Where the Heart Is

By Jenny Gardiner

Reese Larkin had given up on ever going home again, until she realizes that home is the only place she'll ever be able to reclaim what's most important to her. After a call from a long-lost friend, she decides to embark on a road trip to revisit her past and along the way comes to realize that home really is where the heart is...
(originally was titled House of Cards)

Praise for Jenny Gardiner's books:

"reading Jenny Gardiner is like sinking your teeth into a big frosted chocolate cupcake...you just want more." -- Meg Cabot, author of the Princess Diaries, Queen of Babble, & the Heather Wells Mysteries, on SLEEPING WITH WARD CLEAVER

"Jenny Gardiner has done it again - this fun, fast-paced book is a great
summer read." – Sarah Pekkanen, author of The Opposite of Me, on SLIM TO NONE

"With her sharp wit and hilarious descriptions, Ms. Gardiner has a delightful voice that left me wanting more." -- Vee, Night Owl Romance, on SLEEPING WITH WARD CLEAVER

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jenny Gardiner Books
• Release date: Jul 10, 2011
• ISBN: 9781507051658

Jenny Gardiner

Thank you so much for reading my books! I hope you'll find some that keep you from doing the dishes, or vacuuming, or maybe even cause you to stay up later than you'd planned to (although I covet my sleep, so I'd feel guilty if I was to blame for that too often!). I'm the author of SLEEPING WITH WARD CLEAVER, winner of Romantic Times/Dorchester Publishing's American Title III contest, bestseller SLIM TO NONE, the IT'S REIGNING MEN contemporary romance series, including SOMETHING IN THE HEIR, HEIR TODAY GONE TOMORROW, BAD TO THE THRONE, LOVE IS IN THE HEIR and SHAME OF THRONES (book 6, THRONE FOR A LOOP, comes out in March); ANYWHERE BUT HERE; WHERE THE HEART IS; the memoir BITE ME: A PARROT, A FAMILY AND A WHOLE LOT OF FLESH WOUNDS; the essay collection NAKED MAN ON MAIN STREET;  two contemporary romances as Erin Delany: ACCIDENTALLY ON PURPOSE, & COMPROMISING POSITIONS. I have a funny dog story in I'M NOT THE BIGGEST BITCH IN THIS RELATIONSHIP. And I've got many more novels in the works! I've had pieces appear in Ladies Home Journal, the Washington Post, Marie-Claire.com, and on NPR's Day to Day. I honed my fiction writing skills while working as a publicist for a US Senator. Other jobs I've held have included: an orthodontic assistant (learning quite readily that I wasn't cut out for a career in polyester), a waitress (probably my highest-paying job), a TV reporter, a pre-obituary writer, and a photographer (once being Prince Charles' photographer in Washington!). Oh I'm also the volunteer coordinator for the Virginia Film Festival, which is a great one!  I live in Virginia with my husband and a small menagerie; we have three grown children, one of whom lives in Australia and I dream of visiting her there. I love all things Italian, regularly fantasize about traveling to exotic locales, and feel a little bit guilty for rarely attempting to clean the house.  I hope you'll sign up for my newsletter so you can hear about upcoming releases and get special offers here: http://eepurl.com/baaewn Visit me at my website below and my facebook page http://www.facebook.com/jennygardinerbooks , or twitter http://twitter.com/jennygardiner Thanks again for your support! Jenny

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What people are saying about Jenny Gardiner's books:

A fun, sassy read! A cross between Erma Bombeck and Candace Bushnell, reading Jenny Gardiner is like sinking your teeth into a chocolate cupcake...you just want more.

— Meg Cabot, NY Times bestselling author of Princess Diaries, Queen of Babble and more, on Sleeping with Ward Cleaver

With a strong yet delightfully vulnerable voice, food critic Abbie Jennings embarks on a soulful journey where her love for banana cream pie and disdain for ill-fitting Spanx clash in hilarious and heartbreaking ways. As her body balloons and her personal life crumbles, Abbie must face the pain and secret fears she's held inside for far too long. I cheered for her the entire way.

— Beth Hoffman, NY Times bestselling author of Saving CeeCee Honeycutt on Slim to None

Jenny Gardiner has done it again — this fun, fast-paced book is a great summer read.

— Sarah Pekkanen, NY Times bestselling author of The Opposite of Me, on Slim to None

"As Sweet as a song and sharp as a beak, Winging It really soars as a memoir about family — children and husbands, feathers and fur — and our capacity to keep loving though life may occasionally bite."

