The Empty Nesters

by Brown, Carolyn

  The week went by so fast that Diana could hardly believe it was Friday when she turned in the last of her weekly work that evening. She removed the device that Luke had lent her and laid it to the side, then closed her laptop and stood up to stretch all the kinks from her body. She’d used the vanity for a desk and the bench for a chair. It worked, but it sure left more sore muscles than her desk and office chair back in Sugar Run. Either the kitchen or the dining room table would have been a better choice, but there was entirely too much noise going on in those rooms for her to ever get anything done.

  She started down the stairs just as Luke came in the front door. His jeans and jacket were dusty, and a couple of burgundy-colored leaves remained tangled in his hair.

  “Well, hello.” Luke looked up at her.

  “What have you been doing?” He looked so sexy that she wanted to fall into his arms when she got to the bottom of the stairs.

  “Couldn’t you hear the banging up on the roof? That storm knocked off some shingles and loosened several more. I’ve been up there all afternoon getting them fixed,” he answered.

  “I had my earphones in. If another storm came through here, y’all would have had to come and get me, because I couldn’t hear a thing.” She went down a couple more steps.

  “Never fear.” The crow’s-feet around his eyes deepened when he grinned. “I’ll be the knight in shining armor that saves the damsel in distress.” He held out his hand.

  When she reached the last step, she put her hand in his. “You’ve got calluses.”

  “Does that surprise you?” he asked.

  “A little bit.” Even when they were making out on the church pew, she hadn’t noticed that his hands were rough. Working with computers all day should have made them soft.

  “This week while you’ve been in your work cave, I’ve cut down several trees so Carmen will have something to work out her frustrations on, and I’ve done a lot of repairs around here. Got to admit, though, this is the first time I’ve had calluses since I was a teenager and helped Uncle Smokey build the wood shack just off the back porch,” he said.

  “No wonder you’ve gone to the motor home right after supper.” Comparing Gerald and Luke was like comparing jalapeño peppers to grapes, but she couldn’t help it. Gerald had never been one to do much around the house except keep the lawn mowed when he was home. Other than that, he was all for paying someone to take care of it. And here was Luke, whose usual job was sitting in front of a computer all day, and yet he could repair a roof, build a shed, and cut down trees.

  He dropped her hand when they’d walked across the living room. “Got to get washed up for supper.”

  “Me, too,” she said. “I’ll take the kitchen sink. You can have the bathroom.”

  With a brief nod, he went ahead of her. As he walked away, a streak of jealousy shot through her. Someday he was going to make someone a wonderful husband, and even though the relationship would be childless, they’d be so much in love, just like Smokey and Tootsie had been.

  “Have you got all your work done for the week?” Carmen pulled off her apron and hung it on a hook beside the stove.

  “Yep. Finished the last entry, so I’m free now.” Diana soaped up her hands and then rinsed them. “Need some help chopping wood?”

  “You ever done that before?” Carmen asked.

  “No, but I reckon you could teach me,” she said.

  “Not tomorrow.” Tootsie came in from the dining room. “You’re going with Luke to Clarksville in the truck to get some more shingles, and while you’re there, y’all can go to the grocery store and fill the weekly list. Luke wants to finish up the roof on Monday since we change the time in another week. He wants to get it done before it starts getting dark earlier.”

  “And I’ve filled the woodshed—there’s enough there to last through several more years when we come back here for the fall,” Carmen said.

  “So this is going to be a yearly thing?” Diana asked.

  “I’d love it if it were.” Tootsie beamed. “Maybe we could get Joanie to come down from Arlington for a few days while we’re here, and it could be like our own little family reunion.”

  “Sounds great to me.” Joanie shoved her hands into a couple of oven mitts and took a bowl of macaroni and cheese to the table. “Maybe I can even bring Brett if he can get time off.”

  “That would be even better,” Tootsie said. “These past weeks have been just what I needed to get through some of this grief. Y’all will never know how much all y’all being here has helped.”

