Dream House

by Jean Brashear

  “Behind you,” said a male voice. “I can’t decide whether to hug you or kick your ass.”

  “Take your pick. I wouldn’t put up much of a battle.” Micah turned to face the year-older brother people said could be his twin. Levi’s hair, however, was chestnut brown, where Micah’s was black, and Levi’s eyes were nearly navy, instead of Micah’s lighter blue.

  “You look like hell,” Levi said before pulling him into a fierce, back-slapping embrace.

  After so long alone, Micah had forgotten what it felt like to be with someone who loved you. He lingered longer than normal, and Levi didn’t appear any more ready to let him go.

  They broke apart, and Micah saw a bright sheen in his brother’s eyes that must resemble that in his own.

  Then he realized that Lily was openly crying, and Levi’s cheer was forced.

  “What’s wrong?”

  His siblings traded glances, then observed at him as if measuring his resilience.

  His chest constricted. “Is it Mom? What’s happened?”

  When they still hesitated, his temper stirred. “I’m not going to break. Tell me.”

  “She was in a wreck late last night.”

  “How bad?”

  “A broken leg, a concussion, some internal bleeding. Car’s totaled.” Levi scrubbed at his face. “She made it through the surgery, but she’s still unconscious. Noah’s with her. The doctor says we shouldn’t worry yet—”

  “But you are.”

  Levi regarded Lily uneasily.

  “You don’t have to protect me, either,” Lily said. “I’m not a kid, Levi. Yes, we’re worried,” she answered Micah. “Mom has seemed…fragile lately.”

  “And no one told me?”

  Levi’s jaw tightened. “Would you have come?”

  Micah halted in mid-step. “You’re out of line.”

  “Guys,” Lily cautioned. “Fighting won’t help her.”

  Micah continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “You can’t believe I wouldn’t have been here in a heartbeat if I’d known.” What if she never regained consciousness? How much time had he lost with her?

  Levi raked fingers through his hair. “Of course you would. Mom and I actually had a fight over you.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “The cottage. She didn’t think I should make you return to deal with it.”

  “She believed I couldn’t handle it.” His jaw clenched. “I’m not a kid.”

  “She loves you, Micah. She wants you to live again. She’s ecstatic about the great reviews you’ve gotten for your show.”

  “She shouldn’t be shielding me.” It was hardly the first time, though. Marian Smith had never given up on her second son, even in the darkest days. It was she who had reminded Micah of Charlotte’s deep regret that he’d abandoned his art to care for her. She had let her son grieve longer than she’d wanted, but though she’d granted him room to find his way, she’d watched him with an eagle’s eye. She’d slipped into the house and left him food each day when merely getting out of bed had been too much for him. Picked up the brushes he’d snapped like so many twigs during the rage that followed his one attempt to paint. Pressed a kiss to his hair when he’d sat on the porch, staring blindly.

  Loved him far better and longer than he deserved.

  And put him first, even when it hurt her for him to go.

  “Let’s hit the road.”

  “What’s your bag look like? I’ll get it.”

  “This is it.”

  “Micah, you can’t cut and run again, damn it.”

  “I didn’t take much with me,” Micah explained.

  “You’ve been gone a year and those’re all the clothes you own?”

  “Not everyone’s a clotheshorse like Noah.” Their younger brother had saved his allowance to buy an Izod shirt when he was seven.

  Levi chuckled. “Lily would kill for half the wardrobe.”

  The three of them shared a faint smile, but their hearts weren’t in it.

  “I need to see her,” Micah said. “I’ll never forgive myself if—”

  Levi gave a sharp shake of the head. “Not gonna happen. Mom’s tough.”

  “Not exactly the celebration we’d planned for her sixtieth birthday,” Lily said, leaning into Micah’s side and suddenly sounding very young indeed.

  He squeezed her shoulders as he and Levi shared a silent understanding. “Levi’s right. Mom’s a survivor. She’ll be fine. We’ll just postpone the party.”

