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Jack brought his mind to the present, looking back over his shoulder to smile at the boy who’d changed his life. Who’d made him decide maybe living was worthwhile after all. Whom he was afraid to spend too much time with.
“Did you bring homework with you?”
The boy rolled his eyes, their whiskey color reminding him of Arlie’s. “I did. It’s algebra and it’s probably going to be the sole reason I’m never accepted to a reputable college.”
“Good. Tucker can help you.”
Tucker tossed Jack a look of outrage. “I flunked algebra. In my freshman year. Remember? He’s in the eighth grade and can already run rings around me in anything mathematical.”
“I know you flunked it, but you did okay when you took it the second time. I, on the other hand, only passed it because Arlie helped me.”
“She’s a girl and she helped you with algebra?” Charlie scoffed.
“She did.” Jack unbuckled his seat belt when Tucker pulled in at the winery. “And I double dog dare you to take that tone with her. Unless she’s changed a lot, you won’t come out of it real well.”
Charlie squinted. “Double dog dare?”
Tucker laughed. “Don’t do it, Charlie. You’ll be sorry.”
Twenty minutes later, having bought two bottles of wine and a carryout pan of apple dumplings Charlie had salivated over, they pulled into the driveway of Christensen’s Cove. Jack sat still in the passenger seat, a white-knuckle grip on the bottle of zinfandel in his lap. He met his brother’s eyes across the seat. “I don’t know if I can do this. Or if I should.” He was aware, peripherally, that Charlie had got out of the car, but he was incapable of calling him back. He seemed to be just as unable to move. “I should go.”
“No.” Tucker gripped his shoulder hard. “You’ve done that. To her and to me both. It didn’t work worth beans for any of us. It’s time to stay, Jack.”
Charlie was already taking off his jacket when they stepped through the front door of Gianna’s house. “We brought enough apple dumplings for everyone, but if Dad doesn’t eat his, I already called dibs on it. Did you really help him with his algebra?”
“I did.” Arlie hung up his coat. “But in all fairness, he helped me with biology—I couldn’t get the whole mitosis and meiosis thing—and Holly helped us all with English.” She grinned at her sister, the expression all delightful wickedness that made Jack’s heart do the jumpy thing again. “However, she charged us.”
Holly nodded. “Believe me, Charlie, I earned every nickel of it, too.”
“Is there any chance you’d help me with my algebra?” Charlie asked Arlie. “Dad said Tucker could, but I don’t trust him much.”
“Well, sure. We’ll let...uh...your dad and Tucker help Holly with the dishes and we’ll do your homework.” Arlie put an arm through his. “Let’s go in and talk to Gianna. I hope you like spaghetti—she cooks enough for an army—and her bread sticks are the best thing since burgers and fries.” She tossed a smile over her shoulder at Tucker, ignoring Jack entirely. When they walked into the kitchen, there was a definitive martial aspect to her posture.
Dinner was more comfortable than Jack expected, even though it was obvious Arlie had nothing whatever to say to him. It shouldn’t have bothered him, since he knew very well it was his own fault, but it did. When they’d spent time together the evening before, it had felt as though one of the letters he’d written had been sent and delivered. She’d understood and he’d been forgiven.
But he hadn’t been. Of course he hadn’t. Forgiveness for sixteen years didn’t come about in a single day, especially when a whopping lie of omission was added to the mix. He asked himself once again, in the long span of silence between Arlie and himself, why he hadn’t just told her about his marriage and his son.
He knew the answer. Because it had been the ultimate betrayal. Raising a family had been the life Arlie wanted and he’d been ambivalent about, yet here they were in their midthirties and he had Charlie and she had a cat.
She was nice to Charlie, though, and that was what mattered. By the time dinner was finished, the kid had charmed her last bread stick off her plate and extracted a promise from Holly to show him how her prosthetic foot worked as soon as the dishes were done and he and Arlie had finished his algebra. When Jack objected to Charlie’s over-the-top curiosity, the Gallagher women had all rolled their eyes at him, so he’d thrown up his parental hands and eaten another helping of spaghetti.
“You should either bottle this sauce for public sale or be arrested for leading innocent young men astray with it,” he told Gianna.
She laughed. “I do bottle it, but not for public sale. I think the girls and I spend most of August canning tomatoes in the form of sauce, juice, salsa and catsup.”
“Catsup?” Charlie’s eyes widened. “You make catsup?”
