Where Wild Peaches Grow: A Novel by Cade Bentley

Author:Cade Bentley [Bentley, Cade]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: 2022-08-29T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Twenty Years Ago

Jasper Davenport had lost his daughter trying to save her.

Chicago, where he’d gone to collect Nona, might have been somewhere he would have run off to as well. Tall buildings. Streets full of people. Everybody in a hurry.

And pretty women were everywhere he looked. He had a thing for a good-looking woman. That had been his downfall. What had brought his marriage to a screeching halt. Not the actual doing of it but the getting caught of it.

In those days, Jasper—husband, father, breadwinner—had been a janitor at the same junior high school he’d attended as a boy. He’d often say, not complaining, that he hadn’t come far in life, just gone around in a circle. He didn’t make much money, but he’d found a way enough times than not to bring a little extra in.

Drinking and gambling, Jasper’s way of relaxing. Having a good time. Saturday nights. After work. A time to unwind. Cuss and spit. Things he couldn’t do in a house filled with girls.

And nothing much beat a little Johnnie Walker Red or CC and Coke, a pair of dice or a deck of cards, a couple of buddies, and some fine, sweet-smelling women. Ones who didn’t care he was married. Some of them got clingy, but he didn’t have no problem shaking them off. Those things were a release, one Jasper claimed he needed, and as long as they weren’t done in excess, they were something any good woman might give in to letting her man do.

That had been his reasoning, although at the time he chuckled at the thought that Cat would approve of some of the things he did with those women.

Women. In his later years, especially after that stroke had hampered his mobility and some of his thinking, he’d smile—the only thing left he could do—about the times he’d had with women. A few of those thoughts made him blush.

He was one of the ones who’d admit, after all the mistakes had already been made, that those were the kinds of things a person looks back on and knows he should have done differently. He’d gotten the prettiest girl in high school, but that just made him want more.

He hadn’t wanted much of anything from other women. He’d gotten himself a good catch. Other women were just to hang out with. Something to do. Have a good time with. And what most women, Cat in particular, didn’t understand was that sometimes a good time meant giving them the satisfaction they were craving.

“Why’d you do it?” his mother had asked him when he came to pick up the girls after Cat had left.

The only answer he came up with was, “Because I wanted to.”

“And while you’re being so flippant,” Opal had told her grown son, “I hope you’ve learned that the things you want to do have consequences.”

But he hadn’t let it show to her, or to anyone, how much those consequences had deeply hurt. And for years, he blamed it all on Johnny Miller and that botched robbery.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.