by Eden Connor
"Dan!" He heard Colton's yell from the service area.
"In the office," he called back, relaxing in his seat and closing the drawer. He laced his hands on top of his head and waited for his brother to appear, glad to have a reason to stop working on the figures, but concerned because his baby brother and Lila hadn't been due back in town until the next day.
Colton burst in and flopped into the chair in front of the old metal desk. "I think I might need to replace my brake pads," his brother informed him, sounding disgusted. "I swear to God, I believe Lila stood on my damn brakes all the way down the mountain."
Dan chuffed out a laugh. Lila's driving was a bone of contention between the pair. She'd gotten two tickets last week. Two. On consecutive days, on the same road, in the same spot. Lila called it an illegal speed trap. Colton called it damn stupid. The resulting argument was what prompted the couple to take a long weekend in the mountains—for the make-up sex, away from Jonah's inquisitive presence. "Why the hell would you let Lila drive?"
Colton propped his elbows on his knees and shook his head. He fixed Dan with a hard look. "About midnight last night, she starts talking about the flea market. I figured she'd found a place up there, you know, and was priming me to get out of bed at dawn, but noooo. She wanted to come home and go to 'her' flea market. I told her if someone had to drive all night, it wasn't gonna be me, thinking that would discourage her. I mean, we had the place until tomorrow, you know?"
Dan tried not to smile but his brother looked so disgusted it was difficult to keep a straight face. Colton spied the full pot of coffee and jumped out of the chair, crossing the small office to grab a cup. "So, I took a Benadryl and put my seat back, because I knew if I stayed awake, I'd either kill her or end up taking the wheel. I mean, no one's actually died from her driving, right?" He picked up the glass carafe, waving it around. "When she woke me up in the driveway, I swear Dan, I thought the fucking truck was on fire from the stench of burning rubber."
Dan laughed until tears filled his eyes. Colton was meticulous about everything, and topping that list was his truck. "I'm gonna pull my wheels and check my brakes," Colton muttered, splashing the brew into a cup. "Then, I'm gonna wash off the brake dust and try not to think about how much I wanna strangle her. I'll never understand why a woman who takes a speed limit sign as a personal challenge would turn around and ride the brakes all the way down a fucking mountain. You'd think she'd have let 'er rip, huh? Turns out, Ms. Speed Demon Walker's terrified of heights. So why didn't she ask to go to the fucking beach?"
"Better yet, why didn't y'all just stay home?"
"Hell if I know," Colton replied gloomily. "All we did was argue." He flashed Dan an unexpected grin. "And in between, well, you know." He chugged down some coffee. "My damn guns are in my truck, too. She's worried about them not being locked up with Jonah around. Like I haven't talked to him about not messin' with them except when I'm around to supervise?" Sighing deeply, he grudgingly added, "She's probably right. God knows, this family's had enough tragedies. You mind storin' 'em for me till I can get a gun safe like yours?"
Four hours later, Dan thought he heard the back door bang open again but the driving beat of the hard rock station Colton had playing made it hard to be sure. Moments later, Lila poked her head into the office. "Shish kabobs, French fries, and slaw. Brought you a plate."
"You just want me to stop Colton from choking you for getting brake dust on his rims," Dan teased her.
Lila rolled her blue eyes and smiled, looking unrepentant. "You'd think that stuff didn't wash off."
They ate in the break room while Lila rattled off a list of the things she'd bought. He'd never seen a woman's face glow from excitement over poking through piles of old junk, but Dan thought Lila looked radiant. The thought of junk made him wonder whether Cynda had ventured to the attic to look for more clothes.
"You did what?"
Colton's outraged tone brought Dan back from thoughts of the woman he'd left in his house. Cynda was the reason he hadn't gotten very far with his tax paperwork. Every time he got started, he found himself wondering why he'd let her stay. Colton's wide eyes as he stared at Lila made him regret tuning out their conversation.
"I said I bought six cast iron bathtubs. They have to be moved out of the old Daniel Morgan Hotel by Saturday, because they're blowing it up on Sunday to make way for some new law offices."
