Liz Ireland

by Trouble in Paradise

  Ed regarded his creations as an artist might view a canvas—with love but with inescapable acknowledgement of his work’s flaws. “There’s a jagged strip on the lattice crust there. You might want to discount that one.”

  Mr. Trilby hovered nearby. “Why don’t we take that one home ourselves, Cora? We haven’t had a pie since…”

  His wife frowned at him. “Since the last time Mr. McMillan was here!” She turned to Ed with a laugh. “My husband’s going to eat us out of the family business one of these days.”

  Ed nodded and forced a smile. Usually he enjoyed talking with the Trilbys—he spoke to so few people, and as business partners, they seemed to appreciate his work more than anyone else. But today he couldn’t seem to build up much enthusiasm for idle conversation.

  He cleared his throat. “I was wondering…”

  Mrs. Trilby tilted her head with interest.

  It was all Ed could do to keep himself from stammering and blushing like a schoolboy. “I’ve heard that a woman named Isabel Dotrice is in town. Do you know where I might find her?”

  The store proprietors’ eyes widened with curiosity. Of course they would find his question interesting, since everyone in town would know of his family connection to the woman. They probably wondered why he didn’t ask Roy or Parker where Isabel lived. He wondered that himself. His only answer was, he didn’t want his nephews to see how eager he was to visit their mother.

  And Roy—if he hadn’t noticed Ed pumping him with questions about Isabel, it was only because Roy was too in love himself with the Widow Fitzsimmons to notice. He’d never seen his nephew in such bad shape over a woman, although when he saw the woman he certainly understood that she would drive a man to distraction. The unfortunate thing was, she didn’t seem to know it. In fact, she seemed to be eating her heart out instead of just plain eating, bringing herself to the brink of collapse.

  It was an object lesson for anyone in love, he decided. Try to avoid it, let it fester, and you ended up with one woman sick in bed and a man guzzling applejack. Ten feet apart, crazy in love, and neither seemed to know it.

  And so he’d left them. Loaded up his wagon, left a note in the kitchen, and driven off on his own quixotic mission.

  Now he was so nervous he wished he was back guzzling applejack with Roy.

  Mrs. Trilby’s face lit up with a polite smile. “Of course you’d want to know,” she said, her voice just hiding the fact that she was trolling for gossip, “she was your late brother’s wife, wasn’t she?”

  Ed nodded. “They divorced.”

  As if the whole town didn’t know that. The breakup of Abner’s marriage had been the talk of the town—heck, of the whole county—for years and years.

  Sensing that Ed was not going to say any more, Mr. Trilby leaned over the counter. “Says she’s going to open a dressmaking and millinery shop.”

  Mrs. Trilby tsked loudly. “Can you imagine? There’s no call for any such establishment in Paradise! Why, we sell perfectly fine ready-made hats right in this store. I haven’t heard any complaints.”

  Ed squinted over at the hat rack in the corner. He was no expert on women’s fashion, of course, but looking at the faded felt, limp trim, and drooping feathers that adorned the goods for sale there, he couldn’t imagine that Isabel’s enterprise could possibly fail.

  “And she’s rented the building right next door!”

  “Next door?” So close!

  Cora nodded curtly. “The building with the red door. I think she’s living upstairs. Maybe you can talk some sense into her, Ed, but she doesn’t seem to listen to anybody. In fact, she seems a most peculiar sort of individual.”

  He strained to hide his anger at that description. “If you mean that she’s rare, I’d certainly agree.”

  He thanked them and bid them good-night, then had to hold himself back from running out of the store.

  Just next door!

  He scurried toward his wagon, not stopping until he had his hand on the basket he’d prepared for Isabel. His fingers shook as he checked each item. In the package he’d gathered all his best goodies. A pie with a perfect crust, an applique apple made of dough adorning the top. Two jars of sweet applesauce with ribbons tied around the lids. A little jug of his best cider, and a loaf of quick bread baked that morning. Cushioning his goods were apples themselves—the most perfect he could find in his cellar, with drying leaves still on their stems. He tucked his best cloth napkin around the goods, and fiddled with the bow tied around the basket’s handle until it looked just the way he wanted it.

