by Terri Kraus
And poor Chase … isn’t he just as damaged? she thought.
“No. It’s true that we’re all broken in some ways. And maybe I’m wrong here. I probably am wrong. But you need to be aware of how a person’s past colors their present. Maybe this is different. Maybe Ethan does need your help. Maybe. He’s had his share of problems. After his wife … he had some business troubles. I don’t know if that’s the case now. Contractors always seem to be living on the edge of disaster. But maybe he’s ready now … for some positive steps in his life. And you never know unless you try.”
Cameron looked at Paige, then reached over and gave a gentle hug to a surprised Paige. “Thanks,” she said softly. “Thanks for everything.”
“So, you’re going to call him?” Paige asked. “I mean … this is purely journalistic interest on my part.”
Cameron laughed. It felt good. Then she stared at Paige and shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know.” She slipped out of the car. “Probably,” she said. “Someone needs to take care of them both. You know … his son, too. Chase.”
“True. So, you’re going to call?” Paige asked.
Cameron shrugged again. “I don’t know. Maybe. Probably. That’s if I can figure out what to say.”
Then she turned and bounded up her steps and into the entrance of her apartment.
Cameron had been nervous before. She knew what a fast, fluttering heartbeat felt like. After all, she had given the valedictorian speech at her high school commencement. She’d almost gotten sick before stepping to the podium. She had interviewed visiting dignitaries and politicians as they’d traveled through Franklin. She’d almost had the opportunity to ask the president of the United States a question during a stop at her college several years ago.
But nothing compared to the near panic she felt as she at last picked up the phone and tapped out Ethan’s number.
“Hello?”
“Uhh … hi, Ethan. This is Cameron. Cameron Dane.”
Silence.
He doesn’t remember me!
“From the newspaper. Of course. How are you? Have you won the Pulitzer yet?”
She grinned wide.
He does remember me!
Then her palms went moist. She had forgotten what she was planning on saying. She forgot at what restaurant she had decided to ask him to join her. She forgot what day she had intended for this get-together. And he had flummoxed her more soundly by asking a question.
Answer him! Answer him!
The conversation had lasted only a handful of minutes. As she hung the phone up, she felt a bead of sweat roll down between her shoulder blades.
Do guys feel this way when they ask a woman out?
He had been charming and kind, and he’d even thanked her for her story on his work at the Carter Mansion. He said he was pleased with her writing. She might have just imagined it, but he had sounded more than a bit nonplussed when she finally blurted out the reason for her call.
“Dinner?”
Her eyes were shut tight. “Yes. That meal after lunch but before the piece of chocolate cake that you eat standing up in front of the open refrigerator.”
He laughed. She felt a huge weight lift from her stomach.
“Dinner, you say?” he repeated.
She nodded, then smacked her head with her palm. He can’t see you! “Yes, I say dinner. Though some people call it supper.” She gritted her teeth.
Please laugh, she pleaded and hoped he could not hear her fast-beating heart.
“Well … sure,” he said, and she thought his words sounded as if he was actually pleased at the prospect.
Please be pleased!
He then repeated the time and place. She imagined it was as much for her benefit as his. She said, in a hurry, that it would be easiest if they met at the restaurant. Cameron knew it wouldn’t really be easier, but felt that picking him up in her car was problematic—she wasn’t sure how, exactly, except that she knew it was. And she couldn’t ask him to pick her up, since she was the one doing the inviting.
“Great,” he had said. “I’ll see you then.”
Afterward, she collapsed on the sofa, staring blankly into space for a long time.
He said yes.
And then she got up and spent the next five hours, until she heard the bell from St. Mark’s toll midnight, obsessing on what she might wear.
“With who?”
Ethan felt the prickliness of Chase’s voice. They had just sat down to a less-than-elegant dinner of macaroni and cheese. Ethan had come home late that night and had rushed to put together a quick meal. And Chase had always loved macaroni and cheese.
“Cameron. That reporter from the newspaper. The one who did the article on your team … and the story about the Carter place.”
“The story was on the moms,” Chase added with a touch of venom. “Not the team. She didn’t talk to me or anyone else on the team.”
Ethan shrugged.
“When did you talk to her?”
After a minute of hesitation, Ethan replied, “Yesterday evening. She called. You weren’t home, remember? You spent the night at Elliot’s.”
“She called you?”
Both were aware that their tone was drifting from polite civility to something harder, something more caustic.
“Well, are you going?”
Ethan closed his eyes for a long moment. He had not been on an official date for years. After his wife’s death, and for several years after, a few well-meaning friends and relatives had arranged dinner parties or barbecues with a single woman in attendance. Chairs had been shuffled discreetly, and people had contrived to bring Ethan into close proximity with a single friend or cousin or someone’s acquaintance. The evenings had always gone pleasantly enough. Ethan was more often than not a personable, polite man. But he’d always felt awkward both during, and especially after, the event.
