Warm Front

by Patricia McLinn

  “And Everett was just as bad if not worse from what I hear. The old-timers all talk about how much he’s softened up since you came. When he got them to give Zeke-Tech data for that truck farming program, most of them were too stunned that Everett Hooper was cooperating to consider refusing themselves.”

  Anne’s thoughts whirled, but one caught hold. “Softened?”

  “Yeah, so you can just imagine what he was like before.”

  “I… I…” She wasn’t sure what words she was trying to form, except that they absolutely weren’t the ones that came out. “How did you ever get past what your ex did? How could you ever trust any guy again, much less his brother? I mean, how?” Immediately, she clapped one hand over her mouth and half stood. “Oh, Jennifer, I—”

  “I—”

  “No, no. Don’t say anything. I’m sorry. I never should have— Please, please forget I ever—”

  “It’s okay, Anne.” Reaching across the desk, Jennifer gripped her arm. “Really it’s okay. Sit down. Please?”

  Anne sat.

  Jennifer stared toward the closed door for a long moment.

  “I didn’t think I could.” She spoke slowly. “In fact, I was sure I couldn’t. I didn’t even try, really. Maybe that’s why it happened. It sneaked up on me. Because I was sure it wasn’t possible. But then I started seeing how other people responded to him. So different from Eric. And from seeing how other people responded to Trent, it was natural to turn and really look at him. How he treats people. How he handles responsibilities. How he honors commitments. How he is with me and with Ashley. That was when I was able to divorce him from his family.”

  Anne sat there, knowing she should respond, but finding nothing remotely reasonable to say except “Thank you.” It came out a croak. She cleared her throat. “It’s so generous of you to share… To…”

  “You don’t have to forget Chris to move on, Anne. You don’t have to forgive him, either. Not yet. I know you will eventually, but you don’t have to do it yet. Not in order to let yourself love Quince. To let yourself admit you love Quince. You just need to accept all the way down to your soul that they’re different people.” A faint smile touched her lips. “Even if they were brothers, they would be different people.”

  There was a drought on coherent thought. Bone dry. No hope of a drop. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “No need to say anything, Anne. And I’ll stop talking at you and leave you to do your work now.”

  *

  With the last thumb drive nearly finished, Anne’s heart gave a painful lurch at a tall shadow in the office doorway.

  She was breathless when she looked up to an entirely unexpected sight.

  “Zeke?”

  “Hi, Anne. May I come in?”

  She gathered her breath and her wits enough to say, “Of course. It’s Jennifer’s office, so—”

  “I know. Jennifer told Darcie you were here. That’s how I knew.” When he stepped inside, he swung the door closed behind him.

  Two closed-door conversations in one day? Uh-oh.

  “Can I get you something to drink? Water or coffee? Or—”

  “No. I should probably get right to what I came to say. Darcie doesn’t know I’m here.” He sounded half like a guilty child, half worried. “Quince, either. They said not to talk to you. I guess they figured I did enough harm already.”

  “You didn’t do any harm.” She looked at her hands. Rather surprised that they were just resting there on the desk. No tremor, no shake. “You—”

  “Yes, I did. And you’re going to say I told the truth, but it wasn’t—”

  “Zeke, it’s very sweet of you to—”

  “Nothing to do with sweet. I’m not sweet. Anybody’ll tell you that. But I’m as honest as I know how to be. And what I told you earlier wasn’t the full truth. Yeah, Quince does like the challenge of fixing a problem. Me, too. Though not the same kind of challenges. But here’s where I was wrong. All wrong. Quince doesn’t walk away. I know, because I’ve seen first-hand how he is on a really tough, long-term problem.”

  He paused so long she looked up.

  “Me.”

  Before she’d fully absorbed that, he asked. “You know we were roommates in college? Randomized matching, but it couldn’t have turned out better for me if I’d designed it myself. It wasn’t as good for Quince.”

  “Of course it was,” she protested. “He gained a best friend, a career, and—”

  “Only after he made me somebody who could be a friend and build a company.” He said it with such conviction. “I’m not saying my parents weren’t great. And if it hadn’t been for getting to know Darcie during high school I don’t think Quince could have gotten through to me at all. As it was, he had a tough time with me. Still does. I tried to ignore him. I really tried. He says I didn’t say a word for the first week. But he kept talking. He wouldn’t let me be.”

  That last sentence held conflicting currents. A lingering irritation. And gratitude.

  “He’d drag me out to be with other people. It was awful. I just wanted to stay in my room or the labs, dealing with what I understood. But Quince wouldn’t give up. He’d give me sentences to say when certain circumstances came up. Like when I stop listening to somebody, because my mind’s off on other things and they realize it and say ‘Did you hear me?’ and I say ‘Hearing you is not the same as agreeing.’ It—”

  “I’ve heard you say that.”

  He nodded as he continued. “—almost always starts them repeating whatever they’ve said because they’re rearguing their case. They don’t know I wasn’t listening and they don’t get pissed at me. And with the business… well, there wouldn’t be a business without Quince, because he’s the one who deals with people. I’m better — a lot better — than I was, thanks to Darcie, but there’s no way I could do it even now without Quince.”

