Everyone sat with forced smiles, and Alexi had shot several warning glares at Bryn, who generally said what everyone else was too polite to say.
His heart went out to Daphne as she stumbled out an explanation. “I bought you tourist memorabilia,” she said. “to take with you when you travel. As I’m sure you will. In campgrounds, some campers swapped things from their hometowns. I never had anything to give.”
Home. Halifax. Not Spirit Lake. A simple fact he couldn’t seem to wrap his heart around.
“Mel,” Seth said, “are you planning on going somewhere?” The surprise in Seth’s voice was unmistakable.
“Does it have to do with you borrowing my car?” Connie added. “Because I’m calling you on your lie, Mel. I was in the library and Judy completely and utterly choked on the name of the girl you’re supposedly teaching how to drive. So, out with it, Mel.”
“I’m invoking birthday privilege,” Mel said. “I don’t have to, if I don’t want to.”
Daphne touched his knee. “I’m sorry, Mel, but I don’t want you to cause trouble in your family because of me.” She addressed Connie. “The truth is, he’s been teaching me how to drive.”
Daphne’s confession kept Connie from squawking long enough to make Mel think any talk about his travels were forgotten. He’d underestimated his sister’s relentlessness, though.
“But, Mel, you haven’t been anywhere,” Connie said and turned to Daphne. “I mean nowhere. Only Edmonton, Calgary, around here. You don’t even go to the mountains unless it’s with someone. I thought you didn’t like traveling.”
“I don’t like traveling alone, on planes or in the mountains. Which pretty much explains why I haven’t been anywhere. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to go.”
“You don’t like the mountains?” Connie said. “But you and I went there last month for the day. Remember?”
“Because you were taking off on your own,” Mel said. “Someone had to go with you.”
“Yeah, someone had to come with me and let me do all the driving.”
“At least you weren’t alone.”
“I might as well have been. You can’t hike a mountain and be scared of heights.”
“It’s not the height. It’s the distance to the bottom.”
“That’s—”
Ben rested his hand on Connie’s knee. Mel took his future brother-in-law’s cue and quickly said, “How about more cake?”
The kids shouted their agreement but Alexi produced a tiny gift bag with a spray of blue and yellow tissue paper. “There is one more gift. From Seth and me.”
Mel rummaged through the blue and yellow tissue paper and drew out a tiny baby onesie. “‘My uncle,’” he slowly read, “‘is kind of a big deal.’”
Connie gasped, squealed and kissed Ben. “They’re having a baby. A baby!”
Mel looked at her, Seth, Alexi. At Daphne, who was beaming the hugest smile at him.
Mel turned to Alexi. “Is this for real?”
Alexi nodded, her blue eyes bright.
“But how—” Mel glanced uncertainly at her adopted crew, all four of them in various stages of shock.
“Alexi couldn’t with Richard,” Seth said. “But she can with me.”
Mel stared at the tiny onesie, not much longer than a shoebox. “Holy.”
“We couldn’t think of what to get you for your birthday,” Alexi said, “so that’s why we settled on the boring Tim Hortons gift card. Then on Friday, I discovered—”
“Friday!” Connie burst out. “Oh my—I’ve been an auntie for four days and not known a thing.” She clapped her hands at five-year-old Callie. “We need to go shopping.”
Ben lowered one of her hands into his. “First, a budget.”
“Anyway,” Seth said, “we wanted to make the announcement on your birthday. You kept this family together, Mel, when you shouldn’t have had to. I understand how hard that is. You deserve the honor.”
Mel thought he might lose it right then and there. “When’s the baby due?”
“March,” Alexi said. “The fifteenth, or thereabouts.”
No. Not March. Right in the season of sudden spring snows and accidents. He’d gone into the ditch in March. Seth started his calving in March.
“What about calving?” he said to Seth.
“I guess I’ll pick Alexi over a cow,” Seth joked and shot a Mel a puzzled frown.
Daphne slid her hand onto his knee and he held it fast.
This was a good thing. Both Seth and Connie had grown up safe and unharmed, and there was no reason this little one wouldn’t, too. No reason. “Thank you, Seth. Alexi. This,” he held up the onesie, “was real thoughtful.”
The rest of the evening had nothing to do with him and everything to do with planning for the arrival of his niece or nephew.
Mel prepared himself for many months of nightmares.
* * *
LINDA WASN’T ON the deck this time when Tom slipped through the back gate. Not that she should be, but now he’d have to go up to the house.
When she and Mel were dating, Tom had preferred to talk to her outside. Back in May, he’d brought over his mulcher for Linda’s lawn. She happened to be out on her deck, and they got to talking. Then, a couple of days later, he had to come by to pick up the mulcher and she was there again and they talked about weather and movies and politics and places. Never about her love life. Mel Greene was the white elephant between Tom and Linda. An elephant that had kept him on edge during his semiprivate visits on the back deck.
Now that Mel and Linda weren’t together, and he had it confirmed by both parties, he could be alone with her at any time and anyplace. Of course, she would have to invite him in first.
He was still standing by the gate, like a robber with sudden amnesia, when Linda opened the door. “Tom? What are you doing out here?”
