The Happiness Pact

CHAPTER FOUR

NATE CALLED LIBBY after church on the day after the Valentine’s Day party and asked her if she’d like to play golf that afternoon. Since the alternative was waxing the tearoom floors, Libby agreed. How hard could it be to hit a little ball around?

It was, she learned quickly, kind of hard, but by the time they parked the cart in the garage beside Feathermoor’s clubhouse, she thought she liked golf. She’d like it even better, Nate promised, when it was more than forty degrees and they weren’t the only people on the golf course. He mentioned that lessons would be a good idea come spring and that it was perfectly all right to swear when she lost her ball in the weeds—everyone did that.

She liked Nate, too. He was tall and handsome and fun to be with, but so was the golden retriever rescue Jesse had brought by with the suggestion she and Elijah might like some company. Libby hadn’t been sure about the addition to the family, but Elijah had given in right away, so now Pretty Boy slept on a rug in Libby’s room and made the occasional appearance in the tearoom.

Nate, on the other hand, was a good conversationalist and didn’t shed in the house. Elijah wasn’t fond of him, but he drove a nice car and told good jokes, and the only time he kissed her she thought maybe the earth might have moved a little. It didn’t—they’d looked at each other and laughed—but it had definitely been enjoyable.

That had been after the party, when she’d worn her favorite red dress and five-inch black stilettos. The shoes had necessitated rubbing Icy Hot on her calves and feet before she went to bed and wearing sneakers to church the next morning, but it had been worth it.

Tucker came after she closed for the day on Tuesday to help change lightbulbs in the chandeliers in the parlors. “The party was fun,” said Libby, handing him the little flame-shaped bulbs.

“It was. Meredith had a good time.”

“She’s beautiful.” An old and not-missed boyfriend had referred to Libby as “pretty enough”—that was as close to beautiful as she’d ever come. She couldn’t quite keep the envy out of her voice.

“She is.”

She cleared her throat. “Are you seeing her again?”

“We’re taking her kids bowling day after tomorrow.”

“That’ll be nice.” But would it? Didn’t he always play poker on Thursday nights? Was Meredith becoming that important to him that quickly?

“You seeing Nate again?”

“He’s back in North Carolina until the first of March.”

“That’s too bad.” But Tuck didn’t sound as if he thought it was too bad. He sounded kind of like a smirk looked.

“He asked me to come down there for a weekend. He has a house on Topsail Island. It won’t be beachy weather, he says, but still warmer than here.”

Tuck screwed in a few more lightbulbs. “Are you going to go?”

“What do you think?” She stepped from one achy foot to the other, feeling like a ten-year-old uncertain about whether she was ready for fifth grade. “Do you think I should?”

He hesitated and didn’t look at her when he answered. “I think you’re an adult, Lib. I can’t tell you what to do when it comes to relationships.” He reached to take more bulbs from her. “Don’t go this weekend, though, okay? It’s time for another adventure. Can you take an extra day off?”

“Probably. Neely pushes me out the door every chance she gets.” Libby put the old bulbs into a box for recycling. “Which is great for me. I’m thrilled the business can support us both. It just feels weird. I haven’t taken extra time off for years, and all of a sudden I am. What should I pack?” She knew better than to ask where they were going—he never told her.

“Walking shoes.”

She stifled a groan. She’d better pack the Icy Hot, too.

* * *

“FLYING? WE’RE FLYING?” Libby’s gray eyes were huge. Unless Tucker missed his guess, the little blue lights in them were shooting sparks directly at him. “Tucker, I’ve never flown anywhere. I’ve barely left Indiana.”

“About time then, isn’t it?” He pulled into a parking lot.

“Where are we going?”

He swung into a parking place and grasped her chin gently between his thumb and forefinger, forcing her to meet his eyes. “Trust me. Okay?”

“Why would I do that?”

It was there again, that look he couldn’t quite grasp the meaning of, and he’d have said he knew all Libby’s expressions. He’d seen it when they’d mentioned the night of the accident in her kitchen. She was grinning, open and challenging, but there was something missing, too.

