by Rachel Kane
See, there you go. He knew you were interested, and is trying to let you down as gently as possible.
“And is this your baby?” Mason said.
“Whose else would it be?” asked Judah innocently.
Liam held her up. “Mason Tisdale, Rooney Cooper. Roo for short.”
Mason extended his hand and took the baby’s extended fingers.
What a strange, strange feeling. Her skin was like silk, her hand chubby and soft. He never thought of himself as paternal, but he had the sudden urge to sniff the top of her head, to see if she still had that milky baby smell, the one that always reminded him of puppies. Her eyes sparkled as she looked him right in the face, then down with delight as she heard his tools clinking on his belt. “Ba-ba-ba-baba!” Her laugh was like a bubbling stream.
Liam seemed to be studying him, studying his reaction, and Mason had no idea what look must be in his eyes right now. Confusion. Fright? I don’t want a family. I’ve spent my whole life not wanting a family. Roo isn’t going to convince me otherwise!
Or maybe it was more like a realization: I’ll never have anything like this. I’ll never be reconciled with myself. There are no babies in my future, no chubby hands to hold, no sweet babbling to listen to.
“I think you’ve made a new friend,” said Liam. “She likes you.”
“She likes those tools,” said Mrs. Cooper. “Make sure she doesn’t hurt herself.”
Mason swallowed. “So…should we look inside?”
“I’m speechless,” gasped Noah.
“That’s a first,” said Judah.
“Liam, it’s beautiful,” said Mrs. Cooper.
“Holy shi— Holy moly,” said Mason, quickly correcting himself when he remembered Roo was in the room.
And what a room.
The grand staircase, the marble tiles on the floors. The huge stained glass above them. It felt like walking into the distant past, an age that no longer existed, an age of ballroom dances and white gloves, of drama and intrigue. In the midst of it, Liam looked over at Mason. “What do you think?”
“Your mom is right,” he said.
“Yeah, but what do you think?”
Mason grinned, feeling a warmth at being included. He was being asked to put on his contractor hat; Liam needed him. “Let’s keep walking through.”
It was hard to concentrate on the house. He was walking behind Liam for the most part, and his eyes kept straying to Liam’s back, to his neck. The way his arm flexed when he shifted Roo on his hip. His shirt was tucked in, emphasizing his trim waist and muscular ass. He wasn’t a show-off, his clothes weren’t designed to put his body on display…it just happened that way. By contrast, Mason’s own untucked plaid shirt made him feel slovenly and out of place. Like he was hiding himself.
It’s just a day or two. You can survive being around Liam that long.
“So you’re from around here, Mr. Tisdale?” asked Mrs. Cooper.
“Call me Mason,” he said. “And yes ma’am. Born here, lived here all my life.”
“How is it?” She seemed to recognize her question was too heavy with meaning, especially when Liam glanced back at her. “Good schools? Nice people?”
“Well, it’s been a while since I was in school, but they must be pretty good. Cody Baker just took his eighth-grade science class to Washington DC for some national science fair competition, and they came back with all kinds of ribbons and trophies.”
“God, don’t tell her that,” said Liam. “I don’t need her pressuring me to move down here.”
“I’m just thinking about what’s best for Rooney,” she said. “It won’t be that long before you’re looking at pre-K programs.”
“They don’t have science fairs for pre-K, Mama.”
She reached out and took the baby from Liam. “The future, son. You have to think about the future.”
The look Liam gave her said volumes…but they weren’t volumes Mason could read. There was another conversation happening below the surface, that he wasn’t privy to. Again he felt that distance between himself and Liam. As close as he’d felt last night, as close as he’d wanted to feel…they were strangers.
Why that made him feel so jealous, he didn’t know. He had no right to feel that way.
Kitchen, bedrooms, bathrooms. Mason took measurements and notes, jotted them down on his pad. Liam pointed out cracked tiles; Mason pointed out weak joints in the plumbing. Noah and Judah ran ahead, laughing and calling the others to come see.