  And all the while, he was aware of the fact that Isabel was right next door. So close she could see him if she looked out her window.

  So close!

  Why hadn’t she told him she was coming? Why hadn’t she written? He would have met her at the train….

  He nearly laughed. Meeting her at the train seemed so insignificant after all the years they’d corresponded. Maybe she didn’t understand what her letters had meant to a man living alone. Certainly, he hadn’t poured his heart out to her, or anything near it. They’d always just written of everyday things. He’d been giving her reports on her children for fifteen years, until he felt almost foolish informing her that Roy and Parker, now grown men, seemed to be doing well and washing behind their ears, eating fine and all the things a mother might worry about.

  In turn, she wrote him of her life in Philadelphia, of her shop there, and about her husband’s slow decline. The last time he’d written, it was to express his sympathy over the death of Mr. Dotrice.

  He picked up the basket and carried it not toward her red painted door, but across the street, where he stood on the sidewalk and gazed at her new dwelling, trying to imagine her inside. His skinny legs practically trembled beneath him, and he felt ridiculous for behaving so much like a young fool. He had every reason to simply walk up to her door and knock on it. No one, least of all Isabel herself, would think it odd. The whole town knew of their connection through Roy and Parker.

  But no one could know what was in his heart. Any more than anyone could have guessed how he felt when, twenty-eight years ago, as a young man returning from what had seemed sometimes to be an endless and endlessly brutal and ugly war, he had finally stepped foot into the depressing sod house in the strange treeless land his family had moved to in his absence and found the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on smiling up at him.

  And how he’d felt in the next second when he’d realized that she was his brother’s wife.

  His brother’s marriage had been a kind of torture to him. He supposed he was actually in love with Isabel then; her smile brightened his days while she was there, and seeing her unhappy tore him apart.

  Now she was free. And after twenty-four years, no one could say that he had horned in on his brother’s marriage or that his attraction for Isabel was unseemly. He’d waited. He’d been patient. Now he couldn’t wait another moment.

  What’s more, he didn’t have to. When Ed looked up, he saw her, standing in the window by a gas lamp. He sucked in his breath, shocked by her appearance.

  She hadn’t aged a minute! She was just how he remembered her—tall and slim and stylish. Beauty like hers could take a man’s breath away, as it had when he was a soldier coming back from war. As it did now. His eyes weren’t what they used to be, but even from this distance, he could see that her dark hair had the same soft sheen to it. Her blue eyes still looked out at the world with humor and barely checked impatience, and her wide mouth was forever turned up in a wondering smile.

  So much emotion flooded through him that he had to dart away from her line of sight. Though she hadn’t been looking his way, he suddenly felt terrified that she might have caught him staring at her. He stood in the shadow of a darkened building, clutching his apple basket and breathing heavily.

  To see her so unchanged, so like the memory he’d held in his thoughts all these years!

  The vision was humbling. She was the woman of his dream
s, and now there was only a layer of brick and mortar and a few panes of glass standing between them. He was awestruck.

  He was terrified.

  He’d waited. Long years he’d waited. Years that had apparently glanced off her like water off a duck’s back. While he…

  He looked down at his old hands holding his basket and suddenly made a quick assessment of the ravages time had taken on him. He was fifty-six years old, and looked it. No longer could he pretend to be her young and dashing McMillan ally. Years of living alone and doing farmwork showed: his hands were rough and brown. Under his old hat, his gray hair clung to the sides of his bald pate in unruly scruffs. Old, unstylish and unpressed clothes dropped off his lanky stooped frame. His moustache had gone untrimmed for what seemed like months—though surely it wasn’t that long? He couldn’t remember. That was another thing to make him shudder; his memory was going.

