Handyman Special

by Pamela Browning

"Not a word," said Adam.

  "That should be interesting," allowed Sage. "There's probably not a soul in the town of Willoree who speaks Italian."

  "You've forgotten me."

  "Hardly," she said.

  "I'm glad to hear that," he said fervently. Surprising her, he said, "Sage, when are you going to go out with me?"

  "You haven't asked me," she reminded him, lowering her eyelids in a sudden stillness of her heart.

  "How about Saturday night?" he said easily.

  "And what do you have in mind?" Her heartbeat was inaudible, muffled by her words, which fell upon the cool, crystalline air like raindrops on a still pond, rippling out and beyond them infinitely. Not many words, but all of them important, forerunners of whatever was to come.

  He kept it casual, even flippant. "How about driving over to Main Street to watch the chrome rust on the cars parked outside Lenny's Pool Hall?" He grinned impishly, his mustache curling. "What is there to do around here, anyway?"

  "Not much," she admitted.

  "What do you usually do on dates?"

  "Cook something on the grill at home. Watch television. Drive to Yewville for dinner or a movie. Visit with the family—his or mine."

  "Sage, I like your family very much. But I don't think I want to subject our evening together to their scrutiny. Your father made me feel as though I was being inspected like a bug under a magnifying glass that night I stayed for dinner and you so inconsiderately fainted. He acted as though he thought I was the sole cause of your keeling over."

  "My father?" She wrinkled her brow at him. "Ralph isn't my father."

  "Well, he certainly acts like a father. What is he, your stepfather?"

  Sage shook her head, smiling. "I guess you could say he's my surrogate father. As Irma is my surrogate mother. In fact, none of my family is related to me by blood. I thought you would have figured that out by this time."

  He stared at her. "Joy is your daughter. Yours and Gary's. You told me that."

  "Oh, Joy is mine, of course. But the rest of them I—well, I assembled them." She shrugged, shaking her head. "My parents both died while I was in college. First my mother. Cancer. Then Dad a year later when he had a stroke. I married Gary right after graduation because he promised security and stability. When he left, I wanted a real home for Joy and me. I'm an only child, but I love big houses filled with people sounds, with door latches clicking and bathtub drains gurgling through the walls and laughter in the kitchen at night. I'd always hoped for a large family, and now I have one."

  "With your expertise at building things, did you put them together from a kit?" He tipped his head to the side and grinned at her.

  She wasn't used to explaining. Around Willoree, everyone just knew, the way they knew everything about everybody.

  She drew a deep breath. "After Gary left, I knew I had to get on with my life. Willoree needed a handyman. That's why I started my business. And Joy's needs are so special that I knew I couldn't leave her with just anyone while I worked. When I heard about Irma and Ralph's house burning, I went to see if I could handle some of the repair work. The house was beyond saving—a heap of ashes. Irma and Ralph needed a place to live, and I needed help with Joy. I offered them a home, and they've been with me ever since."

  "But what about Gregory and Hayley? Are they Irma and Ralph's children?"

  "No, Gregory came to us after his parents were found guilty of child neglect. They left him alone to fend for himself for days at a time, so he was removed from their custody. They're now in jail."

  "And you offered him a place, just like that?"

  "Greg's a great kid, and I knew his grandmother, who used to bring us vegetables from her garden. She couldn't take care of him because of health problems. Irma and Ralph and I decided that Joy would benefit by having another child around, and Gregory and Joy took to each other from the start. We all love Gregory. He's a great kid with a keen sense of humor."

  "And Hayley?"

  "Hayley lived with her mother, who was a member of my church. She died last year, and Hayley was going to go live with her aunt in Wisconsin. Hayley was depressed about losing her mother and then moving and losing all her friends on top of it, so I asked her if she wanted to stay in Willoree with us. She leaped at the chance, so Hayley's been with us since January."

  Adam shook his head and regarded Sage with undisguised admiration. "I'm amazed that you could take a group of people from various backgrounds and make it work so well as a family." She had built a life, refurbishing the rooms of it, just as she did with her houses.

