My Stubborn Heart

by Becky Wade

  It had been his choice to live this way. After she died, and for the years since, he hadn’t felt up to being social. He hadn’t had the heart or the energy to return phone calls, go to bars or restaurants, or hang with friends at their houses.

  Pacing, Matt made a circuit through the kitchen, dining room, den. Kitchen, dining room, den.

  He couldn’t remember now though exactly why he’d isolated himself to this degree. He’d always been reserved. Concentrated. Preferring to let his play on the ice do his talking. He’d never been the laughing, kidding, life-of-the-party type. But before Beth died, he’d loved going places with her. He’d had friends. He’d been able to talk to people.

  He wished he could go somewhere—anywhere—now.

  But he was a freak. People made him feel uncomfortable, and he knew he made people feel uncomfortable. He was the guy whose wife had died tragically and who’d then quit his career as a professional athlete. How did a person make conversation with that guy? He couldn’t blame them. He could hardly make conversation with himself.

  He shoved his hands through his hair. To hold together what remained of his sanity back then, after Beth’s funeral, he’d pushed everyone away. But the aloneness he’d grown accustomed to—welcomed—over the past three years now felt heavy to him. Like a burden.

  He stopped before his front window, crossed his arms over his chest, and glared at the view of black woods against a dark gray sky. So what had changed?

  He knew exactly what had changed.

  Kate.

  He’d agreed to that first dinner with her and Beverly at Chapel Bluff. Probably a mistake. But not a terrible one if he’d insisted that it be a one-time thing. That’s what he should have done. Instead, like a dupe, he’d waded in up to his neck. So deep that he now found himself sucked in to the dinners and the poker nights, hauling truckloads to the Salvation Army, watching Audrey Hepburn movies, and helping someone’s grandfather pick out pants. Until he couldn’t spend five days by himself.

  Until he was lonely without her.

  Panic seized him. He couldn’t be lonely without her. How long had he known her? He thought back over the calendar. He’d known Kate a month. One lousy month! He blew out a scoffing, disgusted breath.

  With unswerving purpose, he walked to Beth’s picture. He kept it in a silver frame, sitting on the high granite bar that ran between his kitchen and den.

  There had been so many pictures in their Manhattan apartment. Framed. Hanging. Whole albums of them. He hadn’t been able to bear looking at them, after. He’d put the entire contents of their home in storage when he’d moved back to Redbud. Except for this one picture.

  His physical, tangible memories of Beth herself . . . the texture of her hair, the smell of her perfume, the sound of her voice . . . had grown hazy. But he knew every square inch of this one-dimensional image of her by heart.

  The snapshot had been taken at their wedding. Her upper body was turned to the side, but her face was looking back, her eyes gazing directly at the camera. She was laughing with joy, her long blond hair falling down her back.

  She’d been beautiful in the best all-American way. Almond-shaped eyes. Slim, sloping nose that turned up just a bit at the tip. Tall and curvy with mile-long legs. People had called her a Barbie doll, and it had annoyed him at the time. But looking back, he could understand why they’d said it. She’d been that pretty, that smooth, that perfect.

  And sweet. A tenderhearted Georgia girl with a Southern accent and a genuine interest in everyone she met. She’d worked for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society for as long as he’d known her. She’d cried at Hallmark commercials, had carried bugs outdoors on pieces of paper rather than smash them, and had wanted nothing more than to be a mother.

  And this was the girl, his girl, who’d died of brain cancer at twenty-seven. His vision of her picture wavered as tears pooled in his eyes. He’d been missing her so long and so exclusively. How could he do this to her? How could he betray her by missing someone else?

  He’d let her down in life, and now he was letting her down in death.

  The old familiar waking nightmares streaked through his memory. Visions of sitting side by side in the doctor’s office when they’d been given her diagnosis. Beth crying in his arms late at night, terrified and devastated. Her lying swathed in sheets and blankets. Dying.

