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“We need paint,” Iris replied. “White. With some yellow and green for trim.”
Again, Steve’s attention was directed at J.T. “Is this for the coffee shop? Anything to do with Lyddie gets a discount.”
“Nope.” J.T. ignored Iris’s elbow in his ribs. He still wasn’t sure if the rule regarding shared parking lots had been on the books for years or if it was something Jillian might have shoved through to tip the scales in Mr. Crunchy’s favor. In any case, he wasn’t about to discuss that property with anyone other than Lydia, Iris and his lawyer.
“The cottages,” Iris explained after frowning at her son. “Roy had some cottages upriver that we used to rent out. They need freshening up before we can sell them.”
J.T. suppressed a snort. They needed a hell of a lot more than freshening. There were floorboards to replace, wallpaper to strip and steps that were lawsuits in the making. He would have his hands full getting them fixed up by the end of summer.
“Gotcha. Well, then.” Steve pulled out a few paint chips. “Here’s some popular yellows and greens. Why don’t you look them over, Iris? And J.T., would you mind giving me a hand with a load of mulch in the back?”
J.T. had no doubt that the “load” waiting for him had nothing whatsoever to do with mulch. But before he could say something about a bad back, Iris beat him to the punch.
“Of course he’ll help. J.T., you’ve been showing off those muscles since you got home. Go put them to use.”
God save him from mothers on a mission.
He followed Steve into the back room. But as he’d expected, Steve had something else in mind.
“Hang on there a minute, will ya, J.T.?”
J.T. came to a halt between a shelf loaded with potting soil and another one overflowing with hose heads. He hoped he could look reasonably surprised by this request.
Are you really surprised, or are you just a great actor?
He frowned in an attempt to chase Lydia’s voice from his memory. He couldn’t deal with that particular problem now.
’Course, he’d spent the whole night telling himself that. It hadn’t done a bit of good then, either. No amount of rationalizing had made him forget that moment in the dark when she had made that little sound he could swear had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with—
“So listen.” Steve pulled open a box of hammers and began stacking them on the closest shelf. “I hear you’ve got a full plate ahead of you, selling and packing and such.”
“You’re very well-informed,” J.T. said wryly.
“Small town, big mouths. Speaking of which, I have to ask—how long do you think this is gonna take?”
It was a good thing he bore no illusions about his standing in this town. He could get a complex from people asking how long he planned to stick around.
“I’ll wrap things up as fast as I can, but you know it’s not all up to me.” Then, because it was Steve asking, and at one time he and Steve had been pretty tight, he risked a guess.
“People getting nervous because I’m here?”
“Some.”
“They think I’m gonna start another fire?” J.T. paused, watching Steve carefully. “Or do they think I’m going to start talking about what really happened that night?”
“Look.” Steve swallowed hard as he placed the next hammer on the shelf. “I know you got a raw deal back then. You don’t know how many times I wished I’d had the guts to stand up for you, tell people the truth. But I didn’t. I’m not proud of it, but what’s done is done, and now I—”
“Easy, Steve.” J.T. couldn’t take much more of watching the guy fall all over himself. “Look. I’m not here to dig up old memories or start any rumors. None of that crap. As far as I’m concerned, the fire is ancient history.”
“A lot of folks don’t feel that way.”
“Sure. A lot of meddling old busybodies with nothing better to do than—”
“A lot of customers who live here year-round and keep my business going. Folks who make it possible for me to make my child support payments and keep some other people employed, too.”
Oh.
“Let me get this straight. You’re saying that because I came back, people are talking about the fire again. And that’s a conversation that some folks—say, you, and Mike Smithers, and Larry Brown and Tim Pattinson and some others—would rather didn’t get started again.”
Steve’s head bobbed in what J.T. assumed was agreement. “That’s about it.”
“I see.”
J.T. rocked back on his heels, staring out at the yard. If he moved slightly to the right he could catch a glimpse of the river in the distance, the blue calling to him like an old lover.
“They’re all still here in town?”
“Some. The ones who aren’t still have family here.”
He thought back to the new stores on the streets, the names taking on deeper meaning.
He hadn’t been alone the night of the fire, but he’d been the only one spotted at the scene, the only one to flee town. The others had stayed. Stayed, and kept silent.
And helped the town rebuild.
“Steve. Look. I’m not trying to stir up anything. And I’m not—okay, for a while I was pissed that no one said anything, but seriously, it wasn’t like we could undo what happened.”
