She shut the door and cranked the car. After putting it in Reverse, she placed her hand on the back of the passenger seat and backed out of the driveway. As she pulled out onto the highway and accelerated, she tried not to look in her rearview.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE HOUSE ON Fairgrove Avenue had been run-down a good bit by the time Constantine and Vera decided to roll up their proverbal sleeves and scoop it off the auction block for a second chance.
It was Byron, however, who volunteered for the task of literally rolling up the sleeves of his hardy plaid button-up shirt and single-mindedly attacking the overgrown yard with a Weed Eater. When that didn’t work, he searched his father’s toolbox full of odds and ends and found a decently edged seven-and-a-quarter-inch circular saw blade.
After modifying the Weed Eater with the new blade and applying a pair of clear safety glasses, he was able to get the weeds down to a manageable height. He put Ari’s old push mower through hell, chopping the growth down to a ragged carpet.
Despite March’s last cold snap, he’d worked up a fine sweat beneath the plaid. Still, he needed to keep going. He scanned the interior, noticed his mother’s penciled instructions on the walls of the house for what needed to go. After rooting around the shed for a while, he found a promising item among the rusted inventory that the negligent previous owners had left behind.
When Constantine arrived at the house close to sundown, he found his son amid a massacre of Sheetrock, swinging a sledgehammer with all his might at a third wall. The sound of Papa Roach’s “Last Resort” pounded against what was left of the downstairs floor. Constantine shouted Byron’s name three times before crossing the space to turn down the portable speaker.
Byron stopped in midswing, frowning when he saw the man watching him, hands on hips, eyebrows quirked in a quizzical manner. It was only then that Byron realized how hard he was breathing, that his throat was dry and that the muscles in his arms were damn near shaking from the unbroken exertion of the last hour. He pushed the safety glasses to the top of his head and swiped a hand over his slick face, cursing inwardly. “Pop.”
Constantine pressed his lips together as he took in the scene. “So,” he said. “Whatcha been doin’?”
Byron glanced around. It was the first time he’d stopped to look since he started. He shrugged at the destruction, still trying to get a grip on himself. “Uh, you know,” he uttered. “Stuff.”
Constantine nodded as his gaze roved back to Byron’s face. “You wanna sit down?”
“Sure,” Byron answered without argument as his father kicked an overturned painter’s bucket across the floor. He crumbled to it, passing the sleeve of his shirt across his brow. Lifting his chin in thanks, Byron took the flask his father handed him and imbibed a generous nip.
Avoiding Constantine’s steady gaze as the man positioned his ridiculously long frame on a matching bucket, he took his time screwing the cap back on the flask.
Constantine took the flask back and had a drink himself. As he lowered it, he said thoughtfully, “By the way...that wall you’re doing a number on there...that one stays.”
Byron stared at him, blank. When humor didn’t cross Constantine’s expression, he realized his father was serious.
Ah, hell.
Passing a hand from the top of his head to his brow, he swept grains of plaster from his hair and felt the fine coating of dust he’d have a tough time shampooing out later. There was definitely a tremor in his muscles and it wasn’t going away. Feeling the weakness behind it, he steeled himself.
Constantine licked his lips after taking another drink of ouzo. His eyes were lowered now, too. “Son...”
The word and the sentiment behind it brought something up Byron’s neck—heat riding on the coattails of embarrassment and desperation he hadn’t quite worked out. Not even with frickin’ saw blades and sledgehammers. He dropped his head and let it hang low, closing his eyes and wishing the ouzo had killed the sick taste in his mouth.
Constantine shifted on the bucket and sniffed. “The last time I caught you listening to Papa Roach, it was 2001. Vivi was in recovery from the accident. You and Dani had had a fight of some sort. I don’t recall what for—”
“I do,” Byron heard himself saying. He didn’t lift his head as he explained. “I’d made her father mad.”
“Ah. Soft-tempered Javier.” Constantine chuckled, knowing. “However did you manage that?”
