Close to Home Part 4

"Sure." Marcus wasn't about to discuss the origin of his bar's name with a stranger. "Listen, I'd better get back to work. Feel free to stop by in a week or two, hopefully we'll be open by then. Or, I guess I should say I'll be open then. Since I haven't managed to hire any help yet."

"You're doing all this work on your own? Sounds like a big job. I'm Johnny Alexander, by the way. In town visiting ... family."

"Marcus Beckett." Marc lifted a brow. "And if your family is anything like mine, the opening of a bar that serves hard liquor on this island is relevant to your interests."

Instead of laughing or agreeing, Johnny c.o.c.ked his head to one side. "Have we met before? You seem kind of familiar."

Marcus didn't tense up, but he had to exert a real effort about it. He knew his face had been caught on camera a couple of times, after it all went down, and the d.a.m.n news channels repeated the same footage over and over, ad nauseum. "Nah, don't think so. If you went to Sanctuary High, you must have graduated a few years after me."

The younger man shrugged, appearing to shrug off his questions and concerns at the same time. "I didn't grow up here. The person I'm visiting is a recent transplant."

"Huh. I thought I was the only one." Marcus was making a conscious effort to get himself back in the swing of small-town life. People talked to each other. It had never been his favorite part of living here, but he'd promised to try and let people in more. He was grimly determined to keep that deathbed promise. "I missed this place while I was gone. From what I can tell, it hasn't changed much in the years since I left."

That subtle tension returned to Johnny's posture, although his expression never changed from polite interest. "Yeah? It's my first time visiting, but I'll be here about a month. Hey, you wouldn't happen to have a line on a place I could stay, do you?"

Marcus frowned. "You're not staying with your family?"

"No room." Johnny shrugged the shoulder carrying the backpack. His eyes traveled up to the bank of second-floor windows above the sign with a speculative gleam. "This place is pretty big. Where did you get the money to buy the building, if you don't mind me asking."

Marcus did mind, as a matter of fact. "None of your d.a.m.ned business."

"You know," Johnny said, not seeming the slightest bit intimidated, "I'm pretty handy with a hammer. If you wanted some help with the renovation, I'd be glad to pitch in. In return for a place to stay."

Stiffening, Marcus bit back the automatic refusal that sprang to his lips. He didn't want a stranger in his s.p.a.ce, hanging around and wanting to talk to him ... but he did need help with the bar. "If I wanted help, I'd hire some," he retorted. "Professionals with construction experience."

"Sure. But you haven't yet." Johnny tilted his head, narrowing those brown eyes that seemed to see more than Marcus would like.

"It's the interviews." Marcus grimaced. "Finding the right person to hire, talking to a bunch of people who want the work bad enough to maybe lie about themselves. It sucks."

Johnny smiled sunnily. "And here I am, willing to work for room and board and give you the chance to avoid that whole boring process."

It wasn't the boredom that bothered Marcus. It was having to deal with people. Easier to do it all on his own ... except there were a few projects he'd been putting off because they required more than one pair of hands.

As if sensing his waffling, Johnny smiled confidently. "I promise not to get in your way. Come on, man. I've been on my feet for what feels like a week, and if I don't crash soon, it's not going to be pretty."

Not my problem. Marcus actually opened his mouth to say it. But a gust of wind blew around the corner from the direction of the ocean, salty sweet and fresh. The breeze caught the newly hung sign, swinging it on its cast-iron hooks, and Marcus shut his mouth with a snap.

Reluctantly meeting Johnny's imploring stare, Marcus grunted, "Fine. There's a studio apartment next door to mine, upstairs from the bar. It's small, only one room, but it's got its own kitchenette and bathroom. You're liable to get woken up by hammering every so often-I get up early, and the walls are paper thin. But it's yours if you want it."

Lips quirking as if he were repressing a smile, Johnny gave him a serious nod. "Thanks. Sounds cozy."

Marcus hefted the ladder over his shoulder and turned to head back inside. When he turned his head, Johnny was on his heels, clearly not one to wait for an engraved invitation.

