Jesse Colbert was still reeling.  It had been hours, but he was, once again, bent over the bathroom sink, still trying to nurse the bruises that fucker had put all over his face.  Shania came in with an icepack, but he snatched it from her angrily.  “What took your ass so long?” he asked her.

“I had to put all the ice in it,” she said.

But he wasn’t listening.  He was too busy placing it beneath his shirt onto his bruised stomach.

“Maybe you should go to the emergency room, Pa,” Shania suggested.

“Ain’t nobody going to no emergency room,” he said as he elbowed her aside, still holding the ice pack to his stomach, and made his way toward the living room.  He laid down on the sofa and closed his eyes.  Every inch of his body was hurting.

“Give me more pillows,” he ordered, and Shania hurriedly grabbed the pillows from the two chairs and placed them beneath her father’s head.

“Knock knock.”

Both father and daughter turned to the sound.  When Jesse saw who it was, he relaxed.  He even laid his head back down and closed his eyes.  “What do you want?” he asked.

“I hear you had a run-in with Big Daddy Sinatra.”

Jesse’s blood boiled at just the mention of that name.  “Wait till I catch up with his big ass.”

But the visitor smiled.  “Don’t get mad, Jesse,” he said.  “Let’s get even.”

Jesse opened his eyes.  And looked at his visitor.  “What you got in mind?” he asked him.

“You do what I say, and the way I say it, and you’re going to not only have your revenge, but have everything that man owns.  You, Jesse Colbert, are going to bring Big Daddy Sinatra to his knees.  How about that?  Intrigued?”

Jesse was more than intrigued.  “But how?” he said.

“Act as a middle man,” he said.  “Visit somebody who hate him as much as you do, and will pay to take care of him.”

“That’s damn-near the whole town.”

The visitor smiled.  “Exactly right.  Are you in?”

Jesse didn’t have to think twice.  “Oh, hell yeah,” he said.  “After what that bastard did to me?  I’m as in as in can get,” he added.

 

Norm had ordered one of the waitresses to clean up the coffee Jenay had spilled, and had, himself, returned to his duties as chef.   The Jericho Inn restaurant was virtually empty, as it usually was post-breakfast and pre-lunch.  Jenay and Percy were sitting at the table alone, across from one another.  And Jenay was still stunned beyond belief.

“How can it be?” she was asking him.  Her face was frowned with doubt and apprehension, and total confusion.  “I got that letter.  I must have read it a hundred times.  How can you be sitting here right now?  How can it be?  If I had the money I would have went there.  I wanted to go to Botswana myself and see your body, and see for myself.  But how was I going to get to Africa?  I could barely pay my rent back then.”

“I know, Jenay,” Percy said.  “And I did not want to hurt you.  I still do not.  That is why I stayed away this long.”

“But this isn’t making any sense Perce!  How can you be sitting here?  That letter said you had died.  That letter from your parents said you died instantly in a car crash and you were already buried.  That letter said they only found out about me while going through your things.  They apologized for the lateness of the letter, and for the awful news, but that was that.  I couldn’t eat or sleep or do anything for nearly a month after that.  It was so awful I refused to even mention that chapter in my life to anyone after that.  I erased you from my entire being.  But you’re telling me that letter, your death, was all a lie?”

Tears appeared in Jenay’s confused eyes.  She wiped away the tears harshly.  She was angry and happy, but mostly just perplexed as hell.  What in the world was going on?

“The accident was real,” Percy said.  His African accent was controlled and very formal, and his English pitch perfect.  Just as she had remembered it.  “I had only been back in Botswana for two days when the taxi driver lost control of his vehicle and went over a cliff.  It was a horrific accident.  Nobody survived initially.”

“Except you,” Jenay said. 

He nodded his head.  “Except me, yes.  They rushed me to hospital, but the prognosis was not good.  I had been in a coma for twenty-eight days.  I learned of your efforts to find me later on.  I learned that you had attempted to reach my parents, who lived in the village and was not accessible to such amenities as phone service.  I learned that you had even reached out to the Botswana embassy to see if they could help.”

“I tried everything.  I even tried to raise money to go to Africa myself, but my friends were as broke as I was, and my parents flatly told me no.  They weren’t about to bankroll my going to a foreign country to find a man who probably didn’t want to be found.  I tried everything, Perce.  And you were in a coma?”

“For nearly a month, yes,” Percy said.  “When I came to, the doctors remained skeptical.  They said if I lived, and that was a very big if, I was going to be an invalid for the rest of my life.  That was what the doctors had said.  I remembered you when I first came to.  I told my parents I have a girlfriend back in the States, and she has to be reached.  She’s worrying sick I am sure.  But when the doctors told me about my prognosis; when they told me I would be paralyzed, an invalid, for the rest of my life, I knew I couldn’t even begin to try and reach you then.”

