Coming Home to You

by M. K. Stelmack

  Exactly what he’d been thinking. Besides the more money they made, the more kids benefited. “Sure,” he said. And even though it stuck in his craw, he added, “Thanks.”

  Cal grinned and pointed with his chin to the dealers. “We made a good team back there.”

  Mel sensed Daphne coming up behind him. “I’ve got more in storage.”

  “More?”

  “Enough for a department store–size Santa’s workshop.”

  “I’d like to see that. I could help you sell your stuff.”

  Mel’s first instinct was to refuse. Accepting Cal’s help was one step toward forgiving him, and he wasn’t about to let his father off the hook so easily. On the other hand, they had made a good team. Why not take advantage of his dad’s expertise to make a decent buck or two?

  Daphne dug her fingers into Mel’s arm. “I’m sorry, Cal, but I need to consult with Mr. Claus about his toy list. Do you mind?”

  She didn’t wait for an answer, just turned and left.

  “I’ll call you later,” Mel said to Cal, and with a merry wave to all, followed Mrs. Claus. But not before snatching up the stuffed puppy.

  * * *

  MEL FOUND DAPHNE in the shade of a giant bouncy castle. She was pacing in her red-and-white-striped sundress and matching hat. Mel thought she now looked less like jolly Mrs. Claus and more like Waldo’s mother, livid over her son’s wandering ways.

  “What were you doing in there?” she said.

  “What? I made the workshop money. That’s Santa’s job.”

  “You were acting as if you owned all that stuff.”

  “I do own it.”

  “You donated it. Once you donate something, you don’t own it.”

  “What’s wrong with getting a good price for something I donated? Means more for the charity.”

  “Because,” she said, “you weren’t doing it for the charity. You were doing it because you couldn’t stand the idea of getting a single less penny than you think it’s worth.”

  “I still don’t see the problem with that. You want to be paid less than you’re worth?”

  “Fine, then. How much am I worth?”

  “I don’t put a dollar value on you.”

  “How about your baby brother?”

  “What?”

  “You keep your brother’s ashes beside a bag of towels in your shed.”

  Mel pulled on his beard, the arrangement parting a full inch from his clean-shaven jaw. “I put it there to hide it from Cal. He thinks the box is full of money.”

  “So? He opens the box, finds there’s no money there and the matter is settled.”

  Mel felt anger lick around the edges of his control. “He doesn’t deserve to even look at those ashes. Not without my permission, and I’m not giving it.”

  “Mel Greene,” she said. “After what your father admitted the other evening, how can you say that? Don’t you see what your anger is turning you into? You’re not yourself. Connie says you’re a generous person. Can’t you afford to give your father some money if that’s what he wants?”

  Connie and Daphne simply didn’t understand. “He’ll just want more.”

  “How is he any different from you? You want what you can’t have. Isaac. A wife. Your dad to pick you above a lottery ticket. And I bet every time a woman passed you over, every time you had no place to go, no one to talk to, you went out and bought more junk to stuff in a storage locker. Five storage units worth of it, and don’t tell me it’s so you can sell it later. You know you won’t. That stuff is junk.”

  He squeezed the puppy until its soft head caved in. “You’re wrong.”

  She sighed and her voice softened. “That’s exactly what I told myself when you accused me of smallness. But I realized you were right.”

  “Are you saying you now believe me when I said I’d give up everything to be with you?”

  “Does that include the entire contents of the five storage lockers?”

  “Yes.” Then, in the interests of full disclosure, he added, “As long as I could sell the contents for the right price.”

  “And here we are, full circle. You have a big bottomless pit inside you, which you keep throwing junk into and still it’s not filled. It never will be. I was right beside you today. Me. The one who you’ve given no reason to stay another day. You left me. All you care about is getting a good price on stuff that’s not yours, anyway. You made a choice, Mel Greene, and it wasn’t me.”

