by Irene Hannon
Things must be very tight on the farm.
“I hope Diet Sprite is acceptable.” Tracy slid back into her chair.
“Fine.” He popped the tab, letting the carbonation hiss while she took a drink of her water and reached for her laptop. “Why don’t we eat before we tackle business?”
She hesitated—but capitulated. “Not a bad idea. The tacos are great but messy. Do we need some extra napkins?”
“Nope. I’m a veteran of Charley’s by now. I brought plenty.” He dug them out of the bag, then divvied up the two wrapped bundles.
“Would you like a plate?” She started to rise again.
“This is fine. I’m used to eating on one of the benches at the wharf. A plate would feel too fancy and ruin some of the ambiance.”
“I agree. Some things are best enjoyed unadorned.” She began unwrapping her tacos.
He did a quick sweep of his lovely companion’s casual attire, simple hairstyle, minimal makeup.
Yep. Unadorned was just fine.
“Charley’s quite a character.” Forcing himself to switch gears, he peeled the paper back on his dinner too. “Some days when I stop by, the place is shut up tight. And no hours are posted. How can he make a living with such a haphazard schedule?”
“He doesn’t.” She bit into a taco. Closed her eyes. Chewed slowly. “Mmm.” Only after she swallowed did she resume the conversation. “Charley makes tacos for fun. Always has, as far back as I can remember. His stand is a town fixture, grandfathered in when the wharf was rezoned and spruced up a few years ago. He’s looked the same my whole life too. The man never seems to age. He makes most of his income from painting.”
“Houses?”
Amusement glinted in her green irises. “Hardly. He’s a very successful artist. Several prestigious galleries around the country sell his work. Charley says the taco stand lets him express his creativity in a different way, takes him back to his roots in Mexico where his grandmother taught him to cook, and gives him the social interaction he needs . . . plus the chance to dispense philosophy along with fish.”
Michael chuckled. “Like I said, quite a character. In fact, this town is full of them.”
“You think? Who else interesting have you met?” She gathered up a piece of green pepper and some shredded cabbage that had escaped from the tortilla.
“My landlady, for one.”
“Ah. Yes, Anna is . . . interesting. Have you had much opportunity to talk with her?”
“She’s not a talker.”
“No kidding. Still, you must have found a way to get her to open up. It would take some serious charm to wrangle an invitation to stay at the annex.”
“I doubt charm had anything to do with it. She approached me. I think it had more to do with my resemblance to her son.”
She stopped unwrapping her second taco. “You know about her son?”
“Only that she has one.”
“How did you find out that much?”
“I knocked over his photo while I was helping her catch one of the critters that escaped from her menagerie.”
Tracy’s eyes widened. “She let you in her house?”
“Not exactly. I was standing in the doorway when a rabbit got loose, and I invited myself in. It took two of us to catch the frisky little guy.”
“I’d heard she kept animals, but I don’t know of any eyewitnesses other than you. No one’s been in her house in years.”
“Then how did you hear about the animals?”
She lifted one shoulder. “Hope Harbor is a very small town—meaning privacy is in short supply. There are very few secrets here.”
Hmm. If Anna’s background was common knowledge, maybe he could ask a few questions without sounding too nosy.
“So tell me about her son. It’s kind of weird to find a photo in a stranger’s house that could be you in your younger days.”
“I imagine it would be.” She took another bite of her taco, silent as she chewed. “I guess I lied about there being no secrets here. No one knows what happened with her son. He’d be close to forty now, I think. He was ahead of me in school, so I never knew him—but from the stories I’ve heard, he was a nice guy. As far as anyone knew, the Williamses were a normal, happy family. Then her son, John, went away to college, her husband died . . . and a few months later John stopped coming home.”
Michael cocked his head. “That’s weird.”
“Tell me about it.” She dived into her third taco. “After that, Anna began closing up. She still went to work every day as a cook at the high school until she retired, but she stopped going to church, cut out all social activities, and became sort of a hermit. An unfriendly one, at that. Trust me, her inviting you to stay in the annex is the talk of the town.” She inspected him. “Do you really think it’s because you remind her of her son?”
“I can’t think of any other reason.” He started on his last taco too.
“Interesting. A mystery in Hope Harbor.”
“More than one.”
Whoops.
Dumb comment.
“What do you mean?” She took a big bite of her taco and watched him while she chewed.
Since he couldn’t very well tell her she was the other one, he blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “Well, the way you all have managed to keep an organization like Helping Hands running on a volunteer basis in spite of the accelerating demand for services is pretty mystifying.”
“True. Which is why the board and our two clergy directors all asked me to express their deepest appreciation for your help.” She finished off her taco, wiped her hands on a napkin, and pulled her laptop closer. “Shall we move on to that topic while you finish?”
No. I’d rather ask some questions about you first.
Stifling that inappropriate response, he offered the only possible alternative. “Sure.”
For the next thirty minutes, she answered as many of the questions that had come up during his review as she could, deferring a few to board discussion. But in contrast to a lot of the boards he’d dealt with during his nonprofit career, where members liked to see their names on the roster but never wanted to get their hands dirty dealing with “clients,” Tracy came across as a hands-on person. She knew the administrative side of the organization in exceptional detail—but she also knew the people side.
