New Man in Town

by Lyn Cote

  A knock came at the door and Peter’s voice called her. Followed by her entourage, she walked to meet him. He stared at her—openmouthed. Oh, dear, he must think I’m not dressed appropriately!

  “Wow!” He gave her a wide grin. “You look incredible.”

  She blushed at his words and the ladies around her chuckled. But, Peter, what if I fail you?

  “That was quick, wasn’t it?” Peter shut down the single engine plane. “This is going to be fun.”

  Thea let herself breath again. She hadn’t told Peter she’d never flown before and that small planes terrified her. When he’d driven her to the local airport, she’d been too stunned to protest. Thank you, God. We didn’t die.

  “I can’t wait to fly you over the lakes this winter after a few good snows. It’s an incredible sight.”

  Feeling woozy, Thea closed her eyes and ignored Peter’s words completely. After a blur of night driving through a strange town, Peter stopped the rented car under a canopy. He helped Thea out and gave his keys to a valet. As he led her up the blue-carpeted ramp to the country club, he whispered to her, “I’ve told my friends I’d be bringing a special lady with me.”

  Only her feelings for Peter had given her the courage to come this far. He needed a woman who could help him in his work. If only I could be that woman. Inside, he led her through an elegant ivory ballroom to a distinguished gentleman. “This is Bob Smith, our host tonight.”

  She greeted him. He led them to the donated items. Among them were an antique bowl and ewer in white, painted with pink rosebuds; an original watercolor of a lake scene; and a new set of golf clubs. All had been donated for the silent auction.

  Bob explained, “We’ve set up the auction a little more loosely than usual. We’ll let people write down a bid, then come back and raise it if they choose. We figured it would push the bids higher and make more money for the camp.”

  “Great!” Peter put his arm around Thea. “Are the people who donated these items here tonight?”

  Bob nodded. “I’ll introduce you to them.”

  As they walked around the hall, the room began to fill up. Thea eyed the women discreetly. They glittered with diamonds and emeralds over linen suits, silk dresses. Would her simple sheath, vintage rhinestones and purse pass muster? The high pitch of their voices floated and danced above the low tones of the men. And every woman’s eyes located Peter’s attractive figure and lingered there. She couldn’t blame them, but with each appraising look, she felt her self-confidence dwindle.

  Soon people lined up in front of the tables with the auction items on them and began writing bids. Thea concentrated on smiling and repeating names correctly while Peter told jokes, complimented ladies and talked sports with everyone. Peter’s animation and enjoyment grew with each person he met. How does he do that?

  She, in contrast, seemed to lose a bit of herself, of her presence with each introduction to another stranger. Moment by moment, she felt herself shrinking.

  “Thea, is that you?”

  Hearing her name, she turned to see an older man, one of the fishermen who’d stayed at her family’s fishing cabins as long as she could remember. “Mr. Schyler.”

  “What are you doing here?” He shook hands firmly with her.

  Thea motioned toward Peter who was in the middle of telling a joke to another couple.

  “You came with Peter Della?” the man asked in a surprised tone.

  “Yes, his camp is the Double L, you know, the one right next door to our property.”

  “And he brought you with him?” The older gentleman looked puzzled.

  “Yes.” It was obvious that the man couldn’t understood why Peter would bring her here. Was it so obvious she didn’t belong in this exclusive setting?

  Peter pulled her close to him. “An old friend?”

  She introduced them. Peter greeted Schyler cordially. The two of them chatted about fishing. But the disbelieving look in the old fisherman’s eye crushed her. Another measure of her self-assurance dwindled.

  Thea’s smile froze in place. She couldn’t concentrate on the words being said. The voices in the room blended into a raucous sea of sound. She felt queasy after a while from the sheer volume. She finally pulled away from Peter, whispering she needed the powder room.

  Inside the sheltered confines of the luxurious ladies room, Thea sank gratefully onto the tapestry-covered sofa. A young auburn-haired woman came in. After a few moments at the mirror, she glanced at Thea, then away, then back. Thea became wary.

