Return to Paradise

by Laina Villeneuve

  “You recently got a job here?” she asked. Right hand on left bicep, she rested her chin in her left hand. One finger lazily edged her lower lip as she openly assessed me.

  “The place I bought out on Spanish Creek will be my job,” I supplied. I tried not to fidget under her attention. Had I not met her in her shop, I would never have given her a second glance. Her perfect complexion and care she took to style her hair screamed cool-kid crowd to me, the kind in which I’d never felt comfortable. The contrasting oil-stained cuticles intrigued me. If I kept my eyes on her hands, I could imagine having a conversation with her. Otherwise, she would have intimidated me.

  When I risked looking up, she’d inclined her perfect face forward, encouraging me to say more. I considered telling her about my property, but absurdly worried that if I shared that much, she’d insist on driving out with me, and tonight all I wanted was to soak it in on my own. Amy provided my way out by sliding my bag and drink across the counter. “Don’t want dinner to get cold,” I said, fishing out a hot fry before exiting the building, using my hip to open the door to the cold.

  I settled the food next to me and cranked the engine, gassing it to a steady idle. It was cranky as an old man, loud and complaining but reliable and tough. I’d learned not to rush when I drove it. I was about to put it into reverse when I felt The Homecoming Queen’s eyes on me. She shouldered the burger joint’s door open and crunched through the snow up to my truck, motioning me to roll down the window. I complied.

  “This is the second time we’ve met, and I still don’t know your name,” she said.

  “Madison Carter,” I said, extending my hand through the window. I liked the way she held it. As I expected, her hand in mine felt as much like home as the property had the first time I’d walked through.

  “I’m Lacey McAlpine. Welcome to town.” Her eyes were busy on my face in a way I was sure her mind was busy on what she wasn’t saying.

  “Thanks,” I said, taken aback by their intensity. An invitation to eat our to-go orders together on my front porch perched on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t bring myself to voice it. It couldn’t be that easy, could it?

  “I wanted to say that you know where to find me if you need anything. Moving’s a bitch.”

  I hadn’t expected such kindness from a stranger, and it flooded my system. I felt my face flush, and I turned hoping to hide it.

  “Sorry.”

  “No. It’s okay.” I risked glancing back, hoping she’d take the redness in my cheeks to mean that the truck had a good heater. “I appreciate it.”

  “Your dinner’s getting cold,” she noted.

  “It is.” Her words brought back the puzzle of where the big white horse on my property was getting his food. I wanted to find him there again to be able to tell him I’d bought the place and that I’d bring some nice alfalfa. “I should go,” I said, inexplicably feeling like I had to leave that instant to find him.

  Lacey took a step back, disappointed. “Hope to see you around.”

  “Me too,” I said, honestly.

  For the second time that day, I caught sight of her in my rearview. A woman like that would be difficult to drive away from in the morning. I rolled through town, cautious of the speed limit. Why would someone that attractive take the time to track down my truck?

  Once I rounded the corner and exited the main drag, I took in the mountain backdrop. My timing was opposite of what Charlie’s would have been. He’d have been driving out this way to work as the sun crept to peek over the ridge instead of at his back.

  Did he watch his wife from the rearview as he left in the morning, or would she stay in bed as he dressed in the dark? I’d never asked about their daily rituals. I knew that Ruth cooked breakfast for Bo before she got herself ready for the day. I knew that she never ate dinner without him, even if it meant reheating it hours later. I saw very clearly the differences between the couples and knew for sure that Charlie had left a dark and quiet house in the morning and guessed that it was the same way when he returned.

  I looked out the same window Charlie had on his way home from work. I wanted to believe that the headlights had swung into the drive to land on my mom standing on the front porch waiting with me propped on her hip. I wanted my past to include the jubilant reunion of a family each day but intuited that his evenings were nothing like my musings.

