Two days wasn’t a lot of time considering that they had probably spent most of the first day just getting the paper work done and new hires equipped with safety gear. A site office had been set up and they were marking trees for removal to make room for the lodge. All the felled trees were being stripped and treated at the local mill and would be reused to make the rustic log cabin walls of the lodge. It meant very little waste, minimal cost output for materials, and the mill could run a full crew all winter instead of laying-off the seasonal workers. Safety fences had been set up and the road to the run down houses had been blocked with bright orange construction barricades. An army of local workers were clearing debris out of potholes, preparing them for the patching crew, and stripping mildew smelling carpets out of houses. Others were setting up work stations for the carpenters and dumping spots for supplies.
About two blocks down where the sidewalk, started the church ladies had set up a lunch table with sandwiches, coffee, canned pop, and several crock pots of soup beside a stack of paper bowls. Paul walked over and spotted Mrs. Barbour among the crowd. Moving to her side of the table he caught her between jobs.
“This is awfully nice of you, setting up lunch. Won’t this get expensive?”
“It would, but we’re only donating time. Cedar Creek Resorts is paying for the food, something about paying the workers less if they provided them with one meal per day. The church luncheon committee volunteered their time and in return Cedar Creek Resorts will make a substantial donation to the church once they have capital coming in.”
“Once they have money coming in? You make it sound like this is the first hotel they’re building.”
She shrugged. “I’m just telling it how I heard it. None of it actually makes sense to me, except the donation part. I get the picture that it would be enough to repair the church.”
“I’ve never heard of a company doing that,” Paul mused.
She smiled. “We’re lucky they came along.”
Paul was waiting in the lobby. He had stood patiently, looked at all the art work twice, sat and stared out the window while tapping his heel, and paced. He was just about to borrow the phone when Angie finally rushed in.
“I’m sorry Paul. I’ve never been this busy. Let me shower and change and we can go, alright?”
He was so happy she hadn’t stood him up that he said, “Not a problem,” and smiled after her for a full minute before realizing that Mrs. Barbour had come down the stairs with a basket of bedding. He grinned at her a little sheepishly and held out his hands. “Looks like I have a minute, why don’t you let me carry that to the laundry room for you.”
“You’re mother always said you were a polite boy,” Mrs. Barbour said as she followed after him, stretching the stiffness from her lower back as she went.
“Did she?” Paul was genuinely surprised. His father never said a kind word about him unless it was to belittle one of his brothers, and his mother had been such a quiet woman that she hadn’t said much of anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary.
“Yes. She was very proud of you, even after you boys left to make your fortunes in the city.”
“Is that what she said we were doing?”
“Why? She’d have no reason to lie, would she?”
“No, no reason.” He set the laundry basket down and wandered back to the lobby feeling like someone had just changed the rules of the game without telling him about it.
They drove the short stretch to the highway diner since it was too late to make the drive up to Moose Lake for something fancier. They ordered almost without looking at the menus and thanked the waiter for their sodas.
Paul smiled at Angie and said, “I went by the site today, it doesn’t look like they’ve been working long.”
“No, not long at all, but it happened so fast! The day after you left we got a phone call from the lawyer at Cedar Creek Resorts asking about heavily treed land. The township was holding onto a large parcel and they didn’t want to sell it to the timber company because it was so close to the town proper. But with the town in such bad shape, and needing the money for repairs, they were getting desperate to find money for the repairs on those houses.”
“You sure moved fast on that too. I guess you took the cheque from the resort company and hired a contractor the next day.”
“That’s just the thing, Paul. They bought the property, and the houses. They want some of the trees from the foundation site replanted between the houses to give them a more private, cabin-like feel.”
“What about the Bed and Breakfast? Your parents?”
“Oh, my dad’s been ready to retire for years. And my mom will get more involved with the church. Oh, and she’s already busy feeding the workers.”
“Yes, I saw her out there today,” he said as their food arrived. “She looked happy.”
“She sure is. Once the construction of the lodge is complete the resort company is buying my parents out. I don’t know what they’ll do with an old bed and breakfast when they’ll have a brand new hotel but I don’t care.”
“I guess you got a pretty good payday out of all this.”
“I paid off my student loan,” she replied. “And I’ll use the rest to buy a house when the bed and breakfast is gone.”
He raised his glass. “Here’s to drastic measures,” he said.
“And to miracles,” she added, tapping her glass against his.
“Okay, I have some knowledge of the whole house construction business; it can’t have been as simple as you make it sound. Tell me all the details.”
So she did, and by the end of dinner, and dessert, her cheeks were flushed with excitement and they were laughing together like old friends.
As he pulled back into the bed and breakfast he said, “You know Angie, I never would have believed it, but maybe there is something worthwhile in this town.”
“Oh,” she laughed. “Like a hotel?”
“No, like people, good people.”
The change in her demeanor was fast, one second friendly, warm, laughing, and the next her eyes hardened and her back stiffened and she said, “Maybe I don’t want to be involved in your games, Paul.”
Taken aback he said, “What games?”
