18
Dallas is enormous – a never-ending sprawl of tract houses spreading out from the gouge of skyscrapers at its center. As the plane circled for landing, I peered out of the window and down at the city spread out beneath us. Its size was dizzying, humbling, and beyond its craggy, uncertain edges, a patchwork of golden fields stretched to the horizon, where it met with the biggest and bluest sky I’d ever seen.
‘Flight attendants, take your seats for landing.’
It was only then that the nerves bubbled up inside me. It had all come together so quickly, I hadn’t had the chance to consider what I was doing. When I asked Jeremy for the time off, he’d practically shoved me out of the office. ‘Hey, after the way you put the screws on old man Bryant, the least I can do is let you get a break from the rat race.’ I thanked him and backed out of his office slowly.
I didn’t tell Christopher where I was going, only that I’d be gone for a while and that I’d hopefully have a place lined up by the time I got back. He told me that there was no rush, that I could stay in the flat for as long as I wanted, but I could see the relief in his eyes.
Isla thought I was crazy, but in a good way. ‘Thank the Lord!’ she’d howled when I told her that Christopher and I had broken up. ‘Not that I didn’t like the guy,’ she added quickly, but I’d known what she meant. I was relieved, too. The more time passed, the more sure I was that it had been the right thing. When I told her what I planned to do next, she wished me luck and made me promise to swing by New York afterwards. ‘I’m going to take you out for the biggest drink of your life!’ she declared, before remembering what had happened the last time she had done that. ‘No secret weddings, though,’ she warned, ‘unless I’m there as a witness.’
I bought the plane ticket with the refunded wedding dress money, threw a few things in a bag, and away I went.
The plane made a bumpy landing, my stomach flipping with every hop. We pulled up to the gate and my fellow passengers commenced unbuckling their seat belts and stretching their legs, and checking their phones, and nearly braining each other when pulling their unfeasibly large carry-on luggage out of the overhead compartments. I stayed put.
I was here. I was about to do what I’d come here to do.
I was terrified.
‘Excuse me, miss.’ I looked up to see the brassy-haired woman who’d been my loud-snacking seatmate for the flight staring pointedly at the still-gridlocked aisle. ‘I need to get my case.’
I dutifully got up and did the standard half-stand/half-crouch in my seat until the passengers in front of us had shuffled off the plane. I grabbed my bag, checked that I had my passport, my phone, and the Manila envelope I’d tucked in the front pocket, and made my way to passport control.
It was true what they said about Texans: love them or hate them, they are unfailingly polite. By the time I was handed the keys to my rental car, I’d been ma’amed so many times I’d almost forgotten my real name.
I’d asked for the smallest car in the lot, but it was only with a modicum of surprise that I found myself in the driver’s seat of a medium-sized tank. ‘It’s an SUV-hybrid, ma’am,’ the man at the desk explained when I returned to ask if he had anything smaller.
‘Don’t you have a compact?’ I’d asked pleadingly.
He shook his head. ‘Ma’am, that is our compact.’
And so I set off in the SUV-hybrid, carefully edging my way out of the parking lot and onto the vast highway system that threaded through Dallas, feeling like I should be wearing a trooper helmet and peering out of a periscope rather than a windshield.
The route, according to the minuscule map on my phone, was a straight shot on US-82. Once I was clear of the airport and out on the road, I felt myself relax into the drive. In five hours, I’d have my answer. But for now, all I could do was point the car along the straight, sure line of the road and hit the gas.
It had been a long time since I’d driven in America, and I’d never driven through anywhere like this. The sheer vastness of it was overwhelming. I drove and drove, but the horizon stayed a fixed point in the distance. Occasionally I passed through a small town, with its diner and post office and red-brick school, but mostly it was just land. Every once in a while, I’d see a herd of cows milling around near a thin wire fence, their faces impassive as their mouths worked their cud, or a tall barn standing proudly at the edge of a field, but mainly it was just nothing. An endless stretch of nothing.
It was so beautiful, it made my heart ache.
I pulled into New Deal at around dinnertime. The street lights were on, but it was still light outside, and their pale beams were no match for the sun. I pulled the car over. There was a general store up ahead, the sign a shingle hanging above the door, which was propped open to let the air circulate. I went inside and walked up to the counter. A man in a blue button-down was sitting behind the register rolling change.
‘Excuse me,’ I said quietly, ‘I was wondering if you could help me.’
He looked up at me and smiled. ‘I sure hope so, sweetheart. What can I do for you?’
‘I’m looking for a man,’ I stuttered. ‘He – I’m pretty sure he lives here.’ The address listed on the divorce papers had just been a PO Box. I had no idea what street he lived on, or the house number. I’d turned up like Blanche Dubois, hoping to rely on the kindness of strangers. Ridiculous, really.
‘Well, if he does, I’d know about it. New Deal is a small place. What’s his name?’
‘Jackson. Jackson Gaines.’
‘Of course I know Jackson!’ he crowed. ‘I went to school with his daddy.’
Relief coursed through me, tinged with something else. Fear. ‘Do you know where he lives?’
‘Sure do, though I’m not sure if I should be going around telling strangers.’ He sized me up. ‘Though I’m guessing Jackson wouldn’t mind me telling a pretty lady like yourself. He’s over on Monroe. Number 19, I believe. It’s got a swing on the front porch, though I guess they all do. If you can’t find it, come on back here and I’ll take you over there myself.’
‘Thank you!’ I beamed. I hurried out to my car and threw it in reverse. I’d passed Monroe half a block back.