"Stairs are that way." He hooked a thumb left, continuing past the staircase to stash the ladder in the crawls.p.a.ce under the stairs. "Your room is the one on the right. Head on up and look around, if you want. It's open. Keys should be on the counter."

A hand on his shoulder stopped Marcus in his tracks. It took everything he had to control his hardwired reaction, but Johnny seemed like a nice guy. He didn't deserve to get thrown over Marcus's shoulder and body-slammed to the ground.

"Seriously, man, thank you," Johnny was saying, oblivious to his near brush with major bodily harm. "I could come back down after I drop off my bag, help out for a few hours."

Marcus gave him a look. "You said you needed to crash. So go crash. You're no good to me sleep-stupid and slow. You'll only make dumb mistakes I'll have to fix later."

Mouth doing that weird twitch again, Johnny only nodded and turned to head upstairs. "Thanks again. You won't regret it."

That remained to be seen. Marcus shut the door on the closet under the stairs with a little more force than necessary. He wasn't going to tiptoe around, just because his new tenant might be sleeping. He had too much c.r.a.p to do.

Grabbing up his electric drill, Marcus stalked back out front to the controlled chaos of the bar itself. The antique zinc bar shone dully under a layer of construction dust, the fading light of the spring day glinting off the mirrors he'd installed behind the liquor shelves that morning. On his way to snag the box of hooks he planned to screw underneath the bar for ladies to hang their purses and whatnot, his work boot knocked into a stack of papers and sent them cascading over the floor.

Cursing, Marcus squatted to gather them back up. First draft proofs of the beer list. His eye caught on the name of the bar scrolled across the top with a stylized flower in the corner.

Grief and guilt caught him like a kick to the b.a.l.l.s, sudden and sickeningly sharp. I'm doing my best, b.u.t.tercup, he said silently, ignoring the way the paper fluttered in his shaking hand.

I'm going to make you proud. If it's the last thing I do with my worthless life.

Tessa half expected Johnny to be waiting for her outside the bakery when she finally got done prepping for tomorrow's morning s.h.i.+ft and closed up. But he wasn't.

Telling herself she wasn't disappointed, she shrugged into her denim jacket and wound her light scarf around her neck. She loved her new short hair, but after years with much longer hair, she s.h.i.+vered at every breeze on the back of her neck as she walked the four blocks home from Patty Cakes.

She ought to be glad to have the time to think through what it meant that Johnny had followed her to Sanctuary Island. When Johnny was actually around, sucking all the air out of the world and lighting her nerves on fire, Tessa wasn't usually thinking very rationally.

Heat p.r.i.c.kled across her cheeks as she remembered that incredible, spine-tingling, toe-curling kiss. Maybe she didn't need the scarf, after all, she mused as she climbed the front porch steps of Patty's two-story brick house. With memories like that to keep her warm, she couldn't imagine ever being cold again.

"Is that you, Tessa girl?" Patty called from the kitchen at the back of the house.

Tessa savored the feelings of warmth and welcome that bloomed in her heart every time she stepped into Patty's home. "Yes, ma'am! And you better not be back there working. The doctor said you're supposed to take it easy."

The silence from the kitchen didn't bode well. Tessa hurried through, hanging up her coat and scarf, and hustled down the hall on feet that ached from standing all day, measuring out batter and testing cakes' doneness and scrubbing down the giant industrial mixer. And if she was this exhausted after a full day of work at the bakery, how tired must Patty be after doing it on her own, all day, every day, for the last fifty years?

Not too tired to fix dinner, apparently. Tessa paused in the kitchen doorway and watched Patty chop bell peppers with the same precise, efficient motions she used when she rolled out one of her famous all-b.u.t.ter pie crusts.

"No lectures." Patty slanted her a stern glance, her hands never faltering in their work. "I feel good today, plenty of energy, and you've had a rough time of it. Let me take care of you, for a change."

