Hello, It's Me

by Wendy Markham

  Didn’t she watch her own father visibly flinch whenever he looked at her in those grim months after after Mom died?

  “You look more like her than she did, in the end,” he often said, sounding a little hoarse.

  Poor Dad.

  Poor me.

  Annie isn’t sure which is more torturous: watching a loved one fade slowly and painfully with every passing day, or waking up one morning to find them gone without warning. One thing is certain: She’ll never make the mistake her father did and remarry.

  Not that Annie has anything against the stepmother who joined the family rather abruptly after Dad met her on a cruise a few years ago. It’s just that Carolyn isn’t Mom. And what she is—a quietly pleasant middle-aged woman—simply isn’t enough. Not for any of them. Even Dad. The spark went out of Larry Grimes’s eyes when his wife died, and clearly, nothing can ever bring it back. Not even the companionship of a woman who shares his love of golf and cards—something, ironically, Annie’s mother did not.

  Obviously, it takes more than shared interests to create sparks.

  At least he isn’t alone, Annie tells herself frequently, shuddering at the memories of what she mistakenly assumed were the darkest days of her life. Dad alone was even worse than Dad at Mom’s deathbed for weeks on end. He was just . . . lost. Little boy lost. Utterly bereft—the way Annie feels without Andre.

  “So you have two children?” Thom asks, glancing around the cluttered living room.

  “Yes. But it looks like I have ten, doesn’t it?” Annie tries to see the place through his eyes, noticing the heaps of primary-colored plastic toys, the television tuned to cartoons, the furniture and rugs that are already askew.

  “Do you want something to drink?” Annie offers her visitor belatedly, then wonders what she’ll do if he says yes. It’s not as though she has an iced pitcher of lemonade or chilled Perrier and lime wedges at the ready.

  “That would be nice.”

  Damn.

  “What can I get you?” Annie asks. “Coffee? Juice box?”

  He laughs.

  So, after a moment, does she. But she says, “Trust me, I’m not kidding.”

  “Well, that’s fine. I’ve had enough coffee today, so I’ll take juice.”

  “Juice box.”

  “Juice box,” he amends with a grin, and Annie feels an odd flicker of something she has no business feeling.

  “Scary Cherry Berry or One Bad Apple?” Annie calls from her kitchen as Thom walks over to the couch.

  It takes him a moment to realize she must be talking about juice box flavors.

  He calls back, “Surprise me.”

  Surprise me.

  Yes. Annie Harlowe already has done just that.

  She isn’t married after all.

  A loud thump sounds overhead, so violent it shakes the glass in the Victorian light fixture above the front door. Thom looks up, wondering if something happened to one of the kids.

  But their mother, opening and closing the refrigerator in the next room, isn’t rushing frantically to the scene, meaning she obviously isn’t concerned that bodily harm has come to her offspring.

  Thom decides not to be, either, and goes back to pondering Annie’s startling marital status.

  So the wedding ring in his pocket—the ring she so desperately wants back on her finger—was placed there by her late husband. Annie is single.

  Well, not exactly. She’s widowed.

  Yes. And widows are single.

  And the fact that Annie is single changes everything.

  Now you can fall in love with her.

  Thom blinks.

  That particular thought seems to have come out of nowhere . . .

  Kind of like his earlier response to Merlin’s request that he get the ring back to Annie pronto.

  “What is with you today?” he mutters to himself, sinking onto the couch . . .

  . . . and bolting up again with a yelp.

  “Are you all right?” Annie appears in the doorway, clearly alarmed that bodily harm might have come to her visitor.

  “I’m fine. I just sat on . . . something.” Thom gingerly examines the cushion for whatever it was that bit his posterior, and retrieves only an innocuous-looking, inanimate piece of olive-green plastic.

  “Milo!” Annie shouts, rolling her eyes skyward.

  There’s another jarring thump overhead.

