The Right Thing

CHAPTER 13


“Wow—that’s a first.”

His forehead pressed to mine, Ted’s low-voiced comment is shaky, and it’s in that instant I realize what a terrible thing I’ve just done. I stiffen in his arms, and immediately he lets go of me as if I’m radioactive. I’m only just able to stay upright in the aftershock. I stagger backward away from him, reaching for the relative safety of the cinder block wall.

“Me too,” I manage to say. What I don’t say is that I’m married, for God’s sake. I don’t say that kiss was so out of character for me I might as well be in the throes of some cerebral event, what the old-timers used to call a brainstorm. Like I said, there’s never been anybody else but Du, not really. Still, thinking of Ted’s kiss, I wouldn’t take it back—not for anything—and that astounding realization is something I keep to myself, too. Feeling the way I do right now, I’m not even sure what’s going to come out of my mouth will sound like English anyway. I sway on my feet, blinking and trying to lick my dry lips with my dry tongue.

Ted’s face is flushed, and I imagine mine is as well. “You all right?” he asks. He reaches down and picks up Troy’s makeshift leash, obviously avoiding my eyes.

“No.” The edges of my vision are darkening, and the barn rotates in a steep, ominous spiral. Swaying in the aisle, I know that this time I’m going down. “Christ,” I moan.

“Okay, okay,” Ted says. He takes my elbow, steadying me. “Easy, now. Can you hold on here a minute while I go get that water?” When all I can do is nod, he puts Troy’s leash in my limp hand and with quick, easy strides heads down the aisle, turning inside a door at the end of the shed row. I want to sit down in the dirt, but I’ve got to stay on my feet, however unsteady they are, since I’m sure that once I sit, then I’ll lie down, then all the blood will rush to my head, and then I’ll pass out. The longest minute later, Ted’s coming back with a Dixie cup in his hand and a concerned look on his face, probably wondering what he’s gotten himself into. He gives the cup to me, and I take a long, cool drink of what is undoubtedly the best water on the planet. God, that’s good. When I’ve finished, Ted takes the paper cup from me and drops it in a nearby garbage can. I close my eyes and return to my new friend, the cinder block wall.

“If you haven’t been drinking, then what the hell’s wrong with you?” Ted asks. He sounds concerned.

“Don’t know,” I mumble, opening my burning eyes and trying to stand up straight.


“Have you eaten anything today?” Without making a big deal out of it, Ted brushes my hair off my face, a gesture that both warms and alarms me. His fingertips are calloused, slightly rough on my cheek.

“Some Chessmen.” I try to take a step forward and promptly bang up against the stall door of the really big horse who’s been giving me the stink-eye for quite a while now. Ears flattened, the massive chestnut head rears backward in terror as if I’d come after the damned thing with an assault rifle.

“And a brownie,” I add.

“One of Bette’s brownies?” Ted shakes his head. “Honey, you’re high.”

Even in my addled state, “high” gets through to what’s passing for my brain. That’s almost exactly what this feels like, but my abortive experiments in college with marijuana and other drugs are so far in my past I’d purely forgotten all about them. Back then, it seemed like everybody except for ol’ Just-Say-No Julie Posey was smoking dope, but I usually faked it, passing the joint without taking a hit. Marijuana made me sleepy—and hungry, a state I’d begun to avoid whenever possible.

“That brownie did taste funny,” I admit, remembering the herby aftertaste.

“Bette’s brownies are notorious. You’ll do better walking it off,” Ted says. I have misgivings about leaving the wall beside the sulking chestnut horse’s stall, but he sounds serious. “C’mon. I’ll introduce you to some friends of mine. Here.” He wraps my hand in his own and encourages me forward. “You can do it.”

And like that, Ted, Troy, and I are walking down the aisle of the barn. I’m slow like an old lady, unsteady as a grandmother without her walker, but I do find that with each step I get a little better and Ted only has to catch me once or twice when I go crashing into the wall. Still, I’m grateful when we stop in front of the next stall and a tall gray horse pokes his head out, chewing a wad of hay. Ted strokes the horse’s long neck, sleek and smooth as dappled marble.

“This is Triton, one of my stakes horses,” Ted says, his voice affectionate. “Seven years old and sound as a Swiss bank. Won over eight hundred thousand bucks and the monster still runs like he’s three. Go ahead, you can touch him.”

