by Laura Kirwan
Meaghan shivered. The porch, now heavily shaded, was chilly without the early June sunshine. She stood up and tried putting some weight on her foot. Experimenting, she discovered she could walk on her heel, avoiding the rest of the foot, without too much pain.
She limped into the house. She stopped in the hallway bathroom, patted her nap-disheveled hair back into some semblance of its normal shape, and went to find her family.
Matthew and Russ sat at the kitchen table. Matthew worked on some kind of puzzle while Russ read a cookbook.
“Hi, Daddy,” Meaghan said, squeezing his shoulder. An unfamiliar wave of tenderness broke over her as she looked at him.
“I did my homework,” he said with pride. “All done, Becky, take a look.”
“Dad, that’s Meaghan,” Russ said, not looking up from his cookbook. “We see Becky tomorrow. At the hospital.”
Matthew sighed and looked up at her. “I don’t know what’s happening anymore.”
Meaghan leaned her cheek on top of his head. “I don’t know what’s happening most of the time anymore either.”
Matthew smiled up at her. “Becky’s never met Meaghan.”
Russ shook his head and put down the book. “No, Dad. She hasn’t. Maybe Meaghan can go to the hospital with us tomorrow.”
Matthew nodded, then sat up straighter. “Car in the driveway.” He jumped up with a spryness belying his age and headed for the front door.
Russ sighed. “Half the time he can’t hear you even if you shout in his ear, but he always knows when someone drives up. It’s like Duke and the fridge door.”
Duke had been their childhood dog. A scruffy German Shepherd mix, by age twelve Duke was stone deaf, except for the refrigerator door. He could be sound asleep upstairs under a bed, but if someone opened the fridge even a crack to peek in, Duke came running.
Russ got up to follow Matthew to the front door. “It’s probably Jamie. He said he’d stop by with some stuff for you to read when I told him you’d jammed your toe and wouldn’t be by for a few days.”
“Jamie?” Meaghan asked, in shock. “Jamie Smith, my deputy? Oh crap, Russ. Look at me.”
“Relax. You look fine. It’s Eldrich, not Manhattan. Nobody expects you to be all dolled up.”
Meaghan scowled. “I’d settle for bathed.”
Russ dismissed her with a wave of his hand. The doorbell rang. Russ trotted out to help Matthew with the front door.
Meaghan hobbled after him. So much for a professional first impression.
She knew Matthew had known Jamie since he was a boy. It was Matthew who encouraged him to go to law school and Matthew who gave him his first legal job clerking part-time in the solicitor’s office.
After several hours of relatively normal behavior, even if he still didn’t recognize his daughter, Matthew got weird again. She had a moment to register Jamie—tall, young, athletic build, wearing khakis and a black golf shirt, shy smile— standing in the hallway. Nervous to meet his new boss, she thought.
Then Matthew swept into a deep bow in front of him and said something in a language Meaghan had never heard before. He straightened up and smiled. “Welcome.”
Jamie blushed. “Matthew, it’s me. It’s Jamie.”
“I know who you are, Jamie. Your father is well?” Matthew accented Jamie’s name oddly, making it sound something like “szhumay.”
Meaghan gave Jamie a sympathetic smile while Russ came to the rescue. “Dad, it’s Jamie. Your old law clerk. He works for Meaghan now.”
“Russ, don’t interrupt,” Matthew said. “I’ve known the prince since he was a boy.” Matthew bowed again. “I am, as always, at your service.”
Jamie’s nervous grin smoothed into a deeper smile. He bowed his head. “For which I am always grateful, my friend.” He spoke in a slow, rich voice. He glanced up at Meaghan and winked. His eyes were dark indigo blue. If he were twenty years older, I’d be in trouble, Meaghan thought. Too young for her tastes, thank God, but a honey, no doubt about it.
Satisfied by this response, Matthew patted Jamie’s arm with a smile. “I’ll leave you kids to talk shop.” He ambled back to the kitchen.
Jamie took a couple steps toward Meaghan and held out his hand. “You must be Meaghan. I’m Jamie Smith. Welcome to Eldrich.”