Gianna nodded. “And Arlie and Holly help me. It’s kind of like homework—they don’t want to, but they do it.”
“That is so cool. I had to google a tutorial to show my mom how to open the Heinz bottle.”
“Charlie!” Jack objected, although he couldn’t stop the snort of laughter that went with the remonstrance. Tracy was the worst cook in the Northeast Kingdom, and she made no pretense at being anything more.
“She’s a lawyer,” Charlie explained to his captivated audience. “She says she can’t cook because she has to use her legal prowess to keep me from getting arrested for being a smart-a—”
“Charlie!” Jack and Tuck spoke together that time.
He gave them a withering look. “Smart aleck. That’s all I was going to say.” He turned his orthodontic-wonder smile on Gianna. “May I have more?”
When the dishes were washed and Charlie’s homework done, Holly demonstrated removing her foot, then put it back on and made Charlie dance the length of the house’s center hall with her.
“We have to go,” said Jack regretfully when Charlie fell against him on the deacon’s bench near the front door. He hugged him, breathing in the scent of him. “You can come back for Thanksgiving. Your mom already said.”
“Splendid.” Gianna handed a bag of leftovers to Tuck and kissed his cheek. “Then you’ll be able to spend the day with us.”
“Thank you.” Jack got to his feet and took her hands. “For everything.”
Everyone hugged Charlie and the Llewellyns left on a chorus of goodbyes. The last one out the door, Jack finally caught Arlie’s eyes and held firm, as if to say, I’m sorry. It was as though no one else was there.
She looked away, the stiffness of her demeanor making her taller, straighter. “Good night, Jack. Be safe.”
Be safe. He wondered if she said those words whenever anyone left. He did; Tucker did. He wouldn’t be surprised if the other survivors did, too. In some ways, prom night would never end.
CHAPTER THREE
JACK FLEW BACK to Vermont with Charlie the next day. Tracy met them at the airport and they all had dinner together before Tracy took Charlie back to the town house they shared.
Jack checked on his house, standing outside it for a long moment and reflecting that no matter how much he liked the two-hundred-year-old brick Cape Cod, it should have been a family house. And wasn’t, because he only had a family on occasional weekends and vacations.
After a restless night, he drove his own car back to Miniagua, spending the night somewhere in the middle of Ohio. He pulled into the keyhole drive of the Dower House behind the Rent-A-Wife van late in the evening of the second day. There were lights on in both the first and second stories of the house—only the attic and basement windows were dark. He frowned at the clock on the dash of his SUV. He didn’t know how long her workdays were normally, but he thought Arlie might be overdoing it. Twilight came early to the lake these days, but she didn’t need to work after the sun had slipped below the horizon. Not on his house, anyway.
It felt strange to ring the doorbell of the house he was going to live in when the keys were in his pocket, but he didn’t want to scare her by walking in unannounced. He could see her coming through the sparkling lights beside the heavy front door. She was wearing ragged jeans rolled above her ankles and a scrub shirt that had seen better days—maybe even better years. Her hair was tied into a messy ponytail and her face was completely devoid of makeup.
She looked wonderful.
And she didn’t even check to see who was ringing the doorbell.
“You didn’t look,” he said, scowling as she swung open the door. “I could have been an ax murderer.”
“Well, yes, I suppose so.” She raised a questioning eyebrow. “Are you? I thought you were an entrepreneur and a weekend dad who was embarrassed to tell people he had a son.”
He couldn’t look away from her. After all these years and everything that had happened, he still couldn’t look away from the lights in her eyes.
Something inside him shifted. They had laughed together through learning to ice-skate, sliding down snow-covered Sycamore Hill on the detached hood of a junkyard Chevy and being stuck at the top of the Ferris wheel at Indiana Beach. Was it realistic to think they could laugh together again without reopening old wounds? Was it even possible?
Not until he explained about Tracy. About Charlie.
“I’m not an entrepreneur. I just get bored easily. And I never get embarrassed about Charlie—only by my own parental inadequacies.”
She stepped back, her expression not changing. “Come on in. It’s your house, after all.”
He went in, inhaling the fresh smells of vinegar and linen and something flowery. “It looks great.”
“This floor does,” she said. She looked cautiously pleased. “The basement is still an adventure, and I haven’t even been in the attic.”
“You have cobwebs in your hair.”
