by Polly Becks
Lucy stopped dead in her tracks and hung her head, remembering the loss of her wallet.
Then it popped up again, making her curls bounce.
“Actually, maybe,” she said, heading over to the little tree-branch couch and chair on the right side of the porch. She flipped the chair over, felt around in the dark at the bottom of one of the legs.
Ace held up the flashlight for her.
“Got it,” she said, pulling the key from the hollow branch that formed the leg. She set the chair back and came to the door, unlocked it, and waited as Ace swung the light inside.
It looked to Lucy like nothing had changed since she had left that morning, but the smell of the house was different, wrong somehow.
“What’s the layout downstairs from this doorway?” Ace asked.
“To the right, dining room in the front, kitchen behind. To the left, living room from back to front. Directly across, stairway that turns right halfway up, with a half bath and a closet underneath. Door down to the damned flooded basement at the end of the hall outside the kitchen. Door to backyard kitty-corner to it.”
Ace nodded. “I’ll go first and check the floor joists. Don’t want you to fall through, ma’am.” He handed her the lantern.
“Thanks,” said Lucy grumpily.
He turned around and looked at her seriously, his eyes so dark they blended in with the air all around them.
“I know we’re here to find the cat, but make sure you get everything else that’s valuable to you as well,” he said. “The aid workers are not guarding valuables primarily, they’re still working mostly with people. There’s looting already going on—get whatever you would mourn if it was lost.”
Lucy blinked, then nodded.
“Sadie?” she called as Ace started into the house. “Sadie?”
THEY WALKED SLOWLY from room to room, beginning at the left front of the house and walking past the central staircase to the back door, which Ace unlocked and looked out, shining the light into the backyard. He closed the door and locked it again.
He had lapsed into heavy silence as they made their way from room to room, which made Lucy increasingly uncomfortable. She continued to call for the cat, a pssh pssh pssh sound that echoed through the house, but heard no reply, not even the sound of tiny footfalls. After they had checked the front hall closet, from which Lucy took a number of things, and were scoping out the little bathroom, she had finally had enough.
“Sergeant?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“You don’t talk much, do you?”
“No, ma’am.”
Lucy rolled her eyes. “Sergeant, do you have a girlfriend?”
“A girlfriend?”
“Yes—I assume you know what a girlfriend is? Or perhaps a wife?”
“Of course I don’t have a girlfriend or a wife.”
“Well, I don’t know. I don’t think it’s such an odd question. You’re nice looking. You have a good job, I assume. Why do you say ‘of course I don’t’ like it’s obvious that you don’t?”
He thought for a moment. “Because it is.”
“Why? Don’t you like girls?”
The beautifully-lashed dark eyes rolled, but the soldier said nothing.
Lucy crossed her arms, stubbornly silent.
Ace closed the door of the bathroom and turned to face her. “I said ‘of course I don’t’ because if I had a wife or a girlfriend, I wouldn’t have said that I would never let you go,” he said finally.
Lucy blinked. “You—you were just joking, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Harmless flirtation with a double meaning?”
“Yes.”
“So why would it matter, even if you had a wife or a girlfriend, if you were just joking?”
“Because I would never disrespect my wife or my girlfriend that way.”
“Even if you were just joking? Even if your wife, your girlfriend, and I all knew you were joking?”
“Even if.”
Lucy shook her head in amazement. “You are one odd fellow, Sergeant.”
“Probably true,” said Ace. “But that’s not what they call it where I come from.”
“Newcomb? What do they call it where you come from?”
“Being a gentleman.”
“I see.” Lucy swallowed. “I guess I haven’t met many gentlemen in my life. Actually, I thought they were all dead long ago. I’m sorry if I offended you.”
“You didn’t.”
She threw her hands up in exasperation.
“Why are you so hard to talk to?” she demanded. “You are so charming when you’re making a presentation, and so pleasantly commanding when you’re in crisis mode—but when everything is finally quiet, you clam up. Why?”
“I haven’t clammed up. I’ve answered every question you’ve asked, and responded to every statement you’ve made.” His dark eyes twinkled. “Ma’am.”
A shriek of banshee-like pitch issued forth from Lucy’s mouth that would have made her Celtic ancestors proud.
“If you’re using this gentleman-miss-ma’am thing to impress women, prospective girlfriends or wives, I can see why it’s not working.”
Ace chuckled. “It’s got nothing to do with impressing anyone, least of all women.”
Lucy crossed her arms, still annoyed. “What does it have to do with, then?”
Ace looked at her solemnly. “Respect.”
“Oh, I see. Respect.”
“Yes.”
“And you think calling women ‘ma’am’ or ‘miss’ shows them respect?”
Ace shrugged. “Well, it’s one thing that does. Actions speak louder than words when it comes to showing respect, however. And it’s not just respect for women, though that’s certainly an important population. A gentleman endeavors to show respect to and for anyone.”
Lucy threw up her hands, then peered around the corner into the dark kitchen. “Well, that’s very nice, but I can think of a lot of people who don’t deserve to be shown respect.”