  The redhead sat down beside her on the sofa. “Hi, I’m Brooke Martin. And you’re the mystery woman who arrived with Peter.”

  Thea smiled politely. Why are you talking to me?

  “I haven’t seen Peter look so happy in, well, in three years now. I hear you live right next to Peter’s camp.”

  Thea nodded.

  “I’m so glad Peter’s taking another chance on love. After Alanna jilted him just a month before their wedding…Well!” Brooke threw out her hands in a broad gesture. “I’m so glad he’s put it into perspective at last. Alanna just wasn’t meant to be with Peter, don’t you agree?”

  “I never met her.” Thea’s heart lurched and beat in a wild irregular rhythm.

  Brooke squeezed Thea’s hand. “We’ll talk later. I have to get back out and see if I need to raise my bid on that watercolor!” Before she left, she turned back. “You’re just right for Peter. He needed someone more down to earth. Bye!”

  Down to earth? What did that mean? Thea didn’t know, but obviously Alanna had not been. Why hadn’t Peter ever mentioned that he’d been engaged? Why hadn’t she realized that a man like Peter would have had serious relationships before? Wouldn’t a man tell the woman he loved about a previous engagement? Nothing in her solitary past had prepared her for falling in love—especially with someone like Peter. Why didn’t you tell me?

  Finally Thea made herself get up and go back outside. Though she heard Peter’s voice, she didn’t go to him. Instead, she found a chair near the auction items. Hopefully with all the activity around her, she would go unnoticed.

  She folded her hands in her lap and watched the bidding, trying to distract herself. Everyone seemed to be having a wonderful time, laughing and teasing. The sounds of hilarity made her own solemnity feel more pronounced. If I’m in love, why do I feel so isolated, unsure?

  Peter knew what being in love felt like. He had been engaged to a woman named Alanna. And Mr. Schyler’s puzzled expression had spoken volumes. Obviously Thea was too plain, too smalltown for someone like Peter. Maybe she hadn’t worn the price tag on her dress, but she hadn’t fooled anyone. Was that what Brooke had meant by “down to earth”? Thea’s sensation of being a trumpeter trying to play with a stringed quartet grew with each troubling thought.

  A sob swelled inside her. But years of living with Grandmother Lowell had schooled Thea in hiding her emotions. She squeezed the clasp of the beaded purse with tight fingers, but kept her outward serenity.

  “Are you all right?” Peter bent over her.

  She jumped. She’d been so lost in thought she hadn’t noticed Peter approaching. “I’m just a little tired.”

  “Sure?” He traced his finger down her cheek.

  She quivered with the agony of craving his touch, but feeling unworthy of it.

  “Having fun?”

  “Of course,” she lied.

  “You don’t want to just sit here, do. you?”

  “I’m enjoying the bidding.” A burst of laughter around the auction table interrupted them.

  “Well, I’ll sit with you—”

  “No!” She pushed him away. “You need to make contacts. That’s why we came.”

  “Contacts aren’t as important to me as you are. If you’re going to sit, I’m going to sit, too.” He reached for a nearby chair.

  Thea didn’t doubt him. She stood up. “I’ll come along. You came to make contacts.”

  He tucked her close to his side and took her away
with him. “I love having you with me. You do me proud.”

  Each word he said seared like a hot iron to her heart. For almost three hours, Thea smiled a frozen smile, repeated names she would never remember, laughed at jokes she didn’t follow. She gagged down caviar. Her feet ached. Her head echoed with loud voices. She pulled deeper and deeper within herself until she thought she might vanish from sight. Finally the agony ended.

  In the car on the way to the airport, Peter’s enthusiasm bubbled over. “What a night! Almost six thousand dollars in cash from the silent auction and pledges for another three thousand. You were great! Did you have a good time?”

  She nodded. Peter, I failed you! Why can’t you see that?

  Finally he drove through the entrance of the small airport. “You’re so quiet.”

  Even her fear of flying had waned. The plane was the quickest way home. She couldn’t wait to get onboard. She had begun to feel like a shell of a person, a hollow fake. “It’s been a long day.”