“So you’re not trying to set the record straight?”
He sighed. “I am here to sell off the properties and get my mother packed up and move her to Tucson with me. That’s it.”
Relief flooded Steve’s face.
“Right. Well, then. Let’s get you some paint.”
“Got anything that’ll whitewash the past?” J.T. asked, and followed Steve back into store.
* * *
LYDDIE HAD COME a long way in the years since Glenn died. The pain of losing him was always there but manageable now, the jagged edges blunted by time. But some days still ripped her. Today was one.
“I hate Father’s Day,” Tish said. Lyddie bit her lip and concentrated on working through the snarl in Tish’s long auburn curls.
“Why do we have to go? It’s yucky. You get sad and Gram cries. And it’s hot there, and you won’t let me run. I have to be a laaaaady.” She wrinkled her nose at her reflection. “It’s not like Daddy can see us or anything. Are you almost done? I want my hair short. Can I get it cut soon?”
“We’ll get it cut when school is out. I’ll be done in another minute—faster if you hold still. And as for why we’re going to the cemetery...” But for this, Lyddie had no easy answer. How to explain to a seven-year-old that some things are done just for the sake of doing them, for the assurance that you’ve done what you could even when you know it won’t make a bit of difference?
“We’re not going for Daddy.” She flipped the comb around and parted Tish’s hair down the middle. “We’re going for us. So we can remember.”
Silence. Then—
“But I don’t remember him, Mommy.”
Lyddie closed her eyes and concentrated on the feel of her daughter’s hair, soft and curling in her hands. “I know, sweets. You were too little when we lost him. But it’s a way of remembering that you had a daddy who loved you. That’s important for you to know.”
“I know that already,” Tish grumbled, but she didn’t sound quite as reluctant. “Are you doing regular braids or fancy ones?”
“Fancy.”
“Oh, great.” Tish slid down in the chair, and blew out a drama-queen sigh that had to have come from her sister. Lyddie snickered and concentrated on the intricate weavings of a French braid, grateful that Tish had given up her protest.
An hour later, standing on the soft ground in front of Glenn’s headstone, she would have given anything to be snickering again. Ruth had left them, overcome by tears as she always was on these outings. It was just Lyddie and the kids in an artificially quiet circle. Even Ben had consented to hold Tish’s hand. And once again, as always happened, Lyddie looked from the tombstone to her children and wondered what she was supposed to say next.
She’d read all the books on helping kids deal with grief. But in real life, standing with the hot sun beating down on them and the murmurs of other visitors in the background, none of those well-meaning suggestions ever sounded helpful. Especially when the kids seemed more bored than sad.
“Are we done yet?” Tish asked.
“No.” Lyddie had no idea what they should do, but she knew Glenn deserved more than three minutes of awkward silence.
“But we gave him the flowers. And the sandwiches.”
“I know, sweetie.”
Tish dropped Lyddie’s hand to twist the sash of her pink eyelet sundress. “Why do we give him sandwiches, anyway? He can’t eat ’em.”
“Tish!” Sara had the adolescent eye-roll mastered.
Ben spoke up. “The ancient Egyptians used to leave food with the mummies. They thought it would be needed in the afterlife. And they left money and pets, and sometimes slaves were even—”
“Enough, Ben.” Lyddie could already imagine the nightmares Tish would conjure up that night. “Why don’t you tell Tish about the peanut butter sandwiches?”
Ben squinted behind his glasses. He opened his mouth, then closed it. “Uh, well...”
No. This couldn’t be happening. Ben had the best memory of any of them. Lyddie refused to believe he could have forgotten.
Sara jumped in. “Daddy ate a peanut butter sandwich every day, Tish. With fluff and blackberry jam.”
He always said I was the jam and he was the fluff, and the peanut butter was the love.
She reached for Tish’s hand once again, gave it a little squeeze and looked at Ben. “Did you really forget, bud?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed once, twice. “I guess I did. Sorry, Mom.”
“Don’t apologize, honey, you didn’t do anything wrong. I just wish... What do you remember?”
Ben shrugged. “Um...well, stuff. He read me stories at bedtime. And he taught me how to skate. That was fun.”
“Sara? Can you tell Tish a story or two about your dad?”
Sara frowned and twisted the daughter’s ring Lyddie had given her on her thirteenth birthday. “Okay. Well, I remember one time when we were in church, and I was bored, and you were working in the nursery, and he took a five-dollar bill from his pocket and folded it so it looked like a man’s shirt. That was cool.” She frowned. “Then Ben yanked it away from me and it ripped.”