  He kept his fears to himself. Hold on, Mom. I’m so sorry. Please—

  But he wasn’t certain with whom he was pleading, his mother or the God who had abandoned him on the day Charlotte died.

  Jezebel stubbed her toe on the ugliest couch in North America. She would have cursed, long and loudly, but she couldn’t afford to break her own rule.

  She sat on the couch she’d covered with a velveteen crazy quilt in vivid jewel tones and rubbed the offended toe.

  “Mroww—” Oscar leaped from the stack of gardening books on the garage-sale coffee table to the sagging cushion beside her and tried to worm his way onto Jezebel’s lap.

  “The beer truck is coming. I don’t have time for you,” she complained. But she picked him up and rubbed her nose into his long black-and-white fur as her fingers went to work.

  Soon he was purring so loudly that Rufus ambled over from his spot by the space heater she liked to pretend was a fireplace. Ignoring the feline perched on one of her legs, he plopped his big, shaggy golden head on the other.

  Jezebel chuckled as each refused to acknowledge the other’s existence. The big old hound, part golden retriever and part heaven knows what, had been with her since she’d found him as a puppy, abandoned in the alley behind a strip joint in Tahoe. He was all she’d brought with her when she’d fled. She and Rufus had traveled many a mile together, and no cat, however fat or feisty, was going to ruffle him.

  She indulged in a few moments of sheer sloth in a life that was seldom conducive, nuzzling and petting both animals until everyone was happy, herself included.

  Pretty pathetic, Jez ol’ girl. Admit it—you’d rather be wrapped around a good man.

  Maybe so, but the sticking point was that word: good. She’d sworn off men and sex long before she’d left Vegas. Her life journey had put her in contact with too many males to count, but most of them were married and cheating or divorced and bitter…or just sorry in general.

  She’d long ago made her peace with the tendency of red-blooded males to ogle her generous proportions; she barely noticed it anymore. She and this figure had been cohabiting for a lot of years. It was a helpful tool, yes, but it was just as much a pain in her curvy behind.

  She’d used it when she had to, but most times, she’d sell her soul for a pair of boyish hips and an A-cup bra. Okay, B. No need to get carried away.

  Anyway, here in Three Pines, population seven hundred forty-nine, men like the one who’d fit her secret fantasy were simply a dream, as were the babies and white picket fence that were supposed to go with him. Oh, there was Levi Smith, the town’s veterinarian and most eligible bachelor, but his type went for sweet and wholesome. Anyway, such fancies were absurd for a woman with her background, even if she’d ever tell anyone. Which she wouldn’t.

  But she had found the house part of the fantasy and drove by it at least once a week. It didn’t belong to her yet, but she desperately wished for it to. Her carefully hoarded savings would make the down payment. She was determined that Skeeter would have a proper home in which to enjoy whatever days were left to him.

  Jezebel Hart hadn’t survived her rough-and-tumble life on good looks alone. She had grit aplenty, and she wasn’t afraid of hard work. The cottage she already thought of as hers would require plenty of both. Like Sleeping Beauty, it had lain a long time beneath the tangled vines of heartache and loss, according to local lore.

  She wanted to kiss it back to life.

  She plucked the cat from her lap and gave Rufus one last r
ub, then rose. “Okay, guys, keep the party down. I’m off to work.”

  Then she went out the door of what barely qualified as a shanty, rounded the corner and entered the same building from the side, just as the beer truck rumbled into the parking lot.

  Micah paused after leaving his mother’s hospital room and scrubbed his hands over his face to dislodge the grip of despair. The too-familiar scents, antiseptics and cleansers, blood and sickness…and death.

  On just such a night, he’d walked through these halls for the last time, rudderless and reeling. A widower, a term for someone who’d had a full life, who’d shepherded children to adulthood, seen silver strands weave themselves into his wife’s hair and his own.

  He had none of that, no wife, no child. Only a too-brief past that, despite all the worries over Charlotte’s health, had sparkled with joy and love like diamond-bright drops of dew in a summer dawn.