“I think it’s crummy of you to notice.” She moved ahead of him through the clean rooms. “Have you been in here at all?”
He shook his head even though he knew she couldn’t see him. “I haven’t been in this house since the housekeeper and her husband lived in it. I don’t know how long it’s been empty.”
“Four years. Your grandmother offered to let the housekeeper live in it even when she retired, but the woman wanted to live in Florida, so she turned her down.”
Jack snorted. “Knowing Grandmother, she probably wanted to charge her an arm and a leg to stay in it, or better yet have her keep working without pay to cover rent.”
They continued through the downstairs. “I can set up an office in here,” he said, standing in the doorway of the dining room. “There’s plenty of room in the kitchen for a table and chairs.”
“That’s what I did at my house. I had the counter built in to divide the kitchen from the dining area. It’s not very big, but it’s convenient.” Arlie counted outlets. “Of course, my whole downstairs would fit into this dining room and kitchen. But you have plenty of outlets in here, and your wiring is up to date, so you won’t darken the whole neighborhood the minute you start plugging things in.”
“That’s a plus.” He smiled at her, hoping the sheer comfortableness of being together would come back to them the way it had the night before his grandmother’s funeral. Before Charlie had arrived. “What’s upstairs? I don’t really remember.”
“Take a look.”
The stairway was enclosed, but the stairs were wide and easy to climb. “It won’t be too bad bringing furniture up.” The handrail felt smooth under his hand, and he smiled. He didn’t know where his appreciation for good woodwork had come from, but he was glad he had it.
There were four bedrooms and two baths upstairs. At the end of the center hall, lit by a wide window that overlooked the garden in the back, was a little cove of a library complete with shelves and a built-in desk under the window.
“I’d forgotten this.” He stepped down three stairs into the area. “It’s over the glassed-in porch off the kitchen, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “You may have forgotten it, but I covet it. It’s beautiful.”
“Do you have a library in the Toe?” He knew she loved to read—it was one of the things they’d shared.
“Sort of. There was a closet under the stairs I really didn’t need. For my birthday the year I bought the house, Gianna hired a carpenter to take the door off it, line it with bookshelves and put lighting in it. There’s even room for a chair, but when you sit in it your legs stick out in the hallway.”
“Sounds great.” He moved down the hall, peeking into the bedrooms. “I’ll use this one—Charlie can be across the hall when he’s here. How’s the plumbing—do you know?”
“I checked it when I got here. It all worked, but I imagine you’ll want to put showers in the bathrooms. All that’s in there are eighties-era tubs. I do have the master bedroom and bath clean, though. I thought they’d be the ones you’d use. You can move in whenever you’re ready.”
“I don’t want to get in your way.” He frowned at the walls. They were clean and smooth. “Is the entire house painted this color? It’s so bland, it makes off-white look exciting.”
“Yes.”
“Does Rent-A-Wife do painting?”
“No, but Sam’s wife, Penny, does.”
He’d heard that. “I’ll see if I can get her in here first. Does Sam help her?”
Arlie laughed, and he felt the ice begin to melt. “Not with painting. She won’t let him. But he helps her set up scaffolding and hauls materials. She does great work and plays good music while she’s doing it.”
“That would be better than interrupting the crew that’s going to work in the Hall. Tucker wouldn’t want me to do that, either.” He stepped into the walk-in closet and spoke over his shoulder. “I forgot. There was a reason I stopped by.”
“I thought you were checking up on the work.”
“No.” He came back out, pleased with the storage space the house had to offer. “Why are you working this late?”
“Oh.” She looked embarrassed. “The van won’t start and my cell phone’s dead. I went ahead and worked awhile, thinking Holly might stop by when they got back from the casino—she and Gianna took a group today—but I forgot they were staying for dinner. I was getting ready to turn off the lights and walk home when you got here.”
“I’ll take you home. Or, better yet, to dinner.”
She shook her head. “There’s chili in the Crock-Pot at home. If you’ll give me a ride, I’ll share it.”
“That sounds great.” He agreed before she could change her mind, as the look in her eyes told him she might have wanted to.
When they walked past the company van, Arlie patted its crumpled front fender. “We’re going to have to give her a decent burial.”
Jack gave the vehicle a doubtful look. “It looks as though she’s had a long and hard life.” He opened the passenger door of his car for Arlie.