  “Yes, it has been. When we get into the plane, you just rest your head. I’ll be quiet and fly us home.”

  The flight home took forever because she relived her failure this evening. I thought I loved this man. But what do I know about being in love? Surely I should feel in harmony with him, not so inadequate, so distant.

  Past comments from Grandmother filtered into Thea’s weary mind. You didn’t want to go to the prom anyway. You’re not the flashy type. Some women just aren’t meant to gadabout Had Alanna been the “flashy” type?

  Tonight in spite of Peter’s words, Thea had been no help at all to him. He needed a wife who could connect names and faces and remember them, who enjoyed being in crowds of people, who could think of charming or funny things to say to strangers. As she feigned sleep, a tear trickled down her cheek. Grandmother Lowell’s voice taunted her, He didn’t ask you to marry him, did he?

  Finally Peter drove them home over the quiet forested roads. “Thea, you’re not just tired. You’re up-set.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about Alanna?” She couldn’t have stopped these words from coming out any more than she could have stopped the moon rising over them.

  “Was it Brooke who told you about Alanna?” He sounded perturbed.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about her?” Thea hated the tremor in her voice.

  “That was three years ago.”

  “Alanna was very different from me, wasn’t she?”

  “You’re nothing like her!”

  The words flayed her like a whip. She could imagine the sophisticated, educated, beautiful Alanna as if she’d seen her. Thea looked over at him in the dim light. Pain from her failure cut her to shreds inside. “I don’t think you understand that I’m not what you think I am.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This evening was an absolute agony for me. I don’t belong in your world.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean. You were wonderful tonight. More importantly, you’re the woman I’ve waited for, the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with.”

  Thea became an ice sculpture.

  Peter talked on, argued on, but the words flowed over her, adding layer upon layer to the ice she felt inside and out. At long last, he drove up to her door. He gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white. “Why won’t you listen to me!”

  Emotionally drained, Thea turned to him. “I’m sorry. You need someone I can never be.”

  “I don’t need anything but your love!”

  “I’m sorry.” Thea got out of the car and walked to her door. Her sorrow flowed through her like someone singing a dirge, soft and true.

  As Peter watched her walk away, he felt an ache inside him. He recognized it—rejection. The crushing pain of it snuffed out his anger. How could she just walk away? Holding in the torment, he cried out silently to God, Is this how it’s always going to be! Am I always going to be the one left behind?

  Chapter Fourteen

  Thunder rattled the kitchen windows. Fearfully Thea looked out. Lightning crisscrossed the black sky. Raindrops splashed the windows. Molly whined at Thea’s feet. Thea felt like whining, too.

  “Don’t worry, Molly. We’ll just stay in tonight. I just wish Cynda was home from the lodge.” So I wouldn’t be here alone and miserable in a thunderstorm.

  Molly gave her another whine. The phone rang. With a sigh, Thea lifted the receiver.

  Cynda’s voice came clearly, “Thea, I’m going to spend the night over here at the lodge.”

  “That’s probably a good idea.” What she said was the truth, but she wanted Cynda home to take her mind off failing Peter. “This is just the beginning of what’s supposed to be a bad night. When this front is done with us, another one is on the way.”

  “Yeah, the sheriff called and said the storm was good for the camp. He said the vandal won’t come out tonight.”

  “That’s true.” Thea hadn’t thought much about the vandal. Her misery had been too deep.

  “Irene says I should get off the phone. It’s dangerous with this storm.”

  “She’s right.”

  “Thea, wait! You’ll come over tomorrow for lunch, won’t you? There’ll be thirty campers this week and Peter’s bringing a whole bunch of people, you know, donors.”

  “I’ll try.” Thea hung up. More campers tomorrow. Peter wouldn’t stop his plans. He would go on. But what about me? Thunder pounded overhead. Thea sat down. Alone. Glum. Cynda’s cheery voice played in her mind, making her more dejected by contrast.

  Peter.

  Thea pressed her fist to her mouth to hold back tears. She’d spent the week hiding tears from Cynda, her piano students, Aunt Louella. Hot tears beaded in her eyes.

