A Many Splintered Thing / Day 9: “Don’t. There are cameras on the gate and the guys at the gatehouse can see.”

Well, it's unanimous! No one likes Jasmine. And to that I say...good! You weren't supposed to. So I take your dislike of her as a compliment. Now we find out what's changed. Any guesses before you read? Hopefully we're taking a left turn when you expected a right...
Let me know ;)
XOXOSommer
Wine country. He had to laugh as he piloted his old Wagoneer through spectacular landscapes past expensive cars. But not all were expensive. He smiled, eyeing a vintage Woody as it passed by followed, not long after, by a VW bus that made his Jeep look like a brand spanking new ride.
“Leave it to Jasmine to live in fucking wine country.”
According to the GPS he was only a mile from the address she’d given him. However, he came upon a gate marked Curved Leaf Vineyards. He stopped and texted her.
AT THE GATE. NOT BUZZING IN. COME DOWN.
All the hair on the back of his neck stood at attention and her words echoed in his ears. Something has changed. We need to talk.
He sat there, watching Alice who patiently watched the traffic.
“Thank god one female in my life is calm and reliable,” he told her. She smiled. At least it looked like she smiled. “I had forgotten how things had a way of getting twisted and complicated with Jasmine.”Another smile from the dog. A pant. A dip of her head that looked like commiseration.
“I think my brain shut all that out. I was remembering the sex.” He looked at her. “You’re young and innocent,” he said. “At least I think you’re young, it’s hard to tell. But I’ll spare you information about the sex. Let’s just say it was filthy most of the time.” He put his head in his hands. Suddenly his whole head seemed to ache. Probably with the weight of what he’d just done. What he’d set himself up for. Here he was on the opposite coast of where he started at the beck and call of a woman who most would call spoiled and some would call finicky. No job, no house, no friends…no clue.
“I am a moron,” he told Alice, and she licked his hand.
His phone went off and he looked at it.
I CAN’T!
He answered. Clean, no bullshit, concise: YOU CAN AND YOU WILL OR I TURN AROUND AND HEAD HOME. PERIOD.
Then he sat back and waited. The phone finally buzzed and one word appeared.
FINE
Caleb was studying what he had to admit was a spectacular horizon when the gates began to swing open. He assumed it was Jasmine coming until he saw a big-ass red pickup truck pulling abreast of him. “Lost, friend?”
Both men did a double take and then Harrison Day was smiling at Caleb from his I-think-I’m-a-cowboy picke-em-up truck as Caleb’s Uncle Tom used to call them.
“Caleb!” Harrison called, smiling.
It threw Caleb more than he could begin to comprehend. “Harrison,” he said, warily.
“How are you? How was your trip?”
Caleb opened his mouth and then quickly closed it. He even glanced at the dog as if for either moral support or input.
“Uh…it was fine. I guess.”
Harrison talked as if he knew Caleb was coming. Even like he’d been expecting him. Caleb prided himself on usually knowing what the fuck was going on around him at any given time. At that moment he was utterly stumped and not too proud to admit it. At least to himself.
“Want to follow me up?”
“Is that…” Caleb petered off, unsure of how to phrase it.
“Most of that is driveway.”
“Driveway?” Caleb repeated. Amazed.
“Yeah. Driveway. Heh.” Harrison laughed.
In his head Caleb heard: Married? Yeah—married—jeesh! A throwback memory to the bad old days. One of the handfuls of beloved escapist movies his mother would play endlessly on cable, or if she was lucky enough to own it, on VHS when his father got bad. Which was often.
“That’s okay. I’ll wait. She said—“Did he admit this part, he wondered. He was so confused. “She’d come down,” he finished weakly. Alice put her head down and shut her eyes.
“Okay, then. I guess I’ll see you shortly.” Harrison tossed him a wave and began up the driveway in his shiny red truck.
“What. The. Fuck?” Caleb said.
He had to wait another ten minutes, alternately looking at the scenery, the traffic and the dog. He checked his phone a thousand times until he spotted a little yellow sports car ripping toward him beyond the elaborate gates.
“Jas—“ he said under his breath.
The gates swung open once again and the car—a Triumph Spitfire circa mid 70s from the looks of it—zipped out and parked by the shrubbery that bordered the fence. She got out, long dark hair flying in the soft breeze. She wore a hot pink dress that looked simple and probably cost a fucking fortune. Silver sandals flashed in the sunshine as she headed toward him, her mouth set in a tight line he recognized as frustration, anger and just a hint of sadness.
“Jesus,” he said. “What is going on?”
Alice looked at him but didn’t move. She seemed tense. It was Jasmine. Her body language was making him tense and she hadn’t even reached the Jeep. He thought maybe he should unlock the door, open it, get out. Take her in his arms? No, that didn’t see realistic at the moment.
She got to the window and practically hissed at him. “Sorry. I’m sorry. Something happened.”