Colton was shaking his head, but Dan's lower back twinged in anticipation of the moment his baby brother would give in.
"Why?" Colton demanded. "Why in hell would you trade good cash money for some old bathtubs? That's not furniture, Lila."
"Oh"—Lila waved a hand dismissively—"retro is in. I'm thinking of doing an antique show in Greenville next month, and they'll sell like hotcakes there." She sighed rapturously. "They have tall ends and the most gorgeous ball and claw feet. The fixtures are intact, too." She looked anxious for a moment. "You can cut the bolts, right? They're bolted to the floor."
Colton's jaw began to work and Dan chewed his final bite of the delicious meat, thinking that as bribes went, Lila's had come up a bit short. Prime rib and shrimp cocktails might have been a better choice, but she had all week to cook. Eric would be delighted. Their middle brother loved when Lila bribed the brothers into helping with one of her many projects with home-cooked meals. He was good at rigging stuff, too. Eric would find a way to move those tubs without too much effort, he figured. He hoped, because it seemed to Dan his baby brother had yet to actually win an argument with Lila.
To Dan's surprise, Colton sounded calmer than he appeared. "How much, Lila? How much money do you think you'll make on those bathtubs?"
"About twelve hundred," she said, smiling confidently.
"Fine." Colton dropped his plastic fork. "I'll write you a check right now and those tubs can go down with the hotel when they blow it up."
Dan tried not to snicker and failed.
"Is there some genetic defect that makes all men into cocksucking liars?" Lila demanded, pushing away from the table and jumping up. Her fists were clenched. She stared at Colton as if he'd slapped her.
Dan looked at her back in amazement as she ran out of the room.
"Maybe you should've offered fourteen hundred." He tried to joke to hide his concern. "You know how Lila likes to bargain." He expected Colton to go after her, or respond to his jibe, but his brother picked up his fork again, driving it into a piece of the tender meat. "Is she okay?" he asked after a moment.
"At least she didn't cry," Colton muttered.
* * * *
After reading the labels inside the dresses, Cynda loaded them into the washing machine on the gentle cycle. She found a dust rag and polish, deciding to start cleaning in the front room. The Electrolux with the faded metal canister she found in a closet beneath the stairs was like everything else around the place, solid and old. The vacuum was unwieldy but she finally got the hang of it. When the surfaces of the fancy old parlor furniture sparkled, she swapped the dresses to the dryer and decided she might as well vacuum his office.
The wall-to-wall carpeting was thicker than the Oriental rug covering the wood floors in the front room and she had to push the wand with more force. Cynda gasped in dismay when she gave it a vicious shove and it banged into the corner of his fancy roll top desk, causing the large panel of dark wood on the side of the desk to pop off. Heart hammering, she gaped at the light-colored sides of the large drawers. She cut the power to the appliance with a press of her toes on the switch atop the canister and fell to her knees beside his desk. The beveled wood panel hadn't been scratched, thank the Lord, but when she tried to figure out how to replace it, a small space next to the wall behind the drawers caught her eye. A slender leather-bound book rested on a narrow strip of wood in a concealed space behind the drawers.
Cynda bit her lip as she wondered if he'd hit her, or kick her out, for damaging the fine piece of furniture, even as she reached in to grasp the slender volume. Maybe she could fix the
desk before he got back. Lifting the cover she squinted at the ornate handwriting.
Iris Camille Chapman De Marco
Diary 1984
Cynda rifled through thin pages filled with hard-to-read handwriting. The diary had weekly entries, ending in early September of that year. Laying the journal aside, she peered into the narrow space, and spied more. Her arm was slim enough to fit into the narrow space. She tugged out another volume. 1983. She found two more, for the years of 1982 and 1981. Each of the other diaries was filled with entries that began on January first and went through December thirty-first.
Cynda replaced the diaries, but not before she turned to the last entry in the first one she'd found.
