by Gayle Roper
Ginny and the kids weren’t gone a month when he got his first invitation to dinner from a single woman. And they kept coming. After he refused enough of them, word seemed to have gotten around, and he’d been left more or less alone by the women themselves. That’s when the dinner invitations from families who just happened to have single or divorced daughters began in earnest. He’d even gotten a couple from families with unhappily married daughters. It was like they expected him to fall in love with one such sad woman and ask her to leave her husband for him, therefore curing all her ills.
Ri-i-ight.
Not that Carrie had ever been one of those women. She’d always been polite and kind, never pushy. Sometimes he wondered if she might have a bit of a crush on him. After all, she tended to blush whenever he spoke to her. Then again she might be allergic to him and the flush was the first step in getting hives or something. Wouldn’t that knock his pride down a notch or two?
Because he felt foolish to even think of Carrie and crushes, he had held himself more aloof than usual around her. Until today. He had to admit he’d enjoyed his time shopping with her. He’d enjoyed her attention to his injuries. He’d even enjoyed her distress at Chaz’s near miss.
So what did that mean? What did he expect from her now? That she’d get all teary and tell him how glad she was that he’d escaped death because—because what? Life wasn’t worth living without him? She’d have died if he had?
No, what he wanted was for her to sit beside him and smile at him. Not just smile like she smiled at Mr. Perkins and everyone else who came into the café, but smile. At him. For him.
He swallowed hard as it hit him that he wanted to matter to her differently and more deeply than anyone else, even than her sister or Mary P.
His stomach cramped. That couldn’t be right. It couldn’t. It would be unfair to Ginny, disloyal, unfaithful.
Which was stupid.
Ginny was dead. Three years dead.
Greg still got the sweats whenever he thought about that day. And he had suspected nothing. He should have. He should have!
“You’ve got me blocked in,” Ginny had said, her voice rushed. “I’ve got to get the kids to school.”
He pulled his keys from his pocket with no shiver of premonition and tossed them to her. She caught them, grinned, and blew him a kiss. As she and the kids went chattering out of the house, he took a bite of his Cap’n Crunch, savoring the taste, when his world exploded in a fireball.
There were no screams, at least not from Ginny and the kids. Just his own anguished cries. Just the shrill shouts of the neighbors and the shriek of the sirens of the first responders. And the mocking whispers of flames writhing and dancing in the bright morning sunshine.
If only he hadn’t ignored the threats, hadn’t treated them like so much hot air from a buffoon who thought he was John Dillinger. If only he’d realized the depths of brutality and utter lack of morality in the man whose goal in life was to become a crime kingpin. If only he’d realized it didn’t take a large following to have men who would seek vengeance on their leader’s behalf, men who knew how to make bombs.
If only. If only.
Marco Polo was little more than a street thug, but he’d attracted a band of loyalists who followed his every wish. If his charisma had been coupled with matching intelligence, the man would have become a real-life don to rival the fictional Don Corleone or Tony Soprano.
When Greg first heard of him, he’d joked about the man’s name. “His mother must have failed history to name a son Marco when he has the last name Polo.”
Well, Marco got the last laugh if you didn’t count serving life with no possibility of parole.
So here Greg sat, wanting Carrie to smile at him, all the while overwhelmed with guilt about what he knew was a very normal feeling.
I like her.
Greg couldn’t breathe. It was Ginny’s voice.
I do.
“Ginny?” But it couldn’t be.
Her name as he said it was a mere whisper, little more than a breath, but Carrie heard it. She turned to him with a shocked, sad expression, not the smile he’d wanted. He tried to smile at her, thinking maybe then she’d smile, but he couldn’t. His facial muscles weren’t working.
Go for it, Greg. With my blessing. It’s time.
It was the bump on the head. It had to be. He felt like Scrooge blaming Marley’s ghostly appearance on a bit of potato because Ginny’s voice was every bit as impossible as Marley’s materialization.
