Starting Over On Blackberry Lane

Chapter Four

Grant Masters followed the path of flying bronze fish embedded in the terminal floor as he exited the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on Monday evening. Fish. He’d seen enough fish to last him for a long time.

At first the idea of retiring early and living it up in Mexico fishing, drinking beer and flirting with pretty señoritas had sounded like paradise. He’d worked hard to build his construction company. Actually, he’d worked hard all his life. So after a year of coping with the loss of his wife and trying to run a company, he’d decided it was time not only to take life easier, but to take life easier someplace far from the memories. He’d turned Masters Construction over to his son who’d been managing most of the projects anyway, and took off.

But he finally got tired of catching marlin and trying to use his rusty Spanish. The damned sun never stopped beating down and the weather never changed. Just another day in paradise.

With no purpose and no sweet wife, the days were too long. He missed the mountains; he missed his kids. He even missed work. Not that he wanted to work as hard at sixty-two as he had at forty-two, but he wanted something to fill the days. Part-time would do it. He had skills. Might as well use them.

That had been his reasoning when one night he’d sat down with a Corona and a notebook and pencil and his new company, Honey Do, was born. Every woman had a honey-do list, and a lot of women these days were single with no honey to do it. By the end of the night, he had a business plan and a plane reservation for Seattle. Next stop, Icicle Falls, where his oldest son was living.

Now here he was, back in the States. At this time of night, traveler rush hour was past, so he didn’t have to fight the usual crush of people. He was thankful for that, as he was now too tired to cope with women mistaking him for George Clooney and wanting his autograph. There’d been enough awkward moments on the plane.

He picked up his luggage, rented a car and then hit the freeway, heading to the north suburbs of Seattle. He’d spend a night in the city with his younger son, purchase a used truck the next day and then drive over the mountains to Icicle Falls. He already had a room reserved at Gerhardt’s Gasthaus there, and that would do until he could buy a place he liked. Something modest, perhaps in need of some work.

But not too close to town. He hadn’t spent much time in Icicle Falls, but he knew enough about the place to know it had become a big tourist attraction. He didn’t need to encounter gawking strangers around every corner. Someplace in the woods or maybe on the river would suit him just fine—a place with easy access to mountain trails so he could hike in his spare time.

Hopefully, he wouldn’t have too much spare time hanging heavily on his shoulders. He’d had business cards made up online, and he’d get busy posting them around town and see what happened. He was ready to start a new life.

Louise had been gone three years now, and he still missed her like crazy. What he’d had couldn’t be replaced—he knew that. But maybe he could find something to ease the constant low-grade ache in his heart. Being close to the boys would be good.

Yep, coming back had been the right decision. Lou would have approved.

He hit his son’s house, a small place Matt and Lexie were renting, around ten.

“Hey, Dad, welcome home,” Matt said, giving him a hug and a slap on the back. “You ready for a beer? I’ve got some Hale’s Supergoose double IPA.”

“Sounds great,” Grant said and followed him into the kitchen.

The place looked a little bare, sparse on furniture and missing those feminine touches that proclaimed there was a woman in the house. No knickknacks, no flowers anywhere, and some of the pictures had left the wall. The kitchen was downright Spartan. No bowl of fruit on the counter, no figurines of French chefs. No canisters. Not a good sign. He knew his son had been having trouble in his marriage, but the impression he was getting here suggested they’d gone way beyond that.

“Where’s Lexie?” he asked as he settled on a chair at the kitchen table.

Matt frowned at the bottle of beer he was opening. “She’s gone.” He handed it over and got busy with his own.

“Gone. As in forever?”

“Yeah. The divorce will be final end of May,” Matt said and took a long drink of his beer.

Grant studied his second-born son. Dan had gotten Grant’s darker coloring but Matt resembled his mom—less square jawline, light brown hair, freckles. He’d been a cute kid and he was a good-looking man. He and Lexie had made a fine-looking couple. Too bad they hadn’t managed to make a fine marriage.