September 1st, 1984
My body's worn out and my beauty a thing of the past, and though I adore my three beautiful boys and my baby girl, I wish Sarah had been born sooner so I could've tried to persuade Rafe to let me stop having babies before my body was all stretched out.
No one understands why I put up with His demands, except perhaps Georgia. It feels as though I was born out of time. While all my friends are busy proving to their husbands they can run their own lives, I've been left behind and made to feel I was somehow stupid for deferring to my husband's judgment in all things.
Yet, I see them one-by-one announcing their divorces and fighting for child support while trying to deny weekly visitation to the man they vowed to love until death and I cannot doubt I made the better choice.
He still takes me whenever He sees fit, with the look in his eye I saw the very first time, and tells me I'm beautiful and that I'll always be His.
Though Sarah still suckles, I worry I'm pregnant again. Going to talk to Georgia about that.
The page was stained, as if Iris's tears had marred the ink. Feeling like she'd spied on something too personal, Cynda replaced the diary in the spot where she'd found it, relieved when the side panel slid onto small pegs and stayed put.
* * * *
Dan brought the wrecker to a standstill on a narrow two-lane blacktop a scant half-mile from the farm. His heart thumped when he spied Lila's small blue and silver truck upside down in John Carpenter's field.
"Goddammit, she could've been killed," Colton yelled. Dan tried to think of something to say but Colton was already jumping from the wrecker.
He slid out of the cab, his boots connecting with the cracked pavement, watching Colton run toward the spot where Lila was seated in the grass at the edge of the road. The sound of crumpling metal made him flinch and look back at the truck. The rear tires began to spin when the roof collapsed. The vehicle settled into the dirt as the weight of the truck's frame flattened the cab. From the opposite end of the road past John's small white frame house, Dan heard sirens. A white-and-orange-painted rescue vehicle came into view with lights flashing. He walked hesitantly toward his brother, reading the fear on Colton's face.
Dan knew what his little brother was thinking. He felt a familiar burst of anger toward their mother. When Cammie left them without a word of explanation or goodbye, she set up an expectation in each of them that it was just a matter of time before the next woman they loved followed her out the door. Wherever she was, Dan hoped his mother was miserable.
Yes, he was going to burn that goddamn farmhouse to the ground. Soon as he got Lila's truck out of John's field and saw to it that she and Colton were on their way to the hospital, he was going home, pouring diesel fuel onto the wooden floors Cammie had cleaned on her hands and knees, and striking a fucking match. He'd drive Cynda to wherever the hell she lived, kick her out, then find a bar to drink in while it burned.
"No, I'm fine," Lila was saying. Blood trickled from her hair down the side of her face. Colton dropped to his knees in the weeds. Dan looked at the flattened truck again, squinting in the blazing sun, in spite of his sunglasses. "I want to talk to Charlie," she sobbed as Colton's arms went around her.
Dan shook his head and turned away. Lila's son was a Marine stationed in Afghanistan. If she hadn't heard from Charlie recently, that might explain why she'd been so emotional. From the looks of her truck, it was just as easy to die right here in the county as it was fighting terrorism, and the proof Lila would be so careless pissed him off more. Colton needed to spank her ass if she wouldn't willingly slow down.
The farmer who'd called him walked over. "She climbed out 'fore it rolled, Dan. Came flyin' down the road like a bat outta Hell. Lost control in that curve and went right down the embankment. It was stuck in the ditch, nose-down. She got out 'fore I could get to her. Just before you got here, it flipped, ass-over-teakettle." The farmer hooked his hands behind the bib of his overalls and gave Dan a sympathetic look. "She asked if I'd call you. Pitched a fit when I called nine-one-one. Don't she have insurance?"
It had to be a hundred and five degrees in the shade but a chill ran down the back of Dan's neck as he stared at the small truck Lila had bought no more than ten weeks earlier.
"You're damn sure gonna get in that ambulance, Delilah," Colton yelled, causing Dan to look over his shoulder at the couple. Predictably, Lila was shaking her head. "If I have to put you in it, I swear to God, you're going to the hospital." The tears Colton had expected back at the garage ran down her cheeks. Colton's eyes were bright too and Dan knew his brother's anger masked his fear.
