words echoing in his head—to tell her the truth about what Brenda had done to the both of them.
“There’s something I need to confess,” he said.
“No. No, you don’t. That was a long time ago and you’re my friend,” she said.
“I need to say it. Secrets are poison. Lies are poison. I am living proof of both, and it needs to be said.” He took a deep breath. “All those years ago, I never knew what happened. One day we were fine, and then we weren’t. You wouldn’t talk to me, and it was over so fast it made my head spin. You wouldn’t answer my calls. You wouldn’t look at me on the street. I kept wondering what the hell I’d done…what I’d said. All I knew is that I would never have intentionally hurt you.” He paused. She hadn’t moved, but her gaze was fixed upon his face, so he kept talking. “I don’t think I would have ever known if Brenda hadn’t gotten herself staggering drunk one New Year’s Eve. It was the year Asher turned two. She started talking about what a stunt she’d pulled to ‘get me,’ as she put it. Laughing at how she’d convinced you I was paying prostitutes for sex. Making sure you saw what she wanted you to see, but putting another spin on it.”
Pearl paled, but her gaze never left his face.
“If you remember, I’d only recently opened the bar and moved into the house, and I was overwhelmed by the job. I didn’t have a good routine and was wearing myself out by the grunt work. There was a Mexican family who’d moved into one of the trailer houses back then. The man had a wife and four daughters, but no sons. They were all looking for work. I needed someone to clean up after closing, and someone to help me move the heavy kegs and boxesof liquor I was trying to get stocked. When you saw different women leaving the premises after I’d closed, and handing them money as they left, it was me paying daily, to either the wife, or any one of her girls who’d come to clean, and their father, the man I’d hired to help with the heavy lifting, was waiting at the back of the bar to walk them home.”
Pearl moaned beneath her breath and clasped her hands over her heart.
“You saw what Brenda said you would see, but with her own ugly spin on it. She laughed and laughed while I stood there, so staggered by what she’d done that I couldn’t speak. In one brief moment, the urge to strangle her was huge. She said she would have done worse to get what she wanted, which was me. I yanked the liquor out of her hand and threw it across the bar. I was so mad I was afraid to even put my hands on her. My first instinct was to go tell you. But there was Asher…and I thought, if I left her, I would lose him, too. That was my slap-in-the-face moment. It was too late. Water under the bridge. I blamed myself for not dragging your little ass out of that café and making you tell me what was wrong. It was my bad for not confronting you when it happened. But the bottom line is that Brenda laid waste to everything she did, except the boys. She did love them. But she had a mean streak, and she was, in a way, a coward. She killed herself so she wouldn’t have to face her truth.”
Tears were rolling down Pearl’s cheeks. She just kept shaking her head no and wiping her face with the sleeves of her shirt.
Jacob hurt for her, and with her.
“I’m just so sorry, honey. So sorry I didn’t see what she was doing.”
Pearl took a deep breath. “And I’m sorry I let the witchshe was, poison me as well. I should have talked to you then, but… Ah, well. As you said, water under the bridge.”
Jacob patted the cushion beside him. “Come sit by me. I’m harmless, but I need a hug.”
It took everything she had to cross the distance between them and sit down beside him. But instead of a hug, he reached for her hand.
“Forgive me?” he asked.
Pearl held his hand against her cheek. “If you’ll forgive me.”
He was so near to her, and she was still the woman he’d loved, hiding now behind silver curls and teary eyes. He slid his hand behind her head and leaned toward her.
Her eyelids fluttered shut, and then his mouth was on her lips, kissing her, gently, almost reverently, and she could almost convince herself the last thirty years hadn’t happened.
“You’re so very forgiven,” Jacob said, and handed her a couple of tissues from the box at his elbow. “Now, wipe your eyes and tell me what wonderful things you brought for me to eat. I’ve had all of the hospital food I could stomach. Benny is a good nurse, but a sad cook.”
“Come sit at the table. I’ll make your plate,” Pearl said.
“Only if you’ll eat with me,” he said.
She nodded. “I’ll eat with you, and lay to rest the last of the demons from our past.”
