To Have and to Hold: A Returning Home Novel

by Serena Bell

  “But you’re leaving.”

  Clara’s face looked very small and very innocent. Twelve struck Trina as very young to be going through such a big change. It was true that Clara had started developing a year or so ago, but—it wasn’t fair, girls getting their periods seemingly younger and younger.

  “Your father—”

  But even as the words started to come out of her mouth, she recalled the sense she’d had as a kid that only a mother—or at least someone’s mother—could do this particular brand of work.

  So many times over the last year, she’d filled in where Clara’s mother couldn’t. She’d attended softball games and theater performances, tucked her in at bedtime, listened to stories from the day at school. But this—

  It made Trina want to cry, actually. Because she remembered her own vulnerability, how tempting it had been to just not tell her mother at all. To bum feminine products off other girls and hide the evidence of her sudden progress toward adulthood.

  But Clara hadn’t. She’d confided.

  “I could—I could wait another few days to leave.” That would give Trina time to talk to Clara a little bit about what she was going through, make sure she knew what she was doing.

  “Could you? Would you?”

  She’d already put Stefan off the few weeks when she’d ignored his message, and these few more days. She’d have to call him. Make sure the job would wait. Hope his patience would hold out.

  But she didn’t think she could walk away from Clara. Not now. And if she were being totally honest with herself, she wasn’t quite ready to walk away from Hunter yet, either.

  She nodded. “That’ll give you time to tell your dad and we’ll get him up to speed—”

  Clara was shaking her head violently.

  “Sweetie—it’s not like he doesn’t know periods exist.”

  It would be hard for Clara, entering adolescence without a mother. Trina had always known that. But in the face of this particularly strong evidence…

  She had been too buried in her grief over losing Hunter—and losing, in the process, the only other person who knew anything about the intensity of what had passed between them—to reckon with this other loss. She’d just—

  She’d failed to fully realize what it would mean to Clara for her to leave.

  “We’ll figure this out, hon’,” she said. Because that was the best she could do. She didn’t know what the next step was, how you helped a twelve-year-old girl and her father navigate adolescence together. But—they’d figure it out.

  She held out her arms, and Clara slid into them without hesitation, resting her fluffy red head against Trina’s shoulder. And Trina felt as if her heart would break with the pleasure of that hug, the trust—enough for the two of them.

  Chapter 11

  “I had no idea,” Trina said. “I just thought—I guess—that you nailed a bunch of boards to the tree. I mean—” She gestured at the other tree, where the girls’ house perched. “I could see that it was a little more complicated than that, but I didn’t realize the planning and preparation that went into it.”

  For the last four days, they’d done almost nothing but work on the tree house. The part that amazed Trina was that they had only just started building the actual structure a few hours ago.

  When she’d told Hunter that Clara had gotten her period, she hadn’t even had to suggest that she stay longer. He’d rubbed his hands over his face, then emerged.

  “This probably makes me sound like a wimp. Or like a crappy dad—”

  She was already shaking her head.

  “Thing is, I’m not thinking of myself. I’m not afraid of buying the stuff at the grocery store or of talking to Clara about it. But for her sake—”

  “I know,” Trina said, because she did. “I don’t think you’re a wimp. Or a crappy dad. I think you’re a good dad for thinking about her.”

  “I know it’ll be just Clara and me at some point, dealing with this. And that’ll be fine. Just not—not yet. I know you’re supposed to fly tomorrow morning. And I wouldn’t want you to do anything to jeopardize the job, but do you think—is there any chance Stefan would give you a little more time?”

  She tried to pretend to herself that her heart hadn’t soared at the notion of his asking her to stay. Even if his reasons had nothing to do with his feelings for her.

  Stefan had said that he could give her a week more. He was nice about it. But firm. A week was all. Because there were people other than him involved, and everyone was tired of getting along without help. The producers had been insistent. If she could put her butt in the chair by a week from Monday, the job was hers. If not, onward and upward.

  So—on Hunter’s dime—she’d paid the penalty and moved the tickets to a week later—next Saturday—and she’d laid her open suitcase on the bench in the guest room, and she’d told Phoebe they were delaying the trip. Phoebe had been disappointed for about three seconds before she’d been elated. “So we get to stay?!”

  “For a week,” Trina said firmly. “We’re still going; we’re just going to stay a little longer to help Clara and Hunter settle in.”

  She’d been just as firm with herself as she was with Phoebe. She was telling herself not to get her hopes up and imagine that a week’s delay might stretch longer…

  The tree house had been Nate’s idea, but Hunter had snatched at it like a drowning man. Which she supposed he was. She knew, from observing him, how deeply unsettling he found the gaps in his memory. There was a certain look he got on his face when he realized he’d stumbled into a hole—almost panic. But when it came to the tree house, it existed entirely in the present and future. He felt wholly certain of himself, and there was a kind of peace and absorption about him when he worked on it that Trina loved to see.

  First, they’d spent quite awhile scouting locations. She’d followed him around the backyard forest while he’d pointed out possible locations and explained the pros and cons. There were only certain trees strong enough to deal with the additional weight of a tree house, which—with the plans Hunter had bought online—would clock in at a couple of tons. Oaks, big-leaf maples, cedars, and Douglas firs could bear the weight, but hemlocks, poplars, and cottonwoods might give way, especially in wind.

