BIANCA
A few minutes passed before Jackson spoke again, minutes in which my heart ached and I fought back tears, thinking how it must have been for him all those years growing up, and ever since. How lonely he must’ve been. I thought now I understood why he was the way he was, so surly and standoffish, but I hadn’t heard the rest of his story.
“Her name was Cricket.”
That’s all he got out before he had to take another swallow of booze. He sank onto the sofa and stared blankly at the coffee table, his face white, his hands trembling, like a man suffering from shell shock.
“Cricket Montgomery. The most beautiful girl in Kentucky, by anyone’s standards. We were in grade school together before I went away, so I’d known her for years. Known of her, I should say. Like everyone else, she adored my brother but never paid much attention to me, but a few years after I came back I ran into her at the public library in Louisville. I used to go there all the time to read and escape all the accusing eyes in this house. One day she was browsing for a book in the aisle near the chair I always sat in, and she recognized me and came over and said hello, even though I was trying to hide behind my book. She was really nice to me.”
His voice gained an angry edge. “So fucking nice.”
He finished his drink and looked over at me, his eyes glittering. “I should’ve known right then. But I was so starved for attention, for anyone to notice me or look at me like I wasn’t a murdering freak, that I was completely fucking blind.”
I didn’t know what to do with my hands. They were fluttering around in my lap like frightened birds, so I sat on them and kept listening.
“We started dating. I couldn’t believe my good luck. Here was this beautiful, popular girl, choosing me. I was so happy I was delirious. My parents were over the moon. My father started talking about having me take over the business. It was like a dream, everything I ever wanted falling into place. After a year, I proposed. And she said yes.”
Nostrils flaring, he slowly inhaled. His voice shook with fury. “That evil, scheming, lying, soulless bitch said yes.”
Now I was the one who needed a drink. I abandoned the bed, sat across from Jackson, and poured myself a stiff one.
He set his glass on the table and dragged his hands through his hair. Staring at the floor, his elbows propped on his knees, he continued to talk.
“It took another year to plan the wedding. Six hundred people were invited, including the governor. It was a zoo. All my parents’ friends and business associates, all her friends and family, politicians, leaders in the liquor industry, a bunch of other people I didn’t even know. We had it here at Moonstar Ranch, of course. Great location for a wedding. The church was too small for that many guests, so the event coordinator designed this whole fantasy fairy tale theme that ended up costing more than a million dollars.”
He sighed. “I found out later the coordinator was one of Cricket’s college friends. Cricket got a cut of her fee.” He glanced up at me. He looked wrecked. He said quietly, “Because of course that’s what it was about all along. Money.”
I started to feel sick. Finishing my bourbon in one gulp didn’t help.
Jackson stood and started pacing again, like it hurt to sit still. But there was a hitch in his walk now, a slight, unsteady weaving. Everything he’d had to drink was starting to catch up to him.
“The ceremony was ready to start. The guests were seated. The violinists had begun to play. But the bride was nowhere to be found. The coordinator was having a nervous breakdown. So I went looking for Cricket. I thought she was probably just taking a minute to herself, nerves and all that. I had a hunch she’d be in the stables because she loved to ride, so that’s the first place I went. And I was right . . . she was there. And she was getting a ride.”
The inflection in his voice left no doubt to his meaning.
I gasped. “Oh, no!”
He turned and stared at me with wild, black eyes. “Oh yes. Right there in the tack room, bent over the saddle stand with her thirty-thousand-dollar wedding dress that I paid for shoved up to her waist, her panties around her ankles. They didn’t see me come in. They just kept fucking and talking, him grunting, ‘You’re always gonna be mine,’ and her crying that she was, that it was all for him, she was doing it for him, for their future, they only had to pretend for a little while longer. Everything became very clear to me. Very clear.”
His voice went dead. “And then I lost my mind.”
I covered my mouth with my hands, terrified of what he was going to say next. He staggered over to the bed and collapsed onto it, his face crumbling. He gulped in lungfuls of air. When he could talk again, his voice was a hoarse whisper.
“My hands were around his throat. She was screaming. Screaming at me to stop, I was killing him, but of course that’s exactly what I intended to do. Kill him. One of her so-called ‘friends’ that we hung out with who smiled at me and clapped me on the back every time I paid for dinner. I wanted to kill him with my bare hands. And I would have, I’m sure of it, but Cricket came at me with a big metal tool used to punch holes in leather and hit me in the face. She had to hit me three times before I let go.