  With a deep sigh, I made the final turns to my new place, confident that Charlie’s rig could make it over the snow built up by the road. My headlights swept over the trees, dusk closing in more tightly in the wooded area than out on the highway. As I straightened out, they came to rest on a white figure standing right where I’d left him last time.

  I whooped, jumping from the cab with my cold dinner in my hand. I wished I had an apple or carrot for him, but he didn’t seem to care. He strode down the road to meet me at the gate. When he reached me, he dipped his head for me to rub. “Hey buddy. You don’t know how glad I am to see you! Where’s the best place for a picnic dinner?”

  He turned and, like the first time I’d been on the property, I took a hold of his mane to steady my steps as we made our way up to the house. My house. A smile spread across my face. I ate quickly. Without the sun, cold seeped in around me. I spread out my dinner on the porch but stood by the horse for warmth. As if he understood, he wrapped me in the curve of his neck.

  I imagined the peace this quiet place could bring to those who needed to stop. I hoped that I could create something that felt immediately like home.

  “Anything you can tell me about a woman named Lacey?”

  He rubbed his head along my body, shoulder to calf.

  “That’s an enthusiastic endorsement. She doesn’t intimidate you?”

  He shook his mane.

  “I might need your help there.” That comment elicited no movement, so I got busy on my greasy dinner, ready to drive home and start packing. His warmth surrounded me like a cozy den. “Do you forage on your own, or is there someone missing you? Is there a corral somewhere that you’ve figured out how to escape? You know Houdini was an escape artist. How about that for a name?” I gathered my trash and wrapped my arms around his neck. “You’ll be here when I’ve got my keys and I’m back with some alfalfa and a sack of carrots, right? You’re in this with me?”

  Houdini didn’t answer one way or another, and he didn’t walk me to the truck. He wandered toward the pasture where I’d first seen him. As quickly as I could, I picked my way back down to the truck, shivering without his warmth.

  Chapter Eleven

  Madison

  The week I moved in, I considered calling Lacey. She’d been so nice to offer her help, but I never followed through. It didn’t feel right to ask a stranger to lug boxes into the garage. I talked about it endlessly with Houdini. Most of the time he dozed, alternating his resting leg, the picture of patience as I explained that I worried about Lacey seeing the house so run down. The tilt of his ears made me consider meeting up with her in town, but there was the possibility of running into my mom. I knew that my mother could be any one of the people I encountered anytime I drove into town. I couldn’t ignore the fact that the size of the place guaranteed that I’d run into her eventually. If I were to pass by her, would I know her instinctually and immediately?

  I carried in my head the images of her as a woman my age holding the infant me in her arms. I tried to imagine what twenty years would have done to her features like the computer images on milk bottles that guess at a grown child’s appearance. Too many women had shoulder-length brown hair. Too many matched her stature. She’d nestled into the crook of Charlie’s shoulder whereas I stood an inch above.

  Trips to town exhausted me with false recognition. Even trips to the hardware store or lumberyard did a number on my heart though my rational brain tried to calm my nerves by arguing how unlikely it would be to find her there. Knowing that she’d waitressed when she was with Charlie, I avoided the restaurants in town, picking up dinners from the gr
ocery store instead.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about Lacey’s house in East Quincy and how it could have been mine. Could have been ours. I’d passed it a few times on errands, always wishing I had a reason to stop and soak it in. At the beginning of this adventure, it hadn’t occurred to me to look for where I’d lived as a child. But now that I knew where it was, my curiosity called to be satisfied. About a quarter mile past the shop, I had spotted a Chinese place on the opposite side of the highway. I couldn’t imagine my mother working there, so at the end of the week, I decided to treat myself.

  Immediately after I pulled in, a beat-up maroon sedan slid into the parking space next to me. Not expecting Lacey but remembering how she’d snuck up behind me at the burger joint, I glanced in the driver’s direction.

  We both stopped.

  “Fancy meeting you here, Madison.”

  I smiled at that, hearing my name on her lips. She remembered.

