by Liz Flaherty
Lucy looked up in surprise. The comic strips? Boone had mentioned ending “Elmer and Myrtle” once, but had never brought it up again. He wouldn’t, would he? It would be like sending Sims and Gert to the old folks’ home.
“Not really. Micah’s doing more of the writing than he wants to. He still has a family and a paper to run, not to mention poker on Thursday nights—the dude has his priorities. I need to hire an assistant to work with me in Chicago, but I’m reluctant…”
“Maybe it’s time to move on,” Crockett suggested.
Boone’s eyes gazed toward the Atlantic’s crashing waves. He seemed a million miles away. “Maybe it is.” He sighed. “Of course, after eating this dinner, I won’t be able to move at all.”
He was, though. When Crockett offered to load the dishwasher, Boone grabbed Lucy’s hand. “Come on. Let’s hit the beach before he changes his mind.”
“I’ve got calls to make anyway.” Crockett held up his cell phone. “Take your time.”
“Your bookie again?” Boone shook his head. “You oughta be ashamed.”
“And you oughta be locked up. Lucy, take him away.”
“Come on, doofus.” Lucy laughed as she pulled Boone out of the house and down to the water. “Oh, isn’t it beautiful?” Her voice bounced up and down with the roar of the waves, making her laugh again.
“It is.”
They walked along, stepping into the water now and then, pointing at far-off sailboats and the swirling colors of the evening sky.
“What did Crockett mean when he said it was time for you to move on?” she asked, giving up the whole notion of minding her own business. “Are you still thinking of retiring ‘Elmer and Myrtle’?”
“No. It would be easier if I was. Crockett was just telling me to fish or cut bait with the new strip. It’s a good one and my syndicate has indicated they would buy it. Lots of the papers that publish ‘Elmer and Myrtle’ would probably take on ‘Eight Hours Work,’ too, but it’s more than I want to do. That being said, the idea of just turning it over to someone for them to choose who writes and draws it is a lot like giving away a pet after you’ve already housebroken it and let it sleep on your bed.”
“Then don’t give it up. Just hire the assistant you were talking about, and if you ever want it back, it will be there. Shedding on the sheets and chewing your shoes.” You’ve already had to give up too much. She stepped into the water, holding up her long skirt. “Think about what you want to be doing with your life in ten years.” She didn’t meet his eyes, afraid of what he would say. Or wouldn’t.
His arms came around her, pulling her full-length against him. His cheek sandpapered against hers, and she smiled at the sensation.
But he didn’t answer.
*
Boone crawled between the sheets in the yellow room, thinking of the suggestion Lucy had made a couple of hours before. Think about what you want to be doing with your life in ten years. He’d be nearly forty-seven. Would he still be living on memories and regrets over things lost? Dancing on the edges of relationships because he knew beyond all doubt if he moved to the center, there was no going back?
“Probably,” he muttered aloud, pulling the sheet over his bare shoulder and closing his eyes to listen to the sound of the ocean. It was like Lake Michigan on steroids. He fell asleep almost instantly, soothed by the raucous lullaby, wondering somewhere in the back of his mind what Lucy wore to bed.
He didn’t know what woke him before dawn. He put on the shorts and T-shirt he’d worn the night before and stepped out onto the deck. Even now, the beach wasn’t deserted. A few joggers ran close to water’s edge, walkers with dogs sauntered at a safe distance. A runner with a familiar gait was directly behind the house. Boone walked toward the water and fell into step beside him.
“Far be it from me to criticize anyone for running from their problems,” Boone said dryly, “but doing it in the middle of the night is just crazy.”
Crockett’s sidelong glance was half irritation, half amusement. “You should know. I seem to remember a few three a.m. runs with you.”
“You listened. It was a big help.”
“I wasn’t listening. I was winded and couldn’t talk.”
“Bullshit.”
They ran for a long time, breaking the silence only with heavy breathing and the occasional grunt when the sand was too wet and sucked at their feet. “I’m at the same place you are.” Crockett’s voice sounded hollow in the night. “In a way, at least. At a crossroads, not having the slightest idea which way to go.”
