Coming Home to You

by M. K. Stelmack

  Mel rested his elbow in the open window. Nothing was moving, except for the vehicles that came and went. Every last single one shot through a slough-like puddle that had gathered where the parking lot sloped ever so slightly downward.

  Ever so slightly downward...

  “How about the pedals? Can you work them?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t push on the gas. I freeze.”

  Mel had a sudden vision of them squealing toward the vehicles bunched around the store entrance, her foot glued to the gas pedal. “Probably a good thing. How about the brake?”

  Her face brightened. “Yes, I can do the brake.” She thumped the brake once, twice. “I’m really good with the brake. But,” she sighed, “that’s rather pointless when you’re already parked.”

  “Never mind. I’ve got an idea. How are you with the gearshift?”

  Daphne stared at the stick by her elbow. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never got that far.”

  “Try it. Without starting the engine. Push on the brake. Good. Now, put your hand on the grip, push on that knob and slide it up and down. That’s it. All the way in. Yep. Hold it there and move to Neutral. The N. No, yeah, almost, no, yep. Leave it.”

  He opened his door. “Now, I’m going to get out—”

  She grabbed his shirt. “You can’t. Don’t leave me in here. It’s illegal.”

  Her grip was so strong, he dared not move for fear his shirt would rip. “All I’m doing is going to the rear of the car. Okay?”

  “What do I do?”

  “Nothing. Hold on to the wheel like you are with my shirt.” She unclenched her fist from his shirt and white-knuckled the steering wheel.

  He took up his position at the bumper. “All right,” he called, “when the car starts rolling forward, you steer it across.”

  She stuck her head out the window. “What are you doing?”

  It had been many a year since he’d pushed a car. He got low—which, given Connie’s car, was his only choice—and leaned his shoulder into it. Then he gave it all he had.

  Nothing.

  Two more pushes. Still nothing. Odd. There should be some kind of movement. He walked to the open driver’s window. She hadn’t moved, her profile rigid, like a soldier as the inspecting officer strolled by. “Daphne. You’ve still got your foot on the brake.”

  “Yes. Yes. I do. Just like you said.”

  “Daphne. That was just for getting it into gear. Now, take your foot off the brake.”

  As slowly as if her foot was encased in cement, she did.

  “Okay. Keep your foot there. And your hands on the wheel.”

  This time the car eased forward. He stayed low and kept pushing. He wasn’t built like a brick outhouse for nothing. “Just hold on to the wheel,” he called. “Hold on, hold on.”

  The car, slow and steady, crossed the gap and entered the parking space. Just a little more, just a little more. “Brake!”

  “Now?”

  “Yep.”

  Good as her word, she applied the brake. Mel shot to Daphne’s window. “Okay, now. Move the gearshift to P. That’s Park. Up one. That’s it. Now. Take your foot off the brake and take both hands off the wheel.”

  She did, her hands hovering. She beamed up at him. “I drove,” she breathed. “I drove. Thank you, Mel,” she said. “Thank you.”

  He’d push Connie’s crummy car around the parking lot the rest of his life to get that smile, to get that feeling he’d changed her life for the better.

  His one break was granted. He now went for broke. “Daphne,” he said. “I know how else you can remember me. Let’s not fake it anymore.”

  * * *

  HIGH FROM OVERCOMING her first roadblock to mastering her vehophobia, Daphne stared at Mel’s kind face. He had pushed, pushed a car to convert her into a driver.

  But apparently his efforts had burst an important blood vessel regulating sanity. She indicated the passenger seat. “Get in.”

  When he was back inside, she said, “I’ve no interest in embarking on a relationship only to break it off in a couple of weeks. That’s silly.”

  “Or,” Mel said, “we could have a relationship that wraps up nicely in two weeks.”

  “What’s the point of that?”

  “To have a relationship for as long as we can. Isn’t that the point of any relationship?”

  “I need air.” She tilted her head and drew in the warm air of dusty asphalt and mud from the heavy rain that had finally come last night.