  "We all love each other very much," Sage said softly. "And don't give me all the credit. It belongs to each one of us, for wanting it to work. Anyway, I haven't told you about Poppy."

  Adam waited. He found her story beautiful; he found her beautiful in her earnestness. She acted as though putting together a family from scratch was no great accomplishment and took no special skill, but he knew better. He'd had his own experiences with families, none of them happy. When he had been in her family's midst, he had felt—well, embraced was the only word he knew to describe the feeling. Safe within the warm haven of that house with those people.

  He returned his attention to the soft cadences of her gentle voice. "A couple of years ago," she was saying, "Poppy started having memory issues, so he sold his farm outside Willoree and moved in with his daughter in Columbia. Poppy hated the city. He decided that he wanted to spend the rest of his days in Willoree. So he asked me if he could be our resident grandfather, and we all thought it was a wonderful idea."

  "Surely there must be times when you wish you hadn't started the whole thing," said Adam, thinking that his overly romantic and admiring visions of Sage's family life were perhaps not realistic.

  Sage shook her head. "Not really. I wanted a warm, happy family atmosphere for Joy. I thought she'd have a better chance of developing to her full potential if she had the stimulus of living with a group of people who loved her. There's a texture in our family life, like a fabric woven of variegated yarn. Each person contributes something special. Joy has benefited and so have I, and if in the process everyone else is happy, then that's all to the good, isn't it?"

  "I think it's all part of your handyman nature," he said with affection. "You aren't satisfied with the characteristics of a thing, so you tinker with it and experiment until you've got it the way you want it. You did that with your family, too."

  She lifted her eyebrows at him. "Is there anything wrong with that?"

  "There's nothing wrong with that," he told her emphatically. "If I had been lucky enough to become a member of such a family, I might have been another sort of person."

  Curiously she asked, "How would you have been different, Adam, if your childhood had been different?"

  He drained the dregs from his glass and stared reflectively into the flecks of foam that slid down the side. He was quiet for a long while. Then he lifted his head and stared out across the field.

  "I might have been more oriented to living with other people and less likely to remain a loner and a rover."

  "You were adopted at twelve. You must have had a family then." She waited for him to comment, but his eyes had gone hard as black marble, and he held his jaw so tightly that it might have been sculpted in steel.

  "Tony Hracek wasn't much of a family. He adopted me to carry on his family name because he had no children. He'd never married. He sent me to a succession of good boarding schools in the winter, to excellent camps in the summer. I had everything that his considerable fortune could buy, but I seldom saw him."

  "Was he very wealthy?"

  "Tony owned the most successful stone-monument business in the northeastern United States. He was a Czech tombstone cutter who immigrated to this country after World War II. He was an artisan, a real craftsman, and a shrewd businessman as well. He was also a patron of the home where I lived after my parents abandoned me, and when he wanted to adopt a boy to carry on the Hracek name, he was able to do it w
ithout the usual tangle of red tape."

  "What happened to Tony?"

  "He died shortly after I graduated from college, leaving me his business. I immediately sold it, and I've been rich ever since. Tony also had considerable investments." Adam spoke dispassionately, shrugging off the money as though it meant nothing to him despite his obvious enjoyment of the luxuries such money could buy.

  "Surely you were better off being adopted than living in the charity home."

  Adam's tone was bitter. "It was clear to me from the beginning that my sole duty toward my adoptive father was to be fruitful and multiply so that there would be plenty of Hraceks around to render him immortal."

  "And are there?"

  "I married. I have a son. I divorced. I've fulfilled my duty to Tony."

  Sage's sharp, startled breath burned her throat. It had never occurred to her, in a whole panoply of imaginings, that the debonair Adam Hracek might ever have been married. And he had a son! He had just exposed an entire block of his life previously unaccounted for.

  Sage had thought that Adam was the carefree bachelor he appeared to be. This, added to his revelations on the night of the Sheedys' party, gave her an entirely new perception of Adam. At this new awareness of him, her hand began to shake so much that she set the tall glass, still half-full of liquid, down on the ground beside her.