  “Are your kids all right?” Thom asks, trying not to blatantly admire the patch of tanned midriff and navel visible where the hem of her white tank top fails to meet the waistband of her tattered shorts. In that getup, with bare feet and her dark hair falling in loose waves down her back, she’s Daisy Duke come to life; an adolescent boy’s fantasy.

  Except that Thom isn’t an adolescent boy. He’s a grown man with a thousand and one important things to accomplish today, none of which involve belly buttons.

  And that, he thinks illogically, shifting his attention to Annie’s face, is a real shame.

  “The kids are fine,” she informs him. “Milo’s just . . . um, he’s fine.” She raises her voice again, bellowing, “Milo! Get down here and pick up your Legos and your army guys!”

  Army guy?

  Thom examines the object in his hand and sees that it does, indeed, appear to be an army guy. He wonders why he never got to play with army guys when he was little as he hands it over to Annie. Then he turns to examine the cushion, wondering if he dares lower himself again.

  “Careful.” Annie leans past him to give the couch a quick sweep with her hand. He finds himself inhaling her distinct scent; one that makes him think of springtime and firelight.

  She pats the cushion, apparently deeming it safe for immediate occupancy. “Okay, you’re good. Have a seat.”

  He does, without incident, and glances at the television, where an animated, buck-toothed yellow sponge in boxy Bermuda shorts and a tie is laughing maniacally. Mesmerized by the bizarre sight, he looks away only when footsteps suddenly pound down the stairs.

  A child leaps into the room, the pillowcase that’s tucked into the back collar of his T-shirt billowing behind him.

  “Pick up your toys, Superman,” Annie says, heading back to the kitchen with a toss of a gloriously unkempt mane that’s downright begging somebody’s fingers to comb through it.

  “I’m not Superman. I’m Batman.”

  “Pick up your toys, Batman.”

  “Who’re you?” Milo asks, parking himself in front of the sofa and narrowing a pair of eyes that are precisely the shade of his sister’s and his mother’s.

  “I’m Spider-Man,” Thom responds, quite cleverly if he does say so himself. He sticks out his hand. “Very pleased to meet you there, Batman.”

  “You’re not Spider-Man.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “You don’t look like Spider-Man. Spider-Man would never wear pink.”

  “This isn’t pink,” Thom protests, looking down at his shirt.

  “It looks pink.”

  “Well, it isn’t. It’s Nantucket Red.”

  “Spider-Man doesn’t wear ’tucket red, either. He wears spiderweb red.”

  “You’re right. He does . . . but only when he’s—I’m fighting crime. I’m not fighting crime today.”

  “Why not?”

  “Slow crime day.”

  Annie’s son seems to be weighing the likelihood that Thom is telling the truth.

  “What do you wear on a fast crime day?” he demands.

  “I wear my official Spider-Man uniform in blue and web red, of course.”

  “It’s not a uniform.”

  Thom tries again. “A leotard?”

  “No!” Milo recoils with the horror of a boy who has a younger sister and knows all too well what a leotard is. “Spider-Man isn’t a girl. He’s a man and he wears a costume.”

  “Curses. Foiled again.”

  The little boy’s jaw drops. “You’re a bad guy in disguise, aren’t you?”

  “Nope.”
>
  “But bad guys say ‘Curses, foiled again.’”

  “Well, I’m a good guy.”

  “But not a superhero.”

  “No,” Thom agrees, “not a superhero.”

  “Well, I’m a superhero,” says Batman. “And I have superpowers.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like I can fly. Almost. Sometimes I crash-land.”

  Which would explain the thumping overhead. Thom forces back a smile.

  “As soon as I get better at it, I’m going to fly up to heaven and see my daddy,” Milo goes on, and Thom instantly finds himself struggling against unexpected tears instead.

  The thing is . . . Thom never cries.

  Ever.

  He didn’t cry when he broke his leg falling out of a tree when he was nine and he didn’t cry when his sister got married and he didn’t cry when his own father died.

  So why is he on the verge of tears because this little boy’s father died?

  It’s the word “daddy” that gets to him, Thom realizes. First when the little girl said it, and now when the little boy did.