The tall gray horse noses the front of my dress inquisitively, leaving a few white hairs on the black silk. Feeling timid, I slide my hand down the undercurve of his neck, mesmerized with the strong, slow heartbeat under my fingertips. “One of your horses?” I ask. “Do you own a herd of them?”

“I train ten,” Ted answers. “No herds, though. I can’t afford to own any horses myself. Damned things eat their heads off. Triton here belongs to a couple of really nice gay guys from New York, Ray and Stu. Great clients, pay their bills on time, and love to watch their horse run. He’s on the card for the Thanksgiving Classic tomorrow so they’ll be in town.” He takes my hand again, and we walk next door to meet another horse, a bay beauty with a blaze face and tiny ears like quotation marks. This one’s not nearly as intimidating, being a lot smaller than the gray.

“Say hi to Helen Wheels,” Ted says. “Filly’s fast as a lightning strike, so she’s a sprinter—needs a short race where her speed can make up for her lack of size.” The little filly arches her neck when Ted fondles her ears, her half-closed, liquid eyes glazed with contentment. “If I could own a horse, she’d be the one. I like her style.” Ted’s smile at me is intimate. “I like little women with guts.”

Blushing, I pet this one, too, loving the satin-like feel of her skin sliding easily over the exquisite crest of her neck. And Ted’s right: walking is helping, and so is the reassuring solidity of his hand holding mine. Taking our time, we move down the length of the aisle, meeting the horses he trains, getting to know them. When we reach the end of the shed row, I feel as though I’d remember these friends of Ted’s wherever I saw them, and slowly, the clean smells of hay and sleepy horses, Troy Smoot’s curious snuffling, and the papery rustle of pigeons overhead in the dusty rafters quiet my overshot senses. This peaceful company has helped bring me back to myself, enough so that it’s hard to believe I have just kissed a man who isn’t Du.

What got into me? I peek sidelong at Ted. Accident or not, once that kiss began I didn’t exactly back away. Ted steps into the last horse’s stall to rearrange an off-kilter blanket, and I lean my arms on the half-door, watching him seem to magically create order out of a tangle of mysterious straps and buckles while the horse nibbles from a hay net.

“Thanks.” I have to make myself say it, embarrassed now for being such a mess. And for that kiss. “Thanks for not taking advantage, for sticking around to make sure I’m all right.”

Ted straightens, brushing a loose straw from his jeans. “If you ate a pot brownie, might be a while before you’re really all right. Could take hours to wear off.”

“I feel a lot better,” I say, “just a little floaty, like I could walk off the edge of the world at any moment, you know?” Ted steps out into the aisle and shuts the latch on the door to the stall. “Look, I’m, uh, sorry for what happened before,” I say. Pausing, my cheeks hot, I’m determined to soldier on in my apology, even though I’d rather be in a midnight fire at sea than talk about it because I’m sure I need to say something about it. “That was really . . .”

Turning to face me, Ted takes both my hands in his own and smiles that great smile down at me. Before I lose my nerve, I rattle on doggedly. “I mean, it’s not like I go around kissing strange men all the time.”

“Yeah, that ring’s kind of hard to miss.”

“I used to have a little one,” I blurt. “Du—he’s my husband—thought I needed a big ring once he started making money.”

“Got it.” Ted nods but doesn’t say anything else, and for a long moment I’m belatedly dumbfounded to discover that, with no effort whatsoever, I can dismiss that five-carat rock and what it’s supposed to mean from my mind because I want to kiss him again. I want to put my fingers in that dark, a-little-too-long hair, gently pull his mouth to mine so I can feel that smile against my lips just one more time. Amazed at my thoughts, I tilt my head and really look at him, this nice man who’s just showed me his horses, inviting me in as though I have every right to be a part of this world of his.

There’s a strange, comfortable quiet between us, and in that growing quiet I begin to hear things I thought were done, the sounds of possibility, of change. If I can kiss someone besides Du, maybe I can muster a backbone and stick it out with Starr after we get home. Besides, that amazing kiss and this good silence have shut up even the rosebush voice—probably shocked to smithereens at the widening rift, seemingly as broad as the Gulf of Mexico, between the me of this morning and Annie tonight. I could get used to this silence, I think.

“Well, Annie not-from-here,” Ted finally says. “You okay to head back to Bette’s? It’s a ways.” He lets go of my hands. “I could go get the golf cart if you want.”