“I, uh, wasn’t sure if you were home,” he said.
“Well, I am. Do you want to come in?”
Either he made his move now or she’d find someone else to date again. “Coming.”
He hadn’t been inside the house since shortly after Craig’s funeral. She’d renovated the kitchen. It looked bigger, brighter, more open.
“I switched out the window frames and the cabinets. New floor, too.” It was unusual tile. Pale brown with the faintest streaks and spirally bits.
“Bit like walking on a beach,” he said. “After the tide’s gone out and left behind the little sea creatures.”
“That’s the idea. I put in radiant floor heating.” She crossed her arms. “Insurance money.”
He didn’t blame her. If he’d discovered that his spouse had died on the way home from being with someone else, he might feel free to spend the insurance money, as well. But how to say that without insulting her and Craig?
She opened the fridge. “Ginger ale?”
She’d told him it was the last can when he’d been over a week ago, and he saw she’d restocked. A good sign. “Sure.”
“Did you know,” she said, sliding the can of pop across the island toward him, “when Craig died, I was paying for groceries on the credit card?”
He’d wondered.
“And what does it say about me,” she said lowly, “that when I was told the insurance money would come through, that all I felt was joy?”
“Probably says you’re normal.”
“There was nothing normal about the way I felt about him.”
That he understood. He’d spent half his life taking care of Craig, trying to stop him from hurting himself, and when he couldn’t do that, trying to stop him from hurting Linda.
Even when he’d attempted to confront Mel Greene, Spirit Lake’s “Good Guy,” it’d still been an attempt to protect her. Turned out he didn’t need to.
“You haven’t come by for a bit,”
Linda said. “What have you been up to?”
A nice, open-ended question. “Well, I ran into Mel the other day.”
Linda plugged in the kettle. She had hot green tea every evening, summer or winter. “He was with the RV woman.”
“Daphne.”
“That’s her name. She’s got grit, that one.”
Linda carefully set down her cup. “How, pray tell, did you discover that?”
“She confirmed that Mel wasn’t cheating on you,” Tom rushed out, head down.
Several beats of silence passed, and Tom risked a glance at Linda. Her full lips were pressed into two thin pink lines. “I already told you that,” she said.
“I know, I know, but there was a part of me that wanted it to be true so I could— So I could punch him or something.”
“You would’ve laid into the wrong guy.”
“Tell me about it. I...I realized these past days that it was Craig I wanted to punch. I wanted to punch him nearly every day he was married to you.”
The kettle clicked off. As she poured the steaming water into her cup, Linda said, “He wasn’t a cheater every day. Not at the beginning, anyway.”
“But he was married to you every day.”
Linda paused in the act of dunking her tea ball. “Tom. What are you saying? You were married, too.”
“I tried to get on with a life without you. I liked the woman I married a whole lot, except it wasn’t enough for either of us in the end. But with you...Linda...with you, I know I could make an honest go of it.”
Linda dropped the tea ball, the attached chain sinking from sight, into the cup. “Make a...go of it?”
He’d botched this. Worded it wrong. “Yes.”
“Tom.”
“Yes?”
“I broke up with Mel because I felt that he just wanted anybody. And I’m getting the exact same vibe from you. You sound...desperate.”
What was the saying? In for a penny, in for a pound. “I am desperate, all right? For you. I should’ve made a move earlier, after Craig died, but that didn’t seem right. Then you took up with Mel, and I missed my chance. I’m not losing out again.”
“Really?” she said. “I was thinking about what you said the other night. About how I deserved better. If that’s the case, then why did you pass me off in high school to Craig? Why didn’t you go out with me?”
She remembered. He’d hoped that after thirty-six years with Craig, she might’ve forgotten. He wished he could. “Because I was a fool.”
“That you never were,” she said. “You have never made a single mistake in your life.”
“We all make mistakes, and I made my first in high school. I didn’t believe I was good enough for you. And frankly, back then, Craig was better—he had a better job, he was smart and cute, as the girls put it. I caught up, but you were married. And I moved on. Or, at least, I tried to. I waited through your thirty-six years of marriage, then Mel cut in first, but now that you’re free again...” He kept his eyes on her beautiful face. “I want in. I want us to be together.”
Once, when Craig had been hauled into the police station and Tom had followed to bail him out, the cops had asked him to empty his pockets. Tom had been surprised at what he’d been carrying. A laundry token, a business card from an accountant, a toothpick in a plastic wrapper, bits and pieces of his life exposed. It had unnerved him, but it was nothing compared to what he was experiencing now. He felt Linda picking through his confession the way the officer had with his stuff.
“Did Craig set you up to do this?” Her voice was sharp.
“No, no. Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know. Some melodramatic, drink-soaked promise on his part for you to take care of me should anything happen to him.”
“No. Nothing like that. It’s all me, Linda.”
Her face softened, her lips curved up. There. “All you, Tom Baxter,” she said. “Okay, then.”
Yes!
“Only...”
“Yes?”
“If we do this, will you promise me something?”
Anything. He didn’t say that, though, because she’d gone through too much to believe extravagant promises. “What?”