“So can I,” Ace agreed, shining the light over her head into the room. “But it’s not about them deserving respect. It’s a choice I make to give it, whether or not it’s deserved.”
Lucy stepped on the sodden floor gingerly. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Ace swung the light slowly around the kitchen so she could see all of it.
“Do you remember the sort-of innocent lady at the Town Board meeting who thought I was serious about the open bar and hors d’oeuvres at the end?”
Lucy rolled her eyes. “Yes. Some people are too dumb to live.”
“I suppose I could have made fun of her, used her gullibility to score a joke,” Ace said, pulling the flashlight back. He looked down the hall. “But I chose to apologize and explain I was just joking instead. Maybe not the best approach, but it’s what felt right to me.”
His words broke through the fog of trauma that had been wrapped around Lucy almost all day. She stopped, shook off the sarcastic attitude and looked at him intently.
“And that guy who threw the apple at me,” Ace continued, shining the light the other way down the hall. “I chose to respond to him with humor, rather than making him part of the pavement in the parking lot—which I did consider for a moment, I’ll admit.”
“Well, no one would have blamed you, certainly. He’s always been a tool.”
They were moving on toward the dining room at the front right of the house.
“And whether they would have blamed me or not is something I’m really not programmed to care much about,” Ace said quietly. “I’m just guided by what I think is right—not what I think is popular, or advantageous. What most people think of me is not important to me, either. I have to live with myself first and foremost, not worry about impressing other people.
“And, in case you didn’t notice, I try to show respect to children as well,” he said, coming out of the dining room to the staircase again, Lucy a few steps behind him,
carrying an armload of items.
“I did notice,” she admitted, her body beginning to feel warmer for the first time since the flood began. “It really made the students you marched out first less frightened, and the five girls in the music room want to trust you.”
“Well, it feels natural to take and keep the high ground when working with kids,” he said, sitting down on the lower stairs. “I think the earlier that kids, especially little girls, can learn to expect to be respected, the better their lives will be when they’re adults. Every woman deserves to be respected.”
Lucy put the pile of things down on her sofa, traded the damp Red Cross blanket for the blanket her grandmother had quilted, pulled the blanket closer around herself and stopped in front of him.
She said nothing, but the expression in her eyes had changed.
There was something intense in the blue gleam, a warm, fixed look that rested on the young Sergeant, sitting on the stairs with the flashlight in his hand, its beam pointed at the floor.
“Can we go upstairs now?” she asked.
Ace’s face and eyes darkened a bit in the reflected light.
It seemed to Lucy like he was looking into her eyes in a manner that allowed him to see things she had hidden from the rest of the world, deep inside herself.
When he spoke, his voice was a little heavier, a little richer than it had been before.
“Lead on, ma’am.”
Chapter 23
‡
AS ACE FOLLOWED Lucy up the staircase, for a moment at least he seemed a little looser, a little less restricted.
“This place is cute,” he said, looking around as the stairway turned at a right angle halfway between floors. “It’s so little, like a dollhouse.”
“It’s exactly big enough for me and Sadie,” Lucy said, holding the lantern up before her. “I did a lot of work remodeling it, so keep a civil tongue in your head, soldier.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Lucy stopped in frustration at the top of the stairs and turned around, holding the lantern up in front of him. “Again with the ‘ma’am.’ Would it kill you to call me Lucy? You’re in my bloody house, for Pete’s sake.”
Ace exhaled and smiled humorously, glancing at his watch. “Sorry, ma’am—er, Miss Sullivan, but I’m on duty.”
“Still?”
“Almost always, at least where the Army and the gentleman thing are concerned.”
Lucy growled and spun around again, pointing to the left side of the upstairs.
“All right—guest room, left back of house, usually utilized as an office. Front left and right, master bedroom. And, directly at the top of the stairs, full bathroom.” She paused for a moment. “Or maybe it’s a half bathroom—it doesn’t have a bathtub.” She turned back to Ace, still standing near the top of the stairs. “Or maybe it’s a three-quarter bath, whatever-ya-call-it—”
“Does it have a john?”
“Yes.”
“Then I call it a ‘bathroom’ .” He came the rest of the way up the stairs as Lucy crossed to the bathroom and held up the light, whispering for the cat, but hearing nothing.
“She never goes in here,” Lucy said as she led him to the guest room. Ace swung the light around, but saw nothing, and nodded.
Finally they came to her bedroom. The bed was neatly made, and, with the exception of a single pair of shoes tossed recklessly on the floor, the rest of it was completely tidy.
“In spite of several demerits I can see, you’d do pretty well in an Army inspection,” Ace said, shining the flashlight around the room.
Lucy had already headed to the closet, had opened it and was pulling clothing from hangers.
“You may as well have a seat, Sergeant,” she said briskly. “This is gonna take a while.”
“Were your suitcases in the basement?”
Lucy turned and looked at him in shock, then let out another screech and a string of impressively vile curse words that made Ace laugh in spite of himself.
“Pillowcases often work in place of suitcases in the Army,” he offered helpfully.
“That’s a good idea. Thank you. Have a seat.”
Ace looked around the chairless room. “Where?”
