The Major Gets it Right

by Victoria Pade

  “And why is that jackass here, too?” she asked dourly.

  “I was getting to that. I’m sure Quinn won’t have a long leave for this, so we shouldn’t waste any of the time he has, and he’ll need to know how much space you’re allotting to your dad’s memorial in order to decide what to include and what might have to be left out, won’t he? So I thought that you could take Quinn over to the library, give him the tour and show him what he has to work with.”

  “Mim...” Clairy said between clenched teeth.

  “The faster it all gets done, the faster he’ll be out of your hair,” her grandmother explained, as if she’d read Clairy’s earlier thoughts.

  The older woman got up from the porch swing and headed for the steps to enthusiastically greet the new arrivals.

  As she had the day before, Clairy was in no hurry to go anywhere near her old foe, so after a wave in the general direction of the new arrivals—aimed primarily at Harry—she went to the waiting stacks of boxes.

  Since her grandmother was forcing her into the position of dealing with Quinn again, it at least helped that today she’d paid more attention to her appearance, so she wasn’t as self-conscious as she’d been on Saturday. Her hair and makeup were done, and she had on a pair of white clam diggers with a simple, pastel green funnel-neck T-shirt.

  Feeling far more confident than she had the day before, she picked up one of the boxes and carried it off the porch, heading for Dr. Harry’s truck, where Quinn was helping the older man lower the rusty tailgate, and she noted that he again had on camo pants and a T-shirt. The shadow of stubble on his irritatingly too-handsome face made him look rugged and so masculine that that masculinity was almost palpable, even in the open air.

  As she neared the truck, Quinn met her and took the box before she could object, freeing the way for the elderly doctor to step between them and enfold her in a warm hug.

  “Clairy! Welcome home!”

  “Good to be home,” she assured the doctor, whose white hair was still thick enough for a pompadour wave that added an inch to his height.

  Still held in the hug, her eyes met Quinn’s over the doctor’s shoulder, and she was struck by their color all over again. But the moment it occurred to her, she looked elsewhere.

  When Harry released her, he said, “Quinn has offered to help load me up, so why don’t you and Mim just clear the way and let us work?”

  “I didn’t pack any of the boxes too heavy and I carried them all out here, so there’s no reason I can’t help,” Clairy insisted, actually wishing the frail older man would sit on the sidelines.

  “How about everyone sit it out and let me do it?” Quinn suggested.

  “Oh, Harry will never do that,” Mim said. “He thinks he’s still a he-man.”

  Clairy saw Quinn fight a twitch of a smile at that, and she knew he was thinking the same thing she was—that there had never been a time when the diminutive doctor had been anything close to a he-man.

  While Quinn, on the other hand...

  Clairy stopped that thought the moment it popped into her head. Stunning blue eyes and he-man muscles didn’t make him any less the Quinn Camden she despised.

  “Let’s get to it!” Harry said then, heading for the porch under the accompaniment of her grandmother’s warning for him not to overdo it.

  Having Quinn’s help did make quick work of the chore—which was good, because Clairy had a very difficult time keeping her gaze off Quinn. Unfortunately, having the job done that much faster left her saying goodbye to her grandmother and the doctor, and now alone with Quinn, that much sooner.

  “So those two are taking the leap to live together,” he said as they watched the old truck go slowly down the street.

  “They are,” Clairy answered, unable to tell by his tone if he was for or against it.

  “How old are they?”

  “Mim turned eighty on her last birthday. Dr. Harry is seventy-eight.”

  “Your grandmother is a cougar?”

  It was a joke. But was he making light of it, or making fun of her grandmother and the doctor?

  “She’s healthy and happy with Harry. They both figure that since they enjoy each other’s company and they’re good companions, they might as well spend whatever time they have left together.”

  “But they aren’t getting married?”

  “He asked and he’d like to—”

  “But she wants to keep her options open?”

  “She just doesn’t see the point, so she’s not doing it,” Clairy said, still wondering if Quinn’s questions were indications of the same disapproval her father had shown when Mim had announced to him that she was thinking about the living arrangement.

  “She doesn’t need marriage,” Clairy went on, “but she’s also not ready to be put out to pasture the way my father thought she should be. I’m proud of her for not letting her age hold her back.” There was challenge in Clairy’s voice, daring him to say anything against the elderly couple.

  But rather than any kind of scorn surfacing, Quinn said, “Hey, I think it’s great that neither one of them is throwing in the towel just because they have some years on them. Good for Mim. And for old Doc Harry.”

  Okay, so in this he didn’t hold the same opinion that her father had. Clairy doubted that there were too many more ways they weren’t on the same track.

  Then the marine faced Clairy and said, “So since Mim just took off, I’m guessing you lost the battle over working with me?”

  “I certainly didn’t win it,” Clairy said flatly.

  “I’ll try to make it painless,” he offered.

  It was on the tip of her tongue to say just make it fast and get out of my sight.

  But his tone was amiable and she decided that injecting too much venom into the situation was only likely to impede their progress, so she merely nodded.

