The House on Sandstone Read online

  Justine's struggle with sexual issues was not the primary reason for her weekly appointments in Lexington. Her biggest challenges were reconciling the enormous guilt that plagued her in virtually every aspect of her life–her relationship with her mother; the failure of her marriage; but most of all, the loss of her children. She was a cosmic mess, an emotional weathervane torn between doing what she needed to do for herself, and what was expected of her by everyone else. Working with Valerie for three years, she had begun to give herself permission to pursue some of the things she needed in life. But her children's needs always took precedence, not just because they were kids and she was responsible for them; but because doing right by them was the only way she could be truly satisfied with herself.

  And now, the therapist was clearly frustrated with her, having assumed that all of the issues were already on the table. But as they went over what Justine had related in her story of Carly Griffin, she acknowledged that her history with her old high school friend was not insignificant to the person she was today.

  She needed to confront this part of her past, giving a lot of thought to how she wanted it resolved. Was it really fair to beat herself up over how she'd acted twenty-five years ago?

  Teenagers did a lot of stupid things; Carly would understand that, even though she had been more mature back then than their peers. Valerie had advised Justine to openly accept responsibility so that she could move on, but to think carefully about rekindling the friendship if it meant taking on the old guilt.

  Justine drew a hot bath and pulled off her clothes. Easing into the tub, she tried as she did every night to empty her head of troubling thoughts, symbolically washing them from her 24

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  body with a soapy cloth. There was always the bottle of capsules in the medicine cabinet if she couldn't calm herself enough to sleep–Valerie had said she shouldn't feel guilty about taking them when she needed them–but to Justine, the dependence on the sleep aid was just another surrender to her loss of self-control.

  Chapter 3

  For the fifth time, Carly walked down the hall to the full-length mirror on the end wall.

  The black slacks definitely looked better than the tan with her black zippered half boots, and the ivory cashmere pullover was a nice contrast. At her mother's suggestion, she'd taken off the t-shirt underneath because it was too prominent at the open collar of the polo-neck sweater. With her favorite jade pendant from Shanghai, she felt dressed up, but not overly so. This outfit was probably best for what Justine had suggested: driving into Lexington to eat at one of the nice steak restaurants.

  Leland had steak restaurants too, the kind where you picked up a tray and walked through the line to get your drink and silverware and to place your order. There were all sorts of fast food restaurants, pizza parlors, a couple of barbecue places, and a fish camp. These places tended to focus more on expedience than atmosphere. Justine thought that if they were going to have a chance to talk–really talk–it would be nice to have a little more privacy and decorum.

  Carly had been surprised on Friday when she'd returned from a run on the delivery truck with her dad to find a message from Justine. She returned the call and they made the plans for Sunday afternoon. Justine would drive, and she would swing by and pick her up at–

  "Carly? Justine's here."

  From her bedroom window, she could see the sedan pulling into the drive. She was surprised when Justine got out of the car and started up the sidewalk; for some reason, she had expected her to just wait in the driveway. Carly grabbed her billfold and hurried to the living room where her mom had already opened the front door.

  "Justine! How nice to see you again."

  "Hi, Mrs. Griffin. It's nice to see you too. I've been meaning to get by the store to see about ordering one of those new recliners for my mother. She saw one on TV that stands you up when you push a button."

  "Oh yes, we have a few of those. They come in a lot of nice colors and fabrics. And they're very nice for older people."

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  "That's just what my mother needs–her very own electric chair."

  "Hi, Justine." As their guest had been talking, Carly had been measuring her attire against that of the stylish redhead. Justine wore navy slacks and heels, with a white silk shirt that buttoned up the front, its collar ruffled and standing up around her neck. Her leather coat was chocolate brown, beautiful with the auburn highlights in her hair.

  "Carly…hi to you too. That's a beautiful sweater. I bet you didn't find that in Leland."

  The blonde woman chuckled. "St. Tropez. I vacationed there a couple of years ago."

  Justine shook her head in awe. "It just amazes me that you've been to all those places. I can't wait to hear about it. You ready?"

  "You girls have fun."

  "Thanks, Mrs. Griffin. Oh, and I want to apologize for that little mishap with your bill last week."

  "No problem at all. You should have seen the hideous sofa I got one time when I flipped the numbers on an order form." Leaning in, she whispered, "Margie Helton loved it!"

  "No accounting for tastes, I guess. I'll see you again soon, okay? I mean it about coming in to order that chair."

  Justine and Carly stepped onto the porch as the older woman closed the door behind them.

  "Wait, I better get my coat." Carly went back inside to the hall closet, pulling out a black leather jacket similar to the brown one her companion wore.

  "Carly?"

  "Yeah, Mama?"

  "Have fun tonight, sweetheart. Listen, I know you and Justine have some…hurt feelings and the like to work out, but…"

  "But what?"

  "I think Justine's had a hard time, especially these last few years. If you ask me, I'd say she really needs a friend."

  Funny…Carly had sensed the same thing.