His phone vibrated on his hip. He grabbed at it, grateful for something to break this painful moment.
The caller ID read Fred Durning.
“I need to take this call.” He stood. “It’s a guy about the closing on the property sales tomorrow.”
“Sure.” Carrie pointed toward the front of the apartment. “The living room’s through there.”
He nodded. At least she hadn’t sent him out the door. He slid his phone open as he walked into a warm, inviting room. Why it appealed to him he couldn’t have said. He just knew the room stilled the chaos swirling inside.
“What can I do for you, Fred?”
“Hey, Greg. Tomorrow’s the big day. When and where can we meet?”
Someplace neutral. Someplace friendly. “How about we start with a cup of coffee at Carrie’s Café?” He gave the address. “Ten o’clock sound okay?”
Appointment made, Greg slid the phone shut and just stood there. He stared at the rug, a light gray. He had to go back to the kitchen, back to Carrie. He wanted to, but at the same time he didn’t. He’d spent three years keeping life as complication free as he could manage. He’d liked it that way, and Carrie was a complication with a capital C.
But the voice was right. It was time to move on, to live again. As it said in Ecclesiastes, there was a time to mourn and a time to dance. Had he at last come to the dancing time after the long, black stretch of mourning?
“Everything okay for tomorrow?”
Carrie stood just inside the room, caught in a stray beam of sun, like a carefully staged frame in a film. Her shoulder-length blond hair gleamed and her steady navy blue eyes studied him. She was slim, a little taller than Ginny had been, and at this moment she appeared so female he didn’t know how to react. Or rather he did, and that scared him.
“Everything okay?” she asked again.
He blinked and held out his phone. “I’m meeting the guy tomorrow at the café.”
She smiled but it didn’t reach her eyes. “That’s nice.”
“Make certain there are a couple of sticky buns for us, okay?”
“Sure. Not a problem.”
He had to walk back to the kitchen, but he’d have to pass her in the narrow doorway to do so, feel her body heat, smell her scent. But he couldn’t stay flatfooted in her living room, staring at her like some lost Rain Man. “Um, I’ve got to go. Get back to work.”
She nodded, turned, and walked into the kitchen. He followed her, feeling the fool, but at least he didn’t have to walk past her.
“See you later, Mary P, Lindsay,” he said. They smiled and waved. Carrie held the back door for him, and he had to pass her after all. It was as if she’d burn him if he got too close. Which was ridiculous. She was just Carrie. Sweet Carrie. Lovely Carrie.
He swallowed hard. Had he been so conscious of Ginny when they first dated? He must have been, right? He couldn’t remember. All he knew was that Carrie Carter, in one afternoon’s time, had struck him a heart blow without even knowing it.
She followed him onto the porch, where she was forced to stand close because of the landing’s small size. The air snapped around them.
“Thanks for all your help,” he managed. He pointed to his battered face. “And for your peas.”
She waved his thanks away. “Always glad to share a vegetable with a friend.”
A friend. “Look, Carrie,” he began but didn’t know how to continue.
Look, Carrie, saying Ginny’s name didn’t mean an
ything? Because it did, but not as Carrie clearly thought.
Look, Carrie, I think there might be the very real possibility of something between you and me? And Ginny approves?
“And you know this how?” she’d ask.
“She told me.” And wouldn’t that sound just fine. Carrie’d be certain he’d suffered a concussion after all. Which he must have.
“It’s okay, Greg. It’s okay.” Again that sad smile.
And Carrie went inside, closing the door softly.
13
After an evening spent staring at the television with no recollection of what he’d seen, Greg took himself off to bed. He read until his eyelids drooped. He read on until he found himself dozing, the book sagging in his hands. Quickly he put out the light and lay down.
As soon as he’d snugged the covers over his shoulders, his eyes flew open. He stared into the darkness with a weary sigh. His mind hadn’t gotten the message that he wanted the oblivion of sleep. Instead it played and replayed the day on a full-color loop—the accident, Carrie, Home Depot, Carrie, Ginny, Carrie’s sad expression—over and over and over.