— Wade Rouse, bestselling author of At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream

WHERE THE HEART IS

by

Jenny Gardiner

PUBLISHED BY

Jenny Gardiner

WHERE THE HEART IS

Copyright 2011 by Jenny Gardiner

––––––––

Edition License Notes

All characters in this book are fiction and figments of the author’s imagination. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

*****

WHERE THE HEART IS

Summer 1977

I sit in the dark, alone, despite my two brothers and three dogs being piled around me, snoring, drooling, farting: doing the kinds of things that teenaged boys and dogs do in their sleep. Sleep, however, eludes me.

We’re in the backseat of our Custom Cruiser, driving through Pennsylvania, on our way to the Jersey shore. It’s part of my family’s annual attempt to pretend that we like each other and want to be confined together for an eight-hour drive.

I squint to see the clock in the front seat; it’s hard to see clearly in the dark, but I think it says it’s about 3:45 a.m. We always leave for this trip at an ungodly hour, so that we avoid the rush hour traffic near Philly and get a full day at the beach upon our arrival.

I hear the familiar click of metal on metal as my father lights yet another cigarette and snaps shut his Zippo lighter; this must be his tenth smoke, and we only left Pittsburgh two hours ago.

It had been eerily silent for a while but for the hum of the engine, the whir of tires on pavement and the depressing tinny strains of the Mantovani string orchestra on the AM radio. But now my folks — no doubt assuming I, too, am asleep — are at it again, doing what they do best: fighting.

Look, I’m not asking for anything from you but your blessings, my mother almost pleads, an air of abandonment tainting her weary voice. She’s been lobbying for his approval to take a teaching job she’d been offered in the linguistics department at Pitt. We all expend a lot of wasted energy seeking my father’s elusive approval. It won’t affect you at all. It won’t affect the kids. I’ll work my schedule around everyone else’s lives, I promise.

I don’t care what you say. I said no, and that’s that. My father sucks a long hit on his unfiltered Camel. I see the fiery glow of its tip reflected in the windshield.

But what’s the harm in it? The sadness in her voice makes my insides feel empty. My mother bears a mantle of sorrow around her as if it was part of her biological make-up, as integral to her as a hump to a camel.

Because it’s not what we agreed to, goddammit.

My father could never be accused of being overly reasonable or amenable to change.

"Look, that was a long time ago. I’ve already practically raised the kids. They’re almost grown; they’re independent now. They don’t need me anymore. But I need to do something that will carry me through once the kids are gone." Her voice falters as she anxiously twines her long hair around her index finger.

"No!" my father pinches his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger and punctuates his brevity with another intense drag on his smoke.

Silence ensues as Moon River drones on in the background. I hate that song. It makes me want to jump out the window and end it all.

The tension coursing through the hazy, smoke-filled atmosphere in the car is palpable. I can feel my mother’s sorrow as if it were my own. I can feel the anguish of a lifetime of her yielding to my tyrannical father, to living beneath the boot heel of this man she must have loved at some point in her life.

My mother steels herself, and continues.

I can’t go on like this much longer, Finnegan.

Silence. My father consumes the final stubble of smoldering tobacco, holding his breath in like you might when smoking a joint. Like he was relishing the lingering sensation for a precious moment longer.

Smoke surges through his nostrils as my father grinds the butt of his Camel into the ashtray emphatically. He remains silent, leaving it to Mom to continue.

I think it’s time for us to try a trial separation, she whispers.

My father lets the sour taste of her words swirl around his mental palate, much as he’d do with a sip of wine from that pretentious sommelier’s cup that he loves to wear around his neck on a tacky gold chain at dinner parties. He’s unwilling to ingest them, however, and instead spits them back at her.

"I dare you, he sneers. I just dare you. But let me warn you right now: you will never get away from me. Not ever."

The weight of his vitriol is heavy on my heart, making a vise-like press of anxiety envelope me.

"And if you do leave, I promise you this: I’ll kill you. And I’ll get away with it, too." He speaks so matter-of-factly, as if he’s asking her how much further it is on the turnpike till we reach the Walt Whitman Bridge, rather than threatening her with bodily harm.

The silence returns, but for the quiet sobs my mother dares let escape her. The mournful strains of Somewhere Over the Rainbow are filling the night air now. I’m suffocated by the gloom it imparts on the already desperate atmosphere in the car. If ever a more hopeless song was written, I can’t imagine what it might be.

My father turns on the windshield wipers as a hard rain begins to pummel the car. My eyes, unwilling to yield to the late hour and the fatigue that comes with being awake in the middle of the night, burn with suppressed tears. To the steady beat of the wipers, I scratch the head of one of the dogs and silently wipe the moisture from my eyes. Sometimes there is such clarity in the dark of night.

