A Bride by Summer

by Sandra Steffen

  For lack of a better idea, she wandered onto the stoop for a little fresh air. Though shadowy here in the alley, it was still broad daylight. Was she stuck in a time warp?

  Interestingly, a silver Mustang was pulling to a stop down below. Reed got out and looked up at her, his feet apart, brown chinos slightly wrinkled, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled halfway up his forearms.

  She waited until the clock on the courthouse completed its ninth chime to say, “That’s two minutes slow.”

  “Has been for years,” he called up. “Elementary-school teachers have incorporated it into basic math lessons. If the courthouse clock is two minutes slow and the clock strikes seven, what time will it be in fifteen minutes?”

  Another interesting tidbit of area folklore, she thought. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m taking you up on your invitation to show me the renovations at Bell’s.”

  “They’re at a standstill until Friday at the earliest.” She couldn’t control her little sneer. “I was just thinking I missed dinner. You’re welcome to join me.”

  “Do you cook?”

  “Not well.”

  “What are you having?” Obviously he was picking up on her less than jovial mood.

  “Triple fudge ice cream. It’s called Death by Chocolate, which has to be better than Death by Friday at the Earliest.”

  She could see him trying not to grin as he started up the stairs. Leaving him to find his own way in, she headed to the kitchen for the bowls and spoons.

  * * *

  Reed took the steps two at a time and strolled through the door Ruby had left open. The last time he’d been here, music had been playing and the room had been in wild disarray. Tonight her small apartment was quiet, the sectional in its rightful place opposite the TV, the rug rolled out flat. There was a large conch shell on the trunk she was using as a coffee table and a green-and-blue watercolor on one wall.

  Ruby was drying her hands when he entered the minuscule kitchen. “Rough day?” he asked, eyeing the tub of Death by Chocolate ice cream.

  She answered without looking up from the carton she was opening. “More like a missed window of opportunity.” She paused, as if pondering something. With a mild shake of her head, she reached for a bright yellow ice-cream scoop and got busy.

  The antiquated fluorescent lights overhead flickered the way old fluorescent lights often did, and every ten seconds the oscillating fan on the table stirred the air in their direction. Ruby wore knit pants and a faded tank top that had been washed so thin the lace of her bra showed through. Beneath that lace, her breasts rose and fell with her every breath. Concentrating on her task, she spooned ice cream into the first of two flowered bowls. One scoop, two.

  “Strawberry jam or grape?” he asked hurriedly, forcing his gaze elsewhere.

  “Strawberry jam or grape what?” she grumbled, adding another scoop.

  “It’s a getting-to-know-you question.” It happened to be more than that, a lot more, for with it he was trying to distract his wayward thoughts and the way he was reacting to Ruby.

  Seeing her skewing her mouth to one side in serious contemplation, he said, “There’s no right or wrong answer.” When it became apparent she wasn’t going to reply, he studied her expression even more closely. “Okay, let’s try another one. You were listening to vintage music when I stopped by to get Lacey’s cameras the other day. Which do you prefer, Guns N’ Roses or Leonard Cohen?”

  “That’s another tough one,” she said.

  He eyed the bowl that was getting so full he didn’t see how it could hold any more. She found room, though.

  “Give it a whirl,” he said. “Choose one.”

  Pulling a face, she set an open jar of fudge topping in the microwave and started filling the second bowl. “Music is one of the reasons I bought a bar,” she finally said. “Did I tell you I want to have live music on Saturday nights? And that old jukebox in the back still works, a bonus if there ever was one. Music is kind of my thing. You name it, I like it—rap, country, heavy metal, classical, anything old most of all. Billy Joel, ACDC, the Rolling Stones, Elvis, Waylan Jennings, Mozart, the Pointer Sisters.”

  “Fair enough,” he said. “What’s your favorite color?”

  Noticing her inner struggle again, he was beginning to see a pattern. “Cats or dogs?” he asked.

  Silence.

  “Sunrise or sunset?”

  Sticking a spoon into the mound of ice cream, she held the bowl out to him.

  “Trains or airplanes?” He took a step closer.

  She crossed her eyes.

  “Summer or winter?” Another step brought him within reach of her.

  “Did I mention I have trouble making up my mind?” she asked.

  “Day or night?”

  “Reed?” The fan whirred. The fluorescent lights flickered. And she raised her gaze to his.

  “Yes, Ruby?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “That ice cream’s for me, right?”

  “Of course.” The microwave dinged, and she said, “Would you care for some hot fudge?”

  “There isn’t room in my bowl,” he answered.

  He wasn’t surprised that struck her as funny. Tipping her head back, she started to laugh. She had a marvelous laugh. He’d noticed that before. Rich and sultry, it floated out of her like the lyrics of a song, making him glad he’d stopped by.

  She returned the nearly empty carton to the freezer, and added hot fudge to the chocolate concoction in her bowl. He watched her take her first bite and saw the rapture on her face. Sampling his, he was struck anew by the differences between men and women. There was only one activity that brought men that much pleasure.

  “You don’t have Joey with you,” she said after she’d taken the edge off whatever was fueling her ice-cream marathon. “That must mean Marsh is back. How did his trip to Tennessee go?”