Grant wasn’t surprised to hear it, though. He’d thought the girl was spoiled. And a whiner. Unlike his Lou, who’d been hardworking and always had a smile, this babe had been a leech and a downer. Matt needed someone positive in his life, someone to encourage him. Grant wasn’t sorry to hear she was gone.

He did feel bad for his son, though, and it saddened him that Matt hadn’t felt he could call and talk to him. Too embarrassed, he was willing to bet, considering the fact that Grant had questioned whether he and Lexie were really a fit when Matt first started getting serious.

“Want to talk about it?” Grant asked.

“Nope.”

Then this wasn’t the time to tell his son that everything would be all right, that somehow his life would go on. He nodded. “Okay. Got any pretzels to go with that beer?”

Matt dug out a bag, ripped it open and laid it on the table. “You know what really gets me?”

Yep, didn’t want to talk about it. “What?”

“She didn’t even give me a hint that she wasn’t happy.”

“Are you sure, son?” Women left hints, verbal and nonverbal cues that they laid out like a trail of breadcrumbs for a man to follow. Only problem was, it seemed that most guys had a tendency to step right over those breadcrumbs and not even see them. He knew. He’d done his share of missing the clues when he and Louise were first married.

Matt shrugged. Now he was blinking furiously, trying to fight back unmanly tears.

Men ought to be allowed to cry, Grant thought, saving his son’s pride by pretending not to see.

“I could never please her. I mean, I was working my butt off at the restaurant and then doing roofing jobs on my days off. She was never happy, no matter what I did or how much extra money I made. What more did she want?”

Who knew?

“Well, screw her,” his son muttered.

That was how the kid had ended up here in the first place. If you asked Grant, kids jumped into relationships way too quickly. He kept his mouth shut on that topic and simply said, “I’m sorry, son.”

Matt shrugged. “Shit happens, right? That’s what you used to say. You hungry? I can make you a Philly steak sandwich.”

“Oh, man. I haven’t had one of those in ages.”

It used to be his specialty. Lou had loved to bake, but she’d found the meat-and-potatoes stuff challenging. Grant had often pitched in and helped in the kitchen on weekends. He’d been the king of the grill and of Sunday-morning breakfast.

Matt had been his kitchen buddy, always happy to help out. The kid had wound up going to culinary school at Seattle Central, turning himself into a top-rate chef. He’d often talked about having his own place someday, but for the moment he was cooking at a high-end restaurant on the Seattle waterfront that specialized in seafood.

Matt nodded and began cutting sirloin into thin strips. He seasoned it with paprika, chili powder and a mess of other herbs, then cut up onions. He dragged out the old cast-iron skillet that had been his mom’s, poured in olive oil and got to work. Half an hour later, they were both sitting at the kitchen bar, downing the best thing Grant had eaten in the last year. Oh, yeah, it was good to be in the States again.

“So, you’re going back over the mountains, huh?” Matt said and chomped off another chunk of sandwich.

“I think so. Your brother tells me there’s a real demand for handymen in Icicle Falls.”

“There’s a real demand for handymen everywhere,” said Matt, who’d been lobbying for Grant to move to Seattle. “Way more action here than over there.”

“At my age I don’t need action,” Grant informed him.

“Jeez, Dad, you’re not dead.”

There was an awkward moment as Matt realized he’d just brought the ghost of his mom into the room with that one word. “Shit,” he muttered and stuffed more of his sandwich in his mouth.

Grant clapped him on the back. “It’s all right, son. I know what you meant.”

Now Matt really looked like he was going to cry. “I miss her, Dad.”

It wasn’t hard to figure out which “her” his son was referring to. “I know. I do, too.”

Lou had been a stay-at-home mom and the heartbeat of their family. Death had come for her way too soon. So many times Grant had wished it had been him who’d had the heart attack and not her.

“I wish you were gonna stay here.”

Poor Matt. People were leaving him right and left. “It’s not that far over the mountains. We’ll see a lot of each other, a lot more than we did when I was in Mexico.”

Both his sons and their wives had come down to visit him at Christmas, and they’d all had a great time. Well, except for Lexie, who’d topped off a bad sunburn with a case of Montezuma’s revenge. She’d been miserable and she’d done her best to make everyone else miserable, too. Yep, no loss there.

