Hold Me Close

by Rosalind James

  “I’m so sorry. I always thought she was a sweet woman,” Raylene said into the silence that fell. “Lost, maybe, that’s all. I wanted to send a card when I heard that she’d left Bill, let her know I was thinking of her, but he didn’t have an address for her.”

  “We moved,” Kayla said. “She picked me up from school one day, and that was it. How—” She had to stop and get her breath to ask it. “How is Bill?”

  “Oh, he’s good,” Raylene said. “Heartbroken for a while, wouldn’t you say, Stan?”

  “Yeah. I would.” Stan sounded grim. When Kayla sneaked a peek in his direction, he looked that way, too, and her heart sank.

  But then he went on. “Not so sure it was so much about losing Carol, because she was like a . . . a butterfly. Just that pretty, and just that hard to hold, and I think he knew it. But losing you,” he told Kayla. “That tore him up.”

  The lump in her throat was so big, she couldn’t have taken another bite of watermelon if she’d tried. “I missed—I missed him, too.”

  “He’s down in Portland now,” Stan said. “Married again, real nice woman. He’d love to know you’ve turned up.”

  “If it’s all right to tell him,” Raylene put in.

  “Sure,” Kayla said, and she was smiling despite the emotion. She’d been all over the place today. “Sure. I’d love to talk to Bill.”

  “That’s good, then. Sounds a little rough, though,” was Raylene’s next comment. “Losing your mama at that age, when Eli was a little thing.”

  “Yes. It was. Although she wasn’t that involved, you know.” She hated to admit it, here in the midst of this close-knit family. They wouldn’t understand families like hers, or the exasperated love and loyalty she’d felt for her beautiful, fragile mother, who’d always seemed to get it wrong. How hard it had been, still, to have her gone. Although she’d had Kurt, then, to hold her close and tell her that he was her family, and he always would be. And just like that, the tears were there behind her eyes, and she struggled to hide them.

  “Tough thing,” Zoe said quietly, “being a single mom. Being alone.”

  “I wasn’t a—” More hesitation, and her hands were shaking in her lap now, twisting her napkin. “I wasn’t a single mom, and I wasn’t alone. I was married when Eli was born. But I guess you know that, because our name is different now. Chambers. That was my husband’s name. Kurt Chambers.”

  She was conscious of Eli, sitting beside her with that curious stillness he’d learned the hard way at Alan’s dinner table, like an animal that thought that if it froze, it wouldn’t be seen. She took his hand under the table and squeezed it, for his comfort or hers, she couldn’t have said. “And now you’re thinking I’m divorced, that Eli’s dad left us. And he did, but not like that. Not because he wanted to. He’d never have done that. I’m a—” She swallowed, and said the word. “I’m a widow. Actually.”

  Widow. If there were a bleaker word in the English language, she didn’t know what it was. Luke’s eyes were on her. Everybody else’s, too, but she was only conscious of his.

  “Oh, honey,” Raylene said. “I’m so sorry.”

  Kayla’s lip was trembling. This was the hardest thing to take, the one that did her in. Pity.

  “When did your husband pass away?” Raylene asked gently.

  “I—” She wasn’t going to be able to go on. She shook her head, pressed her fingernails into her palm to keep from crying. “Almost three years ago.”

  “Whoa.” That was Cal. “Rough.”

  “Well,” Raylene said, “I’m glad you’re here now. Sounds like you’ve had a tough time. Not much help.”

  “Um . . . no. Some help. But not so much. But we’re better now. We’re all right.” She could feel Eli’s tension right through his hand.

  “I think that’s enough.” Luke’s voice was quiet, but it was every bit as sure as his father’s or his brother’s. “You don’t have to say another thing,” he told Kayla. “Everything else will keep.”

  “Oh, honey,” Raylene said. “Of course it will. We’re just glad to have you around, that’s all.” She stood up. “Time to do these dishes.”

  “I’ll help.” Kayla let go of Eli’s hand and stood up, too.

  “No, don’t you bother,” Raylene said. “Stan can give me a hand. Zoe’s got a wedding dress to pick out, and no matter what she says, I know she’s going to pick something real pretty. And Luke and Eli have a bike to fix up. Everybody’s busy, and everybody needs to get going.”