“I opened my mouth.”
Constantine laughed a little harder before settling back into solemn reminiscence. “I think it might even have been a day or two after you found out—”
“About ’Cilla and Grim. Yeah.” Byron nodded. “Yeah, it was.”
“You remember what you were doing at that point?” Constantine asked.
Byron hitched up the legs of his jeans and placed his elbows on his knees. He tapped the heel of one foot on the floor, pursed his lips. “Throwing a few darts?”
“You don’t throw darts with a crossbow.”
The ghost of a smile tapped the corner of Byron’s mouth. “Maybe not in your day, grandpa.”
“You had a black eye,” Constantine went on. “A busted nose. You never did get around to telling me where those came from.”
“Grim,” Byron blurted for the record’s sake. He spread his fingers, studied the lines. “He didn’t take too kindly to me trying to kick his ass for going behind my back with ’Cilla.”
“That’s only half the story as I heard it,” Constantine said wisely.
The smile grew, upside down and close-lipped as the red tinge in Byron’s neck spread.
Constantine confirmed his findings. “It was you who taught both your sisters how to throw a mean punch. And ’Cilla’s the only person in this family who can get just as riled over something as you.”
Byron’s foot scraped across the floor as he toed away a crinkled, abandoned cigarette butt. “It was you who taught us all that ‘make love not war’ business. Or failed to teach us.”
“She did what she did out of love, same as you.”
“She nearly broke my nose,” Byron pointed out.
“Noses like ours tend not to get out of the way of much.”
It nearly made Byron bust up with laughter—just as his father had intended. But the flash of mirth was quickly dragged back by the lingering touches of desperation and the sick taste on the back of his tongue. His smile faded. “What’s your point, Pop?”
“I’m getting to it,” Constantine promised. “I love you. You know that.”
“It’s that bad, huh?” Byron muttered, bouncing his foot a bit harder.
“I’m responsible, you see,” Constantine went on all the same. “All your life I’ve told you one truth above all others.”
“This isn’t about Roe v Wade again, is it?” Byron quipped, trying to slow down what was coming. Whatever it was, it was going to smash into his splintered resolve with the same Mack truck he’d seen Roxie go head-to-head with last year.
“Strongs are like what?”
“Penguins, pappou.” Byron heaved a sigh. He was starting to think as much of penguins as he did about fast-breeding bunnies. “Penguins.”
“We mate once,” Constantine continued, slowing the words down, “for life. And those mates are equal to us in every way. Always.”
“Yep.” Byron bobbed his head. “That’s the truth as I know it.”
“And because I told you this all your life...because I pounded it into your head and gave you these expectations of yourself, you walked away from something recently. Something wonderful. And it’s all my fault.”
Byron looked up at his father, finally. The man’s eyes were damp and red-tinged and they regarded Byron with guilt and grief.
Constantine Strong was known as a sentimental man. He’d cr
ied at many corners of Byron’s life, and not just at the bad times. He cried religiously at weddings. He’d wept at the birth of each of his children. Graduations turned into monsoons. Tears had sprung forth the first time any of them had said the words I love you. In English. In Greek.
When Byron was younger, he’d turned away from these patriarchal displays of emotion. He’d teased his father for them. Then maturity stepped in—adulthood—and Byron began to understand in a surprisingly subtle way that despite all his bravado and that stiff upper lip he’d worked so hard to convince everyone that he had, he wasn’t unlike Constantine at all. He was, in fact, an apple who’d fallen close to the tree and, over time, had rolled back into the embrace of its roots to rest against the trunk.
Now he stared, blinking fast, into his father’s heart and felt his lower lip start to tremble. Oil! Oil! “Don’t, Pop,” he said.
Constantine would not be undermined. “It is a truth,” he asserted, “proven well in our family, over time. We’ve embraced it, all of us. And...forgive me for saying it...but I think you might be hiding behind it.”