And if he’d had any doubts about the latter, the phone call that interrupted them as they were winding down—from a client Tracy identified as a Helping Hands regular—confirmed it.
“Do you mind if I take this?” She looked up from caller ID. “I should be able to deal with the issue fast.”
“No problem. I have no agenda for the rest of the day.”
Phone in hand, she stood and walked a few paces away—but he had no difficulty hearing the conversation.
“Hello, Eleanor. How are you today? . . . Oh, I’m sorry to hear that . . . Yes, it has been, but the weather around here is always fickle . . . Yes, I know you do . . . Uh-huh . . . uh-huh . . . No, it’s no bother at all. I can have it to you within the hour . . . No, no, don’t worry about it. You’re close by. I’ll see you soon.”
When Tracy turned back, Michael arched an eyebrow. “Why are Helping Hands calls coming directly to you? According to the documents I reviewed, the organization has a hotline.”
She retook her seat and picked up a stray bite of fish from her last taco. “Eleanor is a special case. I answered her first call for help last year, and she sort of latched on to me. She’s eighty-seven and mostly housebound with fading eyesight and bad knees, so whenever she gets lonesome she finds excuses to call. Tonight she ran out of milk, and since the doctor told her to drink three glasses every day . . .” Tracy gave him a sheepish shrug.
In other words, the woman across from him was a sucker for a sob story . . . and people took advantage of that.
But it was hard to fault a tender, caring heart.
All at once, the name and age of the caller clicked. “Is this the sa
me woman who has the sagging gutter?”
“Yes. I’m working on that problem too. One of the new volunteers from our drive at church last week is a carpenter. I already called on him for an emergency ceiling repair this week, but I’m going to tap him again in a couple of days for Eleanor’s job. We try not to overdo requests for help, though. It burns people out.”
“Eleanor hasn’t burned you out.”
“The truth? There are days my patience wears a little thin . . . but I try to put myself in her place—and be grateful for youth and health.”
Michael finished the last bite of his taco, debating. All he had waiting for him at the annex was his mystery book and a landlady who was probably barricaded in her closed-up house. He might have come to Hope Harbor to be by himself, but an evening alone suddenly held zero appeal.
“I’ll tell you what. Why don’t I follow you over there and take care of the problem?”
She blinked. “But you’ve done enough already. Your review is far more valuable to us than a gutter repair.”
“Well, two good deeds have to be better than one—and as I said, my evening is free.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes.” He gathered up the remnants of their meal. “We’re about finished with that, aren’t we?” He nodded toward her laptop.
“Yes. The rest of the questions will have to be dealt with at a board meeting, which we’ll arrange to suit your schedule.”
“Then let’s go fix a gutter.” He stood, trash in hand. “Where do you want—”
Rap, rap, rap.
At the interruption, he angled toward the back door.
“Ignore that. It’s just Floyd, looking for a handout.”
The knocking continued as Tracy rose and picked up their glasses.
Michael frowned. Some homeless person—whom she knew by name—needed food . . . and she didn’t care?
Major disconnect.
Tracy was a kind, caring woman who gave above and beyond to Helping Hands. Who ran errands that didn’t come close to qualifying as emergencies for old ladies on a Sunday evening.
Why wouldn’t she respond to this need at her own back door?
Unless . . . could this be another Helping Hands regular who’d made a pest of himself and worn out his welcome? Perhaps taken too much of a personal interest in a certain volunteer?
The guy might even be dangerous.
A spurt of adrenaline surged through Michael.
“Do you want me to get rid of him?” He raised his voice to be heard above the persistent tapping.
“No need. He’ll go away on his own eventually if I don’t answer.”
He frowned. “If you want to discourage him, it might not hurt for a guy to show up at your back door to chase him off.”
She gave him a blank look . . . and then one corner of her mouth twitched. “I don’t think the gender of the chaser-offer will matter.”
Strange. She didn’t appear to be in the least annoyed by the rude intrusion, let alone nervous.
Maybe he was making too big of a deal out of this.
“Your call, of course—but I could give it a try if you’d like.”
“Sure. Have at it.” She propped a hip against the counter and folded her arms.
The remains of their taco dinner still in hand, he crossed to the back door, unlocked it, and pulled it open.
No one was there.
He sent Tracy a puzzled glance over his shoulder.
Smiling full out now, she pointed to his feet.
He dipped his chin. A seagull was standing on her stoop, inches from his shoes, beak tipped up. All at once it let out a raucous squawk.
“Michael, meet Floyd, who I made the huge mistake of feeding the first few evenings I was here. He has now declared himself my BFF and comes calling every night about this time. As you can see, he’s very persistent if I don’t answer.”
Floyd screeched and flapped his wings.
“You might want to see if there’s a bite or two left in those wrappings. Floyd isn’t picky.”
Michael edged back from the shrieking bird. “Won’t he keep coming if I feed him?”
