Taking a seat at the table, Daphne said, “If it’s any consolation, Connie has found a way to extract payment from me by way of community service.”
“Not surprising. What is she having you do?”
Daphne set down her coffee cup. “Be Mrs. Claus at her Christmas-in-the-Summer event.”
Mel set down his fork. Of all the sneaky... “Connie can be persuasive, but you don’t have to do it.”
“But I want to.”
“That’s what I mean. She’ll make you want to.”
“Mel.” She pressed her palms flat on the table. “I want to be your Mrs. Claus, if you’ll have me.”
A thought sprang to mind. “Does that mean you’re staying in town at least until then?”
“As long as Fran turns up safe and sound.”
Two more weeks. It might as well be a whole new lease on life. She was proposing marriage to him as a big-bellied, red-nosed man. It was a start to them dating for real. He took a doughnut and placed it on her ring finger. “I will.”
* * *
IT WAS ELEVEN O’CLOCK on a Monday, and Daphne had no idea what to do with herself.
She’d shooed Mel out the door around nine o’clock, despite his worried looks at the disarray in the kitchen. She’d returned it all to order, other than the box on the counter which she left for him.
Connie had already dropped off the clothes, including four different pairs of shoes she’d bought at three different stores. There was two dollars and seventy-seven cents in change.
And, Daphne discovered, no receipts.
Still, Connie had taste, and the chunky jewelry was a nice touch.
But now she was dressed with no place to go. She supposed she could grab an early lunch. Mel had given her twenty dollars for “a bite to eat.” But if she left now, she’d have all afternoon to get through. Better to wait.
She refreshed the screen on Mel’s computer in his office for the zillionth time. Mel had said he’d email her if he heard from the police, since he had no landline. Nothing.
She retreated to the couch. Deep in its cushions, Daphne hit the refresh button on her brain. Where could Fran have gone?
Anywhere. If the woman thought she could negotiate a sharp turn into Tim Hortons, she’d have no qualms about turning onto a logging road or a driveway or any of the other tiny turnoffs that no doubt stemmed off the highway like the needles of a conifer.
All this fuss to prove Fran’s point that Daphne couldn’t handle love. Well, if Fran could see her now. Married to Santa Claus. Never mind that she’d eaten his engagement ring.
Fran would love that: she was consuming his love. Daphne couldn’t wait to use that line on her.
“So come back, Fran,” Daphne whispered. She wandered into the office again.
Nothing.
Should she contact Moshe? They’d exchanged emails prior to going on the trip, but at this point, she couldn’t even be sure that Fran was in danger. After all, since Moshe hadn’t emailed her to ask what was going on, Daphne could probably safely assume that Fran had answered her own phone as usual and convinced him that everything was all right. Which meant that Fran was probably fine.
But if Daphne emailed Moshe to confirm that he’d spoken to Fran, he’d know Fran wasn’t with her. Then he’d panic and demand they all come home once Fran was found. Or worse, tear himself away from his very pregnant wife and come out himself.
Perhaps she could come up with something a little...sneakier. After a good deal of revising, she came up with something.
Hi Moshe,
A quick note to let you know that my phone is on the fritz. Until it’s up and running again, you can reach me by email.
I hope your day is going well. Give my love to Hannah and the kids.
Cheers,
Daphne
She added a grinning emoticon to convey her jolliness.
The reply came not a minute later. Okay. Thanks.
Right, then. Fran must have spoken with Moshe today, otherwise he would’ve blasted her by now.
That was good news.
There were a series of knocks on the door. Two quick ones, a pause, another one, pause, and a final one. A code intended for Mel?
Daphne got a kitchen chair to peer through the door’s peephole. The chair was too high, so she had to bend her knees. A gray-haired man in a short-sleeved dress shirt, slacks and cowboy boots stood outside. He wore a gold bracelet.
Probably a salesman.
He knocked out the same code again. “Mel. You there? It’s Cal.”
Okay, not a salesman. Unless it was a salesman who knew Mel. Then again, who didn’t know Mel?
“Mel’s not here,” Daphne said, raising her voice. “Would you like me to pass along a message?”
The man—Cal—looked at the peephole. The tiny circle of glass distorted his face into a long, desolate maw. “When will he be home?”
“I couldn’t say.”
The man chuckled. Daphne didn’t care for a man who chuckled. The guffaws were never genuine. “I am happy to take a message. Or you can leave a card.”
The chuckles stopped but he kept his smile. “Could you tell him that Cal stopped by?” He paused. “His dad.”
His dad. Who Mel wished was dead. “I’ll let him know. Is there a number he can reach you at?”
Cal announced it through the doorway as Daphne wrote it down, using a Greene-on-Top pen and a matching pad of paper from Mel’s dust-free desk.
“I appreciate you taking my number, miss. I was about to call his work but thought the direct approach might be better.”
In other words, better to catch Mel by surprise. Good thing she was here to run interference. “I’ll be sure to tell him.”
“Could you also mention that I’ll come by again at six?”
“Absolutely,” Daphne said.
“I could take him out for dinner,” he said.