  Carmen raised her hand. “You can double the amount that it’s helped you. There wasn’t an ax at home or a huge pile of wood that needed to be split. Eli has no idea how lucky he is. I might have used the ax on his head instead of a stick of wood.”

  “So you’re feelin’ better?” Luke asked as he entered the room.

  “Oh, yeah.” She smiled.

  Diana reached out and took a leaf from his hair. “You missed one.”

  “Thanks. Guess the damsel in distress is helping out the knight this evening,” he said.

  “What’s that all about?” Joanie motioned them into the dining room.

  “I’m the knight who’ll save Diana from tornadoes. She’s the damsel in distress,” Luke explained.

  “Yeah, right. I’m not a little wisp of a girl you can scoop up and put on the back of a white horse.” Diana took her seat at the table.

  “I beg to disagree,” Luke argued. “If I remember right, I saved you from being beaten to death by hailstones when you fell after that last storm. I might not have put you on the back of a white horse, but I got you inside the house.”

  “Seems like I recollect that.” Tootsie winked.

  “A damsel can be any size and have any color hair. The knight is always strong enough to save her, and the horse is big enough for both of them to ride. Haven’t you seen the animated princess movies?” He seated Tootsie and then took his own place.

  “Have you?” Joanie asked.

  “I’ve watched every one of them to see if I could use any of their ideas in the games I created. Let’s give thanks for this food before it gets cold.” He bowed his head and said a short prayer.

  Joanie passed the meat loaf around the table, and when she took a bite, a pang of guilt shot right through her heart. She was eating Zoe’s very favorite meal that evening, and when she got home, she’d have to pack up everything in her daughter’s room. It would be like telling her goodbye all over again, and Joanie dreaded that part of the job awaiting her even more than telling her friends goodbye.

  “Is something wrong with the food?” Carmen asked.

  “It’s delicious,” Joanie sighed. “I was dreading the idea of taking down Zoe’s bulletin board and packing all her things.”

  “We’ll be there to help,” Carmen said. “You aren’t going to have to make this move all by yourself. We’ll get a bottle of wine and sit on the floor and cry with you when the job is done. I’m glad that Eli has agreed to let me have the house so I don’t have to do that for a while, but the time will come when Natalie will want to move all her things to a new place.”

  “Good Lord!” Diana gasped. “I hadn’t even thought of that. It’ll take a backhoe to scoop out Rebecca’s messy room.”

  “Amen to that.” Carmen nodded. “And thank goodness Natalie got my tendencies toward OCD, and everything has to be in its place. When she moves her things out, each box will be marked and packed like a professional. With a spreadsheet.”

  Tootsie giggled. “They both got part of me in them.”

  “OCD is not a good bed partner with messy,” Luke said. “And I’ve never seen your house messy. Not the one in Sugar Run or this one. You’re an immaculate housekeeper. Uncle Smokey said he tried for years to get you to hire a cleaning lady, but you’d have no part of it.”

  “What’s on the outside is OCD.” Tootsie smiled. “But what’s on the inside is Rebecca all over again. Do not ever open either the living room
closet or the hall closet doors, and only go into my little storage shed in the back if you have your life insurance paid up.”

  “You’re kidding me.” Joanie’s eyes widened so far that they ached before she remembered to blink. “I figured your closets would look like Natalie’s.”

  “Nope.” Tootsie shook her head. “I never was a neat person until I married a career army man. I didn’t want to embarrass him at inspection time. But they never opened the closet doors when they did a walk-through, so that was my secret.”

  Joanie thought of the space under the sink in her bathroom. It was always a jungle, but those were her private things, and nobody ever saw it but her. That would have to be cleaned out, too.

  “I just remembered that we’d only lived in the base house a couple of years when we left it for the one in Sugar Run. Moving was downright traumatic—what to take with us, what to sell, what to give away—and every single thing, even as small as a hairpin in the bathroom drawer, had to be handled,” Joanie said.

  “Yep.” Diana nodded. “And you’ve been in this house six times that long, so just imagine how much junk you’ve accumulated and will have to go through.”

