This Heart of Mine

Confusion created lines in his forehead. “Why would you sit on the visitors’ side?”

Because she couldn’t imagine he’d want a mother who’d been in prison for murder showing up where people might recognize who she was and connect them. “I’d rather not cause a stir.”

She looked to Riley for confirmation. He’d used the stigma of her crime as one of the reasons Jacob would be better off without her, so she was hoping to reassure him that she wouldn’t make things difficult. But he didn’t comment one way or the other, didn’t say she couldn’t come as she feared he might. He covered his mouth for a few seconds, rubbed his jaw, then straightened his silverware. It was Jacob who insisted she could sit wherever she liked. But a polite boy would say that.

“Okay, just...just let me know when you have a game.” She figured if he never came forward with that information, she’d have her answer as to whether he preferred she stay away from him in public.

“How am I supposed to let you know?” he asked. “Do you have a home phone or a cell?”

She didn’t. She couldn’t afford either. She had far too many other necessities to buy first. “Not yet. But I have a laptop, and I learned that Black Gold Coffee has free Wi-Fi. I could set up a Facebook page, and you could message me that way—with your father’s permission.” He could also get hold of her through her mother, who lived in a separate trailer on the same property, but she hesitated to suggest that, given Riley’s disapproval of Lizzie.

“You have a laptop?” he asked.

“I do. It was a gift from one of the correctional officers when I was released. It’s an old one, but...it works.”

“So you’ll friend me? You know how to do that?”

She sipped more coffee. The caffeine was making her jittery on an empty stomach, but it helped to have something to do with her hands. “I took some computer classes when I was... I took some classes.”

“Oh.”

“What are your plans now that you’re home?” Riley asked. “Are you looking for a job or...?”

“Not quite yet,” she replied. “I have to finish cleaning out the trailer where I’m living before I do anything else.” She almost expounded on how bad it was, how unsanitary. Her mother’s hoarding was worse than ever. But she caught herself. If her primary goal was to provide a room for Jacob that Riley would deem safe—in case her son ever agreed to stay with her for a night or two—it wouldn’t be wise to regale his father with the gritty details. When she’d first begun cleaning it up, the trailer hadn’t been fit for pigs. Although it was a lot better now, it would be spotless by the time she was done.

“Where will you apply after that?”

“Anywhere there’s an opening.” Riley had also pointed out how difficult it would be for her to make a living in Whiskey Creek, a town of only two thousand. The school had allowed her to graduate in spite of the fact that she’d missed the last three weeks of her senior year, but a high school diploma wouldn’t do much to offset her criminal record. She hadn’t mentioned the business she’d started while she was still incarcerated. She had no idea if it would succeed. But she’d established a small income making leather bracelets for men and boys. The woman who’d given her the laptop, Cara Brentwell, had been putting the bracelets up on Etsy.com and eBay for the past three years. That was where, most recently, she’d gotten the bulk of the money she’d been sending to Jacob. She and Cara had split the profits but, as a free woman, she no longer needed Cara’s help.

“I, um, have a small gift for you,” she told Jacob. “Don’t get excited, it’s nothing big. You don’t even have to wear it if you don’t like it. I just wanted to see if...you know, maybe you’d think it was cool.”

She reached into her bag and pulled out the leather pouch she’d put the bracelet in instead of wrapping it. Somehow that seemed more masculine than paper and bow.

“Thanks,” he said as he accepted it.

She didn’t say that she’d made it. She didn’t want to give him or anyone else any reason not to like it. “If you’d rather open it later,” she began, but he had his hand inside and took it out before she could finish.

“What is it?” Riley asked.

“A bracelet,” Jacob piped up, and the pleasant tone of his voice was slightly reassuring. He didn’t sound as if he hated it.

“So you’ve seen them before?” she said, trying to gauge whether he was just trying to salvage her feelings.

“Yeah, but none quite like this.” He turned it over in his man-size hands. Fortunately, the braided leather she’d embellished with a piece of petrified wood that was carved in the shape of a bird—a play on her name that she wasn’t sure he’d understand—fastened with a tie so it couldn’t be too small. “It’s awesome. Where’d you get it?”