“I’m not hiding behind anything,” Byron bit off then stopped. Reassessed. He sheathed the automatic response and shoved it out of reach. He was exhausted. From the frenzy of manual labor as well as the effort to hold everything in place that wasn’t there anymore.
Roxie. God, he missed Roxie.
Byron shook his head quickly. “Whatever this looks like to you—to anyone—this is not duck and cover. Give me some credit.”
“It came between you,” Constantine noted. “The family truth came between you and the person you love.”
“The person I...” Byron lowered his head once more and grabbed the back of his neck with both hands to keep the tremors from reaching the surface.
“Don’t kid yourself. You’re over the moon for her,” Constantine said. “You know how I know? Because of all those combustive reasons why you do love her—the untamped smile, the warmth that I’m sure you feel down in your bones, her gentleness and unbridled compassion—even the fact that she is who she is in spite of who her family would like her to be—they’re the same things that made me fall hard for your mother.”
“Don’t bring you and Ma into this. It’s not fair.”
“But you made her walk away because you’ve been led to believe that your truth lies elsewhere. With someone else. And you’ve never contemplated any other life but that.”
Byron’s voice was muffled when he interjected. “When did you start sounding like Mr. Miyagi? I must’ve missed the invitation to the dojo.”
“All right,” Constantine said, rubbing his hands together in contemplation. “I guess I’ll try putting this in words you can understand.” He narrowed his eyes on Byron’s face, dropped his voice low and rasped, “‘In Okinawa, belt means no need rope to hold up pants.’”
“Oh, Jesus,” Byron said, but Constantine went on with the performance.
He reached out and tapped Byron’s heart. “‘Karate here.’” He pointed to his belt line. “‘Karate never here. Understand?’”
Byron had pressed his lips together. Beyond the emotional exchange, beyond the sick feeling and the fatigue, his father could still lighten the mood like nobody else. “If it’s not there, sensei,” he said, eyeing his father’s belt, “then why are the rest of us always catching you and Ma pawing at each other?”
“‘Wax on, wax off,’” Constantine said with a shrug.
Byron laughed despite himself. It was short. It came forward against his bidding. But he laughed. He pressed a hand over his eyes. “Why did I ask? Why did I even—”
“Understand, Byron-san?”
Lowering the hand, Byron eyed his father in a weary but fond manner. “‘Wouldn’t a flyswatter be easier?’”
“Bonsai!”
“Okay.” Byron took the flask from Constantine’s jacket pocket. “I’m going to go ahead and cut off the ouzo. I’m not sure it’s helping either of us.”
“Yeah,” Constantine agreed as he leaned forward and wound an arm around Byron’s shoulders. “If your mother asks whether we talked, let’s neither of us speak of this.” He patted Byron on the back and touched his brow to the crown of Byron’s head. “You okay, moro mou?”
Byron swallowed. “Maybe.” Then admitted, “This might’ve gotten me closer. Maybe.”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
“By the way,” Byron added. “It’s not your fault that I am the way I am. And, in case I don’t say it enough... I love you, too.”
Constantine sniffed, his hold tightening.
Byron breathed carefully. It nearly hurt to do so. Something heavy and wide had been lodged inside his chest for a couple of days. Now I know I’ve got a heart ’cause it’s breaking. “Can we man it up a little around here again?” he nearly begged.
Constantine nodded at the half-finished demo job. “Let’s finish what you started here. We’ll take a joint skelping from the boss lady over that third wall, though.” Reaching for the portable speaker, he unplugged Byron’s iPhone and replaced it with his own, queuing up a less angry playlist.
Byron stood and palmed the sledgehammer, ready. He stopped abruptly when music poured into the room again. “You couldn’t have come up with something a little more butch?” he said, lifting his arms in question at the sound of REO Speedwagon.
“It’s either REO or Carly Simon,” Constantine explained, picking up a hammer and fitting safety goggles into place. “Your call.”
Byron pursed his lips. “REO’s good,” he decided and went back to the demolition.
