Real Bad Things(67)

Once settled in the passenger seat, Jane positioned the air vents toward her face. Thunder rumbled in the distance. They sat awhile without talking. Eventually, Jane froze herself with the AC, closed the vent in front of her, and hugged herself for warmth.

Georgia Lee turned down the air and tossed a Maud City Council fleece jacket from the back seat at her.

Jane wrestled her arms into the sleeves and propped her head on the window. Finally, Georgia Lee could look at her without accidentally drawing her eyes downward.

“I hate sitting here,” Jane said. “Waiting, when I know any minute they could show up and escort me to my new lodgings.” As soon as Georgia Lee opened her mouth to protest, Jane interrupted her. “I’m not going to turn myself in before they come and get me.”

“You promise?”

She waited awhile before speaking. “I promise.” It was the first time since they’d reconnected that Jane looked at her without a hint of disdain or disappointment or dread.

Jane narrowed her eyes. “What was all that about Diane and your parents?”

Georgia Lee sighed. “As soon as they learned about your arrest and the rumors of an accomplice, they locked me in my room.”

“Really?” Jane asked. Georgia Lee nodded. “How long?”

“A month? They let me out after they let you go and you’d already left town.”

“Jesus. That’s like something out of the ’50s or ’60s.” Jane considered. “And Diane got them to pay her for her silence?” After Georgia Lee nodded again, Jane laughed and shook her head. “God. What an asshole.”

Georgia Lee didn’t have the heart to laugh. Not with the memory of being locked in her room for a month and the sting of losing $5,000 still fresh in her mind. Diane had played her.

They sat in silence again before Georgia Lee had to break it or she’d go mad. “I’m sorry about rushing out of the house. It’s . . .” I’m guilty. “I’m thinking of leaving him.”

If Jane felt any kind of way, she didn’t reveal it on her face. “After the election?”

Georgia Lee looked away. She didn’t want to see if Jane was teasing her. “Of course. I’m no fool.”

She rummaged around the back seat and took a swig of what was left of her wine, then held the bottle out to Jane. Georgia Lee hated to drink alone, something she’d been doing for a while now, trying hard to be the good woman she was supposed to be. The upstanding citizen and public servant. It got to be real tiring.

“He’s a good man,” Georgia Lee offered, even though Jane had not asked. “But it’s been a long time coming.”

For a moment Georgia Lee panicked that she’d made the wrong choice by telling Jane about something as intimate as her homelife. She felt wretched for even letting the words slip out. Like it was a betrayal of Rusty. Thinking it was one thing, saying it out loud another. But then she contemplated what it’d be like to pull up in the driveway and face the house again. Those feelings that something was missing. A life with a hole in it was no life at all.

As the silence gathered between them, bits of hail began to ping the windshield. When they were younger, they’d said the silly things young people in love said. Like I love you. Like forever. Georgia Lee had once believed in such a thing as forever. Forever was a concept for the young. Still, even with those words, Georgia Lee had not quite captured, not spoken, what Jane had truly meant to her. She doubted she would have been able to find the right words back then. And perhaps the words, this feeling, could not have come if Jane had not left. Even if she had been able to stay in Maud with all that notoriety, maybe she and Jane would have also drifted into that shallow bit of love she and Rusty now found themselves in. Her aching for something more after settling in for so long.

It did no use to wonder.

Georgia Lee never would’ve been able to be seen with Jane. Rumors would’ve felled Georgia Lee. She’d not had the fortitude to withstand scrutiny back then. She wasn’t sure she had it now.

But Jane had mattered. That was what Georgia Lee had longed to share when she drove her home after pizza.

“I don’t know what’ll happen,” Georgia Lee said.

“I’m going to jail.” Jane offered a sad smile before turning toward the window. “I didn’t mean what I said the other night, after the funeral. If you wanted to write or visit, that’d be fine.”

Georgia Lee choked down the urge to come clean. What good would it do now? But she ignored another part of her, one that said to hush and behave and let things go, that not everything needed to be said. Not every truth had to be voiced. At least not all at once.

“You didn’t just mean something to me.” Georgia Lee could barely contain the emotion in her voice. She focused on her lap instead of Jane so as not to lose courage. “You were everything to me. And then you left. Without a word.”

Georgia Lee had a bad habit of blurting out the truth when the truth rattled so strong inside her it felt it might crush her bones. She shut down the oncoming tears. She succeeded, but it made her nose run. She grabbed a tissue from her purse and wiped it.

“You were my first love,” she said. “You only get one of those. I’m glad it was you. Thank you.”

A laugh escaped Jane’s mouth.

“That’s . . .” Georgia Lee crossed her arms. “I was being sincere.”