A Small-Town Reunion

by Terry McLaughlin

  “It was illegal back then, too.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Did my father play?” Dev asked.

  Harve’s shoulders rose and fell on another long sigh. “Yes.”

  “The night he died?”

  Harve shook his head. “I don’t know anything about that night.”

  There was more Dev wanted to know, but Harve’s features revealed his regret. The lumberman wouldn’t be providing any more information.

  Not today, anyway.

  THAT AFTERNOON, as Dev glued the same damn piece of disintegrating pattern paper to the same damn piece of wavy blue glass—for the third time—he no longer suspected he’d never make another stained-glass picture. He was certain of it.

  He’d never thought of himself as a quitter. He’d stuck it out until the end of the season with his first soccer team, even after he’d broken a wrist in a fall and decided playing ball with one’s feet was a game for idiots. He’d stuck it out in choir for a semester, even after his teacher had discovered he couldn’t carry a tune and had begged him to lip-sync at the class concert.

  But the thought of spending another afternoon like this in Addie’s shop made him consider poisoning himself so he could call in sick on Thursday.

  His glass cutting during the second class had been so badly done that he’d needed extra time at the grinder. While the others in the class had quickly smoothed the sharp edges, Dev had spent hours trimming extra glass and regluing sopped pattern pieces.

  Addie leaned in close to his side, her daisies-and-lemonade scent making his vision blur and his mouth go dry. “How’s it going?” she asked.

  “Fine. Nearly ready to give it another shot.” He waited for her to step away—to give him space to breathe again—and then he shoved back his stool. It scraped across her floor with a jarring squawk, and the noise made him wince.

  Shake it off, Chandler, he ordered himself as he stalked to the grinder. He slipped his safety glasses over his face, flipped on the machine, and slowly passed the glass against the bit, determined to get the straight edge straightened out. A few seconds later, one side of the pattern paper curled up. With a muttered curse, he peeled the rest away, dabbed the paper and glass with a shop towel and headed back to his seat.

  “Not a word,” he warned Rosie as he handed her the damp paper and glass. “Not one.”

  She heaved a dramatic sigh as she spread the pieces beside two other sets of disasters, and then she returned to her task of gently scrubbing old glue from the dried patterns.

  He picked up one of the papers and began to reapply the glue, adding plenty to make sure it stayed stuck this time. A thick glob of rubber cement oozed from beneath the paper as he pressed it to the glass, and when he pulled his fingers away, the paper came with them, glued to his hand. “Damn,” he muttered.

  “Are you still working on that same piece?” Rosie peeled the gooey mess from his fingers. “Jeez, you’re slow.”

  The knot between Dev’s shoulder blades tightened.

  “The girl’s right.” Virgil lifted one of his own glass pieces, examined the edge against the overhead light and nodded with satisfaction. “Never saw anyone so inept at such simple tasks in my entire life.”

  Shut up, Dev silently ordered Virgil.

  “I think he’s doing fine.” Barb gave Dev one of her saccharine smiles. “Work that involves small motor skills is sometimes more difficult for men.”

  Shut up.

  “Is that one of those sexist comments?” Rosie stared at Barb with poorly feigned innocence. “Is it? One of my teachers told my class about politically incorrect speech last year, and I’m trying to figure out if I understand what it all means.”

  Addie pulled a cell phone from her apron pocket and handed it to Rosie. “Why don’t you give Tess a call and see when she’s coming to pick you up?”

  “Not so fast.” Dev plucked the phone from the girl’s hand and passed it back to Addie. “If she doesn’t stay and help me finish this, I’ll be here all night.”

  I’ll be here all night. Addie froze, her fingers covered his on the phone, and he treated himself to the fantasy that she could feel the heat rushing through him. And then she took the phone from him, rubbed away the rubber cement residue and slipped it back into her pocket before moving to the other side of the table to check Virgil’s work.

  “All right.” Rosie gave Dev a high five and then handed him the next piece to glue. “You’re probably going to need me to help you on Thursday, too. Virgil’s right. You suck.”