  He was in the autumn of his years; not the gnarled old tree he was sure to become, but turning. Definitely turning. While Isabel—she still looked like spring time to him, as fresh and as blooming with life as ever. She’d even come here with plans to start a new business. Hats! Still trying to make the world gayer, prettier. She would never be old.

  He, on the other hand, already felt like Methuselah.

  What could he do about that now? He couldn’t knock on her door looking like a rumpled old fool.

  Slowly, he finally crossed the street. His heavy footsteps were not those of a romantic suitor now, but a condemned man. He reached the red door and hesitated a moment, staring at the doorknob her hand had touched probably a hundred times now.

  He didn’t touch the knob. He didn’t even knock. In the end, after twenty-four years, all he could do was place the basket in her doorway and turn away.

  When he was safely back in his wagon, heading away from town, away from Isabel, his hands still shook, but he felt better. Relieved. After all…he and Isabel…after all these years…

  Well, it was a foolish notion. Why, everyone knew he was a dyed-in-the-wool bachelor, and happy that way. What did he know of love? It was all very well to lecture Roy about regrets and whatnot, but could he honestly say that he regretted having lived alone, free, creating his beautiful orchard? Isabel was beautiful, and he had happy memories of her. There were all sorts of things they could talk about, but that wasn’t love, was it?

  Certainly not!

  And when you came right down to it, love was damn painful. Look at poor Roy and that Fitzsimmons woman. Suffering? He was the one who had been suffering since Roy came for his visit. The boy had moped and growled and put too much cinnamon in the sauce, all because his heart was sore over a woman. Ed had recognized the symptoms immediately. Roy had been acting exactly how Ed had on those days when he’d been sure a letter from Isabel would come, and none arrived.

  He gasped. Now that Isabel was in town, he supposed there would be no more letters.

  What hope would punctuate his days now?

  There wouldn’t be any more disappointment, though, when the letters didn’t come. That would be a consolation, a relief.

  Relief, he repeated to himself. That had to be what was left when all the excitement was sucked out of him—had to be why he drooped even more than usual as he headed toward home.

  “This is quite a switch.”

  Ellie’s green eyes stared up at Roy as she accepted the mug of warm milk from him. “What?”

  “Me bringing you hot liquids.”

  She laughed, and as always, the laughter worked a kind of magic on his system. He steeled himself against the silly grin that wanted to tug at his lips. “I’m perfectly fine, you know. I could easily get up and fetch it myself.”

  “That’s what I used to think when I broke my toe and you were pestering me with tea all the time.”

  “And was it true?” she asked him.

  Suddenly the kitchen seemed unbearably warm. “Maybe,” he answered, his voice dropping a notch. “But if I’d gotten it myself, I wouldn’t have been able to be alone with you so much.”

  Ellie blushed to her hair roots, and he turned away, got up and poked at the fire. He didn’t look at her, but he could see her behind him in his mind’s eye, sipping at the milk mug cradled in her two hands, a blanket draped over her thin shoulders, those green eyes staring up at him.

  What was she doing here? Was it some madness, some perverse pleasure in seeing him suffer that had brought her here at exactly the worst possible time, during a snow that had covered the road so that he couldn’t possibly send her back?

  And where was Uncle Ed? He’d been gone for hours! Why the heck hadn’t he at least waited till tomorrow to go to town, when Ellie would have been feeling better, and he could have dropped her off at the farm for Parker to deal with.

  To Roy, it suddenly seemed as if the whole world were conniving against him. In cahoots. Parker, by bringing a woman into his world who he couldn’t have. Ellie, by not leaving him be. Ed, for leaving him with Ellie. Ike…

  Well, he didn’t know what Ike had done, but he wasn’t going to let him off the hook just because of that. He was sure there was something.

  He punched a red log with the poker and it collapsed in an explosion of brilliant sparks. He stared at the display with a vicarious relief—he felt as though he might explode that way himself if he spent much more time around Ellie. When he turned back around, Ellie was gazing at him.