"You've done nothing but take care of me since you met me," Tessa protested, taking a reluctant seat at one of the pair of bar stools pulled up to the butcher block in the middle of the s.p.a.cious kitchen.

Patty scooped up the chopped vegetables with a quick swipe of the flat of her blade and waved away Tessa's words. "Let's call it even then. We can take turns. Tonight is my turn, so have the gla.s.s of wine I wish I could drink and tell me what happened with that handsome husband of yours."

They'd been slammed when Tessa finally got back to the bakery to relieve Patty; the evening rush of after-work foot traffic and customers looking to take home a treat for dessert, or one of their savory quiches or a loaf of bread to go with dinner. There hadn't been time to do more than shoo Patty out the door to go home and rest.

Tessa wasn't a big drinker, but she dutifully picked up the bottle of Patty's beloved chardonnay and poured a healthy glug into the single, waiting gla.s.s. "Why don't you switch to red? I bet you could convince Dr. Hathaway that one gla.s.s of red wine a night would be good for your heart. Aren't there studies?"

"Red wine might be good for the heart, but it's h.e.l.l on my head. Bourbon is better." Patty peeled the translucent skin off an onion with a practiced flick of her knife and started dicing it. "Now quit stalling and spill. I'm pretty sure gossip is good for the heart."

Grinning through the sharp pinch of concern over Patty's casual att.i.tude toward her own health, Tessa propped her elbows on the butcher block and took a sip of wine. "I don't know where to start."

"Start with why I didn't know you were still married!"

Tessa squirmed uncomfortably. "I should have told you the whole truth, Patty. I'm sorry. In my own defense, I was certain it was only a matter of time until I was divorced."

"You were certain." Patty pounced on the past tense. "But now?"

"Now..." Tessa blew out a breath that ruffled the fall of bangs over her forehead. "Now I guess I'm not certain of anything. I just never imagined Johnny would come here, looking for me."

Patty whirled, pointing the tip of her chopping knife at Tessa with a narrow glare. "Why on earth wouldn't he? You're his wife! And you're absolutely adorable. Of course he wants you back."

"I wasn't his wife. Not in the ways that counted." Tessa pressed her lips together against the bitter outburst, but it was too late.

c.o.c.king her head inquisitively, Patty set down the knife and wiped her hands clean on her checkered ap.r.o.n before coming over to perch on the other bar stool. "Sugar. What does that mean?"

Tessa struggled to find the words. She'd never meant to lie to Patty or any of her new Sanctuary Island friends and neighbors. But she had desperately wanted a clean break from the life she'd left behind in northern Virginia. So she'd cut her hair and bought new clothes and showed up to answer Patty's "Help Wanted" ad with a new name to match her new self.

No one on Sanctuary Island had ever met Terri, and Tessa wanted to keep it that way. But if Johnny planned to stick around for a whole month, the situation was obviously going to require some explanation.

Patty reached out and laid her strong, big-knuckled hand over Tessa's. "Oh, sugar. You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to. But I hope you know that there's nothing you could say that would shock me, or make me think less of you. I know you."

Tears rose up to clog Tessa's throat. "That's just it," she choked out. "There's so much you don't know about me. So much I should have told you already..."

"I know everything I need to know." Patty squeezed her hand for emphasis. "For a year now, I've watched you take to island life like a sunflower stretching up toward the sun. I've seen how eager you are to learn about running a bakery, how hard you work, how much you care. I've taken you into my home and never had a single moment of feeling anything other than grateful for the day you appeared in my life. I may not know everything about your past, but I know you, sugar pop. Never doubt it."

Tessa blinked. Her cheeks were wet with tears, but they also hurt from smiling too widely. "I can't get over how lucky I am. At the hardest moments in my life, the exact perfect person comes along to lift me out of it. This time it was you, and I couldn't be more grateful and glad."

Clearing her throat, Patty blinked too, and her voice was a little thick when she said, "Oh, stop it. Come here and give me a hug."

