Jar of Dreams

by Liz Flaherty

  The comment made her think of her father, whose body hadn’t failed him even as his mind had. In one of the lucid moments before Alzheimer’s had gone into its later stages, he’d mentioned that. “It’s too bad I can’t give this body to someone who still has the mind to use it. It seems like such a waste.”

  A chill rippled down her spine with the memory.

  “Where are you, Lucy John?” Boone’s voice reached her, gentle and quiet. “You’ve gone away.” He propped an arm around her, held in place by hooking a hand on her shoulder. It was a comforting thing. A warming thing that eradicated the chill.

  And more. It made her aware of the strength of the man who walked at her side, of the depth of his caring. It made her think about being in his arms with nothing but moonlit darkness between them.

  “Just remembering my father,” she said, thinking she should move away from his touch.

  “He’s dead?” He steered her around a sycamore root that had created a small mountain range in the sidewalk. “What about your mother?”

  “She died when I was five. An aneurysm. She came into the kitchen saying, ‘Oh, Johnny, I have such a headache,’ and just that quickly she was gone. I don’t think he ever fully recovered from the shock of it.”

  A shudder ran through the arm around her. Even the side of his body quaked. The agony in his face was startling in its intensity.

  “That’s what…Maggie, my wife…” He stopped, regaining his composure. “We were dancing around the room when she said that, what your mother said about the headache, and then she left me. She never spoke again.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Oh, Boone, I’m so sorry.” Words failed her then.

  She slipped her arm around his waist as they turned onto Twilight Park Avenue.

  “But she didn’t die.” He went on as though Lucy hadn’t spoken. It was her turn to steer him. His eyes were open, but he wasn’t watching where he was going—rather, he was staring somewhere inside himself, somewhere deep and painful. His cheeks were pale, his mobile features carved and still. “I called 911 and they took her to the hospital. They kept her alive with machines for seven days. I knew she was gone, her parents knew she was gone, but we couldn’t let her heart stop beating. There was nothing more that could be done, no hope she would recover, and I had to let her go. I had to.” His voice was strained, sounding as though he were forcing the words out one by painful one.

  Perhaps he was.

  “Of course you did, but that didn’t make it any easier, did it?”

  He shuddered again as they stepped onto the porch of Tea on Twilight. She laced her fingers through his. She couldn’t protect him from the pain, but maybe she could absorb some of it.

  “No, and I’ve never forgiven myself for it. Neither has Crockett.”

  Lucy startled into motionlessness “What do you mean?”

  “I know there’s a part of him that thinks if Maggie had married him, she’d still be alive and well—” he pushed the door open and nudged her inside before removing his arm from around her, “—and there’s a part of me that agrees with him.”

  *

  “Never?” Boone stared at Lucy in disbelief. “It’s impossible to have lived over thirty years in the United States and never have been to a church supper.”

  “No, it’s not,” she said calmly, fluffing at the hair that framed her face in soft curls. “We didn’t go to church as I was growing up, and even when I started going, I didn’t get involved. It seemed like there was never enough time.” She examined the sundress she wore, seeming to take offense to the sight of her suntanned knees and sandaled feet. “You’re sure this is okay for it?”

  He latched onto her arm and pulled her out the door. “If that dress was any more okay, Eli would be raffling you off to make money for the church. You know the man has no conscience.”

  She laughed, shrugging off his arm and running down the steps ahead of him. “He wouldn’t get very much out of me. I’m generic, not a name brand.”

  “You have a skewed sense of self-worth,” he commented, catching up and moving to the street side.

  The smile she flashed at him was bright but brittle. “Life is skewed, Boone.”

  “So it is.” He knew that, but he wished she didn’t. She wore an air of naiveté he didn’t want to see diminished. It gave him an uncommon wish to protect, much like he felt with Kelly. But different. Way different. He reached for her hand as they approached the corner, liking the feel of her small fingers laced in his.

  “But it’s good,” she added cheerfully, raising her free hand to wave to Micah Walker and his wife, Landy. “Not always, but sometimes. You need to hold onto the good things to get you through the bad.”

