Flesh and Bone: A Body Farm Novel

CHAPTER 22

JESS STILL SEEMED SKITTISH hours after being attacked by Craig Willis’s mother. If anything could soothe her, I figured, it would be a quiet dinner at By the Tracks Bistro.

By the Tracks was named for the railroad tracks that passed dish-rattlingly close to its original location. The restaurant had started small, but quickly won a devoted customer base through a combination of great food, attentive ser vice, quiet ambience, stylish décor, and only slightly painful prices. It had long since outgrown its small beginnings and trackside location, but the name had stuck. Year in, year out, By the Tracks remained arguably Knoxville’s best restaurant. Not its most expensive-that superlative belonged to the Orangery, a classic, chichi French restaurant a few blocks away. But I’d never found the Orangery particularly relaxing: every time I ate there, gussied up in my Sunday best, I half expected to be judged, found wanting, and tossed out as riffraff halfway through my meal. At By the Tracks, on the other hand, I could wander in without a reservation, wearing faded jeans and a polo shirt, and be certain of a warm welcome and a delicious meal. Their entrées ranged from basil-stuffed trout over Israeli couscous, at the fancy end of the spectrum, to the biggest and best sirloin burger in town, maybe in all of Tennessee.

Within five minutes after we settled into a booth, Jess was sipping a Cosmopolitan and visibly relaxing. Another drink, a half hour, and half a bacon cheeseburger later, she was smiling and laughing. My hope was that by the end of the meal I might be able to persuade her to stay at my house, but I didn’t want to pressure her-that might undo all the good the meal had done-so I kept the conversation light. I couldn’t resist telling her how beautiful and thrilling she had been the other night; she blushed and looked shy at the compliments. But she did not look displeased.

We had just gotten a crème brûlée for dessert, plus a coffee for Jess, when I saw her eyes lock onto something in the direction of the bar. Her expression froze; it seemed to contain equal measures of pain, fear, and fury. “Jess,” I said, “what’s wrong?” I turned and scanned the bar but saw nothing amiss.

“It’s Preston,” she said. “My ex. He’s sitting over there at the bar. He’s been watching us. That son of a bitch is stalking me.”

I turned again. This time, I vaguely recalled having met the man at the corner of the bar once, several years earlier, at a forensic conference. He was a lawyer-a prosecutor, if memory served, which is probably how he and Jess first connected. “Do you want me to go tell him to get lost?”

“No,” she said. “I need to deal with this.” She pushed away the crème brûlée, drew a deep breath, and set her jaw. Then she slid out of the booth and stormed over to the bar. I would not want to be in his shoes right about now, I thought. Jess’s hands flashed angrily as she spoke; I couldn’t hear any of her words, but her tone carried, and it was not happy. I saw him shake his head vigorously, as if denying something-that he had followed her? — and then he seemed to go on the offensive. He pointed at me, and for a while they both sounded mad. Then his tone turned pleading, and her tone softened. She sat down on a barstool beside him. By now I was staring openly at the two of them; for her part, Jess was looking intently at his face. He reached up and wiped his eyes. She wiped hers.

Jess stayed at the bar for ten minutes going on eternity. When she finally came back to the booth, she would not meet my eyes. She sat down gingerly, as if the seat were wired with explosives. She didn’t speak. “Talk to me, Jess,” I said.

“He’s in town for a DA’s conference,” she said. “Bob Roper, the Knox County DA, recommended this place. He swears he would never have come here if he’d had any inkling I’d be here with a date.” She glanced up at me briefly, then dropped her eyes again. “I believe what he said.”

Every alarm I had was ringing like crazy. “What else did he say, Jess? You seem more upset, in a pulled-in sort of way, than you did when you thought he was following you.” I realized what my intuition was telling me. “You’ve just left me, haven’t you? We barely got started, and it’s already over. Is that it?”

This time she faced me squarely. She was crying a little, but she either didn’t notice or didn’t care. “Dammit, Bill, you’re the last person I would ever want to hurt. You are the kindest, sweetest, smartest, most loving man I know. What you gave me the other night made me feel alive, and loved, and desired again for the first time in a long, long while. It was so lovely, and so healing. And maybe this is just a bump in the road.” She drew a deep breath and shook her head. “I thought I was done with him, but now I’m not so sure. Shit, the guy still gets to me. Look what this one chance encounter has done to me.” She gave me a small, sad smile. “The irony is, I could probably be happier with you. Preston doesn’t actually like me all that much. And when I’m with him, I don’t like me all that much.” She gave me the half smile again, and I thought it might tear my heart out. “You, on the other hand, like me a lot. These past few days, I’ve liked myself, too. More than I have in…maybe ever. You see me through eyes of kindness, and when I see myself reflected in your eyes, I see myself a little more kindly, too.” She slid a hand across the table, laid it tentatively on mine. Part of me wanted to clasp it and never let go; part of me wanted to fling it away from me. “I know I don’t have the right to ask this, but could you just give me some space for a while, let me try sorting through what I feel and what I want?” I couldn’t speak. I swallowed hard and looked down at the table, at our two hands. Neither of them seemed like mine anymore. “I worked with a therapist for a while when the breakup was at its worst,” Jess was saying. “Maybe she can help me untangle the stuff that’s underneath this. The deeper stuff-the stuff that seems to make it hard for me to choose things that would be good for me.”

I considered trying to argue or reason with her, but I quickly concluded that any attempt to plead or pressure would only drive her farther away. I could behave stupidly, I could act pitiful, or I could strive for grace and dignity. When I opened my mouth, I landed somewhere in the murky middle of all three. “Are you leaving with him?”

“No,” she said, nodding toward the bar. “He just left.” I looked, and it was true; his stool was empty, and the restaurant’s glass door was swinging shut. “I told him if he wants to talk, I’m willing to see a counselor with him. That’s it-there, or not at all.”

“But you’re not leaving with me,” I said.

“No,” she said. “I’m leaving alone, and I’ll drive back to an empty house in Chattanooga and cry all night, I expect.”

“I guess I’m better off than I thought,” I said. “I only have to drive about five minutes before I can curl up with the Kleenex box.” I smiled, or tried to, to let her know that was meant as a joke. Amazingly, she laughed, though I wasn’t sure if the laugh was at the joke or at my facial contortions.

“You dear, sweet man,” she said. “I will call you when I figure out what the hell I’m doing, I promise. Even if I’m calling to tell you something that I think will be hard for you to hear.”

“Swell,” I said. “With promises like that, who needs curses?” Again I approximated a smile. “Meantime, what about the casework?”

“Garland’s back tomorrow,” she said, then laughed briefly and added, “May God help you. And we’ve both done all we can do with the Willis case unless they make an arrest and it goes to trial.” She was right; it was just that I would miss her terribly, even simply as a colleague.

Almost before I knew it, she had slipped out of the booth and stood up. She walked to my side of the table, gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, and said, “Thank you, Bill. You might not understand this or believe it, but I do love you.”

And then she was gone.