A Conard County Courtship

by Rachel Lee

  Just an outline. But what did he know about her? That she worked with dinosaur bones in a museum, that her family had lost everything to Bob Higgins and that she didn’t want this house that had fallen into her lap.

  He probably wondered why that was. Not everyone would look at a free house as a problem, even if it did need work.

  She had to admit she wasn’t sure herself why she was reacting so strongly. Yeah, the man had cost her family everything and turned them into wanderers. Yes, her father had drunk himself to death, but that had been his choice, not Bob’s. She’d suffered because of what had happened nearly twenty years ago, but this seemed to go beyond bad memories.

  Maybe it had bored a hole in her soul, somehow.

  With a snap that startled her eyes open, she heard Tim close his computer case. “Done,” he said. “For now, anyway. When the numbers start to look like fish swimming through a tank, it’s usually a good time to stop.”

  She liked his ready sense of humor. She envied that it seemed to come so easily to him. She wasn’t a very humorous person herself. In fact, if asked, she’d probably classify herself as...too reserved, she decided finally. Not sour, but reserved.

  “So, about your house,” he said. “It’s structurally sound. A couple of roof rafters could use replacing because they got wet at some point, but there’s no dampness up there now. You could probably let those skate.”

  She nodded, feeling unready to discuss this, but knowing she couldn’t evade it indefinitely. After all, she’d come back to take care of it, and an inheritance from Bob that she hadn’t turned down was the last of his savings. She figured since he’d dumped his white elephant on her, she needed the money to fix it up and pay the taxes. She just hoped it was enough. Lowly museum assistants didn’t make huge salaries.

  “To make the house interesting to a buyer, there are some basic things we need to do. Caulking. The weatherizing in the windows and doors is cracked, unattended for too long. The attic fan is dead. The floors sag and are weak in a few places.” He stopped. “I don’t want to overwhelm you. The question is, do you want to pull it together just enough to hopefully attract someone by marketing it as a major fixer-upper? That’ll cost you a pretty penny in terms of what you can make off it, and frankly, with the amount of cosmetics it needs, that might not even work. You saw the paint sagging on the wall. I don’t like that.”

  “It’s ugly,” she agreed.

  “It’s more than ugly. It might be lead based.”

  Her heart lurched. “I thought that was illegal!”

  “It is now. But it was only in 1978 that it was banned in housing. Now how many walls do you think got painted over with latex or oil-based paints and never stripped?”

  Her mind was dancing around as if she had hot coals inside it. She didn’t want to hear this. Want to or not, she was stuck with it. “We should knock it down and clear the lot.”

  “Maybe. I’m going to have an inspector check the place out first.” He popped open his computer. “I reckon if there’s lead, knocking it down and clearing out the remains will cost as much as a basic fixup and getting rid of as much lead paint as we might find. And—here’s the important thing—unless you can sell that empty lot, you’ll still owe taxes as if the house was on it.”

  She was flummoxed. “Really? Really?”

  “Best and highest use.”

  That did it. Vanessa put her head in her hands and muttered, “I want my dinosaur bones.”

  “Earl mentioned that you wanted to donate the house, but ask yourself if it would be ethical to give it to a church or preschool before we deal with any health threats.”

  Her head snapped up. “Of course not!”

  He smiled. “Good.”

  Then his question struck her. “You certainly didn’t imagine that I’d pass that lead paint along, especially to children.”

  “In this world,” he said slowly, “you never know. I’ve had people come to me who wanted to cover a multitude of sins with fresh paint or linoleum.”

  “So Bob Higgins wasn’t the only con artist around here.”

  “I wish I could say he was.” He rose and stretched his arms, making her acutely aware of his flat belly. “Let’s go back to your bedroom. No, I’m not sending you to bed, but I want to be sure you know where everything is and feel free to use it.”

