Sweet Haven

by Shirlee McCoy

  “Did you hear me, Adeline?” Byron asked.

  “Of course I did,” she replied, her gaze fixed on the idling truck. What was the driver doing? Texting? Calling someone? Watching her watch him?

  She took a step back, trying to drag Tiny with her.

  He wouldn’t budge.

  “Then, what do you think? It’s a good solution, right?” Granddad demanded.

  She wasn’t sure since she hadn’t heard, but Byron was right. He could make his own decisions about treatment. He could decide where he wanted to stay and how he wanted to handle rehab. If he wanted to stay at her mother’s place—the Lamont place—he should be allowed to do it.

  “It’s a perfect solution,” she responded, nearly falling to her knees as Tiny dragged at the leash.

  “I knew you’d agree, doll! I’ll tell the doctor I’m moving in with you. Hopefully, he’ll let me out of here a little sooner.”

  “Me!? I only have one spare room, and it’s—” She started to protest, but he’d already hung up.

  “Not ready for a guest,” she muttered, tucking the phone into her pocket and using two hands to drag Tiny away from the curb.

  The truck engine died, the taillights going dark.

  Tiny whined frantically. No vicious barking from him. No protective stance. He dropped to the ground, rolled onto his back, his tail wagging frantically, as a man got out of the truck.

  “Everything okay, Adeline?” the guy called, his face illuminated by the streetlight, his nearly black hair gleaming.

  Sinclair Jefferson looked good in the morning.

  But then, he probably looked good all the time.

  He bent to scratch Tiny’s belly and offered Addie a smile that would have melted a lesser woman’s heart. Her heart didn’t even warm up. She’d been down that path before—the one where sweet smiles led to tentative kisses, where tentative kisses led to whispered promises and shared dreams.

  She wasn’t going down it again.

  “Fine,” she managed to say, her muscles trembling as she tried to tug the puppy to his feet. Unlike her, Tiny seemed determined to get as close as possible to the man.

  “Good. I saw you standing there, and worried that maybe you were having trouble getting your dog back home.”

  “I was talking to my grandfather,” she responded, brushing a few pieces of dog hair off her yoga pants. “I couldn’t talk and walk the dog at the same time.”

  “How is Byron doing?” He took the leash from her hand and pressed his palm to her lower spine.

  Suddenly they were walking, heading back toward her house, Tiny trotting along beside Sinclair as if he loved the leash and never ever tried to escape it.

  “He’s . . . fine.”

  “I’m hearing that as, ‘he’s miserable.’”

  “He doesn’t want to go to a convalescent center to do his rehab. He wants to stay with Mom.”

  “And Janelle doesn’t want him there?”

  “There are a lot of stairs in that old house. Stairs up to the porch. Stairs up to the bedrooms. He could reinjure himself.”

  “Right,” he said, and she heard a world of censorship in that one word.

  Which, of course, made her want to jump to her mother’s defense. “My mother is constantly on the road, traveling to show properties. She wouldn’t be home enough to help Granddad, and he’s really going to need it for a while.”

  “Right,” he repeated, and she flushed.

  “It’s not like we’re going to make him do something he doesn’t want to do.”

  “I don’t remember Byron as being the kind of person who would let someone make him do anything.”

  True. He wasn’t.

  “But,” he continued, “your mother isn’t that kind of person either.”

  They’d reached her street. She could see her little house—the porch light gleaming, the windows dark. What she wouldn’t give to be able to hide out there for one day. Just one day to sit alone and try to get her thoughts together. “Fortunately, we’ve found a solution that will satisfy both of them.”

  “Let me guess,” he said, his long strides shortened to match hers, his work boots crunching on the frozen grass as they crossed her yard. “He’s going to stay with you.”

  “Good guess,” she responded, digging the key out from her pocket and sliding it into the lock.

  “I didn’t know anyone around here did that,” he said, Tiny sitting right next to him, calm as could be.

