by Nicole Young
I looked out over an orange sky. “Seems sad, doesn’t it? I mean, what is it about our family that causes us to self-destruct?”
Joel was quiet for a minute. “Is it just us? Or is it everybody? We’re not the only ones living lonely and afraid. It’s everywhere you look.”
I thought about his words. Lonely and afraid. Yep. That about summed it up. Yet I really didn’t have an excuse for feeling that way. I’d heard enough Sunday sermons about abundant life in Christ that I should feel happy and joyous by now. I guess I just needed to try harder.
I put on a smile. “Listen to us whining. We’re some of the luckiest people I know. Young, healthy, and miles of future ahead.”
Joel grinned. “You’re right.” He rubbed his hands together. “Nice job here, Tish. All the best with the rest of your improvements.” He went down the steps two at a time. At the bottom, he stopped and looked back up at me. “By the way, I owe you an apology.” He cast his eyes onto the stair treads. “I didn’t know you were going to be such a decent person. I thought you might be . . . well, I figured you’d just want to barge in here like you had some right . . . Anyway, I’m sorry I was rude at Papa B’s house last time. You didn’t deserve it.” He gave a final glance up at me, then disappeared under the arch. A moment later I heard the back door close.
I stood at the rail. Maybe Joel had been disrespectful the other night. But his apology made up for it in a big way. It took a big person to humble himself like that.
Twiddling my thumbs, I stared at specks of dust floating in the beams of a setting sun. Humility sure wasn’t my strong point.
I sighed. Tonight was my night to call Brad. I dropped my head on my arms, dreading the call. It had been hard conversing with him lately. I just wanted to be with him. But he had his job, his family, his roots down in Rawlings. And I had my roots to plant here in Port Silvan. It seemed there could never be a way for us to be together.
I contemplated not calling him. The pain always spiked after I heard his voice. Maybe if I just let him go, just let him become a long-forgotten memory, then that place in my chest would quit hurting.
Eight o’clock passed and I didn’t call him. I breathed a sigh of relief. It hardly hurt at all. I sat on the couch with my book. After ten minutes staring at the words, I hadn’t understood a sentence. I reread the page. Then I gave up and checked the clock. Eight twenty.
I should call him. That would be the right thing to do. I could say, “Please don’t contact me anymore. Every time I hear your voice, I’m jerked back into loving you. And what good is that doing? We can’t be together right now and it hurts too bad to be apart. So just don’t call me anymore. Just leave me alone.”
Tears ran down my face just thinking the words. I couldn’t bear to be without Brad. As much as it hurt to be away from him, it would surely kill me to never speak to him again.
I dialed the phone.
“Brad?” My voice quavered with emotion.
“Tish, are you alright?”
I laughed into the mouthpiece. “Yes. I’m just glad to hear your voice.” I laughed again to hide my feelings. “Hey, remember the day we went shopping for garage door openers?”
He gave a quiet chuckle. “Oh, man. What were we thinking?”
I smiled and closed my eyes as I relived the afternoon we’d spent at the home improvement center in Flint, just north of Rawlings. We’d gone to buy his-n-hers openers for our own separate detached garages. But somehow we’d gotten distracted on the way to the hardware department and ended up in kitchen cabinets, choosing our favorite styles and colors. He picked a medium hickory with an arch top, I picked a light oak square top. We laughed at our differences, together choosing a lighter arched hickory as our joint favorite. We did the same thing in the bath department, then the lighting department, and finally the whole store, until we built an entire house for ourselves.
“Yeah,” I sighed into the phone, “what were we thinking?”
In the end, we bought our separate garage door openers and drove home to our separate houses and went to sleep in our separate beds and woke up to our separate brews of coffee, which we drank alone each morning in our separate kitchens.
I swallowed hard so I could speak. “Hey,” I said, “did you ever think it might have been fun—to build a house together?”
“Yeah,” he said, “I thought about that. It would have been a lot of fun.”
