by Pat Henshaw
I was taking the Help Wanted sign out of the window as Christopher walked up to the door.
“Hey. Isn’t it about lunchtime?” he asked.
And there it was. The best part of my day.
I looked over at Riley, who grinned and made shooing motions with his hands. As I laid the sign on the sales counter, he said, “Have a good time and bring me something back. I didn’t pack a lunch today.”
I marveled at the bubbly feeling I had whenever I thought about or was near Christopher. How could I be in my midthirties, own a flourishing business, a nice home, and still feel like I was a kid again? I’d thought people grew out of this stage of their lives. Evidently and thankfully, I was wrong.
Over sandwiches, chips, and iced teas, I told Christopher about Bernie’s visit.
“I don’t know why you think you need to change.” He was smiling at me, so the bite wasn’t as painful as Bernie’s comment.
“But….”
“I thought you were perfect the first time I saw you. You were helping a woman whose face looked like a dried apple and who was as tall as your waist. You were explaining how the humane rattrap worked, and she was staring up at you with stars in her eyes, as if you’d created the universe. The first thought that popped into my head was that for the first time in my life I was seeing a real, genuine, honest person. Someone I not only could trust with my life but with Henry’s too. I felt like I’d stumbled onto the missing half of my heart. The first time I saw you was cataclysmic, and it scared the hell out of me. I didn’t know what to do, so I ran away.”
His gaze fell to the table. I was too shocked to speak. I remembered when he’d come into the store the first time too. But he appeared to be just another tourist as far as I was concerned. I was too busy explaining how the rattrap wouldn’t harm either the rat or her cat, if he accidentally got caught in it.
Christopher’s hand came up from his lap, and he laid it on the table, palm up. Then he looked at me.
Our plates were clean. We were done with lunch. If I held his hand, then what would we do?
“I want to take you home and make love to you, but I have no home.” He said it softly, seductively.
Now there was nothing more that I wanted either. My teenage hormones raced around in my middle-aged body.
I had a home. And no one was there right now.
I pulled out my phone and called Riley.
“Hey. Something’s come up. I won’t be back until time for the hiring tests. Can you get someone to bring you lunch?” As I listened to his reassurance, I smiled a slow grin at Christopher, who sighed.
I hung up and grabbed Christopher’s hand.
I FELT so energized as the first teen started the test that I was surprised at his slouching and lackadaisical attitude. Where was his get-up-and-go?
Like a thoroughbred behind the starting gate, I was raring to run. I wanted to dance, sing, shimmy, fly like I had before I’d returned to the store. And here I was tethered to Mr. Ennui, Stone Acres’s next downtown porch-sitter.
I didn’t give him a shot at constructing the box, and he didn’t mention that he expected it. We parted with him getting marginally more excited to be free to head off to the mall.
Bud and Lorraine’s son, Larry, walked in forty-five minutes later as I was mulling whether I should call Christopher or not. Was that what lovers did? I had no clue what to do or say in this situation.
I guess we were really boyfriends, or at least bedfriends, now. We’d agreed that we’d meet for lunch and sex for the next few days until school ended. After that, we’d have to figure out how to be together without Henry around.
I was probably starry-eyed, because Larry kept trying to get my attention until I finally realized he was my next interviewee.
“I thought you already had a part-time job with Abe.”
He hung his head and mumbled, “It didn’t work out.”
“What do you mean?”
He blushed. “I can’t do heights. Who knew a lot of construction has to do with heights? I vomited a couple of times. Abe said maybe working here might be better.” He brightened. “Then I met Henry. And I saw your sign. Plus Henry told me the other night you’d hired him.”
In teenage logic, his move from construction to hardware store made sense.
“What about the cafe? Aren’t you working there?”
“Not really. Only when they need me.” He gave a teenage shrug. “My parents don’t pay me. They pay her, the new girl they hired.”
He shrugged again, then grinned. “They let me work for Abe. So they can’t say no to me being here.”
I nodded. I didn’t want to step into his family’s decisions.
“Well, let’s get started, then.”
He aced the identifications and had no trouble building the box. He was slower and more methodical than Henry. He read through the directions a couple of times before he acted. In the end, though, he was just as curious.
“What’s it for?” Like Henry, he was playing with the small box’s door, opening and closing it as if a magician had stashed a rabbit or scarf inside.
“It’s not for anything, except as a test to see if you can follow directions and use the tools.”
Again like Henry, he frowned.
“It should be used for something. Don’t worry. I’ll figure it out.” Then he beamed at me. “Henry and I will figure it out.”
Any doubt that they had connected the other night vanished. Looked like both the Darlings had gone fishing in the Stone Acres pond and come up with boyfriends.
Christopher and Henry came into the store around four. Henry was ecstatic that I’d hired Larry, but his joy was short-lived when I told him they wouldn’t be working together.
“Why not?”
“Because I only need one of you at a time when Riley and I are here. I’d be paying one of you to stand around.”
“Not if one of us made the IKEA stuff and the other helped with the customers.”
“I’ll think about it.”