Reflexively, I look down at my watch. In the dim light of the shed row I can barely make out the time, but even so it’s plain that I’ve been gone a lot longer than the ten-minute walk I’d promised Troy when we left Bette’s trailer. More like an hour has passed, and now it’s well after midnight. If Starr and I can leave in the next fifteen minutes, I can still get home before I get into real trouble, but the thought of home elicits a stirring of apprehension, as though there’s something I’ve forgotten and need to remember before it’s too late. It’s probably the dope making me paranoid, but in any case, I really do need to get back.


“I can make it. That Airstream ought to still be where it was an hour ago,” I say, hugging my arms with a shiver. Without warning, it feels as though the temperature in the barn has dropped twenty degrees and it’s not like this dress is made for traipsing around in the damp New Orleans fog anyway. Seeing me shiver, Ted shrugs out of his jean jacket and drapes it around my shoulders, body-warm and smelling of him. Lord, he looks good in his white T-shirt, that broad chest, those smooth-muscled arms. I blink and look away while Troy Smoot sits at my feet, all business now after having thoroughly smelled everything he could get his nose into and lifted his leg on the garbage can.

“Thanks for the water,” I say, hugging myself tighter so I’ll be sure to keep my hands to myself because Ted looks so good. Then the nice man in the white T-shirt puts a finger under my chin, lifting it so my eyes meet his. He’s smiling, and in spite of my growing apprehension, I find myself helplessly smiling back at him. “And thanks for the hay rope.”

“Thanks for the kiss,” Ted says mildly. “I’ll walk you back to Bette’s place.”





My car’s missing.

It’s gone. Vanished. No longer there. I shut my eyes and open them again, sure that this time it’ll be where I parked sixty thousand dollars’ worth of German luxury engineering, behind the big semi with the Virginia plates. No—in the damp dirt the tire tracks are unmistakable, but the BMW is gone.

“Hey, Annie?” Ted asks. “Where’s your car?”

I don’t answer. I can’t. I stand in the space where my car used to be, my mouth open wide as one of the semi’s tires. Unbelieving, I stumble away, leaving Ted and the dog behind me. I run between the silk palm trees, up the steps of Bette’s Airstream, and bang on the door with both fists.

“Starr!”

The Confederate flag covering the window twitches, but it’s Bette who opens the door, her false eyelashes removed, a smear of night cream on her big-pored face.

“Oh, Lord, Annie,” she says, looking nervous. “You better come on in, sweetheart. Ted, that you?”

“I’ll wait out here,” he says.

I fall inside the door, fending off Bette’s attempt at a wide-armed embrace. The trailer, smelling of stale coffee and Shalimar, feels way too warm, entirely too bright after the cool, foggy night. All those swans stare at me with beady-eyed smugness from every corner of the room.

“My car’s been stolen! I’ve got to talk to Starr,” I say wildly, looking around the Airstream’s cabin. “Starr?”

Starr doesn’t answer. Her purse isn’t on the Formica countertop either.

“Bette? Where’s Starr?” My voice is trembling on the edge of the kind of panic that sends people out screaming into the streets. I have a very bad and altogether too familiar feeling about this. Somehow, I’ve screwed up again. Serves you right, the rosebush voice says, for kissing that man, and the swans seem to nod in agreement.

Bette wraps her hand around my arm, her big, greasy face concerned. “You better sit down, honey. I’ll pour us some coffee.”

“No!” I whirl away from her and stick my head outside the open door, shouting, “Starr Dukes, where the hell are you?” Ted, who’s now leaning against the side of the battered semi with his arms folded, looks up at me. His face is expressionless until he lifts an eyebrow.

“She’s not out here,” he says.

It’s a long beat before I realize Ted knows who I’m shouting for, that he knows Starr. I can only stare at him in dumbfounded vacancy. Behind me, Bette tugs at the jean jacket hanging from my shoulders, and I just restrain myself from slapping her. Where’s Starr? Where’s my car? Has she taken it to get gas or something? She has to be coming back, she has to. I’m shaking like I have a high fever, my heart pounds like the surf in a storm, and the trailer’s linoleum seems to lift under my feet with a sideways tilt.

“Sit down, Annie.” Bette pats my shoulder as she guides me to the dinette. Like an obedient dog, I sit in a stunned heap. She leans out through the Airstream’s door, into the foggy night. “You can c’mon in, Ted,” she hollers. “I’ll pour us all a cup of coffee.”

My hands are knotted together on top of the table when Ted ducks his head to walk in the trailer. He pauses and looks around, seems nonplussed by all the swans, and then slides in across from me on the dinette’s other bench. I can’t look at him.

