I spent the next four hours engrossed in the feeds, but in the back of my mind, I was wondering if we were doing the right thing in expanding our footprint. Yes, keeping squatters out of the neighborhood by purchasing the orphaned property was the wise choice, but unless we could find some reliable tenants there, the joke might be on us. Sergeant Ruffalo’s words kept running through my head and I felt helpless to stop the slide.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Mike relieved me at four o’clock on the nose, and we exchanged a few words as he examined the log. Nothing stirring, and Mike told me about his visit to the auto glass repair shop. They were completely out of anything that would fit his truck, but a stop at the dealership netted him a promise that they could get the glass in for him the following week. They could also patch the bullet holes on the hood and front quarter panel, but he would need to leave his truck with them for a few days to get it done. I winced at the quote Mike shared, but that’s what you paid when you went to the dealership. He also reported of the two independent repair shops in town that’d survived the hurricanes, one was backed up for at least a week trying to get parts in, and the other had inexplicably shut down.
“Supply chain issues,” I suggested, but Mike was thinking more along the lines of the owner simply grabbing his family and getting out of Dodge. At least, that’s what he figured based on the handwritten note stuck on the office door. He said the town seemed eerily deserted for a Saturday, and he couldn’t find a single restaurant open for business, including Debbie Stone’s place.
As he brought me up to date, he also reminded me I should try to reach the Fussells if I was still thinking about trying to talk to them about moving out to the property.
“Would be good to have somebody else out here who’s good with their hands,” Mike quipped.
“Hey, I’m useful,” I protested. The taunting was tied to a long-running debate between the two of us.
When we were kids, our father finally broke down and had to buy a new television after the twenty-odd year old Panasonic finally died. The new model was an off-brand our father picked up for cheap at Wal-Mart, but it did have a nice, clear picture and a new feature we’d all heard about but had never owned. A television remote control.
True to form, before the first week was up, Mike had taken that television remote apart to figure out how it worked. Putting it back together was another challenge, but a week after that, he managed to pull it off. A year later, I needed to review the owner’s manual for ten minutes to figure out how to change the batteries. That illustrated the deep chasm between our technical skills. I could do it, with help from the books, while Mike had an innate, God-given talent to tear shit up, then figure out how to fix it.
“Bryan, I’ll admit, you try, and I am impressed you managed to figure out how to do the repairs on your little hobby truck, but face the facts. You are just not mechanically inclined. When it comes to tearing down equipment or turning a wrench, if you don’t have the instruction manual, you are pretty much hopeless.”
I wanted to give a snappy retort, but the votes were already in on this topic. I had simply not been blessed with these particular abilities. Instead, I kept my mouth shut and went to find Mark Fussell’s business card in my office. I had shoebox full of paper business cards, but I’d learned long ago to scan cards when I received them and save the data to a digital directory. In the old days, I’d been satisfied with stapling a business card to my Rolodex and calling it good, but technology marches on.
Finding the information was the work of thirty seconds, but I ended up having to leave a voicemail once I found the number. These days, I hated leaving voicemail. There was the very real chance that the recipient would never respond, either due to the deteriorating cellular network, or because they were dead.
Instead of dwelling on the grim facts of life, I flipped on the television and found we had no connection. Either the dish wasn’t functioning, or the networks were down again. Not sure which it might be, I went over to the shortwave and tuned in the system. I’d taken to listening to the BBC services when I could pick them up, which usually equated to late in the evening, but this time I caught the broadcast in the early afternoon. I caught the newsreader right in the middle of a report, and the subject was the increased volcanic activity in Iceland.
I knew scientists considered a volcano to be ‘active’ if it erupted in the last five hundred years, so the list of active volcanoes in Iceland ran between thirty and forty. However, the vaguely Nordic sounding reporter claimed nearly a hundred now-active volcanoes were currently erupting in and around the island, and he detailed efforts to evacuate the majority of the population to the European mainland. Apparently, this was an ongoing problem, but well outside our area of interest and no one had mentioned it during our many bull sessions in the evening hours.
With all the ash, plane flights were canceled, and that sparked a memory of a similar but much less eventful series of eruptions of several years ago when airlines grounded flights for days at a time depending on the ash levels. Thus, the current evacuation was being undertaken by ships and boats of all types, but the frigid conditions and the lack of suitable hulls made for a dicey situation, as mainly the Scandinavian countries pitched in to clear out the three hundred thousand Icelanders. The description reminded me of the evacuation of Dunkirk, with the waves of molten lava standing in for the blitzing Huns.
“What’s going on?”
The question, as well as the questioner, caught me off-guard, as I was using headphones to listen to the continuing coverage. This latest reporter was aboard one of the few Norwegian Cruise Line ships not sunk by the tsunamis. Must have been at sea when the waves broke, I reasoned. That was the reason any of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet survived, even with the terrible losses only now being slowly reported to the public. Most tsunami waves only reached dangerous heights and killing force as they neared shore, but the exception were the waves thrown off by the impact of the meteor itself. Those destroyed anything within a nearly thousand-mile ring of where the monster gouged out a pit in the seabed.