  “Except me,” Cal said. He leaned back in his chair with a sigh of satisfaction. “Guess I’m heading on home, popping open a beer, and watching Sunday Night Football with Junior. It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it.”

  SURPRISE

  Kayla didn’t even know, when she walked up the hill to Luke’s house early Saturday afternoon, whether she would stay for dinner with him. Or at least she told herself she didn’t know. There might be a reason, though, that she was wearing a dress. The one she’d worn when she’d escaped, the pale-yellow one. It was the only one Luke hadn’t seen before, and anyway, it seemed appropriate. The dress she’d walked into her new life wearing.

  She stepped in the back door of his house, into the porch that housed the washer and dryer. Her heart was pounding, even though she knew he wouldn’t be there. It felt like a big step, but it wasn’t so big, was it? Because he wasn’t here. He and Eli would be working until five or six, Luke had told her that morning when he and Daisy had come by to pick Eli up.

  “So you just go on and make yourself at home,” he’d said. “Whenever you want to do your cooking. Back’s always open anyway.”

  Eight hours was a long time to work on a bicycle, especially when they’d started the previous Sunday. Luke was giving Eli his entire day?

  She’d agreed to this, though, so there was no point worrying about it. She’d make him a good dinner and call it even. It might not be a fair deal, but it had been a clear deal. She didn’t owe him any more than that.

  Luke’s kitchen wasn’t much like the ultrasleek, high-end one out at the farm. Like the rest of the house, it was comfortable, but it wasn’t going to be featured in any home-décor magazines. Dark red paint on the walls, which she wouldn’t have picked, herself. White tile countertops instead of polished granite, oak cabinets of the type popular twenty years earlier instead of cherry, and plain white appliances instead of German ones that looked like they should come with a training course. And a note on one of those tile counters, sitting beside cans of tomatoes and sauce, a package of lasagna noodles, and a loaf of fresh artisan bread from the Co-op. The really good kind, the kind she never bought.

  Meat, cheese, lettuce, etc. in the fridge. I think this is everything. Call me if you can’t find something. Thanks. Luke.

  Not quite a love note, but then, she didn’t want a love note, and he knew it. He’d bought everything on the list she’d left for him on Monday night, and he had good, sharp knives, too. A stove on which all four burners worked, pans with flat bottoms, and she’d bet, an oven that didn’t slope side to side, which meant her lasagna would come out even.

  He had a radio set on the counter, and she turned it on, found it tuned to a country station, and smiled. She shoved open the window over the stainless-steel sink and looked down the hill at her apartment building, and then forgot to look at that, because there was a view that was so much better. Over Luke’s deck, across the northern end of town, and out to the rolling hills beyond, the golds and creams she’d seen the previous weekend on the drive to the farm, a few white clouds drifting in a bright-blue sky.

  Paradise. What a difference one little hill could make.

  She found a white dishtowel in a drawer that she pressed into service as an apron, and for the next couple hours, she cooked and looked out the window and sang along to the music. Fast songs about pickup trucks and Friday nights and a pret
ty girl smiling at you from the passenger seat with the wind blowing her hair, slow ones about falling in love and losing your heart and feeling like you would lose your mind, and the angry ones, too. She just might like those most of all. The fan rotated lazily overhead, stirring the warm breeze from the windows, and she smiled, and cried a little, too, and danced in place while she chopped and stirred.

  The lasagna was in the refrigerator ready to be baked, but she wasn’t done, because she was having fun. She’d bake Luke a pie, she decided. She’d bet he liked pie, and besides, there was a big paper bag of apples sitting on the counter. Apples from the farm, from those trees in the orchard, unless she missed her guess. The thought of making a pie with apples from the farm made her happy, and there was nothing at all wrong with being happy. After a trip back down the hill for shortening from her own cupboards, she was making pastry with the help of a bottle of red wine pressed into service as a rolling pin.

