Far from Here

by Nicole Baart

  “I need a high-lacquer gloss,” I said, gathering myself. “Not much. A spray can should do.”

  “Working on a project?” he asked. His hands were busy with a stack of papers that he was straightening and restraightening, but his gaze was trained on me and the corner of his lip seemed to twitch in delight. I delighted him. My hair was in a sagging ballerina’s bun, my jeans were stiff with dried paint, and I was sure I wore the evidence of my project somewhere on my face, but he looked at me as if I were a mirage, an oasis in the middle of a scorching desert.

  “Birdhouses, actually.” They were Christmas presents for everyone on my list, three-tiered beauties that I had stained mahogany and topped with a gabled roof painted a deep brick-red. The gloss was to make the roof shine, but it was hard to remember that small detail with him staring at me.

  He raised an eyebrow. “You made ’em?”

  Was he flirting? So openly? “All six of them. I am surprisingly capable of swinging a hammer.”

  He laughed. “You don’t look the type.”

  I wanted to ask him what “the type” looked like, but all at once I was flustered. A warm chill raced through me and my palms went damp. “I know where it is,” I told him, taking off for the paint section. I thought he would stay put behind the counter, but he followed me, keeping a modest distance until I stopped in front of the spray cans.

  “I’d use this,” he suggested, reaching past my arm. He didn’t brush against me—didn’t even come close—but a jolt of electricity snapped through me at his proximity all the same.

  Everything was very ordinary after that. He charged my account for the lacquer and thanked me for stopping in. I left with a nod, feeling contrite and just a little frightened that a complete stranger could disarm me with a smile. But I went back.

  We never touched, but we talked. And when his face became familiar, I felt comfortable enough to lean up against the counter and linger a little longer than I should. Just long enough to let his veiled interest infuse me with a sense of confidence, a calm assurance that even if Etsell had grown tired of his wife, I was still an attractive woman. The sort of woman who could make a stranger light up.

  I thought it was a harmless flirtation. But one day as I was wasting time in the hardware store, elbows on the counter and laughing at something he had said, the door swung open to let in the cold of a March snowstorm. I didn’t bother to turn around, because he was in the middle of a story, something unlikely and almost certainly constructed for my pleasure alone. I was rapt. There was the sound of someone stomping the snow off their boots, then the quick snip of a zipper being yanked down a little, but I ignored it. In the back of my mind I registered a heavy exhalation, rhythmic footfalls, and then, from a distance, the pressure of a hand on my shoulder.

  “Just what do you think you’re doing?” Hazel barked in my ear.

  I spun to face her, and in the second it took me to take in her expression, I felt shame darken my cheeks. She was smiling at me with nothing more sinister than a greeting in her brown eyes, but before I could recover, I watched her absorb my guilty glance. Hazel looked between me and the man who made me feel pretty, her forehead creased in concentration. Suddenly, something clicked. Her face clouded.

  “What are you working on now?” she asked me, her voice forced and unnatural.

  “A desk,” I said, pushing away from the counter and thrusting my hands deep into the pockets of my coat. “It’s an heirloom I picked up at . . .”

  But Hazel wandered away mid-sentence. “I need a grain shovel,” she said as she stomped toward the back of the store. “The head came off mine this morning.”

  He hurried to help her, avoiding my gaze as doggedly as I avoided his. We were caught. In the act of doing what? Talking? But we both knew it was more. Even if we never did anything more than convey smiles across the hardware store counter, our interactions were laced with land mines. Slip-ups that could destroy everything. Hazel knew that.

  I buttoned up my coat and pulled my gloves from the pockets. If I hurried, I could make it to the parking lot and be long gone before Hazel ever had a chance to pay for her purchase and confront me. But she must have abandoned her quest for a shovel, because well before I reached my car door, I felt her take me by the arm and spin me around.

  “Just what do you think you’re doing?”

  “Getting supplies,” I said, but as soon as the words were out of my mouth I realized that my hands were empty. Snow swirled around my head and I pulled my shoulders up to my ears, trying to stay warm, but also trying to hide from Hazel. She looked ready to flay me.