  “When did you get back?” She didn’t pocket her car keys, and I kept my focus on her fingers wrapped around them. Her hands I could talk to.

  “Monday.”

  “You’ve been here all week.”

  Her tone made me feel like apologizing, but I didn’t. I couldn’t explain my need to get the place together on my own, but I knew it was what I needed. “Getting settled.”

  “I could have helped. Shop’s listed.”

  “I know.” I took a breath. There were so many times I could have let her know I was in town. I didn’t know her well enough to explain that my mind was a tangle of my past in Quincy. While it was fun to read something into the fact that our paths kept crossing, I still couldn’t shake the question of whether I was being led to her or her house. But here she stood again unaware of my thoughts, waiting for me to offer something. “You want to grab dinner with me now?”

  Lacey hesitated. “I could eat.”

  I couldn’t think of another reason she would drive across the highway but opened the door for her and followed her as she walked to a booth that offered a view of her shop, my parents’ old place. I set the book I’d planned to read on the table and slid in opposite her.

  “When you say settling in, somehow I don’t get a picture of you moving a bunch of furniture by yourself.”

  “No. I don’t have any furniture yet. I’m living in the place bare bones while I fix it up.”

  My guard was completely down when the waitress approached our table.

  “Lacey honey!” she exclaimed. “Did you figure out what that weird knocking was?”

  Lacey’s eyes distracted me for a moment. I didn’t know her well enough to read the emotion in her expression as she produced a golf ball, which she then extended to our waitress.

  Following the gesture, I glanced up at the waitress into eyes framed by long bangs that curled over her finely plucked eyebrows. Her curls, dyed a uniform brown many shades darker than mine, were pulled back in a clip to frame her face. Though she looked much younger than I’d expected, I was certain I was looking at my mother.

  I looked down to the crooked nametag clipped to her breast pocket hoping that it would read anything other than “Shawneen.” My ears rang from the blood buzzing through my body making everything sound far away. It felt as if I was seeing the scene from a distance, like I was a balloon floating up into the sky. Eventually the people below would disappear, wouldn’t they?

  Lacey handed the car keys to Shawneen who tucked them into the pocket of her apron. The ball she kept in her hand. “Why are you giving me this?”

  “It was bouncing back and forth under that bench seat Dennis replaced in the back.”

  “Isn’t that funny?” she said, handing the ball back to Lacey. “If it was only a golf ball, then the offer of a meal…”

  Lacey’s gaze shifted between Shawneen and me, and I could see now that my mother tested her patience. “Of course there’s no charge for the Nova. I was just planning on delivering the keys, but I ran into a friend who invited me to join her.”

  Mentioning me forced me back to reality. Shawneen barely looked at me as she extended a menu. When I was young, I’d often imagined finding her. If we went to the county fair or rodeo, I scanned the crowd waiting for her to see me. Back then, I thought she’d be looking for me, and when she found me, she would immediately know me and throw her arms around me. During my first week sharing a town with her again, all I had thought about was whether I’d know her, not what I’d say. My mouth was so dry I couldn’t have spoken even if she’d given me time. A stranger to her, I watched her lips as she delivered the specials.

  When she stopped, she put her hand on her hip, impatient about something that had passed between her and Lacey that I didn’t quite understand. “You need a minute?”

  I nodded. I needed so much more than that.

  I’d wanted her to recognize that I had her high brows but conceded that since I didn’t shape mine as she did that she could easily miss the feature. If she didn’t recognize herself in me, couldn’t she at least have seen Charlie? I was only a few years younger than he’d been when we’d left. Would she even recognize him after all these years? Didn’t she ever look for her daughter in the customers she served, thinking that I might someday come looking for her, or had she once but had stopped somewhere along the way? Most shattering was the realization that perhaps she never gave me a second thought. She just didn’t care at all.

  I blinked back tears and looked for the spiciest thing offered, something that would give me an excuse for watery eyes.