  Chills and fury raced down the back of his neck, across his shoulders, along his arms. He strode into his bedroom. Yanked off his pajama bottoms and pulled on jeans. Stuffed his feet into his Adidas. Grabbed an athletic jacket out of the closet and shouldered into it. He palmed his keys and garage door opener as he passed through the kitchen and banged out the back door. Five strides and he reached his garage.

  He hadn’t done this in months. He always drove the truck. He punched the second button on his garage door opener and stood with his legs braced apart against the cold and the night, watching as the door slotted upward, revealing his Lamborghini Murcielago.

  He slid inside the low car, turned the key, and listened with satisfaction as the engine roared to life. She was black on black. Six-speed manual transmission. A vicious, beautiful tyrant of a car that suited his mood perfectly.

  Matt kept his speed carefully slow as he made his way along the narrow roads leading out of town. When he reached the highway, he eased into the fast lane, downshifted, then went streaking forward into the endless cement pathway striped with light. Fast. Faster. The rear spoiler rose, and the side mirrors folded into the body of the car. The snarling of the engine consumed his hearing.

  He couldn’t let himself grow attached to Kate and Beverly. For so many reasons. They were only in Redbud temporarily. Two more months at most. If he allowed himself to care about them, where would that leave him when they left? Worse off than he already was.

  He couldn’t afford to be any worse off. Not when he was already in such sorry shape . . . just barely functioning.

  He had a job to do at Chapel Bluff. No more and no less. Just that. Just the work. For the sake of his sanity, he needed to step back from all the rest.

  Matt watched with savage approval as the red needle of the speedometer climbed. Light posts whipped past. Roadside trees blurred by. The dotted yellow line on the asphalt zipped below him into infinity.

  chapter eight

  Life truth: Never put on makeup in dim light. The repercussions, once you got a look at yourself in daylight, could be terrifying. Stray eyebrow hairs. Foundation smears. Garish blush. Unfortunately, a second life truth about makeup was that the strong light required to do a good job of it was also an ego shredder.

  It was finally Monday. Kate had finally returned from Philadelphia to Chapel Bluff and was eager to finally see Matt again. Foolishly eager.

  “Foolishly,” she whispered to herself. But try as she might, she couldn’t seem to squelch her excitement. Like a fourteen-year-old getting ready for a school dance, she was taking extra, fastidious care with her makeup.

  Kate leaned back, squinted at herself in the mirror, then leaned forward and swept on more eye shadow.

  She’d thought about Matt the whole time she and Gran had been in Philadelphia. What was he doing with his time? Had he met some gorgeous socialite while they were away, taken her on a date, and instantaneously fallen in love? Was he eating well? Had his shopping expedition with Morty gone okay?

  She’d even eyeballed the phone in their hotel room a couple of times, contemplating the possibility of calling him. She’d longed to call him. Longed. But in the month of their acquaintance, she’d never once talked to him on the phone. Their entire system of communication existed inside the sphere of Chapel Bluff. It would have been too weird, too jarring, for her to call him.

  Gran had talked to Velma and Peg, however, and through them Kate had learned that Matt had declined poker night on Friday. Which had set off a whole new string of questions. Without them, did Matt have anyone to talk to? Was anyone checking on him? Was he sitting home alone?

&nbs
p; Which was nuts! He had family. Parents who lived in Florida, and an older brother somewhere. He surely had lifelong friends. All kinds of people who cared about him, probably.

  She set her makeup back in its drawer. Glanced at her reflection one last time. Face and hair were as good as they were going to be. She had on a new fitted V-neck sweater in sage green, and her most flattering pair of jeans. They planned to move the antiques from the barn into the main house today, and she didn’t want to look like she was trying way too hard to be cute for a man she’d decided a thousand times was nothing more to her than a friend.

  She bolstered her courage, strove for a casual air, and went in search of him. He wasn’t in the bathroom he’d tiled last week, or any of the downstairs rooms. As she neared the kitchen, Gran’s happy chatter floated toward her, which meant that Gran must already have Matt in her clutches. Kate knew just how she’d be feeling, pleased like a bear with a trout in its paws at having caught him.