Lucy, now on her knees going through the shoe rack, waved her hand over her head behind her. “On the bed.”
Ace looked around again and scratched his head awkwardly.
“It’s fine, Sergeant, I’ll straighten it when you stand up so that a quarter can be bounced off it again. Have a seat.”
Ace exhaled deeply and sat down, his heavy boots in the center of a hand-hooked rug with a tatted lace edge and red roses in the middle.
For an uncomfortable number of minutes, silence took up residence again. In the distance, the carillon of Our Mother of Sorrows, muted all day since it had joined in the alarm call, quietly began tolling the hour of midnight.
Otherwise, nothing but the sound of Lucy’s packing disturbed the stillness of the night.
“Do you need help?” Ace asked finally.
Lucy turned to him and smiled, the sarcasm of stress gone. She sat up straight with her knees tucked under herself.
“You know, your mama sure raised you right,” she said pleasantly. “She must be pretty proud of you, turning out to be a gentleman and all.”
Ace nodded, rocking a little. “Thanks.”
“Is she?”
“Is she what?”
“Proud of you?”
“I like to think so.”
Lucy sighed. “Like pulling teeth, soldier.”
Ace’s brows drew together. “What is, ma’am?”
“Number one, getting you to talk,” Lucy said, folding the clothing she had chosen as small as she could and then packing it into some spare pillowcases. “Number two, getting you to stop calling me names that make me feel old, though I think that’s a lost cause.”
Ace took off his borrowed fire helmet and ran his hand over his bristly hair. He cleared his throat and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands together with the fingers interlaced.
“I’m sorry,” he said at last. “Part of it is military culture. Part of it is safety precautions.”
Lucy looked up, amused, in the midst of her folding.
“Safety precautions?”
Ace nodded, his eyes gleaming.
“What do you mean?”
He thought for a moment, then spoke. “It may not seem like it, but there—there is—a lot to me,” he said slowly. “A lot of—energy—no, that’s not a good word for it. Intensity, maybe. A lot.”
Lucy chuckled. “That’s funny. If I were to describe you, I’d say you are one of the most laid-back people I’ve ever met. I don’t know too many guys who could have an apple lobbed at their head when they’re an invited guest at a town meeting they drove an hour or more to get to and not beat the absolute crap out of the moron who threw it.”
Ace said nothing.
“And the kids all were very comfortable around you. Kids are a good barometer, a good judge of adults, I’ve found. I think your mom did a fine job raising you into a pretty cool man—oops, sorry. A gentleman.”
“My mom had a big hand in teaching me to be a gentleman,” Ace said in a low voice, one that Lucy didn’t remember hearing before. “A great teacher of manners, etiquette, and hygiene.” Lucy chuckled. “But the person who really taught me how to be one, made me want to be one, was my dad.”
“Oh? Well, that makes sense.”
“The way he taught me, unlike my mom, who had lessons for everything, was by example,” Ace went on. He ran his finger around the edge of the fire helmet. “My dad was a true gentleman, soft-spoken and kind hearted, with a pleasant word for everyone he met, always had a positive outlook, even when other people were being ugly. And, above everything else, he adored my mother, treated her like gold—like fine crystal. Never let a day go by without thanking her for marrying him.”
Lucy looked up from her packing and smiled.
T
hen, slowly, the smile faded from her face.
Ace was staring down at the helmet in his hand.
The helmet was shaking.
Lucy slowly moved her knees in front of herself and, abandoning her packing, wrapped her arms around them, keeping her gaze on Ace.
“We had a really great life, my mom, my dad, my sister, and me—a really idyllic childhood, in a really idyllic place—it doesn’t get more magical than the Adirondack Park when you’re a child.”
“No,” Lucy whispered. “I can imagine it doesn’t.”
“He took us hiking—all of us—climbing the High Peaks, camping, canoeing, fishing. When I joined the Army, I could almost have tested out of survival training, if they let you do that, with all the skills my dad taught me. He was just—just so full of life—he had this big, booming laugh that echoed off the mountains. Sometimes I can still hear it, especially when I’m climbing Haystack or Giant. He laughed boisterously when we first summitted those mountains—and I think he left his laugh behind, because I feel it still at the top.
“He died when I—was eleven,” Ace continued, still looking at the helmet in his hands. His voice had dropped to little more than a whisper. “I remember wishing on my birthday candles the next year that—that he—” His words faltered and he fell silent.
“That he could magically come back?” Lucy said softly.
Finally Ace looked up. He stared at her intently. Then he nodded slowly.
“I know,” she said, willing her voice to be warm and understanding, in spite of the rasp that had crept into it in the floodwaters. “I still wish that on my birthday candles.”
“I guess neither of us is buying the right kind,” Ace said.
Lucy risked a small smile, and was delighted when it was shyly returned.
“I miss them both so much, my parents,” she said, tears creeping into her eyes. “I can’t think about it now, though; I have a feeling that if I stop to think about loss today—about Glen, and the custodian, and the guy in the bus garage, and all the other people who are missing in the dark, and now probably Sadie—I’m afraid I’m going to melt down completely.”
“I’m sorry,” Ace said. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
