Their Wander Canyon Wish

by Allie Pleiter

  Wyatt was just trying to figure out the simplest way to explain this oddball arrangement when Marilyn stepped in. “Wyatt helped me figure out the maintenance record my late husband left with our car, and in exchange I’m giving him a hand with the paperwork.”

  Wyatt tucked one hand in his pocket. “Never really been my thing.” Now that was an understatement. Nemesis was more accurate.

  “Don’t I know it,” Manny agreed. He turned to Marilyn. “You got the touch. Place looks neater than when I left it.”

  “We get paid in doughnuts,” Maddie explained. “Mom gets fancy coffee.”

  Marilyn’s cheeks flushed at her daughter’s honesty.

  “Not a bad setup, if you ask me,” Manny said. He walked over to the desk and scooped up the stack of envelopes sitting in a small wire rack. “Figured the electric bill’s due about now, and some other things.” He made a show of slowly gazing around the shop again, with the formality of an official inspection. “Seems I got nothing to worry about here.”

  “Not a thing,” Wyatt boasted, although it might have been more accurate to say “some and sort of.” Three—and maybe four—correct orders didn’t quite constitute a fully running business. But it was close enough to make him happy. And to reassure Manny.

  Manny bounced his gaze back and forth between Wyatt and Marilyn, eyes twinkling in amusement. “Guess I’m done here, then.”

  His tone made Marilyn’s cheeks turn further pink. She did this thing, biting just one corner of her lip, when she was nervous or worried, and he watched her do it just then. Different from the way she pursed her lips when she concentrated or figured something out. He shot Manny an “enough of that” look. “Peggy’s missing you, I’m sure.”

  That made the old man laugh. “Betcha she is.” He wagged a finger at Wyatt. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Bye, Manny!” Maddie and Margie shouted as they waved from their spot at the table.

  Manny waved as well, then headed out the door with a head shake and a chuckle that let Wyatt know he most certainly would hear from the old man soon.

  Wyatt watched him leave. “Feels good to be able to set his mind at ease,” he admitted as he headed for the coffeepot. He produced an actual mug this time for Marilyn. He snatched one of the nicer ones from the ranch house kitchen at dinner the other night, remembering the way she had wrinkled her nose a bit at the clunky old paper cups that normally passed for coffee service at Manny’s. The girls, of course, squealed in delight at the enormous cupcakes—complete with sprinkles—Yvonne had made.

  “They’re huge,” Marilyn cried in nutritional protest.

  “Go big or go home, I always say.”

  One hand shot to Marilyn’s hip in a very maternal fashion. “Girls, you can have half now, but I want you to save the other half for when Tessa takes you to the store.”

  That was a mom for you. Always taking something great like a huge cupcake and making you save half for later. He wanted to protest as much as the girls did, proving he was definitely not cut out to ever be a parent. But he also knew where his jurisdiction ended, so he kept silent as she cut the cupcakes into sensible halves. She even found a pair of plastic forks and napkins somewhere in a desk drawer to help the girls navigate all that frosting without a crazy mess. Weren’t cupcakes supposed to be huge and messy?

  A crazy curl of disappointment unwound in his chest at the thought of Tessa taking the girls somewhere else. Until just that moment, he hadn’t realized he was looking forward to having the girls in the shop all morning. Which made no sense because he was sure he’d hardly get anything done while keeping an eye out for their safety and occupation.

  And there was an equally daunting hint of tension at the thought of being alone with Marilyn. Wyatt didn’t know what to do with the irrational pull that was starting to show up when he thought about her. Or sat next to her.

  They worked their way through no fewer than four of the remaining piles before Tessa Kennedy from the newspaper office knocked on the garage door to fetch the girls. At that point, Wyatt found he was glad for the girls’ departure. Something had clearly been bugging Marilyn all morning, and he aimed to find out what it was. She was nervous or anxious or something that hadn’t been there any of the other times she’d been in the shop.