I can’t look at anyone.

“Bette,” I say, my voice low and dangerous. “Tell me where Starr is this minute. Tell me she didn’t just take off in my car.”

Bette’s back is turned to me as she pours out the coffee I don’t want. Her wide shoulders slump. With a sigh, she pushes up the velour sleeves of her sweat suit like she’s got a tough job ahead of her and turns around to face me.

“Well, she did, Annie. Starr took your car and went back to Jackson. You were gone for so long, over an hour, and we didn’t even know where you’d gone.” Bette folds her tattooed arms across her bosom, her face worried. “I’m so sorry. She said to tell you she couldn’t wait.”

My mouth falls open again, and nobody says anything. “What?” I falter, finally. Jackson? Starr left me here, in New Orleans, in the middle of the night without a way to get home? “What?” I say again, still unable to believe this is really happening to me.

Like a dancing bear in teal velour, Bette trundles over to the dinette with two steaming cups, putting one in front of Ted, the other in front of me. “Here you go, honey.” She squeezes in next to Ted and pats my clenched hands. “Oh, Annie—I got another call, and it wasn’t an a*shole trainer with a sore horse this time, it wasn’t for me. That call was for Starr.”

I jerk my hands away, clutching Ted’s jacket to my bare shoulders. “So?” I demand, panic turning to dread.

Bette’s naked little eyes are guarded. She looks down at the table. “So after that call she had to leave. Right away. She wouldn’t wait.”

“I heard that part already. What was so goddamned important that she’d strand me in New Orleans,” I say, my voice rising to an almost-shout, “when she knows how much trouble I’m going to be in when I can’t get home tonight?”

And with that outburst I’m exhausted, collapsing against the leatherette back of the bench seat, dully appraising the disaster Starr’s landed me in. Across the table, Ted takes a sip of his coffee, his eyes watching me with what looks like compassion. I’m numb inside, but my thoughts are racing: even if I could get a rental car on the night before Thanksgiving, my driver’s license, my credit cards, and the money in the pocket of my parka—they’re all in the BMW. I’m broke and alone in New Orleans in the middle of the night. How could Starr do this to me? My eyes fill with tears.

“Didn’t she know?” My whisper sounds broken. “Didn’t she know what’s going to happen to me now?”

Bette sighs. “Oh, honey,” she says gently. With a grunt, she gets up to get me a Kleenex from the swan-shaped dispenser on top of the television. “Starr knew it was going to be a problem, but she had to do it. She said to tell you it was Mr. Right who called.”

Remember Mr. Right? The man my momma told me was going to carry me off, love me forever, and get me whatever my heart desired?


Bette goes on. “It was her chance to get together with her baby’s father, to go get married and get shut of the world of hurt she’s been in, but she was afraid he might have second thoughts. She didn’t dare waste any time.”

“But tonight?” This horror is making less sense by the minute. Starr? Going back to Bobby? “Why tonight?”

“I don’t know, sugar,” Bette says, shaking her head.

“Eight hours ago she had to be in New Orleans tonight!” I want to put my head down on the table and sob, but I can’t summon the energy even for that. “She’s going back to Jackson to marry Bobby? After all he put her through, Starr’s going back to Bobby Shapley? Has she lost her mind, thinking he can marry her just like that? Last I heard, he wasn’t even divorced! He’s still with Julie.”

I can’t seem to take this in, my mind shrieking no. Please, please tell me I’m not going to be ruined because Bobby Shapley changed his f*cking mind.

Bette sits down again, and the bench groans under her weight. Her husky contralto is loaded with a galling commiseration when she says, “I know it’s a shock, sugar.”

“No, it’s not.” Ted says.

I turn from Bette’s heavy-jowled face to meet his steady, brown-eyed gaze. “What do you mean, it’s not a shock?” I ask. “What the hell are you saying?”

Ted’s eyes don’t waver. “You’ve known her—how long?”

Without thinking I say, “Since I was seven years old. What about it?”

Ted shrugs. “Then how can you be shocked when Starr Dukes runs off with your car?”

This hits like a baseball bat to the gut. I stare at him, hoping I heard wrong.

“So you do know her,” I say. “In fact, you seem to know Starr better than I do.” Could Ted be one of the men in her past? Starr, sitting on that god-awful ugly bed, clasping her hands in her lap and looking dreamy. Poppa said that the wages of sin is death. I’ve made me some mistakes, but I can’t say I’d do anything different. Not knowing why I should care, I swallow hard and have to ask, “So . . . how well do you know her?”

