Remove wasps.
TWO
“Figures.” Try to sleep in one day past six. He should’ve known better.
Thomas rubbed one hand down his face as the other stretched to grab his phone off the TV tray he had moonlighting as a nightstand.
“Yup.”
“That’s how you greet your mother?”
“Good morning Mother. How can I be of service to you?”
“Why do I have to want something to call my son and be sure he’s okay?”
He almost laughed. She called him every day and it was never for a well check.
Instead, he waited silently, pulling the bed sheet up and tucking it firmly under his chin to block the scruff abrading the skin of his chest. After enough seconds of dead air she stopped expecting a response, Nancy gave a sigh of defeat.
“Richie is sick. I need someone to help me at the market.”
He wasn’t surprised. Worried, but not surprised. He’d been trying to get a hold of his cousin all week with limited success. A few words in a text here and there. Nothing to explain his sudden flakiness. Nothing besides history.
“Okay. What time?”
“It starts at 10, but it takes a couple hours to get loaded and then set up…” she paused, “then it’s over at 7.”
“So you need me to load your stuff, drive it there, unload your stuff, then come back, load it again, drive it again and unload it again?”
“I’ll make you pancakes.”
“You should have led with that.”
**************************************
Three hours later, standing on his mother’s deck surrounded by piles of freshly picked produce, Thomas decided a stomach full of pancakes and all the coffee he could drink was a bad deal.
They’d been picking, bundling and crating all morning. It was 9:15 and they still had to band and crate the beets before loading the truck and heading out to spend another hour unloading and setting up. Rich was either crazy or a saint for doing this every week.
“I really appreciate your help. I knew I was going to ruin your day. I promise to make it up to you.” She paused. “Maybe I can help you decorate your house a little this winter. It’s… um… sparse.”
The image of his large brick two story dripping in the same lace and floral she’d filled her father’s house with would make any self-respecting man gag.
“Nope. It’s fine.” He glanced sideways at his mother as she worked beside him twisting rubber bands around bundles of leafy topped beets and loading them into crates. She was quiet for a few minutes. Too quiet.
“What about when you bring a girl over? She will think she walked into an issue of Utilitarian Farmer Weekly.”
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Talking about his social life, or lack thereof, was at the bottom of his list of favorite pastimes. Unfortunately, it was quickly climbing to the top of his mother’s list and she was more than happy to dish out advice she never took herself.
For years his dad ran around behind her back, bedding any woman who’d have him. By the time he was killed in a car accident when Thomas was five, everyone in town knew what he was up to, including Nancy. As far as he knew, she hadn’t dated since.
He never understood her decision to remain single. Not until two years ago when he found himself on the receiving end of an unhappy divorce. Unhappy for him anyway.
After that, her choice made more sense. Single was better than the alternative.
Better, but lonely.
However, his mother recently decided what’s good for the goose was not good for the gander. It was okay for her to be single but he was a different story. After nearly thirty years she must have forgotten the kind of damage a failed marriage inflicts on a person.
“… my friend. She’s new to town and maybe you could show her around.”
Thomas’ attention snapped back to his mother. “What did you say?”
“I said you should meet my friend. She’s new in to- ”
“I heard the rest. I am not at the point of considering cougars. ”
Nancy’s eyes shot wide as she covered her gaping mouth with a beet stained hand. “I would never suggest you take up with a woman of my… my… ” she struggled. “…generation.”
A smirk tugged at his lips. His mother was always mentioning her customer’s single daughters, the niece of an acquaintance, but she had yet to suggest one of her friends. I guess desperate times called for desperate measures.
“I guess I don’t understand what you’re suggesting then.”
“She is much younger than me for starters. And she’s beautiful. And she’s successful. And she likes kids.”
Thomas raised an eyebrow. “And you know all of this how?”
“Like I said, she is my friend. I met her at the market and we just hit it off… I guess you could say we’re kindred spirits in a sense."
“What sense is that?”
“Turns out we’re both bad at picking husbands.” She looked thoughtfully at the fistful of beets clutched in her hand. “I might even say she’s worse at it than I was.”
Thomas stopped what he was doing and looked Nancy’s way. Suggesting this woman’s husband was worse than his dad was a big statement for her. The virtually nonexistent interest he had in this conversation two seconds ago was now replaced by mild curiosity. What had this guy done to qualify as such an awful husband?
“I mean, at least your dad never tried to kill me.”
Nancy dropped that bomb and left it there to detonate. She waited, allowing the impact to blow that small curiosity up by epic proportions. She had him. Hook. Line. And sinker.
“Why?”
“Why what?” She glanced up from her bundle. “Why did he try to kill her?”
“Yes.” Thomas grabbed his coffee off the rail of the deck and took a long pull.
“I guess she found out he was involved in drug trafficking and he knew she’d go to the cops.” Nancy snorted. “Found out real quick she was meaner than he thought. So he ended up in prison for trafficking and attempted murder.” She shrugged her shoulder, a devilish grin on her face. “Of course that was after a stop at the hospital to repair the testicular damage.”