  “Well, I’m alone now.” A sob shook her. Leaning her head on her hand, she wept in huge swells like the waves of rain drenching the kitchen windows. “Why did you make me the way I am, Lord? Why couldn’t I be the kind of woman Peter needs? I love him so.”

  The phone rang. As though swimming upward from deep water, Thea swallowed her tears and lifted the receiver. “Hello.”

  “That Della just doesn’t get it.” The voice was harsh and muffled.

  Thea stood up.

  “He won’t stop till I hurt him.”

  Shock echoed through her. It can’t be!

  “Tell him not to come back tomorrow or he’ll get a nasty surprise.” Click.

  Thea hung up and stood staring at the phone. Then her knees weakened and she sank onto the chair. Oh, no, dear God. What she had just discovered shocked her to her core. It couldn’t be, could it?

  Yesterday Thea had received a poison pen letter from the vandal. She hadn’t recognized the scrawl. But tonight she recognized the voice.

  He’d tried to disguise it, but she knew…she knew the vandal’s identity. I have to tell the sheriff! But her mind rebelled.

  Crash! Thunder exploded over the lake. The lights went out. A power outage. Thea lifted the receiver off the hook. No dial tone.

  “I’ll have to drive to the sheriff’s office,” Thea muttered in the darkness, quaking inside with disbelief and dread. Her distress demanded expression. Over the thunder, she began shouting, “Lord, can’t someone else do this? I don’t want to be the one to turn him in. This is an awful storm. I should stay home! Lord, I don’t want to be the one!”

  Even as she argued with God, she pulled on her khaki slicker, grabbed her yellow lantern flashlight and went through the breezeway to the garage. She didn’t have a choice and she knew it. “I know. I have to do it!”

  Thea started the car and backed it out of the garage into the lashing wind. She hunched over the steering wheel trying to see well enough to drive. Lightning flashed like a child flicking a light switch for fun. The deluge coursing down her windshield nearly blinded her. Her knuckles on the wheel turned white from her intense grip.

  Thea raised her voice over the wind and rain. “I’m scared, Lord! Why do I have to drive through this killer storm to turn in th
e vandal? I’m frightened. What if the sheriff doesn’t believe me?” Another thought upset her more. “What did he mean about a ‘nasty surprise’?”

  She drove over a narrow bridge. As she went through a low spot, sheets of water flew up from under her wheels like unfurled wings. The thunder accelerated—pounding, exploding like the finale of the “1812 Overture” conducted by a madman.

  Thea swerved on a slippery slope and felt a momentary loss of control as she skidded. She shouted, “Help! I’m frightened, Lord! No one else knows who he is! Something could happen to Peter! But I’m scared! Help me!”

  For God has not given us a spirit of fear. The words came from the recesses of her memory. The phrase repeated, then Thea, remembering the rest, finished the verse aloud, “But of power and love and discipline. Second Timothy 1:7.”

  Trembling, Thea pulled over and parked. She felt weak with fear. She turned on her four-way flashers. Leaning her forehead onto her steering wheel, she prayed, “Father, being afraid isn’t anything new for me. I’ve been afraid as long as I can remember—ever since Mama became ill. But I don’t want to be afraid, Lord. I know this fear isn’t from You. You’re not the one who has used my fear to control me.”

  For God has not given us a spirit of fear.…

  “I know, Lord. I love Peter. But I’ve been so scared. I’ve been so frightened that I may have lost him. But I don’t want a life without him. Keep him safe. Give me courage. Make the sheriff believe me!”

  The thunder became more distant. Thea felt tension leave her. Her heart began to beat normally again. She released her four-way flashers and eased back onto the road. She drove on, but the lessening thunder and lightning no longer seemed a nightmare. She grew calm. She felt the gloom she’d carried ever since the disastrous auction lift. She repeated to herself, “‘For God has not given me a spirit of fear.’“

  She pulled into the parking lot of the sheriff’s office, then ran through the quiet rain inside. The sheriff sat at his desk, alone in the office. “What brings you out on a night like…” He interrupted himself by surging to his feet. “Has something happened at the camp!” He reached for his hat.