The relative or friend would sidle up and ask, in a conspiratorial whisper, “So … did you like her? Isn’t she nice?”
Ethan had found himself forced to agree that whoever she was, was indeed nice, that he was sure she was a wonderful person. Smiles all around. He was sure there would be a flurry of phone calls back and forth, his friends and relatives dissecting the details of the evening.
The phone calls would never originate with him.
Then he would feel guilty for never pursuing any of these available options. A week or two would pass and he would be forced to defend his inactivity.
Eventually, his friends and relatives stopped their unofficial sponsorship of any matchmaking events. Ethan had felt a great sense of relief as he realized the invitations tapered off. He still was invited to parties, and there was often a single woman or two, but no longer did anyone expect any relationships to ensue.
Ethan had a son to raise—alone. He didn’t have time for dating. And after his wife died, his construction business struggled. He lost jobs, he was late paying for materials, checks bounced on occasion. Lynne would have never let that happen. Now it was just him. It was a struggle, but Ethan felt he had made it through that dark patch without needing anyone else.
Now … well, maybe now was different.
He looked at his son and tried to read his eyes. It could have been anger; it could have been confusion. And then it could have been that innate roll-of-the-eyes children seem to have.
He had never promised his son that he would never date. He had simply never dated.
“I am. I told her I would go. I am going.”
He said the last few words with more firmness than he intended.
Chase glared at him before lowering his eyes. He dug his fork into his macaroni and cheese. After three forkfuls, he looked up. “I can stay with Elliot that night.”
Ethan couldn’t find the words to respond. What did he t
hink he would do—bring her home with him? After a single date?
Ethan felt a sigh in his heart but would not give it voice.
What these young people grow up thinking, he thought.
“No,” he said. “You don’t have to do that. We’re meeting for dinner. At Wilson’s. At seven. I’ll be home by nine, nine thirty at the latest. You’re good by yourself till then, right?”
He hoped his words had the right bounce to them.
Chase shrugged. “I guess.”
And those were the last words the boy spoke all evening.
Ethan waved to his crew, pushing the air in front of him, then pointing at the cell phone at his ear. He tried to make his face say that he couldn’t hear Mrs. Moretti. After a moment, the saws stopped, then the hammering stopped.
“Yes, I know you said the staircase should be wider, Mrs. Moretti … CeCe … but we had it laid out and seven feet was just too much. That’s too wide for the space. We’ll lose a huge chunk of the room off the hall if it’s that wide.”
The crew stood almost motionless as Ethan argued long distance over the staircase. Ethan had decided seven feet wide was too wide for an upstairs stairway, and instructed them to cut the treads at five feet.
“Once we’ve cut them, she can’t expect us to change them back,” he had told them. “You can’t add inches to a cut board, now, can you?”
But now Mrs. Moretti, on the phone and upset, was doing exactly that.
“But we’ve cut the treads already. You’ll be much happier with the smaller staircase. You have to trust me on that … CeCe. You don’t build this big of a staircase without a bigger staircase as its base. It needs a reference point to connect it to the ground level. You just don’t do it that way.”
Ethan averted his eyes as he listened.
The smell of cut pine board thickened the air. Doug, very silently, put down his circular saw. Joel flipped the safety switch on the nail gun. Both men acted as if they assumed the conversation would go long and CeCe would prove victorious. Joel moved slowly to the pile of lumber still in the middle of the room.
“But that means we’ll have to go back and order more tread board. That’s really expensive.”
Ethan turned away, his back to everyone. “I know you wanted seven feet, but that means a lot of extra expense …”
He could feel the slump in his shoulders grow more protracted and pronounced. “All right. Okay, Mrs. Moretti. I’ll order the extra tread board. My fault. Okay. My fault. Okay. Seven feet. Regardless of whether it’s right for the space or not. Seven feet. Fine. Okay. This weekend. Sure. Fine.”
When Ethan turned back, Joel was maneuvering the three uncut tread boards out from the pile. “I think we can get by with ordering another thirty-six feet. That should be enough.”
And no one spoke directly to Ethan for the rest of the afternoon.
“So you’ve been here before?” Cameron asked as they walked up to the front door of Wilson’s.
He nodded. “I grew up in this town, remember? There aren’t that many restaurants. Eventually, you wind up eating in all of them—at least occasionally. Except the truly bad ones.”
Wilson’s had been housed in a rambling stone building, overlooking a bend in the river, for the last fifty years, he told her as they waited to be seated. Ownership had changed infrequently, and the dark, clubby atmosphere had remained constant. White tablecloths and tall goblets marked it as one of the better establishments in the area.
Paige had grinned when Cameron told her of their destination. “You’ve picked the most romantic spot in Venango County,” she had said with a little cough.
Cameron had been horrified but knew it was too late to change her plans.
After a couple of minutes, they followed the maître d’ to their table.