“You thinking of leaving the priesthood?” It had been difficult to become accustomed to Crockett as a clergyman—now it was hard to imagine him not being one.
“I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like it’s leaving me.” Crockett shook his head, drops of perspiration flying from his dark hair. “I’ll be fine. What should happen will happen. What about you, though? When are you going back to Chicago?”
“Two weeks, if the guy living in my apartment finds a place to live. I haven’t pushed him.”
“Living in the big city losing its charm?”
“No.” Living alone is. He left the thought unspoken, but an eye roll from Crockett made him realize he might as well have said it aloud.
“You don’t want to leave Lucy.” Crockett said it for him.
“No.”
“But?”
“We’re both just getting free. I’m giving up a past life I didn’t want to end and she’s just signed the papers releasing the only remaining connection to where and how she spent the first thirty-three years of her life. I’m not sure either of us is ready to tie ourselves to another person.”
“And?”
“And what? Holy shit, Crockett, isn’t that enough?”
“Maybe, but there’s more.”
“Sun’s coming up.” Boone gestured toward to the light working its way over the water.
Crockett nodded. “So it is. Does it every day, so I’m told. You going to talk to me or am I going to have to go put my collar on and call you ‘my son?’”
“Lucy asked me, sort of, where I wanted my life to be in ten years.” It was hard to breathe, harder to talk. “It bothers the hell out of me that I don’t know any better now than I did when the high school counselor asked the same fricking question when I was sixteen.”
If anyone had asked, Boone would have said they were too winded for talking, but he’d have known that wasn’t the reason for the silence that fell between them. No, the reason was that they didn’t have any answers.
Chapter Fourteen
“The sorority wants the pies delivered to the event center out by the lake at noon because the party’s at two o’clock. I can’t begin to make sense of that, but it’s what they wanted and paid extra for.” Gert peered at the schedule on the kitchen chalkboard. “Neither of us can possibly leave here at eleven forty-five on a Friday. Where is Boone, anyway? It’s just like a man to not be around when you need him. Maybe Jack can take them. He only has half-days at school this semester. Classes start at a quarter till one and he’s mowing here this morning.”
Lucy set pumpkin custard pies on the island to cool and replaced them in the oven with Dutch apple and blueberry. “Boone left yesterday to speak at a conference in Louisville, remember? He was whining about eating mystery meat and lime gelatin with fruit in it.” And talking about what he’d like to do with me and a whole vat of lime gelatin. She smiled with the memory of that particular conversation.
She and Boone had grown closer in the week since they returned from Richmond, spending most of their evening hours and many of their late-night ones together.
“I can take them.” Kelly—who’d joined them for breakfast and helped with tablecloths and flowers for the tearoom while she was there—turned from where she was curling her eyelashes with the toaster serving as a mirror. “I’m having a working lunch meeting in another room at the center. Only thing is, I need to borrow one of your cars. I left mine with Sim
s this morning to change the oil and filters and all that under-the-hood stuff.”
“You can take mine to the office,” Gert offered. “We’ll load the pies into the van and you can drive that when you go to the meeting.”
Lucy grinned. “Just don’t tell anyone where you got the car or they’ll all want one. I’m pretty sure that blue-and-rust combination is going to start a whole new trend.”
“You should buy a new van, or at least a newer one,” Kelly advised, getting Gert’s keys from one of the hooks on the inside of a cupboard door. “It could be a company car for the tearoom.”
Lucy shook her head. “The tearoom can’t even afford a company bicycle yet, although Gert’s last newspaper ad was inspired. Even with the percentage off, we’ve had record revenue.”
Kelly went outside, only to come in again thirty seconds later and exchange sets of keys. “You’re parked behind Gert, Lucy. I’ll just take your car to work and the pies can go in hers.”
“Musical vehicles this morning.” Gert smiled at her niece. “Reminds me of when you kids were in high school and needed to go in three different directions—we’d play car tag all day long.”