Christopher exploded with laughter. I rolled my eyes, something I don’t think I’d ever done in my life. I was regressing. I’d never been happier.
At five, Christopher and I loaded the boys into his van, and we drove to the Rock Bottom to take Larry home and have dinner.
Lorraine greeted her son with a frown.
“I thought you were going to work this afternoon, not hang around with your friend.” She handed him an apron.
“I did! I’m going to work for Frank this summer.”
“What happened to Abe and working construction?”
As they walked away talking, Christopher and I sat at a booth opposite Henry. We listened as he chatted about school and the upcoming assembly, saying he wasn’t going to get any awards because he hadn’t been there long enough. When he slowed down and stopped, he stared at us, his eyebrows knotted together.
Since I didn’t know what was going on, I stared back at him. Christopher’s hand wrapped around mine. This was all new to me, so I figured Christopher was the one who understood what his son was puzzling over—or at least knew how to handle the silence.
I glanced at Christopher, but he was no help. He was staring blindly at our hands with a silly little grin on his face. I blushed.
“Oh my God! You guys did it!” Henry all but yelled. “Good on you, Dad.”
Now I was burning up. I shrank into the corner of the booth, ready to let Christopher, who was on the outside, take the brunt of everyone’s stare. I could feel the gossip tree sprouting as I tried to reclaim my hand.
Christopher, the idiot, grinned like there was no tomorrow. When the whispering around us started, he looked toward the noise and nodded to people. I was tempted to go back to wearing my monkey suit so I’d look normal, nonsexy, not the teenage Frank I felt like.
“Henry, we’d appreciate it if you’d keep your voice down.” Christopher smiled benignly down at his son. “What we do and don’t do isn’t anyone else’s business. Es
pecially not yours.”
Henry had the grace to look a little abashed, but still his eyes twinkled with glee.
“Oh man, I can’t wait to tell—”
“Tell who, Henry? Who are you thinking of telling?” Christopher’s voice was low and concerned.
I had no idea what they were talking about.
Christopher patted my hand like he understood. “It’s not what you’re thinking,” he murmured.
What? I wasn’t thinking anything because I was so surprised. I was alarmed that Henry wanted to tell anyone.
Christopher’s eyes were trained on his son, however.
“My other dad,” Henry blurted. “I was thinking how it would kick his ass to find out you were with someone as cool as Frank. I want him to be jealous and suffer. I want him to figure out he dumped the best man in the world, and I want him to feel the pain.”
Christopher slid from my side, scooted in next to Henry, and put his arm around his son.
“You know, I get where you’re coming from. But you’ve got to understand that me being with Frank isn’t about revenge. It’s about happiness. And happiness doesn’t act that way.”
When Henry started to tear up, Christopher gave him a quick kiss on the forehead and ruffled his hair.
“What I’d like for you to do is be happy for us. I’m glad you like Frank. I really am. But he has nothing to do with our previous life, just as we don’t have anything to do with his. The three of us start from now, not letting anything from the past drag us down. If something comes up, we’ll work through it together, but we won’t live there. Today and tomorrow are ours. I want to make the most of them.”
I heartily agreed. Whatever Christopher saw in me was wonderful. I just hoped it kept going.
THE FIRST rumblings of discord appeared on the horizon as we rode home.
“What is it?” Christopher asked, pointing in the direction of my farmhouse.
“A fire.” I was alarmed. It was way too early for fire season.
Although the devastating drought had cleared up a bit, the Sierra Nevada foothills were prey to fires much of the year. Usually set off by lightning, they were also the work of arsonists, careless smokers, and mismanaged controlled burns. One year a huge fire was started by a park ranger who was burning love letters from an old beau. Stone Acres had more fire trucks and firefighters than it had bartenders.
“It looks like it’s pretty close to your house,” Henry shouted as he pointed.
It wasn’t close. My house was ablaze.
My heart fell as I watched my past go up in flames.
Christopher took one hand off the steering wheel and started to massage the back of my neck.
As we neared, we could see fire trucks pouring water over the wooden structures. But even I could see there was really no use. The house’s roof had caved in, so the fire had been burning for a long time before the rescue units had gotten there.
I started crying. Over a hundred years had vanished. I’d wanted to start anew, but not this way. At least I had the box of memories back in the storeroom in town. The thought brought little comfort.
LIT UP in Christopher’s headlights and the dying embers, Sheriff Campbell and Fire Chief George Matthews waited for us to park before they walked toward the van. The house had collapsed in on itself, and now, in the shadows after sunset, appeared to be a giant trying to stand after being knocked to its knees.
“I’m sorry, Frank. It’d been burning too long before someone called it in. Even the fire tower didn’t spot it right away because they were going through a shift change.” Lloyd was clutching my arm and seemed to be propping me up.
Not as much as Christopher on my other side with his arm around my waist, pulling me against him. I leaned toward him for comfort and then felt Henry push aside the sheriff and hold on to my arm. We faced the carcass of my house while the fire personnel gathered their equipment back into the trucks. As the men passed us carrying hoses and axes, they nodded to me, most of them muttering, “Sorry, Frank.”
