by Jacie Floyd
“I hate to put them out of work because I’m squeamish about what they do.”
“We have an amateur night once a month if you want to give it a try.”
“Not in a million years.” Not in public.
“Just sayin’.” He dipped his head and kissed her. And kissed her some more. “Thanks for last night. It answered a lot of questions.”
“And asked a lot more.”
“We’ll figure it out. Eventually. I’m not sure when I’ll see you again.”
“Adam has to be your priority while he’s here.”
“True.” He opened the door and pulled her into the space with him. “Would you like to meet him?”
“I would, but let’s see how well he adjusts to being here.”
He slid into the seat and closed the door.
She knocked on his window and it slid down. “Call or text me if you have time. If you want to.”
“I want to. I’ll make time. Expect to hear from me later.”
“Travel safely.”
Chapter Sixteen
The sun was touching the top of the horizon when Liam pulled up outside his grandparent’s farmhouse. Darkness would settle in fast. He tried to see the old place through Adam’s eyes. The boy had been quiet on the drive. Quieter than usual. Headphones covered his ears, his head bobbed to music, and his eyes were glued to an electronic game in his hands.
“We’re here, buddy.” Liam nudged the kid’s elbow.
Adam lifted the headphones off, blinked and looked around, as if he’d just landed in an alien world. “Wow. A real farm. With a barn. Are there animals in it?”
“Not anymore.”
“What about a tractor?”
“That’s gone, too. But we’ve still got a couple of go-karts out there.” He’d noticed them when he’d retrieved his motorcycle. “I’ll haul them out and see if I can get them to run.”
“And I could drive one?”
Oops. Maybe he shouldn’t have suggested it. He doubted Leah would approve. “After a few lessons, maybe.”
“Cool. When’s Shelby coming back?”
“A friend’s bringing her back in a little while.”
They hopped out of the truck, grabbed Adam’s gear and headed up the front walk. Adam gave the old porch swing a shove or two while Liam unlocked the door.
When they stepped inside, the boy gazed about. “It’s kind of like a museum.”
To Liam, it was just the same as it had always been, which he guessed was Adam’s point. No one had done anything with it in decades. Gram hadn’t been much for decorating with unnecessary frills and distractions, but while she’d been around, she’d kept everything in the house pristine from the original hardwood floors, to the massive rocker by the fireplace to the crystal lamps on each table. Liam had made the necessary repairs and cleaned it up, but an air of neglect hung over the place. “If you think this is old-fashioned, wait until you see upstairs. And the kitchen. And the bathrooms.”
“Where will I sleep?”
“Upstairs. Come on. I’ll show you.” Liam made a mental note to repair the bannister and a couple of creaking steps, then pointed to one of the four doors in the upstairs hallway. “This is the room your dad and I shared when we lived here.”
“You had bunk beds?” Adam asked with his eyes wide.
“Yeah. After he joined the Army, I got a full-size bed to sleep in, but we moved the bunks over and left them in here for when he came home on leave. I thought you might like them.”
“Which one was yours?”
“Bottom.”
“My dad slept on the top? How old was he?”
“Ten or eleven when we moved here, I guess. The same age you are now.” Liam had been eight. Not that they’d had any choice, but Caleb had been happy about living on the farm. He’d always liked being outside in wide open spaces. Liam had liked living in town, where there were other people to hook-up with and friends he could visit on his bike. But Missy was a month old and Child Welfare was going to take all three kids away from their mother if she didn’t get them someplace safe. And stable. And his grandparents had stepped up for all of them. Even though only Caleb and Liam were their son’s offspring, they’d taken in Missy, too.
Adam shimmed up the side of the bunk just like Caleb would have done, almost banging his head on the ceiling as he went over the side. He stuck his head over the edge to study the shelf full of Liam’s and Caleb’s school memorabilia. “I’ll sleep up here. What about you?”
Liam hesitated over too many unwanted memories. He could sleep in the room Missy had shared with their mom, or in the master suite his grandparents had occupied. Not that there was anything masterful about it. Neither choice was ideal.
“Bottom bunk or separate bed?” Adam asked, assuming that Liam would share the room with him.
Which sounded just right. “I’ll take the bed.”
“What’s this stuff?” Adam reached out to the shelf.
“Just a bunch of awards Caleb and I won in high school.”
“What did you play?”
“Basketball and baseball. Your dad played football and wrestled.” He picked up one of Caleb’s trophies. “He was pretty good.”
Adam hung his head. “I’m not very good at sports.”
When Liam visited him, sometimes they threw a ball around. True, he wasn’t particularly adept, but it was more that he hadn’t played often enough to develop real skills. “When we were kids, Caleb and I were always running, jumping, throwing balls around, competing at everything. I had to get good or he would have beat me at everything.”
Interrupted by a knock on the back door, Liam went to let in Tyrell and Shelby. The cook had brought them some wings for dinner. Shelby greeted him like they’d been separated for weeks then went high-tailing it through the house looking for any other presences. When he hit Adam’s room, he heard the boy’s shout of joy.
“You probably lost your dog now,” Tyrell said, as they listened to the ensuing scuffle.