  She'd needed to know that Adam Hracek was one person whom the fates could not command, who was unfailingly able to set his own course and determine his own destiny, unlike mere mortals such as she. He was the kind of person who had never failed. At least, that's what she'd thought. It had been an illusion, but she liked that illusion. To find that he, too, had been buffeted by chance or fate or whatever it is that hurls obstacles in our paths seemed the ultimate disenchantment.

  The chill of the damp ground seeped through the seat of her thin overalls, and she shivered. "I must get back inside and clean up," she said, rising to her feet.

  Her seemingly offhand reaction to his story surprised Adam. He'd expected sympathy, although that wasn't why he had told her. He'd told her because he had this absurd and uncomfortable desire that Sage know all about him, know what—and who—he really was. And now she was walking nonchalantly away as though he'd revealed nothing more important about himself than the brand of soap he used.

  While he was still puzzling over her, she spoke from halfway across the lawn. "If you're serious about going out with me, you can pick me up at my house at six o'clock Saturday night," she said over her shoulder as if it were an afterthought.

  In the light of her abrupt leave-taking, this surprised Adam so much that he called after her in some bewilderment, "What would you like to do?"

  "It doesn't matter," she called back, still striding resolutely toward the house in those ridiculous painter's overalls of hers. She angled a smile in his direction. "Surprise me," she said before disappearing inside the house.

  He picked up the glass that she'd left behind, noticed that there was still liquid in it, and drank the rest of the beer. He wondered if his lips touched the rim of the glass in the same place hers had and wanted to think that they did.

  "Surprise her," he said to himself, lowering the glass. And then he smiled. "Surprise her," he said again. And then he laughed out loud.

  Chapter 7

  Adam bounded up the front steps of Sage's house promptly at six on Saturday. He always felt eager when he was about to arrive, because despite all the action, her home was a place of overall serenity where those who entered felt refreshed and those who lived there found peace.

  His eyes, jet-black and shining in approval, complimented Sage when she opened the door, taking in the way the stylish sweep of mauve silk georgette clung to her figure and revealed the matching slip underneath. He was gracious and charming to her family, especially to Joy, greeting her with the gravity of an adult greeting an adult.

  "Can you say Adam's name, sweetheart?" whispered Sage as she bent to kiss Joy good-bye.

  "Adam," said Joy, slowly and carefully.

  "That's very good," said Adam, smiling down at her. "You must have guessed that I brought you a present."

  Joy shook her head, staring at him in awe at what was to her his magnificent height.

  Adam pulled a small package from his coat pocket and, with a flourish, he handed it to Joy. She fumbled with the tissue paper before she finally unwrapped it. Sage could have helped, but she wanted Joy to learn to do more and more things for herself. Adam let Joy fumble, too, and Sage shot him a grateful look for knowing not to help.

  "Oh!" exclaimed Joy in delight when the little stuffed animal came to view. "'S a kibben."

  "Yes, Joy, it's a kitten," Sage said, subtly correcting her.

  "A kitten." Joy sparkled up at Adam, her bright almond-shaped eyes shining. "Thank you, Adam."

  "You're welcome," Adam said. She was really such a charming little girl. Joy possessed a special sweetness of personality that made her easy to love, and he found himself unable to stop smiling at her.

  "You chose just the right thing," Sage told him, her eyes lighted from within with a gentle warmth. "Joy loves stuffed animals."

  Without warning, Irma appeared from the direction of the kitchen. "Thanksgiving's next week," she said to Adam in her forthright manner. "We'd all be delighted if you'd join us for dinner."

  The invitation took Adam by surprise, and he glanced at Sage for a cue. Sage seemed as surprised as he was.

  "I have two houseguests," he hedged. "We'd planned to go out to dinner."

  "Nonsense," Irma said briskly. "You don't want to eat Thanksgiving dinner in a restaurant. I declare, what kind of Thanksgiving is that? You'll bring them along."