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  **********

  Carly slid into the front passenger seat of the dark blue Acura TL, at once impressed with the fresh smell of the tan leather. "Nice car. Is it new?"

  "I've had it about a year and a half. When my son got his driver's license, my ex and I agreed that he should drive a hand-me-down instead of a new one. I don't see any sense in spoiling kids with new cars. 'Course, boys that age would rather walk than drive a ten-year-old Park Avenue, so I let him trade it for a used Volkswagen and I ended up with a new car…and a new car payment to go along with it."

  "It's hard to believe you have a son old enough to drive."

  "Oh, yeah. Trey turns eighteen in January. Emmy was sixteen last July." Keeping one hand on the wheel, Justine fumbled in her purse for her wallet, opening it to show off her photos. With a click, a tiny spotlight lit the space on the passenger side.

  "Wow, he's handsome, and she's a doll." To Carly, both teens had the best of their mother's features, her thick reddish-brown hair and sterling blue eyes.

  "Thank you. I think so too, but I'm biased."

  "They really are. So what are they like?"

  "Well…they're very bright. In fact, they both know everything, or so I'm told."

  "Oh, that sounds familiar."

  "You think?"

  "I think."

  Justine chuckled. "Trey's a lot like his daddy. They both like sports…and teenage girls."

  Carly found herself nodding absently until she realized the implication. Before she could respond, the proud mother continued.

  "He gets pretty good grades, and he's been accepted already at UK. He thinks he wants to study law like JT. That would suit him. I've always said he'd argue with a signpost."

  "He sounds like a typical teenager to me."

  "He is. He's a good kid."

  "And Emmy?"

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  Justine sighed. "Emmy's…special. Not that Trey's not special, he is. But Emmy is one of those rare kids who sees things other kids don't see. She's compassionate and
empathetic…kind of soulful, if you know what I mean. There were times that it was hard for me to know which one of us was the mother."

  From the wistful tone, Carly felt like she was getting an intimate glimpse of Justine Hall, her remarks as revealing as any she might share. She was settling into a comfortable familiarity with her old friend when the subject was abruptly shifted.

  "So did you have a nice Thanksgiving?"

  "Yes. My mom cooked a big dinner and we stuffed ourselves 'til we were sick. Then we watched the Bengals get killed by the Titans and it depressed us all so much that we ate again."

  Justine laughed. "Yeah, Trey was glued to that as well."

  "So your Thanksgiving was nice?"

  "We spent it with my mother," she groaned.

  "Gosh, you make that sound like so much fun."

  "Oh, it was. Did you ever meet my mother?"

  "She came into the store once, I think. She had us order a love seat, but when we delivered it, she didn't like it."

  "Why am I not surprised?"

  "It happens sometimes. We kept it in the showroom for awhile and somebody bought it."

  Carly remembered another detail–that Mrs. Hall had thrown a fit to have her non-refundable deposit on the special order item returned–but there was no point in bringing that up with Justine twenty-six years after the fact.

  "Well, that sounds like typical Marian Hall to me. And I bet she embarrassed herself so bad that she's never been back in."

  "I wouldn't know."

  "Trust me. She won't go to half the stores in town because she's shown her tail too many times with that temper of hers. She makes either me or Mary Beth do most of her shopping so she won't have to show her face. Of course, she says getting out's too hard on her, but she can go to that country club every single day for lunch."

  "Your mom sounds like a real piece of work."

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  "She is. And I think my kids are confused about whose mother she is, the way she goes on about how much she misses having JT at all the family things. She asked me this year how I'd feel about inviting him and J2 for Thanksgiving dinner, and I told her she could have him or me."

  "J2?"

  "Never mind…long story." Justine wheeled off the two-lane highway onto Interstate 75.

  They'd be in Lexington in another half hour. "Anyway, before she could answer, Trey told her that they were going to her mother's house in Frankfort, so I never got to hear which one of us she'd have picked."

  "Surely…."

  "Not surely."

  "So how's Mary Beth?" Carly remembered that Justine's sister was a freshman when they were seniors.

  "Mary Beth is just fine." Perfection personified. "She's married to Bucky Ball. You remember him, don't you?"

  That didn't compute at all. "She married Bucky?"

  "He got his teeth fixed."

  "Why didn't he get his name changed?"

  "Well, his real name's Herman."

  "Bucky Ball…Herman Ball…It's a toss-up."

  "You think that's bad, how would you like to be Mary Beth Hall Ball?"

  Carly snorted.

  "Anyway, they have three little boys that I like a whole lot. The boys come to visit me sometimes when Mary Beth's at the end of her rope."

  "Are you and Mary Beth close?"

  "Not especially, but that's not really her fault. I guess I was always Dad's favorite and when he died, she didn't want to share Mom."

  "I heard about your dad. I'm really sorry." Dr. Gordon Hall had kept a family practice in Leland for over forty years. He'd been struck by a car when he stopped on the side of the road to help a stranded motorist. Practically everyone in town had known him, but Carly 29

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  had met him only once, when she'd fallen off the back of the delivery truck, and her mother insisted that she be examined for injuries. She remembered him as a very nice man, even more so because he was Justine's father.