“That’s okay. They’ll be good company for one another.”
“How’s he doing?” Ty had dropped his voice.
“Quiet. I think he misses his mom.”
“Must be nice.”
“I know, right?” Liam had watched out for his mom more than she watched out for him, and he guessed Tyrell’s mom had been about the same.
His friend shrugged. “You take what you get.” Ty looked around. “Nice place, man. Why do you live at the club when you could stay here instead?”
“Convenience, mostly,” he said, trying to convince himself of that. This place had a lot of ghosts. Maybe Adam and Shelby would help banish them. “Now that I’ve fixed it up, I might stay out here more often.”
“If you want to rent it, let me know. This is way bigger than the apartment Liza and I share.”
“Adam thought it looked like a museum. Don’t you want something more modern?”
“As long as the stove works, it would suit me fine.”
“I turned it on the other day to heat up frozen pizza. That’s about all I know.”
“Liza would like to have a dog and our current landlord won’t allow that. Would you?”
“Hard for me to object since you already know I have Shelby here.” The rental income would be nice. “Maybe after Christmas.”
“No rush. Our lease goes a couple more months.”
“Hey, Uncle Liam! Me and Shelby are hungry!”
“Then you’re lucky. Meet Tyrell. He makes the best wings in town, and he brought us some. The bathroom’s through there. Wash your hands, and we’ll eat.”
“Hi, Tyrell.” The boy looked way up at the big man. “Did you know my dad?”
“No, I just moved to Sunnyside last year.”
“You staying to eat with us?”
“Nah, I got to get back to work. I’ll see you again before you go. Have your uncle bring you into the diner sometime, and I’ll fix you something special.”
Ty went out
the backdoor, and Adam left to wash his hands. When he returned, he took a seat at the table and started unpacking the food, making himself at home. “What about Shelby? What does she eat?”
“I’m filling her bowl now, so she doesn’t sit under the table and beg through our whole meal.”
“What’s your Wi-Fi password, Uncle Liam? I couldn’t get my tablet to work upstairs.”
Liam winced. “Since nobody’s lived here in years, the cable and Internet weren’t hooked up. I called about it last week, but it will be a few days before it’s turned on.”
“No cable? No Internet?” The kid’s eyes went wide.
“We won’t be here most of the time. You’ll have a connection when you go with me to the fitness center tomorrow.”
“What are we going to do tonight?”
Liam had been hoping to call Jillian. He wasn’t used to entertaining eleven-year-olds. “We’ve got a drawer full of board games. Caleb and I played a lot of Battleship and Risk when we were your age.”
“How long ago was that? I’ve played both games online, never non-electronically.”
“Smart ass,” Liam said, loading up his plate. “It’ll be like time travel for you.”
Adam reached for the last wing. “I like not having to go to school tomorrow.”
“But you still have to keep up with your assignments. Your mom gave me the list.”
“I know. The work’s easy. It’s school I don’t like.”
Now they were approaching sensitive ground. “Since when?”
“Since Riley, my best friend, moved away during the summer.”
“Isn’t there anyone else you like to hang with?”
“There are a few guys I talk to, but I don’t do any of the cool stuff like sports, and I’m not part of the popular groups. This new kid came in. He’s way bigger than the rest of us, and he’s real mean to some of the kids.”
“What does he do?”
“Makes fun of them, calls them names, trips them in the hall, takes their stuff, beats up on them.”
“Do you try to stand up for them?”
“No, I try to stay out of his way.”
Liam wanted to teach Adam to pound the shit out of the guy, but he doubted if Leah would approve. “While you’re here, maybe we can think of some other ways to handle it.”
“Don’t tell Mom, okay?”
He couldn’t promise that. “Why not?”
“When I told her about it, she reported it to the school, but that made it worse. He just lies and acts like wouldn’t hurt anybody. But then he’s meaner when no one’s watching. Teachers and the kids he’s not mean to don’t like to get him in trouble ’cause he plays sports and stuff.”
“But he’s a bully.”
“Yeah.”
“When we’re at the fitness center, I can teach you some self-defense moves and show you how to build up strength and muscle.”
“Mom wouldn’t want me to fight.”
“I don’t want that either, but sometimes you have to take up for yourself or for people who can’t take up for themselves. Usually, with a bully, you just have to stand up to them once. Then they back down and leave you alone.”
“What if that doesn’t work?”
“We’ll think of something else.”
Until three weeks ago, Jillian hadn’t seen Liam in twelve years. Now, she was getting antsy after not seeing him for two days. Texts had been exchanged. Late night calls had been made. But no face-to-face contact. Knowing it was unproductive to miss him so much didn’t make it any better. She tapped her fingertips on the table in the library meeting room and shoved him out of her mind.
“What?” she asked, as the six women on the Santa Walk committee looked at her like she’d forgotten to change out of her pajamas before attending the meeting.
“If you’re willing to cook something for the Santa Walk, does that mean you’re willing to do publicity, too?” Claire asked.
She hadn’t thought about that, but she should have. “Sure, if it’s not too late.”
“We can probably get you on some local shows. And the paper will do a couple of articles.”