  His own father was Father. Never Daddy. Perhaps if Thomas Brannock III had been Daddy, Thom might have cried when he lost him.

  “When I find Daddy, I’m going to bring him back with me,” Milo informs Thom.

  “Good for you.” Thom probably shouldn’t encourage the kid, but he can’t quite bring himself to dash his hopes, either.

  “Yeah. It stinks around here without him. And if my daddy was here he could find the treasure at Copper Beach.”

  “Treasure?”

  “Yeah, somebody lost it near Copper Beach a hundred years ago and my daddy was trying to find it. I was helping him.”

  “Oh. Well that’s . . .”

  Heartbreaking. That’s what it is. Thom swallows hard.

  “And if my daddy was here,” Milo goes on dreamily, “my sister would stop having nightmares all the time and my mom wouldn’t be so tired all the time, or sad, and she’d stop crying and Daddy could help her do stuff and he could help me do stuff and I’d fine’ly learn how to tie my shoes.”

  Thom responds to this fresh trail of tearjerkers with a lame, “You don’t know how to tie your shoes?”

  “Dad was s’posed to teach me.” Milo shakes his head. “And I can’t ride a bike, either. Or shoot bows and arrows.”

  “Well, I can probably take care of the shoe thing right now. Got a pair of sneakers with laces?”

  “Yeah! I’ll be right back!” Milo dashes toward the stairs, cape flapping.

  Shaking his head, Thom surveys the army guy, hastily tossed onto the floor, and the Legos strewn in the entryway.

  The last thing Annie would ever expect to see in her living room is a billionaire tycoon crawling around picking up Legos and watching SpongeBob SquarePants on television out of the corner of his eye.

  But that is precisely the sight that greets her when she returns from the kitchen with a juice box for him and a cup of coffee for her.

  “What are you doing?” she asks, stopping short in horror.

  “Picking up Legos.”

  “I can see that, but . . . why?”

  “Because they’re there,” he says affably, dumping a handful of plastic bricks into a nearby tub that holds the rest of them.

  “But you don’t have to— Milo!” she calls. “Get down here! Where are you?”

  “He’s finding his sneakers,” Thom says helpfully, and gestures. “Is that my juice box?”

  “Oh. Yes.” She hands it over and waits for a reaction, fairly certain the man has never seen, much less ingested, a juice box before.

  “Snazzy Black Razzy,” he reads from the label.

  “I was all out of cherry and apple.”

  “That’s okay. I’m a big fan of Snazzy Black Razzy.”

  Sure he is. Just like she’s a big fan of Krug Grande Cuvée, the champagne served at his party last night. She never heard of it until she found herself pouring it, and she’s willing to bet he never heard of Snazzy Black Razzy until now.

  Still, he’s looking it over with interest . . . or so she thinks, until she realizes he’s more likely trying to figure out what to do with it.

  “Here,” she says, gesturing for him to return it to her. She pries the plastic-encased straw from the side of the carton, slips it from its wrapper, and pokes it through the hole in the top of the box.

  “Huh. Learn something new every day.” He takes it back, sips, and smiles. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” She raises her coffee to her lips.

  The beverage is lukewarm and so bitterly potent, thanks to six hours on the burner, that even her liberal addition of milk and sugar can’t mask the taste.

  Still, it’s caffeine, and God knows she needs it to get through yet another long day. She didn’t sleep well. She kept dreaming that the phone was ringing, that Andre was on the other end, that every time she picked it up, the line went dead.

  “What’s the matter? Too strong?”

  She looks up to find Thom watching her.

  “The coffee? No, it’s fine.” Annie wonders how to go about politely getting her ring back and hustling him out of here. He seems to be in no hurry to rush home and resume polishing his silver and gold or whatever it is men like him do with their spare time.

  “Do you want me to turn off the television?” he asks.

  “No, that’s all right. I usually just leave it on.”

  “For how long?”

