Off the Market
By: Casia Schreyer
Copyright © 2013
Blue Ribbon Books
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
For questions and comments about this book, please contact us at [email protected]
Prologue - Then
It was 1am on a balmy night late in June and Paul Anderson was just getting home. He came in the side door silently, stealthy by habit, and passed through the empty kitchen into the darkened hallway. Above him his family slept and the only sounds were the rhythmic bumps and purrs that old houses made when they thought no one was listening. He had one hand on the banister and one foot on the bottom step when the sitting room lamp came on with a click and a rectangle of light spilled into the hallway behind him.
Paul knew from experience that if he ignored his father’s summons and took one more step towards the limited privacy of his own room his father would bellow loud enough to wake his brothers and his mother. At least if I turn around now the rest of the house can get some sleep. He walked to the sitting room with his heart pounding, trying to keep his breathing even and his emotions under control.
Gordon Arnold - Gord to his co-workers, Gordie to his drinking buddies -sat in his arm chair, stony faced and wide awake, glaring at his eldest son. Paul suddenly realized two things about his father's chair: that chair was in the perfect position for his father to survey the entire room including the doorway, and Paul had never once been allowed to sit in that chair, not even as a child, not even on his father's knee.
He'd been over his father's knee on more than one occasion but he wasn't going to think about that, or the punches or the ridicule, right now. He half sat on the arm of the sofa nearest the door, locked his arms over his chest, and waited.
"You're home awfully late," Gordon stated.
Paul nodded. One o’clock in the morning was awfully late, especially in a small town where everything was closed by midnight, and even more especially in a church centered small town where everyone's curfew was 11pm, or earlier, so he couldn't argue with his father's statement. He just wasn't going to freely offer an explanation, or anything else, to his father. It wouldn't do me any good to start apologizing and explaining anyway. All he'll hear is the 'sorry' and assume I've done something horrible.
"Not the first night, either," Gordon pressed.
Paul knew full well he'd been out past curfew four times this week, and three times the week before, so he just stared at his father, watching the strain of being civil create deep lines around the older man's mouth, and waited. The silence stretched between them.
Finally Gordon said, "You know the rules, son, you're to be home by 10pm."
"I'm twenty-one, Dad, and ..."
"Don't give me that 'grown man' nonsense. This is my house and you will follow my rules for as long as you live here. Is that understood?"
"All too clearly," Paul replied. His voice was just barely on the acceptable side of polite and his eyes were dark with long-contained anger and the beginnings of hatred.
Gordon's face softened a little as he relaxed into his first victory. "Where have you been?" he demanded.
"Nowhere," Paul shot back. It was fairly close to the truth, this time. He'd driven out of town and parked, the where hadn't been important, he'd just wanted a quiet and private place to think. Now, he didn't want his father digging into where he'd been all those other late nights or why there had been so many lately, so he dug in his heels and prepared for one last fight.
Gordon's eyes flashed with a familiar anger and he rose from his chair, his solid six-foot frame filling the corner of the sitting room and casting a larger than life shadow across the floor. "Nowhere? Boys do not go nowhere until one o'clock in the morning, they go somewhere, and most often it's trouble. So, I'll ask you again, where have you been, past curfew, these last few nights?"
"I went nowhere," Paul said, speaking each word slowly and clearly. “Why do you always assume I’ve gotten into trouble? Maybe I was parked on a side road staring at the stars, maybe I just lost track of time.” It was true. He’d wanted a few hours to himself and he’d lost track of time. Of course his selfish need to be away from his father had just put weeks of careful planning in jeopardy and he would pay whatever price was asked of him if that meant keeping his father in the dark now.
"Don't play games with me, Paul. Whatever trouble you've found, whatever nonsense you're involved in, you’ll tell me all about it, now."
"Or what? You'll hit me again?" Paul taunted.
Out of habit Gordon's hand went to his belt buckle but he paused as his son rose from his tentative perch. For so long this boy had stood five and a half feet with barely a pound of muscle on his wiry frame, but if twenty-one years did not make a boy a man, three years laying foundations, hauling drywall, and raising houses could certainly make him look like one.
Paul stood at least even with his father and while Gordon had been strong enough to knock about women and half grown boys he didn't much relish the idea of going toe-to-toe with a construction worker in his prime, even if that man happened to be his son who was in desperate need of straightening out. Gordon fought the instinct to take a step back and won.
"Don't you even think of threatening me, Boy." Gordon's face was livid, his heart thundered, his hands were curled into fists so tight his knuckles were turning white. So often he would simply have lashed out, put the boy back in his place with a fist or a foot or a belt, but something told him he'd better hold his anger in check a little longer, no matter how badly he wanted to release it on this ungrateful boy.
"It's not a threat, Dad, it's a promise." Paul's voice was cold and calm. His body seemed relaxed, loose, except for his hands which were also balled into fists at his sides. "If you lay a hand on me again, I will hit you back. I will match you blow for blow until you back down or I black out. If you hit Matt or Joey again, I will hit you back. We're not boys anymore, and we're not your boys anymore.” Paul turned to go but paused at the door. “And if you ever lay a hand on Mom, I'll pay you back double."
