AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Holly Grace looked at Francesca's underwear scattered over the floor. “Hypothetically speaking, if you really were in love with Dallie, how would you feel about it?”
There was such naked need in Holly Grace's face that Francesca decided she had to answer honestly. She thought for a few moments. “As much as I love you, Holly Grace—as much as I sympathize with your desire to have a child—if I really loved Dallie, I wouldn't let you touch him.”
Holly Grace didn't reply for a moment, and then she gave a sad sort of smile. “That's exactly what I'd say, too. For all your flightiness, Francie, it's moments like this that make me remember why we're best friends.”
Holly Grace squeezed her hand, and Francesca was glad to see that she had finally been forgiven for lying about Teddy. But as she looked at her friend's face, she frowned. “Holly Grace, there's something about this that doesn't ring true to me. You know very well that Dallie won't agree. I'm not convinced you even want him to.”
“He might,” Holly Grace said defensively. “Dallie's full of surprises.”
But not this kind of surprise. Francesca didn't believe for a minute that he would go along with Holly Grace's idea, and she doubted if Holly Grace believed it either. “Do you know what you remind me of?” Francesca said thoughtfully. “You remind me of someone with a bad toothache who's hitting herself in the head with a hammer to distract herself from the pain in her mouth.”
“That's ridiculous,” Holly Grace snapped, her reply coming so quickly that Francesca knew she had struck a nerve. It occurred to her that Holly Grace was frightened. She had begun to grab at straws, hoping to find some distraction to ease the ache in her heart from losing Gerry. There wasn't anything Francesca could do to help her friend except lean forward and give her a sympathetic hug.
“Now, isn't this a sight to warm a man's heart?” Dallie drawled as he came out of the bathroom buttoning his shirt. He looked like a man who'd been doing a slow burn for the past few minutes, and it was immediately apparent that his anger had shifted from righteous indignation into a serious, full-fledged forest fire. “Did the two of you decide what you're going to do with me, yet?”
“Francie says I can't have you,” Holly Grace replied.
Alarmed, Francesca cried out, “Holly Grace, that's not what I—”
“Oh, does she?” Dallie shoved his shirttail inside his jeans. “Goddamn, I hate women.” He pointed his finger toward Francesca angrily. “Just because we set off a few million fireworks last night doesn't mean you have any right to make personal decisions for me.”
Francesca was outraged. “I didn't make any personal—”
He turned on Holly Grace. “And if you want to have yourself a baby, you go look in somebody else's pants, because, by damn, I am not providing you with stud service.”
Francesca felt an anger toward him that she understood wasn't totally reasonable. But couldn't he see that Holly Grace was in real pain and that she wasn't thinking very clearly? “Aren't you being just a little insensitive?” she inquired quietly.
“Insensitive?” His face grew pale with anger. His hands balled into fists, and he looked very much like a man who wanted to destroy one of the higher life-forms.
As he came toward them, Francesca instinctively shrank down into the sheet, and even Holly Grace seemed to move back. His hand slashed out toward the bottom of the bed. Francesca let out a small hiss of alarm only to see that he had grabbed Holly Grace's purse from the place where she'd tossed it. Pulling it open, he dumped out the contents and snatched up her car keys.
When he spoke, his voice was bleak. “As far as I'm concerned, the two of you can go straight to hell.” With that, he stalked from the room.
As Francesca heard the distant sound of a car driving away a few moments later, she felt a stab of regret for the loss of a house where no angry words had ever been spoken.
Chapter
30
Six weeks later, Teddy got off the elevator and walked down the hallway to his apartment, dragging his backpack the whole way. He hated school. All his life he'd loved it, but now he hated it. Today Miss Pearson had told the class that they would have to do a social studies project at the end of the year, and Teddy already knew he would probably flunk it. Miss Pearson didn't like him. She said she was going to kick him out of gifted class if his attitude didn't improve.
It was just— Ever since he'd gone to Wynette, nothing seemed to be fun anymore. He felt confused all the time, like there was a monster hiding in his closet ready to jump out at him. And now he might get kicked out of gifted class.
Teddy knew he somehow had to think up a really great social studies project, especially since he'd messed up so bad on his science bug project. This project had to be better than everybody else's—even dorky old Milton Grossman who was going to write Mayor Ed Koch and ask if he could spend part of the day with him. Miss Pearson had loved that idea. She said Milton's initiative should be an inspiration to the entire class. Teddy didn't see how anybody who picked his nose and smelled like mothballs could be an inspiration.
As he walked in the door, Consuelo came out from the kitchen and told him, “A package came for you today. It's in your bedroom.”
“A package?” Teddy peeled off his jacket as he walked down the hallway. Christmas had come and gone, his birthday wasn't until July, and Valentine's Day was still two weeks away. Why was he getting a package?
As he entered his bedroom, he spotted an enormous cardboard carton with the return address of Wynette, Texas, sitting in the middle of the floor. He dropped his jacket, pushed his glasses back up on the bridge of his nose, and chewed on his thumbnail. Part of him wanted the box to be from Dallie, but the other part of him didn't even like to think about Dallie. Whenever he did, he felt like the monster in the closet was standing right behind him.
Slitting open the packing tape with his sharpest scissors, he pulled apart the box flaps and looked around for a note. All he saw was a pile of smaller boxes, and one by one, he began to open them. When he was done, he sat dazed, looking at the bounty that surrounded him, an array of presents so admirably suited to a nine-year-old boy that it was as if someone had read his mind.
On one side of him rested a small stack of wonderfully gross stuff, like a whoopee cushion, hot pepper gum, and a phony plastic ice cube with a dead fly in the middle. Some of the presents appealed to his intellect—a programmable calculator and the complete set of The Chronicles of Narnia. Another box held objects representing a whole world of masculinity: a real Swis
s Army knife, a flashlight with a black rubber handle, a set of grown-up Black & Decker screwdrivers. But his favorite present was at the bottom of the box. Unwrapping the tissue paper, he let out a cry of pleasure as he took in the best, the neatest, the most awesome sweat shirt he had ever seen.
Gracing the navy blue front was a cartoon of a bearded, leering motorcycle rider with popping eyeballs and drool coming from his mouth. Beneath the biker was Teddy's name in Day-Glo orange letters and the inscription “Born to Raise Hell.” Teddy hugged the sweat shirt to his chest. For a fraction of a moment he let himself believe that Dallie had sent him all this, but then he understood that these weren't the kinds of things you sent to a kid you thought was a wimp, and since he knew how Dallie felt about him, he also knew the gifts had to have come from Skeet. He squeezed the sweat shirt tighter and told himself he was lucky to have a friend like Skeet Cooper, somebody who could see past his glasses and stuff all the way to the real kid.