"She has insurance," Dan assured his elderly neighbor, looking away from the couple.
A sheriff's car pulled up behind the wrecker. Dan was relieved to see Reese Davies step out, jamming his wide-brimmed hat over his close-cropped light hair. "Dan De Marco, how you been?" Reese greeted him, but Dan saw his brows go up at the sight of the dirty undercarriage of Lila's truck. He and Reese had been friends since high school.
"How's Annie?" Dan asked about Reese's wife.
"Expecting again." Reese grinned. "Not too happy at the moment. She's due any day now."
Dan eyed his reflection in Reese's mirrored shades. His envy didn't show. Reese and Annie had gotten married about eight years ago, around the time Dan's last girlfriend walked out. This was the couple's third child, and Reese laughed happily as Dan congratulated him. "This one's finally my little girl," Reese confided. "Randy's gonna play peewee football this fall. Can you believe he's already five?"
Eventually, Reese wrote up his accident report. Lila was lifted forcibly into the ambulance by his brother, and Dan got down to the dirty work of flipping the truck upright with some help from John Carpenter and his tractor. The longer he labored in the broiling sun, the more certain he became that burning the farmhouse was a fine idea.
A dull red Ford Focus passed by slowly. The woman inside threw up a friendly hand. Dan recognized the woman who'd once helped his mother do what she called 'heavy cleaning', but Georgia Mason and Cammie had been more friends than anything. Seeing Georgia's wiry white hair reminded him of how old Cammie would be now. Georgia had looked after the little ones and cleaned house for Dan's family for a few years after his mother had disappeared, but Rafe turned into such a bastard everyone stopped coming, including Georgia. After Rafe died, Georgia began bringing her car to the garage for service. She lived just on the other side of John's house but she used to walk to the farmhouse, cutting across John's fields.
Braking, she lowered her window. "Everything okay, Daniel?"
He hit the button to raise the winch, turning away from the sight of Lila's crushed roof and shouted. "Just fine, Georgia. How about you?" Dan choked on the red dust and his lie.
* * * *
Relieved when the side of the desk stayed put, Cynda was more careful while she finished the rug, sweeping slowly around the edge of the sofa and his bookcases, lost in thoughts about Iris De Marco and Grams.
"You get a choice between a strong man and a weak man, Cynda, you take that strong one," Grams had said a hundred times. "He gonna hurt you, same as any man, and he can be hard to love, but if he lets you love him, you love that one with all you got. Weak man gonna want your praise for every little thing he do, but a strong
man, he never gonna think he's done enough, and when he sees you can love him, even when he thinks he done failed, he's never gonna understand why you picked him. Truth is, that strong man gonna need you more than any weak man could, because he beats on himself, and sometimes, he needs to take that out on you. He'll give back tenfold what he takes, but a weak one, all he knows how to do is take."
The problem was that all the strong men Cynda knew had long since been snapped up, or refused to limit themselves to one woman. Daniel's words about lifetime commitments seemed to hang in the silent air.
Stowing the heavy appliance under the stairs once more, she studied the pictures hanging in the downstairs rooms while she wiped the frames, wondering about the baby Iris had mentioned in her diary. There were school pictures of Daniel and his brothers and sister at all ages, from those showing gap-toothed smiles to caps and gowns, showing a range of haircuts that spanned decades. She spied several photos of one young boy with green eyes. He could be Daniel's son, she thought, but he could belong to any of them, they all look so much alike.
Iris must have been wrong about being pregnant. Or had something about being pregnant made her run away?
The buzzing of the dryer startled her out of her musing. Abandoning her thoughts about Daniel's family, she hurried to the laundry room, eager to try on the pretty dress.
Daisy began to bark when Cynda stepped into the wide circle of the net crinoline. Peering through the window to try and see what the dog was fussing about, the tractor blocked her view of the back of the shed. No vehicle sat in the drive. She tied the ribbon at her waist and slipped the yellow dress over her head, deciding to check on the dog.