  It was Reed’s turn to shrug.

  With a wrinkling of her nose, she said, “Don’t expect me to answer questions if you won’t.”

  “You didn’t answer any questions.” Watching her turn a spoonful of ice cream upside down in her mouth, he considered telling her about Sam’s newest discovery. It was the biggest lead they’d had yet. Nothing had been verified and certainly nothing had been proven, but Sam was getting closer to finding the woman behind Joey’s sudden appearance on their doorstep. Reed felt it in the pit of his stomach. Her identity still hovered slightly out of reach like a word on the tip of his tongue, as vital as the air he breathed.

  For some reason, when he opened his mouth, that wasn’t what he said. “Your first car was a blue SHO with one green door. Mine was my dad’s old Charger. He handed me the keys the day I accepted the scholarship from Purdue. Told me if I was going to college on my own brainpower-induced nickel, the least he could do was give me wheels to get there. He knew I had my eye on a future in some sprawling city like Houston or Seattle or maybe Miami, but for those next four years, he wanted me to have a way home.

  “Every time I pulled into the driveway for a weekend at the orchard, he’d invariably lay his hand on the hood of that car and say, ‘She’s yours now, son. You keep her in gas and oil changes, and she’ll get you where you need to go.’”

  The windows in Ruby’s upstairs apartment were open, but Division Street was quiet this time of the night in the middle of the week. Other than the whir of the fan and the hum of the fluorescent lighting, her kitchen had grown quiet, too. She ate her ice cream slowly, and didn’t ask why he was telling her this or what his father’s gift meant to him. Maybe that was why he continued.

  “It was ten below zero the day I got Marsh’s call. I knew by the way he said my name it was bad. Then he told me about the accident. How Mom and Dad were dead. But Noah was okay. Madeline, too.”<
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  Reed stared into the spinning blades of the fan, but it wasn’t the blur of metal he saw. “The temperature was ten below zero and yet that car started the first time I turned the key. There are two hundred seventeen miles between West Lafayette and our driveway. I don’t remember one thing about the drive that night, but Dad was right. The Charger he entrusted to me took me where I needed to go. It brought me home.”

  Surfacing, he found himself standing across the small room from Ruby. Her ankles were crossed, her lower back resting against the counter, her spoon in one hand, her empty bowl in the other. It was hotter than blazes in here, and the humidity had made her hair curlier and her skin dewy. He wondered if she knew she was naturally beautiful, gorgeous really.

  Her spoon and bowl clattered as she set them in the sink near the bright yellow ice-cream scooper. Hooking her thumbs on the counter on either side of her waist, she said, “Whatever happened to that Charger?”

  She didn’t ask how he’d managed to draw a breath after he’d heard the news. She didn’t ask how he’d made it home during the worst blizzard of the decade, or how it’d felt when he got there.

  No. Not Ruby. She asked the one question he could answer.

  “Noah wrapped it around a tree two years later. He and Lacey are getting back from their honeymoon this weekend. If you see him, make sure you mention how lucky he is to be alive. Not because of the wreck, although it was a miracle he survived that. He’s lucky I didn’t strangle him with my bare hands.”

  “I haven’t actually met Lacey’s husband yet. I’m sure that will get us off to a great start.”

  He nodded in total agreement.

  Later, he wouldn’t recall whether they’d shared a smile then. They changed the subject, and conversation ultimately turned to her plans for Bell’s, the varieties of apples grown in Reed’s family orchard and a new secret graft Marsh was working on. She told him about the going-out-of-business sale at a restaurant in Sparta and the barware she hoped to purchase there.

  Taking his forgotten bowl from him, she said, “I take it you’re not the Death by Chocolate type.”

  He let his gaze flick over her once more, at her wildly curly hair and her slender shoulders and the outline of lace under her shirt. “If you mean am I a girl, no.”

  She gave him one of her deep, sultry chuckles while he glanced at a new text buzzing in from Marsh. “My brother’s wondering where I am. You’d think he hadn’t eaten in a week.”

  She asked, “Where are you going for takeout tonight?”

  “What would you recommend?” He started for the door.

  “You’re on your own, pal. You saw what I had for dinner.”

  Reed thought she hadn’t been fibbing when she said she had trouble making up her mind. There was a smile in his voice as he said, “Good night, Ruby.”

  Ruby followed Reed as far as her stoop and watched him start down the stairs. Darkness had fallen, and the air was starting to cool. She could hear the music at Murphy’s through the alley and across the street. In the opposite direction someone was calling to a dog.

  “Reed?”

  The dog ran by, leash flying behind him as Reed turned around. “Yes?”

  “Cats,” she called. “And dogs. And goldfish. And armadillos. And ponies. Not snakes, though, or mice. Maybe gerbils but no rats.”

  He was laughing when he got in his car and drove away. She went inside and stood resting her back along the length of her door.

  They were opposites, the two of them. She was chatty. He wasn’t. She was wearing the most comfortable clothes in the world. He wore a white shirt with a button-down collar and flat-front chinos. She’d complained about the delay in renovations, and he’d reminded her of Bell’s potential.