  “You know,” he said, “we could just turn the battery on, roll up the windows and blast the air-conditioning.”

  “Remember what just happened when I tried to start the car? I could’ve wrecked the motor—” she snapped her fingers “—like that.”

  “Then I guess we sit here and drip from our armpits.”

  She supposed that if she could drive ten feet, she could move a switch a tenth of an inch. She drew a breath and slowly turned the key until there was a faint click. Once again, the dashboard came alive. She froze.

  “This is it, right?” she whispered.

  “Yep. You can let go of the key now.”

  “I don’t think I can.”

  Once again, his strong, tanned fingers, covered hers, and as before, her hand relaxed into his.

  This time when he drew her hand away from the key, he didn’t let go. Instead, he reached past her and powered the windows shut. Then he upped the air-conditioning. A blast of hot air, and then cool air, cleansed her face.

  And still he held her hand. With every heartbeat she kept her hand in his, she was entering into an agreement with him. A relationship.

  In her third act of courage—or perhaps just her latest act of cowardice—she slipped her hand from under his.

  “We should head back,” she said.

  “Okay,” he said. He moved his hand to his knee.

  “Don’t you dare play that game with me,” Daphne said. “You know very well I can’t drive.”

  He didn’t move.

  “Fine. I’ll just walk.”

  “Sure. And I could drop by and tell Fran that our relationship is fake.”

  “You wouldn’t. We had an agreement. And you are too honorable of a man to go back on your word.”

  “I didn’t make any agreement of the sort. I could tell her that I entered into my relationship with you with completely honorable intentions but I can no longer disguise the fact that you have faked it all along.”

  He had cornered her. She would be obliged to admit to Fran that she wasn’t faking it, which was exactly what he wanted. Surely, she, a mistress of words—she could quote the entire first proposal scene between Mr. Darcy and Miss Bennett by heart—could pin him to the mat with this.

  He beat her to it. “Daphne. All I’m asking is that you don’t lie to me about your feelings, either in front of her or me. And since you like me well enough, it won’t look much different than who we already are in front of Fran, right?”

  “Not so fast,” she countered. “If you have a relationship with me, you are settling. And I won’t allow that, so my answer is no.”

  “You’re funny, pretty, smart. What about you is ‘settling’?”

  She was short, friendless and a scaredy-cat. “I’m impermanent.”

  “Aren’t we all?”

  “Don’t you dare Forrest Gump me again.”

  He smiled, his laugh lines crinkling. She had never pictured Edward Ferrars or Mr. Darcy with laugh lines, both too serious by far. “Just be who you are.”

  Not if it meant being funny, pretty and smart. Okay, she was smart—that is, if the subject was about one author from two hundred years ago. But he was asking her to take one small victory—steering a tiny car ten feet—and transform herself into his real girlfriend.

  Impossible.

/>   “Here’s the deal,” she said. “You are settling. I’m not going to date you for real, even though I genuinely like you. Instead, I am willing to fake a relationship with you not just in front of Fran but in front of whoever you want me to.”

  Mel pulled hard on his baseball cap. “Well. It’s a start.” He gazed out the window, a sneaky smile suddenly lighting his face. What now?

  She was too scared to ask, choosing instead to change the topic. “Will you drive me home?”

  Smile still in place, he said, “Sure, unless you want to drive.”

  She unsnapped her seat belt. “No. You.” He’d been in the driver’s seat the whole time, anyway.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “MEANWHILE, WHAT AM I to do about Frederick?” Fran held up the extinguisher she normally kept on her bedside table. She was doing her aging Katherine Hepburn act on her bed while Daphne, wrapped in a towel, looked for date clothes.

  Her choice was ugly, dirty or ugly and dirty.

  “I don’t know,” she said truthfully.

  Fran tapped her nail against the steel container. Ping, ping, ping. “You and Mel could take him there.”

  “What? All the way to the coast? Hardly. Mel’s a busy man.”