“What the fuck is going on?” He put his hand on her arm, thinking perhaps to draw her in. Maybe a god damn kiss after three thousand miles and change.
But she shook her head once and whispered, “Don’t. There are cameras on the gate and the guys at the gatehouse can see.”
“Jasmine, do you want to fill me in? I mean, seriously. What’s going on? I think I’ve skipped over pissed and fast forwarded right to angry. Truly angry.”
“I told daddy I was leaving Harrison. Told him what Harrison had done—who Harrison had done. I figured if he knew my husband was cheating on me, then he’d let me out of this and not hold the money thing over my head.” She put her head down for a second, dark hair falling over her face, shielding those bright eyes of hers.
“But he didn’t.”
“No. He didn’t. He told me if Harrison’s messing around bothered me, I should do the tit for tat thing and take a lover.” She finally looked right at him. “My father told me that. My father!”
Caleb was starting to catch on. “So…”
“He’s invested a lot of money in this vineyard. He’s invested a lot of money in a lot of things with Harrison. He’s apparently invested me in it.”
“You could just walk away, you know.”
“Caleb—“
“It’s the same old song and dance,” he said, feeling his jaw clamp down. His back teeth sang from the pressure. “Poor me, poor me, I can’t, I can’t. Nobody loves me. Nobody cares.” He was trying to keep his voice low, his mood level. But he was failing. He knew because Alice whimpered softly.
“You don’t—“
“I don’t understand,” he said. “Which is true. Because I’ve never had everything handed to me. You asked me to leave my life, my job, my friends and drive out here to be with you because you changed your mind. But you really didn’t. You were just looking for your father to let you off the hook. You weren’t taking control of your life, you thought you’d found a loophole, Jas. You thought you’d found a way to keep all the easy and get rid of the hard. We’d all like that in life,” he laughed. “Wouldn’t it be fucking grand? Sadly, it doesn’t really work that way.”
She looked like she would cry and instead of feeling sympathy he felt the urge to choke her until her bright reality-blind eyes bugged.
“Caleb, I’m sorry.”
That was a miracle right here, an apology from her, but it was also too little too late. “Now, what the fuck am I supposed to do?” He rapped a hand against the steering wheel and Alice whimpered again. He felt bad for her and reached out a hand to soothe her. “And why is your philandering husband acting like he’s expecting me? It’s like the Twilight Zone.”
“I told him you were coming,” she mumbled.
“Pardon me? Why the hell would you do that?”
“Because I knew you were already almost here. And I wanted you to come, I thought maybe we could, um, work something out.” She tugged a piece of hair. He saw where this was going. She wanted the dust to clear and then for him to be that lover her father told her to take. Only daddy and Harrison could never know it was him.
She hurried on, “I wanted to see you. But I had talked to daddy already and…Caleb! I didn’t know what to do! I knew I’d be leaving you in the lurch if I just said don’t come.”
“Understatement of the year.”
“So, I told him I hired you because you’d met someone out here. You wanted to move out here but had nowhere to go and no job prospects. He thinks we’re helping you…with a job, and a place.”
He just looked at her. Caleb found himself at a loss for words. Truly. Finally, when she looked up at him, trying to appear innocent and frail so he wouldn’t yell, he just said, “You’re insane. You told him I met someone?”
“Online,” she said.
“Online,” he repeated.
“Well, actually, I told him I sort of introduced you both.”
“This just keeps getting better. I met someone online via your relationship charity and want to move out here to be with her. Someone,” he said again, softly.
“Yeah, about that. I told him who that someone is.” She sighed.
“Oh, Christ, this should be good…”

photo credit: millerm217 via photopin cc

P.S. In case you don't get my newsletter, I did want to address this. Because some people seem concerned for me. Which is sweet.

From my newsletter:

Several people have written to ask why? Why would you write a free live novel now? With all that's going on? One person even said, "when you need to earn money the most". LOL. Well, I love when people worry about me but I'll break it down.

1. I'm selfish. Doing something like this takes me out of myself, out of my head, out of the weirdness that can crop up here on any given day.
2. I LOVE my readers. I love them so much that hearing over the years (I did Wanderlust in 2011) how much they enjoyed Wanderlust, I wanted to do it again. To experience that journey with them.
3. I believe that putting yourself out there, giving of yourself, and trusting that you'll get what you need is the way to go. So I give folks a novel. Maybe they like it so much and are impatient (like moi) and go buy one of my books. Maybe they go mad and buy all my books and load nothing but me on their Kindle and go on a Marsden book binge and...*cough* that might be a bit much. Let's just stick with the maybe they like me and go buy a book part.