by Lee McKenzie
She knew he was baiting her, and it was working. “I’m good at lots of things.”
“That is true,” he agreed.
“Being a perfectionist has its advantages.”
“Ye-e-es,” he said. “But…”
“But what?”
“You could use a little more practice.”
Very funny, Brent Borden. Two can play this game, you know. “Practice. You are saying I need practice?”
He gave an expansive shrug. “They say it makes perfect.”
She tried to act indignant but all she could do was laugh. What she really wanted to do was hug him for breaking the ice, but under these circumstances, physical contact wasn’t a smart idea. “If I ever decide I need to be a better kisser, I’ll let you know.”
“I thought we were talking plumbing.” His surprise was so convincing that she almost fell for it. And then his smile let her in on the joke.
“You’re hopeless,” she said.
He leaned close enough to touch her, but he didn’t. She couldn’t have torn her gaze from his if she’d tried. Not that she tried.
“I’ve been told I’m pretty good,” he said. “Anytime you feel like more practice, give me a call.”
That was classic Brent Borden, exactly the way she remembered him. “How long did you plan to ignore the flooding problem at the shelter?”
“Right. We should go,” he said. “I’ll put Max in the house and get my keys.”
While he distracted Max and coaxed him inside with a doggie treat, Leslie went into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. She combed her hair and smoothed her T-shirt. Without makeup, there wasn’t much else she could do.
Would Colleen Borden like her better in hand-me-downs?
Brent didn’t seem to mind.
BRENT PARKED his pickup truck on the street in front of a rundown building. As they got out, he hoisted a toolbox out of the back and joined Leslie. She walked close to him as they approached the entrance and did her best to avoid the glassy-eyed stares of the men lounging on the sidewalk. She couldn’t imagine what they had in their misshapen bundles and over-stuffed shopping carts, but those things were probably all they had in the world.
To her dismay, Brent stopped to talk to several of them. He even knew their names. She stood next to him, feeling awkward and out of place, and hating herself for it. After they’d discussed the weather and his reason for being there, he finally turned to her. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go in and see what needs to be fixed.”
He pushed a buzzer and waited.
A moment later a crackly male voice asked who was there.
“Brent Borden.”
The lock released with a click and he held the door for her. Leslie rarely ventured into this part of town and she had never set foot in a homeless shelter. The lack of any frame of reference didn’t prevent her from deciding that this one was barely fit for human habitation. Inside the front entrance, her toe caught on a loose flap of linoleum. She might have fallen if Brent hadn’t caught her arm.
“Careful,” he said quietly. “I’ll fix that before we leave.”
“Thanks,” she said, grateful that he didn’t let go right away. “Do you know those men?”
He looked down at her. “Some of them. I get called over here pretty regularly—there’s always something that needs fixing—so I shoot the breeze with them for a few minutes. Come to think of it, you know one of them, too.”
What? “I’m sure I’ve never—”
“You saw the old guy in the plaid shirt?”
She nodded, although to be honest she hadn’t looked at any of them closely enough to notice what they were wearing.
“He used to be a janitor at the high school.”
Leslie didn’t tell him that she hadn’t known any of the janitors. “Isn’t that steady work? How could he end up here?”
“I have no idea, but it doesn’t take much. My mother says a lot of people are just one paycheck away from being on the street.”
How could that even be possible? “Sometimes I forget how lucky I am.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Me, too.”
“If they live here, why are they sitting around outside?” she asked. “It’s already getting hot out there.”
“The shelter lets them stay overnight and gives them breakfast.”
“And then they have to leave?”
“This place operates on a shoestring and there’s always a shortage of volunteers. There’s no way they can offer round-the-clock assistance.”
“I see.” And she wished she didn’t.
“I know how you feel,” he said. “Same way I feel every time I come here. Let’s find my mother and see if we can at least fix their immediate problem.”
Might as well get it over with, she thought, somewhat bolstered by his hand on her shoulder. Colleen Borden’s sudden appearance saved them the trouble of having to look for her.
Brent let go of Leslie’s arm and set his toolbox on the floor. The hug he gave his mother was filled with genuine affection. “I don’t think you’ve met Leslie,” he said.
“Yes, we’ve met.” Her voice was crisp and pleasant, but there was no mistaking the undertone of disapproval. “It’s been a while.”
“It’s good to see you again,” Leslie said, wishing she knew why the woman always sounded as though she was about to go on the offensive.
“The clothes my son gave you seem to fit.”
Leslie could handle the barb about wearing hand-me-downs, but Colleen’s emphasis on “my son” was loaded with subtext. If she had to guess, that subtext was “hands off.”
Leslie willed herself to stay calm and not let herself be baited.
Brent stepped between them, as though he, too, sensed the tension. “Mom, why don’t you show me where the flood is.”
“It’s in the basement, in the laundry area.”
“So you said on the phone. Let’s go down and take a look. Leslie will be fine on her own for a few minutes.” As he steered his mother toward the stairs, he shot a questioning look over his shoulder at Leslie.