“He’ll come anyway—and it’s okay. I think he’s lonely. In the beginning he brought his wife, but he’s been coming by himself for the past four months. I guess something happened to her.”
A husband-and-wife seagull pair.
Tickled by that fanciful notion, Michael dug out a few stray pieces of taco filling and tossed them to Floyd, who scarfed down the treat. “Maybe he’ll get married again.”
“He might, down the road . . . but gulls mate for life, and this one’s still in mourning. On the plus side, though, he eats more than he used to.” She wandered over, stopping near his shoulder, a faint, pleasing scent wafting his way. “At first after he started showing up alone, he wouldn’t eat at all, no matter what I offered. I think he just wanted to be in a familiar place, was trying to stick to his normal routine. Not a bad grief plan, actually.”
Some nuance in her inflection told him she wasn’t only talking about seagulls anymore. That she and her friend Floyd had gone through similar trauma.
He could relate.
Holding on to the door with one hand, he turned toward her. She was inches away, a faint sprinkling of freckles arching over her nose, her green eyes filled with pain and loneliness and . . . was that a touch of longing? . . . as their gazes locked.
Several charged beats of silence ticked by.
At last, she swallowed and took an abrupt step back. “You can c-close the door now. He’ll either leave or hunker down on the stoop for a while. And we have places to go.”
Yeah, they did.
But as they headed out to their respective cars, as he followed her first to the market in town to get milk and then to Eleanor’s house, he couldn’t help wondering what else he and Tracy might have in common besides a trauma in their pasts.
And where those commonalities might lead if either of them happened to be open to romance.
8
“I can’t thank you both enough. Are you sure I can’t tempt you with another glass of lemonade and some more fudge cake? I have plenty—and I know you’re partial to chocolate, Tracy.”
She gave Eleanor a hug. “No, thank you, but it was delicious.”
“I’ll second that.” Michael moved forward.
Tracy exchanged places with him, watching as he took the older woman’s hand between his. The man was obviously accustomed to dealing with the elderly. He’d raised his volume as soon as he realized Eleanor’s hearing aids didn’t always pick up everything, and his gentle touch now suggested he understood that older people’s fragile skin bruised easily.
She had a feeling he was very good at his job.
“You can bring your young man back anytime, Tracy.” The older woman gave Michael a once-over, then winked at her, the sparkle in her eyes undimmed by age. “He’s a keeper.”
Tracy smothered a groan. This was the third “your young man” her Helping Hands client had used, and no amount of correcting had dissuaded her.
“He’s only visiting for a few weeks, Eleanor.”
“But I’ll do my best to stop by and see you again.” Michael picked up the hammer from the bannister. “I put your ladder back in the storage shed.”
“Thank you.” The woman eased closer to him, leaning heavily on her cane, and inclined her head toward Tracy. Though she dropped her voice, her words carried in the quiet evening air. “Don’t you give up on her, you hear? She might think she’s done with men, but she’ll come around with the right kind of wooing. And she’s worth the effort, trust me. Kindhearted, thoughtful, pretty as a picture, smart—she’s a CPA, you know.”
Oh, for pity’s sake.
Tracy grabbed Michael’s arm and tugged him toward the porch steps. “I’ll talk to you soon, Eleanor. Call if you need anything.”
“I’ll do that, sweet child—but don’t worry about me. You focus on keeping that man of yours happy.”
They were out of here.
She half dragged Michael down the walk, not stopping until they reached their cars.
After pulling out her keys, she gripped them tight in her fist and forced herself to meet his gaze. “Sorry about that. I don’t know what came over Eleanor. I had no idea she would jump to such starry-eyed conclusions.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Michael seemed more amused than annoyed as he handed her back the hammer he’d borrowed from the guest cottage’s meager supply of tools. “She strikes me as a very nice lady.”
“She is . . . and she’s usually far more discreet.”
“I guess at that age people feel free to call ’em like they see ’em.”
What was that supposed to mean?
Tracy searched his face, but the setting sun behind him shadowed his features.
If he was suggesting there was romantic potential between them, however, she needed to set the record straight.
Now.
“Look, Michael . . .” She angled away from Eleanor’s house to block the octogenarian’s view if she happened to be watching the scene playing out at her curb. “In case you’re thinking that I . . . that we might . . . that our relationship could . . .” She stopped. Exhaled. “Sorry. I’m not very adept at this kind of . . . interpersonal stuff.”
The amusement faded from his demeanor. “No worries. I get your drift. And just to set the record straight, I still love my wife. Eleanor’s matchmaking attempt was entertaining, but I’m not in the market for romance, either. The road I see ahead for myself is a solo one.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of jeans that fit him oh-so-nicely. “I hope that takes the pressure off.”
“Yes.” And something more, though she couldn’t put her finger on what had suddenly vanished, leaving a barren spot in its place. “I appreciate your candor.”
A ribbon of mist swirled between them, and Michael nodded toward the sea. “I have a feeling we’re about to get socked in. I better get back to Anna’s while I can still see the road. Let me know when the board is ready to meet to discuss the rest of the questions I raised. I can have final recommendations to you within a day or two after that.”