“Don’t hurt her feelings. She’s been with the company from the first, when she already had a lifetime’s worth of miles on her. She did look better then. Now I’m the only one who will still drive her.” Arlie flipped down the sun visor and frowned at herself in the lit mirror, pulling at the cobwebs in her hair. “Of course, I looked better then, too.”
“There’s nothing wrong with how you look now.” He meant it, and her eyes flashed something that might have been appreciation in the semidarkness of the car.
* * *
AT THE TOE, Arlie asked Jack to get the mail out of the rural box at the end of her driveway while she went inside and made peace with Caruso. “I know I’m late,” she told the fussy cat, scooping her food into her bowl, “but it couldn’t be helped. Have you been a good girl today?”
Caruso ignored her, going to the front door with her tail twitching.
“Well, fine. He’ll be right in.” Arlie shrugged at the cat’s lack of loyalty and took bowls from the open cupboards above the counter. The chili smelled good and it had been a long time since she’d had a bologna sandwich at lunch.
“Your mail’s a lot livelier than mine.” Jack’s voice came from inside the front door. Caruso meowed sternly.
“Not another frog, I hope—the neighborhood kids do that occasionally. It scares the mail carrier to death when she opens the mailbox.” She set the table with soupspoons and cloth napkins that matched the quilted table runner then put a sleeve of crackers into a basket.
Jack came into the kitchen carrying a stack of mail in his right hand and something else in his left.
Something fuzzy that definitely wasn’t a frog. Winding around her ankles like a blue-gray wool muffler, Caruso meowed again.
“What is it? I don’t think I’ve ever gotten any mail I’d describe as ‘lively,’ unless you count the obscene birthday cards Holly sends me.” Arlie came to where Jack stood. “Oh, it’s a puppy. A teeny, teeny one. Look at its little white feet.”
His eyes danced behind his glasses. They were standing so close she felt his breath against her temple. It was a warm feeling she didn’t want to think too much about. “You get puppies in the mail here on the lake?” he asked. “It must be really interesting when someone has a baby. Do you deliver them after you deliver them?”
She crossed her eyes at him. “It’s so little. I’ll bet it’s too young to be away from its mother. Where’s your baby basket, Caruso?” Arlie went into the laundry room, scrabbling through the cupboard above the dryer until she found the old Easter basket Caruso had slept in until she figured out how to climb onto Arlie’s bed.
“He’s cold.” Jack cuddled the puppy between his hands. “Do you want me to go get him some formula?”
“I made it when I found Caruso. It should be the same for a puppy, shouldn’t it?” Arlie scrounged out the cloth diapers she’d used to keep Caruso warm when she was a kitten. “I’m afraid I’m going to be a hoarder—I seem to keep way too many things.” She wrapped the diaper around a rice bag, microwaved it and tucked it into the basket.
“You have room.” Jack laid the whimpering puppy on the soft flannel bed and stroked his little fuzzy head with his index finger.
She foraged for the ingredients for homemade puppy formula. “Caruso was only a few weeks old when we found her,” she explained, opening a can of evaporated milk and pouring some of it into a glass measuring cup. “Jesse taught me to do this stuff. He’s a great vet.” She added thick corn syrup and an egg yolk and poured in some distilled water, then whipped the mixture with a whisk. “You want to feed him while I brush the cobwebs out of my hair and finish getting dinner on the table?”
“Sure.”
She handed him the cup of warmed formula along with an eyedropper and wondered for a heartbeat how Chris would have responded to that question. He was a good person—funny and smart and generous—but nurturing was so far down his list of attributes she thought it probably wasn’t there.
Of course, she didn’t think Chris had any secret children he hadn’t mentioned, either.
A short time later, they put the snoozing puppy in the basket on the brick hearth in the living room. Freshly showered—the cobwebs had made her feel sticky all over—and with her hair once more in a towel, Arlie lit the gas fire, petted a curious Caruso and joined Jack at the table.
“So, what are you doing at Llewellyn’s Lures?” she asked, laying a napkin across the lap of her favorite brown sweatpants.
“Getting ready to sell it.”
She looked up in dismay. “Really?”
He shrugged. “Neither Tucker nor I are interested in running it. Most of my business concerns are in Vermont and his are in Tennessee.”
“Llewellyn’s has been here for a hundred years.” Wasn’t it enough that he walked away from things so easily? Did he have to be so cavalier about the nearly sixty employees whose jobs he was selling off?
