Family Tree

by Carol Grace

  But she didn’t. She glanced up to find him looming in the doorway.

  “Don’t mind me,” he said.

  She nodded. But she did mind him. She tried to ignore him, this disturbing newcomer. She tried to stack the mail into neat piles. But his gray gaze was so unnerving, she found she’d put the A’s in with the C’s and the Z’s with the S’s. She’d have to resort it later, after he left. The sooner the better.

  “You might want to get a cup of coffee at the coffee shop,” she suggested. “I’m still not finished.” Anything to get rid of him.

  “I don’t need coffee, I need food. How’s the food there?”

  “Probably not up to your standards.”

  “How do you know what my standards are?” he asked.

  “I know you’re from San Francisco.”

  “Is the coffee shop the only place in town to eat?” he asked.

  “There’s the diner, but…”

  “Don’t tell me. It’s not up to my standards, either.”

  She shrugged. “There’s my aunt’s bed-and-breakfast.”

  “What good would that do? I have a bed and I make my own breakfast,” he said.

  “She may branch out into dinners.”

  “Is she a good cook?”

  “Yes, very, but…”

  “But it’s only for guests. I understand.” Brandon braced his arms against the door frame. He wanted to go back to the ranch, but he had no desire to thaw something from the gigantic freezer that he’d filled from his supermarket trip on his way to town. He was hungry, impatient and anxious to see his mail. At the rate this postmistress, former owner of his ranch, was going, it would be dark before he got back on the road.

  “Can I help you with that?” he asked, his eyes on a large envelope he knew was his.

  “It’s against government regulations,” she said stiffly. “I’m almost finished.”

  “Are we going to go through this every day?” he asked. This was not the way he pictured his life on a Nevada ranch. Standing around the post office waiting for his mail. Watching an attractive postmistress weed through the letters. And she was attractive. In her own way. Not his type though, with her lack of makeup and wild hairstyle. If you could call it a style.

  She stood and handed him a stack of letters. Her hand brushed his. Slender fingers, soft skin. His gaze met hers, then she looked away quickly.

  A strange sensation hit him under his ribs. A shock. A recognition of something out of the ordinary. He tried to ignore it by shuffling through the envelopes, extracting the one he was waiting for and slitting it open. His heart pounded when he saw the legal letterhead. He scanned the words that traveled across the page. The man who was responsible for killing his family had been released from jail.

  The blood drained out of Brandon’s head. He’d never passed out but he knew how it would feel. Just like this.

  “Are you all right?” she asked. Her voice came from far away. Concerned, anxious.

  “Fine. I think I’ll have that cup of coffee now.”

  He stood outside the post office and filled his lungs with fresh air. There was a small, dirty boy leaning against his car, running the wheels of a plastic car over the hood.

  “Hey,” he shouted. Startled, the boy jumped a foot in the air. Brandon dropped his mail and the kid’s plastic car went flying, hit the sidewalk and split into a dozen pieces onto the pavement.

  “You broke my car,” Dylan cried.

  “I didn’t break your car, but you scratched mine,” Brandon said, examining the deep scratches in the mirror-smooth hood of his new car.

  “What happened?” Laura McIntyre was standing in front of the post office in her trim navy skirt and white crisp blouse, her hands on her hips.

  “Nothing. It’s all right. It doesn’t matter,” Brandon said.

  Laura strode up to the car and bent over the hood. “Did you do this?” she asked the boy.

  “I was just playing. Pretending it was mine.” He hung his head.

  “I’m sorry about this, Mr. Marsh,” she said. “Naturally I’ll pay for the repair.”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  “Yes, it will. I insist.”

  He shrugged. If she wanted to pay for it, let her. The woman shifted her glance from the hood of the car to her son and back to the car. Her shoulders slumped and he was afraid she was going to cry. Her son was staring at his scuffed shoes. Brandon felt a pang of unwanted sympathy for both of them.

  “Never mind,” he said brusquely. “Forget it.”

  He got into his car and drove back to the ranch. Where no one could scratch the surface of his car or his heart.