The feeling of Patty's thin arms closing around her melted a part of Tessa's heart that had been frozen since childhood. She dropped her head to Patty's frail shoulder and sniffled, breathing in the scent of vanilla mixed with the sharpness of chopped vegetables, and the clean linen of Patty's blouse. Maybe this was what home smelled like.

"So this time it was me who helped you-although I still think we could quibble about who's helping who here. Regardless, who was it last time?"

Trust Patty to cut straight through the bull and pinpoint the exact heart of the issue. Tessa sat up and scrubbed at her cheeks before taking a big gulp of wine. "Last time, it was Johnny."

Patty registered a complete lack of surprise. "And how old were you?"

This was the part where it got weird. "I was almost eighteen."

The beginnings of a concerned frown puckered Patty's steel-gray brows. "And how old was he?"

Cringing a bit, Tessa said, "Twenty-two. I know! It sounds bad, but it's really only a four-year age difference. That's nothing."

"It's nothing now, when you're twenty-six and he's thirty," Patty said sharply, outrage bristling all over her like a cat with its hackles up. "But you were a baby when you met him. He took advantage of you."

"No, he absolutely did not." Tessa was glad she could look Patty in the eye and be completely firm about this point. "Johnny saved me. He didn't do anything wrong. None of this is his fault."

Patty shook her head slowly. "Sugar, I hope you know you sound like every battered woman or abused wife in the world."

"Maybe so, but that's not how it was between Johnny and me." Tessa ran an agitated hand through her short hair, rumpling it up. "I can't let you think that, even for a second. Patty, my life before I met Johnny was ... well, it wasn't easy. My family lived on a commune in rural Maryland. I was home-schooled, never left the community. It was all I knew for the first sixteen years of my life. I was mostly happy there, but looking back, it was a strange upbringing, very isolated and closed off from the world. Johnny was one of the first people I ever met who wasn't from the community."

Tessa snuck a glance at Patty, but instead of the pity she'd feared seeing, Patty looked thoughtful. "Go on," she said.

Encouraged, Tessa took another sip of wine and tried not to get sucked into the memories. "It was a nice place, truly. I don't want you to think it was some weird cult, or something. A lot of the community was just about living close to the land and sharing resources. My parents, though ... they'd been brought up in the community. My mother's parents were pretty easygoing-they even let her learn to drive-but my father is descended from the founders, and he was pretty hard-core."

Patty's brow furrowed again. "What does that mean?"

"A few of the other families shared a pickup truck to go the twenty miles into town, but my parents thought that was extravagant. We walked or bicycled, in all weather. They didn't believe in the trappings of modern life. We didn't have electricity or running water. In the winter, our heat came from a woodstove. In the summer, we had to jump in the creek to get cool. But I didn't mind any of that, really."

"So what changed?"

Remembered fear clutched at Tessa's stomach. She swallowed, the sour aftertaste of the wine coating the back of her tongue. "When I was sixteen, I started having these episodes. Every day, usually just as I woke up, there would be thirty seconds or a minute where I didn't know what I was doing or saying. I looked like I was awake, eyes open, sometimes I'd get up and move around, but I was just ... absent."

"That sounds terrifying." Patty reached out and clasped Tessa's hand again, and Tessa squeezed her fingers gratefully.

"It really was. I'd blink and suddenly I'd be on the other side of the room, or my mother would be asking me what was happening and I couldn't answer her. I thought I was going crazy, or maybe I was possessed. I had no idea, but I wanted to go to a doctor to get checked out."

In the pause that followed while Tessa tried to figure out how to say it, Patty's frown steadily blackened. "Let me guess. One of the trappings your parents didn't believe in was modern medicine."

Tessa nodded jerkily. "I was only sixteen. I couldn't go by myself-I'd never been anywhere by myself! So it just went on, for almost two years. Until one day I blinked and when I came back to myself, I was standing next to the woodstove and it felt like my hand was on fire."

Chapter 6.

She turned her hand in Patty's loose grasp until the side of her wrist was facing upward, exposing the curved silver scar in the shape of the new moon.