  Why did she look at him that way, with those dewy green eyes of hers? It was almost as if…

  Well. He didn’t dare think it, but it was almost as if she loved him.

  Ha! That was a perfect bit of wishful thinking.

  He gritted his teeth. “I’d better go out to the woodpile, get another log.”

  To his dismay, she hopped up, too. “I’ll go with you.”

  “Are you out of your cotton-pickin’ mind? Sit down.”

  She put her cup down impatiently. “Nonsense. I’ve been penned up in here all day. I’d like some exercise.”

  “Your foolish five-mile trek through the snow wasn’t enough exercise?”

  She glared at him now, her hands in fists by her sides. “It wasn’t foolish. I made it, didn’t I?”

  “Yes—and now you can’t leave!”

  Her cheeks turned a shade redder. “I’m sorry. But if I can’t leave, shouldn’t we make the best of it?”

  “The best of it would be you staying put. I don’t want you to die before Uncle Ed gets back.”

  She laughed. “Don’t you know? I wouldn’t die for anything now, Roy. I wouldn’t want to give you that satisfaction.”

  His lips flattened into a thin line. Is that what she thought? That he would be happy without her? He couldn’t help himself. He blurted out, “If that’s how you think I’d feel, you’re not as smart as I thought you were!”

  And then he turned and slammed out of the house, feeling like a damn fool for his outburst.

  He might as well have told her that he was burning up inside with love for her and be done with it!

  Wouldn’t you know it, the door opened and shut behind him and he heard the light crunch of footsteps coming upon him. He turned, surprising her so that she slipped and almost went flying past him. He grabbed her arm, at once stopping her and holding her upright. She still had that blanket draped around her, only she had draped it over her head, too, like a scarf, so that her green eyes blinked up at him as though through the opening of a red plaid tent.

  “Go back inside,” he told her.

  Her chin darted up defiantly. “I’m going to help you, Roy, whether you want me to or not.”

  He sighed. “Fine.” Keeping a firm grip on her arm, he marched her over to the woodpile between the house and the barn. Once there, she dutifully held out her blanket-draped arms, and he began stacking logs—the smallest ones he could find—onto them.

  “Did you really mean what you said just then, Roy?”

  He picked out a larger dry log for himself to carry and put it aside. “Mean wha
t?”

  “That…you wouldn’t be happy if something bad happened to me.”

  “Of course I meant it!” he said gruffly, glad that she couldn’t see his face, which was probably as pink as a baby rash. “I’m not an ogre.”

  She smiled up at him, one of those smiles that could melt a glacier. “I know you’re not.”

  In fact, if he were a glacier, he would be half a lake already. “I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to a friend of Parker’s.”

  “Is that how you think of me?”

  “Isn’t that what you are?” he asked. “Parker’s friend?” The words Parker’s sweetheart steadfastly refused to come out of his mouth, though that would have been a much more helpful question to ask.

  She seemed to understand, though. “Parker’s friend, yes. Did you think there was anything more?”

  His mouth felt dry, and it was all he could do to lift a piece of wood that was practically a twig into her arms. “Of course…what else can I think when you two seem so…companionable.”

  Two red stains appeared in her cheeks. “Parker and I seem companionable?” she asked with indignation. “And so we are!”

  He frowned. “I don’t see why you should be so angry about it.”

  “Because you—” She stopped, taking a deep breath. “Because you seem to imply there’s something shameful between him and myself.”

  “That’s because every time I walk in a room, you two spring apart as if you’ve been kissing.”

  “Kissing?” Her mouth dropped open. “We have never…!”

  “Never?” he asked doubtfully.

  “All men aren’t like you, Roy,” she said. “Kissing me one day and then—”

  “Then what?” He tilted his head, utterly and hopelessly confused. This was the first time she’d ever mentioned his kiss again, but she seemed to think he’d betrayed her somehow. “What did I do?”

  She lifted her head, collecting herself with some effort. When she spoke, it was in a clipped, incensed voice. “Well, if you must know, Sunday morning I saw you.”