Love in Maine

by Connie Falconeri

CHAPTER 10

  Maybe Madison Post was a gift, Hank thought to himself later that week, back at the bottom of the ocean. The wind farm company had put Hank’s diving team on retainer. There was going to be lots of work for the next few months.

  His shift was about to end, and he was trying to let his thoughts about Maddie sift into something recognizable, like the way the disturbed sand around his heavy feet would resettle when he left the ocean floor. Not a good analogy, he chided himself. The ocean floor tended to capture everything and keep it perfectly preserved for centuries. One of his Army buddies had just e-mailed him about a private salvage group that was looking for experienced divers to work on a shipwreck that they’d dated to the fourth century BC. What happened on the ocean floor stayed on the ocean floor . . . forever.

  He double-checked his valves and gave the signal that he was going to begin his ascent.

  Hank got home a few hours later and saw the light on in his mom’s kitchen. This week had been much better in terms of, as Maddie would say, acting normal. He turned off the engine of his truck and smiled to himself that the idea of normal still felt like acting. And maybe always would. He knew he was running out of time before he was going to have to go see someone at the VA hospital. He’d promised himself six months for reentry, to be a normal civilian. For normal to seem normal. But it didn’t seem to be happening. For the most part, Hank still felt awkward and isolated when he was around other people. He hated crowds, like that night at the movie theater. He hadn’t had any panic attacks or flashbacks. Yet.

  Shutting the car door behind him, he walked around the narrow path that led to his mom’s back door. He tapped twice on the wood frame next to the screen and made a note to repaint the door this weekend. “Can I come in?”

  Maddie and Janet were sitting at the farm table and looked up at him simultaneously.

  “Sure, sweetheart. Come on in. We were just trying these vegan cookies I made.”

  He rolled his eyes.

  “What?” Janet said. “They’re good, right, Maddie?”

  Maddie was eating one just then and mumbled something that sounded like “Yes” around her full mouth.

  Hank pulled a soda out of the fridge and sat at the far end of the six-foot-long table, a few seats away from Maddie.

  She finished swallowing. “I mean, at first they’re kind of . . . like . . . twigs . . . but then they’re really pretty good.”

  Hank smiled at Maddie, then reached for one of the cookies. “Twigs, huh? Sounds delectable.”

  Janet smiled down at the table. “Well, give me a break, you two. How in the world am I supposed to make something without butter?”

  “You’re not!” Hank cried as he tried to get past the initial twiggy bite.

  Maddie smiled at both of them. She didn’t want to intrude; she could tell that Janet wanted to spend some time with her son. But Maddie just loved being in the same room with him when he was easy like this. He’d been much more relaxed this week. He’d wave or call hey when they’d passed each other. He’d come into the house once or twice just to say hi. Normal. Or what she hoped would be normal. She got the feeling that Hank didn’t always do normal. Or maybe never had. He was seriously buttoned up.

  “Okay, you two,” Maddie said, standing up, “I’m going to head up to bed. Have fun without me.”

  Janet looked up, a curious look in her eyes. “Oh, so soon? Okay, then.”

  “Yeah, I’m wiped.” She was. The summer crowds were starting to pile into the diner in the mornings, and her tips were starting to mount up. “But at least I’ve got a little bit of cash to show for my efforts.” She held on to the back of the old kitchen chair. “So I’ll see you guys around.” She smiled from Janet to Hank and tried not to acknowledge the slow roll of what must be desire as he smiled at her and said, “Sleep well.”

  Maddie took the stairs two at time and walked quickly to her room. Her attraction to Hank didn’t seem to be going anywhere except up. Maybe he’d been right to try the amputation approach after they got back from canoeing. She stood in the middle of her room, holding the flat of her palm against her fluttering stomach. She was seriously crazy about the guy. She knew she acted like a silly puppy when she was excited, but she couldn’t help it. She knew it bothered him. She could feel Hank looking at her sometimes when she was particularly happy or exuberant about something. She could feel him judging her while they’d watched Troy the previous weekend. She could feel his judgment like a palpable thing between them that night.