Present Day

Chapter One

I’ve never admitted this to a soul — not even to Taylor, and Taylor knows as much about me as anyone ever will —but I’ve often wondered if I could have prevented it all. If I had said something to my father that night, anything, maybe he would have changed his mind. Or if I had said something to someone else, warned them. Maybe even if I’d just discussed it with my mother.

You may argue that this is a childish perspective from which to view the situation, perhaps even an arrogant one. After all, who was I to presume to be able to alter the reflexive cruelty in my father’s behavior, something that to him had become as natural a force as the flow of a mighty river? How could I, as but one small, detached island in the disconnected archipelago that was my family, affect any sort of positive change therein?

Somewhere, deep inside, where the light of truth dimly flickers, I know that my family was already irrevocably pointed down that course toward almighty destruction: a dirty, messy one in which no one would remain unscathed.

The verbal strafing that I witnessed that night, those many years ago, was merely the bellwether: in reality, I was sort of like the ship’s watch who spotted the iceberg in the path of the Titanic. By then, destiny’s cruel path had already been frozen irrevocably into place. And nothing that lonely little island of a child could have done would truly have changed a thing.

~~~~~

My mother used to always say that if you’ve blistered the roof of your mouth more than once biting into scalding food, you’re just too damned impatient.

It’s obvious, she’d say. If you’re so wound up that you can’t even wait for your meal to cool down to eat it, then you just need to chill out.

Great advice from someone who was wound as tight as a tourniquet, but advice nonetheless, I suppose. I chuckle to myself, realizing that while this is the first time I’ve thought about my mother in ages, instead of some soothing maternal words or song wrapping my memory in a cocoon of warm embrace, I’m blunted with one of her more dubious tidbits of advice.

I’m thinking about this as I sear the bejesus out of my palate biting into a piece of pizza while tailgating some unbelievably slow driver on the highway, flicking my lights on and off trying to get the old woman to move out of my way.

I’m not usually this uptight; I’m sure it has everything to do with where I’m headed: home. Or someplace that used to be home.

Whoever said you can’t go home again must have shared my DNA. Or at the very least some equally distressing familial experiences. Who in their right mind actually wants to go home again, anyhow?

The irony of my road warrior behavior does not escape me: being in a hurry to go somewhere I don’t want to go. I think my mother would get a good laugh out of this, at least. Me, cruising through Pennsylvania, rushing back for what? To have undisputable proof that a lamentable old woman is dead? To avenge the unavengeable? To be in the presence of a man I vowed I’d never see again?

I ponder this as my car wheezes in a gray haze of rain along the Pennsylvania Turnpike, a pork-project-gone-awry that remains in the same state of disrepair that it was in twenty years ago. That’s when I last made this trek home: en route to Taylor’s and my wedding. Back then it was a regular journey that came to be known to me as the Guilt Trip.

And although I haven’t returned since, perhaps I’ve been on a guilt trip all along. Who knows? But one thing is certain: my life, just like this damned turnpike, seems to be in about the same state of disrepair it was in just two short decades ago.

Half my life ago. Christ. Wasn’t it only yesterday that I was a wisp of a girl smiling in gapped-tooth innocence in my First Holy Communion photo? Holy Communion? I suspect I was really being prepared for a holy hell.

Twenty years. Hard to believe it’s been that long since I renounced my roots, determined to tuck away forever a painful past, a lingering sadness, and an unrequited bitterness. And yet here I find myself, spiraling backwards in time on this very same road that long ago transported my doomed family on an ostensibly happy little summer vacation.

~~~~~

I’d say the distinct pall of remembrance unveiled itself right about when I pulled in to fill up my tank in Breezewood, Pennsylvania, not far from the Maryland border.

Once upon a time, in happier days, Taylor and I used to laugh that as soon as we crossed into the state, dark clouds would gather, and the dismal Pennsylvania drizzle would commence. So by the time we’d get to Breezewood — the dubiously-named City of Motels — inevitably our car and our spirits would be sufficiently dampened to make the rest of the trip one of dread and drear. At least if we were going to visit my family.

Breezewood, with its kitschy gift shops and ubiquitous fast-food restaurants, was the gateway to freedom when I was a child. It was the must-stop destination on our way out of the orange smog-choked industrial armpit in which I grew up.

Any place but Pittsburgh was how I saw things: a normal reaction for a kid who spent a childhood plunged into a hostile world swirling with chronic tension, unyielding animosity, and calculated reprisals.

My mind wanders to the many times we traversed this very highway. No matter what the time of year, our road trips all took on a hauntingly similar scenario. We were all cloistered in the backseat — my brothers Grover, behind Pops, strategically seated where my dad couldn’t readily reach him, and Wendell, the backstabbing goody-two-shoes weasel that he was, fulfilling his mandate as the Chosen Child, except when Pops wasn’t looking. I sat between them, like some sort of demilitarized zone, tasked with keeping the enemy forces, from the front and the flanks, at bay.

