It was the easy way out, but she had hoped he would text or call with his response. She wasn’t ready to square off with him, hadn’t prepared herself for the emotion tied to seeing evidence of hurt in his eyes, pain in his expression.
She also hadn’t prepared to see Pearl instead of her son standing on the other side of the screened door when she went to open it.
“Nora.” The woman’s face was all empathy and understanding, though Nora couldn’t sort out why.
“Hi, Pearl.” She stepped out of the way to let the woman into her home. “Is everything okay?”
Between two thin, calloused fingers, Pearl pressed a slip of paper toward her.
Nora’s letter.
“Is that…?” Nora took the note and gave it a cursory read through, even though she’d memorized every word.
“I stopped by J.P.’s apartment this afternoon to drop off Waylon. Saw it on the table,” Pearl explained, moving to the front room to take a seat in an armchair, indicating this wasn’t a foyer sort of conversation. Nora tried to tamp down the apprehension the single act produced. “Actually, Waylon saw it too and must’ve had a hankering for paper, because it was in his mouth in two seconds flat. I rescued it just in time.”
Now that she gave it a closer look, Nora noticed the smudged areas that had been covered in slobber, but then later dried. Oh, how she wished the dog had just eaten the whole dang thing. Destroyed all the evidence in one massive bite.
Somehow, Nora located the strength to ask, “Is J.P. furious with me?”
“J.P. hasn’t read the note.”
Nora’s spine went ramrod straight. “He hasn’t?”
“No, he hasn’t. And he’s not going to.”
“But he needs to know the truth, Pearl.”
Pearl gave a nod that made her bucket hat shift on her head. “I agree. He needs to know the truth, but not necessarily about the fire. He needs to know the truth about how you feel. The truth about how you feelabout him.”
“What difference would that make?” Nora unfolded the letter, then pleated it closed again.
A long, slow sigh moved Pearl’s shoulders. “I know my son, dear. He’s guarded. Walls up. And for good reason.” The woman’s wrinkle-shrouded eyes went lax. “I don’t know how much he’s shared with you about his past, but he’s been hurt by the people closest to him. Many times over.”
“He told me a little about Kenzie.” Nora swallowed. “And his father.”
“The two people who caused the greatest amount of hurt, that’s for sure.” Pearl’s face pinched with a wince of painful recollection. “But they aren’t the only people.” The woman slid forward in her seat, coming to the edge so she could reach out to rest a tender hand upon Nora’s knee. “He was taken advantage of a lot when he first started his construction company. Worked with a few clients that never paid their invoices. Sent him into debt for a couple of years there. Got into bidding wars with other contractors that ended in a lot of slandering and defamation. It wasn’t pretty.”
Nora moved her head slowly as she listened, unaware that it had been such a struggle to build J.P.’s business from the ground up.
“Things hit an all-time low a few years back. There was an accident at one of his jobsites. A teenager wandered onto the property and found his way up to the second story. Ended up falling from pretty high up and breaking his leg. He was a baseball player. Just been accepted to college on a hefty scholarship. It was all over the news. The family took J.P. to court, saying he’d left a ladder in the house and that’s what the kid used to get to the second level.” She pressed her fingers to her brow bone, smoothing out the visible tension building there. “The juvenile broke down on the stand. Admitted there wasn’t any ladder at all. That he’d hoisted himself up on his own. That he was on something and jumped from the second story.”
“Oh my word.” Nora’s mouth fell open.
“Even though J.P.’s name was completely cleared of any wrongdoing, his reputation took a lot longer to build back up. He’s been working on it ever since.”
“That is awful.”
“It really is.” Pearl continued, “It was almost enough for him to quit construction altogether.”
“What made him stay?”
“His love for building things.” A wistful grin affixed Pearl’s lips. “Even as a kid, he was always making something. Always tinkering around. I’d often come home from work to find little wooden gifts left out for me. A birdhouse. A jewelry box. He loved creating things for others and seeing the joy that bought them.”
Nora was grateful for the insight into J.P.’s profession, but she couldn’t fit the pieces of that history with Pearl’s request to keep quiet about her personal guilt in the fire.
The hand on her knee pulsed in a squeeze. “I’m not saying you shouldn’t tell J.P. about your responsibility in this,” she said, as if she could read Nora’s thoughts. Nora supposed it wasn’t all that hard to guess. It was obviously all she could think about. “I’m just saying it would be wise to tell him how you feel about him first.”
“But that will only make things harder.”