The waitress arrived with their food, and Phoenix pretended she hadn’t heard the question. Jacob became so distracted putting on the bracelet, and then eating, that he didn’t pursue an answer.

From there the conversation became a bit stilted. Phoenix asked about his grades, expressed pride that he was doing so well and encouraged him to continue. Then she asked if he had a girlfriend. He said he didn’t, that he was interested in a few different girls, but mostly just as friends, and then the conversation lagged again. It would’ve been more natural to talk to Riley, too, but Phoenix was careful not to direct a single question to him. She didn’t want him to worry that she might still have feelings for him. Sometimes their brief relationship played out in her mind, usually late at night. Those memories were some of the best she had. But she told herself they continued to matter simply because she hadn’t shared the same kind of intimacy with any other person. She’d been barely eighteen when she went to prison and, although she’d been approached by various male guards over the years, which some of her fellow inmates resented, she’d never even kissed anyone besides Riley. One guard sent her a few letters after he quit his job at the prison, but she never responded. He lived in the Bay Area, and she’d planned to return to Whiskey Creek; she’d realized all along that she’d have a very brief period to get to know her son before he reached adulthood. She didn’t want to waste time on a man, especially considering how fickle and unreliable they could be, judging by the speed with which Riley had fallen in and out of love with her.

Even without being addressed, Riley added a comment here and there to support what Jacob said. Whenever that happened, Phoenix would turn a polite smile on him to acknowledge his remark. But she kept her attention on her son, which worked fine—until the check came. Then she had to engage Riley because he tried to pluck it off the corner of the table.

Thankfully, she managed to grab it before he could. She wouldn’t allow him to buy her a meal, to buy her anything. This was a matter of pride, what little pride she could salvage, anyway. She’d extended the invitation; she’d pay the tab. Anything else might make him believe she was out to get something from him when, other than his blessing for her to see Jacob, she definitely wasn’t.

“I don’t mind,” he said, as if he wasn’t sure whether to insist while she counted out her money.

Even with the tip, she had enough—thank God. “It’s my treat, but I appreciate the offer,” she said firmly.

Leaving the money on the table, she slid out of the booth.

“Breakfast was good,” Jacob said.

A jolt of hope and happiness shot through her that he seemed to have enjoyed himself. The path ahead of them would not be smooth, but she’d survived her first breakfast with Jacob and didn’t feel she was about to fall apart. It probably helped that she’d had a lot of practice with disappointment. She hoped the next encounter would be easier, and the next even easier and so forth. She had to start somewhere.

“It was my pleasure,” she told him.

Although she tried to lag behind, they waited for her to precede them. She didn’t own a car, which meant she’d be walking five miles to the barren spot of land her mother had inherited from her own parents. Lizzie had two old trailers on that property—the one she’d filled so full of junk she could no longer live in it, which was now Phoenix’s home, and the one she occupied herself, with her five dogs, two hamsters and a parrot.

Once they got outside, she stepped out of the way so they could move past her and into the parking lot. “Thank you for meeting me.”

Riley squinted against the bright spring sunshine and gazed around, as if he expected someone to be there to pick her up. “How are you getting home?”

She didn’t answer that question directly for fear he’d take it as a hint that she wanted a ride. “Oh, don’t worry about me. I’ve got it covered.”

“You’ve got what covered?”

“Aren’t we talking about a way home?”

“Someone’s coming to pick you up, then? When will they be here? Do you need to use my phone?”

Now that he’d pinned her down, she had to tell the truth. She couldn’t use the cell he offered. She had no one to call. “There’s no need to bother anyone. It’s such a nice day I’m happy to walk.”

He glanced down at her strappy sandals. “You can make it that far in those?”

“I made it here,” she said. “They’re very comfortable.” Whether that was true or not wasn’t important. They were all she owned.

He didn’t seem convinced, but when she waved and turned to go, he started toward his truck. Jacob was the one who called her back.

“Mom?”