“If you grow tired of me—” he grumbled a contradiction she overrode “—if you do, promise me that you’ll tell me and we’ll part ways. Then, you can be with whoever you want to be with...and we can stay...friends.”
“In other words, don’t cheat.”
She swallowed, nodded.
He could tell her that would never happen. It was the truth. After nearly twenty years of living with adultery, though, she wouldn’t believe it. She didn’t believe that he wasn’t Craig. He would show her.
“I won’t. I promise.”
“Then let’s give it a go,” she said, coming around the island to him. And for the first time ever, he wrapped his arms around the first woman he ever loved.
CHAPTER NINE
DAPHNE HAD TAKEN to working on her book at the town library during Fran’s afternoon naps. The place was nothing like the vaulted, serene chambers of the university libraries. Granted, there were the requisite bookshelves with the classics, but they were outdistanced by the DVD section that ran twenty feet long and four shelves high.
One afternoon, Daphne forgot to bring her copy of Persuasion. Not expecting much, she wasn’t disappointed when she located Emma on the shelves but not the object of her desire. She could resort to her e-versions, but her thinking improved with tactile stimulus.
“I was wondering if you could double-check the availability of a title for me,” she asked the clerk at the front desk. Judy. Mel’s cover for driving until she’d blown it under Connie’s questioning. Daphne wondered if Judy knew his real reasons. “Persuasion.” To avoid confusion and possible embarrassment, she added, “By Jane Austen.”
“Could you spell that for me?” Judy said with exaggerated politeness, even as she typed.
Well, if sarcasm was permitted... “I didn’t want to make the assumption that this was a place of learning, given that the first thing patrons see is a video arcade.” Daphne gestured to the bank of computers, where teens in headphones were assassinating renegades.
“Diversity is our strength. Persuasion is checked out, due back in two weeks. You want to place a hold?”
“No. I wanted to use it today.”
“We have it on DVD.”
“No doubt. Never mind, I will retrieve my copy from my RV.”
“You’re not from around here, then?”
“Nova Scotia. Halifax.”
“Oh.” She went quiet. Too quiet. Was Judy a former girlfriend of Mel’s? “What do you make of our little town?”
“It’s not so little,” Daphne said. “It takes time to walk anywhere. Unless I come here.”
“Oh. You’re close by?”
“Yes. In the RV park.”
“By the bowling alley?”
“Yes. In the RV park by the bowling alley, next to the railroad tracks on this street.”
Judy forged on. “How long are you staying at the park?”
Good question, and one she couldn’t answer. Fran’s health was steadily declining. This morning, after her shower, instead of dressing, she’d laid down for a nap. Daphne couldn’t convince Fran to abandon the mission and go home while she still had the strength. Not a problem she had any intention of discussing with a librarian, however, especially one friendly with Mel. “Why? Is there a form I need to fill out for tourists?”
“You know Mel Greene?”
So, he had mentioned her to Judy. Daphne opted for casualness. “Who doesn’t? Why do you ask?”
“You have been here for a few weeks,” Judy said. “How much longer are you planning to stay in town?”
The woman was incorrigible. “For as long as it takes.”
There was a thump onto the adjoining checkout. “Hi, Judy,” a young mom said.
Daphne meant to glide away but then she recognized the kids—Linda’s grandchildren.
“Good to see you, Brittany. How’s Linda handling retirement?” Judy asked.
“Oh, good.”
“She keeping busy?”
Linda’s daughter was pleasantly vague. “Busy, busy. You?”
“Hard at it,” Judy said, beeping a book through the scanner. She pointed to Daphne. “I was just helping this woman. She’s dating Mel Greene, as you may have heard.”
Daphne felt as exposed as if she were back in the same ridiculous nightie as when she’d met Mel. Brittany smiled at Daphne. The same smile that Linda had given her—a pained, polite one. “Nice. Mom’s dating Tom Baxter.”
The man who’d confronted Mel and Daphne at the picnic bench. Well. Daphne wasn’t surprised. Tom, for his part, had seemed genuinely taken with Linda. Only, how would Mel feel? To know that Linda had dumped him and taken up with another man so soon. Daphne gasped. Maybe they’d already been secretly dating. And here Tom had accused Mel of cheating.
No, Tom probably absorbed her tirade and concluded that Mel wouldn’t have dumped the elegant Linda for her, a pipsqueak harridan who couldn’t attract a magnet if holding a bucket of nails, much less a full-blooded male like Mel. He’d probably concluded that Mel had rebounded, had settled. Well, she’d promised Mel that she would fake a relationship in public and this qualified.
She also considered herself his friend, and Daphne had a sudden compulsion to break the news of Linda’s new relationship to him before Judy or Connie or anyone else did.
“I’ll just get back to...” Daphne mumbled, indicating her empty seat. She could text Mel and ask if she could treat him to an ice cream or something. Ice cream went with everything, even bad news.
Beep. “That must be a recent development,” Judy said. Beep. “Mel has been with Daphne for a while now. Since that motor home crashed into Tim Hortons.”
Three weeks, publicly dating for two, hardly constituted “a while.”
Coming Home to You Page 10
