To Catch a Camden

by Victoria Pade

  The Bronsons’ eyes were wide as they watched the men set up the TV and the top-of-the-line furniture, and got even wider as they looked over the pamphlet that told them all the functions of their new bed.

  By the time the delivery men left, Larry and Marion were like two awestruck children on Christmas morning—so much so that they even relaxed their attitude toward Derek and thanked him—though not profusely.

  But then they took it a step further and insisted that Derek and Gia stay for supper.

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t do that,” Derek said, the invitation clearly taking him by surprise. “Why not let me take us all out?” he suggested, with an imploring glance at Gia that asked for her support.

  She could tell just by looking at him that he was concerned about taking food from people who had so little to share. But she also knew the Bronsons, and that if they realized what he was thinking, it would embarrass them. So she said, “You’d be sorry to miss Marion’s soup and salad and homemade bread....”

  “All the vegetables are from Gia’s garden,” Marion added, bragging about Gia. “Every bit of the salad and all but the little bit of meat I use in the broth for the soup came straight from her backyard.”

  “And Marion makes the noodles,” Larry chimed in. “No restaurant soup can compare to that!”

  “It does sound delicious...” Derek said, still looking uncertain. “If you’re sure...”

  “Sure, sure,” Larry said.

  “We just eat in the kitchen. Nothing fancy,” Marion said, leading the way into that part of the house.

  The meal was less awkward than Gia had feared. Derek heaped praise on Marion’s cooking, which not only delighted the white-haired woman but opened the door to Larry doing some bragging of his own about the other dishes his wife made.

  Derek was good about keeping the conversation light and airy, steering clear of anything that might go back too far in history and remind the Bronsons of the past ugliness between them and his family. He didn’t try too hard. He just chatted and drew them out and allowed them to get comfortable with having a Camden in their kitchen with them.

  “Gia, take some of the soup and a slice of bread for your lunch tomorrow,” Marion decreed when they were finished eating.

  “I would, but we’re going out for lunch tomorrow—three of my coworkers have birthdays this week. So you guys keep it and have it for your lunch. And we’re going to the Tuscan Grill—I know you like their salmon, so don’t cook tomorrow night, Marion, and I’ll bring you takeout from there.”

  “Oh, that’s a treat! And we like the salmon best chilled, so it’ll be cooled off by the time you get it home,” Marion said.

  “We couldn’t do without this girl here,” Larry confided in Derek. “She’s always thinking about us.”

  “I can see that,” Derek said.

  Gia was uncomfortable having the attention focused on her all of a sudden, so she said to Marion, “Why don’t we get these dishes done and then I’ll help you make your new bed?”

  “And why don’t you let me show you how to operate the television, Mr. Bronson?” Derek suggested.

  “Larry—he’s Larry,” Marion said. Then it seemed as if the words—and her own friendly overtone—surprised her, because she stopped short before she added a bit haltingly, “And I’m just Marion.”

  Gia waited to see if Larry would go along with the olive branch his wife had just extended. His eyes met Marion’s and he smiled an understanding smile, reaching a hand over to pat hers where it rested on the table before he said to Derek, “Yep, you’d better show me what to do—tonight is the start of the new season of Marion’s dancing show and she’d hate to miss that if I can’t figure out how to turn the thing on.”

  * * *

  Daylight was only beginning to wane when Gia and Derek left the Bronsons to enjoy their comfy new furniture and watch their vastly improved television.

  It was a beautiful September night, and when they reached the curb in front of the Bronsons’ house, rather than turning to the left where Gia’s house was and where his car was parked, Derek angled his head to the right and said, “How about a walk down to Bonnie Brae for ice cream?”

  Gia smiled at him. “I knew you didn’t have a big, late lunch,” she said, referring to the excuse he’d used for why he was eating sparingly of the soup, salad and bread. “You’re still hungry.”

  “I felt so guilty taking food from them,” he confessed. “I was afraid that whatever I ate meant they had less to eat tomorrow or the next day.”

  Guilt. That wasn’t something she’d ever seen in Elliot.