"That scared my mother," Tessa remembered, thinking of the lines bracketing her mother's thin, hard mouth. "She waited until my father went out to the fields and then she borrowed the keys to the neighbors' truck and drove us into town. I was light-headed with the pain, which ebbed and flowed but never got any better even though we kept stopping to pack it with fresh snow from the side of the road."

"Merciful heavens," Patty murmured. "But at least your mother finally took you to get treatment."

Tessa sighed. "Well. For the burn, yes. But when the doctor asked how it happened and I started explaining about my episodes, he got very serious and wanted to run a whole bunch of tests. My mother refused. I don't know, maybe she was worried about paying for it. We didn't have health insurance. Or maybe she just didn't want to know what was wrong with me-sometimes she acted like if we ignored the rest of the world and the things we didn't like about it, it would all go away. But as we were leaving, the doctor pulled me aside and told me my episodes were called seizures, and that they could be very serious-but they could likely also be treated."

Without a word, Patty slid off the bar stool and went to get another winegla.s.s. She poured herself a half portion, her lowered eyebrows daring Tessa to comment. Tessa kept her mouth shut and Patty sat back down. Taking a ladylike sip, she said, "Okay. Go ahead. Tell me your parents refused to get you treatment."

It was even worse than that. Tessa bit her lip. "I hate the way this all makes my parents sound-they aren't bad people. They hold their beliefs very close to their hearts, and they endure a lot of hards.h.i.+p to adhere to those beliefs. My mother, especially. It must have been a huge blow to have a child who needed more than she could give, more than she believed any person should need."

Patty set her winegla.s.s down with such force, it was a wonder she didn't snap the stem. "You are a sweet girl and I love your forgiving heart. But I swear by the Almighty, sugar, if you make any more excuses for those people-"

"I'm not making excuses," Tessa protested, even as Patty's fierce protectiveness warmed her heart. "My father was a hard man, and the amount of control he wanted over our household-I know now that there are other ways to live, and I can't imagine going back to that oppressive, domineering ... But you know, I've spent a lot of time trying to understand their reasoning, to see the situation from their perspective, to understand what it was that forced them to react the way they did."

To understand how they could be willing to see their only daughter die rather than submit her to the care of medical science.

Frustration flattened Patty's mouth into a grim line. "Finish the story. I won't interrupt again."

Blowing out a breath, Tessa bolstered her courage with another sip of wine. "The whole ride home, I argued to be allowed to take the tests. I was really afraid-I don't know how to explain how terrifying it was to feel so out of control of my body. I hated those seizures, and the idea that I could find out more about what was going on and maybe even get treatment ... But Mother gripped the wheel and stared straight ahead. She wouldn't even look at me. When we got back to the commune, it was late and my father was waiting for us. He took one look at the bandage on my wrist and sent me straight to bed, but I could hear him yelling at Mother about betraying their way of life, giving in to temptation and fear, stuff like that. But instead of agreeing with him, for the first time ever, I heard her talk back."

The moment was emblazoned on Tessa's memory. She'd crawled out of her bed and inched over to the edge of the loft, where she could peer down into the cabin's main room. Her mother had been down on her knees, hair straggling around her shoulders and a look of raw misery on her lined face. "She told him what the doctor said about the seizures and she ... she pleaded with him. On her knees, she begged. The look he gave her, I'll never forget. Contemptuous, disgusted. He sneered at her that she wasn't the helpmeet he thought he'd married, if her principles and morals could be shaken so easily. He grabbed her by the arm and yanked her up to her feet and I remember being sure he was about to hit her, but he didn't. He shoved her toward their bedroom and slammed the door behind them, and I knew ... I had to leave. My parents never fought. Ever. They were united about everything, except this. I was the thing tearing my family to pieces, and I couldn't bear it."

Tessa peeked at Patty, who appeared to be holding her breath. "It's okay," Tessa said, attempting a smile. "It was a long time ago, and not to ruin the ending but obviously, I did get away."