“I’ve only eaten here once,” Cameron explained to Ethan as she slid into the seat opposite him. “When I was interviewing for my job, we came out here for lunch. I remember the food being very good.”
Ethan smiled at her.
What was that for? she wondered.
“It is good food. I don’t come here often. My son doesn’t exactly require anything gourmet. The way he views food is that if you can’t put ketchup or cheese on it, then you may as well not eat it.”
Cameron laughed nervously. She started talking about her day at the newspaper. She found herself reaching for the one strand of hair she always twirled and twisted at times like this.
His eyes followed her hands and then found her eyes. She stopped talking in midsentence. “Uhh … what was I saying?” she asked, flustered.
“Something about the mayor and zoning,” Ethan replied. “I think so, anyhow.”
Her eyes fluttered. “Uhh … well … then …”
She folded her hands on the table and lowered her eyes. When she looked up, she tried to smile. “I have no idea what I was saying,” she admitted. “I guess I was simply … prattling on. Silence makes me nervous sometimes.”
Ethan looked around the restaurant. It was midweek and perhaps only half-filled with patrons. He leaned forward a few inches. “Can I tell you a secret?”
“Okay.” Surprised and curious, Cameron leaned in to hear it.
“When you called and suggested this place, I was worried about the same thing. What was going to happen when neither of us could think of anything to say? At least at Cumming’s there’s the low rumble of that relic of a dishwasher that would drown out any uncomfortable pauses.”
Cameron smiled. “Is that what that noise was? It sounded sort of like a subway train, and I didn’t think Franklin had a subway. But I didn’t want to ask and sound stupid.”
Ethan laughed. “This isn’t so bad. I was worried about nothing.”
“You were worried? Really?”
Ethan nodded. “I guess. I mean … it has been a long, long time since … you know … I’ve been on a date. Like tonight.”
A look of mild alarm came across Ethan’s face.
“I mean … this is a date, isn’t it?” he quickly added. “It isn’t another interview, right? You’re not going to try and sell me something, are you? Please tell me this is … sort of a date so I don’t evaporate from embarrassment.”
“Yes … it is sort of a date. I … I haven’t much practice at this sort of thing. I mean, asking a man out.”
Ethan tilted his head. “A modern woman like yourself? I would have thought this is standard operating procedure.” Ethan reached for a thick slice of bread from the breadbasket.
She watched as he gently tore a smaller piece from the slice and actually used the butter knife to place a pat of butter in his own bread-and-butter plate. She watched as he laid his knife across the plate—just like the rules of etiquette suggested. It had been a long time since she had dated a man who seemed to know that there is a difference between dining and eating.
She watched his hands. They were powerful and callused. She could tell he had spent extra time cleaning them this evening. She looked at him as he studied the menu. He wore a simple blue cotton shirt—starched, button-down—with sharply creased gray slacks. If she had not known, he could have passed for a stockbroker or a schoolteacher.
She listened to him order his meal—steak, medium, house salad with Thousand Island dressing, au gratin potatoes, and an iced tea. He seemed assured. He treated the waitress with courtesy and humor. He smiled as she laughed.
To Cameron, the evening passed by as quickly as a summer sunset. She had done most of the talking that night, and when the second cup of coffee was finished, he reached for his wallet and began to extract a credit card.
She leaned over and placed her hand on his. She had been right—it felt strong and competent.
“No,” she said firmly. “I called you. I invited you out. This is my treat.”
Cameron shook her head. “Not this time,” she said, as if she knew right then that there would be other times. “My treat.”
“All right,” he said, slipping his wallet back into his pocket. “Next time, I get to pay.”
She nodded.
He said there would be a next time!
“But you can be assured that I’m not going to pick such an elegant place.”
She laughed. “You mean expensive, don’t you?”
He grinned. “Well … that too.”
In the parking lot, she stood by her car door and unlocked it. He had escorted her there. She saw his truck parked on the other side of the lot.
“I had a very nice time,” she said. “Thank you.”
“No, thank you,” he replied. “It was a nice treat. And I enjoyed myself too. There weren’t too many awkward silences, were there?”
She shook her head. “Only a few. But they gave me a chance to think of something witty and charming.”
He stepped back. She saw his eyes dart from her to his car, then to his hands, as if he was now so very uncertain of what to do next.
She thought his indecision was utterly adorable and wished she could tell him so.
She saw his hand move slightly, as if to offer a handshake to end the evening.
That is not an appropriate way to end the evening, she thought.
She leaned toward him as she opened her arms. He obviously saw her and responded in kind. They exchanged a short, chaste hug in the parking lot of Wilson’s.
He dropped his arms first and backed away a step, nearly stumbling into a Buick parked next to her.
“I’ll … I’ll call you,” he said, then turned and walked into the Buick’s side rearview mirror.
She held her laugh. “Thanks. I’d like that.”
And as she sat down and closed her car door, she realized her heart was pounding as if she had just run up a flight of steps.