Meaghan shook his hand. “I never thought of playing along. All day long he’s thought I’m somebody else. This morning he thought I was a witch. At least you get to be royalty.”
Russ coughed. Jamie stiffened for a moment, then shrugged. “It seems to make him happy.”
Again, she had the quick intuition of a lie—some shared information her brother and this young man didn’t want her to know. Too much stress, she thought. It’s making me nutty.
Russ served them lemonade and a plate of cookies, and left them alone in the living room. Jamie had brought her a copy of the city ordinance book along with some other documents—budgets, memos, a city organization chart. He had the Pennsylvania Code on a flash drive until she could access the online version at city hall.
Meaghan needed to get better acquainted with the specifics of Pennsylvania law, but it was familiar stuff after all the years she’d spent working in local government. With just over five thousand residents, Eldrich was small enough to keep the politicians from getting into expensive trouble. Shallow pockets meant less of a fiscal safety cushion, but also limited the range of bad ideas available to elected officials. A $100,000 boondoggle was much easier to clean up than a multimillion dollar one.
As if reading her thoughts, Jamie said, “Eldrich is kind of sleepy. Must seem like Mayberry after Phoenix. It’s not a badly run town, but things have slipped a bit since Matthew left.”
Meaghan shook her head with a smile. “I never actually worked for Phoenix itself. I worked for a couple of smaller cities and the county.”
“But it’s basically all one big city, right?”
“Yeah, sort of, I guess. Not as self-contained as Eldrich.”
Jamie chuckled. “Not as dinky, you mean.”
“Ouch. Am I that transparent?”
Jamie smile widened, his eyes crinkling. It was a freer happier expression than the nervous grin in the hallway or the smile he’d given Matthew. In that moment, she could see the boy he had once been. It was extraordinarily disarming.
He must be magic with a jury, Meaghan thought. What’s he doing in Eldrich handling municipal slip and falls?
“No,” he said. “You aren’t transparent at all, but I remember how I felt coming back here after law school in Philadelphia.”
“Which school?”
“Temple. Not in a great part of town so it was even a bigger shock to come back to Eldrich.”
Meaghan smiled. “Well, I’d be lying if said I wasn’t suffering Internet withdrawal and all the trees didn’t freak me out a little.”
Jamie leaned forward, now serious. “It’s hard to see your dad like this.”
It wasn’t a question for her, she realized, but a statement about Jamie.
“You’ve known Matthew since you were a kid?”
He nodded. “It was a bad time. We had to leave . . .” A moment’s hesitation. “We had to leave the place we lived really fast and got here with nothing. Matthew helped us get on our feet.”
“How old were you?”
“I was twelve.”
“And you’ve lived in Eldrich since?”
He sat back. “Not the whole time. I went to Mansfield University for undergrad. It’s real close so I got back to Eldrich on weekends a lot. And then the three years in Philly.”
“But you came back.”
“I did. I feel at home here. It’s safe. My wife had some culture shock at first. But she’s good with it now.
If he’d known Matthew for what must be almost twenty years, Meaghan calculated, then he must know something of their turbulent history. Best to deal with it right away.
“I guess you know Matthew and I haven’t been very close over the years.”
Now it was Meaghan’s turn to blush. “I’m sorry. I put you on the spot there. It’s just . . .”
Just what? It would help to clear the air if she had to work with this kid every day. But beneath the pragmatism, she realized, lay jealousy, coiled like a snake. Jamie had found Matthew in his life at about the same age Meaghan had lost him.
She continued. “I know you’ve been closer to him than I have. I figure it’s better to deal with that upfront than tiptoe around it.”
Jamie nodded. “I get that.” He looked away from her. “I don’t . . . my father and I . . .” He met her gaze again. “I understand how things go wrong. And it’s none of my business anyway.” He smiled again, but it was restrained, sad even. “But you’re here now.”
He looked so woeful for a moment that Meaghan felt a pang of . . . maternal instinct? Like I’d know what that felt like, she thought. “I’m here now.”