  This time, having escaped her self-absorption, she knew instantly that this room had once been the master bedroom. Those forget-me-nots and the colors were his wife’s choices, she had realized earlier, but now they took on meaning that almost made her squirm.

  “Private shower, too,” he remarked, pointing to a closed door.

  She wanted to ask outright but caught herself. No point in prodding this man’s wounds. She ought to understand that herself. “Where do you sleep?”

  “Upstairs, just down the hall from Matthew. He used to have nightmares and be scared there was something under his bed.”

  She suspected that was only part of the reason, but it was good enough. “I hope he’s outgrown that.”

  “Mostly. It still happens occasionally. So, when we can get out into the world, do you want to go over your house with me? I can make a list of the absolute essentials, but I still need your input.”

  She nodded slowly. “I’m still trying to figure out why I hate that house. I know why I didn’t want to come back to this town. My dad spent his last years vilifying this place. But the house? I vaguely remember having fun there as a child.”

  He tilted his head to one side. “Why was your dad so down on the town? They didn’t rip him off.”

  “I think he believed people around here thought he was an absolute fool. He felt they were judging him.”

  He nodded slowly. “Higgins was your dad’s friend, right?”

  “Lifelong.”

  “Well, I reckon I’d get a bit paranoid, too, if my best friend stole everything from me and my family. I’d feel like an idiot for having trusted him, I’d feel wounded beyond words and, yeah, maybe I’d feel like I was in the public stocks, when in truth a lot of people were probably thinking, there but for the grace of God.”

  She sighed. “You might be right. I just know what my dad believed. Anyway, I never wanted to come back here, and Earl probably told you how badly I wanted to get out from under that house.”

  He pursed one side of his mouth, then said, “Well, judging by what Higgins did, you could always just deed it over to someone else. Just quitclaim it to some wealthy guy half a continent away. Won’t he get a shock?”

  She laughed. She couldn’t help it—the idea was so funny. “That wouldn’t be a nice thing to do.”

  “It wasn’t nice that Higgins bombed you this way, either.”

  She looked away suddenly, realizing that he might have just touched on the core of her problem with this whole mess. Not the past at all, but the present. A house she hadn’t wanted, a headache, an expense. Like Bob Higgins was reaching out from the grave for one last swipe. “You think he was bombing me?” Her voice had tightened, and tension arose within her again. Mainly because Tim seemed to be confirming her own suspicions, suspicions she’d been trying to ignore.

  “Truthfully? I don’t know.” He led her down the short hall back to the kitchen. There he asked her if she wanted some cocoa or warm milk. She opted for the cocoa. “Thank you.”

  “I don’t know about you,” he remarked, “but when it’s howling and cold like that outside, I feel an urge to get cozy inside. It’s not like that cold out there is reaching me. Some atavistic response, I guess.”

  Interesting choice of words from a guy who made his living as a building contractor. For the first time, it crossed her mind that she might have become a bit of a snob over the years. An intellectual snob. Why wouldn’t the man be smart and have a great command of the language? Because he
worked with his hands? That didn’t mean he didn’t have a brain.

  Man, this whole trip was shaking her up in so many ways. Facing a childhood she couldn’t remember, facing once again the years of her dad’s deterioration, facing an anger that had been planted in her by chaos and one man’s bitterness.

  She wasn’t ready for any of this, yet here it was. And she sure as hell didn’t want to deal with it right now. “If you owned the house,” she said slowly, “what would you want to do with it?”

  “Now that’s an interesting question.” He made the cocoa from packets and only needed to add boiling water. Soon he was sitting at the kitchen table with her again.

  She waited, watching him slowly stir his mug with a spoon as he thought about it. He wasn’t going to treat the question lightly.

  “The house-flipping business isn’t exactly booming around here,” he remarked. “Real estate sales are sluggish. Not dead, but not fast, either.”

  Oh, great, she thought. She’d probably be stuck with that damn house forever.

  “Anyway, if I were going to own two houses here, I’d fix up the Higgins place, stem to stern, and sell this house.”