  And tried not to feel the hint of engaging appeal his comment had had.

  “Mim said she got you over here tonight to check out the library and see what kind of space we’re devoting to Mac so you’ll have an idea of how much material there’ll be room for,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “Seems like a good place to start.”

  “Let me close my front door and we can walk over through the town square. Or you can drive and I’ll meet you, if you want to go home from there.”

  “I’m up for the walk.”

  Clairy thought she could feel his eyes on her as she returned to the house, but she couldn’t be sure until she pulled the front door shut.

  She hadn’t been wrong, and despite being caught at it, he didn’t stop watching her as she retraced her steps to the curb. But she wasn’t going to let being studied like a new recruit shake her. She could take whatever scrutiny he wanted to dish out.

  As they crossed the street and headed through the square, the centerpiece of it became more and more visible—the huge bronze statue of her father that had been erected two years earlier. Merritt considered it an honor to be the birthplace of a decorated national hero and had wanted that recognized.

  “I heard when they put that statue up the town council discussed renaming Merritt,” Quinn said as they neared it. “Two more votes and this would have become McKinnon.”

  “The town likes claiming him as their own,” Clairy confirmed.

  She expected Quinn to say it was because her father had been a great man—or something along that line—but for a moment he was strangely silent.

  Into that silence, Clairy said, “How long is your leave?”

  “I took ten days.”

  Clairy bristled internally at the idea of spending that long a time with him and let silence reign again.

  Then he said, “So do I have this right—there will be a section of the old library that will be solely devoted to Mac’s life and service, a second section that will be g
iven over to other vets and a third division that will be for serving veterans?”

  “And their families,” Clairy added. “The memorial and the library will be on the ground floor and will also offer a small area for enlistment brochures and materials—”

  “For recruitment?”

  “My father mentioned it specifically in the will—he wanted the glory of the military to inspire men to join, and information right there when he hoped it happened.”

  “Yeah, that sounds like him.”

  “The foundation offices will be on the second floor and separate from the memorial and library. That’s where I’ll be and so will whatever staff I can afford to help organize fundraising and meet with vets and the families of vets.”

  “For?”

  “It will be a resource center to help or access outside help for benefits, housing, loans, education. We’ll have counseling for any health or mental or grieving issues, for transitioning back into civilian life. Hopefully the fundraising will give us money to use not only to keep the doors open here, but to also eventually offer financial aid ourselves—grants, scholarships, support until benefits kick in. Whatever’s needed, wherever it’s needed, however it’s needed.”

  “That’s pretty ambitious,” Quinn said as they climbed the steps to the gray stone two-story building Mac had purchased.

  When Clairy unlocked the church-like arched double doors, Quinn caught and held the one she opened, and she went in ahead of him. He followed close behind into the dusty air of an old structure that had been idle and unoccupied for years.

  “There’s a cleaning crew coming in,” Clairy said as she waved away some of the dust that the door had stirred up. Then, focusing on the first floor, she motioned to the few pieces of furniture that were scattered around. “I want to use the bookcases and tables that were left, so I’ll need to reposition them before I can measure around them for display cases and pedestals, that sort of thing. I’m hoping to do some of that tomorrow when the cleaning crew finishes, and I’ll be able to give you a more exact footage of the memorial space when I do that. But for now...”

  Clairy walked around, explaining her vision of things as she went. “You might want to give some thought to how you think things should be displayed so I can accommodate it—again, cases, pedestals, maybe shadow boxes and frames if there are newspaper or magazine articles. You have more grasp on what he actually wanted used to memorialize him.”

  Okay, she’d managed to be less hostile as she’d talked about her pet project, but that last reminder that Quinn Camden had more insight into and knowledge of her father had hit a nerve once more and her resentment echoed in her voice.

  But why—when Quinn muttered, “All to the glory of Mac...”—was there something in his voice that sounded as if a nerve had been hit in him, too?

  “That was his objective, wasn’t it?”

  Quinn didn’t answer her, and that, too, was curious when she expected him to launch into accolades about how much her father deserved glory. Instead, he merely went on. “I know what Mac wanted out there to represent him, not the best way to put it out there—display cases, pedestals... Hell, I know shadowboxing. I don’t have any idea what a shadow box is. So we really are going to have to work together...”

  As much as Clairy didn’t want to, she had to admit that Mim had been right—this was one of her areas of expertise and she was going to have to collaborate with Quinn in a way that not even Mim would have been able to.

  “I guess so,” she finally conceded with a resigned sigh of acceptance.

  There was nothing left of the library tour and the dust was getting increasingly more irritating to breathe, so they went outside again.

  They’d had such a late start that the sun had set by the time they left the old building, and as Clairy locked the doors, Quinn said, “I’m starving. Anything around here stay open on Sunday night these days?”

  “I don’t really know. Over the years, Mim has mainly come to stay with me in Denver. Even being back for good now, I didn’t get in until late Friday night, so it isn’t as if I know anything about what’s here or what goes on or when.”

