She looked up at him and tried to manage a smile. She knew it didn’t reach her eyes. “Sometimes a man walks by on the street and he has a smell, or a certain way of smiling, and I think about my dad.” The last time she’d noticed it, it had been an old man drinking coffee at the Four Star. The same exact cologne. Made her want to hug him and cry all at the same time.
Mark’s eyes burned through hers and she had to look away. “He was a steel worker, killed in an accident one day when I was four.” She hesitated. Her chest tightened. An overwhelming sense of fear seized her, like falling over a cliff and not being able to grab onto anything for support. Even with Mark right next to her she felt small and very alone.
“My mom never got over it, but she tried to move on as best she could. I remember the steady stream of ‘uncles’ in and out of the house.” She laughed. Bitterness burned beneath her skin. She swallowed, tried to swallow past the pain in her throat. “I always dreaded her bringing some guy home. The way some of them looked at me, the way they touched her in front of me.”
“Jennifer, did any of them hurt you?”
“No.”
Mark didn’t know what to think. He felt angry. He thought about her mother and how she put her own grief above her daughter. Jennifer looked so defeated, sitting next to him. It ripped his heart out of his chest. He wrapped her hands in his and held tight.
“She did her best. I know it sounds bad, but she just couldn’t cope, didn’t know how to do it on her own. The men stopped coming over when I was eleven. That’s when she started working all those extra hours. Promised me a better life, said that she would do better for me if we could just get the money.”
“You didn’t believe her, though?”
She shook her head. “We fought a lot as I got older. I accused her of caring more about money than about me.” Her words tumbled quickly. “I just didn’t understand. I was sixteen when I left home. I came to the city, got in trouble right away. I didn’t know how to live in the city, or what people were really like.”
“What do you mean you got in trouble right away?”
Jennifer shook her head.
Let her go slow, he reminded himself. “Okay, then, where’s your mom now?”
Mark knew he was pressing, but he just had to know. It seemed important, for reasons he couldn’t yet explain.
Jennifer swallowed. Once, then twice. “She died when I was eighteen.”
She said it so softly Mark could barely hear it. Jennifer drew her hands back, pushed the tray of food from her lap, and turned over to her side. Away from him. She curled into a ball, her body trembling. He fought against the urge to smother her in kisses. Make it better, take away her pain. He wanted to do anything to change her memories, but interrupting her now would only take away from her truth. And he didn’t want to do that.
“I never told her I loved her, ‘cause I hadn’t forgiven her before she died.” Her words came out quickly. “She was working late one night and slipped on the wet diner floor. She fell into the counter, cracked her neck. She wasn’t found till the next morning.”
Jennifer gradually stopped shaking. “So I have no family. I have no one but Sally, and the baby. They are my family. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
Her words became incoherent as he lay down beside her and pulled her into his arms. She tried to pull away, but he held on tight.
Through sobbing breaths she cried, “Don’t, don’t, don’t.”
Mark rocked her gently back and forth. “I’m sorry for your pain. I’m sorry. I’m glad you told me. You’ve been so brave by yourself. God, I can’t imagine.”
She stopped fighting, and he held her against him. He rubbed her forehead and pushed her hair back from her damp forehead. Gently, he kissed her shoulder, but still held her. Rocking.
As her sobs subsided, Mark knew a truth of his own. He loved her. Not because of what she’d revealed, but because she was the bravest woman he’d ever known. And because he couldn’t imagine letting her go.
****
The ticking clock sounded loud in her ears. Time passed way too slowly, and nothing she did made this any easier. The hesitant starts and stops. Deep breathing. Mark reached forward and took her hand as he said, “You’re doing great, just concentrate. You’re doing fine. You’ll make it through this turn in no time.”
Pulling her hand out of his, she laughed. “Stop messing with me! How am I supposed to win at chess if you keep messing with me every time I make a move?”
Mark grinned. “If you didn’t take so long with every move, I wouldn’t have to mess with you so much.”