  She didn’t even hear the door. She had the pie out of the oven and the lasagna in it, was slicing bread in preparation for garlic butter, and she was dancing, wielding her serrated knife like a sword and singing along to a song about how hard it was to bury the hatchet when you were holding a chainsaw. Angry music was definitely a category she could get behind.

  Daisy’s skittering feet were her first clue. She whirled, flushed and laughing, and there the two of them were, stopped in the doorway, Luke’s hand on Eli’s shoulder.

  “Well, hey,” Luke said, his smile broad, his brown eyes warm. “Look at you.”

  She laughed again, wiped her hands on her dishtowel apron, and reached to turn the volume down. “You caught me having fun.”

  “Pretty good way to catch you.” He’d forgotten to be careful for once, because there was heat in that gaze now. “Smells great in here, too. And, wait, you made pie?”

  “Why? You don’t like pie?”

  “Oh, yeah, I like pie. Pie and lasagna? I’m pretty sure I got the better deal here.”

  Eli, she remembered. “So how’d it go?” she asked her son. “Do you have a bike?”

  “Uh-huh. It’s sweet. I can’t wait to ride it tomorrow.”

  “Do I get to see?”

  Eli looked up at Luke, and they exchanged a secret, smiling glance.

  “Well,” Luke said, “that’s kind of the deal. Can you take a break here for a sec? We have a special way we want to show you.”

  “Oh, we’re having a ceremony? I love ceremonies.” She set down her knife. “Let’s do it.”

  “Right, then.” He glanced at her dishtowel, said, “Yeah. That’ll work,” and went to the drawer to pull out another one. “OK?” he asked, holding it up.

  “Uh . . . OK what?”

  “A blindfold, Mom!” Eli had lost all his caution, was bouncing on his toes, and Daisy had caught the mood and was wagging her tail furiously. “So you can be super surprised.”

  “Um . . . All right.”

  Luke had finished folding the dishtowel. Now, he put a hand on her shoulder, looked into her eyes, and said, “Here we go, then,” turned her gently, and put the dishtowel over her eyes. She could feel him tying it behind her head, his fingers brushing her curls, and she was holding her breath, because he was so close. She felt a brief flash of panic, but then he stepped back and said, “OK, Eli, lead her out.”

  It wasn’t his hand, then, but Eli’s that tugged her forward, Eli’s voice that coached her through the kitchen and living room and out the front door.

  “All right,” he said. “Stop. We’re here. Are you ready to be surprised?”

  “I’m ready.”

  Luke’s hands, again, pulling the dishtowel off, and she was looking at it.

  No, at them. Two bicycles, the smaller one cherry-red, the other blue. And the blue one wasn’t Luke’s. It couldn’t possibly be, because it was a girl’s bike.

  “Oh.” She had a hand on her chest, and she was laughing, so startled she couldn’t speak.

  “We did both, Mom!” Eli was actually jumping now. “That’s why it took so long! Because I fixed you a bike, too!”

  Kayla’s eyes flew to Luke’s face. He was smiling at her, but he looked a little nervous, too. “Had another frame out there, it turned out,” he said. “We figured we were doing it anyway, might as well.”

  “See, Mom?” Eli was ignoring his own bike to pull her toward hers. “It’s got baskets on the back so you can get groceries. The one on the front’s just to be pretty, and to hold your purse, because it’s a girl’s basket. Luke said you’d like it. Do you like it?”

  “It’s . . . it’s great.” She laughed. “It’s . . . great.”

  No road racer, this. A solid, old-fashioned frame with wide tires, high handlebars, and a comfortable leather saddle. The fork swooping in a graceful curve, cut so low that she could ride this bike in a skirt, as long as it wasn’t too short. Wire-mesh baskets fixed on either side of the rear wheel, and best of all, a white wicker basket fastened to the handlebars and decorated with a bouquet of silk flowers.

  “It’s so . . . so girly,” she said with delight. “It’s a total girl’s bike. But however did you get them looking this nice, if they’re old?”

  “We painted them,” Eli said, still bouncing. “Last weekend. We cleaned them, and we bought spray paint, and we did two coats. And then we did everything else. And look at this!” He went over to a corner of the porch, picked up two helmets, and handed one to her. “Yours is blue, to match your bike. And mine’s red, like mine!”