The surprise of that statement stopped his coffee halfway down his esophagus and launched it immediately back up. Back up and back out, scorching as it climbed his throat and invaded his sinuses. His eyes watered. His throat seized up not letting air in or out. He wheezed trying desperately to suck in anything he could get.
“Jesus Christ Thomas! Sit down.” Nancy shoved a metal patio chair at the backs of his knees knocking him in the seat. He bent forward, head between his knees, coughing coffee out of his lungs.
“You just hurled coffee all over the damn beets. I’ll be right back.” A few seconds later, she was back and wiping at the coffee covering the better part of his face with a towel and handing him a fist full of tissues. “What the hell happened?”
Between nose-blows, Thomas managed a few good chuckles and finally, “She a bit of a pistol?”
Nancy folded her arms across her chest and leaned back against the deck rail. “Well that’s what you need. A woman who can handle you and your,” she waved a hand in his direction, “ways.”
Thomas rolled his eyes and turned his back, going back to work on bundling beets. It wasn’t worth fighting about. If and when he started dating again, he wouldn’t be relying on his mother to play matchmaker. Especially if her choices were going to be based on what she thought she knew about him and his ‘ways’.
**************************************
A couple of hours later, Thomas pulled his truck out of the farmers market parking lot and onto Main Street. By the time he finished getting his mom situated and chatted with a couple customers, both old enough to be his grandmother, and both trying to set him up with their daughters, it was after 11:00 and the place was beginning to fill up with white haired ladies doing their weekly shopping before the after work crowd hit.
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Over the years, Nancy had grown the original small market into a large, booming business with a waiting list of vendors eager to snap up a spot. Everyone in town came for their produce and homemade items from spring through fall. So much so, the local supermarket had to scale their stock back while the market was in season.
Thomas had eight hours to kill until it was time to pick Nancy up and haul her and anything she had left back home. That left him plenty of time to go see what exactly his cousin was up to. It wasn’t like him to leave Nancy high and dry. Something was up.
Thomas wasn’t happy about the possibility that Rich was doing things he swore off no more than two years ago, but at least it gave him something else to occupy his mind. Lately it seemed to be stuck in the same place he was. The past.
Thomas rolled down the window as he headed out of town, the smell of farmland flooding the cab. Taking a deep breath, he let the familiar scent wash over him as he tried to relax.
Normally, he enjoyed spending time in town and catching up with everyone, but today the commotion of vendors setting up at the market only added to the aggravation building inside him. His mom meant well and only wanted him to be happy, but pushing him wasn’t going to accomplish anything. His divorce was still a sore spot and bringing it up was like a punch to a bruise.
He didn’t plan on spending the rest of his life alone. He just didn’t know how to get over this hump. How do you learn to trust someone else? Hell, how do you learn to trust yourself?
Maybe you don’t. His mother hadn’t. Maybe he wouldn’t either.
Hopefully he was wrong. Maybe one day he’d find someone. Someone who would have his back, be his partner. Love him the way he would love her.
He pulled his truck down the long, winding driveway, hoping he would find Rich well and simply wrapped up in his own life. If not…
Parking in front of the four car garage, he made his way up the steps to the stone alcove surrounding the carved mahogany double front doors. He rang the doorbell and waited, listening to the gentle chiming it made on the other side.
Rich’s house was beyond nice. After high school, Rich had gone on to get a degree in accounting while Thomas stayed and helped their grandpa on the farm. Farming was in Thomas’ blood. He’d rather be in the field than just about anywhere else. Rich’s passion was a little more fiscally profitable. He seemed to have a knack for making money.
Even back as far as college, Rich was investing and playing the market. He did pretty well too. Made enough to pay for his education. Since then, he’d managed to turn the decent amount he made as the manager of the farm into a hell of a lot, if you went by the looks of things.
He rang again and held his breath, listening for the sound of anything other than the bell. Nothing. No footsteps. No voices. Nothing.
He headed back down the steps and crossed to the garages. He moved from bay to bay, jumping so he could look through the windows set high on the door. Cherry red classic Corvette. Harley Street Glide. Rich’s custom extended cab cobalt blue truck. Only one was empty. The one that held the most modest vehicle they owned. Beth’s minivan.
“Shit.”
If Beth was gone that would explain a lot. None of it good.
Rich’s wife had left before. After what Rich later described as a temporary lapse in judgment, she loaded their daughters up and took off to her parents. It had been enough to scare him back on the wagon. Maybe it wasn’t enough to keep him on the wagon.
He pulled out his cell and found Beth’s number. The chances of her picking up were slim, especially if his assumptions were correct, but it was worth a shot.
The phone rang once and went to voicemail. He ended the call without leaving a message. It would be a waste of breath.
He was going to have to figure something else out and come up with a way to keep his mother out of the equation. If Rich was back to his old ways Thomas wasn’t sure she could handle it… again.
THREE
“You have to go potty?”
Daphne blew an excited puff of air through her floppy doggy lips and wagged her tail while making a bee line for the back sliding door. The big shaggy dog danced in place as Mina disabled the alarm and slid the door open, then shoved her way out into the still dark yard.