  But if Maddie claimed to want “normal,” she had to try to understand what that meant for Hank. She got ready for bed and picked up her Agatha Christie as she slipped into the cool sheets. She sniffed the smell of sunshine and fresh air that clung to the old floral sheets. Janet had changed her linen that day. Maddie reminded herself to thank her for that.

  They were all puttering around Janet’s for the rest of the weekend. Hank had taken it upon himself to remove all the screen doors, strip and repaint the frames, and replace the screens. Maddie tried not to be too much of a gawker, strolling past Hank in the driveway, where he’d set up a couple of sawhorses to rest the door frames on while he sanded and prepped them.

  She wasn’t the only one, she realized, when she noticed a couple of teenage girls who just so happened to be bicycling past the driveway. Repeatedly.

  “Hey, Hank!” one of them called, then laughed and got all embarrassed.

  “Hi, Emily. Say hi to Karl for me.”

  Maddie was walking by with a box of old clothes from the attic, which she was helping Janet clean out.

  She must have laughed or done something to indicate that she’d seen the exchange. After Maddie put the box in the back of Janet’s car, Hank said, “What are you laughing at? She’s the younger sister of one of my oldest friends.”

  “Just how all the girls in this town have a crush on you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” He scowled and went back to hand-sanding the trim on the door that he couldn’t reach with the electric sander. Maddie felt her heart pick up, and her pulse followed the beat of his movements. She was rapidly moving from crush to full-on lust when it came to Henry Gilbertson. He had on his usual fitted gray T-shirt and worn-in cargo shorts. He looked so damn good. So natural in his skin. His shoulders and arms exuded strength and power. His hands held the sander with familiar confidence. His back and neck flexed and relaxed through the repetitive strokes. His hips and—

  “Cut it out, Maddie. I can’t concentrate.”

  She must have stared too long.

  She shook her head. Guilty.

  “Oh, sorry.” She walked quickly back into the house and returned to the attic for another box of old junk to bring to the VA hospital thrift shop down in Portland.

  About two hours later, Janet and Maddie agreed that they’d done enough for one day. Janet suggested they all three go to dinner in Portland.

  Hank had finished stripping and sanding all three screen doors—his mother’s two and his own—and the first coat of primer was done, set to dry overnight. He was in the midst of moving all of his tools and the sawhorses back into the garage when his mom came out with a tray of three iced teas for them.

  “I don’t know, Mom. Why don’t you two go on without me.” A statement, not a question.

  “Because it would be more fun to go all together. You could go shower and look nice and the three of us could go to that great place with that new chef that everyone’s been talking about. Phil said it was supposed to be really good.”

  Maddie looked up from her glass of iced tea. “When did you see Phil? I don’t remember you being in the diner this week?”

  Maddie realized too late that she had totally violated the sisterhood of the . . . sisterhood. Janet looked cornered and then overly blasé. “Oh, I bumped into him at the Safeway the other day, I think. I can’t remember exactly.”

  Hank looked skeptical. “Maybe we should invite him to come with us? Even up our numbers.”

  M
addie looked at him. He was a cruel beast.

  “Well,” she hesitated, then looked right into Hank’s sparkling eyes, “that might be nice.”

  And there went the air out of the driveway. That might have been all the air leaving the town of Blake, Maine.

  “You and Phil?” Hank blurted before he could think better of it.

  Janet kept looking at him. She didn’t say a word, just nodded. She was steely when she wanted to be, that was for sure. Maddie watched the little power struggle play out, taking a slow sip of iced tea and reaching for an imaginary bucket of popcorn.

  Front.

  Row.

  Seat.

  It dawned on Maddie that this was exactly what Janet had been hoping for, to draw Hank into something—anything—that would make him take an emotional stake in life.

  He must have seen the trap as quickly as Maddie had, because he retreated immediately. He coiled back into himself just like he had on the drive back from the canoe trip. Total shut-down.