“Anything to keep Boone from driving,” Kelly said, and went out the door again, laughter following her.
Lucy went to the refrigerator and stood staring at its contents, trying to remember what she needed. “Gert, do you—”
A panicked shout from outside interrupted her. She pushed the refrigerator shut and ran out through the sunroom, Gert close on her heels.
Kelly was in the yard, her cell phone at her ear. Jack, white-faced, had abandoned the lawnmower and was dragging the garden hose from beside the garage, aiming its spray toward the van that was rapidly losing much of the blue paint left on it to the flames that were bursting from under its hood.
Lucy stood still, watching in silent horror as yet another fire laid insidious siege to her life. “Don’t get too close,” she shouted to Jack. She ran across the drive to pull Kelly away from the burning vehicle. “Stay back. Did you call 911?”
It was a revisit of the fire in Mr. Morgan’s garage. The same fire trucks and ambulance filled the street in front of the house. The same volunteer firefighters unfurled the big hose. Tom Simcox stepped out of his cruiser and held up a beefy arm and traffic stopped as if by magic.
Sims, his face as white as Jack’s had been, arrived in Kelly’s Volvo, running over a flowerbed and striding across the yard with scarcely a limp to take Gert in his arms.
In the end, the only lasting damage was to Lucy’s van, which was totaled, and the flowerbed.
When the last of the emergency vehicles and the backed-up traffic had gone, Tom came to where Lucy stood. “The fire marshal will release it after he investigates. You’ll want to call your insurance agent too.”
Tom was burly enough to be scary if you had a guilty conscience, but non-judgmental and soft-spoken right along with it. If Lucy had been drawing a prototype of everything she’d want in a law enforcement officer, he would have fit nicely onto the page. His wife was Lucy’s doctor and one of the tearoom’s best customers. One notable Tuesday—traditionally a slow day for Tea on Twilight—all the tables had been full at once and the sheriff had donned an apron and helped Lucy serve. A picture of him graced the bulletin board in the kitchen. When he’d jitterbugged with Lucy on her birthday, everyone had stood around and clapped.
But now, with his attendance at the third fire where Lucy was also present, his smile was conspicuously absent and suspicion had erased the kindness in his eyes.
“We have to stop meeting like this.” His voice was calm.
“That would be perfectly all right with me.” She tried to smile, but her cheeks trembled with the effort so she gave it up.
“Kelly was getting ready to drive the car, right?”
“Yes.” Kelly stood between Gert and Sims. The accusation on the attorney’s face made Lucy want to cringe, but she didn’t. “I don’t know if she’d started the car yet.”
“Okay.” He gave her shoulder an awkward pat and went over to the others. “Kell, you okay?”
Lucy didn’t hear her response, though she knew what it was. She’d already checked, had already shouted, “Are you all right? Are you all right?” in Kelly’s shocked face, grabbing her hands and shaking them for emphasis.
“Yes,” Kelly had said, and it was as though ice ran through the words. “Did you think I wouldn’t be? Or hope it, maybe?”
Lucy didn’t answer the accusation, just dropped her hands and ran to Jack. She’d rubbed at the soot on his face. “You’re not burned?”
“I’m fine.” He’d pulled away from her, not meeting her eyes, going to coil the garden hose before someone tripped over it.
She felt accused again. Although the temperature was above seventy, she was freezing. And she was alone. As alone as she’d been since the day Johnny died. She hadn’t realized she was running away when she came to Taft, but maybe she was. Not from Richmond, not even from loss, but from fire.
She hadn’t run far enough.
She went into the house to take the pies from the oven and make sure it was turned off. That would be the icing on the whole nasty cake, if fire followed her right into Tea on Twilight.
Moving on automatic pilot, she boxed pies and wrote up an invoice for Gert to mail to the sorority treasurer. She took the stockpots off the deep shelf in the pantry and put them on the stove. Friday had become soup day in the tearoom. Today’s choices were chili and vegetable. They’d also have a smaller pot of the vegan potato soup Jessie St. John had taught her to make. She needed to assemble meat and cheese and relish trays for the wedding shower that afternoon. Lucy would just concentrate on food, preparing it, cooking it, arranging it neatly on antique platters.