He sniffed. “You wound me with your lack of faith. I’ve never told anyone about you losing your lunch when we rode the bullet at the 4-H fair when we were in the seventh grade, but you still don’t trust me?”

“Well, since I did it in front of half the county, I’m really impressed that you kept my secret. Okay, I trust you. But if I lose my lunch on this plane, you’ll be sorry.”

He opened his door. “Come on, Nausea Nellie, let’s go. See that shuttle coming? We’re going to ride it to the terminal.”

By the time they’d checked in, he’d had to tell her they were on their way to Nashville, Tennessee. To be tourists, something she’d spent precious little of her life doing, and go to the Tennessee branch of Llewellyn’s Lures and his apartment in nearby Gallatin. He’d lived there until moving to Indiana to share the CEO duties with Jack at corporate headquarters. He still missed it.

He never flew first-class, considering it a waste of money, but for Libby’s first flight, he’d booked two of the roomy front seats on the plane. They were still on the ground when she was holding her first cup of coffee.

“See there?” He pointed to the pocket in front of her. “That bag is for when your stomach decides you don’t like flying. You did have breakfast, didn’t you?”

“Just that drive-through biscuit.”

“Oh, Lord.” The biscuit sandwiches were good, but they also sat like lead on a normal stomach—heaven only knew how hers would react. “Read the magazine.”

But she couldn’t. She was too excited. When the plane taxied down the runway a little while later, her eyes widened with anticipation. “I’m not scared. I thought I’d be scared.” But she grabbed Tucker and cut off all circulation to his right arm.

Other than a little gasp when the plane lifted, she did well with takeoff. “Well,” he said, “that’s a relief. I don’t have to be embarrassed.”

“Right. Like you can be embarrassed.” She sipped the last of her coffee and set the cup aside. “So, now that I’m an expert in commercial flying, let’s talk about your personal life.”

He snorted. “If you want a nap, just say so. You know my personal life is boring.”

“Well, sure, I know it, but I didn’t know you did.” She patted the hand that was only beginning to resume normal blood flow. “Tell me about Meredith. She’s come into the tearoom with Arlie. She seems very nice. And beautiful.”

“She is nice. And beautiful. Her kids are good, too. They miss their dad.”

“That’s too bad.”

“It is. It’s not like Jack and me—we never missed ours at all. From everything Meredith says, he’s a good father. He lost his way in the marriage, though.”

“Do the kids see him?”

“Yeah. He lives in Indianapolis and he comes and gets them every other weekend and drives up and has dinner with them one night during the off week. Pays support right on time, even early. But he and Meredith don’t communicate at all except for texting about the kids or the very occasional phone call. When he picks them up, she sends them out to the car. When he brings them home, she stays inside and opens the door when they come onto the porch. She’s never said why they broke up, but it must have been serious stuff.” He hesitated. “Is that more than I should say about her?”

“I don’t think so. I—” Libby stopped. “You know what? It probably is. I mean, I’m not going to repeat anything you tell me. You know that. But if I were dating someone, I wouldn’t want him talking to another woman about me, even if that woman was twenty-seven minutes older than him and no competition whatsoever. I’d feel as if he owed me some loyalty, or at least confidentiality.”

“You’re right.” She was, and it bothered him that he hadn’t hesitated at all in talking about Meredith. If he had known truly private things about her, if they were having a physical relationship, he would have felt safe talking to Libby about that, too.

Sometimes he wasn’t nearly as sure about his nice guy status as he wanted to be. “But, hey,” he said, picking up on something she’d said, “what do you mean, if you were dating someone? You are. You’re dating Nate.” Although it didn’t feel right to him, and he couldn’t really figure out why. Nate was one of the good guys, too.

But maybe not good for Libby. Maybe that was what didn’t feel right.

“Not really dating. I think he still looks at me only as Jess’s little sister. There’s someone in North Carolina, too. The more he tries not to mention her name, the more often ‘Mandy’ enters the conversation.” She smiled, a lazy, sleepy expression, mildly regretful. “He is fun, but it’s definitely a buddy thing.”

The flight attendant came around, bringing more coffee and assuring them the weather in Tennessee was going to be great today. She smiled at Libby’s drowsy expression and procured a blanket and pillow from the compartment above.

