Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 68033 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68033 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
“I know, and I care…” Kerris let the insipid word describing what she felt for Walsh sit on her tongue like tasteless porridge. “I care about him, which is why I can’t see him right now.”
“Mind explaining that?”
“There’s something broken in me. Something that’s never been right. I used Cam to try to fix it. I used the baby to try to fix it. And if Walsh comes now, as much as I…care about him, I’ll use him to try to fix it, too.”
“Hmmmm.” Mama Jess crammed everything and nothing into that monosyllable.
“And I can’t do that,” Kerris said, her eyes filling up. “Not anymore. Not to him. I need to be on my own and figure this out. And if he comes…I won’t be able to say no. I won’t be able to send him away. And I just…I just need some time to get it straight. To sort it out. I’ve messed up so badly, and I can’t keep—”
“Stop, baby.” Mama Jess’s voice, quiet and sharp, sliced into the hysterical note Kerris heard building in her own voice. “I’ll handle it.”
* * *
Walsh pressed the doorbell again for the fourth time in a matter of seconds. Cam said Mama Jess was here with Kerris. Walsh walked over to the window, trying to see through the sheers into the living room. He knocked on the window, a few soft taps. Maybe he should go around to the back door. Maybe he’d knocked too softly, and the steady rainfall had muffled the sound. He put a little more insistence into the fist he banged against the windowpane. It shouldn’t take this long to open a door. Surely Mama Jess hadn’t left Kerris here alone.
The front door opened before he could send his anxious mind too far down that road.
Mama Jess stepped onto the front porch, closing the door behind her and leaning against it.
“Were you going to call the fire department next?”
Mama Jess started her scrupulous inspection at his shoes, then inched up his dark-wash jeans and past his NYU T-shirt until she met his eyes. Walsh didn’t like what he saw there. It was steel. It was determination. The fact that she didn’t let him in hadn’t escaped him. Walsh walked the few feet from the window to the front door, standing his ground in front of the woman he suspected meant to keep him out.
“I’m here to see Kerris.”
“Oh, and here I was about to get flattered.” She rolled the words around in sarcasm and accompanied them with a twist of her lips.
“I…well, I heard that—”
“News sure travels fast.” She squinted up at him in the weak porch light and gestured to his face. “What’s the other guy look like?”
Walsh touched the puffiness under one eye and brushed his fingers across the cut above the other.
“Worse.” Walsh shoved all thought of Cam from his mind. He had waited too long. This was happening. Tonight. Now. “I need to see Kerris.”
“No.” Her lips barely parted over the word, like it was nothing to her either way, but Walsh wasn’t fooled.
“Is she asleep? My flight leaves in a couple of hours, but I can wait. I could even reschedule my flight. Cancel it. I can stay another day. Another week. I just need to see her.”
“Even when she wakes up, she don’t want to see you, son.” Mama Jess’s firm tone gentled just a little over the last part, but that brought Walsh little comfort.
“No, she will.” Walsh tried the usual confident smile, but it slipped and fell right off his face when he saw just how unmoved Mama Jess remained. “She’ll want to see me.”
“Then why did she tell me that if you came by, to tell you she don’t wanna see you?”
Walsh gave a vigorous shake of his head, denials fighting their way out of his mouth and tumbling past his lips.
“No, you must have misunderstood. She would never say that. Now that—”
“Now that she’s getting a divorce?” Mama Jess pushed away from the door, planting a fist on one full hip. “And now she’ll be free? Is that what you were gonna say?”
“Not exactly, but…can I just come in? Just for a few minutes.”
“I said no. Now go.”
“Go? You’re telling me to go?”
“No, she’s telling you to go. Look, give her some time.” Mama Jess heaved her full bosom with a sigh that seemed to say she was barely tolerating him. “Don’t be a spoiled little boy about it. Don’t you have money to make, orphans to save, and things to do?”
“Spoiled?” Walsh knew he was in trouble when he started sputtering. “Wha…I…You…Me? Spoiled?”
“Look, all I know is you out here, banging on the door, pounding on the window, whining ’cause you can’t get your way, and ’bout to pitch a fit ’cause I won’t let you disturb a woman who barely survived a car wreck, lost her baby and was just walked out on by her husband.” Mama Jess leaned forward and up until he couldn’t escape the strength of her brown eyes. “Excuse her for needing a minute.”