  Hank shrugged.

  “You three should go. You’ll have fun.”

  Maddie nearly spit her iced tea out. “I’m not going to Portland with Phil Campbell on my night off.” She turned quickly to Janet. “No offense! I mean, he’s my boss—”

  Janet looked at Maddie as if the younger woman had just revealed the details of the Manhattan Project to the Russians. Traitor!

  “Oh, fine!” Janet finally conceded. “We don’t need to invite Phil. I don’t know how I got painted into this corner in the first place. I just thought it would be fun to drop off all this stuff at the thrift shop in Portland and then get a lobster roll while we were there.” She shrugged, a blatant mockery of Hank’s similar movement. “Call me crazy!” She pivoted on the heel of her blue Keds and stormed back into the house.

  Maddie whistled with low accusation. “You are in deep shit, Hank!” Then Maddie laughed; she just couldn’t help herself. “Your mom basically just confessed that the secret mystery man is none other than Phil Fucking Campbell and you rained all over that particular parade. Nice going, buddy.” Maddie patted him on the upper arm with a dismissive swat. “Good one!”

  Still laughing to herself as she walked through the front door, Maddie called out, “Quit sulking, Janet! I still want to go to Portland! Let’s leave Mopey home and go have some fun!”

  Within half an hour, both women were showered and had changed into casual sundresses and sandals. Hank was sitting on the bottom step of the stairs that led to his apartment, reading what looked to be some sort of mechanical engineering magazine.

  He looked up when they walked past him.

  “Have fun, ladies,” he said.

  “Oh, we will!” Janet said with a defiant lift of her chin.

  Hank smiled despite himself, feeling a slight tremor of that ephemeral “normal,” watching his mother and his beautiful . . . friend . . . get into the small, piece-of-crap Japanese car and drive off like a pair of teenagers on their way to the mall.

  CHAPTER 11

  The following week was the Fourth of July, and Blake, Maine, had done a little bit of primping. Bunting stretched across the storefronts on Main Street, and sparkling little white lights had been strung from the rooftops on the north side of the street to the rooftops on the south side of the street and back again. The parade was happening on Saturday, and then there were huge fireworks on Sunday over in Freeport.

  The sun cast long shadows across the sidewalk on Saturday afternoon. Janet, Hank, and Maddie sat on the curb along with hundreds of other people who’d grabbed a plastic cup from home and come to watch the antique fire trucks and small-scale military bands parade past.

  Hank was sitting in the middle, between Janet and Maddie. At one point, he turned to look at Maddie’s profile. She was gazing contentedly at the bagpipers from a few towns away. To his right, Janet was talking to a friend of hers with whom she worked at the library on weekends.

  “Hey,” Hank said softly.

  Maddie’s head spun to face him. “Hey . . .”

  “Really exciting, huh?” He was trying to bait her into admitting how boring their small-town existence really was.

  “I love it!” She didn’t clap her hands against her thighs or sigh or do anything overly enthusiastic, but her eyes gleamed and, Jesus, if Hank didn’t feel it like a punch in the gut. “I am so happy right now. Just to be sitting here.”

  So much for baiting Maddie. If anyone had been snared, it was Hank: he felt like he’d been hooked and gutted. How could she just feel, and experience, and express like that? It was so foreign to him. And it was beginning to dawn on him that the Army and his deployments might not be entirely to blame. He had never been comfortable around this kind of vitality. It felt messy and threatening. It was like being drunk.

  It was like Maddie was drunk.

  On life.

  That’s probably why Janet had come to love her. Because that’s what had happened. It wasn’t some misdirected mother-daughter thing. Janet just adored the way Maddie looked at life and found it all so exciting and promising. That was the way Janet had probably always wanted to look at the world—through clear-eyed, rosy glasses—but the only way Janet could achieve that was in a bottle. To see someone who did it on the air? That had captured Janet in a way that a bottle of Jack never could.

  Hank turned away quickly, pretending that he wanted to pay close attention to one of the vintage fire trucks that had driven over from New Hampshire for the festivities.

