“Whoa,” Neva said and let her head drop back down onto the towel. “I have no words.”
I dropped my tools down into my toolbox at her feet then sat cross-legged on the ground beside her. I reached into her purse and pulled out the thermos of vodka lemonade she had made for me before we left the house.
I took a long sip and then leaned back on my hands as I let my head fall back.
“Why don’t I feel bad?”
“You should,” Neva told me, not understanding at all what I was saying. “I have never had more than one orgasm in a night, if I even got that one. I know you were in the same boat because we’d talked about it before.”
“No,” I tried again. “Why don’t I feel guilty?”
Neva sat up and crossed her legs like mine. She reached up and took her glasses off and tossed them onto her purse as she bit her lip. I knew she was trying to figure out how to say something without hurting my feelings.
“You don’t have any reason to feel guilty,” Neva told me softly. “Neither of us do.”
“He hasn’t even been dead a year,” I whispered. “I loved Wyatt.”
“Honey, I know you did, but you have to be honest with yourself,” Neva said gently. “You weren’t happy, baby, and you hadn’t been in a long time.”
“I was happy,” I argued.
“But you wanted more,” Neva insisted. “I know you did. You know you did and so did Wyatt.”
“Yeah,” I admitted.
“He wasn’t going to get out of the army, Jamie.”
“He might have,” I argued. “We had talked about it more than once.”
“You had talked about it. Wyatt just smiled and nodded while he packed his shit to leave again.”
I didn’t say anything, because Neva was right. Wyatt loved the army and probably would have never left it. I wanted more kids and he had said more than once he wasn’t sure he did. I knew deep in my heart that he would have never let me get pregnant. Even though I had been on birth control for our entire relationship, he still wore a condom every single time we had sex except at the end of his last stay at home.
I remember how shocked I was to feel him bare inside me. I had been so excited, hoping that my pills wouldn’t work and that I could get pregnant.
“He loved you and his boys, Jamie,” Neva whispered. “But he loved the army more.”
I used the back of my hand to wipe the tears from my cheeks as I stared up at the sky. I couldn’t look at Neva, because I knew I’d see pity in her eyes. She had loved her brother, but she knew him well. Well enough to know that he wouldn’t have changed his life for anything. He had us to come home to when he wasn’t off protecting his country, but if he was home for too long, he got antsy. He always had. That had caused so many fights between us that it made me flinch just thinking about it.
“I did love him, Neva,” I whispered. “And I would have never left.”
“No, you would have stayed. For the boys. Not for yourself or for Wyatt, but for those boys.”
“Yeah,” I agreed with a sad laugh. “You’re right.”
“Jason and I were getting a divorce,” Neva admitted. I snapped my head up to look at her and saw a faraway look in her eye. “We had decided already. We’d been talking about it in our letters and phone calls in the months before he died. We were going to go and see a lawyer when he got home from that last deployment. I wanted kids from the start and I think at first he did, too, but watching Wyatt leave them home with you every time made Jason change his mind.”
“Oh, Neva,” I whispered.
“He got a vasectomy,” Neva smiled sadly. “And he didn’t even tell me.”
“He did?”
“Yeah, while they were home that last time. He said he hurt his back and he laid around the house for a week or so before he went back to duty. I didn’t realize it at the time, but he was on medical leave until he healed and could go back to active duty. He told me after he was already deployed again. In a letter. It was after that when he and I started talking about divorce.”
“It only took him a week to recover?”
“Yeah,” Neva nodded. “A week without any heavy lifting and he was back to his old self.”
“Wyatt did that,” I whispered. “The last time they were home, about a week after he got back. He said he had the flu, but he wasn’t really ever sick. He just stayed in his recliner and watched television. He wouldn’t even play catch with the boys.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t the same thing,” Neva shook her head.
“About a month before they left was the first time he and I ever had sex without a condom. He didn’t say anything about it and I was just praying that meant he was ready to have a baby with me.”
“Oh, Jamie,” Neva sobbed. “I’m sorry I said anything. Oh, honey.”
I shook my head, angry now rather than sad. I had always wanted a baby of my own. I loved my boys, but I hadn’t been with them when they were small. By the time Wyatt and I got together, the boys were 5, 6 and 8 years old.
For the past couple of years, since I was about 23, I had wanted to try and get pregnant. For almost two years, I had tried to convince Wyatt that it would be good for both of us and I wouldn’t leave him like Jill had. At first he argued that I didn’t feel like my boys were enough and then later he admitted that he just wasn’t ready.
But I knew in my heart he had taken that final step to make sure that he didn’t make a baby with me.
“I loved Wyatt, Jamie,” Neva assured me. “You know I did. But my brother could be so selfish. I’m sorry he hurt you.”
“Look at us,” I laughed over a sob. “We’re sitting here in the middle of a tetanus farm having a bawl fest.”
“Well if you can’t cry in the middle of a junkyard, what kind of woman are you really?” Neva joked as she wiped her face. “Can we go yet? The boys will be out of school soon, you’re not even trying to get drunk, and I need something to eat.”
“Yeah,” I told her. “Let me run into the office and let them know I want this cab for Adam’s truck. I’ll meet you at your car.”
“I love you, Jamie Lea.”
“I love you, too, Geneva Monroe.”
◆◆◆
DAUGHTRY
“How’s my favorite baby sister?” I asked Jenna.
“I’m your only baby sister,” Jenna answered. It was one of the long-standing jokes between the two of us and it always made her smile.
“You miss me yet?”
“I saw you last week, Polka Dot.”
I growled at her, but she knew there wasn’t any heat in it.
“Yeah, but Clem came up there again and I don’t want him to replace me as your favorite.”
Jenna laughed and I realized I was on speaker phone when I heard Clem reply, “I’ve always been her favorite, fuckhead.”
“You guys are nuts,” Jenna laughed.
It was so good to hear her laughter. In the weeks right after her accident, she barely spoke and never ever smiled. Finally she started talking to us and a few months later, she was laughing and almost back to her old self.