“I don’t know how you expect your … your … fling to remain a secret in a small close-knit town like Barnes Lake. And maybe running around with married women is acceptable in the big flashy city but here it’s not. It’s just not!”
“Married woman?” he sputtered. “Angie, did you get married after I left?”
“Me? No!”
“Then who are you talking about?”
“Shirley Bryant, of course,” she said archly.
“Shirley ..?” And then it clicked. He’d been thinking so much about Angie that he hadn’t given his run in with Shirley a second thought. “The door was open,” he said.
“Yes, the door was open. I came to tell you … I came home early. I saw everything.” She locked her arms over her chest looking vulnerable like a child showing defiance to hide fear.
“You saw everything? You saw me offer to take a battered woman to safety? You saw my offer get twisted and the kiss that resulted? You saw me tell her she was a selfish bitch and to keep her hands off me? Or did you just see a kiss and assume the worst of me?”
Her eyes were slowly widening. “She kissed you?”
“Yes. Is it so hard to believe? Are you so naïve to think that someone from a church centered small town would be less than perfect and that the big city visitor is always the bad guy?”
“That’s not it …”
“No, that’s exactly it. You thought I went to Shirley after our first fight because you wouldn’t do more than kiss me? Why? Because I dated her once, fourteen years ago? Or because I trusted you and told you that I had messed up and slept with some of my past girlfriends?”
“Paul, you’re blowing this out of proportion.”
“Am I? Because I thought I was just defending myself.”
Her hands and eyes dropped to her lap. “I’m sorry, Paul. I was just so … so …” she sighed. “It doesn’t matter what I felt. I’m sorry.”
His anger and pain was real and raw but her apology was so sincere. He knew he had a choice to make and very little time to make it. Swallowing anger and pride he said, “It’s alright, you couldn’t have known.”
“How did you know?”
His brow furrowed but try as he might he couldn’t follow her conversation leap. “How did I know what?”
“About Shirley; you said she was ‘battered’ and I assume you meant abused. How did you know?”
He squirmed, unbuckled his seatbelt, and finally said, “She said some things, acted sort of nervous at times.” He shrugged. “I asked around a bit and everything just added up.”
“How did you know what to look for? And what to ask? I’m a very observant person and I never guessed.”
He shrugged again. “I’ve seen it before.”
Puzzle pieces tumbled in Angie’s mind, the pieces of Paul Arnold she had collected over the years, now rearranging to form the first hint of a picture that she didn’t think possible. “Where? When?”
“It doesn’t matter. I never want to see anyone trapped like that again.”
She laid a hand over his. “Paul, you can trust me.”
“Can I? I trusted you once and you thought I was sleeping with a married woman.”
“I said I was sorry. Paul, I care about you, and you’ve been suggesting that you came back for me. I want there to be something between us, but there can’t be, there won’t be, until you tell me what happened.”
Their last fight was too fresh, the edges of his temper too frayed, his pride still bruised, and he pulled his hand and got out of the car trying to distance himself, to quiet his mind.
She was out just as fast and yelling, “Paul, don’t you dare shut me out! I want to help you!”
He turned on her and let twenty years of rage loose. “It’s too late to help me, or my brothers, and it’s definitely too late to help my mother. What do you want to hear? Because I’m sure you’ve pieced it together by now. He hit us, all four of us, and if he wasn’t hitting us he was insulting us or sneering at us. We left so he couldn’t hurt us anymore, but that didn’t work. He put my mother through hell and put her into an early grave, and that hurt more than anything else he’d ever done to us. Now he’s dead and he shouldn’t be able to hurt us ever again but he made us come back here to that damn house,” he swung his arm in the general direction of this parent’s home, “And that hurt!”
“Why? Why does coming here hurt so badly?”
“Because none of you did anything! We were children and every one of you let it happen. No one got us out. No one protected us. All these women worked how many countless church functions with my mother and not one of them got her out! The church trapped her in that marriage. The town trapped us in that hell!”
“Paul, how do you know that? How do you know no one offered to help her?”
“Because she told me, Angie! She told me we had no one else but each other. I’ve had no one but my mother and my brothers, all my life.”
Angie was silent as Paul stormed inside. The next day Angie got up as early as she could but it did no good. Paul was gone again.
Chapter 14
Paul spent a week working on other projects and remotely supervising the Barnes Lake build. Every day there was a message on the apartment phone from Angie. She had apologized to the machine, pleaded with it, cried to it, and begged for a call in return. Every day he would hit delete under Matt’s sullen gaze and then Matt would disappear into his room until morning. Joe was hardly ever home but when he was, he was either so cheerful it upsets his brothers or he was just as sullen as they were.
The night stand Paul had collected stood in his room and every night he stared at it, thinking of his mother and Angie and Barnes Lake.
He’s dead. He can’t hurt us anymore. But this hurts, missing her hurts, yelling at her hurt.
The next day when he got home there was no phone message. He stared at the machine trying to decipher why it bothered him so much. I miss the sound of her voice.