  “Had their grandfather live with them?” She stepped into the vestibule and reached for Tiny’s leash. She’d have to keep it on him. The clock was ticking, and she needed to get him to Nehemiah’s and get to the shop. She had about twenty hours of work that needed doing before it opened.

  “No.” He chuckled, the sound as warm and rich as a cup of hot chocolate. “Locked their doors. Your mom has been reminding me for days that this is a nice, safe town.”

  “She’s probably trying to undo the damage she thinks my grandfather is doing,” she said without thinking.

  “What damage is that?” He stood on the threshold. He might have been waiting for an invitation to come in, but she didn’t have time for niceties. She didn’t have time for conversations, either, but . . . there she was, conversing, and looking into eyes so green she was wondering if the man wore contacts.

  “It’s a long story, and—”

  He cut in before she could say what she was thinking. “We both have busy schedules, so maybe you can tell me later?”

  “Sure,” she found herself saying. Even though she had no intention of talking to Sinclair again. Not if she could help it. The last thing she needed was more trouble, and Sinclair? He looked like a boatload of it.

  He nodded, stepped back. “See you around, Addie.”

  Seconds later, he was crossing the yard, his stride a little hitched, as if one of his legs was bothering him.

  Not her business if it was. Like she kept reminding herself, she didn’t need more trouble or problems or any other crap that came with relationships. Mother-daughter, grandfather-granddaughter. Sister-sister.

  She scowled. That might just be the stickiest relationship of all. Especially lately, when both Willow and Brenna called once or twice a week to check on Granddad’s progress. They both had a hundred excuses as to why they couldn’t visit.

  At the heart of the excuses was the truth—they hated Benevolence. They didn’t want to be part of the town they’d grown up in.

  As far as Addie could tell, they didn’t want to be part of the family they’d grown up in either.

  She shrugged off the frustration of that. Life was filled with opportunities and choices. Her sisters had made theirs. Whether she liked the results or not, she had to try to be supportive.

  Even if there were moments when she wanted to shake some sense into both of their heads.

  * * *

  Relationships with family should be easy, right?

  You were born into a group of people. You grew up surrounded by personalities, steeped in whatever drama or trauma existed within your familial unit. You learned each other the way dawn learned daylight— intimately with no separation of one from the other. That being the case, it stood to reason that a guy who’d grown up with a brother should have absolutely no problem understanding his sibling’s choices.

  Sinclair was having plenty of problems.

  He was trying to understand why Gavin did the things he did.

  God knew he was.

  But he couldn’t wrap his head around his brother’s lazy approach to winning his wife back.

  They were brothers. They’d been raised together, spent every moment of their early childhood together. They shared genetics and parentage. Shouldn’t Sinclair at least have some basic understanding of the way that Gavin operated? Barring that, shouldn’t he feel at least a smidge of sympathy for a guy whose pregnant wife had walked out on him?

  Sinclair didn’t.

  All he felt was pissed.

  He lifted a
stack of newspapers dating from the 1960s and tossed them into a garbage bag with about ten other stacks. He cinched the bag, threw it into a pile near the pocket doors.

  Or what should have been the pocket doors.

  Now there was just a wide opening that looked out into the foyer. That, at least, was finally clear. No more furniture shoved into the corners. No church pews lining the wall. The space had opened up nicely, the intricately patterned wood floor finally visible.

  Sinclair hadn’t realized how much craftsmanship had gone into the house. He’d known it was large, that it dated from the end of the nineteenth century, that a railroad magnate had built it as a wedding present to his daughter.

  His daughter who’d had the misfortune of marrying a Jefferson.

  Yeah. Sinclair had known all that. But he hadn’t realized what a masterpiece the place really was. If he had, he’d like to think that he’d have come back a few years ago to clean it out and restore it.

  He’d like to think that, but the truth was he’d probably still have avoided the place like the plague. All his memories of the house were of wanting and needing, of struggling, of trying to keep the place warm in the winter, dry in the spring, cool in the summer. Of fixing leaking pipes to keep wood from rotting, and fixing wiring to keep the house from burning down.