Trying to break the cycle, he counted backward from a hundred. Not so much as a yawn. He counted forward to a thousand. He prayed for everyone in his family. He sat up and read some more. He thought for a moment around two o’clock that he was drifting off, but the thought seemed to kick-start the loop to double speed, making Carrie race around as if running for her life.
He gave up just before dawn. He untangled his legs from the disheveled bedding and got to his feet. He pulled on an old pair of jeans and a Seaside sweatshirt, and grabbed his fleece pullover and Phillies cap.
Dawn was just lighting the sky when he stepped into his Starcraft. The peace he found on the water was just what he needed to get his mind back in neutral. One night thinking about a woman and he was as jumpy as Oreo when Carrie sprayed the Bactine.
Bad example. Bad! He was here not to think about Carrie. He turned his eyes toward the bay, which lay like a smooth sheet of silver in the gray morning mist. He guided his boat from its slip and turned east into the rising sun. A few fishermen and charter fishing boats kept him company as they headed for open water.
When they reached the channel where the bay and the ocean met, he turned back, lining the buoys up for red right returning. He didn’t want the excitement of the colliding currents. He wanted tranquility, ease, disconnection.
He still knew peace on the water because Ginny never went fishing. She didn’t mind cooking what he caught, but she wasn’t interested in the catching. The bay held no memories of her to blindside him, only pleasure and serenity.
After he went under the Ninth Street Causeway and was halfway to the Thirty-Fourth Street Bridge, he killed the engine and pulled out his pole. He dropped his line over the side without anchoring. This early in the day he felt safe letting the boat drift with the tide as it receded. He crossed his ankles on the seat facing him and laid his head back. The gentle movement of the boat was soothing, and he thought he fell asleep for a few moments. After the night he’d had, he wasn’t surprised.
But he needed to be alert. All it took was one cowboy in a cigarette boat going full throttle to create catastrophe. He sat up and took a pull on the hot coffee he’d grabbed at the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-through. The pair of chocolate iced doughnuts were good, though Lindsay’s sticky buns, grilled and spread with butter and reserved for him, would be better.
A gentle breeze ruffled his hair, and he smiled. In spite of the new complications I haven’t sorted out yet, Lord, life’s good. Not great exactly, but good.
And good was a vast improvement from the terrible it used to be. He must not wish for more and disturb this pleasant lassitude. Good was good enough.
He took a deep breath of the tangy air and watched sea gulls wheeling overhead. A blue heron stood immobile in the shallows at the edge of the marshy area to his left, and buffleheads and scaups glided over the wind-ruffled water. A cormorant sat on a piling, black wings spread as he dried them in the sun, now fully risen.
All he needed for perfection was a bite.
The Starcraft’s bow nudged up against a small island covered in sea grasses and got stuck in the mud. Greg reeled in his empty line and set his pole aside. He reached into the storage pocket in the boat’s side and pulled out a collapsible oar. With a twist he extended it.
He knelt on the seat in the bow and leaned out to push the boat free of the islet.
He almost fell overboard when he saw the hand tangled in the grass, open palm flung skyward. The body to which the hand was attached lay submerged, bumping gently against the mud and grass with the movement of the water.
Greg recognized death but still reached out and felt for a pulse. With sorrow he also recognized the victim in spite of the damage done by the water and the nibbling sea creatures. His memory flashed on Joe and Margaret Peoples, their sorrow-filled faces, and their premonition of disaster. He knew the devastation about to suck hope and happiness from them. The only positive about this scenario was that he wouldn’t be required to be the one to inform them of their son’s death.
Scratch that. Their son’s murder. The coroner would need to make a final determination, but the marks about Jase’s neck told their own tale.
But he’d have to tell Carrie and the others at the café. It’d be best coming from him, and it’d save someone on the force from that difficult duty.