“Oh, hey, Nancy,” I replied, swiveling the chair around and trying to act nonchalant. She looked good in black slacks and a gray sweater with silver accents. Her golden hair, grown out longer than I’d ever seen, was pulled back in a ponytail that seemed to emphasize the luster of her blonde mane. If she wore any makeup, I couldn’t discern it, and her big blue eyes seemed to see right through me.
I might have pulled off my casual act if the cord connecting the headphones to my ears hadn’t wrapped around my neck like a boa constrictor as I turned. A quick jerk freed the plug from the jack and I tried to ignore Nancy’s gale of laughter as I fumbled for the switch to turn off the radio.
“Glad to see I can provide a little entertainment,” I announced, trying to act like my feelings were hurt, but I guess I wasn’t that good of an actor. Her presence here, seeking me out after avoiding me for some long, made my heart thump a little harder.
“You are definitely entertaining at times, Mr. Hardin,” Nancy chirped in amusement, then her pretty face grew more serious. “I was wondering if we could talk about something a little bit more serious.”
With those words, my happy mood plummeted. In my admittedly limited experience with women, hearing the words ‘talk’ and ‘serious’ in the same sentence invariably led to painful truths being revealed. I turned away, schooling my face, and I replied with what I hoped was a suitably neutral, “Sure, we can do that.”
Gesturing, I led the way over the loveseat I’d been using as a temporary dresser, sweeping up the neatly stacked rows of underclothing and shirts into an armload and depositing them on my desk before turning to look at Nancy. The pensive expression she wore didn’t offer me much hope, but I owed her the courtesy of listening, so I plopped down on the overstuffed pillows and tried not to look like a four-year old being scolded. For her part, Nancy glided over to claim her seat with an almost regal air. But when she sat, I could tell f
rom the closed body language that something was bothering her.
“Nancy,” I prompted gently, “You have to say the words out loud. Whatever it is, I’ll listen, okay? Otherwise, we can just sit here and enjoy each other’s company. I’m fine with whatever you decide.”
There, that didn’t sound at all judgmental, did it? I wondered if she thought I was being too flippant, when all I wanted to do was extend my support.
A brief smile, a hint of what was, graced her lips and cheeks before she started speaking.
“Bryan, you know I have developed feelings for you. Deep feelings, which I think you reciprocate.”
She paused, and I nodded in acknowledgement as well as encouragement, but I bit my tongue to the point of tasting blood to resist the urge to speak. This was her chance to say the words, and I wouldn’t interrupt. I owed her that much, at least.
“And these last few days, I’m just having trouble getting my arms around the way I feel, about us.”
I tried to smile, feeling the earth open up beneath my feet as she paused. Gathering her thoughts, I assumed.
“I think I love you, Bryan. I know I feel something. Something powerful. But I’ve never felt these emotions before, because,” she paused, and I could tell she was fighting herself getting the words out. “Because I’ve never been in love before. Not like this. Not with someone. Not with a man.”
That last bit made me pause for a second, and I wondered if this was Nancy’s effort at coming out of the closet. Just as the thought crossed my mind, I saw Nancy color as she figured out what she’d said as well.
“That’s not to say…I mean, I’ve never…”
“Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” I supplied, throwing Nancy a lifeline, while not trying to laugh.
For a backwoods country boy, I wasn’t the least bit homophobic. None of us were, I didn’t think. Probably due in large part to our father’s influence. He was a very progressive thinker for his times. Hell, for any time I eventually discovered. He taught us not to judge people by the color of their skin or who they loved, but how they acted and how they treated others.
And using that phrase was almost code for someone who was bothered by something out of the mainstream but was trying to cope anyway. I think that phrase was first popularized by a skit on Saturday Night Live, but over the years, it had been co-opted to mean just the opposite.
“Screw you, lawyer boy,” Nancy popped off, losing her train of thought for the moment as she giggled. “You’d just want to watch.”
I waggled my eyebrows at Nancy, and she visibly relaxed before she began her explanation again.
“Bryan, after what happened, when I got pregnant with Lisa, I never really let a guy get close to me. I tried, I really did. I went on dates, and I told myself that I shouldn’t let one asshole ruin my life. But, I never really gave any of them a chance. Not until I met you.”
I started to make a joke, but I realized that was just another way I avoided addressing my own emotions. Instead, I bit my lip and decided to be a grown up for this conversation.
“Nancy, I have never really gotten over the death of my wife, or my little boy,” I finally shared. “Colette and I were together for so long, it was like we were a team, and it was the two of us against the world. Then Charlie came along, and we doubled down on that devotion.”
“Nikki told me a little bit,” Nancy admitted, and it was her turn to bite her lip. I wondered absently what tidbit she was fighting not to share. The suicide watch? The episodes of mindless rage where I’d tried to drive my family away? Or was it something even worse. I shrugged, deciding to own whatever truths my family might have divulged.
“I was a mess for the first year,” I allowed, again giving her as much as she could take. “With the kindness and devotion of a family I didn’t, don’t, deserve, I gradually dug myself out of that pit of despair and started living again. Well, maybe not living, but I managed to get to the point where I could go through the motions and most people wouldn’t stop and point at me, the freak.”