Ted doesn’t say anything right away. He takes a sip of coffee and puts the cup down before he says, “It’s not what you think, Annie. Starr’s like a lot of people—comes from nothing, wants a lot. I’d say that if taking your car and leaving you behind was the one way for her to get over, she’d drive off with your BMW in a heartbeat and never look back.” He idly turns his cup in its saucer. “Starr and I were friends once, sort of. That’s all.” His tone tells me to take his word for it.

Bette runs her fingers through her tight brown curls, working them into a loopy, corkscrew halo. She looks tired, too. “And that’s the way it is with me and Starr,” she says, sounding subdued. “She only tells me what she thinks I need to know, so I can’t answer all your questions, Annie. She hadn’t even told me about being pregnant, and wasn’t that a surprise when she walked in the door! But I’ll tell you what, once Starr’s made up her mind, she’s like a round from a thirty-aught shotgun—whatever she’s aiming at, she’s gonna take it out.”

Eyes cast down at her wide lap, Bette gulps, obviously steeling herself for what she says next. “And Annie”—she lowers her voice—“this isn’t the first time Starr’s been pregnant, but she swears it’s going to be the last, said that phone call meant she wasn’t going to have to fight anymore, she’d never be broke again. Starr’s going to be set for life.”

I’m reeling with humiliation. I want to crawl into a hole and die. I want to wake up in my bed at home to find that this has been a wicked, wicked dream. Ted’s face is carefully without expression, but the terrible sympathy in Bette’s eyes tells me I’ve been a fool. What have I done to myself now?

Finally, I locate my voice. “I still have to find a way home,” I say, defeated and thin as tap water. “All my money, my driver’s license, everything’s in the car. I have the clothes I’m standing up in. And a dog.”

“Well, the dress looks fabulous on you.” Bette narrows her eyes and gives me the once-over. “I’d lose the boots, though. You need a killer pair of Ferragamo sling-backs.”

“And he’s a good dog,” Ted offers.

“Where is he?” I ask. In the midst of all this sickening revelation, have I lost Troy Smoot, too?

“He’s in my truck,” Ted says. “There’s a pile of clean horse blankets in the back seat, fresh from the Laundromat. He’s warm and comfortable.”

“Why’d you do that?” I rub my eyes, put my face in my hands.

Ted reaches across the table and gently pushes a thick sheaf of hair off my face. I look at him through my fingers. “I’m going to drive you both home,” he says. “You ready to leave?”

This offer is as surreal as everything else. “Why are you being so nice to me?” I ask.

“You liked my horses, and I don’t have another date for tonight.” His voice is easy, but his eyes tell me that he means it. “I can get you home and be back here before my first horse runs tomorrow.”

Looking relieved, Bette nods her approval. “Ted’s one of the good guys, honey,” she says. “Go on home, Annie. Things will look better in the morning.”

It’s already morning.





Ted’s truck is humongous, an older black four-door Ford diesel with an extra pair of tires on the rear axle. Ted calls it a dually. There’s a welter of fast-food bags, gas station receipts, road maps, a couple of shiny aluminum horseshoes, a tattered paperback copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, and a claw hammer underneath my feet on the passenger’s side. I’m shivering on the frigid bench seat that’s as cold under my bare thighs as only vinyl can be, waiting for the big engine block finally to warm up so we can have some heat.

“Somebody stole the radio back in Virginia,” Ted says. “I could sing, if you want. My ex-wife used to say I sound okay for a guy whose only musical experience is hymns from when I was an altar boy. Sometimes I sing Van Halen in the truck, just because it feels good.”

“I’m not really in the mood for music, thanks.”

It’s a quarter of two o’clock in the morning, black as the underside of a crow’s wing except for the brief pools of efflorescence surrounding the deserted interstate’s lamps. Just as the truck begins to lose its chill, we pass the last exit and leave New Orleans, plunging into the darkness of the spillway, going back the way I came, across the marsh and up the I-55. Slipping off my boots, I curl my feet underneath me and lean my head against the window, looking through the bug-splattered windshield at indistinct stands of cypress trees, the hummocks of switch grass and reeds spread under the scattered stars. Troy Smoot snores softly in the back seat, ensconced in his pile of horse blankets.