“Do you want something more?” Tucker asked when the woman had moved toward the back of the plane. “More than fun, I mean.”

“I do.” She drank, then set her cup down on the tray table and turned her head to look out the window. “I want to be something besides good old Lib to someone.”

* * *

“OH, RHETT!” LIBBY fluttered her eyelashes at Tucker as they toured the gardens at the Hermitage, the home of Andrew Jackson. “How you do go on.”

“You’re in the wrong state, Miss Scarlett. I assume you know that?” He lifted his phone to take pictures of either her or the flowers in the beds behind her. In case it was her, she tried to straighten her hair a little and wished she’d freshened her makeup before they left the airport.

“Of course I know that. I’ve read Gone with the Wind at least once a year ever since seventh grade. But I figure this is the closest I’m going to come to Tara in this lifetime.” She knelt to look at the crocuses peering out from between the tulips. The flowers were the same as the ones that grew at home, but Tennessee was well ahead of Indiana on the color scale. “It’s so nice to be here. I’m ready for a glimpse of spring, aren’t you?”

More than a glimpse, she realized. The depression that was nipping at her heels was becoming frightening. She needed light, lots of light, and February in the Midwest offered very little. Spring tossed other demons in her path, but at least she got to fight them with sunshine in her arsenal.

“I think the long winter is easier for me because I travel so much.” Tucker’s eyes were darker than usual, and he wasn’t smiling. “What’s wrong, Lib?”

Am I trying too hard? “Nothing.” She kept her voice bright. “Except I’m hungry. You picked me up at zero dark thirty this morning and all I’ve had since the drive-through are those crackers on the plane, which I lost while we were landing in Detroit. I never knew Detroit was on the way to Nashville, did you?”

“You learn new geography every time you fly.” He helped her straighten, then went on in a truly appalling Humphrey Bogart voice, “Stick with me, sweetheart, and you’ll be throwing up all over the world.”

She laughed, elbowing him, and didn’t draw away when he pulled her in close and kept his arm around her as they went to the on-site restaurant for some lunch.

“Where do we go from here?” she asked after they’d ordered and she’d consumed a small pot of tea.

“Downtown.”

They walked for miles, stopping to listen politely to every fresh-air musician they passed and leave generous tips in open guitar cases. They rode a tourist bus all over town, ending at the Grand Ole Opry.

“This was the only place my parents ever went on vacation,” she remembered. “They never took us, but every couple of years, they’d hire someone to help with the milking and come down for a few days. Going to the Hermitage, walking around downtown and listening to the heart’s echoes in the Ryman just now—it felt as if I was with my mom. She loved it here. It was where she grew up, and even though she didn’t have any family other than us, she still felt at home here. Dad brought her down when she was sick. He always thought the trip shortened her life, but even if it did, it gave her joy she wouldn’t have found anywhere else.”

Libby didn’t know how many years it had been since she’d wept. The losses were things she kept buried in a safe place. Arlie and Holly’s mother had once called that place a pocket behind her heart, because grief wasn’t measured by tears. Libby remembered feeling so relieved when Gianna said that, because maybe it meant the girl who’d stood dry-eyed at her parents’ funerals wasn’t broken after all.

She didn’t cry tonight, either, sitting beside Tucker in the Grand Ole Opry watching some of the same artists her mother had loved in addition to ones Libby listened to. But her heart ached to a depth she’d forgotten existed. It was good to feel something other than numbness, she supposed, but she hadn’t thought feeling this much would be as heavy as it was. Not after all this time.

Tucker laughed beside her, drawing her attention to the performer on stage. He’d been around since her mother’s time. Oh, her mother used to say, he’s a case, he is. He grew up on the same mountain as I did, only a little deeper in the hollers.

And there he was, at least a decade older than Crystal Worth would have been, still singing the songs she’d sung as she cleaned the redbrick farmhouse where Jesse still lived and helped with the milking. Libby wondered if her mother had ever sat in this row when she came to the Opry. Maybe in this very seat.

“Dad used to say—” Libby spoke before she knew the words were coming, and they stuck in her throat. She had to clear it before going on, leaning to speak into Tucker’s good ear under cover of the music. “He used to say Mom should have sung at the Opry, that her voice deserved a bigger audience.”