“Did not.”
“You did, too.”
“I did—” He stopped, flushed. “Maybe I did. I don’t remember.”
“It’s okay,” Sara said after a moment’s silence. “You might not have grabbed it. I tell myself that story a lot. So I might have changed it a bit.”
“Why do you tell yourself the story, Sara?” Lyddie had planned to stay quiet and let the kids lead the way, but she had the feeling this was important.
“Because...well... Promise you won’t get mad?”
Oh, God.
“Promise.”
“Okay. Well. Sometimes, I kind of... It’s hard to remember him. You know?”
“Because it makes you sad?”
“No.” Sara lifted her head, looked directly at Lyddie with the wide-set eyes she’d inherited from her father. “I mean, I can’t remember. Not what he was really like. Just the stories I tell myself.”
Lyddie had the same feeling she’d had the year she mistakenly wore spike heels to the cemetery: like she was sinking into something better left untouched, but she had no choice because she was already stuck.
“You really can’t remember him? But you were almost ten. I thought—I hoped you were old enough...”
“I remember some stuff. And sometimes I get this feeling, like I’m doing a Daddy thing, but I can’t really say why. It’s just like I said. It’s all stories now that I tell myself to make me remember.” She looked down again. “And sometimes I’m not even sure if it’s really something that happened at all or if it’s a whole bunch of memories I put together in my head.”
Ben nodded. “Me, too. It’s like he was a story, not a real person.”
This was wrong. So, so wrong. Of course Tish had no memories of Glenn, but for Sara and Ben to be losing him, too... Glenn had adored his children. They needed to know who he was and how much he had loved them.
Tonight, she thought. Tonight she would sit down and go through the photo album and start writing stories to go with all the pictures. And everything else she could remember. But she’d already told them all her stories. They needed to see him in a new light, as a person who was once a kid like them, not a fading memory.
Lyddie glanced around the cemetery. For the first time she focused on the other visitors walking the gravel paths and laying flowers on graves. Father’s Day had brought out the crowd. Surely, somewhere in this quiet place of remembrance, there was someone who could tell her children something new about their father.
“Mommy, can we go? I’m bored.”
“No, Tish. Not yet.” There. On the other side of an ostentatious marble angel, there was Harley Prestwick, town historian. He’d lived in Comeback Cove forever. Surely he would have a tale or two.
“Wait here,” she ordered the kids. “I’ll be right back.”
Gravel flew from beneath her sensible pumps as she walked double-time down the path. For a man in his seventies, Harley could move. It wasn’t until she reached out to tap his shoulder that she realized her request might seem a bit bizarre, or that Harley might not be up for company at the moment. But Harley had never been known to suffer in silence. And surely the needs of three children couldn’t be ignored.
“I have a favor to ask,” she began, and explained her request as quickly as possible, stopping a couple of times to catch her breath. She really had to make time to exercise.
Luckily, Harley was not only agreeable, but he also seemed eager to have someone to talk to on this sunny afternoon. Lyddie walked beside him back to the kids and sent up a prayer of thanks.
Within minutes, Harley was seated on a granite bench, Tish beside him, Ben and Sara leaning against a pair of flowering crabs.
“Well,” the old man began, “your father was a couple of years behind my boys in school. But I remember him well. Always a nice fellow, even back then, you know. Polite. And good-hearted, too, looking out for the little kids...”
Harley droned on. Lyddie checked the kids’ faces and saw what she feared: the initial curiosity had dwindled to bored endurance. Once again, they were only hearing what they’d heard a hundred times before. Glenn the saint, Glenn the selfless one, Glenn the hero.
Maybe this hadn’t been such a great idea after all.
She turned to see if there were any other possibilities wandering the cemetery and found herself almost face-to-face with J. T. Delaney.
“Oh!” She stepped back, flushing at the realization that her breasts had been about two inches from his chest. Memories of the boathouse engulfed her. She looked away, fast, before she could start blushing. Or worse—imagining.
“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It’s okay. You just caught me by surprise.”
“I cut across the grass.” He grinned. “Years of practice playing graveyard tag.”
“What a lovely pastime.” He looked rather lovely, too, she had to admit. The tight shorts and chest-hugging shirts had been abandoned today in favor of a yellow-striped short-sleeved shirt and gray cargo pants. Not exactly Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes, but it gave him a far more respectable air. Almost like an adult.
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