“I’ll pass it along.” She was getting a crick in her back from bending like Marilyn Monroe over a street grate.
“You’re also welcome to come, of course. Don’t mean to exclude you or anything.” The charming hesitancy, the concern that no one be excluded, was all Mel.
“Thank you. That sounds...delicious. I’ll be sure to tell him.”
Cal left. With due consideration for her back, Daphne descended from the chair and returned to Mel’s computer. This email, however, would be to Mel.
How to break to Mel that the man he wished dead was very much alive and eager to meet him? She suspected from the way he’d shut down about his dad and about his mountain accident that the two were related.
She needed to be more than his Mrs. Claus. She needed to be the one person he could trust with his secrets.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IT WAS A good thing that Daphne’s email had come in while Mel’s two feet were planted firmly on the ground. Otherwise he might’ve taken a header off the roof and swung from the safety ropes like a monkey.
Cal. The man he’d not seen, had not talked to, had not so much as exchanged a birthday or Christmas card with in thirty-nine years, was here, in his town. Had come to his home and talked to the woman he wanted to marry.
He typed a reply to Daphne. Okay. Thanks. Too short.
I’m glad you didn’t let him in. I will contact him.
Now, as he ate his A&W burger, would be the perfect time to call. Then he could cut off whatever scheme his old man had in mind without having to set eyes on him.
No, he’d eat first. His dad wasn’t going to keep him from getting a decent meal, like his wild spending had when Mel was a kid.
Two bites into his burger, he set it down. On second thought, he’d get the call over with so he could enjoy his meal.
Cal answered before the first ring ended.
“Hello?”
“Mel! Thanks for calling.”
Mel said nothing. Couldn’t really. He felt as if a piece of his burger was still wadded in his throat.
“I hope you don’t mind that I dropped by your apartment, Mel. I didn’t mean to scare your lady friend.”
He was fishing for information, but to what end? Mel swallowed. “How did you know where I lived?”
“Can you believe it? I’d just come into town and was trying to figure out how to get in touch with you when I spotted your company truck parked out front of the building. The storm hit about then, so I hightailed it over to a hotel. This morning I walked in when someone was going out and they mentioned you lived there.”
His dad always had been a sneaky charmer. “The truck says Greene, not Grant. How did you know it was me?”
Cal didn’t hesitate at Mel’s blunt question, probably expecting no less. “I can explain. How about over dinner?”
“What else do you want?”
“Nothing. I want nothing more.”
“Try again.”
“That’s all. I want to have dinner with you. I’ll pay. We’ll talk. If you want to see more of me after that, I’ll be in town for the next week or so. If not, I’ll move on.”
Move on? That was more Cal’s style. Still... “Why now?”
“It’s been forty years. Why not now?”
“Thirty-nine,” Mel said automatically and wished he hadn’t. It showed he was still counting. That every now and again, Cal Grant entered his thoughts.
“I’d like to have dinner with you. Bring along your lady friend, if you like. I already invited her.”
“What?” Mel hadn’t even laid eyes on Cal, and he was already interfering in the most tender, unformed part of his life.
“I told her I was inviting you out and it seemed rude not to extend the invitation. It was courtesy, is all. She doesn’t have to come.”
“I already have dinner plans with her. Just her and me.”
“All right. How about breakfast tomorrow? Or dinner some other night? Or how about a drink after work? Before you go for dinner?”
How many times when he was a kid had he heard Cal chase the next best thing the same way? By not letting the investor or client or customer go until he’d extracted a promise of some kind.
Cal’s voice dropped. “Listen. I know I wasn’t a good father. And I don’t blame you or your mother for leaving. I got to apologize to your mother, but not to you. I just want the chance to talk face-to-face. To see you grown.”
“You spoke to Mom?”
“We talked over the years. Not often, or for long. Last time was just before she passed. She wanted me to know that you were taken care of and not alone.”
He’d had no idea. He never thought his mother had worried about him, especially having Connie to raise. And especially after he became an adult. But, it turned out, she’d never forgotten he was her firstborn, the first child she’d loved.
And Cal was the one to tell him. “Fine,” Mel said. “One meeting. One drink. No appetizers. No dinner. Tonight. Just you and me.”
Again, Cal didn’t hesitate. “I’ll take it.”
* * *
THE PARKING LOT of the sports bar was nearly full, and Mel couldn’t help surveying the lot for what might be his dad’s car. When he and his mom had left all those years ago, they’d taken the only working vehicle, a mustard-yellow Chevy. And it had died forever at a Spirit Lake gas station thirty-nine years ago, determining the town where its occupants would live.
Daphne’s cool fingers touched his bare arm. “He’s probably inside.”
“I know. I was looking—” She wore blue and green, from her earrings to her flowy dress to her bare toes. Clothes Connie had picked out but Daphne had given meaning to. “I wasn’t watching where I was looking.”
She frowned at his doublespeak and he kissed the lines on her forehead. “I’m glad you made me bring you.”
She slipped her hand in his, and his heart expanded. “Never underestimate the powers of a bored and anxious woman.”