  Dev was beginning to see why Tess got along so well with her soon-to-be stepdaughter. They were a lot alike. “If I bring you back on Thursday—and the chances of that are growing slimmer by the minute—you won’t be able to help with the soldering.”

  “That’s okay.” Rosie shrugged. “I want to be here to see you mess up that part, too.”

  Dev grabbed the glue wand and smoothed the goo over the paper. And then he stopped and stared with horror at the tiny, shredded triangle of paper stuck to the edge of the brush: the ruined corner of his pattern paper. “Damn.”

  “Now what?” Rosie peeked over his shoulder. “You ripped it? Oh, man. You’re toast.”

  “Let me see, Dev.” Addie took the sticky paper bits and lined them up on her palm.

  He cleared his throat. “Can you fix it?”

  She gave him a kindly smile, the kind of pitying, patient look any instructor would bestow on the imbecile in her class. “No. Rosie’s right. You’re toast.”

  It took him a second to figure out she was teasing. A thrilling second in which he dreamed of a dishonorable discharge. An escape from craft prison. He’d rise from his wobbly metal stool and walk out that shop door, a free man.

  And in the next second, Addie’s apologetic smile turned deliciously wicked, deepening her dimples. A familiar, gut-deep tug pulled him under, and he wanted to do whatever it took to stick this out. Even if that meant grinding every bit of glass in her shop to shapeless nubs.

  “We’re going to try something different.” She reglued the pattern piece to his blue glass, pulled a red glass-marking pen from his supply box and filled in the missing corner.

  As she worked, the soft pink cotton of her T-shirt lifted and fell as she breathed—up and down, in and out—and the taunting shadow of cleavage above its V-shaped neckline shifted like a curl of smoke. Warm, moist puffs of air brushed Dev’s face. One perfect tendril of spun-gold hair slipped from behind her ear to lay against her collarbone, the turned-up ends beckoning.

  She handed him the glass and pointed to the neat mark on the end. “Now the trick is to grind away the red. Nothing more,” she told him in her teacher’s voice. “You can always remove more glass if you need to. It’s pretty hard to add the missing glass back.”

  He cleared his throat. “Yeah. I’ve got it. Thanks.”

  She moved away, and he stared sightlessly at the things in his hands, waiting for the pounding, swishing tidal wave in his chest to subside.

  “Earth to Dev,” Rosie whispered.

  “Hmm?”

  “Are you just going to sit there for the rest of the day?”

  “No.” Dev’s hands came into focus, as big and clumsy as ever and still holding the damn glass and glue.

  Everything came into focus.

  “I’m going to finish this,” he said.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  TESS COLLECTED ROSIE shortly after four for a dentist appointment, and Dev doubled his efforts to catch up with Addie’s other students. But as the rest of the class stretched lengths of lead—lining up those molecules—and nipped neat bits of the stuff to begin assembling their pictures on their layout boards, he fell further behind.

  Dev tried, again, to slip the orange piece into place. It didn’t fit. In fact, it knocked the entire top half out of whack.

  Damn.

  “I think I’m going to call it a day.” Virgil stood with a grunt and stretched. “I have to run a couple of errands before
I head home.”

  Addie suggested he hammer another nail in place to hold one section of his picture more securely and then gave his shoulder a friendly pat. “You’ve got quite a knack for this,” she said.

  “I think so, too. I certainly do enjoy it.” He pulled on his jacket and lifted a hand in farewell. “See you all again in a couple of days.”

  Addie strolled to the door with her star pupil, chatting about Thursday’s class plans. Dev picked up the orange half circle and trudged back to the grinder bench. He flipped the switch on one of the machines, holding his jaw rigid at the nagging whine as he ran the protruding edge against the bit. Again.

  When he returned to the worktable, he found Teddi admiring her work, “Isn’t this fun?” she asked. “I’ve been waiting to see how this is going to look when it’s finished.”

  “Let me see.” Barb stood and peered across the table. “Oh, that’s beautiful. How’s yours coming, Dev?”

  “It’s getting there.” He rolled his shoulders, trying to ease the kink in his neck.