  “WHAT IS WRONG with you?” Laura asked, holding her son by the shoulders. “That is an expensive car. It’s going to cost an awful lot to get the scratch out of the finish.”

  He shrugged.

  “And whatever it is, it’s more than we can afford. Do you understand that?”

  He nodded, but kept his head down.

  “What were you doing?”

  “Playing,” he mumbled.

  She sighed loudly. “I have to go back to work now, but I’ll discuss this with you later. I want you to go back to Aunt Emily’s and stay there until I get there. Do you hear me?”

  He nodded. He heard her. But instead of walking down the street in the direction of the bed-and-breakfast, he stooped down and scooped up the pieces of his plastic car, one by one, and put them in his pocket. Then he turned and walked away in the opposite direction without speaking another word to her. Even a complaint would have been better than his silence. Even the question about his father, as painful as it was, would have been better. As she watched him trudge away, her eyes filled with tears. She wished she hadn’t been so harsh; she wished he’d turn around and say something. Like where he was going. Anything would be better than nothing.

  She had to find something constructive for him to do this summer. But what? She couldn’t afford a baby-sitter every day, and even if she could, he’d already declared he was too old for one. He was too young for summer school. Too rambunctious to leave at home and too unpredictable to let loose.

  She’d hoped that between her aunt and herself they could keep an eye on him, but it wasn’t working out that way. She didn’t know what the solution was. Her dream of being a stay-at-home mom was fading to nothing.

  She sighed and glanced up at the notice on the wall for the postmistress job. As if that would solve all of her problems. It wouldn’t, but it would be a start. She had to admit she was counting on the job. Although anyone at all could apply for it, she was sure she’d get it. Who else would apply? Who would want to live in Silverado? And who among the residents would qualify except herself?

  Yes, she had to have that job. She had to have the salary increase and she had to have this small apartment above the post office now occupied by Willa Mae, the current postmistress who was on the verge of retirement. It was going to be the new home she’d promised Dylan. It wasn’t a ranch. But she’d make it into a home for them. She had to. In between waiting on customers she thought of how she’d redecorate, even rebuild the tree house behind the building, and the afternoon flew by.

  THAT NIGHT she followed her aunt’s recipe and cooked a coq au vin for six without her aunt’s help. Not that Aunt Em didn’t want to help. But after one look at her ashen face, Laura insisted she stay in bed. Fortunately she had Dylan for a sous chef. Whether he was trying to make amends for his behavior that afternoon over the car incident, or he realized how much she needed him, he rose to the occasion. Without complaining and with her supervision, he set the table, carried dishes in and out of the high-ceilinged dining room and took out the garbage afterward. When he got a five-dollar tip he was proud and ecstatic.

  “Can I keep it?” he asked, studying the picture of Abraham Lincoln on the greenback.

  “Of course you can. You earned it. You worked hard tonight.”

  “I could buy another model car or—” he wrinkled hi
s nose “—or I could give it to the guy with the car to help pay for the…you know.”

  She hugged him, feeling her heart swell with pride. If she weren’t so dog-tired she would have jumped for joy. The moment she’d been waiting for had arrived. Dylan was coming around. First he’d worked without complaining for the past hour. He’d actually taken her suggestions without a murmur. He hadn’t mentioned his father, and now he was showing remorse and a willingness to make amends. Of course he hadn’t actually said he was sorry, but just volunteering to part with his hard-earned money was more than she’d expected and a good sign that this stubborn phase of his life might be finally coming to an end. And not a moment too soon.

  The next morning Laura walked to work with a lighter step. Her aunt was up and in the kitchen stirring up waffles, looking tired but determined. She said she was not going to stay in bed another minute, despite Laura’s offer to cook breakfast for the guests. Laura would have insisted, but she had a sneaking suspicion that Aunt Em didn’t think her cooking was up to her standards. After all, she considered herself a professional chef and her niece, though talented, was just an amateur.