  Kate walked into the kitchen and sure enough, found Matt sitting at the breakfast table with several plates of food arranged in front of him. Gran was flitting about the room, talking and gesturing with animation.

  Matt’s gaze cut to Kate’s.

  “Hey.” She smiled. “Good to see you.”

  “You too,” he said without enthusiasm, as if he’d said it because it was the requisite response. If he’d risen at all, she’d have given him a friendly hug, but he stayed right where he was, planted in his chair. Baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. Expression solemn.

  Something was wrong.

  “Morning, sweetie,” Gran said. “Sit, sit. When Matt showed up for work I asked him if he’d had breakfast and he hadn’t, so of course I couldn’t let him go to work on an empty stomach. Gave me a good reason to cook something.”

  Kate looked at the spread. “Wow.”

  “Bacon. Sausage. Eggs. Pancakes.” Gran pointed at each in turn. She was wearing her jade rings and bracelets, Kate noted. The ones she liked to pair with her green Naturalizer flats. She had on her wide jean skirt and a black tunic-style shirt. The colorful beads that draped behind her neck from the sides of her glasses swung rhythmically.

  “The food looks delicious,” Kate said.

  “Coffee?” Gran asked.

  “Please.”

  Gran bustled to the other side of the kitchen. Kate returned her attention to Matt.

  He was still looking at her. His expression was intense, but guarded. There was no shine of camaraderie there anymore.

  Her chest tightened with intuition. “Study any poker while we were away?” she asked, hoping to thaw him out and bring him around.

  “Nope.”

  “Well, good then. That Coach purse is looking more and more like a sure thing.” She smiled.

  He didn’t smile back. Instead, he held her gaze for a few beats, then looked downward at his half-eaten food as if unsure what it was doing on his plate.

  Kate glanced at Gran.

  Gran gave her a troubled frown, lifted her hands and mouthed the words I don’t know.

  Kate’s heart started to pound with hollow thumps. Through dint of will, she helped herself to breakfast. Her hands felt a little wobbly and her stomach started tightening. Her thoughts spun around, descending at the center like a whirlpool.

  Pull yourself together! she told herself. He might just be having a bad day. “Don’t the floors look great?” she asked him.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  The single syllable was followed by uncomfortable silence.

  “I think they do, too!” Gran said. “I just knew we made the right choice, to go with that honey-colored stain. It looks so nice with the paint we picked.”

  Gran, bless her, could fill silence with the best of them. Her voice bubbled on, like a cheery brook, lending an odd backdrop to the sadness strangling Kate’s throat like a vise. She gave up the pretense of eating and just looked at Matt, who was similarly still, staring out the window.

  She’d seen it happen plenty of times with traumatized kids at work. And it always broke her heart.

  He’d regressed. During the five days they’d been gone, he’d retreated from them to somewhere he perceived as safer. He’d slid back to the bottom of the mountain he’d been climbing. The mountain she’d been pushing him up since the day they met.

  Tears stung the back of her eyes.

  He hadn’t asked for and didn’t want her help. He wasn’t her responsibility. She was a social worker who specialized in mistreated children. She knew nothing about wounded men who still loved their dead wives. Even so, she’d been really pleased with the way their friendship had been going. It had taken a month of effort to get him to banter back and forth with her, to tease, to occasionally smile. It devastated her to see him like this again, so distant and shuttered.

  She didn’t know . . . she blinked a couple times to clear the moisture from her eyes . . . if she had the heart to push him up the mountain again. To start over at the bottom. Not when he could decide to slide down again at any time. Not when it hurt this much to see him slide.

  She shouldn’t have gone to Philadelphia. . . .

  But, no. She wouldn’t let herself wallow in guilt when this wasn’t her fault. The men who’d refinished the floors had ordered her and Gran to leave, so they had. Their absence might have played a role in whatever was going on in Matt’s mind, or it might not have. What she knew for sure was that pulling back had been his decision.