Phoenix’s heart hit her chest with one giant thud. He hadn’t addressed her as anything yet, let alone Mom. She hadn’t expected to hear him say that, not right away, especially since she’d given him permission to use her first name instead. “Yes?” She hoped her voice didn’t sound as strangled to him as it did to her.

“You told me I could say anything.”

“Jacob.” Riley spoke their son’s name as a warning, but Phoenix ignored that, along with his frown.

“You can. It’s absolutely okay.”

“No matter what it is?”

She swallowed hard. She hadn’t expected the questions to begin quite this soon. “Of course.”

Jacob looked at his father, but his inner turmoil was obviously driving him to disregard the quick shake of Riley’s head. “Did you do it?” he asked. “Because I have to hear that answer from you. I want to know the truth after wondering about it all these years.”

She didn’t mind him asking. She longed to tell him the truth. But it would’ve been much easier to discuss this some quiet night when Riley wasn’t with them, because she knew Riley would doubt every word she said. She was afraid he might even scoff at her denial, if not in front of her, then once he and Jacob got in the truck.

Still, now that she had the chance to tell Jacob she was innocent, she had to take it. Kids didn’t always wait for the best time or place, and if she missed this opportunity, maybe she’d never have another. Not like this, with her son so...open.

Tempted to grab his arms or do something else to impress on him just how fervent she was, she stepped forward. But she was still afraid that coming on too strong would scare him away. So she stopped there and lowered her voice for emphasis. “I didn’t do it. I swear I didn’t do it.”

“But you were driving the car! You had to have done it.” Although he sounded argumentative, he spoke as if he wanted her to persuade him otherwise, and she appreciated that more than he could ever know.

“There was someone else in the car, Jacob. Have you heard about this?” He must’ve been told bits and pieces over the years. But he hadn’t even been born when the trial took place, and he would’ve been ten or twelve before he was old enough to hear what had happened. That meant that whoever told him the story had very likely simplified an incident that was over a decade old. And once Jake entered his teens, maybe he felt it was a subject his father didn’t want to touch, so he didn’t push.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Who was it?”

Did this mean that Riley was so convinced she’d been lying when she gave her side of the incident that he didn’t even present it?

She didn’t know how else to interpret it. “A girl my age—a friend of sorts that I was supposed to be doing a homework project with,” she said. “My mother let me take the Buick so we could go to her house after school. When we spotted Lori Mansfield walking back to the high school after finishing her cross-country run, the girl who was with me said we should give her a little scare. I laughed. Maybe I said something that she took for agreement—I don’t remember—because the next thing I knew, she yanked on the steering wheel.”

His Adam’s apple moved as he swallowed. “Someone else turned the wheel?”

“Yes. I don’t think she meant to kill Lori. She had no reason to harm her. I’m guessing she thought I’d be able to correct in time, but I couldn’t.” She winced at the memory. “It all happened too fast.”

He spread out his hands, beseeching her. “Why didn’t you tell everyone that?”

Another group came out of the restaurant. She fell silent until they’d regained their privacy. Then she said, “I tried.” She’d told everyone in the courtroom. Riley hadn’t been there the day she testified, but surely he’d heard what she’d said from someone. “No one would believe me.”

She wondered how Riley was taking all of this but was afraid to look at him. “It’s the truth, but the girl who was with me denied it.”

“You’re saying she lied?”

Penny Sawyer had left Whiskey Creek right after high school and never come back, and Phoenix knew she probably never would. “Yes. Under oath.”

“Why would she do that?”

“I’m sure she was scared, Jacob. She didn’t want what was happening to me to happen to her.”

“So she let you take the fall.”

“Essentially.”

“But...why would her word be any better than yours?”

At this, Phoenix couldn’t stop her gaze from shifting to Riley. She found him watching her as intently as Jacob and got the impression he was trying to figure out whether he could believe her any more than he had before. So she decided to tell the down-to-the-soul truth, regardless of the embarrassment certain admissions might cause her. “Because they knew I had a...a terrible crush on your father. They called it an obsession, and maybe it was. They also knew by then that I was pregnant. You see, I hadn’t told anyone about you before the accident. I was too scared my mother, the school counselor and anyone who knew your father would want me to...to end the pregnancy or put you up for adoption. I wasn’t willing to do either.”