For now. It was the only thing she knew to do, the only way to stop herself from running screaming toward—toward what? She had no idea.
Gert came in and went to work beside her, browning the ground round and just a “smidge” of sausage for the chili while Lucy sautéed the peppers, garlic and onions.
After a few minutes, Gert broke the silence. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, Lucy, but I’m pretty sure it’s wrong.”
“I’m thinking maybe I should leave.” The words felt like fishhooks coming through her throat.
Gert shook her head, clearing her throat. “That’s just foolish.”
But Gert hadn’t seen Tom Simcox’s face, hadn’t seen the progress Lucy and Kelly had made toward sharing the planet in peace drain away in a fiery moment. Hadn’t seen the way Jack avoided Lucy’s eyes as though he hated her. Gert wasn’t considering that just maybe her business partner was a pyromaniac in some deep, dark identity no one knew existed. Gert wasn’t wondering what was going to burn next and if Lucy was going to be the one to start the fire.
No, Gert wasn’t wondering any of that.
But Lucy was.
*
Boone loved cartoonists’ conferences. He liked interacting with others who shared his interests and his talents. He even liked being a featured speaker. It used to scare the bejesus out of him—it was nothing in those early days to drain four glasses of water during a twenty-minute speech. He always prayed there was a restroom somewhere close to the lectern because he would be in dire need of it as soon as he said, “Hey, thanks for listening,” and unhooked his microphone. Nowadays, though, he was comfortable with what he had to share and with the audience. The Q and A portion of his presentation always lasted longer than the talk itself, and that was fine with him.
His favorite part was the schmoozing time spent in the hotel bar. He’d spent the evening there last night, catching up with colleagues he saw only a few times a year, and he’d planned to go back after dinner, but the truth was that he was ready to go home. He wished he’d brought Lucy to the conference with him, but she’d pushed him out the door.
“I’ve got a living to make,” she said. “My vacation’s over.”
“
Aw, come on.” He swept her into a hug and kissed her for a long time before letting her go and meeting her gaze. “I’ll miss you, Lucy John.”
He’d been flirting, teasing, because he was actually looking forward to a few days of single guy time. He and Lucy were nearly always together these days and even though he liked it, he liked being single too. Sort of. Although he thought he was ready to love somebody again—better be, since he already did—he didn’t think he wanted the same kind of closeness he’d had with Maggie. They had, he could admit in retrospect, damn near smothered each other from time to time.
So he was surprised to find himself leaving the conference hotel almost immediately after his presentation. He’d be back on Twilight Park Avenue in time for supper. He might even call and see if Lucy and Gert wanted him to pick up pizza on his way.
Then again, he might not. He whipped into the right lane of the interstate and set the cruise control for five miles an hour over the speed limit. He rarely did that, because no one knew any better than he did what a lousy driver he was, but a sense of urgency was humming along under his skin that he couldn’t explain. He just knew he wanted to be home. He thought maybe Lucy needed him.
*
Arson.
Lucy folded freshly laundered tablecloths slowly, matching corners so the creases would be in the center of the tables when she set them. She loved the autumn colors of the table covers. Gert had been aghast when Lucy suggested seasonal cloths instead of white, but she’d come around the day Lucy walked in with thirty yards of fabric she’d found at a garage sale. The two women had unearthed Gert’s sewing machine and borrowed Kelly’s and spent every evening for a week cutting and hemming tablecloths and coordinating toppers for the tearoom’s fifteen tables.
They’d bought the tables off an internet auction site and driven to Lexington, Kentucky in a rental truck to pick them up. The creamy old dishes and thick, faceted drinking glasses had been in the kitchen of the Knights of Pythias lodge hall, along with most of the mismatched wooden chairs. The Knights no longer met and Sims had bought the building to do something with—he hadn’t decided exactly what.