“That’s why you have nightmares, isn’t it?” Nancy asked me softly. “You’re still torturing yourself over something that wasn’t your fault. You said it the first day we met, when you said you killed your family.”
“Yeah, I know. Look at the ego on me, thinking I know better than anybody else,” I conceded. “But he’s the thing. I know that drunk asshole caused the wreck, and I know it was on icy roads at the time. But I was just back from spending nearly a month in Philadelphia in the winter, and it wasn’t my first time stuck up there for work. The locals in Houston, Hell, in this part of Texas, they don’t know how to drive in those kinds of conditions. I do.”
“I think it’s the uncertainty of it all,” Nancy ventured, and she reached over to initiate contact, molding her fingers to mine, palm to palm, before sliding the digits together to hold my hand with the fingers intertwined.
“I mean, if I’d just listened to that little voice in the back of my head that whispered to me to stay home that night and study, then I wouldn’t have been drugged. I wouldn’t have been raped. For you, it’s the guilt of not knowing if being there for your wife and son would have actually made any difference.”
“The choices we make, make us,” I said, seeing the truth in her words. “I just know that I feel different when I’m with you. Happy. And I want to make you happy, too. Which is funny, given how crappy the rest of the world is right now.”
“Does it feel different that how you felt with your wife?” Nancy asked, her attention riveted to me in an intensity I’d never before witnessed. I knew then that if I lied, or hedged my answer in any way, she would sense the evasion.
“It does,” I admitted, again deciding to bare my soul. “The feeling is different, but not any less. Maybe this is how grownups feel when they are falling in love.”
“Wow, cowboy, you don’t mess around, do you?” Nancy exclaimed, then she leaned over, looking up into my eyes. “You really bringing out the ‘L’ word?”
“You asked, and I am too old to play games,” I replied, trying to maintain my cool as I felt Nancy’s eyes lock with mine. “That’s what I meant when I said grownups, because I knew Colette from back when we were just kids. We knew each other, the bad with the good, from an early age. You and I, we don’t have that background, but I know what I feel for you is real, and that feeling grows stronger the more time we spend together.”
Nancy gave a little head bob, and then she stepped back, as if needing the space to breathe.
“I…I’m not sure I’m ready to make that kind of commitment, Bryan.” Nancy responded, and her eyes told a different story. “I have feelings for you too, but I need time to think about what’s happening.”
“You’re scared,” I said, not really needing to guess. “This is all happening too fast, and you are feeling like your control is slipping away from you.”
“I am scared,” she admitted. “I am scared and worried sick, and what if we don’t work out? What can I do? Bryan, you are a good man, and I think I am falling for you, but I have other things going on that I can’t ignore.”
“You are scared,” I repeated. I could see the conflict in her body, as she crossed her arms in the same way that Colette used to do, and the similarity almost made my knees buckle, despite the vow I made to myself not to compare the two women.
“You’re worried about your daughter, and if this is the right place for her.” I guessed, wondering if I was on the right track. “You’ve had to be strong for her for so long that you don’t know if you can accept someone into your life.”
“No, I know this is the right place for her,” Nancy replied with a hesitant smile that quickly faded. “I see how the kids are treated, and how they are loved. Not just by their mothers and fathers, but by the whole family. I want to cover her with bubble wrap, but that’s not an option. But I know you and your family would do anything to protect all of them.”
“Then if not Lisa, what has you so c
oncerned that you can’t let go?”
Nancy looked away, and for a minute I wondered what she was thinking. Then I saw where her eyes were focused. On the radio.
“Nancy, what is it?”
“I don’t know if I can stand to love you when I know we are all going to die.”
“Who says we are all going to die? I know times are rough right now, but we aren’t doomed,” I countered. “I know getting shot at is no picnic, and seeing what we had to do at the barn must have been traumatic for you.”
“Oh, Bryan,” Nancy pronounced with a sigh. “You still don’t get it, do you? We are only living on borrowed time, until those other three meteors get here. I heard the talk. We’ve got what, maybe another three or four months until the next ones arrive?”
“Oh, so you don’t think I’m a dangerous psycho? And you aren’t plotting on how to get away from me and my crazy family,” I responded with a genuine sigh of relief that resulted in a shocked laugh from Nancy.
“Is that what you thought? Because I saw you have to kill somebody, that I was worried you might be dangerous to me or my daughter? Come on, everybody knows you’re just a big softie.”
“Really?”
“Really. Even the way you love those two college girls tells me a lot.” That smile returned with those last words, and I felt a weight lift from my chest, then I processed what she said.
“Wait. What? What about Maddy and Cece? There’s nothing going on there, Nancy,” I insisted. “I’m like their dad. Or a favorite uncle.”
“That’s what I mean,” Nancy quipped with a laugh that seemed to break the dark mood that we’d both been skirting, for different reasons. “You treat them like they were your daughters, too. Just like you treat Lisa. Like they are all your little princesses.”
“Screw it,” I said, and closed the distance to with Nancy bridging those last few inches between us on the loveseat, and took her into my arms. I thought she might resist, but she seemed to melt into my touch.
Tertiary Effects Series | Book 3 | Bite of Frost Page 29