Paul walked out leaving his father to seethe in the silence that followed his promise, a promise he was longing to keep.
Chapter 1 - Now
"Well, if it isn't the Arnold boys," Mrs. Barbour, the petite elderly lady who, along with her petite elderly husband, ran the local bed and breakfast, said as she greeted her guests with a smile. "When we didn't see you for the funeral we weren't sure you were ever coming back to town. And then Bill got your phone call the other day and I couldn't help but wonder why you weren't staying up at the house. But it's in such disrepair, I don't blame you. Oh, it was quite the heartbreak when the porch started to rot out, it was your mother's favourite place to sit. We tried to talk to your father, of course, but he wouldn't listen, stubborn old fool. He never listened to anyone but that mother of yours. He wasn’t the same after your mother passed, God keep her soul." Without breaking her rambling narrative she had checked them in, grabbed keys from behind the desk and given each of them a hug. Paul and Matt had stood awkwardly through the whole encounter but Joe had hugged her back with a grin.
"Sure is good to see you again," he said, slipping easily into the small town drawl.
"I've got the three rooms up-upstairs for you since I know they're you're favorites."
Paul frowned. Mrs. Barbour is acting like we're fast friends and frequent visitors; we've stayed with her once! I remember politely t
elling her the room had been lovely, but 'favorite' might be a stretch. Why did we agree to come back here? We could have done this over the phone instead. We're doing fine on our own without all this small-town meddling.
Mrs. Barbour was still rambling. "Bill should be down in a heartbeat to help with your bags, in fact I have no idea what's keeping him."
Paul opened his mouth to tell her that they didn't need help but a rich, feminine voice from the stairs cut him off. "There's a leaky tap in 2C. Dad will be awhile, could take him all evening just to get off the floor again. I can give you a hand if you need one."
In an instance Paul was transported back to his teenage years and this lovely, well-dressed woman was sitting two rows behind him in math class, wearing jeans when all the other girls wore skirts or slacks, and chewing on the tip of her nearly black braid whenever she started thinking too hard.
Mrs. Barbour's voice brought him back to the lobby with a jolt. "You boys remember my daughter, I'm sure."
She's even more beautiful than she was at our graduation, Paul thought, then roughly shoved the thought aside. He had moved on, and she probably had too. "Angie, yeah," he said with a curt nod, trying to sound like he barely remembered her. "I think we had a few classes together."
"A few?" Angie laughed, crossing the foyer in just a few confident strides. "Which high school did you attend? There were only enough of us to make one class in any subject." She held out her hand and Paul shook it with a forced smile.
"You're probably right." He felt his face flush a little. How does this girl always make me feel like a fool? I haven't seen her in nine years and she's still embarrassing me like she did when we were children.
Angie was smiling softly at him, still holding his hand. "It's been so long since I've seen you. After high school I went off to school. I'm sorry I missed your mother's funeral but I had exams. I thought I'd see you last week but ..."
Paul pulled his hand away and grabbed his bag. "Yeah, well, we couldn't make it until now. Thanks for the offer to help but we don't have much with us. We'll just go up on our own, we know the way."
Mrs. Barbour smiled and handed out the keys. "Alright, but if you boys are hungry, I can fix you up some dinner."
"Thanks," Paul said and headed up the stairs.
Matt smiled at Angie. "Nice to officially meet you," he said with a nod.
"I'll be back for that dinner," Joe called over his shoulder as he followed his older brothers up the stairs.
Paul had been completely honest when he'd said that he, and his brothers, hadn't brought much with them, and he didn't bother transferring it out of his suitcase and into the ornate antique chest of drawers that stood beside the bathroom door. The bed protruded from the opposite wall with a nightstand on either side. Lamps with stained glass shades stood on the tables in contrast to the digital alarm clock. There was a desk, though it was little more than a plain table, and a chair next to the window and a short entryway with a few hooks for jackets and a plastic mat for shoes. The whole room was decorated in floral print, the wallpaper, the bed spread, the gift shop prints that hung framed about the room and even the pattern on the lamp shades.
Paul knew he looked out of place here as his broad, six foot frame dwarfed the delicate furniture. He felt as though his labour roughened hands would catch on the lace curtains or the bed spread if he touched them so he sat gingerly on the edge of the bed with his hands in his lap. He wasn't a reader and the room didn't have a television so there was nothing for him to do until his meeting the next morning but sit and stare out the window until the darkness finished settling, and then turn in for the night.
There was a knock on the door and before he could answer his younger brother Matt was in the room, leaning on against the wall.
"You're not going to break the bed you know."
Paul hid his embarrassment beneath a scowl as he stood and turned to face Matt. "What do you want?"
"Joey went down for dinner."
"I'm not hungry."
