Free Tattered Innocence by Ann Lee Miller Page A

they went on the Dr. Pepper run.
    A hermit crab scampered across the sand.
Jake looked up from the crab to Rachel. “Those guys made sense. But
that screw-up got his girl. I saw the look she gave him when he
finished talking.”
    “You saw that, too? That screw-up is my
cousin’s husband.”
    “Sorry.”
    She shrugged.
    “Sleeping with my fiancé wasn’t half as bad
as what that guy—your cousin-in-law—did. And I lost the girl.” He
stared at the waves crashing on the tip of the jetty. Gabs said
she’d still feel shame even after they married. He’d wrecked her
religion or something. “One lousy mistake and God zapped me. Presto, no Gabrielle. No
future.”
    He turned away from Rachel. This was crazy,
puking his life out on the rocks. The bonfire must have gotten to
him more than he realized.
    “Avra chose to stick with Cisco. Gabrielle
chose to ditch you. How is that God’s fault?”
    “Isn’t He like the great webmaster in the
sky who runs everybody’s show?”
    Rachel’s chin dropped. Seaweed sloshed
against the jetty beyond her toes. “He made me choose a guy who
already belonged to someone else? No. It was my choice.” A gust of
wind blew her hair away from her face as she gazed seaward.
    Jake started back down the beach. “The guy
with the guitar got one thing right. I’m hacked because God’s
rubbing my face in the dirt over this.”
    Rachel walked beside him in the surf. “I
hope… I hope God forgave me tonight.”
    Her words were so soft and plaintive that he
had to strain to hear them. “I don’t get your guilt. What did you
do that was so bad? What did I do? We’re not talking murder or
robbing banks.”
    “Yeah, I felt that way for a long time.
Then, one day, the whole dump truck of guilt unloaded on me.”
    They headed into the dunes, not talking.
Something tugged him toward the God people sang to tonight. A part
of him had always strained toward the man of integrity Gramps had
been, maybe even the man of faith he’d been.
    Jake paused with his hand on the door handle
of Rachel’s faded-to-white Ford Escort. He peered at her across the
roof. “Gabs dragged me to mass every Sunday for a year, and we
never had a conversation like this. I don’t feel like you do, but I
get what you’re saying. Gabs’ religion was too high to reach—not
down in the muck where I live.”
    Rachel smiled.
    Nice smile.
    She ducked into the car. “That would be
me—down in the muck.”
     
     
    Monday morning Jake killed the spray from
the hose and looked up at Leaf. “What did you say?”
    Water ran down the teakwood deck and gurgled
through the scupper drain in the gunwale.
    “Where’s Rachel?”
    “At Winn Dixie. So, she’s Rachel now. She
been slipping you granola or something?”
    Leaf laughed. “You ought to sweeten up on
her yourself. She’d make you a mighty fine lady-friend.”
    “If you like her so much, you go for
her.”
    “I would if I didn’t have a woman of my
own.”
    Jake shook his head. “You’re full of
surprises.”
    “My old lady lives down by where they tore
down the old Faulkner Street Elementary School down.”
    “You’re married?”
    Leaf shifted his weight from one foot to the
other and back again. “We been together more or less since nineteen
fifty-five. A good woman. Like your girl.”
    “She’s not my girl. You’re not married?”
    “What? You never slept with Miss Country
Club? You can have a woman, and I can’t? I may be old, but I’m not
dead.”
    Leaf’s words felt like Gramps jamming a
finger into Jake’s chest. He shoved it back. “Why didn’t you marry
her?”
    “You sound like my daughter.” Leaf chuckled.
“She’s ashamed that her parents never tied the knot.” A cloud
passed over his expression. “My daughter and I don’t see eye-to-eye
on much. Man’s got to reject negative energy. Inhale the
positive—good food, ocean air, beauty.”
    Jake sprayed a stream of water against the
deck, and it sloshed against the gunwale. He