Nancy Bartholomew - Stand By Your Man

"Okay," he said, moving away from the bed, "I've gotta go. They're waiting for me. Just close up when you leave, the door'll lock behind you."

Almost as an afterthought, he crossed the room and leaned down to brush my lips lightly. "I'll call you," he said.

Then he was gone, clunking down the steps, walking through the empty house and out the back door. As I listened I heard the sound of his car starting up, and then the crunch of gravel as he left me. That was that. Almost no sign that we'd shared anything at all.

I pushed the quilt aside, stepped out onto the cold wooden floor, and began looking for my clothes. As I gathered them up, the phone on the bedside table rang. I stopped, staring at it. The tape in his answering machine clicked on, playing his message, then preparing to record. After the beep, a familiar female voice began to speak.

"Marsh," Tracy the door buster said softly, "did you leave yet? I'll try and get you on your cell. I'm just going to meet you over there," she said. "Don't worry about coming to get the van, I've got it."

I could've cried. Marshall Weathers wasn't going to a call-out. He was keeping a date with Tracy. Dressing up like a commando was probably just his way of distracting me, giving me a good excuse for why he had to leave. After all, he couldn't have known his afternoon would turn out like it had.

Now, wait a minute, girl, maybe she's on the team and they're responding together , I thought. But just as quickly, I tossed the idea aside. A green rookie on a SWAT team? I couldn't see it. No, she was meeting him and they were taking her van somewhere. Probably to a drive-in movie, that looked like his speed. Yep, he'd be out on a date with Tracy, the girl voted most unlikely to fall asleep when he touched her .

"I don't believe this," I muttered to myself. "What is it with me? Do I have a sign over my head that says sucker?" Mama used to talk about women like me, women who attracted all the wrong men. She'd say we had "bad picker" genes. But I'd thought Marshall was different.

I sat back down on the bed and pulled on my still-damp jeans, looking around the empty room. I thought he would be the one, the final one to break through every other bad experience I'd ever had. Instead, I'd overlooked my family and put my heart out on the line with disastrous results. Just like I'd done with Vernell, and Digger Bailey before him.

My sweater was a total loss. Instead I took the white dress shirt he'd worn and left lying on the bathroom floor along with the rest of his clothes. It smelled like him, like leather and his cologne. I had no one to blame but myself. Marshall Weathers was hurt and running like hell. He'd as much as told me so, and I'd ignored it. I'd seen right past the shield, right on down into his heart, and I knew he needed someone like me. Too bad he didn't know that. Too bad he thought he needed a hotcake like Tracy.

"Nothin' for it, girl," I said aloud. "Get on with your life." No sense to throw good love after bad. That's when I remembered Vernell. Here I was moping around and Vernell could be in danger or worse. I shook myself, walked down the steps, out of Marshall's house and across the backyard to my car.

I did turn around once and looked out over his valley. A light twinkled from the window of another farmhouse and I imagined a woman moving around her kitchen, putting the dinner dishes away and preparing for another day with her family. For some reason, that only made the sadness in my heart that much more unbearable.

"Kick it, girl!" I said to myself. "Kick that mood right on out of your heart."

I slid into the car. The seat squished. Cold water seeped through my pants, chilling my legs and reminding me how I'd come to be in this mess in the first place. I cranked the engine, pulled on the headlights, and started off down the drive. I tried to focus on Vernell. By the time I reached Summit Avenue, I'd succeeded, mostly.

I rolled into King's Gas and Go, but it was closed. The office was dark, with only the sparkle of Bess King's trophies to add any luster to the flat windows. There wouldn't be any talking to her tonight. I sighed and drove on home. But as I turned into my back alley and pulled up in the backyard, I could see that things weren't right. Every light in my house was on.

The house was so well lit that I almost missed the two figures sitting on the back steps, but my headlights trapped them for one brief moment before I shut off the car. Tony Carlucci and Sheila were sitting on the back steps, side by side.

I jumped out of the car, crossed the yard, and stood right in front of them, a tiny thrill of fear leaping across my skin as I saw my baby sitting with Carlucci.

"Are you okay, baby?" I asked Sheila, not wanting to alarm her with my concern.

"Totally," she answered, her face unreadable. "But like, what the hell happened to you?"

Carlucci was laughing, a gut laugh that lit up his face and eyes. His eyes roved the length of my body, taking in the wet jeans, the rumpled man's shirt, and my disheveled hair.

"It's a long story, honey. My sunroof broke."

Sheila's eyebrow rose. She looked up at the starlit sky and back down at me. "It didn't rain, Mama. What really happened?"

I sighed and put a hand on my hip. "It really is a long story," I said.

Sheila and Tony looked at each other and smirked. Somehow, the man who had been her mortal enemy this morning was now sharing a joke with my daughter.

"We got time," Tony said.

"Shut up."

"Mama!" Sheila said. "That's not nice."

How had the tables turned? What in the world was going on between these two?

"We were just worried about you, that's all," Sheila said, hurt creeping into her voice.

"All right, all right! If you must know, I took the car through a car wash and the roof got stuck open."

Tony snickered as Sheila's eyes widened. "What did you do?" she asked.

"Well, there wasn't much I could do. So, that's why I look a little worse for the wear."

From inside the house, the phone started ringing. Sheila jumped up like a dog wearing an invisible leash and ran to answer it. Saved by the bell , I thought, but not quite. Tony Carlucci sat on the steps grinning.

"Nice save," he said. "Now what really happened?"

I glared at him. "What're you doing at my house talking to my daughter?"

"Somebody had to bring her home from work, especially with her Mama out gallivanting."

I took a step closer. "What?"

Tony leaned back and rested his elbows on the top step. He was enjoying every moment of this.

"Well, she called here looking for a ride home. They let her go early. I figured, since you weren't around, I'd better go get her."

"What were you doing in my house?" I shrieked.

"Waiting," he said calmly.

"It's my house! You can't just waltz inside anytime you want and answer my phone and eat my food. What's with you?"

Tony Carlucci just stared at me, his features darkening momentarily, then returning to their nonchalant mask. Something in that darkness terrified me, a streak of cruelty that might break loose and surface at any second, something perhaps not even within his control.

"I didn't answer your phone," he said. "I listened to your messages." He leaned forward and stared at me, his eyes hooded and dark, the raw anger returning. "I took care of your daughter because if I didn't, somebody else might. When are you going to get it? The other guys looking for Vernell are going to kill him. They're getting desperate now. They don't care how they get to him." He leaned back, his face completely cold and impassive. "They'd cut your daughter's heart out and show it to him, just to get what they want. So yeah, while you were out fooling around with the owner of that oversized shirt, I was watching your back."