While Grover was busy diminishing breathable air in the backseat with an ongoing assault of flatulence, Wendell would pinch, hit, smack, twist, or grab me, just out of sight of my father’s spare set of eyes in the back of his head. Mom usually sat in silence in the front seat, voluntarily oblivious to the goings on in the back seat, and probably deliberately opting to be equally heedless of the stranger in the front seat next to her.

I remember one road trip, to a wedding in New York — my mother’s youngest sister was getting married for the third time. I don’t quite know why we kids were dragged along, as all we knew how to do was battle with one another, which made for unpleasant company, at the very least. Maybe my mother wanted us there as a buffer between her and Pops; perhaps our skirmishes were preferable to theirs.

The minute we were packed into the car, the fighting commenced.

Moooooommmm, Reese is taking up part of my seat, Wendell bleated. Wendell was a master complainer, who elevated the skill to near-professional status. Sometimes he even whined about me breathing too loudly.

I was, as always, wedged between him and Grover, my legs teetering on the hump in the floor of the car, my thigh muscles grown jittery from trying to unnaturally balance my limbs atop the narrow isthmus so that my brothers didn’t hit me when my straggly little legs invaded their terrain.

"Am not," I countered.

Wendell glared at me, flicking me on my temple with his forefinger. Whenever my parents weren’t paying attention — which was often — Wendell resorted to physical retaliation.

I began to cry.

Goddammit, if I have to pull this car over, you two will regret it. My father’s stern tone of voice could scare the dead from their graves. His threats were not hollow, and on more than one occasion he did pull off the highway and spank the three of us, not distinguishing between the aggressors and the innocents.

I was a sensitive child, however, and at first Pop’s threats only elicited more tears. Now, traditionally, fathers have a soft spot for their daughters, particularly if they’re the only girl, and a crying one, at that. Not so with mine.

Reese, I’m telling you, he’d growl through pursed lips, which clutched his ubiquitous cigarette. I will remove this belt and bend you over my knee, right here, in front of all these cars driving by.

He would, and I knew it. That leather belt of his did not so much command respect from me as it engendered a deep and abiding loathing of the man who wielded the weapon. I quickly collected my emotions, packing them away in my mental suitcase: a skill that would serve me well in the future. For the rest of the trip, I remained silent — as Wendell taunted me and Grover gassed me — passively allowing my brothers to poison my existence just that much more, powerless to do anything about it, for fear of my father’s assured wrath.

~~~~

One of my father’s steadfast mandates was that there were to be no bathroom stops, at least until the gas tank had run nearly dry. Too bad, as for me there was some mysterious converse relationship between the tank draining of and my bladder filling with liquid, so much so that by the time we would finally stop for gas, I could barely emerge from the car, I was in such need-to-pee pain.

Mom, I have to go to the bathroom, I’d whisper, hoping I’d find an ally in her. I knew it was safer to convey the message through a conduit, rather than speak directly to my father, even if deep down, I knew she had no pull. Mom was relegated to sitting in silence in the front seat looking pretty; my mother’s cool beauty, the elegant curve of her nose, her soft auburn curls held no sway with my father. She was a glorified hood ornament.

We have another hundred miles till we get there, so just hold it in, Pops would snarl.

Of course, in his defense, a hundred miles went faster for him than for most people. Throughout my childhood, Pops sought out a succession of devices to ensure that he could virtually exceed the speed of sound without fear of detection by a cop: he avoided them at all costs. Having spent some years living in the Deep South, Pops knew the best way to avoid police intervention wasn’t necessarily by obeying the law, but rather circumventing it. And if there was anyone who could figure out how to avoid the law, it was Pops, the dashboard fascist, that fat little crew-cutted man with a glacial gaze and an even frostier heart.

~~~~

I shake my head to eradicate the dismal thoughts that have taken over. Like it or not, I’m headed toward Pittsburgh, a gunnysack full of bad blood in tow, with a perplexing befuddlement at how on Earth I came to be driving back to my past in a possibly misguided effort to improve my future.

Chapter Two

I got the call a couple of days ago from Ginger. God, I hadn’t talked to her since the fateful day. In a million years I never would have expected to hear from her again. I don’t think I really ever wanted to, actually.

But sure enough, it was Ginger’s voice that transformed me, took me back to a time of hope and a time of despair, the two concepts vying for primacy in my life on a daily basis back then. Sadly, it seems that despair ultimately triumphed.

I was putting away