Golden Trail (The 'Burg #3)(21)

“That was taken about three weeks after we started going out. She was seventeen,” Layne told his boys.

“Wow. She’s pretty,” Tripp mumbled and his head came up to look at his Dad. “But she’s prettier now.”

He wasn’t wrong.

“Seventeen?” Jasper asked, his tone biting. “That’s sick, you were twenty-one.”

Jasper wasn’t wrong either. Twenty and twenty-four was okay, nineteen and twenty-three was still good, anything below that, the guy in his twenties, the girl in her teens, was frowned upon in that ‘burg.

But he didn’t give a f**k then and, thinking about it for the first time in over a decade, he didn’t give a f**k now.

“Look at her Jas,” Layne urged quietly and Jasper held his eyes, Jasper’s belligerent, then he looked down at the photo.

“It’s safe to say, her brother and Dad weren’t all fired up that she caught my eye,” Layne continued. “She was in high school, I’d graduated Ball State and was at the Academy. The first six months I was with her, every date we had happened at her Dad’s house. He wouldn’t even let me put her in my car. He got to know me and that changed. We moved in together a month after she graduated from high school and we lived together for two years.”

He knew Jasper would do the math, he already did. Layne’s son was far from dumb.

Layne carried on. “She went to Butler. She’d drive into Indy every day to go to class, worked at Frank’s as a waitress on the weekends. I worked for the ‘burg’s PD.”

Jasper looked from the photo to him and Layne went on.

“You see her?”

“Yeah, I see her,” Jasper replied.

“Three weeks before that photo was taken, I saw her, took one look at her and I knew. She was it. I didn’t care if she was seventeen. She was it. You want something bad enough, you know it’s right, you know it’ll be worth the wait. So I waited and I was right, Rocky was worth it. Until you two came along, she was the best thing that happened to me in my whole goddamned life.”

Tripp was staring at him, his mouth had dropped open. Jasper was shielding his response.

“Look at that picture, Jasper, and tell me that girl wasn’t worth the wait,” Layne said quietly.

Jasper licked his lips and then sucked them between his teeth.

Layne waited.

Then Jasper showed him that he had broken through.

“I know it because she’s the coolest teacher in school,” Jasper informed him.

“Yeah?” Layne asked, curious, even though he told himself he did not want to know.

“Yeah,” Tripp put in. “She’s like, that Dead Poets Society dude except a lady. She even shows that movie in her class. Kids are always hearing that she’s gettin’ into trouble with the principal because of something she’s done. Half the time, they aren’t even in the classroom but doin’ all sorts of shit all over the school. You get in her class, you got so many field trips, it’s awesome. I hope I get her. She even lets kids read comic strips for credit.”

Yes, another indication that Rocky was a nut.

“You have her yet?” Layne asked Jasper.

“Had her when I was a sophomore and she was awesome so I’m takin’ Advanced English Lit next semester. I hope I get her because Mr. Halsey is a moron,” Jasper replied.

Layne hoped he got Rocky too. Jesus, Halsey had been there when Layne had been at that school. He must be a hundred years old.

Jasper cut into his thoughts. “If she was the best thing that happened to you, how’d it go bad?”

Layne answered without hesitation. “She left me. She didn’t say why. One day it was good, really good, the next day she was gone. Everything that was hers was out and she was gone. She didn’t talk to me, she didn’t explain it. We weren’t fighting. It wasn’t turning bad, and you know when that happens even though sometimes you don’t admit it when it’s happening. But it wasn’t. It was good one day and she was gone the next. I reckon she had her reasons but the right thing to do was share them. She never did that. To this day, I have no clue why it ended; all I know is that it did. Whatever happened I might not have been able to fix but after what we had, she should have showed me the respect of tellin’ me where it went wrong.”

“Did you ask?” Jasper asked.

“Yep, about a hundred times, on the phone, when she didn’t hang up on me. Showin’ up at her Dad’s house, at her school, at Frank’s. She shut me out. Eventually, I had to man up and move on. So I did.”

“To Mom,” Tripp guessed.

“To your Mom,” Layne confirmed.

“But Mom wasn’t the best thing to happen to you,” Jasper noted, his eyes locked on Layne and Layne gave it to him straight.

“No, Jas, she wasn’t. She’s a great Mom and a good woman but she was not a good wife.”

Jasper surprised the hell out of him when he nodded.

Then, always sharp, Jasper noted, “Word is, Mrs. Astley is gettin’ a divorce.”

“Word is correct,” Layne affirmed.

“She want you back?” Jasper asked, clearly having spent some time considering why Rocky was there yesterday morning.

“No,” Layne answered.

“So why was she here?” Tripp put in, also clearly having thought about Rocky’s visit.