“Doomed?” she repeated in disbelief. “That’s a bit drastic.”
“What you wanted to do was drastic.” He tore off wet socks and swiped a towel off the chest of drawers to dry his feet.
“To some,” Claire said. “I thought you were open minded enough to at least consider it… consider all that it meant to have another baby now and make a rational decision.”
“I told you before, it would have been hard. But we would have made it.”
She let her head fall back. “At what cost, Aryl?”
He stood so quickly it startled her. “I can’t believe you’re talking like this. It was… or would have been our child. And you talk about it as if it was a nagging splinter, get a needle, and pull it out quickly so it’s not an inconvenience.”
“That’s not how I saw it,” she said, shaking her head.
“Well, that’s what you sound like.”
Standing stock still, their eyes in different places, she desperately tried to reach out.
She began with a sigh. “Aryl, you and me, we’re different. We see things differently. I’m an artist; you’re a wanderer, an adventure seeker. We don’t march along like everyone else. You come from an eclectic family and your mother gets more eccentric as the months pass. I paint and day dream and I really envy Muzzy’s pants.”
His eyes flashed up. “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
She couldn’t help but smile. “They’re more comfortable, easier to move around in and last longer than these thin dresses,” she said, plucking her skirt.
“So now you’re going to start wearing pants?” he asked.
“I might.”
He threw his hands up silently.
“I know you don’t understand why this was an option for me. I don’t understand why it wasn’t for you when the proof that another baby would be a disaster is right in front of your face. But, much to the shock and horror of most people in this town—and you—it was an option for me. It made sense to me.”
He sat down on the bed slowly. “There’s no way to come together on this, Claire. I’m sorry, there’s just not. I don’t care how… strange my family and I are, how different you and I are from everyone else. It’s just not something I can consider should it happen again.”
Her eyes went cold. She expected more of him. If not outright support, at least understanding and consideration.
“Then I’ll have to make sure it never happens again,” she said, her words laced with venom.
He shoved a hand through his hair, knowing exactly what she meant by that.
***
Peter had been working day and night. After he finished on the boat, he didn’t even change his clothes before he ran an important errand and then started working on the house. Their house.
He smiled. He was downstairs plastering a patched hole in the wall. He could hear Muzzy at her typewriter, tapping away with a speed that amazed him. He liked to watch her sometimes when she didn’t know he was there. More than once, he’d crept up the stairs with a fresh cup of coffee and peeked discreetly. Her head bobbled and her fingers flew. Sometimes she mouthed the words she was typing. The only thing she didn’t stop doing was typing when he walked in. Typed right along as he set the mug down and took the old one. She jerked her chin in something of a thank you and kept right on working.
This evening, he wouldn’t bring her more coffee or her dinner as he’d often done when she was strung up against deadlines. He had been asking her for a couple of weeks for a chance to talk to her and she was busy every waking moment. If she had to break concentration and come down for her own coffee, he might have a chance.
He had to wait until nine p.m. as he continued to work by the light of a lamp with no shade. Dinner—fish he’d managed to catch while eating lunch—was ready, keeping warm in the oven. He was more than happy to take Ian’s advice and spend lunch eating, feet propped up on the rail with a rod cast out.
Half the week, Ian told him, they ate dinner for free. And if he didn’t catch anything, he was welcome to take a lobster or two. This idea excited him and he couldn’t decide if it was due to the frugality of it or the sense of providing. He made cornbread, something he still hadn’t mastered, and thought it was dry—nothing extra butter wouldn’t fix.
She flew down the stairs, empty coffee cup in hand, mumbled something to him about getting the press ready, and disappeared into the kitchen. He put down his trowel and followed her. While she set her press up for the daily print, he washed his hands, took the hot plates of food from the oven, and put them on the table. There was only water, so he filled two glasses. She came out of the bedroom where her printing press lived, flew around the corner to the dining nook off the kitchen, and stopped with a skid.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Dinner,” he said, glancing up with a smile. “I do make dinner every night, remember?”
“No, when did you get a table?”
“Oh, that?” He turned and looked. “I bought that this afternoon. A family across town is moving. Got it real cheap.”
She got a better look at it. It was the perfect size, round, just three feet or so across, in a dark walnut finish with two matching chairs.
“How did you get it home? Here?” she corrected quickly.
“I carried it,” he said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“How?”
“You’re full of questions,” he chided.
“I told you—”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re a reporter, that’s what you do. I carried the table, upside down, balancing it on my head. Then I went back for the chairs. Then I went back for my bike.” He sat down. “In all, I managed nearly eight miles of walking to get this home, after work.”
“Oh,” she said, sitting down slowly.
“Surely that entitles me to some adoration. Just a little?”
She gave him a hard look.
“Slap a guy for trying.”
“So.” She ran her hand over the finish. It was obviously second hand, but still in good condition. “We have a table now.”
“Yes. We don’t have to eat standing up or at your desk or sitting on the floor.”