“And I hope it stays. I truly do,” he replied quickly. “We’ll do everything we can to keep the status quo, to pass Llewellyn’s on to someone who wants to keep it in business and run it the way it has been. After all, it’s a profitable company.” His expression didn’t change, but his eyes did. They looked distant. Sad. And conflicted. “The truth—for me—is that Charlie lives in Vermont most of the time. I don’t have custody. I don’t even see him nearly as much as I should. But he’s there, and I need to be there, too.”
She couldn’t argue that, though she’d have liked to. She’d have liked to throw things and shout at the top of her voice, What about our baby? She’d be fifteen now.
But he didn’t know. Other than Gianna and Holly and herself, the only ones who knew were the medical staff who had attended her the night of the accident, the ones who told her the trauma was too much for the fragile life she’d carried.
Gianna had wanted her to tell Jack about the pregnancy, but Arlie had refused. It had been over nearly as soon as it began, one more loss added to a night already too full of them. He’d had enough on his plate, she thought, losing his father and dealing with the knowledge that Victor Llewellyn had caused the accident. She would tell him later, she’d promised her stepmother, when life was calmer. He would share her grief and make it easier to bear.
But by the time “later” came, Jack was gone from her life. Only in her heart did she know the lost baby had been a girl. Only in her heart had she nursed her, dressed her and taught her to sing. Only in her heart had she named her Sarah Angelina after her grandmother and the woman who’d been the only mother who mattered.
Most of the time, it was easy. As the nurses in the hospital had promised, time had healed the wounds of the accident—even the emotional ones. Grief had settled and smoothed and memories had dimmed. Delivering babies had provided healing and joy beyond what she’d been able to imagine even when she was training in midwifery.
“You’re right.” She felt as though she was speaking from the end of a tunnel, and she cleared her throat. “You need to be with him.” She smiled, thinking of the boy with the beautiful eyes and shiny dark brown hair. “He’s a sweet kid. Ornery. More like Tuck than you, I think.”
“He is.” Jack sounded surprised. “He looks like his mother and biological father, and he definitely got his mother’s brain, but he does have a lot of Tuck in him.”
Arlie frowned, not understanding. “Is he adopted?”
“Not exactly.” He gestured with his spoon. “This is really good.”
“Thank you.” Arlie was glad he liked the chili, but wouldn’t be diverted. “Would you want to explain ‘not exactly’? I don’t remember the term from my nursing or midwifery classes.”
“Tracy was my study partner at Notre Dame from the beginning of freshman year. We dated some,” he said. “Kind of like you in high school, she was good at things I wasn’t and I needed all the help I could get. Her parents lived right there in South Bend—still do—but she lived in the dorm because she had an unbelievable course load. She also had an ex-boyfriend her parents hated. He drank, doped and gambled. When Tracy came up pregnant, she found out he had a wife at home.”
“Oh, man.” Arlie shook her head and offered him a half smile. “Her folks were upset?”
“She was afraid to tell them. Not that they were bad parents or mean or any of that, but they were older and very conservative. Bottom line was, she didn’t want to hurt them. An abortion wasn’t even a consideration. She was out of her mind with not knowing what to do. One night, it was really late and she still wasn’t in from the library, which wasn’t like her at all. I went looking and found her standing on the bridge over the St. Joe River. She swore she wasn’t going to jump or do anything stupid, but she was feeling pretty desperate.” He shrugged. “Scared the bejesus out of me.”
It would have. His mother had taken her own life when he was a toddler. He had no memory of her, but Arlie knew Janice Taylor’s mental illness haunted him—it always had.
“What did you do?”
“We talked about it. She was just so scared, and, you know—” He stopped for a moment, taking a drink and looking past her into the kitchen. She wondered where he’d gone, what memory was adding to the sadness in his eyes.
He set down his glass and took another bit of chili. “I felt like my life was a waste anyway. I’d survived the accident with no visible scars. I’d walked away from you. I’d even walked away from Tucker. I hated that my father went through life tossing other people’s pain around like so many dry leaves, and yet I’d done the same thing. I thought if I helped her, it wouldn’t cost me anything and maybe it would mean I wasn’t a complete waste of space. So I offered to marry her and take care of her until the baby came. She wouldn’t have to come clean with her parents and it wouldn’t be a shock if a marriage between an eighteen-year-old genius and a nineteen-year-old loser didn’t work out.”