by Ruthie Knox
Scraping the old caulk out of a seam with a screwdriver, he slipped and banged his hand against the shingles, opening up the cuts in his knuckles. He swore and threw the screwdriver into the parking lot, which only succeeded in making him feel like an asshole.
He was such an asshole. A pathetic, angry, sweaty asshole who couldn’t stop thinking about Ellen and how sad she’d looked at the hospital, even though what he really needed to be thinking about was how to save his company or find some other way to keep his family afloat.
Ellen didn’t need his comfort or anything else he had to offer. Ellen wanted him to back off, and damn it, that was what he’d done.
He took off his shirt and wrapped it around his hand, which was bleeding freely. Again.
The extension ladder shuddered against the side of the building, and after a moment his father’s head poked over the top, cap first. Today’s cap advertised the feed store in Mount Pleasant. Red, which meant he was feeling jaunty.
Derek Clark hauled himself onto the roof with a grunt and dropped the screwdriver next to Caleb. “You lost this.”
“Thanks.”
“Pissing-pile-of-crap skylights got your goat?”
“More or less.”
“Happens.” His dad sat down beside him. “Sometimes I dream about burning this place to the ground for the insurance money. Then I could rebuild it without the skylights.”
“Why don’t you do it?”
“Too risky. I’d have to notify all the tenants in advance, or somebody could get hurt.”
“You’re too nice for your own good.”
“Don’t I know it?” His father rummaged around in the knapsack he’d carried up with him and pulled out two bottles of beer and an opener.
“Now you’re talking,” Caleb said.
“Thought you might be thirsty.”
Caleb eyed the bag. “How many you got in there?”
“That bad, eh?”
He smiled a little. “Just wondering if I should nurse this one or if I can drink it in about four seconds like I want to.”
“I brought the whole six-pack. Don’t tell your mother.”
“My lips are sealed,” Caleb said, before tilting his head back and letting the cold beer slide down his throat. It went a long way toward slaking his thirst, but it didn’t do much for the rest of his problems.
The Breckenridge guy had finally showed at lunchtime on Monday, right as Caleb finished up at the hospital. After spending most of a bleary afternoon bringing the guy up to speed, he’d gone to bed at six o’clock and slept straight through to morning.
Yesterday, he’d headed back to the hospital, where dozens of photographers continued to jockey for position at the barricaded entrances, hoping to get a shot of Jamie and Carly and the baby to sell for a million bucks. Fat chance. He had the situation under control.
He hadn’t felt like showing his face on Burgess, so instead he’d played cards with Carly for most of the day. They let Callahan in on a few hands, but Carly was right—he couldn’t bluff. Everything he thought showed on his face. Just like his sister.
Caleb got to see the baby, but he turned down a chance to hold her. Her whole body would fit easily into one of his hands. He didn’t trust himself not to break her.
This morning, he’d intended to go to work but had ended up here instead. He couldn’t handle the thought of turning all of his responsibilities over to Breckenridge, but he couldn’t deal with seeing Ellen again either.
Or Henry. That night at the hospital, he’d told the kid stories about Ellen. He’d made up superpowers for her and spun yarns about how she’d used them for the good of mankind, rescuing kittens from trees, getting the president to an important meeting, that sort of thing. Henry had sat in his lap and soaked up every word with his huge blue eyes, asking one question after another until finally he started to have trouble holding up his head, and he’d laid it down on Caleb’s chest and gone to sleep, Caleb’s shirt clenched in his chubby fist.
It might as well have been Caleb’s heart.
He’d sat there like that for hours, watching people move in and out of the room as the sky grew darker outside and he finally drifted off to sleep. He hadn’t wanted to get up, because being there with Henry had felt like the only thing he’d done right in a long time.
“Here, give me your empty,” his dad said.
Caleb handed it over, and Derek exchanged it for another beer.
“Did you come up here to help me or get me drunk?”
“Little bit of both,” his father said. “Thought maybe you needed to unwind.”
“The screwdriver clue you in?”
“Nah. I just figured the way your mother’s been riding you, anybody would be tense.”
Caleb glanced sideways at him, surprised his dad had noticed Janet’s disapproval—and more surprised he cared. “She’s riding you a lot harder.”
“Yeah, but I’m used to it. You’ve been getting the hero treatment for years.”
“It wears a little thin.”
“No doubt.” His dad took a long pull on his beer. “Plus, there’s that whole circus you’re caught up in over on Burgess.”
“You’ been following that?”
“Saw a picture of you in the paper taking a swing at that poet fella who wears the leather vest.”
Caleb sighed. He wondered how long it would take before people stopped bringing it up. Given that this was Camelot, he was guessing fifty years would be cutting it close.
They had a great view of the village from the rooftop. It looked small and harmless from up here. Picturesque.
“Why do you let her do it?” Caleb asked. “Run you down all the time?”
The question didn’t come entirely out of the blue. It had been bothering him since he came home. His father seemed diminished by illness, and to watch Janet make him even smaller turned Caleb’s stomach.