Tucker took her hand. “He was probably right. Remember when all the churches had Bible school together in the clubhouse at the lake? Your mom always led the singing and she’d get us to sing, too, no matter how bad we were. I still know all the words to ‘Deep and Wide.’”

Libby chuckled, the weight of old grief lifting a little. “Father Doherty said we created whitecaps on the lake when we sang. I don’t think he meant it as a compliment.”

Tucker laughed, leaning his head back. She looked at the line of his throat above the sweater he wore and thought how handsome he was. How much she appreciated him holding her hand. And how good that felt.

Something in the pool of too-intense emotions she was feeling right then warned her that maybe it felt a little too good. It was like sitting where her mother had been, listening to the songs her mother had heard—it was pleasure to the point of pain.

CHAPTER FIVE

“NO KIDS?” INSIDE the town house in Sawyer where Meredith lived, Tucker looked around and raised his eyebrows. There were no toys in the small living area, no TV noise in the background, no sounds of sibling joy or its noisy opposite. “How did that happen?”

Meredith smiled, although her eyes looked shadowed. “Their dad got an unexpected long weekend and asked if he could have them. He picked them up from school and is taking them for pizza and the movies and then to spend two nights in a motel with an indoor pool. They told me I wasn’t any fun anymore and Daddy was.” The shadow came perilously close to being tears, and she turned away abruptly.

Charlie had played that con-the-parents game with Jack, telling his father that Uncle Tucker was the fun brother. Jack had called Tucker and asked if Charlie could come and live with him because being a dad wasn’t fun anymore. Tucker yelled, “No way!” over the phone, and they all ended up laughing.

He didn’t think Meredith would see the humor in the story, so he didn’t tell it. “Let’s go do something,” he suggested instead, hooking her arm with a gentle hand and turning her back toward him. “Hey.” He thumbed the tears from her cheeks. “They’ll be home in a few days, Mer, and he’s a good dad. It’s not like he’s going to abscond with them.”

“Oh, I know.” She leaned against him, and he held her, dropping a kiss on the top of her head. Her spiky hair felt odd against his lips. Not hard, exactly, but not soft and warm like Libby’s, either. Meredith was taller than average, too. When they’d gone to a wine-tasting party, she’d worn skinny high heels and they’d been eye to eye. He’d liked that. She’d been fun to dance with. She was fun to be with, for that matter. She liked football, made really good potato soup that went well with the crusty bread he bought from the Amish bakery and had nice kids. He was attracted to her.

And yet.

It was the and yet that got him. It was okay that he wasn’t falling in love—other than Jack and Arlie and a few friends here and there, he’d never really observed being in love as all that healthy a part of a relationship. Plus, he and Meredith had only been seeing each other for a short while. He liked her more than anyone he’d dated in a very long time. He enjoyed the kids—he’d even taken Zack with him to play basketball with Jack and Charlie at the elementary school on open gym night. They’d played for an hour, working on Charlie’s jump shot and teaching Zack how to do layups. Afterward, Tucker sat quietly with Zack at the ice cream counter in the Silver Moon and heard between the lines of the eight-year-old’s conversation how much he missed his dad.

“I know he’s a good dad. It was husbanding he failed at.” Meredith shrugged, the movement slight against Tucker. “What would you like to do? We’ve already seen both the movies at the theater.”

“You want to go roller-skating?”

“What?” She pulled away from him, laughing. “I’m thirty. All I do at the rink these days is tie the kids’ skates and be ready with Band-Aids when they fall down.”

Disappointment nudged, although he couldn’t have said why. “Pool?” he suggested. “We could go to Kokomo or even back to the Hall. The table there is regulation.”

She shook her head. “Can we just stay here? Maybe order pizza and stream something on TV? I’m sorry. I’m in kind of a crummy mood.”

“Sure, we can do that. It’s okay.” It wasn’t. They’d seen each other nearly every day since their first date, but they hadn’t reached that stage of comfort and conversation with each other. He didn’t know how either would bear up through an evening of inactivity.