  His answer truly surprised her. “But why? This is a beautiful house!”

  “Also a size that would be easier to sell,” he said with a shrug. “Already beautifully decorated. By my wife.”

  She bit her lip, feeling uncomfortable. She usually kept a safe distance from others, riding the surface of emotions without getting caught in the deep waves. But Tim’s simple statement pierced her armor a bit, and she felt sorrow for him. “That must be...difficult for you.”

  “Not exactly the word I’d use. It does remind me of her and that I miss her. It may be time for me to move on. As for Matthew, he doesn’t remember her at all. She’s photos in an album. Moving around the corner would probably be an exciting adventure for him.”

  “But why take on a house you couldn’t sell?” she pressed.

  “Because I wouldn’t want to sell it. Fixing it up bit by bit would probably take most of the rest of my life. A major project.”

  That sounded so darn lonely to her. Here he was living in a beautiful house he probably felt he couldn’t change, a kind of memorial. Changing it would be like erasing his late wife. A new house...a clean slate. And he’d be busy with it.

  For the first time, she considered that the Higgins house wasn’t just a pain for her. Something she had never wanted, something she didn’t want to deal with. Maybe she needed an attitude adjustment. Tim obviously thought the house had potential and promise. Maybe she should try a different perspective, if she could manage it. However this fell out, she wasn’t going to be here long, and she should stop resenting it and just deal with it. Maybe even enjoy it a bit. Somehow.

  “What happened to your wife?” she asked, hoping she wasn’t being intrusive. Somewhere in the fog of the upheaval that had been dominating her mind, she had the feeling he had already told her. Had he? If so, forgetting about something so important to him should embarrass her.

  “Pulmonary embolism,” he answered matter-of-factly. Maybe he hadn’t told her before. “Blood clot in the lung. They were never able to pin down the cause, but I guess that doesn’t matter. What matters is that it was fast for her.”

  “That’s so sad.”

  He nodded. “Goes without saying. So, yeah, I’d take that house and make it over, and when I got done it would be a jewel. And I’d enjoy every minute of making it into one.”

  “I could quitclaim it to you,” she remarked.

  He laughed. “I wouldn’t feel right about that. Don’t even consider it. I’m sure we can get you something out of that property. And whatever we get would be rightfully yours, if you ask me.”

  * * *

  The storm continued to rage throughout the night. Tim didn’t sleep well, but he seldom did when the weather turned bad. Claire had called him the night watchman, laughing as she did so, but bad weather made him restless. He wasn’t expecting anything terrible tomorrow, except a lot of shoveling. But he still got restless.

  After Vanessa went to bed, he walked in socks around the house, up the stairs and back down again. He’d warned her he might pace, so she wouldn’t worry if she heard anything, but he tried to keep his step light and silent anyway.

  Moving away from this house? He hadn’t been kidding when he told Vanessa it might be time for him to move on. There were a lot of ways he could do that, though. The first one was simple: redecorate.

  The problem with that was equally simple. Claire’s taste and identity were stamped all over this house. It was odd how easy it was for him to remember each new find of hers and how excited she had been about them. The way the structure of this house had taken on a whole personality because of her. Simply wiping away the beauty she’d created here felt like a betrayal of sorts. As if he were erasing her from his life.

  She could never be erased.

  So moving on might literally require moving. He couldn’t, not with his own two hands, remove her from this house. So, yeah, if he owned the Higgins place, he’d let someone else make the changes here as they wanted and he’d start a whole new project.

  But he didn’t own the Higgins house, and he hoped Vanessa had just been joking about turning it over to him. He didn’t want that, would never want that. He hoped he’d made that clear enough.

  Then his thoughts turned to Vanessa. Quite a pretty young woman, especially those mossy-green eyes of hers. He didn’t think he’d ever seen quite that color before. It reminded him of a creek bank in the summertime shade. Peaceful.