Then why don’t we do it, I wanted to say. Why don’t we figure out a way to get together and make it work?
Instead, I made a little grunt through my tears. “What do you think happened to that idea, anyway?”
He paused a moment. “We decided to just be friends.”
I nodded, wiping my face. “Just friends” didn’t get married and have babies and build houses together. No, “just friends” called each other on the phone every once in a while. Just like we were doing now. I tried not to sniffle into the receiver. “Thanks for being my friend, Brad. It really means a lot to me.”
Comforted in the knowledge that he was at least still my good buddy, I relaxed a little. We talked for over an hour. I could almost hear the dinging of a cash register at my cell phone company as each minute passed, but decided not to let my usage minutes rule my relationships.
I mentioned my great-grandmother’s death scare, my grandfather’s former career, and my cousin’s take on life.
“Your family sound like good people. I’m glad they’re there for you.”
He said it like such a true friend. I wanted to think that underneath the words he was really saying, “I love you.” But that would have been reading too much into it.
“Good night, Tish.”
Brad’s gentle farewell dredged up that gush of agony.
“Night.”
I sniffled and disconnected. Then I carted myself off to bed.
15
The weeks that followed brought an amazing transformation to the peninsula. Bare branches now glowed bright green as tiny leaves began their temporal journey. New grass poked through last year’s tangle of dried yellow blades. Each new morning dawned crisp and bright as the sun drew closer to Port Silvan.
It was the first Thursday of May. I stood on the ramshackle front deck, careful to avoid the rotted sections. It was warm enough for a sweatshirt and my navy windbreaker. Just beyond my perch, small brown birds twittered in and out of the brush. Farther out, Valentine’s Bay stretched smooth and blue in front of me. I savored the scent of newly warmed soil laced with cool lake breeze. I had a hard time imagining ever making a move back to civilization.
In fact, tea with Candice was the maximum human interaction I wanted today. Afterward, I planned on getting intimate with the local worms and grubs as I dug up a section of yard for a flowerbed. Besides, burying my hands in dirt up to my elbows would take my mind off the significance of the day’s date. But then again, burying anything was probably the exact thing I should be avoiding.
I made the drive to Candice’s house, memorizing every new and brilliant spring creation along the way.
She waved from the porch as I pulled up. A gust of wind pushed at the sides of her wide-brimmed straw hat. She tightened the black polka-dot scarf that kept it from blowing away.
“Hello!” I called as I approached the house.
“Happy Thursday.” She kissed my cheek. “I can’t hug you until I’ve washed up. I’ve been getting the beds ready.”
I looked at the rectangles of newly turned soil on either side of the steps. “What are you planting?”
“Nothing yet,” she said. “Not until Memorial Day. That’s the rule of thumb around here.” She held the door open for me. I waited in the parlor while she washed. A few minutes later she served up the tea.
“It’ll be iced tea soon enough, won’t it?” Candice said.
“I know.” I took a sip. A hint of lemon tickled my tongue. “This winter has flown by. Just when I got settled in Rawlings, it was time to make the move to Port Silvan. And now summ
er’s almost here.”
“What projects do you have planned for the warmer weather?” Candice nibbled a circle of rye topped with cream cheese and a cucumber.
I reached for a tiny tuna on wheat. “The porches need all new decking and the log siding needs restoration. I’ll be going through a truckload of bleach to kill the mold and get the logs back to their original color. Then of course I have to stain everything.”
Candice knit her brows. “Is that really something you can handle on your own? That place is huge. You’ll be spending your summer up on a ladder.”
I smiled to reassure her. “It’s all part of the job. And it’s a great excuse to get outdoors in sunny weather.”
“I sure hope you know what you’re doing. Jim Hawley could probably finish the project in a week. Maybe you should think about letting him help you.”