  For the hundredth time, he lifted a curving piece to check his work against the light, but he could still see a sliver of green over the edge of the paper. While Barb and Teddi packed their supplies and headed out the door, he stalked back to the grinder to remove another miniscule slice of green. The soaked pattern piece slipped from the glass. Again. “Damn,” he muttered.

  “Need some help, Dev?” Addie asked.

  “No.” I can make a complete mess of this all on my own. “Thanks.”

  He blotted the excess water from his work, feeling marginally better when he saw that the green had disappeared for good. And then he turned and saw Addie frowning at his project.

  Uh-oh.

  He braced for bad news and made his way back to his seat. “What is it?”

  She poked at the pale blue glass near the top of his design. “See how this little bump on the orange piece is making these others shift to the right? I think if you trim off just a bit here…” She grabbed his red pen and marked a tiny arc. “Just along this spot. Remember, don’t take off too much—”

  “Because I can always take off more the next time,” he said, forcing himself to smile.

  Great. Another problem piece. And only eleven more of them to finish. He headed back to the grinder.

  He wished he hadn’t let Rosie choose this pattern. He wished he hadn’t noticed that flyer advertising this class. He wished he hadn’t returned to Carnelian Cove.

  But then he wouldn’t be standing here in Addie’s shop. He wouldn’t have been here to watch her interact with her customers, and he wouldn’t have taken a closer look at her art.

  He wouldn’t have reconnected with one of the best pieces of his past.

  He heard Addie’s soft, tuneless humming, he glanced over his shoulder to find her sweeping the work area. Outside, early evening lengthened the shadows along Cove Street. Two young mothers pushed strollers past the window, laughing at a shared comment. A yellow balloon tethered to a stroller handle bobbed in the breeze, and a swooping gull dodged out of its way.

  Good to know someone was enjoying a nice summer evening.

  He dragged his stool closer to the table and dropped onto the seat. “Sorry it’s taking me so long. I don’t have to stay.”

  “Take as long as you need to. Art doesn’t happen according to schedule.” She cast a shy glance in his direction as she wiped the counter near her work sink. “When you’re writing, do you take exactly the same amount of time to finish each page?”

  “Good point.”

  “I’ll be back in a minute.” She opened the elaborately leaded glass door at the rear of the shop and stepped into her apartment, closing the door behind her. A few seconds later an overhead fixture switched on, casting a weak band of light over her indistinct form as she moved toward the rear wall and disappeared from view.

  Through the lace curtains, Dev thought he could make out a table and chairs. And was that a cabinet hanging from one of the side walls? A sofa against another?

  He wondered if she grew bored with her small world, if she tired of living a few steps from the place where she worked all day. There were shops crowding both sides of hers; her only other view must be of the alley in the rear. There was no assistant to cover for her coffee breaks, no coworker to chat with during the slow times.

  The light inside her apartment switched off, and he redirected his gaze to his work as she returned to her shop. He carefully pushed the orange half circle into place, pleased to see it line up neatly with the pieces around it. Next he tried shifting the bottom half of the pattern into place. Still no good.

  His stomach rumbled, and he realized he’d never had a chance to grab that quick lunch he’d planned after the meeting with Harve. He’d soon be running on empty—yet more trouble. “Addie?”

  She moved to stand beside him. “Let’s see what’s going on here.”

  A bandage flexed beneath one of her knuckles as she slowly, carefully pressed and prodded the glass into position. The pale, fading nicks of healing cuts and the random scars of old burns formed a tiny network of jarring contrasts against such delicate, fragile skin. He silently promised them both he’d kiss every one of those marks and make them better.

  “Here’s the problem,” she said. “It’s this green piece. See how everything seems to catch on this one corner?”

  “Why can’t I see that for myself?”

  “Practice.” She straightened, set her hands at her waist and arched back a little, stretching her spine. Stretching her T-shirt across her breasts. Testing the restraint of a starving, desperate man. “Believe me,” she said, “I’ve spent many long hours maneuvering hundreds of pieces into place in big, complicated patterns.”