  That was the beginning of what had become a lucrative career, but the memories weren’t fond ones, and he’d always hated the house. Or, more precisely, what it represented.

  It was a beautiful old place, though.

  Or would be when Sinclair finished with it.

  He’d already procured pocket doors from a place in Massachusetts. They should arrive in the next couple of days. By the time they did, he’d have the lower level of the house cleaned out.

  He could refinish the floors, repair plaster ceilings, replace the peeling Victorian wallpaper with something that matched pretty closely. He could re-side the house with period clapboard, whitewash the wraparound porch, and replace the rotting steps.

  He could make the house into a home that Lauren would be proud to live in.

  What he couldn’t do was fix his brother.

  “Gavin!” he shouted, his breath visible in the frigid air. He’d turned off the boiler their first day of work, and was keeping it off until he got some of the newspapers cleared away from the radiators. The last thing they needed was a fire. Once it started, there’d be enough fuel to keep it burning for a week.

  “Gavin!” he yelled again. “You’d better get in here, or I’m quitting for the day!”

  “Hold your horses, Sinclair!” Gavin responded. “I just threw twelve bags into the Dumpster. I needed a drink.”

  “Your ‘drink’ better be water,” Sinclair said as his brother pushed a wheelbarrow into the room. He’d actually dressed for the job—jeans, a flannel shirt, work boots. Maybe . . . just maybe . . . Sinclair was making some progress with him.

  “I didn’t grab a beer, if that’s what you’re implying.” Gavin held up a soda can. “But it’s not water either. I need caffeine. Being pulled out of bed at the crack of dawn doesn’t agree with me.”

  “It better start agreeing with you, because Lauren isn’t coming back until this place is finished.” Personally, if he were Lauren, he’d have packed up and moved out for good.

  But that was him.

  He didn’t waste time on things that weren’t going to work out. Some old houses were ripe for restoration. Some had foundations that were crumbling, walls that were falling in on themselves, and so much wrong that no amount of fixing could ever make them right. Relationships were the same. Some could be salvaged. Some couldn’t.

  Based on what he’d seen his brother doing—or not doing—the last few days, he’d say Lauren would be better off cutting her losses and moving on.

  He could be wrong. That had happened a time or two with a building project that someone with more money than sense wanted to salvage. He’d always been willing to give it a shot as long as the client’s commitment was as deep as his pockets. It took money and determination to bring a property back from the brink. Sinclair had managed it enough times that he knew it could be done. Often, though, it came at a higher price than the owner really wanted to pay.

  Resentment could build when that happened. Sinclair had seen the way passion for a project could become ambivalence. He’d watched as beautiful restorations—buildings that had every detail and color chosen by hopeful owners—were put on the market before the family that had planned to live there ever moved in.

  He hoped that Gavin and Lauren’s marriage wasn’t going to be like that, nothing more than a pretty monument to what could have been.

  He lifted another stack of newspapers and chucked them into the bag with a lot more force than necessary. He’d been working since dawn. Nonstop. No break for soda, coffee, or food. He was hungry, thirsty, and pissed that his brother kept finding excuses to disappear.

  He was also sorry that, as a whole, the Jefferson men weren’t the kind who could be counted on. They were lazy bastards. That was the truth. Lazy alcoholic bastards was even more the truth. The women who married them inevitably ended up working themselves to death to try to keep roofs over their heads and food in their pantries.

  Except for Sinclair’s mother.

  She’d been a party girl too. Not the best choice for a guy like his father. They’d been decent enough parents when they were sober. That wasn’t often. By the time Sinclair was six, he was making sure Gavin had breakfast, lunch, and dinner. By the time he was eight, he was getting both of them dressed and ready for school. His mother worked as a preschool teacher in Spokane, and he’d learned to wake her up from her alcohol-induced stupor so that she could make it to her job.

  Not a pretty childhood, but it was better than what he and Gavin had had after his parents died.

  That’s when his grandfather had taken them in.