Jackson’s house was small but perfectly formed. Weathered white clapboard with a generous front porch, with, as promised, a swing bench swaying gently next to the door. I walked up the flagstone path, Manila envelope crushed against my chest. I could feel the sweat pooling underneath my cotton T-shirt. I’d swiped on some lipstick in the rear-view mirror, but between the nine-hour flight and the five-hour drive and the now-almost-unbearable anxiety, it hadn’t made much of an improvement. My nerve faltered, and I stopped in my tracks. What was I doing here? Had I lost my mind? But it was too late now. I was here, on his front porch. I could only keep going.
I knocked gently at first, and then took a polite step back from the door, as though I were a census-taker, or a Jehovah’s Witness. No answer. I approached again and knocked harder this time. Waited. Still no answer.
I’d come all this way and I hadn’t even checked if he’d be home. Embarrassment flooded through me. What had I been thinking? I knew he traveled all the time. I knew he was almost never home. What on earth had possessed me …
‘If you’re looking for Jackson, you won’t find him here.’
I turned, startled, to see an old man sticking his head out of the upstairs window of the house next door.
Oh God. Now someone had seen me. There were witnesses. ‘It’s okay!’ I shouted up to him. ‘Never mind!’
‘This time of day,’ the old man continued, ‘he’ll be over at Bucky’s with his pop.’
I gaped up at him. ‘He’s in New Deal?’
‘Sure is. Saw him about an hour ago. You go down to Bucky’s if you want to find him – he’ll be there.’
‘Okay!’ I called. ‘Thank you!’ I was waving with both arms now. Soon I’d be doing a cartwheel.
The old man had his head half-pulled in when he remembered something. ‘You know where Bucky’s is, right?’
I froze. The man had a good point. ‘No. Where is it?’
‘Up the road, take a right. Look for the neon cowboy boot – you can’t miss it!’
Turns out, Bucky’s was right next to the general store. I’d got it right in the first place.
I sat in my car for a few minutes, heart thudding in time with the blinks of the neon cowboy boot above the door. There wasn’t any other sign, or windows you could see into, or any sign of life other than the faint clack of pool balls clipping each other on their way into the side pocket.
I took a deep breath. I braced myself. I got out of the car.
The first thing that hit me when I walked through the door was the sour fug of stale beer mixed with the sweet scent of cigar smoke. I guess the smoking ban didn’t apply to Bucky. The second thing that hit me was the wall of silence that descended as soon as my feet were over the threshold. It was so quiet, I could hear the man in the corner digesting the burger he’d eaten for lunch. The third thing, which I could only barely discern through the haze of smoke, was that Jackson wasn’t there.
My heart sank. The man in the general store, the old man in the window … they’d led me on this stupid wild goose chase. But really, I’d got myself lost. And now here I was, in an unfriendly bar in the middle of Nowhere, Texas, without so much as a hotel reservation for the night. I was starting to be grateful for the spacious back seat of my SUV-hybrid. I might be sleeping in it that night.
I heard his laugh first. Deep, full-throated, inviting everyone along for the ride. A door in the back of the bar swung open and out walked Jackson, followed by an older, more sinewy version of Jackson. His father, presumably. My knees almost gave out.
He saw me straight away, presumably because he was wondering what everyone was staring at. Our eyes locked and I saw his mouth move. ‘What in the world …’ I tried to move towards him, to close the distance between us, but my feet were rooted to the spot. So he came to me.
Which, considering I’d already traveled 4,894 miles, seemed fair.
‘Jenny.’ It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t a statement. It was as though he was reassuring himself that his eyes weren’t fooling him. That I was real.
I pulled out the envelope and handed it to him. ‘All signed,’ I said. ‘We’re officially divorced.’
His eyes trailed down to the envelope and then back up to mine. ‘You came all the way to New Deal to give me these? We do have a post office here, you know.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘But there was something else. A question I wanted to ask.’
‘Is that right?’ He took a step towards me, and the familiar smell of him cut through the smoke. ‘Shoot.’
‘Do you want to go out sometime?’
He took another step towards me. I could feel the heat of him now, sense the magnetic pull of it. ‘I thought you were engaged.’
‘Not engaged,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘Not engaged or married.’
‘So, you’re saying you’re free?’ Another step closer. His hand brushed against mine and a thrill ran through me.
‘As a bird,’ I murmured. ‘So I thought we could get a coffee or something. Talk.’
He tipped his chin down and frowned. ‘I thought you weren’t all that keen on talking. I waited on that bridge for three hours in the hope of talking to you.’
‘I – I’m sorry,’ I stuttered. ‘I thought I knew what I wanted – Christopher, marriage, the whole thing – but then you turned up and …’ I shook my head. ‘I was scared.’
Silence stretched between us. The whole bar had gone quiet except for the faint twang of a country song on the jukebox, and I could feel everyone’s eyes on us. ‘I’m sorry.’ I felt the hot flush of embarrassment run up my neck. ‘God, I don’t know what I was thinking, turning up here like this. You must think I’m nuts. And you’d be right! It was crazy of me, really. I just thought, maybe, if we could talk for a little while, if I could make you understand …’
He brought a hand to my face, traced my lips with his thumb. ‘Sweetheart,’ he said gruffly, ‘I could talk to you for the rest of my life.’
He leaned down and touched his mouth to mine, and we melted into a kiss.
‘Jenny,’ he grinned when we finally broke apart, ‘allow me to introduce you to the good people of New Deal.’ He threw an arm around me and pulled me towards him. ‘Good people of New Deal,’ he announced, turning to address the room, ‘this is Jenny Sparrow, my ex-wife, and the woman I one day hope to marry.’
The room burst into raucous applause. ‘Bucky,’ Jackson shouted, ‘line them up! We’ve got some celebrating to do.’