  She looked at Luke again. “It’s so great. But it’s too much.”

  “Well . . .” He scratched his nose. “Eli did most of the labor.” Which she knew wasn’t one bit true. “But I thought you might say that, so I checked with Zoe. She says if you don’t want it, she’s got dibs.”

  “No way.” The words had flown out before she was aware of them, and she slapped a palm over her mouth, then dropped it and laughed. “This is my bike.” She put her arms around Eli and drew him to her, her eyes misting with tears. “Thank you, sweetie. Thank you so much. And your bike—” She had to laugh again, out of pure happiness. “I’ve hardly looked at it. I’ll admit it. But it looks very, very cool. It looks blazing fast, red and everything.”

  “It is,” he said. “And I know how to adjust it, so if your brakes rub or anything, you just tell me, and I’ll fix them. Luke taught me how. I’d have to borrow his tools, but he says that’s OK. He says I can do it anytime.”

  “Haven’t been in the classroom for a couple years,” Luke said, “but it seems I haven’t completely lost my skills. If I’ve taught Eli something, well, I’m glad. And if you’ve got a little more freedom now, a little more independence, I’m glad about that, too. A bike’s a big, wide window of opportunity. That thing’ll carry your laundry, carry your groceries. And it’ll carry you, too. Anywhere you want to go.”

  “Thank—Thank you.” He understood. How? “I’m not sure one pie is enough. And, oh!” she realized, the faint beep registering. “Shoot! My lasagna!”

  After that, staying for dinner wasn’t hard at all. Sitting at Luke’s kitchen table, watching the two of them wolf down the dinner she’d made while the radio played and Eli told her about brakes and cables and the special tool that you used to put the tires onto the wheels, and Luke watched her and smiled, and they drank the wine from her rolling-pin bottle until she was a little giddy.

  “Whew,” she said, sitting back after she’d finished her slice of pie. “I’m going to have to go for a bike ride tomorrow, because I think I gained five pounds tonight.”

  “Doesn’t sound like a bad thing,” Luke said.

  She almost invited him along, but she didn’t, and he didn’t ask. He did say, though, “Know what next weekend is?”

  “The county fair,” Eli answered promptly.

  “Yep. Got animal barns, and, oh, quilts and all that down th
ere. Not that I’ve ever spent much time looking at them, but I hear they’re real pretty. A carnival, too. All kinds of rides. About the biggest event on the Paradise calendar, in fact. It’s a good time, but not that much fun to go alone. I was kind of hoping I could talk the two of you into heading over there with me next Saturday night. Food won’t be as good as this, but if your taste runs to corn dogs and fried Twinkies, you’re all set.”

  “Can we, Mom?” Eli asked. “All my friends are going.”

  All my friends. The sound of it was sweet. “Sure,” she said. It wasn’t a date. It was going to the fair with Eli and Luke, that was all. And it would be fun.

  DIGGING DEEPER

  Alan sat at his desk, his fingers poised over the keyboard. The alerts he’d set for Kayla’s name, and Eli’s, too, still hadn’t turned up anything, and neither had Kervic. The detective kept telling him that they hadn’t showed up in any databases, but Alan didn’t think he was trying that hard.

  He racked his brain to remember his conversations with Kayla from when they’d been dating. When he’d been charming her, encouraging her to talk about herself. Her husband had died, right? His name had been Chambers, of course. What had he died from? Alan couldn’t remember, but he had a vague recollection that it had been an accident. “My dad was a cowboy.” Eli had said that. Probably some kind of accident on a ranch—but maybe not, because then there would have been workers’ comp, and Kayla wouldn’t have been so destitute. Unless she’d blown it all, which was completely possible.

  He opened the Idaho Statesman’s website, found the Obituaries section, plugged in the last name, and began a search. More than a year ago, fewer than . . . five? Six? He didn’t remember when the husband had died, either, but that would be a safe range.

  Thirty-three results, half of them women, and of the men, nobody young enough. Nobody close. He changed the filter so it captured the entire United States and searched again.