“My blood was all over him. He was lying on the ground, bloody and unmoving, and she fell on him like Mary over the body of Jesus, weeping and wailing and begging him to say something. When he didn’t, she turned on me. You’ve never seen anything so savage. And the things she said. God.”
He broke off and covered his face with his hands.
“Jackson, you don’t have to tell me,” I said, but he shook his head.
“I do. I have to tell someone, because I’ve never told anyone else. Maybe if I get it out . . . maybe if I just . . .” He flopped onto his back and laid there, arms out, chest heaving.
Sick and helpless, I went to him, sat on the edge of the bed, and took his hand. It was clammy and trembling. With his eyes closed, he told me the rest in a broken whisper.
“She never loved me. We didn’t meet in the library by accident. They’d planned the whole thing. I was just a . . . meal ticket. A patsy. Who could love me, the murderer, the freak, the awful lover? She fucked me for two years, and it was torture, she said. It was hell. She wished I was dead.”
I squeezed his hand and vowed that the first thing I was going to do when I got back to New Orleans was have Eeny put a voodoo curse on this nightmare named Cricket Montgomery.
Jackson’s head lolled sideways. His eyelids drifted open. His eyes were unfocused. He was very drunk.
He whispered, “I left. I didn’t say anything to anyone. I went to my room and packed a bag, and left Kentucky, right then. I couldn’t bear to see their faces. I drove until I found myself in New Orleans. I checked into a hotel and hid there for a week, trying to drink myself to death. I didn’t have a gun and didn’t want to leave a bloody corpse for anyone else to clean up after anyway, so I thought alcohol poisoning was the way to go.
“It was Rayford who found me. Credit cards leave a trail. After Linc died he was the only one who would talk to me. Anyway, Cricket and her ‘friend’ told everyone they were just talking in the tack room when I came in and went crazy with jealousy. Didn’t matter, I had a death wish to take care of, who cared what story they made up? But that old bastard Rayford wouldn’t leave me alone.”
A faint smile crossed Jackson’s face. “Stubborn son of a bitch.”
“Oh Jax,” I said, my heart breaking. I turned his hand over and traced my fingertip over the semicolon tattoo on his wrist. My eyes filled with water.
Jackson said, “The day after the wedding that never was, my mother had a stroke. I didn’t know about it until later, but obviously it was my fault. The humiliation was too much for her. The disappointment.” He heaved a great sigh. “Who could blame her? With a son like hers, it’s a miracle she didn’t die from shame.”
He trailed off into silence. His breathing deepened, evened, and I realized he was close to passing out. But he had one final piece of horror to deliver first.
His voice slurred and faint, he said, “A week after I got to New Orleans, Christian had his legs blown off by a roadside bomb in a hellhole halfway around the world. He was my real brother. The brother who accepted me for who I was. He was the only one who ever did, aside from Rayford. He was my only real friend.” A sweet smile drifted over his face. “And you.”
I was crying openly now, but silently, tears running down my face, my free hand in a fist in my mouth to stifle the sobs.
Jackson murmured, “Christian had no family, so he came to live with me. He was in so much pain all the time, as much physical pain as I was in emotional pain. He started to drink. He’d go down to a bar on Bourbon Street and drink during the day, and I’d go with him . . . nothing better to do, either of us. He met this girl. I knew . . . what she was, of course . . . I knew what she did. But at least it was honest. They both understood. Not like me . . .”
His voice was getting more and more faint, the pauses between his words growing longer. He licked his lips and turned his head with a sigh, and his face looked heartbreakingly vulnerable without its usual armor of scowls.
“She got pregnant. Had a paternity test. It was Christian’s. He died before Cody was born. Never got to meet his son. Trina signed over her parental rights to me and disappeared. I get a call every once in a while . . . bail money, rent money . . . everyone wanting money . . . all I was ever good for . . .”
Jackson fell asleep with his hand in mine. A lone tear leaked from his eye, tracking a zigzag path down his temple.
I leaned over him, hugged him as tightly as I could, and sobbed.
I cried for a long time, my ear pressed to his chest, listening to his slow and steady heartbeat. Finally when I had nothing left, I sat up, wiped my eyes, slipped off his shoes, and settled a blanket over him. I went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. I called Mama and told her how much I loved her, how lucky I was to have her, how she and Daddy were the greatest parents in the world.
Then I marched my booty downstairs to have a nice, long talk with Clemmy and Brig.