“I’m coming up on weekends during the winter,” Matt threatened with a grin.

Skiing and snowboarding—both his boys loved their winter sports, just like he did. He’d see more of Matt now that he was back in the Pacific Northwest. And he’d sure see a lot more of Dan.

As he’d discovered, he wasn’t cut out for the life of an old hermit crab.

Matt wanted him to stay a few days but had to work at the restaurant for the rest of the week, and Grant didn’t want to sit around cooling his heels. He was anxious to get to Icicle Falls and get settled.

So a day later he had a truck and by late afternoon he’d arrived at his temporary new digs in one of Icicle Falls’ favorite (and more affordable) B and Bs. “You’ll get my Ingrid’s incredible breakfasts every morning,” Gerhardt bragged as he checked Grant in. “And my alpenhorn serenades.”

Grant had heard about Gerhardt’s famous alpenhorn serenades. One time he’d had too much of his German beer and serenaded himself right off the B and B’s dining room balcony and broken his arm. The guy was a character.

Grant thanked him and towed his oversize suitcase to the room. It had everything he owned in the world—a couple of changes of good clothes, his favorite old work shirt and jeans, his tool belt, toiletries and his share of the photo albums his wife had so carefully kept over the years. Everything else from his life in America he’d given to the boys or sold before he went south, and what he’d accumulated in Mexico, he’d left behind. Except for his trophy marlin, which was being shipped up to him, care of Gerhardt. He’d hang that over the fireplace once he got a house.

After he was settled in, he walked to Zelda’s Restaurant, which was owned and run by his daughter-in-law Charley. There was a bite in the air. The sun was still out but starting to cast shadows on the town before its evening slide behind the mountains. The shop owners had already welcomed spring, filling their window boxes with plants and putting up hanging flower baskets.

Icicle Falls was set up to look like a German village, with Bavarian-style architecture and murals painted on the buildings. The closest Grant had ever gotten to Germany was pictures he’d seen in magazines or glimpses of the country in movies. This place sure seemed like a dead ringer to him.

Charley’s face lit up when he walked in. “Dad! You made it.” She hurried over and hugged him and, darn, it felt good to be hugged, good to be back with family.

“How you doing, gorgeous?” he said and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

“Doing great,” she said.

She looked like she was doing great. At least one son and his wife were enjoying married bliss. Charley practically glowed with happiness.

“Dan should be here in about ten minutes,” she said. “We’ve got a table reserved for you.”

He followed her to a booth toward the back of the restaurant. The retired set was already there, enjoying drinks and meals from the senior menu.

“Would you like a beer while you wait?” she asked.

“You know it,” he said, and she went to put in an order for him.

A few minutes later, a cute little gal was setting an icy cold one in front of him. “On the house, Mr. Masters,” she said with a grin. “I’m Melody and I’m new here.”

“Thanks, Melody,” he said. “And it’s Grant. May as well get on a first-name basis, since I plan on being a regular.”

“Grant,” she repeated, smiling, and hurried off to deliver some kind of fancy drinks to two women seated at a table in the middle of the room. One of them, he noticed, was a real looker, with beautiful green eyes and chestnut curls. She glanced his way, blinked, blushed, then turned her head.

No, I’m not him. Thank God no one had come up to ask for his autograph so far. It often took a while to convince people that he wasn’t George Clooney. Once he did, they were embarrassed, and so was he. He wouldn’t mind if the redhead came over, though.

Charley was back now and saw him watching. “That’s Muriel Sterling-Wittman, and yes, she’s single.”

He smiled and shook his head. “Just lookin’. Not in the market.”

“You never know,” Charley said. “I sure wasn’t in the market when I met your son, who, by the way, is the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Speaking of his son, there he was, obviously just out of the shower with his hair still damp, and wearing clean jeans and a shirt. “Dad, you made it,” he said and hugged Grant. Then he slid into the booth, and Charley sat down and joined him. “How was Seattle?”

“Crowded.”

“Matt’s pissed you don’t want to live there.”

“Matt needs to move up here.”