  "They're Italian," Sage injected on a warning note. "They don't speak English." She still hadn't met them and wasn't sure she was looking forward to it even though Adam had spoken so highly of them.

  "Doesn't matter," insisted Irma. "The more the merrier. Anyway, they should learn what an American Thanksgiving feast is like, don't you think so, Sage?"

  "Well, um, yes," she murmured with a sideways glance at Adam. She wondered what the two mechanics would think of the hubbub of a family Thanksgiving and how they'd get along without speaking English.

  "I'm sure they'll be delighted to come," Adam said graciously. "So will I."

  "Good," Irma said with a decisive nod. "Come help me, Joy. I need someone to set the table for dinner. Have a good time, you two," she said over her shoulder before she led Joy away. In leaving, Joy flashed Sage and Adam a sunny smile.

  "I didn't know Irma was going to invite you to Thanksgiving," Sage told Adam once they were in his car. "There's still time to maneuver your way out of it if you'd like."

  "I want to eat Thanksgiving dinner with you," he said. "Whatever makes you think I wouldn't?"

  "Oh, we're such a large group. We might intimidate your houseguests."

  Adam laughed at that. "Luigi has ten children and Vito has six. They're lonely when they're away from their families. Your family will seem serene compared to either of theirs."

  She accepted this, and he glanced over at her. To have her here beside him in his car again was a pleasure that went deep inside him, and Adam wondered how Sage could take hold of him the way she did. Her very presence was enough to lighten his heart. She made him feel young for the first time, when everything was fresh and new. His throat ached with the happiness of it.

  She was aware that he was watching her, but not of his feelings beneath the surface. "Where are we going?" she asked curiously.

  "We are going," he said with a sideways look at her, "to a fine Italian restaurant."

  Sage laughed at the joke. "There's no fine Italian restaurant within sixty miles of here," she scoffed. "Now, how about the truth? And have I dressed all wrong?"

  He momentarily took his eyes off the road to look over at her with an expression of injured innocence.

  "An Italian place is definitely where we're going," he said. "And you have d
ressed beautifully, perfectly."

  "But we're turning into your own driveway! This is Kalmia Hill!" The familiar azalea leaves flashed by the car windows.

  "How observant you are," he said mildly. "Come inside the house with me. I've forgotten something."

  A light illumined the portico at the summit of the drive. Through the trees, the effect of the brightly lighted house was dramatic. Sage thought Kalmia Hill was beautiful all the time, even at its worst, but tonight the house looked spectacular.

  Adam guided her up the magnificent outside staircase, one hand firmly cupping her elbow. He held his key in his hand, and it slid smoothly into the lock. He pushed at the ornate door with the other hand; it swung open easily on its hinges. The foyer, now restored to its former glory and painted in soft shades of gold, welcomed them. To their right, a dancing fire graced the living-room fireplace. There was no other illumination in the room, and the ivory silk-velvet upholstery on the two elegant settees glowed in the lustrous light from the flickering flames.

  "You leave a fire burning in the fireplace when you go out?" Sage asked sharply.

  "Only on certain occasions" was Adam's bland reply, as though this had no importance. "Come out on the sun porch. There's something I want to show you."

  "Adam, you really shouldn't leave the fire burning when you're going out. Unless those Italian mechanics of yours are—" And then, standing at the open French doors to the sun porch, she stopped short and said "Oh!"

  The sun porch had been transformed. There were plants everywhere, everywhere—palms and hanging Boston ferns and philodendron and several very large scheffleras in standing pots. And the ceiling! Yards and yards of swooping multicolored gauze draped it from one end to the other, and over and under the gauze twinkled tiny lights, the smallest and daintiest of Christmas-tree lights, but all white. The effect was one of hundreds of stars splashed across the ceiling, enveloped in a sweep of mist. And beyond the room, through the wide uncurtained windows, the milk-white crescent of a new moon rose above the deep-purple shadows of the cypress trees on the far shore of Lake Willoree. Sage caught her breath at the sight.