  Hazel leaned into me, and though she was shorter than I was, I couldn’t help being cowed by the intensity of her stare. “You listen to me, little girl. You don’t . . . I have no idea . . . You can’t possibly know . . .” she sputtered, her lips struggling to keep up with whatever was going on inside her head. Finally she squeezed my arm so tight it hurt, and said, “Don’t be stupid, Danica Greene. Just don’t be stupid.”

  I never saw him again. Well, once or twice from a distance, but I started getting my supplies at the co-op on the edge of town. And though I nearly died of embarrassment every time I thought of Hazel’s confrontation, there was a part of me that was grateful that she had come into the hardware store that day. It was like a slap to the face, an unexpected blow that brought me to my senses. I didn’t have any feelings for him. He was an ego-boost. Nothing more.

  But while I was secretly grateful for Hazel’s intervention with my hardware store fling, I resented her assessment of Benjamin. I saw the way he looked at you.

  “That’s absurd,” I told her after my neighbor was long out of sight. “He has been our neighbor since the day we moved in. He’s Ell’s friend.” But that wasn’t entirely true. They didn’t dislike each other, but they didn’t have much in common either. “They respect one another,” I amended.

  “Good for them,” Hazel snapped. “But I have eyes in my head. I know what I saw.”

  A minute ago, I had been too weary to fight her, but the thought of what she was implying stoked me into a swift rage. I bristled. “What are you saying? Etsell’s been gone for a month. Do you think Benjamin . . . Do you think I . . . ?”

  Hazel looked startled. “No. No, of course not.” She pursed her lips for a moment, considering me. Then she closed the space between us and gave me a clumsy hug, thumping my back with one awkward hand. “That look is reserved for Etsell. It took me by surprise, that’s all.”

  I backed out of her embrace and rubbed my temple with the heel of my hand. “Fine, Hazel, whatever. Look, I’m really tired. I’m going to go lay down for a while, okay? Thanks for stopping by.”

  It occurred to me that I didn’t even know why she had come, but my back was already turned and I simply didn’t have the grace to stick around and be polite.

  “No problem,” Hazel said from behind me. “I understand. But I have something for you and I was wondering if you could spare two minutes to help me unload it from my truck.”

  She sounded apologetic, but even if she had demanded my help, it would have been hard for me to just walk away. Hazel had something for me? Something that required both of us to move it? I paused, but she had already counted on my cooperation. “It’s a bit heavy, but even skinny as you are, I think you can manage it. We don’t have to transport it far.”

  I was already looping back to the driveway when I saw Hazel hop up in the bed of the rusty pickup truck that typically held down a forgotten corner of earth at the airstrip. It belonged to the Blackhawk airport, but Hazel left the keys in the ignition and anyone who needed it could use it for hauling leaves or helping a friend on moving day. The truck wasn’t worth much, but it accomplished the job, and as I moved around it to survey Hazel’s treasure, I found myself indebted to whoever thought it would be a wise purchase.

  “Where did you find that?” I breathed. Upside down in the bed of the pickup was an antique trestle table. It was at least seven feet long and feat
ured two bowed iron supports that were green with age. “Is that a French farmhouse? Is it original?”

  “Eighteen sixties, give or take a bit.” Hazel looked like she was very pleased with herself. “Or at least that’s what the auctioneer said. Now, don’t get too excited. Someone took it upon themselves to paint it blue at some point in time, but it’s still in really nice condition.”

  I passed my hand over the flaking paint, heartsick that someone had painted the wood robin’s-egg blue. But the tabletop was a single pane—oak, I guessed—and therefore not an imitation trestle made from someone’s old floorboards. My chest felt alive with butterflies, living things that rose and fell inside of me in spite of my earlier irritation.

  “It’s gorgeous,” I whispered. “It must have cost you a fortune.”

  Hazel knocked one of the legs with her fist. “More than I should have paid for it, but much less than it will be worth once you restore it.”

  “You want me to restore it?” I asked. “Are you going to resell it?”

  Hazel wrinkled her lips. “It’s yours, Dani. I bought it for you.”