“That’s what I keep telling him,” Dan said. “He could come work for Charley.” Charley seemed a little uncomfortable at that, so he added, “Well, if her chef ever quits.”

“He’s a good one,” she told Grant. “And he’s been with me for several years.”

“Loyalty’s important,” Grant said diplomatically.

“But so is family,” Dan said.

Grant shrugged. “Then why don’t you guys open a second restaurant and let Matt run it?”

“Not a bad idea,” Dan said, “but we’re gonna be busy for a while.”

“Oh?” The minute he saw Dan and his wife exchange smiles he knew, but he played dumb. “With what?”

“With a baby,” Charley said, beaming.

“Well, now, that’s terrific news,” Grant said. “Congratulations, you two. When’s the stork coming?”

“November,” Charley replied.

That explained why his daughter-in-law looked so happy. There was something about a pregnant woman. She glowed like a candle in the dark.

As for his son, Grant sure recognized that goofy grin. If there was anything as exciting as learning you were going to have a kid, Grant didn’t know what it was. “You got names picked out?”

“We’re thinking Amanda Louise if it’s a girl.”

To honor both Charley’s mom and Lou. Lou would have been out of her mind over all this. Damned heart attack. That should have happened to him, not her.

“And Ethan Grant if it’s a boy,” said Dan.

“A nod to Dan’s neglected first name,” Charley teased, nudging him.

“Sorry you get second billing, Dad.”

“At least I’m on the bill. That’s real nice of you. You two will be great parents.”

“I hope so,” Charley said. “I never thought I’d end up being a mom.”

“It’s happening, babe.” Dan slipped an arm around his wife. “So, Dad, you’re gonna be a grandpa.”

“Works for me,” Grant said.

And now he was really glad he’d decided to come back stateside. A new kid in the family and a new business. What else could a man want?

He caught a glimpse of the pretty woman at the other table and suddenly remembered what else.

* * *

Stef normally had Tuesdays and Thursdays off. Once upon a time, BD (Before Destruction), she’d enjoyed staying home on her days off, watching HGTV or puttering in the garden, doing craft projects or playing with Petey. These days, home wasn’t exactly where the heart was, so on Thursday she was more than happy to take a latte break with Griffin at Gingerbread Haus.

“I’m going to poison Brad now and be done with it,” she informed Griffin as they entered the bakery. “Then I’ll replace him with a real carpenter.”

“From what I hear, they aren’t always very fast at getting work done, either,” Griffin said. “Anyway, he’ll get the living room finished eventually,” she added, obviously trying to be encouraging.

Stef did not feel encouraged. “Eventually? Maybe. Right now, it’s looking more like never.” Stef shook her head. “I thought we were so perfectly compatible when we first got married, but I didn’t know about...this.” She sighed. “I do love the guy. What I don’t love is the way he keeps starting projects and never finishing them. It’s making me nuts. I just want to find someone to finish this so we can be done with it, but Brad keeps insisting he’ll get to it.”

Cass, who was ringing up some swan-shaped cream puffs for Muriel Sterling-Wittman, greeted them. “Still nowhere near done, huh?”

“He’ll never be done.”

Muriel took her purchase and smiled the all-knowing Mona Lisa smile she was famous for. “When we’re in the middle of something challenging, it always seems like it’ll last forever, but trust me, even the hard times come to a close.”

“Thanks,” Stef murmured, feeling like the queen of the wicked witches. Here Muriel Sterling had been widowed twice—talk about hard times—and she never complained. Stef’s chaotic reno project, which had been feeling like a mountain, shrank to a molehill. Muriel gave her a reassuring pat on the arm and Stef sighed as the older woman left the shop. “I’m a bitch.”

“No, you’re not,” Cass assured her. “I’d feel the same way if I was in your house. I feel the same way in my leaky house, only I don’t have a husband to blame.”

Another woman with no husband. Now Stef really felt guilty for complaining. Sometimes Brad did not bring out the best in her.

Oh, yeah. Blame it all on Brad. She needed therapy. “Give me two gingerbread boys and a large caramel latte,” she said to Cass. “I’m going to smother my sorrows in sugar.”