I waved a hand to reject her offer. “No, no. I can handle it.” After all, I didn’t want to get the place fixed up too quickly. What excuse would I have for sticking around Port Silvan if everything was done by September? And figuring out my mother’s life wasn’t like baking a cake. It was more like refinishing a piece of fine furniture. The old varnish had to be removed layer by layer until the true wood was revealed. Only time and patience could bring an accurate depiction of my mother.
Candice and I talked more about my renovation schedule. Then the mantel clock bonged.
“Is it that time already?” I stood to go.
Candice gathered the cups and saucers and set them on the tray. “I forgot to mention that Drake Belmont was arrested yesterday. Had you heard?”
My hand flew to my throat. “Is Missy alright? He didn’t hurt her, did he?” I could kick myself for not forcing my way into Melissa Belmont’s life instead of letting her dictate a code of silence.
“From what I gather, he was picked up for possession of marijuana with the intent to distribute, or something like that.”
I closed my eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. “As long as Missy and the kids are okay, that’s what matters. Hopefully she can leave safely now that he’s in jail.”
Candice arched a doubting eyebrow. “We’ll see. Some women are tenacious about staying in an abusive situation even when the way out is staring them in the face.”
I pursed my lips. I hated that Candice always thought the worst of Missy. “I know she’ll do the right thing.” I turned to go. “See you next Thursday,” I called over my shoulder.
As I drove toward home, I tossed around the bright possibilities for Missy now that Drake was sitting in a jail cell. I’d give her a call just so she’d know I was there for her if she needed anything.
I crossed Cupid’s Creek. Over the treetops to the left, a tower of smoke billowed skyward. I squinted, trying to pinpoint its origin. My heart plunked to my hips. My house was the only structure in the area. I stepped on the gas. My house was burning down.
I skidded onto my driveway and gunned the engine. I gripped the steering wheel, trying to stay in the seat as the vehicle bounded through potholes.
The stench of smoke blasted my nose as I neared the source. “No, no, no.” Not my house. It was my childhood, my memories. It was all my tools and enough stuff to fill an SUV.
How could this be happening? I couldn’t have left the iron on, since I didn’t own one. I hadn’t done anything different today than any other day.
I turned the last corner and slid to a stop, blinded by a cloud of gray. My eyes watered and my lungs burned. The wind shifted. Through the hazy air, I could see that my cottage was still there. Still in one piece. It wasn’t burning down.
Instead, the garden shed blazed orange and blue. Thick black smoke rose from curling shingles. As I watched, the roof collapsed and flames rose to new heights. There went my landscaping plans. There went the hangout some buyer would have deemed irresistible.
I slammed my palms on the steering wheel in frustration, then reached for my cell phone. I dialed 9-1-1.
The dispatcher answered on the second ring.
“My name is Tish Amble and I’d like to report a fire.”
I gave the operator the location, then went in search of a garden hose hopefully stashed in the crawl space. I found a bucket instead. Fifteen pails of water later, help arrived. The Port Silvan volunteer firemen doused the flames in a matter of minutes.
A waist-high square of rocks was all that remained when the smoke cleared.
One of the firemen approached. His black and yellow coat hung to the top of tall boots.
“How did this get started?” he asked.
“I have no idea. I left the house around noon and when I got back about two twenty, this is what I found.” I gestured toward the burnt-out shell. “I called right away.”
The man nodded. “It looks like accelerants were involved.”
“Accelerants?”
“Like gasoline.”
I shook my head. “I don’t remember seeing a can of gas in there. Maybe, but I don’t think so.”
“Does anybody have a reason to be angry with you?”
I looked at him in surprise.
He stared at the ashes. “The reason I ask is that the majority of crimes are committed by someone we know.”
I fumbled through my data banks and came up empty handed. “I don’t know anybody up here. Well, just a couple people, but they wouldn’t burn down my shed.”
“Weren’t you tight with Melissa Belmont awhile back?”
My eyes scoped out the trees as I tried to figure out how he knew that. “I wouldn’t say tight. We talked at church and bumped into each other once at the library. Why?”