  And here he was again. The sight of his mother had been a fist to the heart. Even if he hadn’t hated hospitals because he’d spent so many hours in them with Charlotte, he would have felt the impact of this. Marian Smith loved the outdoors; she should have sunshine on her face, not fluorescent lights. She ought to be surrounded by her flowers and herbs, not impersonal machines exuding beeps and heartless digital messages.

  “Micah?”

  Reluctantly, he turned at the voice. Blinked. “Helen?”

  Charlotte’s best friend smiled. “How are you?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  She gestured to her scrubs. “I work here.”

  “I thought you lived in Dallas.”

  “My folks can’t manage without help, so I’m back.”

  “What about Ricky?”

  She shrugged. “We’re divorced.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It happens.”

  A long, uncomfortable pause.

  “Micah, I never knew how to talk to you when Charlotte died.”

  He averted his eyes from the pity in hers. “There was nothing to say.”

  “I read about your show. Charlotte would be so proud.”

  “It’s not—” What I wanted. Not if losing her was the price. But he kept silent.

  “She loved you so much.”

  “Don’t.” The old fury whipped through him as if he’d never mastered it. He turned away, seeking an exit.

  She grabbed his arm. “Micah, she honestly believed she could bear that child for you and make your life together even better.”

  “Well, she didn’t, did she?” Bile rose in his throat. All the dark days rolled back over him like a menacing fog.

  “You have to forgive her, Micah. Put it behind you.”

  “Leave me alone,” he all but shouted. With immense effort, he called back the beast that clamored to spread the hurt.

  Palm out in warning, breath coming hard, he met her shocked expression. “Helen, I’m sorry. I’m just not—”

  Ready.

  He fled past the crowded waiting room filled with his mother’s friends and ducked into the stairwell. Halfway down a flight of steps, he sank onto the bottom one and tried to breathe. He couldn’t deal with any more sympathy just now, or the pitying stares.

  Or the knowledge that the progress he thought he’d made could be destroyed so easily.

  After a few minutes, a door opened above him. “Micah, you here?”

  Micah stirred. “Yeah. Come on down, Noah.”

  His younger brother descended and crouched beside him but didn’t speak. Noah had always been the peacemaker. When Micah and Levi were going at each other over toys or chores or girls—or just for the fun of pounding a brother—Noah would step in and try to use logic.

  He hadn’t had a lot of success when the two of them had their blood running high, but Micah knew Levi felt as fiercely protective of their sibling as he did. “Sorry. I’ll go back to wait with you all now.”

  “Doc told us to head out for the night. We can return in the morning, and he’s got Levi’s cell number to call at any time. Her vitals are good, and they think she’s stable, that it’s her body’s protective reaction to stay under while she heals.”

  “I can’t just leave her here like that.”

  Noah’s gaze was sympathetic. “We all remember how you slept in chairs to be with Charlotte every minute. No one doubts your devotion, Micah. But even if being inside a hospital wasn’t making you crazy, there’s nothing we can do right now but wait. Go home and get some rest. You look like something the cat dragged in.”

  He didn’t attempt to deny how being in this place again impacted him. He sought a smile. “You’re just jealous because I’m prettier.”

  Noah snickered and shoved him. “Believe me, bud, I’d be happier if you were.” Noah’s Newman-blue eyes and killer lashes, coupled with their mother’s blond hair, were only some of the features that had made strangers stop their mother on the street to coo over him as a little boy. Now grown women did.

  Though Noah had hated the reaction as a kid, he’d progressed to taking full advantage of it as a man.

  “I’m serious, Micah. Here are the keys to my car. I’ll catch a ride with Levi. You staying at your house or Mom’s?”

  Micah tensed. “I don’t know.” Either place held too many memories. “I guess I’ll drive out to the cottage and check it out.”

  “You really going to sell it?”

  Memory squeezed his heart in a merciless fist. “I haven’t seen the offer.”

  Noah clapped one hand on his shoulder and stood. “All in good time. Get some sleep, bro. Everything will look different in the morning. Here’s my cell, so we can phone you if Levi gets any word. Don’t suppose a hermit has one.”