“We can add your name to additional flyers we’re having printed,” Myrna Hooper suggested.
“That’s fine, but I’m not sure how much help that will be. The walk is in ten days, and I’m not that well-known.”
“You are in Sunnyside,” Barb said. “Or your dad was, and he talked about you all the time.”
“You being gone a long time just adds to the mystique,” Junie joked.
“I’m not sure how my mystique quotient could be all that high, but I’m available to promote the Santa Walk as needed.”
“How long will you be staying in Sunnyside?”
“Another couple of weeks.”
“Will you be spending Christmas in Sunnyside?”
“No.” She couldn’t stand the thought of staying in the Sunnyside house for Christmas without her parents. She’d only managed getting through Thanksgiving thanks to Liam. Since her mother had died in the Sunnyside house three days before Christmas of Jillian’s junior year in high school, she and her dad had spent the next two Christmases trying to cheer up one another. The following years hadn’t been much better, but they hadn’t spent them at the house.
“You’ll miss all the fun in the town square. We have caroling and a cookie exchange and all kinds of neat stuff.”
“Why save that for the week before Christmas? You should be doing that for the Santa Walk, to draw in more people and promote the local merchants.”
“We like to save some stuff for the locals. Just the community.”
“But you could do that, too, on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day when you’re unlikely to draw in outsiders. That would be nice for the people who don’t have much family left and no one to spend the holidays with. Maybe you could even offer a big town hall Christmas dinner.”
“You don’t understand much about tradition, do you, dear?” Myrna asked.
“I understand enough to know Sunnyside needs to start some new traditions. This town is dying, and we have to work together to revive it.”
“Dying?” Her word choice got Junie’s attention.
“If you think caroling and a cookie exchange will be enough to do that, you’re out of touch.” Barb said.
“It’s a place to start.”
“People in Sunnyside like it the way it’s always been,” Lenore said. “Just having you and Tyrell take over the food will be a big change for some of them. They won’t like all these other things.”
Jillian bit back her irritation. “If you don’t start making some changes soon, there won’t be any town left.”
Almost as one, the ladies reared back in shock. “Are things really that bad?”
“If you’re relying on me and my dad’s businesses to save the day, they are. I’ve been over the financial reports a dozen times, and there’s only so much we can do.”
Myrtle Collier settled her glasses on her nose and sat forward to flip open the Santa Walk playbook. “Let’s add a Christmas sing-along with hot chocolate and cookies to the Santa Walk.”
“It will need a catchier name than that,” Lenore grumbled. “What else can we do?”
“You’ve got those new Christmas decorations from Harper and Zach’s wedding, and the twinkle lights in Library Park. Just add a zillion more twinkle lights around town, and you’ll have a festive display.”
The ladies got down to business, putting together a plan that wasn’t as aggressive as Jillian wanted but was more aggressive than the ladies really liked.
“I’ll see if we can get the Presbyterian church to agree to present their live nativity scene that day, instead of just on Christmas Eve,” Myrna said. “Having the animals nearby would be a good children’s attraction, kind of like a petting zoo.”
“If it’s not too late,” Jillian suggested, “we should come up with a logo and a commemorative item that could be updated annually.”
“I’ve seen a painting in Chicago that has a manger in a stable surrounded by all kinds of animals,” Claire said. “Maybe we could recreate something like that.”
“I like it in theory,” Jillian said. “But that would be a big project at the last minute.”
Myrna Hooper sat forward. “My brother Bennie is gaining a reputation as quite an artist. He could design a screen print like Claire’s talking about to put on tote bags and t-shirts to sell. If the town pays for his labor and supplies, he’ll donate the proceeds.”
“We can’t copy another artist’s work.”
“No, I’ll just describe to him the sort of thing we want, and he’ll do the rest. His creative process is all in his head, and sometimes the results are amazing. But the creation doesn’t come to him, he won’t do it.”
“I appreciate the creative process, but what if it won’t come to him?”
“Then we’re no worse off than we are now, are we?” Myrna cleared her throat and leaned in. “However, I’ve been taking photography classes and have some nice shots of the gazebo. Maybe we can do something with those as an alternate plan.”
“Excellent idea,” Claire agreed. “I’ll spread the word to the merchants about an expanded Santa walk and see what promotions they can come up with on short notice. If they can tie it into the theme, have a sale of some kind, that would improve their business.”
“I’ll alert the PR people that they can talk to Jillian and expand the flyer.”
“This will be fun,” Junie said, rubbing her hands together. “Let’s get to work.”
Cautiously optimistic about the meeting’s results, Jillian checked her phone for an incoming text as she stepped outside the library. She’d wanted to meet Liam and Adam for lunch at the diner, but Liam wasn’t sure who he’d run into there. She didn’t think he’d be able to keep the child under wraps for two weeks, but she was fine with picking up lunch, if that’s what he preferred.
She ordered tacos, burritos and quesadillas at the Taco Shack. Since this was the Mexican food she grew up eating, it was her gold standard for all other Mexican cuisine. After catching up with Miguel Sanchez, owner and cook at the Taco Shack, she took her bag of goodies out to the old barn.