"Yeah, that's what I told him you'd say when he came to see if I was coming down. I'm guessing he didn't even stop in here. You aren't worried he'll say too much?"
"He'll say too much whether I'm there or not. I thought business men played things close to the chest."
"Well, Joe was always like this. I don't know why either of us thought business school would change him, but I still think it’s a good thing we didn’t encourage him to be a psychologist."
Paul gave his head a shake. "He's too trusting. Maybe I made a mistake, pulling him out of here at eighteen and putting him through school. Maybe I should have made him work for it."
"I think we did too good a job protecting him for eighteen years to leave him behind, or for him to learn to be distrustful," Matt said softly.
They were both remembering what they had gone through to cover for Joe's mistakes and the memories were tinged with pain, and some anger that was directed at their father, but not with even a hint of regret. It wasn't that Joe had even been a bad kid, but their father had been a hard man to please and an easy man to cross.
Paul sighed. "I hate coming back here. Too much garbage here that's better left buried."
"There were some good things here too," Matt said.
"Yeah, but she died four years ago."
"He's dead too," Matt said gently.
"So there is nothing left for us here and no reason to stay," Paul snapped.
Matt shrugged. In those first years on their own he had tried to convince Paul to come back to visit their mother but Paul had refused every time. He had always been impossibly stubborn when it came to Barnes Lake and their father. "Look, I'll be in my room, reading. Try to come down for breakfast at least, alright?"
The door clicked and Paul was alone with his thoughts again, thoughts which, thanks to Matt, were now centered on the past once again.
Barnes Lake had been a small logging town with the men working mainly on the logging crews or in the mill. With the mill relying so heavily on machines now and the one big logging company in the area folding, the unemployment rate had risen. Over the years various companies had tried to revive the small town. Paul could remember the furniture factory and the contractor, but neither had been able to do much more than keep the town afloat. The factory still employed a hundred or so men but the contractor had gone. The only thing in the whole town that had ever prospered had been the church, and when Paul had returned for his mother's funeral four years earlier even the church building was looking run down.
Paul had tried to stay focused on the service but he couldn't help but see the water damaged carpet and the weathering around the windows, just as he noticed the sagging, peeling look of every home they passed while driving through town. And it was even worse now. At eighteen, Paul had gotten a job hauling drywall for the contractor who thought that if he built enough fancy new houses maybe the young ones would stop moving to the city after graduation. Now Paul owned a small contracting company that specialized in large scale renovations of old homes and other buildings.
His father hadn't approved of Paul getting work straight out of school, but his father had made it damn near impossible to go to college so Paul had had little choice.
It kept me home, Paul thought. It kept me under his thumb, right where he wanted me. Under his thumb, and his fist, and his belt.
Paul didn't often think about the yelling or the beatings anymore and it had been years since dreams of his childhood had haunted his sleep. Sometimes, if a bad case of abuse made the local news, Paul's eyes would turn hard and his body would go rigid and he'd snarl at everyone for days after. But there was nothing he could do for those children and once he was able to lock the pain away again he'd stop snarling and go back to just growling and grumbling, promising himself he'd never go back to Barnes Lake.
In his dreams he was sixteen again, and so was Shirley White, his first date. He could see her so clearly with her blonde ponytail tied with a neon scrunchy that he wasn't sure i
t was just a dream. She wore a knee length flowery summer dress, so much livelier than the floral print of his hotel room, and she smiled so wide and so real, so unlike anything he'd seen before. He loved her for that smile, the way it reached all the way to her crystal blue eyes.
He looked shabby by comparison in a pair of blue jeans that were wearing at the seams and his only clean t-shirt, but she had never sneered at him. They'd gone out for dinner, just burgers at the highway diner. And after burgers they had talked and laughed until their sodas ran dry. And after the sodas he'd bought the biggest possible sundae to split and they'd finished it all only to realize how late it was.
He had barely gotten her home before curfew and she'd kissed his cheek, making it the best night in his young life. He'd walked in the front door of his house, barely half an hour late and walking on air.
His father had been waiting in his chair with the light on and Paul had walked into the sitting room with an apology on his lips.
Sometimes in dreams Paul was able to apologize for missing curfew but tonight dream ran true to memory and before Paul could utter a word his father was yelling.
"You ungrateful bastard. I lent you my car with the understanding that you'd be home on time. Now you waltz in late ..."
"It's twenty minutes after ten! It's not that late!"
"Late is late! I expected you home by ten sharp."
"We just lost track of time" Paul pleaded.
"I can imagine. There's lipstick all over your face! I don't know where I went wrong with you, Paul. Lord knows I tried to raise a good, upstanding, God fearing son. I took you to church every week, we say grace before dinner, and Lord knows I've upheld the rules of my own home.” He stood and Paul stepped back.
"Dad, I'm sorry. It's not what you think! It's ..."
The belt came hurtling down. Paul shied away, fell out of the narrow bed, and landed, wide awake, on the floor of the bed and breakfast with a heavy thud.
OFF THE MARKET Page 1