Mina stood and watched mindlessly for a second, her exhausted brain not quite up to the task of thinking yet. Daphne was taking her time, sniffing around the grass as she looked for the perfect location to deposit last night’s dinner. Mina slid the door open.
“Hurry up.”
Daphne raised her head from the area she’d been inspecting and stared.
“Go potty.”
The dog turned her butt toward Mina and went back to sniffing the ground.
“Damn dog.” Mina slid the door closed and headed into the kitchen. Daphne might have time to kill this morning, but she did not. It was almost 6:30 already and the kid’s lunches still weren’t packed. If she didn’t get it together she would have to skip her run and nobody wanted that to happen.
By the time two lunches were packed and in the fridge, Daphne had made her way to the back door where she stood with her wet nose pressed against the glass adding one more print to the five hundred others already there. Cleaning the door went on her mental list of shit to do. The bottom of the list.
Big brown eyes watched pitifully as she crossed through the dining area toward the door. “Poor baby.” Mina opened the door and switched off the flood light as Daphne sauntered back in the house and headed for the couch.
“Don’t even think about it.” The sheepdog looked back over her shoulder and flopped down on the floor… temporarily. The white puffy fur stuck in the chenille of the couch everyday gave her away.
Mina shot her the stink eye as she walked to the stairs leading up to the bedrooms, pointing her finger as she went. “Stay off the couch.” The dog wouldn’t listen, but it was worth a shot.
Maddie was still asleep, curled up in her bed. Mina couldn’t help but feel a pang of jealousy. How long had it been since she slept like that? Deep and peaceful. Waking up to the sound of an alarm instead of the twisting of her gut as her mind ran through everything it could find for her to obsess about.
Years. It had been years.
Three to be exact. The last time she slept well was the night before her ex-husband tried to kill her.
“Sweetheart.” She nudged her daughter softly.
“Hmmmm?” Maddie adjusted the covers, tucking them tightly against her neck.
“I’m going to go run. You’re phone is right here.” She checked to be sure the alarm was switched on. “I’ll hurry, but if I’m not back get up and start getting ready, okay?”
“Okay.”
She brushed the hair off her daughter’s forehead. “Call me if you need me.” Almost fourteen was old enough to be left alone for less than an hour, especially with an alarm system and a hundred and twenty pounds of Daphne. But it was still hard.
Maddie jutted a hand from under the covers to swat at her. “Mom, go. I want to go back to sleep.”
Ugh. Maybe not as hard as it was before she found her attitude. “I’ll be back.” She dropped a kiss on the blanket as Maddie pulled it over her head.
On her way back downstairs, she peeked into Charlie’s room making sure he was covered and still sleeping soundly. The sight of his sweaty sweet face made her smile as she wrapped her phone holder around her bicep and plugged in her ear buds.
They were finally on the other end. It had taken three years and moving from Florida to rural Indiana for a fresh start, but it was over.
She activated the alarm, the steady beep timing her as she pulled the door shut. She stayed, stretching on the porch for a few seconds until the beeping stopped. Four years ago, she would have never given their safety a second thought. That was before she knew what kind of people were in the world. Awful people who would take you out in a minute to get what they wanted. The worst ones hiding in plain sight, right under your nose, or in he
r case, beside you in bed.
Switching on her running playlist, she skipped down the steps of the 1970’s contemporary cedar tri-level she and the kids had called home for almost a year and headed down the driveway to the unlined road. Taking a deep breath to suck in a lungful of fresh air, her body begin to relax.
Running and long, hot baths were a Godsend these past few years. Probably the reason she held on to her sanity. Most of it anyway. Every morning, she pounded stress and frustration out on the pavement so she could get through the day without losing her mind. Every night she soaked her tired body until her skin was pink and prune-y so she could get at least a little sleep before her brain woke her up reminding her of all she had to stress about.
This morning there was no shortage of stress to motivate her run. After the summer off, she and the kids were trying to get back on schedule and into the swing of homework and after school activities. On top of that, she and Paul were struggling to finish the house they were working on. And she couldn’t forget Don and his boner.
Of course this was all in addition to her normal list of things to worry about like laundry, grocery shopping, cramps, the last time she changed the oil in her van, how many sets of contacts she had left, Daphne’s nose prints on her glass door. The list went on forever.
That was why she ran. The never ending list of things she could find to worry about.
Well, that wasn’t the only reason she ran. Not recently anyway.
Watching the sun just begin to peek over the horizon, Mina slowed her pace a little so she could steady her breathing. She smoothed her hands over the hair around her face making sure everything was still well contained by her ponytail, then tugged at her running shorts so nothing was bunched up and weird looking.
She knew it was stupid, she just didn’t care. It had been such a long time since she’d had butterflies for any reason other than nerves and it felt good. Her little crush was the perfect baby step into the world of dating. It was a place she’d never really been before. Marrying your high school sweetheart when you’re eighteen and stupid didn’t leave much room for experience in that arena and she was more than a little nervous about the idea.
Run (Never Waste A Second Chance Book 1) Page 2