Cal was already sitting at a booth by the window. On the dining side, not the lounge. He slid out as they approached and stood, hand outstretched to Daphne. It gave Mel time to catch his breath at the first sight of his father since he was twelve.
He was so much older. Intellectually, Mel had understood that he would be, that he was seventy-two, so his hair would be thinning and gray, the wrinkles established and varied on his face and hands. But he was thinner than Mel had imagined; his short-sleeved shirt draped rather than fitted his form, and his arm muscles were flat against the bone. He wasn’t sick, was he? Come to see his son one last time, the same way Fran, still missing, was seeking closure with her husband’s ashes?
Cal turned from Daphne to him, his hand outstretched. Mel automatically took it, but dropped the handshake quickly to slide in beside Daphne in the booth. Cal resumed his seat, adjusting so that he was positioned directly across and between them. A diplomatic place to be.
Cal had already chosen his drink and waited with his menu closed while Daphne and Mel surveyed theirs. “Take your time, take your time,” he said, all the while drumming his fingers on the shiny table.
Mel would. If Cal had delayed this long to say what he wanted, another few minutes wouldn’t kill him, though it appeared Daphne wasn’t above trying. She read the drink menu from start to finish, and then when the waitress came, entered into a serious conversation about the colors of the sangrias and the dryness of the whites and mellowness of the reds, before placing her order.
A brilliant strategy to make sure Cal didn’t take charge of the situation.
“Should I leave the menus?” the waitress asked.
“Nope,” Mel said. “Just here for drinks.”
As soon as the menus were swept away, Cal set his folded hands on the table, ready to deliver his pitch.
“Daphne, I don’t know how much Mel has told you about me but—”
“He hasn’t mentioned you at all. I have met his brother and sister, though.” That was Daphne, always trying to protect him.
“That would be his half sister and half brother.”
“I don’t make those distinctions,” Mel said. “Just like I didn’t care that my dad wasn’t my biological dad.”
Cal wore glasses with thick lenses that seemed to enlarge his eyes, skewing the proportions of his face. He nodded and quietly said, “Fair enough.” He started again with Daphne. “He and I—” he waved his hand between Mel and himself as though their separation had been planned between them “—haven’t seen each other in nearly forty years. This meeting is history in the making.”
“Glad to be part of it,” Daphne said.
“Mel asked why I’m here now.”
“To see me, you said,” Mel jutted in.
Cal lifted his hand and the gold bracelet on his wrist slid down. Did men in their seventies wear bracelets anymore? “And I do. I do. And that’s all I want. I’m not here to ask you for anything. I’m okay.” He smiled and his smile broadened into a grin. “I won the lottery.”
Sure, Mel thought. Sure.
“How fortuitous,” Daphne said. Mel detected her forced enthusiasm and smiled, not at Cal’s announcement but at Daphne’s soft-spoken words.
Cal pulled out his wallet and took out a newspaper clipping. He flattened it on the tabletop before them. It showed a picture of him standing with an oversize check beside smiling officials from a lottery corporation. The sum wasn’t clear, so Mel had to read the caption underneath to learn that Cal had won a little less than what was in one of Mel’s portfolios with the local bank.
Through careful planning, he was miles ahead of his father, a full twenty years his senior, proving once again that gambling didn’t pay. He’d minded all the little pieces, and not chase
d after the Big Break. He’d been right all along.
Except, by that irrefutable logic, he shouldn’t bank on Daphne becoming his Big Break, his pot of gold. No. He could have her. He’d just take their relationship one step at a time. First, from now until Christmas-in-the-Summer, and then...whatever came next.
Mel handed the clipping back to Cal. “Congratulations.”
“Yep. First thing I did was pay off my debts. I don’t like owing anybody.” Mel sucked in his breath so hard that Daphne’s hand shot to his thigh. Mel wrapped his hand around her small, perfect one and slowly exhaled. Cal sailed on as if he hadn’t heard, which he probably hadn’t. “Then I picked myself up that beauty you see right there.” He pointed out the window to a gleaming black four-door luxury car Mel never would have guessed was Cal’s. “A couple of years old with only—” he lowered his voice as if passing on a secret “—thirty-two thousand kilometers. I lubricated the deal with cash.” Cal crunched down on the last word, like an oversize salty potato chip.
“It certainly looks,” Daphne said very seriously, “like one sweet ride.”
She had to be messing with Cal; she grew claustrophobic when the needle edged to forty kilometers per hour.
“I quit work—” of course, Cal would quit work, and of course, he still had to work at his age “—and decided to go on a road trip. No better time. When would I get the opportunity again?”
Here it was, then. The “opportunity.” “You’re telling me that this is,” Mel said, “the first chance you’ve had in thirty-nine years to come see me.”
The waitress waltzed up with their drinks, giving Cal time to come up with an answer. Except Cal was already prepared.
From his shirt pocket, he produced an envelope with a plastic window on the front, the kind the utility company in British Columbia once sent its bills in. He pushed it across the table to Mel.
On the envelope, in his mother’s handwriting, was written “Cal. We have left for good. Do not follow us. Shirley.”
Coming Home to You Page 13