  I dropped my hand from the table and forced myself to take a step away from the truck. “I can’t accept this,” I said. “It’s too much. Even with the blue paint . . .”

  But Hazel was already waving away my protestations. “Too bad. It’s a done deal. The table is yours and you’d better do something with it or I’m going to be really ticked.”

  A shocked gasp choked out of me before I could stop it. “You’re serious.”

  “Of course I’m serious. What would I want with a monstrosity of a table like this?”

  It was sobering to hear her say that. What would I do with such an enormous table? My situation was no different from hers. I was single—the thought sent a shudder through my bones—and childless. Hazel’s husband had died of cancer years ago, but she had children, two grown sons, and grandchildren. Maybe I could finish the table and give it back as a gift. Beautiful as it was, I certainly had no use for it.

  Hazel seemed to read my mind. “It’s for you,” she said simply, cementing the offering between us.

  “But . . .” My eyes clouded, and I couldn’t finish.

  “Don’t worry. You’ll fill it,” Hazel said. She was matter-of-fact. Working at the bungee cords she had used to secure the table to the truck, she said it again, a wish. A prophecy. “You’ll find a way to fill it. I’m sure of it.”

  10

  Fidelity

  After Dani helped Hazel lift the table off the back of the truck—a daunting endeavor that left them both stiff and aching—they were at a bit of a loss about what to do with it. The long table was far too big to fit into Dani’s small kitchen, but it was too valuable to store outside. Hazel looked utterly deflated for a moment, and the expression was so out of place against her harsh features that Dani scrambled to find a solution. In the end, they backed Dani’s car out of the detached garage and settled the blue trestle table in there.

  First Dani insisted on giving the floor a quick sweep and knocking the latticework of spiderwebs from the corner where the table would sit. It seemed wrong somehow simply to abandon the gorgeous piece of furniture in such a dusty, dingy place. And yet, when they stepped back to survey their handiwork, the table looked as if it had been dozing in that particular sun-drenched corner forever. There was a large window presiding over the table that offered a smudged view of the newly tidied backyard, and a red door off to one side that opened onto the patio. Dani imagined sewing white curtains for the window and buying an oversized sisal rug to cover the broken concrete floor. She smiled wryly at the thought of eating by herself in a garage-turned-dining room.

  “It actually looks kind of nice there,” Hazel said, affirming what Dani was already thinking. “That chipped paint goes well with the cracked windowpane.”

  “At least I won’t have to worry about making a mess out here.”

  Hazel laid her hand on the top of the table and picked at a curling flake of paint with her blunt fingernail. “What are you going to do?”

  “Well, I don’t think I’ll have to strip the paint. Looks like I can sand it off. Then, depending on what I find underneath, I’ll decide if I want to restore or refinish.” Dani glanced up at Hazel and found the older woman chewing on the inside of her cheek. “Oh,” she said. “You weren’t talking about the table.”

  Hazel shook her head.

  “I don’t know,” Dani finally sighed. “I don’t know how I can go on like this—not knowing. Doesn’t it kill you?”

  “Of course it does. But I’m not sure we have much of a choice.”

  “But what if . . . ?” She let the question hang in the air between them, infusing the space with hope that flickered weakly before it was extinguished by the sobering reality of Etsell’s loss.

  “He wouldn’t want this for you,” Hazel said. Her voice rasped but her eyes were gentle.

  “What’s ‘this’?” Dani asked, trying to straighten her shoulders. To appear stronger than she felt.

  “This is withdrawal. You haven’t returned any of my calls, and your mom said that you hardly look at her when she comes to visit.”

  “You’ve been talking to Char?”

  “She called me.”

  Suddenly everything clicked. Dani crossed her arms over her chest and gave Hazel her best defiant glare. “She told you to check up on me, didn’t she? You’re here on an errand for my mother. Well, guess what? I don’t need either of you to babysit me.”

  Hazel didn’t shrivel under Dani’s accusation; it seemed to brace her. “Nobody is babysitting you, Danica. In fact, it seems to me that we’re doing a pretty good job of leaving you the hell alone. Isn’t that what you want?”