  Ah, there it was, the innocence that gleamed from her. Even if he wasn’t sure he believed it entirely, he enjoyed it. Boone laughed aloud, feeling delivered.

  The dinner was as all church dinners were—noisy and delicious. Boone and Lucy answered questions concerning Sims’s condition so often, they took to offering the information before the query was made. Finally, using a ladle as a microphone, Eli announced to all and sundry that Sims would be fine, though all prayers would be appreciated.

  Lucy was so delighted when her pie was the first one to be all gone that Boone delivered an impromptu lecture on humility that had their entire table laughing.

  It was dark when they headed home, the air heavy with humidity and thick with awareness. They walked slowly, their hands together and their heads dipping close so that they could speak in low tones. The atmosphere felt so electric, Boone wondered if a storm was coming. The cloudless, moonless sky told him the electricity was personal and physical, conducted by leaf-green eyes and hands with nails bitten to the quick.

  Lucy may not have considered the evening a date, but Boone had. His first since Maggie’s death. Well, not exactly. It wasn’t the first time he’d taken a woman out, bought her dinner, and taken her home. No, it was much more than that.

  It was the first time he’d wanted to.

  “Hot chocolate?” she asked when they walked into the silent house.

  “Sure.” He followed her to the kitchen, going to check the messages on the old-fashioned answering machine. There were no calls from Cincinnati, so he ignored the others and sat on a counter stool to wait.

  He watched her move around the kitchen, her movements quick and sure as she poured the milk and measured the chocolate. Her hips had a subtle curve and sway under the bright sundress that held his attention. He wouldn’t need whipped cream with this chocolate—she was delicious topping enough on her own.

  But who was she?

  She was from Richmond, she’d worked in a restaurant, her parents were dead and she knew Crockett. The description covered everyone in his family and many of his friends and it didn’t narrow things down much.

  She said she wanted a future, but exactly what kind of future was she talking about and how did she intend to go about securing it? Had Crockett talked enough about his rich aunt that Lucy had set out to ingratiate herself? Crockett wasn’t stupid by any means, but he wouldn’t be the first man duped by false innocence.

  That was what Kelly thought had happened, but it didn’t quite ring true with Boone.

  In the first place, Aunt Gert wasn’t anybody’s fool. Other than Crockett’s, she’d never been taken in by a pretty face, and since he was her nephew—Crockett’s mother was Gert’s sister—Boone supposed that didn’t count.

  Secondly, in Boone’s experience, which admittedly was confined to watching television and reading newspapers, people who set out to bilk others of their worldly goods did so because they weren’t willing to work at making an honest living. Most of them didn’t work in gas stations with no thought of being paid. They didn’t stand on ladders to polish chandeliers, dismantle toilets to remove toys that had been flushed by small patrons, or help recalcitrant students study for chemistry exams.

  Lucy had done all of those things this week. Jack had been reluctant to ac
cept help with his homework, although he was happy with the cookies and milk Lucy offered. She’d nagged him until he sat at the island with his books and answered the questions she fired at him while she worked. When he’d wanted to give up, she bribed him with more cookies.

  Gert’d asked if she’d ever considered teaching. Lucy said she hadn’t.

  Jack’d said that was a good thing, because she was godawful at chemistry.

  Boone laughed, remembering Lucy’s indignation and the cup of ice she’d dumped on the boy’s head. Then Jack had taken out the trash without being asked, exchanging grins with Lucy when she opened the door for him.

  “Where did Jack come from?” Boone took the cup of steaming chocolate Lucy handed him.

  She sat beside him. “I don’t know. He was already working here when I came.” She smiled fondly. “He’s a nice kid.”

  Boone nodded. “Seems to be.”