  She was in his face now. The only other times she’d been that close was to kiss him, or the night he’d told her about Isaac. But those had been times of tenderness, not this hurt anger.

  He reached for her.

  “Hey,” he said, “I’ll make you a deal.”

  She stepped back. “You sound like your father.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “Sure, you did. You wanted to bargain for my love.” She slid on her sunglasses. “We’re going nowhere. Time to pretend we’re a happy couple once again and for the last time.”

  He followed, no longer sure what to do with the stuffed puppy. Or himself.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  SHE MIGHT AS well leave town, Daphne thought the next morning from her hide-a-bed. There was nothing to keep her in Spirit Lake. Certainly not Mel.

  After their argument, they’d not been alone again. The paper took pictures of them faking their happiness. They’d even stood with their arms around each other and once with her posed on his lap.

  They’d become celebrities at faking a relationship.

  Time to go home. Fran needed her. She was in palliative care now, and according to Moshe, as well as could be expected. Yes, he was using her line but at least she knew what he meant.

  She flipped back the covers. No excuse for her bedridden state. After all, had she really thought there’d be a different outcome between her and Mel? Up and at it, Daphne girl.

  An hour later, she was dressed in a halter top and shorts, packing books into a suitcase when Tom came knocking.

  He patted a computer case slung over his shoulder. “I thought we could finish up my presentation. If you don’t mind.”

  Oh. Right. “Yes, yes, of course.”

  He cracked a grin. “You’d forgotten completely about it, hadn’t you?”

  “Yes,” she confessed.

  “Could we do it now?” Not at all pushy, was he? He had the decency to look abashed. “The investor meeting is set for three days from now, and I said the presentation would be waiting in their inbox Monday morning.”

  “Well, then. We best get on with it.” She sized up her mess. “Outside at the picnic table. I’ll bring lemonade.”

  Tom already had his computer ready to go when she arrived. “I’m hoping that this deal goes through. I have a couple of debts to clear away, and then I can move ahead with my plans.”

  “To buy elk?”

  “That and...” He trailed off with a small smile that suggested his secret was available for the asking.

  “And?”

  “To buy a house for Linda and me. A new one. Or at least a different one than the one she spent her marriage in.”

  “Oh. Wow. This is serious. What did Linda say?”

  “I haven’t told her yet. No use until I’ve got money in the bank.”

  “I suspect she’d like to be part of the plan.”

  “No money, no plan.”

  Daphne didn’t press Tom. A man tied his worth to his wealth, like a woman to her beauty. Who was she to criticize? “Let’s get started, then.”

  It didn’t take long before she and Tom were immersed in the document. She felt almost giddy writing about something tangible, even if it was for someone who practically had his head between her and the screen. Was this what writing could be like? An immediate, gratifying connection
between her and the reader? If so, she might need to reimagine her book into...a blog? A vlog? Fiction? Something where her “highfalutin talk,” as Mel had put it, meant something.

  For the third time in half a page, she pushed his head away. “Space,” she said and got her own head in close to adjust the graphics around the text. Tom again drifted close...

  “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

  The sudden, sharp voice had Tom and Daphne whipping around in their seats in opposite directions, their heads colliding.

  Linda smiled, the hard and tight kind that comes after receiving an insult.

  “No, no,” Tom said hastily, rubbing his head.

  This was not good, not good at all. Daphne cursed herself for depending on Tom to resolve the misunderstanding at the library with Brittany. “Hello, Linda,” Daphne said. “Would you like a lemonade?”

  “No. I wouldn’t.” She continued to stand straight as a white column in her pantsuit. Fran would’ve approved of the wardrobe choice.

  “Daphne was helping me with a presentation,” Tom said.

  “I take it you’ve spoken to Brittany,” Daphne said. “I think she saw things that could be easily misunderstood.”

  “That’s what I told her. I said there was likely a much better explanation. But she spotted you and Mel having words yesterday.”