  “Do you like it, Hank?” Maddie asked in a near whisper.

  She wasn’t even overly close to his ear. But he felt her close. He felt her voice as if she were breathing hot and tight against him, even when she was a few feet away.

  “It’s all right, I guess.” Remaining ambivalent was becoming more and more difficult. Maybe that was progress. Maybe that meant he was getting better. But he didn’t feel better. He felt like he was coming apart at the seams, in slow rips that were going to make all of his insides slip out. And he resented that Maddie was the one who was making him feel that way. He resented that it was so easy for her to be jubilant and connected. To be a part of life.

  When he wasn’t.

  Janet’s library friend left and a little while later Phil showed up and sat down next to Janet. At one point he looked past Hank and Janet to make eye contact with Maddie. She smiled, and he winked. Maddie was so happy for Janet, who had obviously been trying to keep their burgeoning relationship under wraps until she knew how far it would go.

  From the way the two of them were holding hands in front of the entire town, it looked like things were very unwrapped. And going far.

  Maddie had a little shudder as she realized how much she wished Hank would hold her hand like that, to tell the world that they were together (which they weren’t), to take possession of her (which he never would), or just to feel the warmth of his skin against hers (which would feel lovely).

  She must have sighed aloud. Hank turned to look at her again. She knew her freewheeling, emotional outbursts drove him crazy, but it wasn’t like she could change who she was. And he hadn’t even seen the half of it.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Sure, fine. Just enjoying the festivities.” She smiled quickly and then set her face back to a stony mask, taking in the fire trucks. Concentrating. Watch me be a reliable, unemotional, normal person watching a parade, she thought.

  “You want to go out tonight?” he asked.

  “What do you mean? We are out—”

  He shook his head. “Never mind.”

  “No.” She reached for his forearm—digging her fingers into his skin too hard and too quickly—and then pulled her hand away. “Please. Yes. I would love to go out with you tonight—” Jesus. Why did he have to make her feel so desperate? Maddie wondered. She was going to make him pay for that in bed one day, if she ever got the chance. She would make him beg or cry out or grab at the nape of her neck and demand things of her, things that only she could provi
de in that moment of wanting. Because right now he was making her feel so needy, and she didn’t want to be alone in that.

  She knew she’d be alone after. She had spent much of the past few weeks making all sorts of deals with the devil about what she would be compromising if she actually slept with him. The risks were pretty vast. If he bolted emotionally the way he did after the canoe trip, well, she argued with herself, at least she could know that it was all about him and his screwed-up isolation issues. Not about her.

  Because that always worked. Knowing it wasn’t about her. Yeah, that was so comforting.

  Not.

  She shook her head and whispered, “Oh, never mind.”

  He reached over, like a thirteen-year-old boy might reach for a girl’s hand the first time he went to the movies without his mom there. Tentatively and so sweetly. So cautious.

  He held her hand like that, fingers intertwined, both of their hands resting on his strong thigh, as the fire trucks passed by in a dreamy blur. Maddie had a brief vision of being so unwilling to remove her fingers from his that the parade would finish and the people would disperse and night would descend and the bits of stray garbage would be floating down the middle of the dark street like a tumbleweed in a ghost town, and there the two of them would be sitting, still quietly holding hands on the side of the road. Content.

  “I’ll pick you up at eight,” he said.

  She smiled so broadly. It was only half past two in the afternoon. And he was still holding her hand in that public, possessive way that told the world they were more than friends. And she could relax into the now because he had just offered a beautiful later. It didn’t get much better than—

  “Guess who!” Two strong male hands covered her eyes from behind. She could hear immature masculine laughter and recognized the sound of Zander’s voice right away. Hank’s hand shook free, and Maddie thought she might burst into tears at the loss of those strong fingers in hers. Then the rage of Zander Dalgliesh spoiling her perfect moment overrode every other feeling.

  Maddie pushed the jerk’s hands away from her face and jumped up with a spring that years of squats had given her.