  “You okay?” he asked once the girls’ voices had faded down the block in the direction of Redding’s general store and whatever errand they had there.

  “Fine,” she said quickly.

  He didn’t argue, but gave her a doubtful look and sat back in his chair. In his experience, “fine” meant a hundred different things to a woman, and not one of them was fine.

  She responded by taking a deep breath and pulling a set of papers from her handbag. “Do you ever remember visiting a reading specialist in school?”

  That was an odd question. “I remember visiting the principal’s office a lot of times.”

  She spread the papers cautiously on the desk. “Ever remember taking a test like this?”

  She looked scared. “What are you getting at?”

  “It’s just that... I think I might know why all these orders give you such trouble.”

  A spot in his gut turned cold and hard. “’Cause they’re stupid and complicated, that’s why.”

  “I don’t think so. Wyatt, I think you might be dyslexic.”

  * * *

  Marilyn watched Wyatt’s eyes narrow at the pronouncement she’d just made.

  “I’m not sure...” she went on. “I mean, I’m not an expert or anything. But I know enough from the treatment Margie gets to...”

  Why, after rehearsing so many careful ways to say this, had she used that word? His spine stiffened. “You’re saying I need some kind of treatment? Like I’m sick?”

  “No. Not sick. It’s a learning disability. Lots of people have it. It mixes up how they see letters and numbers.”

  He pushed sharply back from the desk. “I hate paperwork. That’s all that’s wrong with me.” He gave the word a caustic emphasis. Then he stood up and walked away from her.

  She’d expected him to bristle, to resist, but not quite this hard. Some foolish part of her even hoped he’d welcome the theory, feel the relief of an explanation the way she had when someone had told her about Margie. Then again, even Margie had put up a fight about special class until she began to see how the skills she learned there made things easier. Why expect any less from a man of Wyatt’s temperament?

  “I want to help.” The explanation sounded feeble, intrusive even, as if she’d poked her nose in where it didn’t belong. Had she?

  Wyatt scoffed. “So you were just analyzing me the other day? Seeing if your theory about my defect was right?”

  “No. Not at all.” She started to say more, then realized it wouldn’t do much good. He wouldn’t hear whatever explanation she tried to give. At least not now.

  Wyatt didn’t respond. He turned away from her again, slamming tools from his workbench loudly into drawers in the tall open tool chest the girls said looked like a giant red treasure chest.

  He hadn’t told her to leave. At least not yet. Marilyn held on to that as a good sign. “Don’t you want a solution?”

  “I don’t have a problem.”

  He had a wrench in his hand, and the way his reach stilled in the air on the way to the toolbox told her even he knew that statement couldn’t hold up. The desk in front of her, still piled with stacks of paperwork, made that loud and clear.

  She borrowed a phrase from Margie’s reading tutor. “No, you have a challenge. And you don’t strike me as the kind of man to back down from a challenge.”

  That turned him toward her, wrench pointing in accusation. “Don’t you use that parental stuff on me. This isn’t any of your business.”

  He was right. “No, it’s not. But I’ve always believed it’s wrong not to help someone
when you can.”

  A dark laugh erupted from him as he tossed the wrench into the drawer, the shrill metallic clatter filling the room. “Oh, yeah, you’ve helped.” He’d always been very good at sarcasm. She’d never liked it in Landon, and it hit a nerve in her now.

  Marilyn felt her hackles rise. She had helped. She hadn’t just imagined the relief and satisfaction on his face as they’d finally begun to get ahead of the pile of papers. The way he’d talked about the orders that had come in correctly today told her everything about how frustrated he had been before. Maybe somehow to him her theory pulled the rug out from that victory, made it hers instead of his. “I think I have helped,” she said gently. “I’ve been glad to.”

  She had. It surprised her how much. The time spent putting order into this chaotic space had fed her soul somehow. It was so refreshing to feel useful, to contribute something, even in such a tiny way. Sometimes the days with her parents felt like one big debt, a slippery surface of constant not-enough that wouldn’t let her get her feet underneath her. A pressure that wouldn’t let her feel strong enough to move on. That didn’t make much sense, but what about grief ever did? It wasn’t a logical process.