  At lunch Laura ran over the rules with Dylan once again and he didn’t even protest. Now all she needed to do to get her life back on track was to nail down that job. That very afternoon a representative from the personnel office of the central post office was due to visit her branch. The next step would be the interview, and then she was in. At least she hoped so. By all rights she should have the job. She’d been working there ever since Willa Mae, the longtime postmistress, went on medical leave.

  Willa Mae had just recently announced her retirement after forty years in the post office, and had made plans to leave Silverado and go live with her sister. Everyone assumed Laura would get the job. And the apartment. It was the next step on Laura’s way to independence. Both financial and emotional.

  At exactly 4:55 that afternoon, when the post office was bursting at the seams with the last-minute customers as well as the official from the post office who’d come to interview her, the phone rang.

  “Mrs. McIntyre, your son is on my property,” Brandon Marsh said angrily. “He’s sitting in a tree house and he won’t come down. He says he’s waiting for his daddy to come back.”

  Her knees buckled. She gripped the edge of the counter. He couldn’t…he wouldn’t…but he had. “Oh, no.”

  “Oh, yes. I suggest you come and get him.”

  “Can I talk to him?”

  “As far as I know, there’s no phone in the tree house,” he said.

  “I know, but…” She glanced at the clock. “I—I’ll be there as soon as I can.” Just as soon as she closed up and had her interview. Surely he could wait that long.

  BBRANDON STOOD under the tall, rickety, homemade ladder that led to the tree house and stared up at the worn soles of a pair of dirty sneakers.

  “Come down from that tree right now,” he ordered.

  “No. I’m not coming down till my daddy comes back.” There was no mistaking the determination in his voice. Brandon had no idea how to deal with a stubborn eight-year-old. He didn’t usually avoid problems. But he always avoided eight-year-olds. And kids of all ages. On the other hand, he found most other kinds of problems challenging. But not this messy kind of personal problem. He wanted to go back in the house and study a spread sheet he had on his computer. So he could solve a problem for a Silicon Valley start-up he was consulting for. A problem he could deal with coolly and efficiently and impersonally.

  At one time in his life, a long time ago, he wouldn’t have minded a boy in his tree house. He would have built the house himself. And invited the boy to help. But not now. If things had been different…if his child had had a chance to grow up…But he hadn’t.

  Dylan stood and leaned over the railing which made an ominous creaking sound. His eyes widened in alarm and he stepped back from the edge.

  “Would you get down here right now,” Brandon said. Where was the kid’s mother? What was wrong with her that she couldn’t control her son? If he had a son…But he didn’t. Not anymore.

  Dylan shook his head. Was it Brandon’s imagination or did the whole wooden platform shake, too? All he needed was to have the kid fall out of the tree and break his arm. Kids were so fragile. One minute they were talking, laughing, riding in a car over slick streets, and the next minute…The worst thing was they didn’t know it. They thought they were invincible.

  Maybe that was the best way. To live life fearlessly. As if you had some control over the outcome. Until one day you learned you had no control at all and you found out how quickly life could be snuffed out. How irrevocably things could change forever. This tree house appeared to be falling apart before his very eyes. Whoever built it had obviously thrown it together, and it wasn’t meant to last. He just hoped it would last until his mother arrived. Or his father.

  “When is your daddy coming back?” Brandon asked.

  “Pretty soon.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “He went to the moon on a spaceship.”

  “So he’s an astronaut,” Brandon said.

  “Yeah, that’s right. He’s gonna bring me back some moon rocks and a saddle and a video game. But I gotta wait for him right here until he comes back.”

  “You can’t wait here. It’s not safe. Look, kid, whatever your name is…”

  “Dylan,” came the muffled voice.

  “Be reasonable, Dylan. You don’t live here anymore. Why would your father come here to look for you?”

  “Cuz this is where his spaceship lands.”

  Brandon looked around at the meadow that surrounded the tree. He had to admit this would be an ideal spot for a spaceship to land. But he wasn’t going to admit that to the boy. He braced his hand against the rough bark and looked up. “Your mother’s on her way. You don’t want to make her wait for you, do you?”