I glance over at Ted. He drives like a guy accustomed to the thousand-mile distances between racetracks, forearm resting on top of the wheel, one long leg bent, the other stretched to the pedal. His profile in the greenish light of the instrument panel is cut from the cloth of the night.

“You hungry yet?” he asks.

“No.” I can’t imagine eating anything. Hell, I don’t even want a cigarette—which is unusual, although just as well because the pack’s in my purse in the BMW. I wish I hadn’t thought of that. Damn her. “I’m not hungry.”


“You’re going to be. Bette packed up some cookies for later, for when you want them.” He pauses. “I told her about the brownie while you were in the bathroom.”

Cookies. If I hadn’t eaten those Chessmen, I probably wouldn’t be in the mess I’m in. If I hadn’t eaten the damned brownie, Starr, Troy, and I would be almost to Jackson by now. The truck hums along the elevated miles of the spillway, its diesel engine a constant drone, and the silence, so alive before, is thick and lifeless between Ted and me. What can I possibly say? I don’t deserve his kindness—a silly, vacuous woman who deceived her husband, ran off to New Orleans, and got stranded there.

Finally, I clear my throat. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry you have to drive me two hundred miles back to Jackson.”

“I’m not,” Ted says. “Sorry, I mean. It’s a good excuse for spending more time with you. I’d like to know you when you’re sober, Annie.” He turns and glances at me briefly before he puts his eyes back on the road again. “Besides, driving’s half of what my job’s about. I’m good at it—better than singing anyway.”

“Still,” I persist, “you shouldn’t have to—”

Ted interrupts. “Why don’t you just say thank you and let it go?”

I swallow my apologies. “Thank you,” I whisper. But letting it go is going to be a lot harder.





Still, after that the mood in the truck lifts. As if by mutual agreement, Ted and I don’t talk about Starr. I can’t even think of her without crying, and he seems to know this.

Instead, we head directly to all those places you’re never supposed to go with an acquaintance: politics (he’s a nonvoting Republican, I’m a blue-dog Democrat), religion (he’s a Christmas Catholic, I’m a lapsed Episcopalian), and money (both of us agree that while it doesn’t buy happiness, it sure makes miserable a lot easier to take). I find myself laughing at Ted’s absurd stories of the backstretch, especially the ones about Bette and her temper, something of a small miracle since I was sure it would be years before I laughed again. Even so, from time to time there’s a sense of black ships on my horizon, the foreknowledge of what might be waiting for me at home. It’s a disturbing disconnect with a whiplash effect. I’ll be laughing, talking, and then out of the blue I’m besieged by sharp-edged, wince-worthy memories of a tribe of Barbies in sock-dresses, a broken majolica umbrella stand, a burning tractor, a four-and-a-half-inch heel and an empty pint bottle left under a gardenia bush. Disapproving faces around the dining table. My mother’s perpetual disappointment with me. Du’s wary eyes watching me maneuver myself into yet another corner at a law firm cocktail party.

He trusts you. It’s an ambush. The rosebush voice has been lying in wait for this opportunity. Look what you’ve gone and done to Du. He trusts you.

Trusts me to screw everything up, you mean. The realization presents itself like an old diary, my private thoughts misplaced and found in a box in the attic many years after the fact.

I’ve known this a long time, it seems. I shift uncomfortably in my seat, the unwelcome understanding coming home to roost like pigeons on a ridgepole at sunset: one at a time, each with a soft thud of inevitability. I’m cringing as I think about how we live together, thoughts I usually avoid. Of course Du never would have agreed to let me take this trip—he barely lets me go shopping on my own. It’s Du who supervises the dinner menus, signs off on the gardening, consults Myrtistine on every damned little thing around the house, keeps me on his radar whenever we’re at a function or even just out for drinks with another couple. No, I think, Du Sizemore doesn’t trust me at all.

What’s most disturbing about this knowledge is the fact that I already knew it.

More subdued now, I let Ted talk and drive, two things he really is good at. He keeps it all light and humorous, thank God, because I’m sorely distracted. After another sixty miles, we’ve crossed the state line and I find I’m hungry—no, ravenous—only to discover that Troy Smoot has surreptitiously nosed open Bette’s bag of snickerdoodles and eaten them all, every crumb.

“It’s okay,” I say. Another random eating episode averted. I know I ought to feel relieved, but instead, I’m ready to hunt through the jumble on the truck’s floor for anything, even just a leftover pack of Wendy’s saltines. I don’t think I’ve ever been this hungry in my life.