“They thought you were jealous of Lori.”

She guessed he’d heard that part before, since the entire story hinged on it. But had Riley provided the information? Or was it Riley’s parents? Or even others in town? She’d always wondered what people were telling Jacob about her. “They assumed I thought your father would come back to me if she was out of the picture. And the girl in my car had no motive. She was just being...silly.”

“That’s so unfair!” Jacob turned as if to gain the support of his father, but Riley remained silent, his hands jammed into the front pockets of his jeans.

“If what you’re saying is true, you served all that time for nothing,” Jacob said when he faced her again. “Why didn’t you fight harder to get people to believe you?”

Because she’d been an odd, unfortunate eighteen-year-old girl struggling to grow up with an obese, hoarding mother who wouldn’t even leave the house. Without champions, without the money to hire a decent attorney instead of the public defender who’d done a halfhearted job at best, she’d had nowhere to turn. To make things worse, Riley’s parents were so sympathetic to Lori’s family that they complained about how many times she’d phoned Riley or driven by their house, told everyone how she’d followed him around town. The fact that she’d also crank-called Lori after Riley had started dating her, had become a big part of the case against her.

Everything that could go wrong simply had.

“I didn’t have the tools,” she said. “I was only two years older than you are now and I was pretty well on my own. There wasn’t a lot I could do.” Especially because she couldn’t claim that she hadn’t been absolutely consumed with Riley. The day he came into her life everything had changed; it’d been like feeling the sun on her face for the first time. But after only six weeks of an intense “I have to be with you every second” affair, he’d suddenly broken up with her.

As rocky as her life had been, she’d never felt pain to equal that.

But she hadn’t killed anyone.

“The girl, the one who lied, this is all her fault,” Jacob said. “Do you know where she is? Are you going to try and find her and make her admit the truth?”

Phoenix had spent seventeen years thinking about getting out of prison and going in search of Penny. She craved vindication. But she knew chasing after it would be a waste of effort. Even if she could find Penny, it would still be her word against that of someone more credible. No one wanted to consider the possibility that an innocent woman might have been in prison for so long. And even if Penny suddenly and miraculously came forward on her own, it wouldn’t change what Phoenix had been through. It probably wouldn’t convince the people she needed to convince, since they didn’t want to believe the truth, anyway.

“No.” In the beginning, she’d sent so many letters to Penny, pleading with her to tell the truth. All the ones she’d mailed after the Sawyers left Whiskey Creek had been returned. She didn’t even know whether the early ones had reached the girl who could’ve made such a difference. “I have to focus on moving forward, forget the past.”

Jacob stared at his feet. When he lifted his head and spoke again, he sounded torn. “I’m not sure I can believe you.”

“That’s okay.” She forgave him easily, was grateful he was actually trying. “I understand how hard it is. I won’t put any pressure on you. We don’t have to talk about it again, if you don’t want to. We—”

“I think that’s enough for today,” Riley broke in. “Jacob, let’s go. We’ve got to work.”

Anxiety-induced sweat rolled down Phoenix’s spine. But she smiled so her son would know he could leave without feeling bad about anything. She didn’t blame him for being confused, and she certainly didn’t want to detain him any longer and get him in trouble with his dad. She’d known from the beginning that she’d have to earn Jacob’s trust over time.

Clasping her hands in front of her, she watched them get in Riley’s truck. She’d just taken a deep breath and was about to start her long walk home when Jacob turned and waved—and she knew she’d carry the memory of that tentative smile for the rest of her life.

2

Jacob sat in silence as they pulled out of the parking lot. They had a job today, a remodel of one of the older Victorians in town, and needed to go to the lumber store, about ten miles away. On Saturdays, Riley hired his son to help out so Jacob could learn the trade, in case he cared to become a partner in the business when he was older or wanted to get his own contractor’s license. They had a lot to do, and they were getting a late start because they’d met Phoenix for breakfast, but right now it was difficult to concentrate on anything other than the past hour. Riley was so torn about what he’d seen and heard, he knew Jacob had to be really confused.