  They drank their chocolate, making desultory conversation, then Lucy stood, gathering their cups and putting them upside down in the dishwasher. “I enjoyed the dinner,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “I did, too.” He watched her disappear up the back stairs, then wandered through the house checking locks. He didn’t want to think about the last reason he’d nearly decided to trust Lucy, although it was working its way around the edges of his mind. He started up the front steps at a sprint. If he could just get into his third-floor bedroom before the thought developed fully, he could escape it. He could shuck his jeans and crawl into bed and think about the strip or about an idea for the political cartoons he occasionally drew.

  Then he’d fall asleep, having survived another day without…her.

  But he didn’t make it. By the time he reached the first landing, with its faceted round window displaying the light of the full moon, Maggie’s face filled his mind and her laughter echoed softly through his heart. He could almost feel her hand on his face, nearly heard her voice as he remembered her saying, “Of course Elmer and Myrtle love each other, just like Sims and Gert do. What would ever make you think I can’t see into your heart?”

  He rounded the second landing of the staircase and lifted his head as a familiar scent touched his nose lightly, like a feather drifting past. Lilac. Maggie had always smelled of lilacs. Of spring. Of eternal hope.

  “For our dreams,” she used to say, dropping change from her purse into the crystal bowl that sat on her piano—the parlor grand he’d bought her when he’d signed the contract for the first collection book of “Elmer and Myrtle” cartoons.

  By the time he closed his bedroom door, the pain had engulfed him. On auto-pilot, he opened the slatted blinds to let the moonlight and its shadows into the room before sinking onto the bed to lie on his back and stare at the angled ceiling. If he lay still and tried to force his mind to go blank and empty, sometimes the pain would ebb away to numbness and allow him to sleep.

  Lucy kept her dreams in a glass pickle jar on Aunt Gert’s counter. The fact that she kept them at all was the third reason he couldn’t think she was less than honest.

  He’d buried his own dreams in a cemetery outside of Taft under a stone that read, “Maggie Brennan. Beloved wife and daughter.” He no longer believed in dreams or the future or hope.

  Reaching into the wastebasket that sat between the bed and the desk, he took out the beer can he’d placed in it the night before. He crushed it slowly in one hand, working at it.

  And realized that even though he didn’t believe in any of those things, meeting Lucy Dolan had made him wish he did.

  Chapter Five

  “I never realized how hard Sims and Aunt Gert worked.”

  Crockett, Boone, Kelly and Lucy sat around the table in the sunroom off the kitchen. The weary remark had come from Kelly, but any of them could have said it. The three days since Sims’s accident had been long and difficult.

  “Why don’t we close the tearoom, at least for the summer?” Boone suggested. “Aunt Gert’s bound and determined she’s going to take care of Sims when he comes home, and she can’t do both. We can’t close the gas station—I’m as scared of Sims now as I was when I was in high school.”

  “No.” Lucy sipped sweet tea with a frown, thinking she’d added too much mint when she brewed it.

  “No?” Kelly’s voice rose and thinned with the word. “Need I remind you that this is still our aunt’s home, and none of us has the time to run the tearoom and this house? Crockett will be going back to Virginia any day now. I have a practice that needs my attention. Even Boone has business he has to conduct.”

  “So do I,” Lucy said evenly, setting her glass down so no one would see her hand shaking. “I know this is your aunt’s house, but that doesn’t alter the fact that I pay to live in it or that I own half the business. I need to make a living, and the tearoom is how I do it. You’re welcome to keep an eye on the books to make sure I don’t abscond with the funds or the china, but Tea on Twilight isn’t closing, even temporarily.”

  “I hardly think a handshake and a contract written on a notepad from a campaigning politician are things I can’t get around if I need to in order to protect Aunt Gert’s interests,” Kelly said evenly. “I don’t want to put you out on the street, but I wouldn’t hesitate to do so if I thought it was best for her.”

  “Kelly!” Fury vibrated through Boone’s voice. “This isn’t a time for threats, nor has Lucy done anything to earn them. If you don’t have anything constructive to suggest, why don’t you go home?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Boone, she’s a perfect stranger, another stray of Crockett’s. Don’t tell me you’re taking her side.” Tears glittered in Kelly’s eyes.