  But he felt little peace in her. She had relaxed when talking about her work, but then he felt invisible walls rising, putting space between her and everything else. It wasn’t just the reserve one might feel with a stranger. It felt to him like something much more, something much deeper.

  So maybe he ought to stop thinking about how pretty she was, or the way her sweater earlier in the day had cuddled her breasts and revealed a surprisingly tiny waist.

  She had the kind of figure a man could dream about, from what he could guess through her clothes, even the loose fleece she had put on after arriving here.

  Another kind of complication he didn’t need in his life. He had a son to think about and was scrupulous in his behavior as a result. If he went out on a date, which was rare, he was always home at an early hour. Setting an example, he hoped. Making Matthew feel secure, he hoped.

  Not that Matthew seemed to have any major insecurities. If he did, he hid them well for a child his age.

  But being a solo parent had made him acutely aware of his responsibilities. He didn’t have a backup crew to step in and pick up any slack or correct any of his mistakes. Matthew wasn’t by any measure a difficult child, and his heart seemed to be in the right place. But Tim was acutely aware that if he made mistakes they might affect the boy for life.

  The school counselor had told him to relax a bit. There was no evidence he was doing anything wrong. But he could never quite believe it. He was flying on a wing and a prayer.

  The wind blew another blast of ice at the windows. As cold as it was, the snow shouldn’t be icy. At least that’s what he thought, but he could be wrong. He could be wrong about so many things.

  Finally pulling out his laptop, he looked up digs for dinosaur fossils in Wyoming. If Matthew was still interested come early summer, they ought to take that trip that Vanessa had suggested. There was one museum, a little on the expensive side, that would take the two of them out to participate in a dig. For his own part, he was more interested in something less commercial.

  He was sure he could find an opportunity, especially with Vanessa’s help. He had no trouble imagining Matthew’s excitement, even if all they did was watch from the sidelines or see some bones emerging from the ground.

  Then h
e remembered Vanessa putting her head in her hands and saying she wanted her bones back. It had been cute, and funny, and so terribly truthful all at once.

  Bones would certainly be more peaceful. But life seldom left anyone alone.

  He closed his computer after checking the weather report, then shut his eyes for a few minutes, just listening. The storm wasn’t easing yet. Time to take another swing by Matthew’s room, make sure he was still sleeping.

  As for himself, he really ought to try to get some shut-eye. Thing was, he knew all he’d do was try. All his life, storms at night had made him restless. He could never explain why.

  * * *

  In her own room, the former master bedroom, Vanessa listened to Tim’s quiet movements through the house and tried to get some sleep herself. After all that had happened today—the long drive from the airport, her viewing of a house that had somehow become part of her nightmares and her evening with Tim and Matthew—she ought to be ready to crash.

  Instead she remained wakeful, listening to a restless man walk the hours of the night. She wondered if it was really that storms made him edgy or if it had other roots. But why should she wonder? If he’d been dealing with it for a long time, he probably understood it better than she ever could with a few guesses.

  Though the bed was comfortable and the room cozy, she couldn’t help wishing she were home in her own bed, facing another day in the bowels of the museum sorting through bones, making sure they were properly identified and preserved. So much that came out of fossil beds had been protected by nature for ages, but once exposed, all the elements of decay could resume their work. Especially since they had found that in many dinosaur bones the marrow still contained living tissue. Which had, amusingly enough, explained the slightly unpleasant smell paleontologists had been associating with those bones for a long time.

  But she was comfortable in that environment, sure in her knowledge, excited by possibilities, and enjoying the scientific conversation and discussion. Definitely in her element.

  Now she had been yanked away, however briefly, to face an environment she didn’t know how to handle as well, leaving her comfort zone so far behind she almost felt like she was in free fall. What was going to happen from all of this? Would she be able to deal with those old demons, many of which traced directly back to her father, some of which were due to being uprooted so many times?