Derek polished off his beer before he answered. “You probably don’t remember this, because you were just a kid when we moved here, but your mom was pissed off at me for two years straight for taking her away from her people and dragging her to this town. Two years, she didn’t have a kind word to say to me. Then she got over it.”
Caleb rubbed his hand over the back of his neck and stared down at the shingles. It wasn’t any kind of answer.
“She can hold a grudge, is all I’m saying. She doesn’t get mad easy, but when she’s mad, she stays that way for a while. It doesn’t help to try to talk her out of it. You just have to wait for it to blow over.”
“What’s she mad at you for now?”
“For being weak.”
“It’s not your fault you had a stroke. You’ve done everything you can to get better.”
“She knows that. She’s mad anyway. I always took care of her, and now she has to take care of me, and it pisses her off. It’s emotions, not logic. They aren’t the same thing.”
Caleb turned that over in his mind for a while. “She doesn’t have to do everything. I’m trying to help.”
“That makes her mad, too.”
“She doesn’t seem angry with me. Just … strange.” Disapproving. Manipulative.
“She wants you to have your own life. She doesn’t think you should have to be here living ours.”
Caleb finished his beer. “This is my life. It’s my responsibility. My choice.”
His father smiled, his dark eyes dancing beneath the brim of his hat. “I know that. She’ll come around eventually. Meantime, you can butt heads with her, or you can play along. Doesn’t matter which, she’s the same. Believe me, I’ve tried every possible approach over the years. Even took her on a cruise one year. She put on a bikini, laid herself down on a deck chair, and refused to speak to me the whole week.”
Caleb grinned despite himself. He could easily imagine his mother doing that. “Why do you put up with it?”
“I love her,” Derek said simply. “Always have. Always will. Besides, she’s not always so bad. She gets tetchy
around you kids. We have our fun when you’re not around.”
The way he said it … confident. It made something slot into place for Caleb. His parents didn’t need him to rescue them. The stroke had changed his father, but it hadn’t destroyed him. It hadn’t rendered him incapable of negotiating his own life, his own relationship with Mom.
Caleb had moved home to help. He had good hands and a strong back. That was all he owed them. It was all they needed from him. And any issues between himself and his mother were just that—issues between him and Mom. Old misunderstandings. Habits they’d figure out a way to break, with time.
Caleb handed his father the empty and waved off a third beer. Three bottles in twenty minutes, and he’d be liable to fall off the ladder and break his neck.
His father clapped him on the back. “You’re a good man, Caleb. You were a good kid and a good soldier, so it stands to reason. But you worry an awful lot. You can’t fix everybody’s problems. Nobody expects you to do that but you.”
He hung his head, disturbed to have his father’s approval when he was so far from deserving it. “The business is going under, Dad.”
Derek wrinkled his nose, then took another drink. “Nah. It might look that way, but you’ll figure something out. You always figure something out. It’s your specialty. And even if you don’t, what’s the worst thing that can happen? We own this pile of bricks. We’ve got a place to live. A family. We’ll work something out.”
He stood, polished off his beer, and tucked the empty in his bag. “I’d better get back to the apartment before your mother catches on I’m up here. You about done?”
Caleb looked at the row of skylights stretching out in front of him. “No.”
“Well, lunch is in an hour or so. Why don’t you see what you can get finished before then and let the rest of it go for today? It’s not like you’re ever going to be done caulking the goddamn skylights.”
Caleb smiled, grateful for his father. Grateful to feel like his son for a change, and to be able to let go of some of the pity he’d been carrying around.
Just before his red cap disappeared down the ladder, Derek paused and said, “I saw that woman in the paper, too. The one who was wearing your shirt. I figure she’s who’s got you looking like you just ate a bag of nails.”
Caleb didn’t answer.
“If I were you,” his dad said, “that’s the problem I’d be trying to fix.”
And then he was gone, and Caleb picked up the caulk gun and laid down a perfect bead along the seam of the skylight.
At least, with twenty years of practice, he could do that right.
Chapter Thirty
“Where’s Clark?” Jamie asked, wadding up a clean shirt and tossing it into his bag. Ellen took it back out and folded it before returning it to the top of the pile.
He’d come by to pack up some of his things for a longer stay in town. Carly wouldn’t be released for another day or two, and Isadora would need to remain in the NICU for at least a week, maybe longer, depending on how she did.
Meanwhile, Jamie had been busy, settling into his new life with a speed that made Ellen’s head spin. With Carly’s permission, he’d already made an offer on a house on the edge of town. Ellen had seen the listing—it was a big place on a few acres, with a stone fence around the perimeter. Jamie said it would be easier to keep it secure than Nana’s house, and moving there would get him and Carly and the whole circus out of Ellen’s hair.
She would miss having Carly next door, but she had to admit, the news was a huge relief.
“I don’t know,” Ellen said. “I haven’t seen him.”
Not for lack of watching. She’d found herself looking for excuses to play with Henry near the windows or out in the front yard, but Caleb hadn’t been around for a few days. There was a new guy who wore a navy blazer and an earpiece, like a Secret Service wannabe. Ellen disliked him by default.
Henry didn’t seem to like him much either, and he wouldn’t stop talking about Caleb. Cabe’s phone. Cabe’s stories.