The conversation was more casual after that. Less about work, more personal details, but easy. Two people getting to know each other.
His wife was named Patrice. He had two small children. His daughter, called Liddy, short for Elizabeth, was four and his son, Ben, was not quite two. With pride, he pulled out his cell phone and showed her some photos. Patrice was petite and lovely, with a determined set to her jaw. Liddy had wild curly red hair and Ben had his father’s blue eyes.
They lived in a pre-war Tudor cottage—another storybook house, Meaghan thought—in the newer part of town, within walking distance of city hall. Patrice worked as a nurse at the local clinic. By Eldrich standards, they were doing well. They didn’t need Patrice’s paycheck to get by, but Jamie said she loved her job and it kept her from going small-town bonkers.
In spite of herself, Meaghan’s cynical heart warmed. Jamie was a good man, with a good head on his shoulders, who loved his wife and his kids. He liked to fly fish and play softball. He was a normal, well-adjusted, all-American guy. With a wonderful little family. In a wonderful little town that was his refuge from whatever domestic nightmare he’d grown up in. His hasty arrival in Eldrich and his stammering references to his father suggested a troubled start in life.
And it hit her. The war. What her mother—what her subconscious, Meaghan corrected herself—had been trying to tell her. Did she hear somewhere through the years that her father was working with refugees? Given his age, maybe Jamie was a refugee? From somewhere like Bosnia or Kosovo? One of the countries in the post-Yugoslavian mess? The timeline fit.
That had to be it. She had found a highly dramatic way to put some disconnected bits of memory about Matthew and Jamie together. That meant her dream was not an omen of incipient dementia. She breathed an internal sigh of relief. Her mother delivering it and telling her to give her father a break was nothing more than familial guilt for not having been a better daughter.
Jamie’s English was flawless American and his name sure didn’t sound eastern European. But dropping the accent and picking up a quintessentially western name—honestly, James Smith? He might as well be named John Doe. Both acts fit a traumatized kid fleeing an ugly civil war and a messed-up family life.
He didn’t mention any other family and Meaghan knew well enough not to ask. She’d ask Russ for the details over dinner.
Jamie looked at his watch. “It’s after five. Gotta pick up the kids from day care.” He handed Meaghan a business card with his cell number and told her to call him if she needed anything, asked her to give his best to Russ and Matthew, and hurried out the door. She hobbled over to the window to watch him go. He got into a minivan—of course, Meaghan thought, I bet it’s full of stale Cheerios, broken toys, and softball equipment—backed with care out of the driveway and drove down Holly Lane.
Well, good for him, she thought. To get out of whatever post-Soviet hellhole he’d been born into and build himself a nice little life here in Eldrich. The perfect little American dream. Somebody ought to have one. She was glad it was him.
Chapter 7
Meaghan tried at dinner to push Russ for details about Jamie’s past, but he and Matthew were reticent, to say the least. She could barely drag speech out of them at all until she’d finally dropped it and changed the subject.
What were they not telling her? Was Jamie here illegally maybe? His father was wanted for war crimes? What was the big secret?
Meaghan resigned herself to waiting for now. In another week she’d be neck deep in office gossip and would hear all the ugly details soon enough.
By the next morning, the swelling in her toe had subsided enough so that Meaghan could wear flip-flops. Right after breakfast, Russ and Matthew trekked off to the hospital in Williamsport, for Matthew’s weekly session with Becky, the occupational therapist. Meaghan was left alone for the first time in her new home.
With no Internet connection for her laptop and the cell signal still spotty, she used the landline phone in the kitchen. She scheduled her storage pod to be dropped off on Thursday despite resistance from the Williamsport trucking company that now had it. At first, they flat out refused to drive to Eldrich, despite its inclusion on the service area map on their website. Meaghan changed their minds by informing them what she did for a living, reading them the part of the contract about delivery, and threatening to call the corporate office.
Then she called the city’s human resources department about filling out her employment paperwork. A motherly woman named Gretchen told her not to worry about it yet. She advised Meaghan to get settled in at home and they could take care of it all next week.
