The Last Breath

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“Perfect timing for what?” Ella Mae fought to keep her voice level around her heart pounding in her throat.

“To ask your thoughts.” He moved closer, stepping over the crumpled paper and pointing to the wicker chair next to hers. “May I?”

She nodded and he sank into it, his knee brushing against hers.

“I was thinking of getting the girls a dog. They really miss their friends back home, and well, I was hoping a puppy would help, or at the very least distract them enough to make new friends. What do you think?”

Ella Mae pictured it, a tiny tornado of fur and floppy feet, barking and bounding around the yard, digging up flowers and turning the lawn into a virtual minefield. Ray would detest both the noise and the mess. But Ella Mae was thrilled. She’d always wanted a dog.

“I think a puppy is a marvelous idea.”

“Really?” His face lit like the rising sun, a smile so unselfconscious she couldn’t help but return it. “You don’t have pets so I was worried...well, I’m glad you like my idea.”

“I do.”

“Excellent.” He leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees, and the chair creaked under his weight. “I was also hoping you could give me some advice on where to get one.”

Ella Mae thought for a moment. “You could go to a pet store, but it’ll be expensive. Otherwise, I have a friend over in Mount Carmel who breeds Maltipoos.”

“What the heck’s a Maltipoo?”

“A mix between a Maltese and a poodle. They’re precious. Your girls will adore them.” Ella Mae tried not to think of Dean’s wife when she said the word girls, but Allison popped into her mind anyway. She quickly returned the conversation to the puppies. “So what do you think?”

Dean cocked his head and gave her a look that tingled all the way down to her toes, a look so suggestive it might as well have been adulterous. “Are we still talking about puppies?”

Puppies?

Dean laughed at whatever he saw on Ella Mae’s expression. “I think a Maltipoo sounds perfect.”

Ella Mae stood and motioned for Dean to follow her into the house. She didn’t speak, but she held her back a little straighter, her shoulders a little squarer, her head a little higher, all the way through the living room and down the wallpapered hallway into the kitchen. Only her hips swayed loose and free, putting on a show, she knew, underneath the ruffles of her white tennis skirt.

A show she knew he was watching. His gaze was as good as leaving a trail of blisters down her entire backside, as if she was being chased through the house by a bonfire.

In the kitchen, Ella Mae reached for the phone on the wall and dialed Shelley’s number, leaning against the counter and twisting the cord around a finger while Dean watched from the doorway. It was an all-consuming, toe-curling scrutiny that made something deep inside her belly buzz and hum.

When Shelley answered on the third ring, Ella Mae gave her friend a brief rundown of Dean’s request.

“Shelley says she has two female puppies available,” Ella Mae told Dean, dropping the mouthpiece to her shoulder, “one black and one cream colored. Both are weaned and ready to go.”

Dean’s smile was white-hot, and her knees caved a little. He took three long strides across the checkered linoleum. “Tell her we’re on our way.”

“We?”

He gestured to her tennis outfit. “Unless you have something else you need to do.”

Other than a tennis lesson she could just as well skip, Ella Mae didn’t have anything else she needed to do. She didn’t even have anything else she wanted to do, other than spend the rest of her day playing with Dean Sullivan’s fire.

She should say no. Say no and show him the door and avoid any more contact with Dean. Did they make blinders for wives with wandering eyes and handsome neighbors? Then again, blinders only help if you were willing to turn your head, and Ella Mae was not.

Nor was she willing to turn him down.

Ella Mae pressed the phone back to her ear. “We’ll be there in about thirty minutes.”

If Shelley answered, Ella Mae didn’t hear. By now Dean was close, so close. Close enough for her to feel his heat. Close enough for him to touch her. He slid a palm to her waist, and she let him. He pulled her up against his body, hard and lean and ready, and she practically fainted with relief.

Finally.

He lowered his mouth to hers, and at the very last second, she somehow came to her senses.

“Shell, it may take us a teeny bit longer.” The words tripped and tumbled in a hurry off her tongue, right before Dean took the phone from her hand and dropped it onto the cradle.

9 (#ulink_67c2c279-227b-55db-a567-5c9135ff6185)

PRISON HAS NOT been kind to my father.

How ridiculous is my first thought upon seeing him through the living room window? Of course prison hasn’t been kind; that’s why they call it prison. I push my face into the glass to get a better look, and something sharp and spiky twists in the pit of my stomach. Riverbend Maximum Security Institution has stripped my father down to a ghost of an unrecognizable stranger. A hard, angry, bitter stranger.

Then there’s the cancer eating away at his insides. His face and neck have grown gaunt, his eyes sunk deeper into their sockets. His chest no longer fills out his shirt, which is now concave down to his protruding hip bone. And thanks to the tumor squeezing his pancreas and shooting sprouts into his liver, his skin has turned an awful yellow-orange like he’s been dipped in carrot juice.