  “By the look on your face,” Linda continued, “I take it Brittany was right. You aren’t with Mel. But I see now who you are with.”

  Tom finally seemed to clue in. “You can’t believe that I would ever—I promised you.”

  “I was stupid to not believe the stories about Craig, wasn’t I?”

  “You weren’t stupid. You were loyal.”

  “And is that what I am now? Loyal?”

  “No.”

  “Right. I’m just stupid. Well, no more.” She turned to Daphne. “I’m done with this one, too. You can have him now.”

  She strode off, absolutely regal in her white suit.

  “She reminds me of Fran,” Daphne said. First Connie with her ceaseless nagging, and now Linda with her theatrical flair. Daphne felt oddly at home.

  Tom, clearly not appreciating the grand exit, rose to follow her. Daphne grabbed his arm. “No,” she said. “Let’s finish this report so we don’t ever have to be seen together again. Then,” she pointed in Linda’s direction, “I will follow up on that matter.”

  She and Mel had their breakup, but she wasn’t going to be the cause of another.

  * * *

  DAPHNE EASED THROUGH the back gate—Tom’s idea—to find Linda, faced away. Her pristine white suit was streaked with dirt as she dug up a rosebush with enormous, delicate pink blooms. A red one was already upended.

  Still in her heels, Linda sliced the shovel into the ground, her breath coming in hard, choked gasps.

  Daphne called to her and Linda whirled, her face a mask of fury. Daphne raised her hands in surrender. “I want you to hear it from me,” Daphne rushed out. “In absolutely no way am I romantically involved with Tom Baxter, nor has he ever proposed that we become involved.”

  Linda gripped her shovel.

  “Do you think,” she said through gritted teeth, “Mel would agree with you if I told him that I’d seen you and Tom together?”

  “Frankly he probably wouldn’t much care,” Daphne said, “but, yes, he already found us together in much the same scenario that you did.”

  “And he didn’t question it?”

  “No, he said that seeing me sitting closely beside another man only made him want me more.”

  “And you say you were working? That’s your story?” Linda held the shovel high across her chest as though it was a rifle.

  Daphne stood her ground. “Yes. Working. I can show you.” She drew the strap of her computer case off her shoulder. She’d loaded Tom’s file onto her laptop before taking a taxi over.

  Linda drove her shovel into the base of the bush, hard and close enough to make the blossoms shudder and several petals flutter off. “You could show me whatever you like. You’re good with words. You could have spent the time since I found you together preparing your case.”

  How could this woman be so blind? Why would Tom even consider her when he could have the grandeur and beauty of Linda, even now dirty and sweaty? What to tell someone who doesn’t believe in their worth when all the evidence was to the contrary? Now, there was a topic for a book.

  Linda let fly a shovelful of dirt. “Let’s just say this isn’t my first rodeo.” She knelt and Daphne cringed at how the dirt and grass stains would be ingrained in the suit.

  Daphne dared to take three steps closer. “I’m sorry... Mel told me about your husband. I don’t get it, I don’t. You’re beautiful. And a nurse. You had a family with him. You seem...nice. Why would he do that?”

  Linda reefed on the bush with her gloved hands. Branches quivered and petals fell, but the plant remained. “Because you can be perfect and it still doesn’t matter.”

  Linda stood and whacked the rosebush with the shovel. Petals dropped like pink butterflies. “It doesn’t matter.” Whack. “Nothing matters.” Whack. “Nothing. Ever. Changes.” Linda raised her shovel again and again, butchering the poor plant.

  Daphne dropped her computer case and raced to Linda in time to grab the shovel in mid-arc. Linda yanked it hard enough for the rough handle to slip several inches in Daphne’s grip.

  She dug in her heels and talked fast. “Linda, please. I swear to you I didn’t cheat on Mel with Tom, and Tom didn’t cheat on you with me. I am helping him put together an investor’s package. He didn’t want to tell you about it because he’s not as financially sound as he’d like to be. He has debts to reconcile. He wants to buy a house for you two. He didn’t want to tell you before it was definite.”