  All day, every day doesn’t seem like an acceptable reply, so she says, “A while. It keeps the kids occupied while I’m busy with other things.”

  “Your son is charming,” Thom informs her, giving the cushion another quick once-over before sitting on the couch.

  “Oh, he’s charming, all right.”

  “He says he can fly but he can’t tie his shoes, so I offered to teach him.”

  “To fly?”

  He smirks. “To tie his shoes. I’m afraid my wings are in the shop this weekend.”

  “Well, that’s a shame.”

  “Yeah. It’s such a pain to walk everywhere.”

  “Or drive,” she adds, having glimpsed the shiny BMW convertible in her driveway. “Listen, I know you probably think I’m a lousy mother for not teaching him how to tie his shoes, but—”

  “I don’t think that.”

  Maybe he doesn’t, but she does.

  She goes on wearily, needing to explain to him—or maybe mostly to herself, “My husband had a lot more patience than I do. He was trying to teach Milo how to tie his laces when . . . well, he never got around to it.”

  He never got around to a lot of things.

  She follows Thom’s gaze to the mantel, with its large collection of framed photos of Andre, the variably-sized rectangles scattered as randomly as gravestones in an ancient cemetary.

  “So Milo’s still wearing Velcro sneakers,” she rushes on, looking at the floor, “and I keep promising to teach him to tie—I even bought him regular sneakers with laces before school ended, so he’d be ready. But I haven’t had a chance. I’ve been . . . busy.”

  “Yeah, well . . . I know how that goes.”

  “You do?”

  “The being busy thing,” he says with a laugh. “It seems like I never have time to do anything these days.”

  Really. Then why the heck is he sitting on her couch slurping a juice box?

  Annie takes another sip of her coffee, wishing the caffeine would hurry and do its thing. She’s absolutely and thoroughly exhausted. She’d love to sink into the recliner opposite the couch, but she’s afraid that if she sits down, Thom will never take his cue and leave.

  Why do you want him out of here so badly, Annie?

  It isn’t just because she’s anxious to have her ring back, or because the house is a mess, or because she has other things to do, like go out and buy chocolate chip ice cream.

  No, it’s mostly because his presence makes her nervous. And the thing about it tha
t makes her nervous is, ironically, that he doesn’t seem . . . well, out of place.

  You would expect a man like Thom Brannock to stick out here like antique English bone china in a Tupperware cabinet, but he doesn’t. He seems oddly comfortable.

  Which makes Annie decidedly uncomfortable.

  She can’t go getting used to having dashing billionaire tycoons dropping in for midafternoon juice boxes, because life isn’t like that. Her life, anyway.

  Her life is about unpaid bills and untied shoelaces. Stray army guys and scattered Legos and kids who ask too many questions and think they can fly.

  Meanwhile, his life is about . . . well, what is it about, exactly?

  She decides it can’t hurt to ask him. The worst that can happen is that he’ll think she’s rude and leave.

  “What is it that keeps you so busy, Mr. Brannock?”

  “Don’t call me that. It’s Thom, remember? With—”

  “An ‘h.’ Got it. What is it that you do, Thom?” She lifts her mug to her lips again.

  “I’m in finance,” is the reply, which could mean any number of things . . . none of which she is likely to understand.

  Before she can think of an intelligent question to ask about finance, he looks around and says, “This is a great old house.”

  Annie nearly snorts coffee through her nose.

  “This great old house is falling apart,” she tells him, just in case he hasn’t noticed the sagging steps and worn moldings and uneven hardwood floors.

  “I think it has character.”

  Annie smiles. She can’t help herself. She wants to hate this man, but she likes him . . . and not just because he likes her house.

  “Your place has character, too.”

  “My house has about as much character as the guests at my party do.”

  She raises an eyebrow.

  “Don’t look so surprised, Annie. I don’t have any illusions about where I live or who lives around me.”

  “Then why do you do it?”

  “What?”

  “Live there? Surround yourself with . . . those people?”

  “They’re the only people I know, and it’s the only summer house I own.”