  “That’s exactly what I want.”

  “So you can do what? Curl up in a corner and die?”

  “Maybe that’s exactly what I want to do.”

  Hazel snorted angrily. “That’s the most selfish thing I’ve ever heard. I miss Ell, too, you know. But losing you isn’t going to make anything better.”

  Dani’s retort caught in her throat. Hazel was worried about losing her?

  “I know this is hard,” Hazel said. “I think I’ve cried more tears over Etsell than I shed for my own husband. But it seems to me we aren’t honoring”—she paused—“we aren’t honoring his memory if we get bitter.”

  “I’m not bitter.”

  “You’re getting there.”

  It was true and Dani knew it. She could feel brittle edges sharpening around the place where Etsell was supposed to be.

  “You’ve got to go back to work.” Hazel raised an eyebrow and indicated Dani’s disheveled appearance with an irritated flick of her wrist. “You’ve got to start washing your hair.”

  A part of Danica was furious, downright livid that Hazel dared to confront her. To tell her how to live—or how not to live—with Etsell’s disappearance. “You have no idea what it’s like.”

  But that wasn’t a fair thing to say, and Dani could see the hurt splinter in Hazel’s eyes. They were quiet for a minute, each tortured by her own memories and the ghosts of shattered dreams. It was a helpless, anguished feeling to know that the future they had planned was an impossible hope.

  “Do you remember that movie,” Dani finally asked into the silence, “where the guy is trapped on a deserted island for years? He came back in the end. He came back, and the woman he loved had moved on.”

  “This isn’t a movie,” Hazel said.

  “I know.”

  “I don’t want . . .” But it seemed that there were too many ways to finish that particular sentence. Hazel didn’t even try. She shook her head, as if trying to dislodge some errant thought, and gave the tabletop a good, hard knock. “Hey, I look forward to seeing what you can do with this.” She gave Dani’s arm a squeeze as she left.

  But Dani didn’t even touch the table again for nearly two months.

  Instead, she woke up the next morning at six thirty without
an alarm clock, and knew deep in her bones that it was time to get up.

  Dani showered and dressed in clean clothes. Then she made a pot of coffee and put on makeup while it brewed. A dab of concealer hid the dark lines under her eyes, and a touch of mascara made her look more alert than she felt. After towel-drying her hair and setting it with a few sprays of straightening serum, she surveyed herself in the mirror and decided that a different person was staring back at her. She didn’t look like the woman that Etsell had loved, or the grieving wife who had littered the halls of her empty home. It was disconcerting, but the truth was, she couldn’t handle herself anymore. She couldn’t stand the waiting and the wishing and the despair. The loneliness. Hazel was right. Her life wasn’t some Hollywood movie. She really had only one viable choice: she had to go on.

  It had been a month since Dani had given a thought to her shop. Except for her brief visit to fix Kat’s hacked hair, La Rue had stood empty all that time, shuttered and sleeping. Now that the world felt slightly less unbalanced beneath her feet, Dani wondered if she even had a business to come back to.

  When she stepped over the threshold at five to eight, the very first thing she did was walk straight to the answering machine and delete every message. Dani wanted to make a clean break, to tear off those missing weeks from her history with one decisive rip—even if it left the jagged edge of a raw wound. Maybe no one would call. Maybe they had all given up on her already. Somehow, that thought didn’t terrify Dani. Getting back to life as normal wasn’t so much a chance to start over as it was a way to forget. To layer days and weeks over the hole in her life until it was buried beneath the high gloss of time. If she had to find other ways to anesthetize herself, she would. But this was as good a place as any to start.

  As it turned out, Dani didn’t have to worry about people forgetting about her. After wandering around aimlessly for nearly half an hour, she rallied herself and came up with a short list of a few things that she could bring herself to do. She clicked on the Open sign, propped open the door to air out the place, and settled down to clean. But before she had a chance to even finish dusting off the shelves that had grown fur in her absence, the front door squeaked open. Eve, the owner of the bakery next door, bustled in.