  “Unbelievable.” Lacey and I both had our eyes on the menu.

  “You work on her car?”

  “Yeah, I do a lot of work on it, and she’s always offering me a dinner to take care of her bill.”

  I looked at the prices and couldn’t imagine any work that would make Lacey come out ahead. “I can see why you’d be reluctant to accept that offer.” The car Lacey had brought back looked so old, I wondered if Shawneen had bought it new when I was a kid. Had she ever carefully buckled me into its backseat?

  “Shawneen’s a piece of work,” she muttered.

  My mother’s name sliced through me like ice water. I didn’t know what to say, especially when she returned to take our order. She was all efficiency repeating the dishes without writing them down as she collected the menus.

  “Are you okay?” Lacey asked.

  “Sure,” I said although I was anything but. Lacey excused herself to use the restroom, and I looked down the street at the house I could have grown up in. Was that why Shawneen chose to work here? Did she spend her days imagining what life she could have had if Charlie and I had stayed with her?

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Lacey asked, startling me a little when she scooted back in the booth across from me. She sat very still with the expression she’d worn the day I drove into her shop. I had to stop thinking about Shawneen.

  “Sorry. I’m beat. All week I’ve been washing and sanding walls to get ready to paint.”

  “You said the place you bought is going to be your work too.”

  “I did.”

  “Care to elaborate?”

  “I have a big ranch house that I’m turning into a rustic mountain getaway.”

  “Is all the work you have to do cosmetic, or will there be some remodeling? Whatever you need, I probably know the right person for the job. The contractor who helped me extend my shop was great.”

  I talked easily about the dirty walls and carpet that made up most of my planned work until Shawneen delivered our food. I kept my eyes down, only chancing a look at her as she walked away. When I looked back to Lacey, she was studying me. Without a word, we ate our meals. As I’d intended, mine was spicy enough to make my eyes water and nose run.

  “Have you thought about keeping horses? Mountain getaway makes me think of riding.”

  “Eventually, I’d like to be able to offer that, but that’s way down the line.”

  “I think you’d like my friend Dani. She’s a relative newc
omer too. Feather River College hired her five years ago to get the rodeo program going.”

  I nodded in interest, grateful for her ability to carry the conversation with my mind so occupied with Shawneen.

  “Her wife, Hope, owns Cup of Joy, the little diner in Quincy proper.”

  Her use of the pronoun her with wife captured my complete attention. I’d eaten at the diner a few times and searched my memories for the woman she described. “Does she waitress? Long dark hair?”

  “No. She manages the place for her family, and these days she’s not at the diner so much since her daughter was born.”

  I choked on the bite I’d been swallowing and coughed an embarrassingly long time. I downed my glass of water trying to drown the cough, and Lacey pushed her glass in my direction when that didn’t work.

  “That’s about how the town took it too. She’d already floored everyone coming out, but people got over that pretty quick. Everyone loves Dani, so it’s like they couldn’t blame her for falling too. It’s hard not to with her Texas drawl. Theirs is a great romance.” She paused and sighed, her chopsticks in midair. I’d started to wonder if she was jealous, if she’d been interested in Dani. As if she realized how she sounded, she redirected the conversation, pointing to my book. “Are you reading a great romance?”

  I laughed. “You could say that: the country’s great romance with Teddy Roosevelt,” I said, pushing Doris Kearns Goodwin’s The Bully Pulpit toward her.

  “Weighty.”

  “Power is a mighty aphrodisiac.”

  “It’s all about politics?” she asked. Though her expression feigned interest, her tone conveyed how boring she considered the subject.

  “I’ve gotten background on Roosevelt’s and Taft’s childhoods and their wives. You’d be surprised by what a romantic Roosevelt was. He wooed his first wife, Alice, fiercely and thought he’d never marry again.”

  “But he did?”

  “To a childhood friend. She’d always loved him.”

  “So she waited for him even though he married someone else?”