She forced a smile then. “Serious?”
The silence that followed this question was one of the most pregnant moments of my life. “Define serious.”
She held up her left hand and tapped her wedding ring with her painted thumbnail.
“No,” I said. “Not soon, anyway. Your son looks really great, by the way,” I told her, trying to change the subject. “He looks like you.”
“Oh, he’s something. Paul and Max already have him playing every sport ever invented. They send him off to special camps, and he’s on a traveling baseball team. I think he’s too young for all that.”
“He is a Matheson,” I pointed out.
She let out a long sigh. “About three-quarters Matheson, I’d say. I may have a quarter of him. That’s what keeps me sane.”
In that moment I saw the deep pain working inside her. “Do you have a friend?” I asked. “A good one?”
She gave me a wistful smile. “Not really. Not a close one. You know me. Too private.”
“Does Paul realize how unhappy you are?”
“If so, he doesn’t do anything to help. I think he knows he can’t. Not where it counts. His mother’s been kind to me. Sally. She has some sense of the position I’m in. Being Max’s wife all these years had to be tough. She’s empathetic. But the rest of them, Max and their redneck cousins from Jackson—”
“I remember the cousins,” I said, thinking of the night we climbed the electrical tower.
“They were there when Adam drowned, weren’t they?” she asked. “In the river?”
I nodded, forcing my mind away from Dooley and Trey Matheson.
“So will you be coming down more often? To help take care of your dad?”
“I think so. More to help with the paper, really. It’s been going down fast.”
“I’m sorry. It has gotten a little . . . rickety. But I’m not sorry to hear I might see more of you.”
And there it was.
After that day, I knew that if I came back to Bienville, Jet would come to me. Even if I didn’t ask her to. Even if we resisted consummation, fate would unfold in that direction. And from that moment, this knowledge began to work on me. I felt like Jay Gatsby staring at the stupid green light across the bay. The truth I had denied for decades finally rose to the surface and would not be denied any longer.
I had wanted her for so long. Even during the first year of my marriage, when my new wife filled most of my conscious mind, a faintly glowing anima remained in the dark chamber where Jordan Elat Talal had resided since I was fourteen years old. The farthest I ever got from Jet was probably the two years that my son was alive. Baby Adam soothed the unquiet ghosts of my youth, stilled the restless desire that no other woman but Jet had quenched.
But after he died, my world emptied out, as though all life had been poured from it. I became a ghost myself, moving noiselessly through my days, hardly noticed, noticing nothing. To my surprise, as I retreated inward, I discovered that the inmost chamber of my mind still had its tenant. Even more surprising, that chamber held warmth as well as memories, and life was so cold then that I was glad to huddle inside it. Eventually, my work brought me back to the world. Yet somehow, during every relationship I pursued, Jet was always there, a silent measuring stick for every woman I got close to.
Yet I never reached toward her. Before marrying Paul, she had made two pilgrimages north to try to save me from myself—and to save herself from compromise. Both times, I let pride stop me from seizing the chance. I’d never seen myself as a passive person, but after feeling the surge of life that hit me in that Christmas checkout line, I realized that my lack of initiative with Jet was probably a clue to why I’d spent my life reporting the news rather than making it.
By the time I got back to Washington after that Christmas trip, I’d resolved to move back to Bienville. I had a hell of a rationalization to obscure my baser motive. Trying to both care for Dad and run the Watchman had worn my mother down to a shadow of herself. If my brother had been alive, he would have moved home at least a year earlier. In fact, Adam probably would have moved home as soon as Dad was diagnosed. But I’ve never had Adam’s impulse for sacrifice. Even with the situation critical, the decision was tough for me. To leave Washington for an extended period, I would have to unwind my TV deal with MSNBC and take a leave of absence from the Post. The sources I’d cultivated over decades—who were paying off in spades during the Trump administration—I would have to pass off to trusted colleagues and, in one case, to a competitor. With my career plugged into the 220-volt main line, I was going to have to short-circuit my professional dream, probably for months and maybe a year. I might never regain that kind of juice again. But I had to do it. For my mother, I told myself.
Jet and I held out for two months after I arrived. During that time, I learned just how she’d kept herself busy—and sane—in our old hometown. Despite marrying into money, she had diligently practiced law since her return, usually representing underdogs against corporate employers or insurance companies. She’d also founded the most successful charter school in Mississippi. And not a typical one. Reliant Charter was no public school for white kids, but rather a highly effective institution that was being used as a model by three other Southern states.
The first time Jet and I were alone after my return, I was interviewing her about a proposed expansion at Reliant. As she faced me across my father’s desk at the Watchman, we acted out a scene of platonic friendship, avoiding eye contact and blushing whenever other people walked into the room. The second time—when she came over for a follow-up story two weeks later—it was in the same office, but later in the day. The paper was a little quieter. After an awkward, stammering couple of minutes, Jet turned and locked my door, then walked around my desk and kissed me.
I kissed her back. The voices from the newsroom outside faded. Thirty seconds later, I unbuttoned her blouse and began kissing her breasts. With every second that passed, a year fell away. A low purling sound came from her throat, and she took hold of my hand and pressed it between her legs. Her slacks were soaked through. In that moment we were fourteen years old again, standing in the Weldons’ barn. My office ceased to exist. I slid my hand up, then down under her waistband, and a familiar shock went through me. There was the coarse, abundant hair I remembered from the barn and from senior year. I pushed my fingers into the thick tangle and squeezed, pulling the hair away from her skin.
“I grew it out for you,” she whispered.
“When did you start?”
She bit my earlobe and grabbed my belt buckle. “That night at the department store. Last Christmas.”
After that, we were lost. Since that afternoon, we’ve hardly gone a day without making love. I let my Washington connections wither to nothing—on both the professional and romantic fronts—while Jet began exploring the practical realities of divorce. The problem, as is so often the case in Bienville, is the Poker Club. Divorces and child custody decisions in Mississippi fall under the jurisdiction of chancery judges. Tenisaw County has two. And the chance of Max Matheson allowing either one to grant Jet the right to move his grandson to D.C. is zero. Jet is a brilliant attorney, but even she has found no way to cut the knot that binds her to her old life.