  After a long, prickly silence, Wyatt leaned back against the workbench, arms crossed over his chest, defiance searing in his eyes. “And what do you suggest?”

  She willed herself not to rise to the bait in his sarcastic tone. She pulled out the small stack of pages she’d printed out last night. Just some basic information such as a list of issues or difficulties faced by adults with undiagnosed dyslexia. She hoped Wyatt would see himself in the information the same way she saw him in there. It explained so much. To her it offered a clear hope, but she doubted Wyatt could see it that way. At least not just yet, if ever. She held the papers up toward him. “That you look at this.”

  “Oh, that’s rich,” he said with another dark laugh.

  “What?”

  “You tell me I have a reading disability and then you give me something to read about it?”

  She cringed. He had her there. This had all seemed so much simpler last night. Now it just felt like a giant tangle. “You want me to read it to you?”

  “No,” he snapped almost instantly.

  “Would you like to me to tell you what it says?”

  “No.”

  Honestly, if he stomped his foot, she’d be hard-pressed to say if she was squaring off against a first-grader or a full-grown man.

  “I’ll just leave it for you, then.” The poignancy of placing the printouts on top of one of the stacks of sorted papers didn’t escape her. “Whether or not you look at it is up to you.”

  After another long pause, he said what they both were thinking. “So now what?”

  “I think that’s up to you, mostly.” She nodded toward the stacks on the desk. “We’re not done with these.”

  She waited for him to say something like “Oh, yes we are,” but he didn’t. He turned from her and walked over to the front of the bay, his tall frame silhouetted against the clear Colorado sunlight coming through the rather grimy windows. He put his hands on the huge doors and simply leaned against them, defiant and weary at the same time. As if he, who always had a witty comeback for everything, didn’t have one for this.

  Even as she looked at him, she couldn’t fathom why the cluttered, dirty garage had felt so comfortable to a woman with her taste for order. It baffled her the way letters and numbers baffled him. Marilyn pushed away the unsettling notion that it was the man, not the space, who’d been the comfort. No. That was just her loneliness and dislocation talking, and not a voice there was any wisdom to heeding. As he stood there, not responding but not telling her to leave either, Marilyn sent up a quick prayer. I just tried to help, Lord. I can’t think You didn’t have me see that for no reason. Don’t let his pride get in the way of getting what he might need.

  The silence dragged on, feeding her fear that she’d just destroyed whatever surprising friendship they had. Had she let her urge to feel useful push her a step too far, meddle where she didn’t belong? Landon’s words, hurled at her in irritation one night when she’d been at a committee meeting for a local charity and the girls had been fighting the flu, came up from the depth of her memory. “You don’t have to help everyone. Nobody needs you like that.”

  Landon had been tired and overwhelmed by the girls’ sudden sickness. Caretaking had never been his strength. He’d meant that no committee needed to come before their family, but it hadn’t come out that way. The bite of his words had told her no one wants your help. In a million little ways, Landon had made her feel that all her value came from him. As if she was an appendage, an accessory, even a means to an end. Landon had somehow worn down her self-esteem in ways she was only now beginning to realize. Maybe that’s why coming home and starting over had felt like such an enormous uphill climb. Why the contents of their Denver house felt more like deadweights than treasures.

  It had felt so satisfying to offer real, useful help to Wyatt. That’s what had driven her to push the boundaries to help even more. It wasn’t another version of Wander always watching—although it was clear that’s how he viewed it.

  “You probably have places to be.” His voice was low, his words clipped short.

  Even though Wyatt’s words weren’t “go home,” they sent the message loud and clear. He spoke them with an undeniable finality.

  Marilyn straightened the piles one last time before she left.

  Chapter Nine

  Wyatt slid himself out from underneath his friend Tim’s derelict Jeep the next evening. “One of these days I’m gonna have to start charging you for this.”