  Linda stared. Her face was streaked with dirt, mascara, smeared lipstick and tears. “I want to believe you so much.”

  Linda’s hold on the shovel weakened and Daphne tightened her own. “What cheating woman visits the woman she’s cuckolding?”

  “Cuckolding?”

  “Uh, old English word. I’m not even sure it applies to women. The point is, I wouldn’t hurt Mel, especially when— Because I’m leaving.”

  “You are?” Linda’s grip eased into a relaxed hold, leaving the two women companionably holding a shovel.

  “I need to wrap up a few loose ends, and then I’m back to Halifax.”

  “But—what about Mel? Are you leaving him?”

  Time to divulge another truth. “Mel and I pretended to date as a scheme I’d concocted to keep Fran from traveling.”

  “Were you and Mel ever together, or were you faking it all the time?”

  Or was it that they were together all the time and only seeming to fake it? “I— There might’ve been more. But in the end, I’ve decided to go home to Halifax.”

  “I feel sorry for Mel. He deserves someone.”

  There it was again. Someone. Anyone.

  Linda swiped her hand across her face, smudging even more dirt and makeup. “I apologize, Daphne. You must think me insane, flying into a jealous rage.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Daphne said. “In fact, it was kind of flattering.”

  “Flattering to be accused of cheating?”

  “To think that a beautiful woman like you would even consider that a man would choose me over you.”

  “Why wouldn’t they?”

  “I—well, I struggle to believe that I’m anything other than short and ordinary.”

  Linda lifted off a pink petal on the shovel blade and together they watched it flutter to the grass. “I think,” she said softly, “that our problems aren’t with our men.”

  She took the shovel from Daphne and threw dirt back around the roots.

  Daphne, her hands dirty from the handle a
lready, dropped to her knees in the warm, giving soil. “Here, Linda. Let me help you.”

  When the rosebush, minus a couple dozen flowers, was back to rights, Linda leaned on her shovel. “I wish Tom had told me. The money, the house... It doesn’t matter.”

  Daphne gathered rose petals, pink and red, into her palm for no other reason than that it was a shame to leave something so pretty on the ground. “It never does.”

  * * *

  MEL DIDN’T KNOW what was worse. Having his storage units rummaged through by Connie and Daphne, or right now by Cal with his hoots and whistles of glee.

  “You’ve got a gold mine here, son,” he said, and pointed to a tarped cube in the back of the fourth shed. “What’s under there?”

  Mel’s prize find. “A generator. New. Picked it up at a farm auction. The auctioneers ran out of time after they got through the machinery, and people started heading home. I got it for fifty bucks.”

  Cal mouthed the price in awe. He peeked under the tarp and whistled. “That’s a fifteen-hundred-dollar machine right there.”

  “Yep.” Mel couldn’t suppress a shot of pride—and camaraderie. Someone finally understood the value of what he was doing here. Even if it was his dad, and he was going a bit overboard. Maybe, just maybe, he and Cal could figure out some kind of working partnership.

  Cal scanned the shelves, adding estimated values, Mel throwing in his own occasional adjustment. The final total dropped Mel’s jaw.

  “And you’ve got four more sheds,” Cal said.

  “That first one... The stuff inside is not worth much... It’s mostly from Mom’s house,” Mel said.

  “Let’s take a look,” Cal said.

  Mel preferred not to expose the bits and pieces of his life with the Greene family to the man whom he and his mom had run from with two suitcases and an old car.

  Still, he had agreed to show Cal his entire inventory. He pulled open the shed door for the first time since he’d left Connie and Daphne to their plunder. It was definitely emptier. Gaps and odd stacks had appeared on the floor and shelves. Mel fought the urge not to feel robbed.

  He should’ve urged Daphne to keep the children’s book about the ugly duckling. A gift he knew she’d appreciate, and now it was probably with some random kid.