  “That’s what you keep saying. Is that a new dress?”

  It was. The downtown shopkeeper, who was every bit as tall as her, had assured her that this design added inches—inches!—to her height. Of course, she only donned it because she literally had nothing else to wear.

  “That style is a little out of your comfort zone,” Fran said. “Mel Greene is certainly expanding your horizons. What’s his place like?”

  Daphne fussed with the dips and folds of her dress, while she plotted how best to divert Fran’s obvious ploy to reveal how intimate her relationship with Mel was. Given that she was only dating him while they were in public, he’d not taken her to his apartment, not kissed her or even hugged her. In fact, she hadn’t seen him since the ten-foot drive five days ago, though Fran thought only one day had passed since their last date, thanks to Daphne inventing a bingo night, walks on the fitness track together and karaoke night at a bar. Fran would expect a higher level of intimacy after all of that.

  “It’s your typical bachelor’s apartment,” she said. “Nothing but the basics and a big screen.”

  “Does he live on the top floor? I bet he does, being a roofer,” Fran said.

  “By that logic,” Daphne said, “he should live on a roof. Listen, how about when the time comes, I will take both you and Frederick out to the coast?”

  Fran rubbed the letters on Frederick’s extinguisher. They spelled his name, and underneath was the line DO NOT USE. EXPIRED.

  Oh, dear. Had she crossed a line? Fran made constant crass references to her passing. But it made all the difference in the world to hear the truth about yourself from a loved one.

  “Fran, I’m—”

  “That plan won’t do. I promised him that I would be the one to scatter his ashes in the Pacific, and, yes, I rue the day I didn’t board a plane to Vancouver immediately after his service. But there you have it. I need to have this resolved.”

  “Hello?”

  Mel.

  Fran swung her legs off her bed. “I’ll ask him to deliver Frederick to the coast on your behalf.”

  “On my...?”

  Daphne hurried behind Fran to the living area, where Mel stood. His gaze warmed when his eyes rested on her. He may not have kissed her, but he still made her feel as if they’d spent a great long time doing just that. “Ready to go for a drive?”

  Code for her driving lesson, which she was grandly overdressed for. “I am, but you should be warned that Fran intends to ask something preposterous of you, and you must feel free to decline.”

  “Sure,” Mel said and turned to Fran. “What did you have in mind?”

  Fran produced the extinguisher. “This is Frederick, my late husband. I was wondering if you would be so kind as to run him out to the coast and deposit him in the ocean. I would, but as you know, I’m stuck here for the time being.”

  “Say no,” Daphne said to Mel. “Just say no.”

  “You can take Daphne along for company.”

  “Fran, you’re being unreasonable,” Daphne said.

  “I have no other options, or I wouldn’t ask.”

  “Wouldn’t you want to be there yourself, Fran?” Mel asked.

  “Exactly!” Daphne said. “Very good point.”

  Fran leaned against the cushions and fluttered her eyelids down like winged insects landing. “I would but I feel so weakened these days. If I knew you and Daphne were carrying out poor Frederick’s wishes, it’d be as if I were doing it myself.”

  Fran was weaker. Her meds were working but they left her drowsy. “I can’t leave you alone,” Daphne said. “And that’s that.”

  Fran sank into her love seat. “Mel? Would you fly there by yourself? I’d pay you, of course.”

  Mel pulled on his cap, then his collar and again on his cap. “I don’t fly. Never have, never will.”

  Daphne could tell from his adamant tone exactly what was behind his flat statement. “You’re afraid of flying.”

  “Yep.”

  “Perhaps if we could locate a plane that could go in ten-foot hops, you could overcome your fear,” Daphne said.

  “Huh.”

  “Whatever are you talking about, Daphne?” Fran said and moved on. “Drive, then, Mel. I know that will take longer. A full day there and back, maybe. But I would pay you, and it would mean so much.”