  Tim handed him a battered towel. “No, you won’t.”

  Sitting upright, Wyatt stared at the towel, then wiped his face with the front of his T-shirt instead. “And why is that?”

  “I’m the only one who still plays basketball with you.” Tim extended a hand to help Wyatt up off the mechanic’s dolly that had sat in Tim’s driveway. “All your other friends are tired of losing to you. You need me.”

  Wyatt merely grunted as he put his tools back in the toolbox beside the Jeep. “No, you need me. This pile of scrap would cost you a fortune if you took it to anyone else. So don’t. Ever.” Keeping Tim’s twenty-year-old Jeep up and running was a never-ending job, but it also ensured multiple repair visits that came with the side benefits of hoops and burgers.

  The visits had also started to boast an additional feature: job recruitment. Tonight while Wyatt made repairs, Tim kept up an ongoing description of the outstanding possibilities and income potential for anyone at Mountain Vista. Honestly, Tim made it sound as if a job with the resort would solve every problem Wyatt ever had. Since Tim was looking pretty successful these days, maybe he had a point. Sure, people weren’t that fond of the company and their plans to double in size, but it wasn’t as if lack of public approval had ever stopped him before.

  Tim ran an affectionate hand down the rusty fender. “I could never take her anywhere else.”

  He scooped up the basketball as they walked toward Tim’s deck for the grilling portion of the evening. “So, have you thought about it?”

  Evidently Tim was not going to let up until Wyatt officially threw his hat in the ring as the vehicle manager for Mountain Vista Resort. And Tim made it sound that easy, too. As if the job was his if he wanted it.

  He just wasn’t sure he wanted it. “I’m thinking about it,” Wyatt replied to his friend. “And it does sound like a great job.” Wyatt overstated his enthusiasm just to quiet Tim. “A little too good to be true” might come closer to the mark. Why would a company that big be so eager to hire someone like him?

  “The pay’s amazing,” Tim added. “And a lot of snazzy resort benefits. The parent company has seven resorts around the country and you can stay at any of them for a fraction of what other people pay.”

&
nbsp; Tim worked at Mountain Vista as one of the resort’s grounds managers. As such, Tim was involved in plans for both the current landscaping and the multiple new golf courses the resort hoped to add—three if not more. That, and two more lodging units, were behind the company’s not-so-quiet attempts to buy up local land around the existing company property.

  Attempts that were angering many Wander Canyon residents. Wyatt suspected one of the reasons Mountain Vista paid so well was the social cost of working for them. A connection with Mountain Vista tended to shrink a guy’s friend base in Wander Canyon. Two of their mutual friends had given Tim the cold shoulder since he signed on with Mountain Vista. So although he’d never come out and say it, Wyatt guessed that lately Tim needed Wyatt’s friendship as much as Wyatt needed Tim’s.

  “I’d have to work with you,” he said to Tim. “Don’t you think we’d get sick of each other?”

  “It’s going to be serious money,” Tim offered as they walked through the house. “The company’s got deep pockets. C’mon. You’re over a decade out of high school. Aren’t you tired of scraping by?”

  “If those pockets are so deep, why you don’t own a better car?” Wyatt countered. He never tired of teasing Tim about his irrational devotion to the old Jeep.

  Tim smiled. “Just bought one.”

  Wyatt stopped in his tracks. “What?”

  “I take delivery on a Range Rover next week.” The look on Tim’s face told Wyatt his friend had been waiting all night to deliver that shocker.

  “You’re ditching the Jeep?” Wyatt could hardly believe it. As a matter of fact, he found himself a bit put out that his friend had made an automotive decision like that without asking his advice.

  “Of course not.” Tim lit the grill with a boastful smirk. “I’ll simply be a two-car guy. And when my lease is up next month, I’ll be looking for a bigger place. After all, I’ll need a two-car garage. I’ve arrived, my friend.”