“I suppose that’d be a nice change.” Her appetite fired up as fast as her Flying Squirrel, and she pushed away the worry of accumulating furniture together, and began to eat in the same way she did everything else. Fast.
“Hey, slow down,” Peter said with a laugh.
“I have work to do,” she said with a full mouth.
“The articles are written, the press is humming along. You can stop and enjoy your dinner. Besides…” His eyes flickered up to her. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you.”
She writhed, grabbed her glass, and gulped her water.
Glancing at her watch, she said, “Well, I only have a few minutes, maybe we could—”
“No, Muzzy. We need to talk now.” He didn’t sound mean, but firm.
“Okay,” she said slowly. “We’ll talk now.” She glanced out the window at the last little bit of sunlight. “Nice weather we’re having,” she said.
He almost laughed. Only for the seriousness of what he had to talk to her about did he keep a straight face.
“Do you remember the night you pressed me with questions before you’d agree to let me stay with you?”
“Yes.”
“I answered every one of those questions truthfully. But I didn’t give up anything I didn’t have to. Only what you demanded. There were questions you missed.”
She seemed to take this as a personal insult and scoffed. “I doubt that,” she said. “I am rather thorough in my poking around.”
He flashed a tight smile. “Not thorough enough. There’s still a lot you don’t know. And before this goes any further, I think you should.”
“Before what goes any further?” she asked with reservation.
“Tonight, I come clean about everything. And if you choose to kick me out, I’ll go.”
“But, why, Peter?” she asked, leaning in.
“Because we are…” Oh, hell. How should he put it? “I don’t want to be a liability for you or your business.”
“How would you be? If anything, you’ve been a saving grace. Fixing my bike, fixing my press, finding this place, doing the work for the cut in rent. Thanks to you, I have enough to ask Grace to work here part time. To actually be here,” she said, looking all around, “working. A real employee. I could never do that before.”
With a faltering smile, he nodded at her gratitude. Hopefully, he wouldn’t be homeless by the time this conversation was over.
“I have a past, Muzzy. One you should know about. I guess I’ll just start at the beginning.”
“That’s usually where I start things,” she said.
“Grant Hagan is the man who tried to buy you out and get you to leave town. He’s the clerk treasurer and he’s involved in some unethical, not to mention, illegal things. He wanted you gone because he didn’t want you sniffing him out.”
Muzzy took the last bite of her dinner in one large forkful. She chewed a few times and then covered her hand with her mouth.
“I know all that, Peter. Aryl told me, I agreed not to pursue the story—” At this, she physically cringed. “—and Aryl got him to back down. I haven’t heard from him since.”
“Right. But I have.”
“Oh?”
“At the old place. He was there, waiting for me one evening.”
“What did he want?”
“He wanted me to leave you.”
She stared at him wide eyed.
“Leave… where I was staying. With you,” he corrected with some discomfort. At times, her phobia of relationships bothered him. He’d never forget the way she looked at him the first time he walked in to the Rockport Review, and he could tell a hundred other ways, that kiss being one of them, that he had caught her eye. Only, damn if the girl would admit it. She ran from every advance like a skittish cat. But that, he reminded himself, was a conversation for another day.
“Wait,” Muzzy said, pushed her plate away and held up her hand. “Why does he care where you stay? Were you helping him skim money from the town?”
“He cares because he’s my uncle. I didn’t help him steal from the town coffers, but I did help him in other ways.”
Muzzy sat back and folded her arms.
“Funny. You two don’t look anything alike.”
“He’s my father’s brother.”
“He wanted you to leave so you—and by proxy, he—wouldn’t be so close to the press.”
“Right.”
“For the sake of my business, I have been forced to look the other way. What does it matter?”
“I don’t think he’s convinced you don’t know anything. He said if I didn’t distance myself, he was going to tell you everything. That’s really the only thing he has to threaten. He knows you’ve made friends with Aryl and Jon, so he’s not going to try anything directly. But he’d sleep a lot better at night if I weren’t sleeping here.”
“He threatened to tell me he’s your uncle?”
“No. I’m sure he’d rather keep that as hush hush as possible.”
“What then?”
He didn’t answer right away, instead, took their plates, and put them in the sink. From the cupboard, he pulled a box of cherry turnovers, plated them, and put one in front of Muzzy.
“Oh, this should be good,” she said, not looking at the turnover.
“The first time I walked into your office wasn’t by chance, and it wasn’t to see the new business in town. I was sent there.”
“By Grant?”
“Yes. He wanted me to find out what you knew.”
“He sent you to spy on me?” she asked.
He braced. Here it comes. The feminine volcano spewing tears and angry words, I hate you, I never want to see you again, how could you do this to me?
“He did. And I agreed. But only at first.”
She chewed on her lip, studying him.
“What else?” she asked.
“I told you I went away for a while and I did. Only I wasn’t at my grandmother’s and you never asked me about it. I told you my father died and he did. You never asked me how or when. How he died and where I went have everything to do with each other.”
Unable to resist the smell, Muzzy dug her fork into the turnover blindly, keeping her eyes on Peter.