  "Thanks. It's been nine years and I still miss him like it was yesterday." The driver's mood had gone somber.

  "I'm sure it was a very hard time for you."

  "It was…but I had JT…and the kids…and they were all supportive through everything."

  Justine let out a half chuckle. "JT could be a real rat, but I've got to hand it to him. He always comes through when it really matters, even now."

  **********

  "This is a nice place." Carly admired the ambient setting of the college-town restaurant, obviously a favorite watering hole of the sophisticated faculty and staff.

  "It's one of my favorites." Justine had been here with JT for their tenth anniversary and more recently, on a couple of dates with Mike Pritchard. The last time she'd been here was about four years ago, and she'd spent half the night eyeing the beautiful blonde at the table directly behind Mike. That was her last date with a man, the night she realized that for all his good qualities–he was handsome, interesting, and kind–she was never going to be sexually drawn to him or any other man like she was to that total stranger at the table behind him.

  "Do you come to Lexington a lot?"

  "Pretty often…once a week or so," assuming that her visits with Valerie should count. "I thought this would be a good place for us to talk."

  Carly picked up on the nervousness in Justine's voice, and remembered her mother's words about Justine needing a friend. A real friend would lay to rest any worries about slights of the past.

  "Listen, Justine…I was really glad that you wanted to get together again after all this time. Of all the people in Leland, you've always been…pretty special to me, even when we weren't close. It means a lot to me to have a chance to be friends again." I forgive you.

  "Oh, Carly." Justine tucked her hair behind her ear on one side, hoping to mask the swipe at the tear that had gathered in the corner of her eye. "You were special to me too. I was…so immature and…scared about stuff."

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  "It's okay. It's all forgotten. Let's just go from here, okay?"

  Justine shook her head. "No, I have to say this first. I'm…really sorry for how I acted back then. You didn't deserve–"

  "Justine, we were just teenagers. It was a confusing time for all of us. I was scared about things too." Carly reached across the table and touched her fingers lightly to the other woman's wrist. "Fortunately, we outgrew all that, and now we really do know everything, instead of just thinking we do."

  The redhead smiled at that. The blonde had always been quick to ease things with a joke.

  "Look at you, Carly. Look at all you've done with yourself. The rest of us leaned on each other so much we didn't know how to act on our own. We went off to college and didn't have all our little friends to copy anymore. And you went off on your own and took the world by the tail." Justine wasn't going to contrast that with her personal failures. This was Carly's moment. "I'm just so proud of you…so proud of all the stuff you've done."

  "Thank you. But most of it was luck. I got recruited by Worldwide Workforce during my senior year at U of L. To be honest, the only reason I've been able to hang with them so long is because I don't really have any ties that keep me from going from one project to the next, wherever they want to send me." Carly was sure that's why some of the others she worked with were given stateside jobs. "So I suppose I've had a pretty successful career, but some people wouldn't consider that a successful life."

  Justine couldn't help but reflect on the irony that she had been voted Most Likely to Succeed, and her life was an absolute mess. "Well it is if you're happy. We all grew up thinking–I guess I should speak for myself–I grew up thinking that I had to have somebody else in my life to complete me, otherwise I'd be a colossal failure. Instead, I find out that I can live just fine without a husband…especially the one I had. It was like it was all a false promise, that you needed this and that to be happy. It just wasn't true."

  Carly had been waiting for
a segue to ask how her friend was really doing, but the somber tone suggested that she needed to tread carefully. It was clear that Justine was uncomfortable talking about herself.

  "But I don't want to talk about that depressing stuff. I want to hear about all these exciting places you've been to and what you've seen. You know, I wanted to write to you the last time I talked to your mom, but I just didn't know where to start."

  Carly took a lot of pleasure in hearing this. Over the years, she'd written half a dozen postcards that never made it into the mailbox. "I wish you had. I would have been thrilled to hear from you."

  For the next two hours, Carly brought Justine up to speed with what she had been doing since she left Leland.

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  "Okay, let me see if I've got this straight: First, you went to…Bolivia, then to India, then Bangkok. In Bangkok, you got promoted to team leader because your boss had a heart attack."

  "While with a prostitute. Don't forget that part."

  "Right. And then next you went to…Estonia. Where exactly is Estonia?"

  "It's in northeastern Europe, near Finland. It's colder than a witch's tit."

  Justine laughed. "Okay, and after that, you went back to Bolivia, then to Peru, Johannesburg, Shanghai, and Israel."

  "Nicely done, Miss Hall. You win the kewpie doll." Carly had shared the details of her job and how she'd lived among the locals in most of the places where she'd worked.

  "So where do you go next?"

  "Madrid. There's a Japanese computer company that wants to open a technology plant to service Europe. Madrid's labor costs are lower than most European capitals, and it has a large university enrollment. It should be a pretty smooth job…at least not as challenging as competing for textile workers in Bangkok, or high-tech types in Shanghai."