Cabe is?
I don’t know.
Cabe come now!
Sorry, buddy. I don’t think he’s coming.
Why?
“I need to find him,” Jamie said. “Carly and I were talking about the security situation, and we’re going to need extra help after Dora gets out of the hospital. I’m going to ask him to take over.”
“What about Breckenridge?”
“Screw Breckenridge.” He opened a dresser drawer and started emptying out the contents, miscellaneous extra clothing he’d left behind at her house over the years. “I’m the one who pays them, but they listen to the label more than they listen to me. Plus, I owe Caleb. He did a great job of handling all the crap I pulled last week, and then he got all of us to the hospital. Who knows what would’ve have happened to Carly and Dora without him?” Jamie threw all the clothes on top of the bag, which was never going to zip now. “He’s the man. I want him running the show. Do you think he could do my concerts and everything? He might have to expand. Anyway, I need to get him on board, and I had this idea that he—”
When he finally glanced over at her, she must not have been controlling her expression very well, because he abruptly stopped talking and dropped everything on the bed so he could pull her into a hug.
“Shoot, Ellen. I’m sorry. I’m a moron. I should be hanged for that. I forgot you guys were still … Want to talk about it?”
She looked over at Henry, who was sitting on the floor near the guest room doorway eating Doritos straight out of the bag and getting crumbs everywhere. His fingers and face were coated in powdery cheese. It was a horrible snack, but Jamie had brought it, and she hadn’t been able to hide it fast enough.
“You have to go back to the hospital,” she said.
Jamie sat on the bed and gave her shorts a tug, urging her down beside him. “Spill it. I think the Doritos are going to buy us ten minutes.”
Ellen glanced over at Henry. “Maybe five.”
“Talk fast.”
So she tried. She cast around for a beginning. “You know how you asked me if I was having totally awesome, totally meaningless sex with my bodyguard, and I said yes?” She pitched her voice low and hoped Henry wasn’t old enough to follow any of this.
“Uh-huh.”
“That was a lie.”
“Duh,” Jamie said.
“Duh?”
“Duh, as in, Duh, I knew that, Ellen.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I know. I knew that, too.”
“You read minds now?”
“I read yours. It’s not that hard. Also, you’ve never had meaningless sex in your life.”
“I was trying to turn over a new leaf.”
She glanced at Henry. He’d dumped the rest of the Doritos out onto the floor and was arranging them in a pattern discernible only to him. He was making an unholy mess, but if she wanted to talk to Jamie, this was the only chance she’d get.
When she looked back at her brother, he was shaking his head. “No, you were trying to give yourself an excuse to get closer to him, because getting closer to him scared you, but you wanted to do it anyway.”
Yeah, that was pretty much what she’d been doing.
“Have you figured out you’re in love with him yet?”
She flopped back onto the bed, letting her legs dangle over the side. “Yes.”
“So you’re at that stage.”
“What stage?”
“The stage where you know you love him, and you think he loves you, but you’re totally convinced it’s over for some lame reason you can’t even articulate, so you go around all mopey and heartbroken until you get a Frisbee in the face and realize you’re being an idiot.”
Ellen actually had been hit in the face with a Frisbee once. She’d sat up just as someone threw it over her head, and it had smacked squarely into her eye socket, giving her a shiner that turned black, purple, and blue before fading to a sickly greeni
sh yellow a week later. Jamie had thought the whole episode was hilarious, and he still brought it up as often as possible.
“That’s a stage?” It didn’t feel like a stage. It felt like the end. Irrevocable. Miserable.
“That’s totally a stage. Want me to be the Frisbee?”
She put her forearm over her eyes. “I don’t need a Frisbee. This isn’t funny.”
Jamie patted her on the knee. “I only think it’s funny because I already got my black eye. Why don’t you try telling me why you and Clark can’t be together?”
“He knew this photographer was a felon and a threat to me and Henry, but he didn’t tell me, and Richard let the guy take Henry’s picture.”
“Wait, is this the one Caleb had arrested over at Maureen’s house?”
“Yeah. How’d you know about that?”
“Breckenridge gives me updates. So that’s what you argued about? Because he didn’t tell you?”
“Sort of.”
“But he’s not supposed to tell you all that stuff. He’s just supposed to deal with it. That’s his job. He took care of it, right?”
“Yeah, but—”
“No, wait, listen. Breckenridge knows all kinds of stuff about my security they don’t tell me. I get stalkers and really freaked-out, weird e-mails, sometimes even death threats. I don’t want to know about it. I don’t need to know.”
“This is different.”
“How?”
Because I was sleeping with him. Because if he’d cared about me, he’d have told me everything.
But she cared about him, and she hadn’t told him everything. She’d told him next to nothing. And as much as she resented Caleb’s decision to keep what he’d known about Weasel Face from her, she understood why he’d done it, and she knew she’d blown it out of proportion. She’d used it as an excuse, one of half a dozen ready options she’d latched onto because she couldn’t handle feeling like her life was spinning out of control.
“I rejected him,” she said, and the words came out weak and despairing.
“So un-reject him.”
“I can’t. He’s cold with me now.”