“You okay?” he asked as they rolled to a stop at the traffic light in the center of town.

Jacob gave him a morose shrug.

“Could you use your voice?” Riley asked.

“I feel...weird,” Jacob replied.

He looked sullen and unhappy. “Weird in what way?” Riley could guess, since he was so conflicted himself, but he felt it was important to get his son to talk to him about Phoenix. It hadn’t been easy to become a father at eighteen. Other than the help he’d received early on from his parents while he was commuting to college three days a week, he’d raised Jacob alone.

But Riley had a feeling that he was facing a much more formidable challenge now. He didn’t want Phoenix back in his life or his son’s, didn’t want to cope with all the old questions and doubts.

“I met my mother for the first time a few minutes ago, and I can’t decide how I should feel about her.”

Because he had no frame of reference. Riley hadn’t even given Jacob the many letters she’d sent, other than a handful of the less emotional ones. In his mind, he’d been protecting his son, hoping she’d move on and just leave them alone when she was eventually released. But if she was innocent, maybe standing between her and Jake had only hurt them both.

If so, that was a lot to feel responsible for.

“It’ll take a while to adjust,” he told Jacob.

“How would you feel if you were me?” his son asked. “Do you think she killed Lori Mansfield?”

The light turned green and Riley gave the truck some gas. Jacob had asked this question several times over the years, but Riley had always been able to say he wasn’t sure and leave it at that. Phoenix hadn’t ever been present in Jacob’s life, so Jacob hadn’t pushed the issue. But with her back home, he needed a more definitive answer.

“She wasn’t herself when all of that happened,” Riley said.

Jacob leaned forward to look into his face. “What does that mean? Are you saying yes or no?”

Riley had no idea whether she’d killed Lori. He only knew that everyone else insisted she must have, and the scenario created at her trial seemed logical. Lori was the girl he’d started dating right after Phoenix, and Phoenix had acted terribly jealous. “I’m saying she became a little...intense after I broke up with her.”

He’d often relied on her erratic behavior during that time as a reason to withhold another one of her letters.

“She could have done it.”

“Yes.”

The expression on his son’s face made it clear he didn’t like that answer. “But ‘could have’ isn’t proof!”

“There were witnesses, Jake.”

“Who saw her behind the wheel! She admits she was driving.”

“Penny Sawyer was a witness.”

“The friend she told us about? Penny, the one who might’ve grabbed the wheel?”

“Penny had no motive.”

His scowl deepened. “How come I don’t know any Penny Sawyer?”

“She moved away after the trial.”

“Why?”

“Because she’d graduated from high school, so she left for college like almost everyone else.”

“You didn’t leave for college.”

“I went to UC Davis three days a week because it’s only an hour away, and I had you. I wanted to be able to come home at night and take care of you. My situation was different, not hers.”

Jacob didn’t respond right away, but he didn’t sound any more convinced when he did. “Has she ever returned?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“That’s unusual, isn’t it?”

“Not if her family relocated during those four years, which they did. She had no reason to come back here.”

“She could’ve lied about what happened.”

“Or Phoenix is lying. Like I said, she wasn’t in the best frame of mind when Lori was killed.”

“So her frame of mind clinches the deal? Makes her guilty? Or did my mom go to prison just because she was heartbroken and jealous? She was pregnant at eighteen, with no one to turn to except a weird mother she was embarrassed by—a mother who couldn’t really do anything to help, anyway. From what I’ve seen of that grandma, you were the most normal thing Mom ever had in her life. Of course she’d try to grab on to you. She probably felt like she was drowning. And you were the one who got her pregnant.”

The fact that she’d been a virgin until he came along still made Riley feel ashamed of breaking up with her the way he had. But he hadn’t known she was pregnant when he told her he didn’t want to see her anymore. He’d only been acting on the advice—the insistence—of his parents. They’d been so positive that he was about to ruin his life by getting involved with a girl who wasn’t worthy of him they’d threatened not to pay for college if he didn’t listen.