  “I’ll have to make even more lists,” Joanie groaned.

  “I’ve never been in your homes,” Luke said. “Are they all pretty much like Aunt Tootsie’s place?”

  “You know someone in the market for a house in Sugar Run?” Joanie asked.

  “I might,” he said. “A friend has been looking to relocate close to San Antonio but not in the town itself.”

  “They’re about the same, except that she’s got a screened porch and a deck beyond that. She’s got two lots, and we’ve only got one,” Joanie answered. “Is this friend someone that would fit in with folks on our block?”

  “I think he just might,” Luke said. “Tell me more.”

  “The houses are all what they call spec homes. They’ve got different-colored brick on the outside, and they sit a little different on the lot, but they’re three bedrooms, full bath in the hallway, and a half bath in the master bedroom. About fourteen hundred square feet, which isn’t a bad size,” Diana told him.

  “But they’re twenty years old, so they are pretty standard brick homes. You’ve been in Tootsie’s place, right?” Carmen asked.

  “Only the day of the funeral, and things were so hectic that I don’t even remember meeting any of y’all,” Luke answered. “I always visited them in the fall when they came up here to Scrap.”

  “You were there?” Carmen asked.

  “If y’all will remember, we spent a lot of the time on the screened porch with the girls,” Joanie said. “They were so upset. Smokey had told them he’d be at their graduation from basic if he had to crawl there on his hands and knees.”

  Tootsie sniffled. “He’ll be there in spirit, just like he’s here. Thanks for sharing that. I knew he was proud of them but had no idea he’d said that.”

  “I didn’t mean to make you sad,” Joanie apologized.

  “It’s okay,” Tootsie said. “Always, always feel free to talk about my precious Smokey. It keeps him near to me to hear y’all tell stuff that he said and did.”

  After supper they got out the decks of cards to play canasta but decided that since they had an odd number, they wouldn’t play partners. Luke had the biggest hands, so he shuffled the big stack of cards and dealt the first round.

  “I remember when Uncle Smokey did this job. Last time I was here, he finally let me do the shuffling. I was prouder than if I’d sold a new game for a million bucks,” he said.

  “First time we all played this game was at Tootsie’s house,” Joanie said. “I was Smokey’s partner so he could teach me the ropes, and Carmen was Tootsie’s partner.”

  “Where was Diana?” Luke asked.

  “She and Gerald took Rebecca to a movie that night. Our husbands had already left on a mission, but Gerald had an extra day,” Joanie answered.

  “The next morning after he left, we taught her the game to keep her mind off the sadness of telling him goodbye.” Carmen arranged her cards in a fan.

  Diana’s face lit up in a smile. “I remember the first time I beat him. He used it as an excuse to break out a brand-new bottle of Jameson, and we all had a shot to celebrate.”

  Joanie had to swallow three times to get the lump in her throat to go down. She knew in her heart and soul that she was doing the right thing, but she was going to miss times like this so much.

  Make the most of them. Maybe God gave you these weeks so that you could have the memories to take with you to your new place, Smokey’s gruff old voice whispered in her ear.

  You’re so right. Joanie nodded. It’s not the end for any of us but a new beginning for every one of us in some way.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It would make more sense for Tootsie or either Carmen or Joanie to go to town with Luke that Saturday since it was Diana’s day in the kitchen. When she realized that, she altered her plans after breakfast and put a pork roast in a slow cooker to make pulled pork sandwiches for dinner. If she and Luke weren’t home, the rest of the family wouldn’t be eating cold cuts, and she’d make chicken Alfredo for supper. All she needed was whipping cream, and she would pick that up at the store.

  The truck wasn’t as smooth riding as the motor home, but the wide bench seat reminded her of riding with her dad in his last vehicle. She’d wished dozens of times that she hadn’t sold it when she was settling the estate, but at that time, she was in college and had a car.

  “We haven’t had that talk yet,” Luke said. “Since we’ve got some time alone, it might be a good time to do so right now. I’ll start. If we met in a church social or in a bar and I asked you out, would you go with me?”