  “What would you say to a walk down Independence to see if we can find someplace to eat? My treat.”

  Clairy hadn’t stopped packing boxes to have lunch, so she was hungry, too. And after a long day, the idea of returning to the empty house she’d been alone in for nearly two days, and fixing something for herself to eat standing at the counter, didn’t have much draw. Even if the alternative was dinner with Quinn Camden.

  The best she would allow was that he was better than nothing, and she told herself it would give her the opportunity to practice tolerating him. So she shrugged without enthusiasm and said, “Okay.”

  Independence was Merritt’s main street. It ran through the center of Merritt proper to end at the town square. But Clairy and Quinn didn’t head down Independence, because when they’d crossed the rest of the square to get to it, they discovered a food truck. According to the signs posted around it, the truck had come in for the weekend, offering fish and chips.

  “Smells good,” Quinn said as they approached it. “Want to keep going or try this?”

  Quick, easy, closer to her house than if they went the rest of the way down Independence, more informal than a restaurant...

  “I’m fine with this,” Clairy answered. “Nobody’s using the chess tables—we can sit at one of those,” she suggested with a nod to the north.

  “Great.”

  They went to the end of a lengthy line made up of people neither of them knew, and before too long, they were sitting across from each other on the cement benches, their meals in front of them on the chess table.

  As they began to eat, they talked about the growth and change in Merritt that not only brought in food trucks, but also meant that neither of them recognized anyone in the square tonight. They also appreciated the food that wasn’t fancy, but that they agreed was great.

  Then Quinn said, “So I don’t know a lot about what you’ve done since I left town...”

  “You didn’t know anything about me when you were in town—except that I was in your way.”

  His grimace showed some remorse, but was also a concession to the fact that that was true. “I know I was a jerk to you in the old days—I told you I’m sorry for that. I wish I could make it up to you, and I’d like to find a way...”

  His tone and his expression were solemn, and as if to let her know how serious he was, he laid both forearms on the table on either side of his food and looked her squarely in the eye.

  “But in the meantime,” he continued, “maybe we could start over? Do things differently now? We’re not kids anymore, Clairy. We’re connected through your dad...” He added that last part cautiously. “Would it be so bad if we got to know each other? Even a little? Maybe then I’d have a clue how to...I don’t know...like I said, make up for being so lousy to you somehow.”

  Everything about him said that he honestly meant what he was saying, and still, Clairy’s first inclination was to shoot him down, to make it clear that there wasn’t anything he could do—because there wasn’t.

  Her father was gone, and gone with him were any thoughts, any hopes, any fantasies she’d had of somehow, somewhere down the road, reaching a point where Mac might recognize that he had a daughter, that he might even appreciate that fact, that he might acknowledge her, show her some kind of affection.

  Now any chance of that was lost. Lost to all those years when Quinn had been close to him.

  “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but whatever it is, I can see you getting madder and madder at me,” Quinn said, injecting his voice into what was going through her head. “But, please, can we step onto a new path here? There are things I know now that I didn’t know before. Things that make me even sorrier for the way I treated you. Things that are making me ta
ke a look at myself in a pretty harsh light... But there’s no question that you are where I first went off track and I really—really—want to do anything I can to set that right.”

  That was a surprise. Mr. Tough Luck was questioning something? Doubting himself somehow?

  And what things did he know now that he hadn’t known before? What things had made him sorry and caused him to see himself in a harsh light? Were they the same things that had caused that remark about the memorial being to the glory of Mac?

  Quinn certainly had her curious, if not any more likely to forgive him.

  “What things do you know now?” she asked.

  He shook his head, and his expression was so troubled, it increased her curiosity even more. “I can’t talk about it yet...wheels are in motion...but...” He shook his head again. “But when it comes to you...could you just give me a little bit of a break here?”

  There was such distress and uncertainty in his tone, in his furrowed brow, that it gave Clairy pause. He’d always been so obnoxiously sure of himself, of what he wanted, of how to get it. This was not the Quinn Camden she’d ever seen before. The Quinn Camden she knew. And while before she’d thought that he’d merely mastered the art of appearing sincere, this time she thought he actually was.

  “Is it something to do with my father?” she asked.

  “Just...can we please have a fresh start between the two of us?” was his only response, stubbornly sidestepping her question. “Just you and me? Can you put hating my guts on hold a little? Let me sort out what I need to sort out, and while I do, maybe if we get to know each other, try with each other, things will be better...”

  More things...

  But Clairy had to admit that he’d intrigued her. And because of that—and in the interest of learning the secret that was niggling at him—if she had to let him feel as if he was getting to know her, if she had to put some small effort into getting to know more about him, she couldn’t see any harm in it. It would all be superficial, and if it netted her some satisfaction to her curiosity, it might be worth it.

  “Okay,” she agreed.

  Quinn seemed to relax enough to go on eating, and after a few minutes of silence, he returned to what he’d been saying before. “So college—did you stay here and commute to Northbridge for that? Or did you go somewhere else?”