She shrugged and shook her head in response. So much for needing her help. He’d ended up being a referee instead. Still, she’d rather wait up here than go into the basement with Colleen Borden.
After they disappeared, Leslie became uncomfortably aware of her surroundings. The room inside the front door had a long counter and judging by the signs on the wall behind it, they made people check in, as if this were a hotel. A security camera was mounted in a corner near the ceiling. Was someone watching her?
Her skin started to crawl.
Through a doorway to her right, she could hear a television. The room was filled with an assortment of battered sofas and the television was suspended from the ceiling by metal brackets. The sole occupant, an elderly, white-haired woman, sat on one of the sofas. In spite of the TV being so loud, she was reading.
She looked familiar.
Leslie moved into the room.
The woman glanced at her.
“Hannah?”
The woman’s broad, familiar smile swept Leslie back to her childhood. She set her book aside and slowly heaved herself to her feet. “Leslie Durrance. Is that really you?”
“Yes, it’s me.” Leslie rushed across the room and embraced the only person who had given her childhood a sense of normalcy. “Do you work here?”
“Heavens, no. I’m too old to be any good to anyone anymore, but I guess you could say I live here. I’ve only been here since Friday, and I hope it’s temporary.”
Hannah Greene, the Durrance family housekeeper for more than thirty years, was homeless? Leslie tried to remember the last time she’d seen her. “It’s been too long. I think I came home after my second year at college and you weren’t there. My mother said you had retired.”
The elderly woman sat down again and patted the sofa. “That’s right, but let’s talk about you. What are you doing here, child? I know you’re not homeless.”
The sound of her laughter made Leslie feel as though they were sitting in the Durrance kitchen. It had been Hannah’s kitchen, really, and it had been the only part of Leslie’s house that had felt like a home.
Leslie sat next to her. “I came here with a…a friend. He’s fixing a flooding problem in the basement.” She couldn’t believe how much Hannah had aged. Her shoulders were bent and she had none of the robustness that Leslie remembered so well. And she was in a homeless shelter. How could this be?
“You must be talking about Colleen’s son. The two of you are still friends?”
“Oh, well, he and my brother, Nick, have been friends for years. Brent and I are just—” How could she explain why they were together on a Sunday morning if they didn’t know each other? “Yes, we’re still friends.”
“He’s a fine young man,” Hannah said. “You could do worse.”
Trust me, I have.
“Now tell me about yourself.” Hannah took Leslie’s left hand in hers. “Still not married, I see.”
“No, not yet. I was engaged but we…changed our minds.”
“Who broke whose heart?”
“No broken hearts,” she said. “It just didn’t work out.” And that was the truth. It had only been twenty-four hours since she’d found out Gerald and one of her best friends were having an affair. She was mad as hell about it, but her heart was surprisingly intact.
“And you and Brent, that’s working out?”
“Oh, no, it’s not like that. We’re just friends.”
“Honey, even at my age it’s easy to see he’s not the kind of man a woman wants to be ‘just friends’ with.” Hannah might be white-haired and fragile, but the same spark still brightened those gorgeous blue eyes of hers.
Leslie laughed. “There’s nothing wrong with your vision, is there? You haven’t told me what happened, how you ended up here.”
“It’s not important.” She patted the book—a Bible with a frayed black cover—that lay on the sofa beside her. “I’m in good hands. Now I want to hear more about you. How’s your family?”
“My brother owns a construction company. Actually, Brent works for him. And my mother is the same as ever.”
“I imagined she would be,” Hannah said, somewhat cryptically. “And what about you? I’ll bet you did well in school.”
“I did.” She leaned closer and took Hannah’s hand in both of hers. It felt unbelievably frail. “I went to Harvard Law School, just like you always said I would.”
The old woman smiled broadly. “Another lawyer in the Durrance family. Your father would have been proud.”
“I’ve joined his old law firm so, yes, I think he would have been pleased.”
“And you’re happy?”
Leslie hesitated. Two days ago she’d thought everything—her career, her husband-to-be, her future—was perfect. Since Gerald had been a mistake, she didn’t feel sure about anything. “I have a good life,” she said. She looked around at the peeling paint and tattered furniture. “Sometimes I forget how good.”
“You’ve always been a sensible, hardworking girl. You deserve good things.”
“So do you,” she said to Hannah without hesitation.
Some throat-clearing from the doorway made them both turn around. “I see you’ve met Hannah,” Colleen said.
“I have. We’ve been friends for a very long time.”
“Have you?”
There was a hint of accusation in her voice, and Leslie wondered if Colleen was implying that she should have done more for Hannah. “Did Brent say how long the repairs would take?” she asked, deciding she would not let the woman get to her.
“You just got here and you already want to leave?”
Hannah squeezed her hand.
“Not at all,” Leslie said, as sweetly as she could. “I was hoping to spend more time with Hannah.”
“He said he’ll be ten or fifteen minutes. One of the washing machines has a leaky hose, so it wasn’t too serious after all.” After delivering that information, Colleen about-faced and left the room.