Two armed and uniformed men settle him into a wheelchair. They tuck a heavy wool blanket around his scarecrow frame and then stand guard on either side, which is, of course, ridiculous. If there’s a working muscle under those state-issued scrubs, it’s not strong enough to win a race to the end of the driveway, much less a getaway chase through the woods.

And running looks to be the last thing on my father’s mind. He tilts his face into the sunshine and puffs out a breath long enough to have been saved since 1994.

Has it been that long since he last felt the sun’s warmth?

One of the guards, a stodgy man with thinning silver hair, pushes the wheelchair up the ramp Cal built. The guard whistles a country tune, but not loudly enough to drown out the protesters at the end of the driveway.

“Ray Andrews is guilty. We want justice.”

A news van pulls up, scattering the protesters like cockroaches, and a camera crew piles out. They find a spot on the front lawn and begin taping, the house as their backdrop. Two seconds later their newscast is interrupted by a noisy procession of trucks and SUVs, their drivers laying on their horns. The cameraman abandons the broadcast and swings the lens around, focusing in on the lead truck where a bearded man leans out the open window. He lifts a bullhorn to his mouth. “Wife killer! Die, wife killer!”

His evil words echo through the valley and slice, as sharp and deadly as a buck knife, into my gut.

My gaze darts to my father, now almost to the top of the ramp. He chomps down on his lips and burrows farther under the blanket, but not before I catch his expression. The sixteen years’ worth of outrage and indignity have slashed lines on either side of his mouth, his eyes, his forehead, but there’s still plenty of room in between for this afternoon’s mortification.

Fannie tsks, stepping up behind my left shoulder. “Crackpots. No matter what your father did or didn’t do, darlin’, he doesn’t deserve that. Everybody deserves to die with dignity and respect.”

“He used to be respected.” My voice is thick, and it cracks on the last word. “He was a member of every service club, raised money for every nonprofit, served on every board. Just look at him now.” I swipe a cheek with the back of a hand. “He’s pathetic.”

The guard makes the last turn onto the porch, and Fannie pats a palm on my shoulder. “Get ahold of yourself, sugar. ’Cause here he comes.”

She leaves me sniffling into the curtains, waddles to the door and pulls it wide. Through the window I see Dad’s gaze land on her with an expectant thud.

“Welcome home, Mr. Andrews.” She lifts a hand. “I’m Fannie Miles, and I’m gonna take real good care of ya.”

Disappointment is written across Dad’s forehead as clearly as the Tennessee Department of Corrections painted in big blazing block letters on the van behind him. He cranes his neck toward the side of the house, searching. Searching for Bo and Lexi. Searching for me. I step into the shadow.

The protesters increase their volume, marching back and forth on the road while the news crew films their angry chants. Dad returns his squint to Fannie. “I see you called the welcome wagon.”

Fannie motions for me to come to the door. “Your lovely daughter Gia is here. We were just getting acquainted.”

His eyes flash to the window. “Where is she?”

I don’t move. I barely breathe. Last month our convoy was almost ambushed by four armed bandits, and I sped the Rover away without breaking a sweat. Now I’m about to hurl my coffee onto the burgundy Rooms To Go carpet.

“Gia’s right here. Come on inside and say hi.”

He shakes his head. “Hold it right here, fellas.”

Dad doesn’t wait for the silver-haired guard to stop the wheelchair. He grips the chair’s metal arms and tries to push himself upright, but his feet are still propped onto the metal flaps and his scrawny body can’t get more than four or five inches of air. After a few clumsy tries, he sinks back into the chair, his face ashy-orange beneath his whiskers. “Somebody get me out of this goddamn chair.”

The second guard, a stocky man with a bottom lip bulging with tobacco, plants his feet and palms his billystick. “Sir, my orders are to escort you into the house and tether your ankle monitor before allowing you out of that chair.”

My father flops one slippered foot onto the ground. “I aim to walk.”

For the first time I notice Jimmy standing guard at the bottom of the porch. He gives my father a disciplined smile and climbs the ramp, his equipment chinking at his belt. “Afternoon, Mr. Andrews. You remember me?”

Dad glares up at him. “Of course I remember you, Jimmy. But right now I’m trying to walk through my own goddamn door, so our little reunion’ll have to wait until I get inside.”

Jimmy’s mustache doesn’t even twitch. He motions his silver-haired colleague aside and stomps on the wheelchair’s brake. Fannie rushes to help, tucking the foot supports out of the way and planting my father’s feet onto the cold concrete. Together, the two heave him out of the chair.