  Oh, Lord. What a loss. She thought of the conversations the three of them had been having lately over dinner. The way he’d smiled at her inside his pickup truck the day they’d driven to Salvation Army. Sitting on top of a Home Depot bucket watching him work.

  Matt had eased her loneliness.

  Looking now at his tense profile caused that chronic loneliness, which always circled above her like a vulture, to rush in on her horribly. She didn’t want to rattle around in this house with him for the next two months, neither of them talking to the other.

  What was she going to do?

  The only thing she could do. Pretend to act cheerful and focus on moving antiques.

  Let it be said that God is kind.

  Because when Kate arrived at the barn later that morning, she found Matt and two strangers already within. And one of the strangers was indisputably, in-your-face, fine looking.

  Matt stopped work and straightened when she entered the barn, as did the other two. “Kate,” he said, motioning with his hand, “this is Tyler and this is Ryan.”

  Ryan was a huge teddy bear of a person with a balding forehead and twinkling eyes. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Nice to meet you, too.” He and Matt went back to work.

  Tyler, the fine-looking one, approached her with a forthright grin. “Oh man, this job just got a heckuva lot better.” He extended a hand, and when she placed hers in his, he enclosed it with a firm grip. After an extra long shake, he stepped back and gave a low whistle. “You’re gorgeous, young lady.”

  “Why, thank you. You’re not half-bad yourself.”

  An understatement. He had the whole bit going for him: Deep dimples. Squarish face. Light blue eyes. Dark blond surfer hair. One of those leather tool belts the carpenters on HGTV were so fond of. He wore baggy low-slung jeans, hiking boots, and a brown and beige collared Op shirt, the likes of which Kate hadn’t seen since fifth grade. They still made those?

  “Man,” Tyler said, “if I’d known you were living here— It’s Kate, right?”

  “Right.”

  “I’d have been over here weeks ago working on your house for you for free. But of course my friend Matt didn’t say a word about you. Obviously wanted to keep you to himself.” He gave her an amused wink, and they both glanced at Matt.

  Matt was staring at them. He looked like he’d swallowed a frog. Stunned and displeased.

  Ha! Kate thought, with a surge of satisfaction. How terrible, very wrong, of her to feel so delighted. But, ha! Maybe I won’t bother pushing you u
p the mountain again, you big, dumb lump!

  “That’s Matt for you,” Tyler said. “A man of few words.”

  “Very few,” Kate agreed.

  “Hopefully you’re a talker,” Tyler said. “Ryan and I like to talk it up while we’re working.”

  “I’m a talker.”

  “Well, double good, then.” The dimples plunged into his cheeks. “Where are you from? You’ve got an accent.”

  “I’m from Dallas.”

  “I should have guessed. Have you ever been to Big D, Ryan?” he called.

  “Nope,” Ryan answered, poking his head out from behind an armoire.

  “You need to go, man. Like eighty percent of the women there are beautiful. It’s crazy! They all look like Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.”

  “Sweet,” said Ryan. “Of course . . . I’m married.”

  “Oh, right. Then don’t go. It’d only bum you out.” Tyler looked down at Kate with an unrepentant expression. “I can go, though.”

  “Single?”

  “Oh yeah. You?”

  “Yep.”

  “Excellent. Then I’ve got all day to twist your arm into going on a date with me.”

  Matt made a disgusted sound.

  Tyler glanced at him. “Dude, don’t embarrass me in front of the lady. I was on a roll.”

  “Yeah,” Matt muttered, “real impressive.”

  Tyler gave her a comically long-suffering look. “See what I have to put up with?”

  “Terrible,” she said.

  “Horrible.” He swept his arm outward toward the massive space. “So, young lady, how would you like us to tackle this job?”

  “Well, I know where in the house we want the furniture to go, if that’s any help.”

  “Maybe you could get some of those . . . whadda’ya call ’em? Sticky notes? . . . and put them on the furniture. You could write on them telling us where you want us to take each one.”

  “Okay, sure.”

  “And you’ll have to promise me that you won’t try to move anything heavy yourself.”