At first, it was okay. They wrangled, laughing over what pizza to order, then again over what to watch. The movie they finally agreed on didn’t hold Tucker’s interest, and he had to work to stay awake. Halfway through, she said, “This is crummy, isn’t it?”

At first he thought she meant the two of them trying to make a relationship out of too little substance, but it was too early in the dating game to make that assessment. At least, according to Libby it was. He still wasn’t sure if she’d forgiven either him or her friend Allison for being completely unattracted to each other from the get-go.

“Crummy.” He let the word percolate between them for a moment. “Why?”

“There’s no plot. The only conflict is stupid stuff Shelby’s first-grade class could have developed. What’s her name has had so much plastic surgery she’s unrecognizable.”

Oh, the movie. He almost laughed, but thought once again that she wouldn’t see the humor in the situation. “It’s not great,” he admitted. “Let’s go have a drink somewhere. We shouldn’t waste an evening on a movie we don’t like. I’ll even buy.”

“Okay,” Meredith said reluctantly, turning off the TV and standing up. “I don’t know any place to go in Sawyer, though. If it’s not kid friendly, I haven’t been there.”

“Sawyer has places, but we can go to the Grill. It’s only five miles over to the lake.” He hoped she would go for that, because he didn’t want to stay here. Her sadness was heavy and all-consuming, filling the room with an unhappiness he couldn’t begin to penetrate.

She nodded. “All right.” She brightened. “What about darts? Do you like to play?”

He did. He and the Thursday night poker players often played when the cards weren’t falling right. Plus, he was glad to see her be enthusiastic—he’d have probably joined the dominoes table in the corner of the bar if she’d wanted to, and he didn’t even remember how to play.

On the way to Anything Goes, they talked about her job and the move from a practice in an affluent suburb to a small-town one with many Amish patients. She liked it, Meredith maintained, because she loved working with Arlie, but she wasn’t completely comfortable with the differences between the two practices.

“The rules are the same, and the laws, and I’m glad to have people call me by my first name and ask how my kids are doing, but it’s just so informal. I never expected to work in a facility that had a hitching rail and a water trough in addition to regular customer parking.”

He nodded. “The Amish workers at Llewellyn’s Lures ride their bicycles to work or ride with one of the English. Jack asked one of the guys if we needed to add hitching rails, and Fred, who’s a supervisor, said no—they weren’t going to leave their horses standing there for eight hours. It wasn’t one of my brother’s brightest questions.”

She laughed, the sound quiet and polite. “You don’t travel much these days, do you? Do you miss it?”

“No. I still go on the road once a month or so, but I really like being settled here.” Although he got lonely sometimes. He’d probably gotten lonely when he lived in Tennessee and spent half his time on the road, too, but he didn’t remember it. Of course, then he hadn’t been in pursuit of the whole wife, kids and four-bedroom house dream.

The dartboard was already in use in the Grill, and literally every table was occupied. Libby and Nate were sitting in one of the booths beside the windows overlooking the lake. Nate waved them over, and Tucker captured Meredith’s hand as they wove between the tables. He waited until she’d slid into the booth beside Libby, then sat next to Nate. “’Sup?”

Libby pointed an accusatory finger in his direction. “You sound like Charlie.”

Tucker grinned at her. “Only because Jack and I practiced sounding like Charlie. The kid can’t start a conversation without saying that.”

“So that’s why Zack’s been saying it.” Meredith beamed over the discovery. “When I asked him to stop doing layups in the living room, he paused for the moment and said ‘’Sup, Mom?’ and dunked the ball right into the ficus tree.”

Libby and Nate laughed, and Tucker did, too, but he wondered where this cheerful woman had been when they were at her house trying to watch a boring movie she’d chosen. She’d been taciturn and moody and on the verge of tears.

They talked about spring—surely it would come eventually—and about golf and the state high school basketball tournament. Tucker asked about Libby’s plans for remodeling the carriage house at Seven Pillars to be used for larger meetings than the tearoom could accommodate, and Nate promised her more business when the expansion took place. Meredith listened and contributed to the conversation and laughed as long and loud as everyone else when it was warranted. Or when it wasn’t—clients in the Grill weren’t picky about what they laughed at.