  “You shouldna’ told her I was here,” he said, “cuz I’m not going back with her. I’m staying here.” He stomped one foot on the platform for emphasis.

  The whole structure shook. Dylan grabbed a limb of the tree. Brandon held his arms out to catch the kid, as if he could save him. He hadn’t been able to save his own son, so why would he be able to save some one else’s boy? The tree house was falling apart, and once it did, there’d be no putting it together again. He was sure the boy would come hurtling down in a minute. But the boards held and nothing happened. Brandon heaved a sigh of relief.

  “Are you still mad at me?” Dylan asked.

  “For putting a scratch in my car? I’m not happy about it.”

  “My mom says I gotta pay to get it fixed. I already got five dollars.”

  “That’s a start. Why don’t you come down and maybe we can work something out.”

  “No. I told you—”

  “I know what you told me. Look, what if your dad is stuck on the moon for a while and he can’t get back anytime soon? If he comes when you’re gone, I’ll tell him you’ve moved.”

  “He won’t believe you.”

  Oh, Lord, this was one stubborn kid. How in the hell was he going to get him out of the tree? He leaned against the trunk. He wanted to walk away. To go into the house, close the door behind him and forget about this kid and his sad-eyed mother and his astronaut father and the furniture he left in his room.

  “Hey, you forgot your Legos? Why don’t you come up and see if there’s anything else you forgot?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like…maybe baseball cards or…I don’t know.”

  “How much did your car cost?” the boy asked, peering over the edge of the platform. “Seventy thousand?”

  “No, not that much.”

  “My dad’s gonna get one like that, or maybe more expensive, like a Porsche. He’s coming to get me in it.”

  “What about the spaceship? Never mind. You like cars?”

  Dylan nodded. “Fast cars.”

  A truck coughed and sputtered in his drive
way. She was here. At last. Thank God.

  Dylan heard it, too. He moved back into the partial shelter of what was intended to be an A-frame tree house.

  “Hey, come on down,” Brandon yelled. “Your mom’s here.”

  “I’m not coming down. She’ll be mad at me.”

  “She’ll be even madder if you don’t come down.”

  Brandon watched Laura McIntyre marched purposefully across the field in her regulation post office uniform with crisp white shirt and sensible navy blue midheels. The late-afternoon sun picked up copper streaks in her dark hair. She looked mad enough to haul her son home with her and punish him severely. Which was exactly what she ought to do. And about time. He had to learn to obey her. Stay out of trees.

  Stay out of danger. He knew he’d hate to be in her way when she had that look in her eyes.

  She ignored Brandon as if he wasn’t there. Her whole attention was focused on her son.

  “Dylan, get down here this minute.”

  “No, I don’t hafta. I’m not going back with you. I’m waiting.”

  “He’s waiting for his father to pick him up,” Brandon explained.

  “I know what he’s waiting for,” she said stiffly. She tilted her head back to regard her son. “All right, I’m coming up to get you.”

  “I wouldn’t recommend that, Mrs. McIntyre,” Brandon said. “And I wouldn’t recommend making threats you can’t follow through on.”

  “Thank you very much for your advice. Who are you anyway—Dr. Spock? Do you think I can’t climb this tree, Mr. Marsh?” she demanded, turning to look at him for the first time. He felt the full force of her blazing eyes, her anger and her frustration.

  “I’m sure you can. I just don’t recommend it. And for God’s sake, would you quit calling me Mr. Marsh? My name is Brandon.”

  “Then stop calling me Mrs. McIntrye. My name is Laura. What exactly do you recommend I do, Brandon, if you know so much about child psychology?” she said.

  She had him there. “Nothing,” he said, the muscles in his jaw tightening. “I don’t know anything about psychology and even less about children. So you handle it yourself. Good luck.” He rested his hands on his hips and stared at her. This was the moment when he would be completely justified in walking back to his house and closing the door behind him. But he no longer wanted to retreat into his house. He knew he wouldn’t be able to think about anything but this woman and her son. He was too curious. He wanted to see how she was going to manage this situation. If she was going to manage it.