“Good idea.” Cass looked at Griffin. “Are you going to walk on the wild side today and have a gingerbread boy?”

“I’ll just have a cup of gingerbread tea. Beth’s been stuffing me full of goodies the last three days.”

Cass smiled. “Next to me, she’s the best baker in town. Well, except for Janice Lind. I’m sure she’ll win the Raise the Roof bake-off again this year.”

“That was before you moved here,” Stef told Griffin. “It was really fun, kind of like a county fair, but without the cows and pigs. At the end they auction everything off. They also have a silent auction. Last year I won a dinner for two at Der Spaniard and a huge basket of Sweet Dreams chocolates. You should come. I bet you’d get some great food pictures.”

Griffin nodded thoughtfully. “I might have to.”

As if on cue, Maddy Donaldson, one of the town’s busiest volunteers, came into the shop, selling tickets to the event. “It’s for a good cause,” she reminded them.

“What does it raise money for?” Griffin asked.

“The proceeds go to maintaining our historical buildings in town. It’s a big part of what keeps Icicle Falls beautiful, and the tickets are only ten dollars, a real bargain.”

“I’m all for that,” Stef said, digging her wallet out of her purse. “I’ll take four,” she told Maddy, then said to Griffin, “You can come with us.”

“I can pay for my own,” Griffin insisted.

“I know, but I want to.” Griffin no longer had Steve to share expenses. Her budget had to have shrunk considerably.

“I’ll take one, too,” Cass said. “Give me a minute to get my money from the back room.”

“I’ve got it,” Stef said. “We can all go together.” Was she being bossy or what? But it would be fun to have her two favorite Icicles with her.

“That’s sweet of you,” Cass said.

In light of the many times Cass hadn’t let them pay for their treats, that was the least she could do.

“Raise the Roof is going to be great this year,” Maddy said as she took their money. “We have so many wonderful things for the silent auction. The art gallery is donating a painting by Gray Wolf Dawson. And Sweet Dreams has come through again.”

“I’m interested in that,” Stef told her. “Now, if you could raffle off a temporary husband...”

“Funny you should say that. We have a new business in town—Honey Do—and he’s going to be offering a whole day of work.”

“It’ll take more than a day to clean up my mess,” Stef grumbled.

“You can always hire him for however long it takes after that.”

“I hear he does roofs,” Cass said, “so I’ll be all over that.”

“I’m sure he does. It’s Dan Masters’s dad. He’s just moved here from Mexico. I talked to him on the phone yesterday and he’s really nice. I hear he’s gorgeous.”

“He is,” Cass said. “I met him when Charley and Dan got married.”

“If that’s the case, there’s bound to be a bidding frenzy,” Maddy said with a smile.

“I suspect there’ll be a bidding frenzy anyway,” Cass told her. “We’ve got two of us right here who’ll bid on a handyman.”

Maddy hung around for a while to chat, then went on her way, and Stef and Griffin settled at one of the bakery’s bistro tables with their drinks and the gingerbread boys. Cass took a moment to join them.

“I sure would like to win that handyman for a day,” Stef said. She could already see her new great room with its polished hardwood floors. All that space! Of course, what she needed would take more than a day. Maybe she’d hire him for...life. “If I could get the guy to finish some of Brad’s other projects, I wouldn’t have to murder my husband.”

“You have to stop saying stuff like that in front of us,” Cass teased her. “If anything happens to Brad, we’ll get called into court to testify.”

Stef sighed. “I know. It’s just that he makes me so mad sometimes. Why can’t he finish anything?”

“He’s a visionary,” Cass suggested. “Lots of great ideas.”

“Well, maybe he needs to envision sleeping on the couch for a while.” The weekend was around the corner and had he saved any time to work on the house? No. Friday night he was sitting in for someone at Ed Fish’s weekly poker game, Saturday was T-ball for Petey, followed by a birthday party they’d all be going to, and Sunday he’d committed them to staying after church for a potluck. Generous of him to volunteer her to bring a casserole and dessert.

“That’ll never happen,” Griffin said. “You’re too soft. He wouldn’t be on that couch longer than a couple of hours.”