His eyes were all over my face. “Drake Belmont got thrown in jail yesterday. You wouldn’t have had anything to do with that, would you?”
My jaw dropped. “Absolutely not. I’d heard he dealt drugs, but I assumed that’s common knowledge.”
“Common knowledge or not, I think Drake’s buddies are sending you a message. I imagine next time it’ll be your house they burn down.”
I sputtered. “If you think you know who did it, then let’s go to the cops. The arsonists should be sitting behind bars next to Drake.”
He shook his head. “I’ve seen this before. You’ll never be able to prove a thing.” The fireman glanced at the others winding up hoses. “I guess it pays to mind your own business, huh?”
He joined his associates. With the last of the equipment stowed, the tanker truck and engine started out the drive.
“Thank you,” I called toward the last rig. One man lifted his arm in acknowledgment. The diesels roared, then were gone.
I stood alone in the yard, still shaking from the incident. The fire had scorched the grass around the ruins. I guess I was lucky the whole forest hadn’t burnt to the ground. I couldn’t believe someone would pick today, of all days, to do this horrible thing.
I ran inside, flopped on the bed, and dialed Candice’s number.
16
“Candice, you won’t believe what just happened.” I blurted into the phone when she answered.
“I can’t even understand you, Tish. Is everything okay?”
“They burnt my shed down. I got home and it was on fire.”
“Who? Who burnt your shed?”
“Drake Belmont’s buddies. The fireman said they must be mad at me for turning Drake in. But I didn’t turn him in. I never said a word to anybody.” I paused, remembering. “Except you and Puppa.”
The other end of the line was quiet.
“Candice? Are you there?”
“I’m here, Tish.”
“I can’t believe they’d do this to me. I loved that shed. I had big plans for that shed.”
Candice gave a big sigh. “Just be glad it wasn’t your house. I’ll be right over.”
“Thank you, thank you.”
I put on some coffee while I waited. The interior reeked of smoke. I went around and opened the windows facing the lake, hoping the fresh breeze would clear up the air.
&nbs
p; Back in the kitchen, I dragged a stool to a spot near the window. I stared out at the smoldering foundation. Gray smoke wisped toward heaven, as if carrying the spirit of my precious garden shed home.
Candice arrived. Her white Impala lurched to a stop near the porch.
She raced inside. “Tish, are you alright?”
I nodded. At her show of concern, my face swelled up. Next thing I knew, tears were pouring down my cheeks. She held onto me, rocking me like a little girl, right there in the kitchen.
“Shh. It’s okay. We’ll get through this.”
The gentle back-and-forth motion brought me back to that tragic May, years earlier.
“Do you know what today is?” I sobbed.
“I know, dear. I know.”
“Why did she have to die? Why did she have to do that? Wasn’t it enough just being my mom?”
Candice ran a hand along the back of my hair. “She loved you, Tish. She really did.”
I pushed away from Candice and stared into her face.
“Why weren’t you there, Jellybean? Why weren’t you at the funeral for me? I looked and looked, but you never came.”
Candice’s eyes pooled. She grabbed me and held my head to her chest. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I wanted to be there, I really did.”
We were both crying like babies when a black pickup pulled up. Gravel flew when the driver hit the brakes.
“Oh, no.” Candice wiped at her face. “I’ve got to make a run for it.”
The passenger door opened. My grandfather stepped out. Gerard walked around from the driver’s side. The two men headed for the porch.
“You’re not going anywhere.” I stepped in front of Candice, as if to shield her.
“What’s going on around here?” My grandfather bellowed as he barged in. Gerard entered behind him.
“Hi, Puppa.” I tried to act natural, though all the tears must have made my face look like I’d sunburned through a chain-link fence.
“What’s she doing here?” He pointed a finger of accusation in Candice’s direction.
Candice stepped out from behind me. “Hello, Bernard. I’m comforting your granddaughter in her hour of need. You know, that thing I wasn’t allowed to do twenty-six years ago.”