  “Quince said you took care of him after Fiona died.”

  He ducked his head. “If I did, it was Fiona’s doing. She asked me to visit her, about a month before she died. Made sure Quince wouldn’t be there. She said she was counting on me to get Quince looking to the future again. That I needed to make him see he was needed. I said how would I know what would make him feel needed? And she said not feel needed, be needed, and talked about how there was a big difference for someone like Quince.

  “I’ll tell you, that was one of the hardest conversations I’ve ever had. And it wasn’t even because she was dying. It was because she wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

  “She sounds like an extraordinary woman.”

  “I thought so. More important, she sure was right about Quince. I started talking to him about my idea for Zeke-Tech. He didn’t listen, not at first, because that was right after Fiona died. After about four months he was sinking deeper and deeper, and I started thinking what Fiona would say. So I went and got him. Took him right out of his father’s house, to the room I’d rented.”

  He shook his head. “What scared me was he didn’t notice what a dump the place was — not for months. The day he started griping about the place, I wanted to do a jig — that wasn’t for nearly a year. About the time Vanessa joined us. But right from the start, he worked like crazy. He’s the one who talked the landlord into letting us stay when we owed back rent. And he was out every day looking for backers — even when I was picky about who’d we take money from. The point is, if you think Quince solves an issue, then moves on to something new, I’m here to tell you he doesn’t. Not when he’s your friend.” He held her gaze. “Not when he loves you. Then all he wants to do is make things better for you.”

  The one thing he hadn’t been able to do for Fiona, as much as he’d loved her.

  Her eyes filled with tears.

  …You can’t fix everything. Quit thinking you can.

  I know I can’t.

  Oh, God. She’d been cruel. Unintentionally, but still cruel.

  And now… She’d walked away from him because he hadn’t fixed Hoop
er Farm.

  Hadn’t fixed facts and history and the future.

  Hadn’t fixed her guilt that she hadn’t been able to save the farm her husband had loved so much.

  Hadn’t fixed her fear that she hadn’t saved her husband because she hadn’t loved him enough.

  She let out a sound.

  “Anne?”

  “I— I’ve gotta go.” She was throwing stuff in her bag, not focusing. Keys. That’s what she needed. Her keys.

  “To see Quince?”

  “No. Not yet. I have to talk Everett. I have to get home and talk to Everett.”

  *

  The instant Anne opened the mudroom door the smell of burnt coffee cut through the numbness of her cold nose.

  It was the first thing that had pulled her out of her own head since she’d left the dealership.

  Her thoughts were like a tornado inside her skull, picking up random pieces, slamming them together in no semblance of order. Dropping a fragment of a memory, then swirling a look, a phrase, an action around and around and around until she had to close her eyes.

  She automatically left her cell phone on the kitchen table and kept going to switch off the coffeemaker Everett had left on. But underneath the habitual action and trickle of annoyance, concern welled up. He’d never before left it so long.

  Surely he smelled it, so…

  “Everett?”

  She pounded up the stairs, calling his name again. No answer. Her throat closed. His door stood two-thirds open at the far end of the hall. She pushed it open, forced herself to step inside.

  The bed was empty. The covers thrown back, their disarray no more than usual. Nor did anything else in the room raise alarms.

  She spun around and checked the bathroom door, but that, too was open. She stuck her head in, just in case. Empty.

  “Everett!”

  She headed for the stairs again. God, he couldn’t have gone outside, could he?

  Almost to the bottom of the stairs, she thought she heard something over her own steps. A rasping, gasping cough. She stopped. Listened for half a beat, then sprinted to the parlor, pushing the pocket doors wider.

  Everett slumped on the sofa, both hands to his chest as a rattling cough wracked him. Beside him and on the floor at his feet, old photo albums assumed odd angles, like dead leaves deposited by a fitful wind.

  He wore his robe and slippers, but the room was chilled. She barely slowed down to snag the aged quilt off the rack just inside the door. She wrapped it around his unresisting shoulders, already looking for something to warm his feet. Two pillows and a knitted throw had to do. She put one pillow under his feet to raise them from the cold floor, the other on top, and looped the throw around to keep them in place.

  “Oh, Everett. What did you—?”

  Her first look at his face evaporated the scold like snow on a hot griddle.

  His skin was gray. His eyes unfocused. His mouth open as his breathing produced a rattling sound like a distant echo of the cough she’d heard.

  “Everett, I’m calling 911.”

  He didn’t react at all. She gasped out a brief, inarticulate plea, and ran for her cell phone.

  A familiar voice answered as she hurried back to him. “Corine? Thank God. Something’s wrong with Everett.”

  She answered Corine’s professional questions with as much patience as she could muster, but when the dispatcher said to stay there until the ambulance arrived, Anne cut her off. “No. It’ll be too long. Tell the ambulance I’ll meet them. Look for the farm truck — rust over green — and I’ll have the flashers on.”

  “Anne, how’ll you get him in the truck? Is Quince—?”

  “No. I’ll get him in. I’m hanging up now. I’ll call back when we’re on the road.”