Some days life hurt.
He grabbed his phone and called 911.
The SPD Marine Unit arrived first, and Greg moved his boat out of the way as he watched the officers assess the situation. Soon crime scene techs were doing what they could while the Coast Guard, Fish and Game guys, and the SPD talked jurisdiction and the coroner declared Jase dead, not that there was any doubt, but the law had to be satisfied.
Activity swirled around Greg, but he was no more than the one who found the body. Sure, several of the professionals going about their various chores acknowledged him by name, asked how he was. A couple of them even said they missed him. But he was outside the loop, merely the one who reported a tragedy, the one to be questioned about how he made his discovery.
He was amazed at how much the exclusion hurt.
14
Harl Evans grinned as he looked at the bay stretching before him. It was a pretty scene on this warm October Tuesday—tall grasses rising from the islands on which the Ninth Street Causeway rested, the water reflecting the deep blue of the sky. A few motorboats made foamy wakes as they sped past, and a couple of catamarans with colorfully striped sails heeled in the soft breeze. He inhaled the scent of the marshes, a singular smell that was strangely pleasing to a man raised in backwoods Maine. The sun poured down on him, making him feel toasty and warm. He loved warm. It filled him with something approaching happiness. He loved hot even better—which was why he’d ended up in southern Arizona, as far from his home as possible.
Those cold Maine nights when he’d been a kid had been agony.
“Can’t we put more wood in the stove, Pop?” he’d asked as a young boy.
“What’s your problem?” Pop would retort. “Can’t you deal with a little chill? Put on another layer.”
Somehow “a little chill” seemed a gross understatement when there was rime forming on the inside of the windows across the room.
“That wood supply’s got to last the entire winter, Harl. I ain’t cutting any more, not in snow like we got.”
“We could buy a couple of cords,” he suggested once when he was about seven. He’d heard one of the kids at school talk about buying wood, and he’d been amazed that people did something so sensible.
“We ain’t spending what little we got on what’s out there for the taking,” Pop snarled. Trouble was, Pop wasn’t taking, so Harl dragged fallen logs home through the thigh-deep snow and did his best to split them.
“Watchin’ you with that ax is better’n watching TV,” Pop said. “Ain’t laughed so hard in years.
”
Harl bit his tongue to keep from suggesting yet again that Pop apply for a job at the lumbermill in town. Pop’s anger and the sharp blows he rained on Harl for what he called disrespect were powerful deterrents. It wasn’t until Harl was an adult that he understood that Pop couldn’t handle a time clock and a regular job. He just wasn’t smart enough, and his heavy drinking didn’t help. Doing summer maintenance at the Happy Days Campground was all he could manage, and that was done on his own unpredictable schedule.
Pop kept him home from school when the snow got deep, and Harl didn’t even have those few hours of warmth provided by the old hissing and groaning radiators in Moosehead Elementary.
“This room is always so hot,” his teacher complained.
Harl smiled and slid his desk closer to the radiator.
“You are a waster of resources, Harl,” Pop constantly growled at him when he returned from foraging in the woods with a fresh supply of downed limbs and rotting logs. “You are a weakling, a wimp, and no son of mine. For generations we Evanses have been strong, men of character. What’s a little chill to us? You make me ashamed.”
Then they were even. Pop’s laziness and inability to cope with life shamed Harl.
“I don’t want to freeze to death in my own house,” Harl said. “Talk about stupid.”
“Don’t you call me stupid!” Pop’s fist came up.
“I’m not! I’m saying freezing is stupid.”
“You just don’t unnerstand your heritage and the ways we Evanses become men.”
For once Pop was right. Harl couldn’t equate chilblains with manliness, so he kept chopping wood and building roaring fires.
Early in the winter of his sophomore year, he cut a hole in the upstairs hall and installed a grate to let the heat rise. Pop nearly had a cardiac when he found what Harl had done.