For one brief moment, Mason and Liam were alone in a hallway. Mason was examining the lighting fixture in the ceiling, hanging loose, connected only by old, cloth-insulated wires.
“You could tell her the town is awful,” Liam said.
“Is that what you want? You want her to tell you to sell the house?”
“I see you taking notes. It’s bad, isn’t it? The condition of the place?”
Mason shook his head. “I mean, it’ll take work. I want to get a closer look underneath. But it seems really solid. Honestly? I’m shocked by what good condition the place is in. Most of this stuff is cosmetic. No rodents, no signs of leaks, no busted pipes…yet.”
“I’m not sure that’s what I wanted to hear.”
You could stay a little while. You could hire me to renovate the place. Nothing would have to happen, if we could just talk once in a while. If I could sort of pretend we were friends, pretend we were close…
Mason knew Liam wouldn’t want to hear that, either. “I’ll give you an objective view. You’ll be able to make an informed choice, I promise.”
“I’m glad someone in this town is honest.”
The bitterness in Liam’s voice was so unexpected that Mason started. “What? Who isn’t—oh. Don’t tell me. Justin Fucking Mulgrew. Did he bother you last night? I swear to god, I’ll—”
“No, no, it’s fine. I think he was trying to pressure me…but to do what, I don’t know. Clearly he’s used to being a big shot in this town. Your friend Alex told me all about him.”
Oh no, not Alex, please not Alex, if he meets you and knows what you look like, he’ll never stop giving me hell about you…
“Alex is the epicenter of gossip in this town. All the little old church ladies come to buy their books and tell him the latest.”
“I just…” Liam looked over his shoulder, where his family had continued their exploration of the house, their voices further and further away. “I don’t need drama in my life, Mason. I don’t want to get pulled into anything damaging, just because there are all these hard feelings about this house in your town.”
I will protect you from it. I will stand between you and Justin Fucking Mulgrew. I’ll take him down, in the way I should’ve done back when he—
“No, no, I understand. Look, we’ll keep this all-business. I’ll get you on your way as quickly as I can.”
“I can’t uproot Roo. I can’t uproot…myself.”
There was so much depth in his voice, like looking into a still lake and realizing just how far down it goes, so far down you might get lost forever if you dove in. Things he wouldn’t say, things he might never say to anyone he wasn’t very close to.
And he was never going to be very close to Mason.
Mason just had to accept that.
I don’t even know you. This little momentary attraction, it’s just a novelty. In a few days you’ll be gone forever, and I can stop thinking about it.
He reached out a hand, and grasped Liam’s upper arm. “It’s okay,” he said. “Whatever you need, all right? If your family is pressuring you to keep this house, but you don’t want to, I’ll explain all the reasons you can’t. I’ll find something wrong enough with the place, that you can’t hold on to it.”
Yet as Liam looked around the hall, he seemed to sigh and deflate. “It’s so beautiful, though. I haven’t even showed you the spring-house yet.”
“Okay, so let’s look there.”
They were alone. Roo had needed changing, and Mrs.
Cooper offered to take care of that. Noah and Judah were exploring the hedge maze, which had become nearly impassible over the decades of overgrowth.
So it was just Mason and Liam who entered the spring-house. “I wish there was power here,” Liam said, “so I could see the whole thing at once.”
“I’ve got something,” said Mason, pulling the LED lantern from his belt. He switched it on, and the whole room was suffused in eerie white light.
His breath left him. “Oh… Oh god.”
“You see?”
He nodded, practically wordless. “I see.”
Liam walked up to the wall, and traced his fingers over the outline of one of the men on the wall, a mythical beast, half fish, but definitely half man, the lines of his muscles carefully drawn in the fragmented mosaic tiles. Golden hair streamed from beneath his crown, and he extended his trident in a show of lording over the other figures on the wall.