  As angry as she was, Lucy felt the pain and exhaustion of those tears and was sorry for it. She was as tired as Kelly was, and the street of dislike definitely went both ways. “Maybe I should—”

  “Let’s stop before everyone says things they don’t mean.” Crockett’s voice was calm and patient—Lucy didn’t know how he did it. “Everybody’s tired.”

  Kelly spoke stiffly. “I won’t be here tomorrow or the next day. I have to be in court.” When she got up, she knocked her glass to the floor, flinching when it shattered against the hardwood. “I’ll make sure not to count that one against you when we inventory the dishes, Lucy.”

  She didn’t clean it up, either, just left the house without further comment. The silence between Boone and Crockett was even louder than usual after she left, and Lucy wished they would go home, too. This had been such a happy house before they’d descended on it, the easygoing atmosphere not affected even by Kelly’s snippiness, but the anger between the two men hovered like a dark cloud.

  She went for the broom and dustpan, and when she came back to the sunroom, Crockett was gone and Boone was picking up the larger shards of glass and laying them carefully on his plate.

  “I apologize for my sister,” he said, taking the dustpan and holding it for her to sweep the splintered glass into. “I really don’t know what her problem is.”

  “Well.” Lucy shook her head, hoping to somehow dislodge the weariness from her soul as well as her voice. “It seems to be me.” She took the dustpan from him. “Thank you.”

  He helped her carry the dishes into the kitchen. “How did you meet Crockett?” he asked, double-bagging the broken glass.

  She wanted to say it was none of his business, but that would have sounded as though she had something to hide. And she didn’t. There was a difference between hiding something and not wanting to talk about it.

  “I told you before, he came into the restaurant where I worked,” she said. “Even in a city the size of Richmond, servers become familiar with regulars. You know, calling them by name, pouring their coffee before they order it. After a while, you remember if the customer hates tomatoes or wheat toast or whatever. It was that way with Crockett, although I never knew his full name until he gave me a business card and told me to come to Indiana and call Gert.” She closed the door of the dishwasher and turned
it on, then leaned wearily against it. “I just called him Father.”

  *

  He forgot sometimes.

  Boone changed into running shoes and left the house as quietly as he could. He stopped to warm up, pushing against the sycamore tree in the front yard, then took off, heading toward downtown. It felt good to stretch his muscles. He slowed to a walk long enough to make sure everything was okay at the gas station—it was closed for the night, but the pumps were still open for business—then speeded up again. After the bridge, he turned onto the River Walk. He hated running on the cobbles that paved the path, but he loved the Walk and the sounds and smells of the river.

  He waved at Eli St. John, who was running the other way with a couple of his kids, and kept going. He passed the park bench where he’d proposed to Maggie on a sunny summer day, another one where he’d sat and wept after he lost her. Crockett had sat with him that time, neither speaking nor touching him.

  In the three years since Maggie died, Boone had often wondered if the man who’d sat on the bench with him had been doing his job or being a friend. Unless he was going to mass, Crockett seldom wore his collar when he visited Taft. He was just the guy who’d once been his best friend, who had a tattoo of a coonskin cap high on his thigh that matched the one on Boone’s—the only lasting result of a hilarious and often drunken spring break spent on a Florida beach.

  However, being reminded of his former friend’s vocation lightened a load Boone hadn’t realized he carried.

  Father Crockett had met Lucy first, he’d invited her to come to Taft, and he was fond of her. But he wasn’t in love with her—Boone would know if he was. It wasn’t like fifteen years ago when Noah Crockett had come home from Notre Dame for the weekend, bringing beautiful Maggie Martino to meet Aunt Gert. Boone had been there too, home from art school for the weekend. That was when they all learned that there really was such a thing as love at first sight.

  Sweat was pouring off Boone when he got back to Main Street, and his legs felt rubbery when he slowed to cool down. By the time he reached the house on Twilight Park Avenue, however, he felt energized. He’d be able to draw for a couple of hours before going to sleep.