If it weren’t for Christopher and Henry, I would have lost it completely. But Christopher, as he had the previous time, walked me around, kept me moving, and talked to me softly, calmly until my breathing matched the slow, steady steps we were taking.
I felt devastated. The house chronicled the McCord family history from its beginning on a small working farm in Scotland, across the United States by wagon train, and settlement in California. What started as a one-room shack had blossomed over the decades into a two-story house, with the original cabin transformed into the current kitchen.
The house smelled like my mother and grandmother. It echoed with decades of conversations, becoming my solace and my cave when I was a bachelor.
I hated the old place as much as I loved it. Often I resented the extra work it demanded when I came home exhausted from the store at night. After fixing other people’s homes, I’d walk in only to have the lights short out, the furnace die, or the pump stall. Still, it was the repository of all the love and caring I’d ever known.
The house and our family were mainstays of the community, landmarks like the grizzled old trees that featured in directions old-timers gave. Now I felt like I’d been plucked from the soil and was on the verge of blowing away in the wind.
Christopher hugged me to his chest, and I wept. I mourned this blow to my self.
AS THE officials wrapped up, Lloyd said he’d gotten us rooms at the Bandy Hotel in Old Town since the sport fishermen had left. So we drove back to town in what amounted to a funeral procession.
Lloyd had booked us into three connecting rooms on the long-stay floor.
After Zeke, the hotel owner, showed us to our rooms, he patted me on the back and muttered, “Sorry to hear about the farmhouse.” He handed us clean clothes, toothbrushes, and everything else we needed for the night, then said after we took showers and put on the clean sweats, he’d take our smoky clothes to be cleaned and ready for us by morning.
Christopher tucked me in, said good night, and made sure his son was comfortable in the adjoining room.
I woke to nightmares of fire and my mother’s and grandmother’s screams. Christopher woke me and calmed me until I slept again.
11
WAKING THE next morning in a strange room, I had trouble touching base with reality. The faint odor of burning wood still clung to me. In the next few days, I was going to be relying on Christopher for comfort and hope. I was both physically and emotionally wrung out.
“Don’t even go there.” His warm voice in my ear soothed me. I hadn’t heard him come in. “I’m taking Henry to school. While I’m gone, you’re getting up, taking a shower, and waiting for me to return with coffee and breakfast. I think Zeke said there’s a study or library or something next to the check-in desk. I’ll look for you there.”
He nudged me so I was facing him. He was dressed and smelled like a new day.
“Don’t think about anything but me, or if you have to have someone else to focus on, Henry. Just get yourself ready.” He glared at me, then gave me a kiss. “Are you listening?” He kissed me again.
“Yes, sir. I hear you.”
Then I kissed him, just as there was a knock on the connecting door to Henry’s room.
Abruptly, the tranquil interlude of the morning ended and the full orchestration of the day began.
The sheriff intercepted me in the foyer as I was trying to find the lounge. We ended up sitting in the breakfast room surrounded by the smells of coffee from Penny’s and pastries from Monique’s Bakery.
I pulled out my cell phone and called Christopher, telling him he could skip getting food because there was some here.
“I’m sorry about the house, Frank. How old was it again?” Lloyd had barely waited to the end of my phone call before he started talking.
I knew he had information about what went wrong last night, and I should want to hear it. What I really wanted to do was wake up in an altered reality. The smooth sailing I’d been ba
sking in yesterday had turned into turmoil, and my compass was still rocking and reeling with the waves.
My loss flooded over me, threatening to suck me under.
“My great-great-grandfather built the back part of it before the turn of the twentieth century. Each generation added on to the one-room cabin.” I stopped and took a deep breath. “I think the cabin predated this hotel and the saloon by ten or fifteen years.”
I slumped. So much personal as well as local history gone.
Homeless. I was homeless. Christopher and Henry were homeless.
My breathing started to accelerate. The walls moved closer.
Then my anchor appeared and spoke. “Frank, baby, I’m back. Let’s walk a few steps, okay?” Christopher rubbed my back as I stood and put one foot in front of the other.
“We’re homeless,” I choked out.
“I know. It’s okay. We can stay here. One day at a time, right?”
Christopher worked his magic as the sheriff watched us circle the room.
When I could breathe again and had gotten myself under control, we went back to the table where Lloyd sat with his coffee. It occurred to me that this was Christopher’s latest blow in a long line of them. I had to comfort and be strong for him as well as for myself.
I gave Lloyd a rueful grin as I lowered myself onto a chair at the table. He nodded like he understood.
Christopher had gone to the coffee bar and was pouring us drinks. I watched as he fixed a tray of juice, coffee, and pastries.
“So what can you tell me… us?” I asked Lloyd as Christopher unloaded the tray onto the table and sat.
“It was arson, not an accident.” Lloyd looked at both of us. His eyes questioned if I wanted to hear more, so I nodded. “Whoever did it used a lot of accelerant. Too much, in fact. The fire marshal thinks they might even find traces of the body of the person who did it when he and his men start investigating.”