“Thank you,” Leslie called after her.
“What was that about?” Hannah asked.
“I wish I knew. When I came back to Collingwood Station to join the law firm, Colleen and I sat on a local committee for a while. She decided she didn’t like me, but I’ve never understood why.”
“Maybe it didn’t have anything to do with the committee,” Hannah suggested.
“Then I don’t know what it could have been. We’d never met before that.”
“Sometimes people make up their minds about other people before they ever have a chance to meet them.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not my place to say what Colleen Borden might have thought of you before now, but I have a feeling that if you and her son are finally going to be friends, she’ll come around.”
Leslie gazed into Hannah’s familiar eyes and realized how much she’d missed having her, and her common-sense wisdom, in her life. “It’s so good to see you again,” she said. “There must be something I can do—”
Brent walked in, toolbox in hand. “Here you are. I wondered what you were up to.”
“Finished already?” Leslie asked. “Your mother thought it might take longer.”
“It was one of the less challenging plumbing problems I’ve had to deal with lately.”
Very funny. “Do you remember Hannah Greene?”
The look he gave Hannah held no sign of recognition. “No-o-o, but I take it we’ve met?”
His question had Hannah chuckling. “I used to feed milk and cookies to you and Nick. You boys were quite a handful in those days.”
“Of course!” He stepped forward and offered his hand. “You used to work for Leslie’s family. Nice to see you again.”
“Hannah hasn’t told me why she’s here, but it’s wonderful that we’ve had a chance to reconnect.”
“It’s a blessing,” Hannah said.
“Are you ready to leave?” Brent asked.
Leslie nodded at him and gave Hannah a hug. “I feel as though as I shouldn’t leave you here.” But given that she was temporarily homeless herself, albeit by choice, what could she do? “Will it be all right if I come back to see you?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Then I’ll see you soon,” Leslie promised. And she meant it.
“What do the two of you have planned for the rest of the day?” Hannah asked.
Leslie and Brent exchanged a quick glance. “Nothing.” If one or the other had said it, it might have been convincing. Because they said it in unison, they sounded like a pair of guilty teenagers.
Hannah’s smile confirmed it. “You two run along, then, and have fun doing nothing. I’m going to sit here and do a whole lot of nothing myself.”
Leslie followed Brent back to the entrance. She would have been happy to slip out before his mother caught up with them, but no such luck.
“Is everything okay?” Colleen asked.
“Good as new. Well, as good as it was before the hose on one of the washing machines started leaking. I’d say they’re both on their last spin cycle. Have you thought about replacing them?”
His mother gave him a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me look. “I’ll just run out back and grab some cash off the money tree.”
Is she always this sarcastic? Leslie wondered. Or is there something about me that brings out the worst in her?
“We should be going,” Brent said.
“What do you have planned for the rest of the day?” his mother asked.
Leslie caught Brent’s glance. That seemed to be the question of the hour.
“I guess we’re going back to my place,” he said.
She wished there was some way to ask his mother to keep this visit to herself, but she didn’t dare.
Colleen Borden looked from one to the other, then sighed. “Have a nice day, then. Thanks for fixing the washer.”
“No problem. Ready
to go?” he asked Leslie.
She really wanted to get out of that place, but she also wanted to know more about Hannah’s situation. “Yes, but I was wondering about Hannah,” she said, lowering her voice. “Why is she here?”
“Because she has no place to live?” Colleen’s quick reply was posed as a question, but it sounded more like an accusation.
And how is that my fault? Leslie took in a deep breath and told herself to stay calm. “If there’s some way I can help—”
“Have you tried throwing yourself in front of the wrecking ball at that old rooming house over on Railway Avenue?”
“Mom!”
Colleen shrugged off her son’s interjection. “That’s where Hannah was living until she was evicted last week, along with about a dozen other people. She couldn’t find anything else she could afford and with no family to help her out, she ended up here.”
“I see,” Leslie said. She felt physically sick. She didn’t know what else to say to Brent’s mother, but her thoughts were racing. For years, Hannah had been part of her family. Why hadn’t she come to them for help? But the instant she pictured Hannah knocking on her mother’s door, she had her answer. As soon as Leslie had her own life back together, she’d figure out some way to help Hannah.
Brent seemed to decide the conversation had gone on long enough. “I need to nail down that loose linoleum, then we should go.”
LESLIE DIDN’T SAY any more until they were back in his truck. “Your mother really doesn’t like me.”
He pulled out of the parking space, then glanced at her. “Do the two of you already know each other?”
“I was on the redevelopment committee two years ago, when I first moved back to Collingwood Station. She didn’t like me then, and it’s pretty obvious she doesn’t like me now.”
“Are you still on the committee?”
“No, it was a temporary position. I was filling in for the senior partner of my father’s law firm. He was working on a huge case and didn’t have time for committee work.”
“How long were you on the committee?”
“Six months. It was a lot more work than I’d anticipated, and almost every member seemed to have a personal agenda.”
“Including my mother.”