  Again, Mel pulled on his cap and collar and said with the same uncompromising firmness. “No. I don’t drive in the mountains.”

  Fran glanced at Daphne, eyebrows raised. Daphne shared her disbelief. How could Mel live so close to the Rocky Mountains and not want to visit them? Hadn’t he once mentioned living in them? Wait. Did it have something to do with the accident when he was twelve? But nothing traumatic had happened. No one had died. Was it possible that he had fears greater than hers?

  “Then what am I to do?” An anxious edge entered Fran’s voice. “I promised him.”

  “I am sure Frederick will forgive you,” Daphne said softly. “Probably already has.”

  Fran shook her head. “It’s the one promise I could’ve kept and I didn’t.”

  Daphne felt horrible. Yes, it was a physical impossibility for her to be in two places at once, but if she’d been able to drive, she could’ve handily granted Fran her wish. While she’d found a way to keep Fran from going forward, she hadn’t found a way to help Fran bring her aborted cross-country tour to a satisfying conclusion, either. What were they doing here, then?

  * * *

  MEL WAS ROCKING Connie’s car when Jake crossed the parking lot wearing his reflective vest. It was Jake’s graduation he’d gone to last year.

  “Is the car an automatic?”

  “Yep,” Mel said, not losing his rhythm.

  “You can’t push start an automatic.”

  “Don’t want to start it.”

  “Excuse me,” Daphne said to Jake through the open window on the driver’s side, “could you help him out? Push from the other side, maybe?”

  Jake looked back at the cart shelter, packed to the gills. “I’m supposed to hurry and get the carts back inside.”

  “Just to the lamppost, and then we’re off,” she encouraged.

  “I, well, I—”

  “I don’t want him having another heart attack.”

  Mel nearly spun out. Heart attack? What was she getting at? She probably decided he’d backed out of taking Frederick west because of his health, since simply refusing to drive in the mountains sounded so lame.

  Jake hustled to the other side, and immediately Mel felt his load lighten. The car took off, so to speak.

 
“Doesn’t the car start?” Jake asked as they walked the car.

  “It does but she hasn’t got the hang of it yet,” Mel said.

  “Oh. With these old models, you have to turn a key, I guess.”

  Old? Ten years go by and things are old? “Yep,” Mel said. “I know.”

  Jake peered through the rear window at Daphne. He was probably wondering who Mel Greene had hooked up with now. Daphne faced the front but he knew full well from the set of her shoulders that she was taking in every word.

  All at once, he remembered another time, another place. A wet night in spring, and his mother was at the wheel, begging him to push. Push. And he’d tried, his boots slipping in the sticky snow. He’d pawed, shoveled, pushed. But the car had stayed stuck in the ditch. And in his mind.

  “How’s work?” Mel quickly asked Jake.

  “All right, I guess. I’m going to college come September.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah. Biological sciences.”

  “Good for you.”

  A pickup packed with teenagers pulled in beside them, driven by a kid who looked as if he’d got his license five minutes ago. “Dude,” he said to Jake, “what are you doing?”

  “Don’t you have eyes? Pushing.”

  “You can’t push start an automatic.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I said.” Jake pointed with his head to Mel. “He’s teaching her to drive. Hey, can you help? His heart—” another head point “—is not so good.”

  And this, Mel thought, is how small-town rumors start.

  The kids packed in the cab yabbered among themselves, and then the truck spun off and came to an abrupt halt. Out piled the kids, over to the car. Mel stepped out of the way and five kids gave Connie’s pink-mobile all they had, which turned out to be enough to force Mel into a jog beside Daphne.

  Holy, maybe Daphne was right about the heart thing. “You’ll need to steer, Daphne.”

  Daphne was focused on the road in front of her. “Tell them to slow down.”

  The kids were jogging themselves now, the speedometer hovering at the ten kilometers per hour mark.

  “You can handle it, Daphne,” he said. He glanced around the parking lot. A pickup rolled toward them. He pointed. “Go to the other end.”