  “Nope.” Micah accepted the phone as if he’d been asked to pet a rattler. “How do you use it?”

  Noah rolled his eyes. “One of these days, we’re going to drag you into this century.” Quickly, he demonstrated the rudiments.

  Micah rose and drew Noah into a bear hug. “Thanks.” He clasped the keys and continued down the steps. He was exhausted but too wound up to sleep.

  Might as well face the cottage.

  As he exited the hospital, he noticed that the light was nearly gone. In the gathering shadows, he drove down tree-lined streets and out to the edge of town. He passed the closed-down Rialto movie theater and the old five-and-dime. A mile and a half down the main road, he turned at Ed’s Feed and Grain, then after another mile, crossed the slow, syrupy ribbon the locals called Honey Creek.

  Charlotte had loved its name. She’d requested a sign for their gate. Welcome To Honey Creek Cottage, it had proudly proclaimed. Her little haven in the woods.

  Once his haven, too.

  And someone now had the balls to try to buy it.

  He hadn’t even asked Levi how much was being offered. He should sell it, he knew. How could he ever live there again?

  But how could he give away Charlotte’s dream to a stranger? He stared at the landscape. The creek meandered along the southern boundary of the grand sum of seven acres he’d been able to afford. The red soil, more sand than clay, nurtured countless pines and shin oaks, sprinkled with native dogwoods here and there. Charlotte loved the fragile blossoms of the dogwood so much he’d planted them around the house, too, along with a couple of magnolias and too many azaleas to count. Both dogwoods and azaleas might be blooming already, he imagined.

  And, of course, there were her yellow roses, as lush and flamboyant as she was frail. If life had treated her better, she would have been just as vibrant.

  But fate had given her no such chances, damn it all to hell.

  As he neared the bend where the house would become visible, Micah jammed on the brakes, a visceral dread snaking through him.

  His breath came faster. He clutched the steering wheel with white-knuckled fingers and bowed his forehead against it.

  For a long moment, the sound of his heartbeat was so loud nothing else could intrude. A train wailed in the distance, and he wante
d to be on it. To dodge all the feelings roaring toward him, unleashed in spite of the ruthless control he’d exerted to avoid ever plunging into that dark place again.

  A shred of self-preservation had him whipping the car around and racing in the opposite direction.

  He couldn’t face his mother’s home yet, either, and he didn’t want to talk to his siblings. There was one place that held no memories to drown him, an establishment he’d seldom entered, first because he was too young, then because he was already married to Charlotte and had no need to carouse.

  Skeeter’s Bar. He hardly ever drank. Had instinctively avoided it in the depths of mourning, unwilling to allow himself the escape of crawling into a bottle, never to emerge.

  But tonight he had nowhere else he could bear to go.

  Jezebel noticed the tall, rugged stranger the second he entered. There was something unsettling about the way he stalked across the floor and snagged a shadowed booth in the back. A restlessness akin to anger crackled in the air around him.

  This was not a man who was comfortable inside his skin.

  But he was sure good-looking.

  Interest piqued, she moved to take his order.

  “We don’t know this guy, Jez. Be careful,” Darrell said, his bartender’s radar obviously picking up the same vibes.

  “Always am,” she replied as she passed him. Three Pines, Texas, had yet to throw anything at her to rock her confidence in her ability to handle the male of the species.

  “What can I get you tonight?”

  “A beer.” The stranger never took his eyes off the scarred tabletop. “And a shot,” he added.

  “Tap or bottle?”

  “Either.” One finger tapped a staccato on the surface.

  “Jack Black?”

  “Whatever.”

  “Anything to eat with that?”

  “Nope.”

  She paused, then thought better of the urge to ask what was wrong. Most drinkers cared about the selection. He was either caught in a craving or had little experience. Either way, he’d warrant watching. “Coming up.”

  When she returned, she laid down a coaster and set the mug atop it with the shot glass beside it.

  “Fancy for Skeeter’s,” he observed. Then, as if he regretted the impulse, he clamped his mouth shut.