It was one of those rare nights when they were all home, made rarer by Paul actually cooking a meal. It was spaghetti with store bought sauce and a bagged salad but his brothers joined him at the table, thankful for a hot meal that wasn’t take-out.
They were all poking at their noodles and staring at their plates, the silence heavy and awkward over them. Paul could only think of the bags sitting packed and ready in his room. This is it. I have to tell them, I can’t just disappear.
“I’m moving out.”
Paul looked up, startled, and was met with two equally startled faces. They had all spoken the same words at the same time and now they sat back studying each other.
Matt took a deep breath. “I’m taking over Mr. Jayson’s garage in Barnes Lake. I’m tired of being nothing but a shop monkey. There’s no chance for owning my own shop here in the city, not any time soon. Joe already helped me with the paperwork. I would have said something sooner but …” he glanced at Joe and shrugged.
“Well, good luck Matt. If you need a place to stay I’ll have a few extra rooms.”
They stared at him, cautious. “You’re not going back there,” Joe said but there was a hint of questioning and a lot of thinly veiled hope in his voice.
“I’m going home, our home. And I’m going to make a fresh start there.”
“With Angie?” Matt pressed.
Paul nodded. “If it’s not too late,” he added.
Joe whooped and leapt to his feet, sending his chair clattering to the floor. “We’re going home!”
The phone rang not five minutes after Angie walked into her office that morning. She’d told herself she’d given up on hearing from Paul and still her heart started beating a little faster. “Angela Barbour, realtor, how can I help you?”
“Yes, I’m interested in your Barnes Lake listing, the two story one,” said a male voice that was vaguely familiar.
She grabbed the paper work and a pen and shoved any lingering thoughts of Paul from her mind. “It’s a very nice property.”
“I’d like to see it, today.”
“Certainly. What time?”
“Two o’clock.”
Angie’s heart was starting to pound. They had listed the house at a reasonable price, given that it was roomy but old and in a remote location. The commission would be beans compared to what she had made working with the Cedar Creek Resorts Company, but it was thrilling to be making a sale.
Don’t get ahead of yourself. He only wants to look.
“Can I get a name?” she asked.
“Mr. Terrance,” Paul said, using his mother’s maiden name. “I’m on my way out the door now with my family. I look forward to seeing the house.”
He had done nothing to disguise his voice and he half expected her to say, ‘is that you Paul?’ at any moment. All she said was, “Thank-you, Mr. Terrance. I’ll see you this afternoon.”
Joe and Matt were hovering in the doorway. “Are you finished?” Joe asked. “The car is loaded. Let’s go!”
“Hold on, I need my bags,” he said.
“Matt grabbed them. Let’s move, now!” Joe grabbed his arm and half dragged him like an impatient toddler into the hallway. They locked up and headed on their way.
They arrived in Barnes Lake earlier than their meeting and drove by the job site without stopping. They didn’t want news of their arrival to spread until after they’d met with Angie, and that meant they had to stay out of sight. Paul was impressed with the progress being made. The entire foundation for the lodge and hotel had been cleared and leveled. The stucco siding had been stripped from the houses to make way for the rustic log siding the Cedar Creek Resorts company had requested.
But more amazing than the swarm of workers was the rest of the town. Mrs. Tates, the owner of the grocery store, was out swee
ping the sidewalk in front of the store. Pastor Frank and several of the men from around town were busy mowing the lawn around the church, trimming bushes, painting the fence, and washing the windows. Paul had worked for weeks without seeing anyone besides the Barbours and Candace at the grocery store. Now lawns were being cut, trees pruned, and houses washed. People waved to each other as their kids ran about the streets. It’s like they all just appeared out of nowhere, Paul thought. Even the trailer park was a hive of activity as fences were repaired and flower boxes were installed under windows.
They pulled into the driveway to find Angie waiting on the porch. “Wait here,” Paul growled and got out of the car. When Angie saw him her brow furrowed.
“What are you doing here?” she called, hurrying down the steps and across the lawn. “I wasn’t expecting you at all.”
“You’re going to take this house off the listings, today,” he said forcefully.
She looked flustered. “But I have someone coming to see it. He should be here any minute.”
“This house isn’t for sale,” Paul insisted.
“I don’t understand!”
He grabbed her and she dropped her folder as he dragged her against his chest and kissed her. When she could take half a step back she looked up at him, clearly dazed now as well as flustered. “You foolish woman,” he said gently. “Didn’t you recognize my voice?”
“How could I?” she managed to snap, though without much force. “I haven’t heard it in over a week.”
“We’re the ones coming to look at the house. I called you this morning. You’ve been waiting for us.”
“I’ve been waiting for you,” she corrected, her voice soft. She touched his cheek, and then the dreamy, contented look vanished from her face and she said, “There’s no going back, you know. I’m not leaving Barnes Lake so don’t think you can just put off this fight until later.”
He laughed, grabbed her by the waist, and spun her around. “Where would I go? I need to be with you, Angie. And besides, I have a job to do here.”
“What job?” she asked, suspicious.
OFF THE MARKET Page 9