  She’d begun the evening in a funk. And so had he. Whatever had been bothering him when he’d arrived had still been on his mind when he left, but Ruby was beginning to understand why he wanted Joey to be his. It had to do with a tragic accident that tore a hole through an entire family, and one small baby who was somehow closing the gap.

  As she stood at the kitchen sink rinsing out the bowls, she thought her mother and best friend and brother had been wrong. Her irascible mood had lifted and it hadn’t been a shift in hormones or some trite saying or even the art of getting drunk or laid, or both, as Rusty had so eloquently put it.

  It was conversation that went nowhere and silences that went everywhere. It was talking and not talking. It was comfortable and it wasn’t. It was Reed. Yawning, she stretched her hands over her head and smiled for no particular reason.

  Triple-fudge ice cream hadn’t hurt.

  Chapter Eight

  Up and down Division Street, veterans, some of whom looked too young to shave and others so old they could barely shave themselves anymore, had teamed up with members of the city council and the high school marching band to collect for the upcoming Fourth of July fireworks display. They stood in incongruous teams of four or five on nearly every corner, the city officials accepting the donations, the patriots accepting praise and gratitude, and the band members playing their hearts out.

  Ruby reached into her trunk for another cardboard box, and smiled at the somewhat discordant notes of “My Country ’tis of Thee.” Scattered as they were over a seven-block area, the clarinet players tended to be a few notes behind the French horns and trombones, and the drums occasionally missed the fourth beat. She couldn’t see the tuba player from here, but every so often she heard “thank you” in tuba notes. She smiled every time.

  Today she was smiling. It was Saturday, and Saturdays were always good days. The weather was especially glorious. The drywall crew had come back to Bell’s yesterday, and the renovations were on track once again. Everything she would need for Bell’s reopening, from beer to wine to whiskey and seltzer water, had been ordered and was due to arrive in plenty of time for the Big Day.

  Abby Fitzpatrick, reporter, photographer and advertising wizard for the Orchard Hill News had helped Ruby design the perfect ad, which would run in the paper this coming weekend and every day thereafter until the grand reopening. Ruby was practically giddy. To top it off, her first auction had been enormously successful.

  Humming along to the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” now, she hefted another box laden with her new used barware into her arms. She spun around, and almost ran headlong into the man who’d planted himself between her and Bell’s front door.

  She let out a little yelp. “Reed!” Before she could drop the box filled with glassware, he took it out of her hands, and not gently, either.

  “Where did you come from?” Glancing around, she didn’t see his car. Somebody really needed to put bells on him.

  Without a word, he turned on his heel and disappeared into her tavern. Ruby spared a look at the window-shoppers in front of the shoe store down the street and wondered what on earth Reed’s problem could be. Reaching all the way to the back of her trunk, she pulled another box toward her and took it inside.

  She found Reed in the tavern’s kitchen, where he was pacing between the antiquated grill and the extradeep and equally old metal sink. Every surface in the small room held boxes containing her new used barware and the dozens of other items she’d picked up for a song at her first auction ever.

  Reed stopped to glare at her in front of the stainless-steel exhaust fan. “You couldn’t have gotten all this in your car.”

  That sounded like an accusation to her. “I did, actually. It’s taken two trips to Sparta and back but—”

  “We have a brand-new extended cab pickup sitting in the shed at the orchard,” Reed cut in.

  Eyeing all the cartons filled with dishes and glasses she needed to unpack and wash, and then arrange on the open shelves to the left of the sink, she bit her lip. She was starting to see where this was going.

  “How many tim
es have I given you the opportunity to ask for my help with something, with anything?” he asked.

  Actually, she knew the answer, but simply said, “You have so much going on in your life.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  The fit and style of Reed’s clothes was worthy of GQ, the colors a combination of thunderclouds and smoke, like his eyes today. He’d worn a similar expression the first time she’d seen him. She didn’t think failing to ask him for help was in the same category as being run off the road by some fool driving like a bat out of hell on Old Orchard Highway, but there it was, thunderclouds and smoke and a tightly clenched jaw. Suppressed anger, GQ-style.

  “If it makes you feel any better, there are more boxes in the backseat,” she said.

  He obtusely failed to see the humor. She’d known men sporting similar expressions, as if pent-up steam was about to blast a hole through the tops of their heads. Her father and brother normally punctuated the display with a snort. Reed shot past her without making a sound.

  He was on his way in with another armload by the time she reached the front door. “Friends ask friends for help when they need it,” he said as he blew past her, glassware clanking as he went.

  The volunteers were using the alley today, so after the sale she’d backed her loaded car into a parking space out front. Somebody had parked a little close on the driver’s side, but the passenger side had plenty of room for her to open the door, which she did. Reed was there suddenly, reaching past her into the backseat, his shoulder brushing her arm, his hip nudging hers. Even though she backed up as far as the door would allow, there was only a matter of inches between them when he straightened.

  In the tight space, she felt the heat radiating from him, and the tight coil he had on his temper. He didn’t hold his pose for long. Turning on his heel, he shot past her yet again.

  “Strawberry jam or grape?” she called.