That was all she could do with a sore foot and no Internet. The day yawned ahead of her, empty. The pace of small town life would take some getting used to. Meaghan sighed and poured herself another cup of Russ’s excellent coffee and topped it off with a dollop of fresh cream. At least the food was really good.
She sat back down at the table and took a sip, wondering what to do with herself. A firm rap on the back door made her jump. She spilled the almost-full cup of coffee onto the table.
Meaghan grabbed up her laptop, clutching it to her chest, before the spill spread under it.
Another rap on the door, more tentative than the first.
Meaghan hobbled around the table, holding her laptop to her chest like a sleeping baby, and peered through the window in the kitchen door.
A man stooped on the back porch, pulling amber jars from a cardboard box and setting them with care in a line next to the door.
One of Russ’s foodie guys.
Meaghan pulled open the door. The man stood up fast and took a step backward.
“I . . . I bring the honey for Russ,” he said in a thick accent. Tall, with a strong build, he had indigo eyes, like Jamie’s, but rheumy and bloodshot. He had once been quite handsome, she could see, but the effects of too much drinking lay over his face like a veil, muddying his features. He looked about her age, with shaggy dark-blond hair shot through with gray.
He looked familiar. And it hit her. He looked like Jamie with twenty extra years and a drinking problem. This man had to be Jamie’s father.
“Hi, um, Russ and my dad are at the hospital right now. Do I need to pay you or . . .”
He shook his head. “Nuh. Russ leave the money for me.” He pointed at an empty flower pot next to the door. “In there.”
“I’m Meaghan,” she said. Juggling her laptop to her other arm, she held out her right hand.
He didn’t take it. He gave her a small shy smile, like it was something he seldom did, and shook his head. “My hand is dirty. From the bees.” His exhausted eyes met hers for a moment, then darted away.
Her gut fluttered and she felt her face grow hot. She flashed on her observation from the day before when she met Jamie for the first time. If he were twenty years older, I’d be in trouble. It hadn’t been an observation, she realized. It had been a prediction.
She was in trouble.
Still know how to pic
k them, she thought. Some things never change.
Now, she wanted him gone. Fast. An attraction to Jamie’s alcoholic father was drama she didn’t need. She saw a battered, rusty white pick-up truck parked in the narrow access alley.
“Okay,” she said, realizing she still didn’t know his name. “I’ll tell Russ you were here.”
“It’s good for your father you’re here.” His accent was unlike anything she’d ever heard before. Like Scandinavia mixed with Russia by way of Central America. With a stop in Jamaica.
Bosnian, she thought. Or Croatian. Or something. Close enough.
He met her eyes and she felt the heat again. No, she thought. Bad Meaghan. Don’t go there.
“Thank you,” she answered. Leave, she thought. Please leave.
As if hearing her thoughts, he said, his voice now gruff, “Tell Russ to call me if he wants more.” He turned away from her and marched back to his truck.
She fled back into the house, her heart pounding. A door slammed. She heard the truck cough into life and head down the alley.
Meaghan waited a few moments, then peeped out the window to make sure he was gone.
She gathered up the jars of honey and brought them into the kitchen, lining them up on the counter. She unscrewed a jar lid, dipped the tip of her finger into the thick amber liquid, and tasted it. She’d always thought of honey as sweet but otherwise flavorless. But this stuff—it tasted like roses and cut grass. And sunshine.
Meaghan sighed. Of course it was the most amazing honey she’d ever tasted. Because the world always conspired against her that way if inappropriate romance was involved.
She didn’t fall in love often, but when she did, she fell hard. And it always—always—started with that flutter in her gut, that moment of heat. She liked to believe that love was a conscious choice, something she could control.
Except when she couldn’t.
Jamie’s father—she didn’t even know his name—Jamie’s father was a fixer-upper, exactly what she’d sworn off of for years. A sad, broken man in desperate need of rescue. Signs of a drinking problem normally short circuited any spark of attraction she might feel for a man. Yet here she was with honey on her fingers and butterflies in her belly.