“You sure?” Ted asks. “I can stop.”

“I’ve had plenty already today. I’ll live.”

“Not if you don’t start eating,” Ted says. “Seriously. You’re one beautiful lady, but you’re way too skinny. If you were a horse, I’d worm you. There’s a truck stop at the Fernwood exit. I’m going to buy you a ham sandwich and then take you on to Jackson.”

And like that I hear Starr, in the passenger seat of the BMW. You probably have no idea how men look at you—like they want to buy you a ham sandwich, then take you home.

Starr. All over again, I experience the gash in my utterly unfounded trust. I lose it then, bursting into loud messy sobs that seem to rip their way out of my chest. I can’t stop them either because, like seeds, these tears were planted this morning in the rose garden when I gave up on the baby, they took root when Starr rubbed out the two little girls drawn in her breath on the car’s window, and they’ve been waiting for their chance to explode into the light ever since I learned she’d abandoned me. I trusted her. She was my best friend once, a long time ago, but how could I have been so gullible? Tears are all I have left.

And it appears these upstart tears mean to have their way with me, and so they do, all the way to the off-ramp, all the way to the dark edge of the parking lot behind the Fernwood Travel Plaza, all the way—inevitably it seems—to Ted’s arms again.

“Hey, baby,” he murmurs into my hair. “Hey, now. It’s going to be okay.” He strokes my back, soothing me as he might a nervous horse or a worn-out child. I’m getting the front of his T-shirt wet, but I can’t quit crying.

“You’ll be home before you know it, sweetheart,” Ted says.

I sob. “That’s the worst part of this—home.”

Ted tucks my head into the hollow between his neck and broad shoulder. “Well,” he says lightly, “isn’t that the place where they have to take you in?”

“You have no idea. You have no idea how awful it is, how awful I am. All my life, I’ve tried to do the right thing, but the right thing always seems to turn into the wrong thing somehow.” The words pour from my mouth like a busted faucet in my rush to get it out. “If I can’t get back in time tonight, everyone is going to be giving me that look again and I can’t stand it, I can’t take being a f*ck-up of the highest order anymore. It’s always been that way for me. Why is it so damned hard? Why am I always such a mess?”

Feeling emptied out, I come up for air at last, wiping my eyes, but Ted is warm, Ted smells wonderful. Ted feels too good for me to move back to my side of the front seat, so I rest my head on his shoulder and come closer.

He kisses the top of my head, his lips just barely brushing my hair, but I feel it. “You seem just fine to me, Annie,” he says. “For what it’s worth, I think you did the right thing by a friend and she let you down. You can’t be responsible for the whole world, honey.”


That’s when I really cut loose crying. It’s that word. Responsible .

Ted scoops me up like a load of caterwauling laundry, and I instinctively wind my arms around his neck. He opens the door, carrying me the short distance to the back seat of the truck and gently sets me down in the heap of horse blankets with Troy Smoot. Alarmed at this noisy interruption of his nap, the dog shakes himself and leaps into the front seat. I roll to my side and curl up in a miserable ball in the midst of the blankets, still warm from Troy, crying myself into hysterics. The rosebush voice, strangely on the same team as I am for once, is crying, too. Then the slick fabric of the horse blankets rustles as Ted climbs in the back, shuts the door, lies across the seat and takes me in his arms again. Ah, I breathe. That’s better. Gradually the tears slow. I catch my breath while he holds me close.

“Hush, baby,” Ted says softly. “I’ve got you.” I’m quieting now, aware of his body pressed against my own. I wipe my eyes and look up at him.

“Ted?” I ask. “What are we doing?”

He sighs, shifting so that there’s the barest space between us. “Getting to know each other better, I think,” Ted says, his voice thoughtful. “I’ve been doing most of the talking so far. Tell me something about you, Annie,” he says. “Tell me about something that’s important to you.” His hand is on my hip, just resting there, but I feel the warm weight of every finger, the solid breadth of his palm, and for the first time that I can recall, for once I come to understand. This time, in this place, I already know what’s important. I know what’s important to me.

“Not yet,” I whisper. “Not yet.”

This time, the kiss isn’t an accident. No, and this time I slide my hand to the front of his jeans, closing around the long, hard length of him. I press my lips to the surprised groan deep in his throat. Ted pulls me closer, his breath running rough.

“Are you sure, Annie?” he says, low-voiced and hoarse.

I am.