  Their only family because his mother had cut off all ties with her straitlaced parents. Sinclair had a vague memory of them showing up for the funeral, but they’d had no desire to take in two wild little boys. At least, that’s the way he’d always figured it. He didn’t know. They’d moved away from Spokane while he was in the military and hadn’t bothered to leave an address.

  “How about I get the rest of these bags out, and we go get some dinner?” Gavin suggested, apparently oblivious to Sinclair’s mood.

  “How about you get the rest of the bags out, and we don’t?” Sinclair responded. He didn’t snap like he wanted to. Keeping calm in stressful situations was a requirement in his line of work.

  Gavin was pushing him to the edge, though.

  And Sinclair thought he knew it.

  “You haven’t taken a break since you got here this morning,” Gavin pointed out. “You’ve got to eat sometime.”

  “I’ve got to get this project done more than I need to eat.” He finished filling the bag, cinched it, and tossed it in Gavin’s direction.

  To his credit, Gavin managed to snag it. He’d always been a good athlete. Maybe if he’d pursued sports, he’d have gotten a scholarship to college, obtained a degree, and had more job opportunities.

  “Working yourself to the bone isn’t smart, Sinclair.” Gavin took a last sip of soda and placed it on the fireplace mantel. “You’re not getting any younger. A guy your age—”

  Sinclair cut him off. “Get the bags out, and let’s get on to the next room.”

  “The next room? I thought we were finishing this one and calling it a day.” Gavin scowled. “I have plans.”

  “With who?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yeah. It does. I came here to help save your marriage. You go off with some lady you met an hour ago, and that’s not going to happen.” He surveyed the room. Aside from dozens of bags of trash, a few pieces of Victorian furniture, and about two inches of dust, it was empty.

  “I would never cheat on Lauren,” Gavin said, his eyes flashing as he chucked trash bags into the whee
lbarrow. “I’m not that kind of guy.”

  “Yeah? Then what’s so important that you need to leave a job you’re doing for Lauren?”

  “Not your business.”

  “But somehow, cleaning this place up for you and your wife is?”

  Gavin’s jaw tightened. “Are you going to keep throwing this in my face? Am I going to be hearing about how you ran to the rescue for the rest of my life?”

  “Not if you tell me what I want to know.”

  “Fine,” Gavin snapped. “You want to know what my plans are? I’m going to counseling. Alone. To work on my problems. Because,” he continued as he wheeled the trash through the doorway, “despite what you think, I know I have them, and I love Lauren enough to try to fix them.”

  That was it.

  Just those few words, and he was gone, leaving Sinclair standing right where he was, the nearly empty room still layered in dust, the late afternoon sunlight streaming in through the dirty windows and a tiny bit of hope fluttering somewhere in the region of his heart.

  Chapter Four

  Sinclair worked until the sun went down and the house grew so cold that his fingers hurt. He didn’t mind the quiet that had settled over the place after Gavin left. He didn’t mind being alone. What he minded was the frigid temperature. If not for that, he’d have stayed later. As it was, he was chilled to the bone, his bad knee aching as he got in the truck.

  He felt good, though. The parlor, sitting and dining rooms were cleared. The kitchen was getting there. Tomorrow he’d finish that and move upstairs.

  To an even bigger mess.

  He wasn’t sure how his grandfather had managed it, but somehow Elijah Jefferson had carted more stuff up to the second floor than he’d stored in the lower level. Sinclair and Gavin would have to haul it all down. He estimated seven hours to finish the job. Everything after that required skill and intensive labor. It would be interesting to see how Gavin handled that.

  Or frustrating.

  Either way, Sinclair would deal with it.

  He pulled away from the house, heading down a dirt driveway that had once been paved. Bits and pieces of asphalt peeked out from between tangled weeds and piles of dry earth. Other people might have called it ugly. Not Sinclair. Decay had its own kind of beauty. If a person was willing to look for it. Sinclair could see it in the crumbled driveway and the wrought-iron fence that had once surrounded the front yard but now listed inward, nearly touching long yellow blades of grass. Even covered with junked cars and pieces of old trucks, the place had appeal. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t bringing back nearly as many bad memories as he’d thought it would.