  He wanted, ideally, to suspend the house between two or more trees to help bear the structure’s weight, and he didn’t want to have to wrap it around any of the trees because it could inhibit their growth down the line. Plus, if the roof were interrupted by the tree’s trunk, it would make it hard to create a waterproof seal.

  After they chose a spot—well, really, after he chose it, while she took pleasure in watching him tromp around and pat trees and look skyward—he started setting up for construction.

  He’d rented scaffolding and rigged up a complicated system for climbing the tree. A climbing harness like you’d use to scale a rock face, plus clips anchored at intervals with webbed nylon so he could “clip in” at various locations instead of always dangling. “Safer that way,” he said.

  “It does seem dangerous.”

  Although she had to confess, she enjoyed watching him climb. The stretch and bunch of muscle in his arms, thighs, and calves, the way the harness outlined his butt and framed—

  He was not hers to lust over. No matter how much it had seemed so the other night. He was not hers, and she was leaving. Saturday.

  “I took a climbing class, believe it or not. Before I built the first one. Knot tying, self-belaying—and focused on trees and tree houses rather than rock climbing, because it’s different. I mean, there’s some danger, obviously, but I’m not just some Joe Schmoe weekend warrior.”

  And then there were the supplies. Pricey bolts aptly named “tree house attachment bolts,” or TABs, that could hold several tons of weight at a distance from the tree’s trunk. Brackets that could sway or rotate or otherwise move with the tree’s natural sway. Thick cables that could hold weight at even more of a distance. Oak and fir beams and planks for t
he platform on which the house would rest.

  “You want as little contact between house and tree as possible,” he explained. “Everywhere there’s contact with the tree, there’s friction, which means a possible wound. That’s also why I need to sink the TABs so far apart. Because each TAB creates a wound, and I want the wounds to heal separately. If they’re too close together, the tree might treat two adjacent wounds as one big one, and that’s a big area that’s subject to rot.”

  There was no sign, at this moment, of the uncertainty, of the headaches, of the small but real outbursts of confusion and anger. Just Hunter, competent, in control, and very, very hot.

  She sighed and tried another reset on her own desire. “How did you learn all this stuff?”

  “I read a lot,” he said.

  They were in his workshop, a shed she’d noticed a hundred times during his absence but never once entered. It was a ten-by-ten with a big workbench and several serious-looking saws and other woodworking machines. By now, there were supplies piled everywhere.

  “I don’t like to do stuff half-assed. I like to know exactly what I’m doing.”

  “Mmm,” she agreed, without thinking.

  He cast her a surprised look that contained, suddenly, something hot and dark. Her breath caught.

  Then he looked away, and she wasn’t sure it had really happened.

  She’d wanted to help. So after a day or so, once Hunter had begun to talk about his plans and what he might need, she and the girls began scavenging supplies. They pored over Freecycle and other giveaway sites, and went on long trips to pick up materials. Copper roofing. Reclaimed stained-glass windows from an old church. Six-over-six windowpanes from a farmhouse scheduled for demolition. Tongue-and-groove cedar flooring. The girls loved scavenging. They learned to ask questions on the phone about the materials and whether it would be okay for them to “come check it out” before they agreed to take it. They learned to assess materials for soundness and appropriateness.

  Clara would not, however, learn to go into Hunter’s toolshed.

  “I hate it in there. There are snakes and spiders. Big, hairy spiders.”

  She’d had a run-in with a spider in there that had left her terrified. She’d been watching her father work and one had crawled up her foot and—before anyone could stop it—run into the leg of her pants. It had taken hours for Hunter and Dee to calm her down and convince her that the spider was not still at large inside her clothes.

  “I’ve refused to go in ever since.”

  Trina and Phoebe tried cajoling, but to no avail. So Trina and Phoebe carried the supplies into the shed, inventoried and organized, and fetched things as needed.

  Trina and the girls also elaborated the interior and exterior design, inspired by what they were able to scavenge and by fantasies they spun on drives to scavenging locations and antiques stores.

  “What if there were a spiral staircase up a nearby tree and then a suspension bridge?” Clara suggested.

  “That sounds complicated,” Trina said.

  “I bet Daddy could figure out how to do it.”

  “I bet he could.” Trina smiled, a little sadly. It was lovely that Clara’s old hero worship of her father had resurfaced. But it meant that it was almost time for Trina to go. The night before, Hunter had even dared a conversation with Clara about the taboo topic, and Clara had nervously, grudgingly, answered his questions.

  As Hunter began to drill for the TABs and anchor the first beams of the house’s platform, Trina, Clara, and Phoebe hatched the notion that there should be a sleeping loft. A crow’s nest. An outdoor, solar-heated shower. A padded window seat with extra storage that would fold out into a bed in case additional guests came to stay.

  Hunter never said no. He took the girls’ suggestions seriously, and hers even more so.

  “Sky’s the limit,” he said. “Literally.”