  “I don’t want to think about it.” He didn’t want to think about her breasts, either. He picked up the offending slice of glass and trudged back to the grinder.

  “Do you mind if I turn on some music?” she asked.

  “As long as it isn’t Kabuki.”

  “Kabuki?”

  “Japanese opera,” Dev told her. “Sounds like cats being tortured.”

  “Good thing I’m fresh out of Kabuki CDs.”

  A few seconds later a jazz trio’s smooth improvisation floated over the whir of the grinder. He smiled at her choice, and a layer of tension eased from his neck. “Nice.”

  “You’ve been there, haven’t you? Japan, I mean.” She passed a feather duster over a stack of boxes on one of her shelves. “What’s it like?”

  “Japanese.” He turned to see her outlined in one of her big front windows, the softening light of a beginning sunset touching her hair with gold. “You’d stick out like a sore thumb.”

  She frowned and moved to the end of the shelving, turning her back on him.

  “It’s not like what you see on TV,” he continued as he headed back to the table. “It’s not all cherry trees and geishas. Most of the cities are crowded and not all that attractive at street level. But the other parts—those perfectly sculptured parts you see on postcards—they’re amazing. It’s like moving through a fantasy.”

  “I’d like to see it someday. I’d like to travel.”

  “Then do it.”

  “You make it sound so easy.”

  “Easier than getting this thing to work,” he muttered as he took his seat.

  “You’ll figure it out.” Setting her duster on her desk, she returned to his side. She grabbed a nearby stool, pulled it close and rested her elbow on the table, her face a few inches from his. “You did such a good job with your other pieces. You’re closer than you think.”

  Her simple praise gave him a crazy thrill, along with a reason to hope he’d make it out of there before midnight. He picked up his ruler. Working from the corners, he pressed the pattern pieces toward the center, toward the orange sun at the heart of the design. The bits of glass seemed to shift and slide against each other as though they were living organisms, and then suddenly everything locked tog
ether, holding tight, no gaps in sight. The pattern fell into place with a silent click.

  “That’s it,” she said. “You did it. See how perfectly everything fits together?”

  He turned his face toward hers and found the old Addie in her eyes, the old smile on her lips.

  Click. Everything fell into place.

  “We did it,” he said. “We made it work.”

  “You made it work.” Her grin was wide and happy and uncomplicated. “All you had to do was smooth out the bumpy parts.”

  “You make it sound so easy.”

  “Like going to Japan?”

  “No.” He took the opportunity to study, up close, her beautiful features. The cloud-soft curls teasing her forehead, the surprising silver streaks in her dark-blue eyes, the adorable slope of her nose, the lush curves of her cheeks. The slightly stubborn chin, the inviting lips. “As if it were easy to find the one thing I was looking for all this time.”

  Her smile faded, and she dropped her gaze to the table. She straightened and waved awkwardly in the direction of his project. “Sometimes the answer is right there, in front of you.”

  “You’re right.” He caught her wrist as he rose from the stool. “Sometimes it is. All you have to do is look.”

  She stared at his fingers encircling her arm. “Dev, I—”

  “I’ve been looking for a long, long time.”

  “You haven’t been here that long.” She shook her head, and one of the clips in her hair slipped another fraction of an inch to the side. “A few hours is all. It only seems longer be—”

  She stiffened with a funny, breathy squeak as he slid a hand along her waist. Her narrow, supple, feminine waist. Slowly, he spread his fingers over her lower back, dipping into the slight indentation along her spine and tracing the subtle bumps below. He wanted to savor every touch, every scent, every sigh, every blush, every flutter. He’d missed so much.

  “Because you had to make so many trips to the grinder,” she finished in a raspy whisper.

  “No, I’ve been looking for years. And look what I’ve found.” He released her wrist to raise his hand to her hair. He’d been wanting—waiting, for a lifetime—to pull those clips and bands from the top of her head, to watch the sunshine-bright streamers fall around her shoulders, to plunge his hands into the thick, luscious mass and grab fistfuls. And now she was here, standing before him with her eyes wide and locked on his, and her lips parted in a breathless surprise that matched his own.