  She pushed the parlor doors the rest of the way open and jacked up the thermostat before she ran outside again, pulling on her coat as she went. The truck started right away. She brought it around to the front porch — a shorter exit from the parlor than down the hall and through the kitchen. Back inside, she tried to lift Everett. It wasn’t going to work. Not to carry him any distance, not without the likelihood of dropping him.

  Think, Anne. Think!

  She ran back to the kitchen, grabbed Everett’s warmest jacket, his farm coat, a number of scarves, loaded them onto a kitchen chair, and ran back with it to the parlor. As she removed the quilt to put the jacket on him, another shuddering cough shook him so hard, she couldn’t even guide his arm into the sleeve until it passed. He still didn’t respond to her, even as she talked to him, constantly telling him what she was doing, and why.

  With the jacket on and the quilt wrapped around his legs and feet, she heaved him into the chair, panting with the effort. She added the coat, then used scarves to tie him into the chair. Then, holding onto the chair back, she tipped it back and dragged it across the resistant rug, moving backward one hard-fought step at a time.

  At the threshold to the hall’s wood floor at last, she took only enough time to check that Everett, still unresponsive, was secured in the chair, ran back to the kitchen for a cotton rug, and maneuvered the chair onto it. Using the rug as a skid, she pulled the chair to the front door. The uneven front threshold held dangers, but she managed to maneuver the chair out by using her body and legs to cushion it.

  The three steps down from the porch to the drive were much worse.

  The first was mere torture. The second, the chair slipped on an icy patch, and pivoted, nearly tipping all the way over. Anne caught it — barely — taking the full weight on her right shoulder and breast. She didn’t even gasp at the pain. She had no breath left for that. And no time.

  She saw Everett’s face for the first time since she’d tied him into the chair, and he looked worse.

  No time for finesse, she yanked the chair down the third step, cushioning some of the jarring with her body. She had to get him in the truck — out of this cold and on the way to the hospital. Fast.

  She swung open the truck door, and refused to think how impossible it was to get him up to that high seat. She untied the scarves, trying to tell Everett what she was going to do, but not sure that even if he’d been capable of listening that he could have understood her panted words.

  She got him over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Her first try to swing him up onto the seat was pitifully short. She backed up, tried again, with a couple steps’ momentum. Closer. A third try was closer still. The fourth time, she got him partway on the seat. He started to slide back toward her. She shoved with all her might, closing the truck door. A corner of the quilt stuck out the door, she just prayed she hadn’t caught any of Everett. She left the chair where it was, didn’t bother to close the front door, just ran around the truck and got in.

  The old beauty was in one of its rare fits of spewing out heat like a furnace. She half sobbed, half gasped, trying to pull in oxygen. She levered Everett to a half-sitting position, but there was no way she could get his seatbelt hooked.

  She had to go.

  She had to go now.

  Her hands shook so hard she had to wrap one hand around the other to release the emergency brake. But they were on their way.

  Each motion of driving seemed foreign. To keep her concentration on the road so she didn’t have a wreck, she muttered reminders to herself — avoid the pothole at the third fence post, ease into that icy patch, look both ways, keep speed steady for the turn into the highway — like a teenager with her first permit.

  On the highway, she turned on the emergency blinkers to catch the attention of an oncoming ambulance, forced herself to pull in long, slow breaths, then fished out her cell phone, and hit redial.

  “They’re on their way,” Corine said.

  “We’re on the highway. A mile from the farm.”

  “Okay. How’s he doing?”

  “Not good. The truck’s warmer than that parlor, but his breathing’s still bad. And his color … he’s so gray.”

  “Talking to you?”
>
  “No, but — I might be imagining it, but I think he’s heard me when I talked to him.”

  “That’s good. That’s good, honey. Now, you just keep talking to me until you see the ambulance.”

  Talk? Breathing was still a chore. “You talk. I’ll listen.”

  That’s what they did — Corine talking, Anne grunting breath-saving responses — for the eighteen minutes until she heard the wail of the siren and caught the first strobe of the flashing lights.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The hospital room was quiet and dim. The doctors and nurses gone. Everett sleeping, his breathing easier.

  A sound, an awareness. She raised her head.

  The door opened slowly and Quince entered.

  Well past visiting hours. He wasn’t a relative, but of course he’d gotten in.

  He remained by the door. Waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dimness? Or assessing?

  “How is he?” he asked quietly.

  “It’s pneumonia.” Her voice broke.

  He was to her in two strides. Picked her up, held her against his chest — a pang of envy struck her that she couldn’t have picked up Everett with such ease. Sometimes life just wasn’t fair — but also relief to be held that way.

  He sat in the chair with her in his lap, her head on his shoulder.

  Stumbled words, telling him what the doctor had said.

  “…think he’ll be better in a few days. But … he’s got bruises.” A sob tore the words. “From me. It was the only way—”

  “You did great, Anne. You did amazing. You saved his life. You know you did. You think he’s going to complain about bruises?”

  A small, hiccupping laugh. “He’s going to complain about the heating bill. I left the thermostat up and the front door wide open.”