“Okay,” he said with a deep breath. “All the way back to the beginning. My uncle and my father. There couldn’t be two men who are more different in the entire world. My father was a hardworking, God-fearing man who insisted on taking the straight and narrow in life no matter how challenging. My uncle has always been shifty. For as long as I can remember, he always tried to see what he could grift. If there was a shortcut and he could weasel it without risking himself too much, he’d take it.”
He paused, dug into his own turnover, and took a moment to enjoy it. He drank some water wishing they had milk.
“So, one day my father finds out his brother is helping move booze, cocaine, and morphine around the state. He tries to talk to him, but Grant’s not hearing any of it. He was making money and keeping a safe distance so he saw nothing wrong with it. It starts a big family fight. And then, my father finds out I’ve been working for him here and there. Nothing too terrible, just taking stuff to and from Boston. I get home one night after one of these deliveries and my father is on the porch waiting for me. He’s furious. Yelling and screaming… one of the few times I heard the man curse. He hated my uncle for dragging me into his schemes. Of course, I’m seventeen, making money, and I don’t think anything of it, so I go to walk past him. He grabs my arm and keeps yelling. It went back and forth for a while until he’d had his limit. I said some things I shouldn’t have. He swung at me and I pushed him away. He broke through the railing of the porch and fell. It was only four feet off the ground. Anyone else, any other time, and they might have sprained their ankle or taken a knock to the head. But he fell so precisely it broke his neck. One second he was yelling, the next he was dead.” Peter kept his eyes low. The only sound was the printing press whirring away in the next room.
“I went to prison for five years for manslaughter. Had I been eighteen, it would have been worse. Having my uncle, a respected public servant, testify to my character helped a lot, or so I was told.”
“I’m so sor—”
“Don’t say anything. Not yet. Let me get it all out and then you can tell me if you want me to stay or go.” He bristled, hating to have to relive that memory. He’d done all he could for years to avoid it.
“When I got out, my uncle picked me up. There was no warm reunion, he told me I looked like shit, offered me to clean up at his place, but then I had to go. I didn’t have anywhere to go and he knew it. He also was under the impression I owed him for testifying what a great kid I was until the unfortunate accident. He never thanked me for not ratting him out. Sometimes, I really regret that. Anyway, he sent me to a house he runs on the outskirts of town.”
“The one I followed you to that day?” Muzzy asked.
“Yes. He said I could stay there if I agreed to work. So, after wasting five years of my life in prison, I ended up right back where I started. I went to Aryl and told him I didn’t want to do it anymore. I knew something worse waited for me if I kept at it. That’s how my uncle works. He sets it up so he profits, but if it falls apart, he’s not anywhere near to catch hell. That’s when I showed up on your doorstep and you let me in.”
Muzzy sat back, and then slumped. She brought her hands together and pursed her lips.
“So, when I was asking you questions that night, I knew you’d been running booze. I left out asking too much about that house you were staying at, how your father died, and I never specifically asked you where you’d been for five years, only where your grandmother lived. Did I get it all this time?”
“Yes.”
She nodded s
lowly. Then she let out a snicker. “Did you ever ask yourself why, Peter? Why would any self-respecting reporter leave out such crucial questions?”
He looked lost and shrugged. She leaned forward. “Because I already knew,” she whispered.
Peter’s eyes popped. “You knew? Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I don’t have time for polite conversation, much less something like this.”
Her flippant attitude made him believe otherwise.
“I knew all this before you ever asked to stay with me.” She got up and walked away. He heard her climb the stairs and sighed, looking out the window. It was full dark now. She never said if she wanted him to leave. Then again, if she already knew… it didn’t change much. A lot of luck he’d have in winning her over. He was a convict with a criminal uncle and, thanks to his reputation with the older generation, the best he could hope for was staying on the boat to make a living. He might be able to keep his bed, but doubted she’d ever agree to be in it.
“Right here,” she said and it startled him. She plopped down a file and pushed it toward him. He opened it, glanced up at her and back down.
“You have a file on me?” he asked.
“Oh, you make me sound like a detective. Or a stalker. It’s just for organization’s sake. Most all of it was easy to find. The part that had me stumped was your last name. You’re a Burkley, he’s Hagan. I had to do some family tree climbing, but I figured out your father and your uncle had different fathers.”
“Right. My grandmother married twice.”
“Well, I’m not sure what you were hoping for by coming clean, but I do appreciate it.”
“Why didn’t you ask if you already knew?”
Muzzy wiped the last of the cherry goo from the plate with her finger and licked it. “I figured it would be uncomfortable for you. You had the guts to walk away from that place and your uncle, that was enough character testimony for me. Plus, Aryl helped you. If he trusted you, then I knew I could, too.”
Her discretion on that night was appreciated more than he could say. A small part of him thought it was because she cared. A fella could hope, anyway.
“So, you don’t want me to leave?” he asked.
Purling Road - the Complete Second Season: Episodes 1-10 Page 15