Mason couldn’t help but think Liam had been the model for that man. His hair, outside in the sun, had been just that shade of gold, although nowhere near as long. Maybe he should grow it out, maybe he should let it roll down over his shoulders like a wave.
Maybe you should calm the hell down before you do something you regret.
“This,” said Liam, “is the problem. This right here. If it were just the house, it’d be a hard decision, but I could do it, I could give it up, because that’s the right, practical thing to do. Sell the place, save the money for something useful. But this. How do you give up something this beautiful? Once you know this is in your hands, how do you let it go?”
Mason had no answer for that. He joined Liam at the wall and reached up to feel the tiles. It wouldn’t be easy to restore this mosaic, but it would be so worth it. Once he was done being dazzled by it, he could see that many of the tiles had fallen out, the grouting needed to be replaced, there was a lot of work involved…but at the end of it, you would have helped preserve a piece of art.
“How have I lived here my whole life, and never seen this?” He reached up to touch the figure’s crown, not realizing that Liam was going to reach up too, and their hands brushed.
Liam quickly brought his hand back down, and blinked, and stepped back from the wall. “You see why it’s hard,” he said.
Mason nodded. “Really hard.”
9
Liam
“I call this family meeting to order,” said Liam with a solemnity he wasn’t sure he meant. Roo was reaching across the table, trying to put her fingers on the Red Cat’s menu.
“Ca’!” she said. “Ca’!” The way she always did when she saw Mrs. Morris’ cat in the window of their building.
See? We have a life there. We look at Mrs. Morris’ cat. The city is where I belong, not here.
Noah looked up from his menu. “Is this place…clean?”
Judah said, “Look at the prices. You pay twice as much for a cheeseburger back home.”
“It’s probably made from squirrels or possums or something.”
Mama, at least, was paying attention to Liam’s mood, although he couldn’t tell what she was thinking. She had been quiet and thoughtful on the drive back from the mansion, unwilling to engage in Noah and Judah’s banter.
“In the end,” she said, cutting through any preliminaries, “it’s up to you.”
Liam shook his head. “That’s exactly what it’s not. If I lived all by myself, sure, if my decisions didn’t have an impact on anyone else. But…”
He didn’t have to explain. Everyone at the table knew what he meant. His life was back home, in the city. To uproot himself and his baby, to leave his family behind, all for a house? Even a beautiful house? Even for those tiles, those mosaics?
Not to mention, this house had been willed to his father first. And that made it as much Mama’s decision as his, to his way of thinking. Hadn’t that been one of the things on Mama’s mind, on the way back? She had to be thinking about Dad, about all his secrets, about why he wouldn’t have told her about this place, and his refusal of it.
Noah set down his menu. At first Liam worried he was going to make another snarky joke, but as he searched his friend’s face, he saw nothing but concern. “If it were me, I’d sell it. Think of the money, Liam. You’d be rich.”
“Not rich.”
“Richer than you are now, that’s for sure.”
“But—”
“I know,” he said to Liam. “I know what you’re going to say. I’m just telling you, that’s my advice. Sell. Enjoy the money. After everything that’s happened to you, after everything you’ve been through? You deserve to cash in and relax for once.”
“You are incorrect, and your logic is flawed,” said Judah.
“Oh boy, here’s Mr. Spock to help you out,” muttered Noah.
Judah gave Noah a not-very-logical but quite brotherly shove, nearly knocking him out of the booth, before turning back to Liam. “If we were talking short-term, I might agree with Noah, as rare as that is,” he said. “But if you think of the house as an investment, then that changes things. If you hold on to it, its value goes up. If you get it in good repair, the value skyrockets. You could be looking at fully funding Roo’s college, a retirement plan… Far more than you’d get for selling it today. You should keep it.”
Liam groaned. “So much for a consensus. All right, one vote to sell, one vote to keep. Mama?”
Before Mama could speak, though, Renee approached.
“How are y’all today?” she said, her voice brightening the somber, thoughtful mood of the table. “Mr. Cooper, is that your baby?”