  “Maybe,” she answered.

  “How many dates would we go on before you asked me how old I was?” he asked.

  “I have no idea,” she answered. “Where are you going with this?”

  “Okay, then I’ve asked you out to dinner and maybe a movie afterward, and I’m even okay with a chick flick,” he said.

  “Whoa! Who says I like chick flicks? I’d rather have dinner and then go home and cuddle up on the sofa to watch a Bourne DVD. I own all of them, so you can choose the one you like best.” She turned on the radio and found a country-music station. She imagined a dimly lit room. She and Luke would be sitting on the sofa. His arm would be around her, and maybe her head would rest on his shoulder.

  “That sounds great. So we’ve been out on one date. I kiss you goodbye at the door and ask you out again. This time I suggest a picnic at a park and then watching the sunset as we talk well into the night,” he said.

  “That sounds nice.” Her thoughts shifted from a romantic evening in the living room, maybe with snow falling outside, to a spring setting. A quilt spread out on the ground, the bubbling sound of a creek close by, the two of them lying side by side and talking about their hopes and dreams.

  “Third-date time now, and you still haven’t asked me if I’m younger than you are, have you?”

  She shook her head. “I’m having too much fun and wondering what you’re going to come up with next.”

  “Then what the hell are we doing dancing around this birth-certificate crap?” he asked. “I’m attracted to you, and you kiss like you feel the same, so if I ask you out when we get back to Sugar Run, will you say yes?”

  What he’d said made perfect sense, so she nodded in spite of her doubt. “Dinner and a movie at first, but no commitments. Deal?”

  “Are you seeing other guys right now?” He made a turn to get on the highway going south to Clarksville.

  “Nope. Are you seeing other women?” Diana held her breath, expecting him to hem and haw like other men she’d dated.

  “Haven’t been in a real relationship in a decade. I’ve had a couple of short-term girlfriends, but right now I don’t have to break up with anyone, so I won’t feel guilty about dating you,” he said.

  “You might change y
our mind when you get to know me. I’m Scottish, and I’ve got a temper. You might not even like me in a dating scenario,” she said.

  “And I’m honest, so if I do, I’ll be up front with you, just like I’d expect the same from you. I just think it’s terrible to waste this attraction on something as trivial as age,” he said as they passed the WELCOME TO CLARKSVILLE sign.

  It didn’t take long at the lumberyard to get the shingles and nails that he needed, and then they were off to the grocery store. That took more than an hour, with both of them taking a cart and filling half the list. Diana felt guilty when he whipped out a credit card to pay the bill, but Tootsie would have a hissy fit if they tried to sneak one past her.

  They were on the way home and about to make the turn just before the Red River bridge to go back toward Scrap when Luke swerved to miss a cardboard box sitting right in the middle of the road. “Don’t like to run over things like that. Never know when a bunch of kids might have put it there with a chunk of concrete in it that will tear up the undercarriage of the truck.”

  “Or else have filled it up with fresh cow crap so your truck will smell horrible for days. Whoa! Stop!” she squealed as she looked back in the side mirror.

  He stomped the brakes and left a long line of black tire tracks as he came to a halt. “What is it?”

  “I think there’s a baby in that box. I saw what looked like a little hand sticking out one of the holes in the side.” Diana opened the door and started running the city block back to the box.

  Luke bailed out of his side, leaving the door wide open, and jogged after her, until he saw a car coming from the opposite direction. He stood in the middle of the road, waving both hands until it slowed down. Then he pointed at the box, and the car inched its way forward until the driver rolled down the window a little and came to a stop only a few yards from where Diana was kneeling.

  “What’s going on? Y’all lose something from the back of the truck?”

  “No, but someone left that box in the middle of the road, and there’s something alive in it,” he answered.

  “Be careful. Someone put a skunk in a box, and my boyfriend stopped to see about it and got sprayed.” The window went back up, and the lady drove very carefully until she was past.