“But why, Perce?”

“What do you mean why?  I was not going to let you take care of me for the rest of your days.  That would not be fair to you.  You were not my wife.  You were not my parent.  You had no such responsibility to me.  So I . . .”

Jenay stared at him, still unable to believe that he was sitting right in front of her. “So you what?” she asked him.

“So I told my parents to send you that note.  I told them to tell you about the accident, and how it killed everybody, including me, and how I was already buried.  I needed you to understand the finality and move on with your life.  I knew it would be painful for you at first.”

“Painful?” Jenay asked, with nothing but pure pain in her voice.  The tears were coming uncontrollably now, but she was wiping them away as fast as they were coming.  He offered his handkerchief.  She accepted it.  “That news was more than painful, Perce.  It was . . . It was devastating.  I didn’t know if I was going to make it through.  If it had not been for my faith, I might not have.”

“But you made it through, Jenay,” Percy said.  “And, as I knew you would, you moved on.  You graduated from that hospitality college in Boston.  I know because I checked.  You went on to come here, to Jericho, and run this fine hotel.  And,” he added, although she could see the change in his eyes, “you married the hotel’s owner.  But none of it would have been possible had I been selfish and told you about my plight.”

“The doctors said you would be an invalid,” Jenay said, “but that didn’t happen?”

“Oh, yes, it happened,” Percy said quickly.  “For several months thereafter, I was very much unable to walk or do anything for myself.  I began a rehabilitation program that they said could help, but even that wasn’t supposed to do very much.  But, as always,” he said with a smile, “I exceeded expectations.  I regained strength in my legs, and I did walk again.  But it took years, Jenay.  It did not happen overnight.  And by that time, it was too late.  I knew it was.  I lived and worked in Africa, in Gaborone, deciding not to return to the States.  Until now.”

“What changed?  Why now?”

“I received an appointment as a Diplomatic Attaché at the Botswanan embassy in DC.  It was then, and only then, that I decided to check up on you.  To make sure you were okay.  My investigation led me here, to this town in Maine.  I was surprised.  I always fancied you a big-city girl.  But I guess you’ve changed too.”

He’d never know how much Jenay had changed!  She used to think that any relationship after her divorce would be a rebound romance.  She had just gotten out of an awful marriage with Quincy, and just wanted to be left alone.  Then she met Percy.  They were friends at first, and then lovers.  And then much more.  It wasn’t a long romance, but it was like a whirlwind.  Fast and wonderful.  When Percy left to go visit his family in Botswana, they had been together for only six months.

But as they continued to talk, and as Percy continued to try and get her to understand why he absolutely had to let her go all those years ago, Jenay ultimately asked the all-important question.  “Why are you here?” she asked.  “And please don’t say you just wanted to check up on me.  Why are you here?”

Percy pushed his lips in, and then back out again.  He was going to be frank with her.  “I want you back, Jenay,” he said bluntly.

Jenay suspected as much, but she couldn’t bring herself to believe it.  She had a new life now.  A new man.  But those feelings she once felt for Percy were still there.  Doggonit they were still there!  And Jenay was overwhelmed.  Tears came again, and she couldn’t wipe them all away.

And then Donald Sinatra, Big Daddy’s youngest son, entered the restaurant.  He wanted to grab a Coke before he made his way across town to meet with vendors.  He didn’t see his stepmother in the place, and she didn’t see him, because she was occupied with her own grief, and because he saw a waitress he liked, Bev, at the counter.  He hurried in her direction.

“Hey, beautiful,” he said with a smile.

Bev was wiping down the countertop, but was staring off in the distance as she wiped.

Donald snapped his fingers in front of her face.  “Hey?  Over here.  Bev?”

It was only after he said her name did she snap out of her gaze, and looked at Donald.  “Oh!  Hey, Donnie.  What’s up?”

“What’s up with you?  I was standing here for ten minutes already!”

“Yeah, right, sure you were.”

“Why were you so distracted?”

Bev was surprised that he didn’t see for himself.  “Over there,” she said.  “Your stepmother with a man.  A very attractive man, I might add.”

Donald immediately looked in the direction Bev was pointing.  When he saw Jenay with Percy, he was curious.  But when he saw that Jenay was wiping tears from her eyes, and that Percy had reached out and was holding both of her hands, and she allowed it, he was more than curious.  He was peeved.  “What the hell,” he said out loud.  Nobody comforted his mother like that but his father!  He wanted to go over there, and find out for himself just what that guy was up to, but he knew Jenay would cuss him out for getting all up in her business.  Jenay was a firecracker.  She didn’t play that, and Donald knew it.  She would cuss his ass out easily.

But she wouldn’t be cussing out his father.

He asked Bev to get him a Coke quick, he took the Coke, and then hurried off, to go tell his father.