“Everybody, meet Renee, she’s Mr. Edwards’ daughter, and proprietor of the Red Cat Cafe.”
“Ca’!” exclaimed Roo.
“Ain’t you the cutest!” said Renee, reaching over Liam to stroke Roo’s cheek. If there was anything Roo loved more than cats, it was strangers, and she laughed and grabbed Renee’s hand. “Now that’s what I like to see, a girl with some strength!”
They ordered, and Liam couldn’t help but notice Noah wasn’t going to make any possum jokes to Renee. He looked at her towering figure with something like awe.
“Nice people in this town,” said Mama.
“Mostly.” Liam thought of Justin Mulgrew. “Not all. But it’s time to say what you think. Because you haven’t really said a word about it.”
Mama sighed. “It’s not my decision.”
“Would you just tell me what’s on your mind? Something clearly is.”
Her lips pressed together, and she stared out the window of the diner, out at the little street beyond. After a long moment of silence, she said, “It makes me wonder about your dad, is all. Did he come down here? Did he see the house, before making up his mind? Why didn’t he ever tell me?”
All three men were still and quiet. There were conversations the Coopers all knew were off-limits, and the greatest of these was the mystery of Dad. It was the one real point of friction between Liam and his mom. He was mine, too. He wasn’t just your husband, he was my father. I deserve to have feelings about him. I deserve to be able to talk about him, without being shut down. But that was the way Mama had always dealt with it. She thought it would be a sign of weakness to dissolve into tears, or burn with anger, or show any emotion at all about him, other than this suffocating thoughtfulness.
Liam knew, though, that if they ever were to talk about Dad, it wouldn’t be here at the Red Cat. He tried to steer her back to the question at hand. “It’s not Dad’s problem anymore,” he said, “it’s ours. Tell me what to do.”
“You know what to do. You find out what’s best for Rooney, what decision gives her the best possible future, and you follow it. Nothing is more important than her.”
He looked at his child, his baby, who was happily saying her name over and over in a sleepy sing-song, Woo, woo-woo, wooooo.
She was much too young to understand the pain in their lives, and he had done everything he could to keep it from her, because while she might not unders
tand why he had felt so hurt, so broken, she would’ve been able to pick up on the sadness, the sorrow, the times when all he wanted to do was curl up in bed, clutching the pillow to his chest, and spend the day unmoving and alone. She had pulled him out of himself, forced him to think of things other than his own feelings, and he’d be forever grateful for that… But it meant there were things he simply hadn’t dealt with emotionally yet, mourning he had not yet done, and that made this new house an imposition, one more thing standing in the way of his getting over his loss. One more practical problem to solve.
It had been a long couple of days, and he found himself ready to grumble over his family not solving it for him. Why can’t you take this burden off me? Why do I have to be the one to decide? But before he could say a word, he took another look at Mama’s face. She was staring again, out the window, beyond the town…someplace far away, the place she had been hiding all her thoughts since Dad died.
He realized he had received three different answers…if only he were willing to listen to his mother’s unstated message, the words behind her words.
Noah: Sell immediately.
Judah: Fix it up as an investment.
Mama: This house is one of your father’s mysteries.
Yes, yes, he had to think about Rooney and the future, but that went without saying. It was the look in his mother’s eyes that gave him her secret answer, that finding out more about Superbia Springs, and his father’s refusal of it, might unlock some of the secrets he’d kept from his wife and sons.
So would Liam consider that a vote to stay here for a while?
It wasn’t the same as a decision. It didn’t answer the problem that he had an entire life back home. But it was…interesting, nonetheless.
“So are you sleeping with the handyman?” Noah asked over his fries.
Liam sputtered, nearly choking on his vanilla Coke. “Noah! There’s babies present!”
Roo laughed at the sight of her dad’s reaction, and Mama just sighed. “Do I need to cover Roo’s ears?”