* * *
“YOU’RE SURE WE can’t change your mind?”
Roxie smoothed the folds from the contract on the tabletop in front of her, trying to comb through the legal jargon. Pinching the skin between her eyes, she read the first few paragraphs as classic rock clashed from one tavern wall to the next. Olivia’s regulars weren’t a quiet bunch. Picking up the pen, she angled the form so that she could sign.
Vera hadn’t touched the chilled white zinfandel she’d requested. They sat at a table in the corner, away from the bar and pool tables. As Roxie finished looping her signature over the line, Vera watched in solemn meditation.
Roxie placed the pen cap back on, set it on the paperwork and scooted it to Vera’s fingertips. Tilting her glass of water to her lips, she sipped as Vera stacked the papers and placed them in her folder. “You’ll have the check for the remainder of the lease by midweek,” Roxie promised.
“Con and I are willing to waive that.”
“I insist,” Roxie said. “I’ll put it in the mail first thing tomorrow. As for the furniture, Cole and James have offered to lend a hand. They’ll have it out by tomorrow evening.”
Vera sighed. “If you’ll allow me, I’d like to speak plainly for a moment. It’s about what happened at the house the other afternoon.”
“I’m sorry, Vera,” Roxie said instantly. “I’m sorry I made such a mess of things at Evangeline’s welcome-home party.”
“You weren’t the only one who made a mess of things.” Vera picked up her wine. “My son’s made quite a mess of things with you, it seems. Con blames himself. And, in retrospect, I blame myself a little bit, as well.”
“What for?” Roxie asked with a frown.
“When Dani passed away, I didn’t know how to talk to Byron,” Vera mused. “I was there for him in every way I did know how, but there were too many times I let him retreat into the quiet. I told myself to be patient, to let him find his way. That’s always been Byron’s mode of operation, since he was a child. But I didn’t know that by not cracking him open, by not making him address what he was feeling, that he would continue to avoid it so determinedly. It never occurred to me that it might ruin any woman’s chances of reaching him ever again.”
Roxie shook her head. “There’s no reason to blame yourself. What happened between Byron and me...it was foolish of us. We were friends, now we’re not. We both lost something in the mix. Something really special.”
“He lost a great deal by letting you go,” Vera said. “Friendship’s only the start of it. You make him very happy, Roxie—happier than I’ve seen him in years. It did me well to see that. I think he wants to be with you. He’s just been closed off for so long, he isn’t certain how to proceed without hurting either of you more than he already has.”
“It’s safer not to feel. I can understand that, and I’m not so much angry as I am sad.”
“He’s the same,” Vera ventured. “Low. And...maybe I’m overstepping my bounds, even as his mother, but I’ll say this—it’s safer, the road he’s chosen. It won’t make him happier, though. He won’t be truly happy again until he realizes that. I just hope... I hope by that point it’s not too late for him to have all the things he still could’ve if he’d tried now. Part of the problem is he doesn’t believe he can have everything he had before. He doesn’t believe he can commit his whole self to another marriage and he certainly doesn’t believe he has another shot at a family.”
Roxie blinked at the sting behind her eyes, surprised by it. Raising her hand, she pretended to check her eyeliner. When she was sure that her eyes were dry again, she cleared her throat and lowered her hand back to her lap. “I hope he does, too. Even if it’s not me. It doesn’t have to be me. Everyone deserves to be happy. Someone like Byron especially.”
Vera grasped Roxie’s hand. “I’m selfish. I want it to be you.”
Roxie tried to laugh but failed. She held on to her choked emotions for a moment. “You have a beautiful family. You’ve all been so kind and generous. You made me feel like I belonged. It has meant more than you could possibly know.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, come here.” Vera hugged her around the neck in a gesture that was just as touching as Priscilla’s days before. Maybe even more so.
Roxie held on tight. The maternal embrace should’ve sweetened the hurt. It only made her feel the loss of Byron and his family that much more.
Wooing the Wedding Planner Page 24