  And at night, when the girls were in bed, they sat on the couch and he told her his ideas for how he would make each item on the wish list happen, and then he sat quietly and listened while she told him what she pictured for the interior. Her focus had shifted from features to how she wanted it to feel.

  “Cozy. Safe. Warm. But also not rustic. Elegant, but all those other things, too. I’m picturing autumn colors, but threads of gold. Low light, but from really beautiful fixtures. I mean, obviously, you don’t have to do it this way. They’re just suggestions.” She pushed down the wave of sadness that rose at the thought that she’d probably never see the finished product.

  “Believe me, I’m happy to hear your thoughts. Interior design isn’t my strong suit. And you’ve got an amazing talent.”

  “It’s what I do,” she said. “Set design is all about helping to tell a story, and telling a story is all about making people feel certain things at certain times. So you have an emotion in mind, and you evoke it with things. And being able to imagine the things and then find or make them—that’s part of the skill.”

  “You really love it, huh?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You light up when you talk about it. You’re—”

  And then he hesitated. Touched his fingertips to his head, the way he did when it bothered him. “I should get to bed,” he said.

  She watched him go, and then she picked up one of the couch throw pillows and quietly cried into it.

  Chapter 12

  She was cleaning up the girls’ breakfast dishes Wednesday morning when he stepped into the kitchen.

  He was wearing men’s cotton pajama pants and a gray T-shirt, and her pulse leapt at her throat. Not just because the fabric of both articles was well worn and clung everywhere his body bulged with muscle or otherwise. Although it was a thing of beauty, the soft way that T-shirt knit hugged his pecs and biceps. She wanted to stroke him through the shirt so she could feel both the give of the knit and the immovable strength underneath. And that was leaving aside entirely how very much she wanted to lay hands on those pj pants and what he was packing underneath.

  No, her heart was pounding because this was the first time he’d come into the kitchen in the morning without showering and getting dressed first.

  It was like before.

  He was getting comfortable with her. He wasn’t putting so much distance between them.

  But it didn’t matter, did it? Because she was leaving Saturday.

  “Granola?” she asked, to get her head on straight, pouring him a bowl.

  As she was about to add milk, he shook his head.

  “You like it,” she said. “The first time I tried to serve it to you, you called it rabbit food, but then I said that you were setting a bad example for the girls, not even trying it, so you did, and you couldn’t resist. It’s my own recipe: mostly oats, maple syrup, and a little bit of coconut.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Well, then, how can I say no? Bring it on. But wait a sec, and I’ll make some scrambled eggs, too.” Then a shadow crossed his face and he tilted his head quizzically.

  “I love your scrambled eggs,” she reassured him.

  He looked like he wanted to ask her something else.

  She shrugged, not because she was actually feeling nonchalant, but because she wished she were. “I stayed over a couple times.”

  Was it her imagination or did his gaze darken at that?

  He ducked before she could say for sure. He came up, forehead wrinkled, hands empty. “Did you move the skillet?”

  “In the cabinet next to the stove.”

  She didn’t say, You put it there. Right before you left. You said it made way more sense for it to be next to the stove.

  He didn’t need to be reminded constantly that pieces were missing.

  He crossed to the fridge and pulled out the eggs. Broke them into a bowl, added some milk.

  He rustled in one of the cabinets and she saw his shoulders rise in tension and fall in defeat.

  “Salt and pepper’s on the other side,” she said quietly.

  He shot her a lo
ok of gratitude. She wasn’t sure if it was purely for the information or for something in the way she’d delivered it.

  She’d stayed over twice when the girls were at a sleepover party. And once or twice when they were in the house, because the four of them had been out late or up late here playing board games. And they’d always made sure she woke up in the guest room and he woke up in his room. Which had not always been easy. Once Hunter had snuck upstairs at six a.m. and almost bumped into Clara going to the bathroom.

  By that point, she hadn’t cared if the girls caught on. She might even have preferred it, because it would have put an end to the sneaking around. But she wouldn’t have said that. Maybe she’d sensed some lingering reticence in him.

  She wondered: If he hadn’t lost his memory, would he have come back 100 percent gung ho? Or had there always been a little part of him not completely sure of her, of them?

  The thought chilled her.

  “How would you feel about the four of us going to Lakeshore Park today?”

  She must have startled or made a small noise, because he said, “What?”

  “You asked me that. Before. We did that. The four of us. That was—it was the first time the four of us all did something together. You texted just like that. ‘How would you feel about the four of us going to Lakeshore Park today?’ ”

  “Huh,” he said. He cut a pat of butter and let it skate around the bottom of the skillet on the stove.

  “I just figured you were feeling nervous about Clara staying with me. At that point, we didn’t know each other very well. I mean, you knew Clara spent about half her life at my house, and that Dee and Linda both trusted me enough to have left Clara with me for a couple of days at a time. But I figured you were doubting yourself.”

  “I guess I might have been.”

  He hadn’t been, though. He’d told her after the fact that the outing was his first attempt to spend time with her, even though he wasn’t admitting it to himself yet. She didn’t want to tell him that, though. It would be too leading. She didn’t want him to think she was trying for a do-over.