  “But sometimes they have to give a little back,” she said. “It makes them feel less...needy. Sometimes you have to take what they offer, the same way you want them to take what you’re offering.”

  “You take what they offer and then make up stories about going out to lunch the next day so you can bring them takeout to replace what you ate tonight?”

  “You don’t know that I’m not going out for lunch tomorrow,” Gia challenged.

  But he just looked at her as if he could see right through her, smiling a small smile that said yes, he did know it. “Let me buy you ice cream—you didn’t eat any more than I did.”

  There was no question that she should say no. But when she opened her mouth, “I never turn down ice cream” came out, and they headed toward the creamery walking side by side.

  “Do you do as much for your own family as you do for the Bronsons?” Derek asked her then.

  “I would if I had a family to do for,” she answered.

  “Oh, that’s right—I think you told me that. That the Bronsons have become family for you, that you don’t have any family of your own, right?”

  “I might have a father out there somewhere, but he left my mother and me when I was seven and no one ever heard from him again, so I don’t really know if he’s still living or not.”

  “He just took off?”

  “Just took off,” she confirmed. “He’d been telling my mother how he’d made a mistake to get married and have a kid, that it had shown him that he wanted a different life than that. My mother tried to make it work, tried to figure out how he could have what he wanted and us, too, but the truth was that he just didn’t want us. One day he went to work and never came home. When she looked for him, she found out he hadn’t gone to work at all. He’d used the day to empty their bank account, clear out every other asset they had, cash his last paycheck and leave town—”

  “Without so much as saying goodbye?” Derek asked in amazement.

  “Without a word.”

  “And that was it? You never heard from him again? Not a card or a letter or a phone call?”

  “Nothing. He’d talked about traveling, about not wanting to live in Colorado anymore, so my mom didn’t have a doubt that he’d left the state, but beyond that...” Gia shrugged. It had all happened so long ago that the wounds she’d nursed through childhood had healed. “I have no idea what happened to him.”

  “Ever thought of looking for him?”

  She shook her head. “When I was a kid I had fantasies—he’d come home, say what a mistake he’d made and we’d all live happily ever after. But when I grew out of those... No, I wouldn’t look for him. I can understand people who are adopted and hope that they’ll find their biological parents and learn that the reason they were given up was just because there was no other way, that it was what was best for them or it wouldn’t have been done. But for me... My father spent seven years with me and then...” Okay, maybe there were still some old wounds, because her voice cracked unexpectedly.

  She cleared her throat. “He made it pretty clear that he didn’t want anything to do with me. It wasn’t even a matter of him divorcing my mom, He could have made sure he was still in my life in some way—even long-distance. But
he wanted out and he got out. And he didn’t leave us a thing, so he obviously didn’t care what happened to us—not whether we had a roof over our heads or food to eat or clothes on our backs. That only says bad things about him as a human being, as a man. Why would I go looking for someone like that?”

  They’d arrived at the ice cream shop by then and were lucky not to find a line out the door.

  As they went up to the display freezers, Derek said, “Chocolate, right? It’s just a matter of how dark or what extras might be in it.”

  “Actually, I like vanilla ice cream.”

  He laughed. “You’re kidding?”

  “Really rich, creamy vanilla. With little specks of vanilla bean in it and nothing else. On a wafer cone, not a sugar cone—they’re too sweet for me.”

  “Okay,” he said with another laugh, conceding to the unexpected. “When it comes to ice cream, I do like chocolate.”

  “Then there’s hope for you yet,” Gia teased him.

  He laughed once more, as if he hadn’t expected that, either. “I’m not sure what that means—was there no hope for me before?” Just then, the girl behind the counter came to take their order, freeing Gia from having to answer that.

  When they had their ice cream cones, Gia and Derek sat down at the one unoccupied café table outside.

  “So what happened after your father left?” Derek asked when they were sitting contentedly eating ice cream. “Were you and your mom okay? Was there only you and your mom, or have you lost siblings along the way, too?”

  “I was an only child. And things were rough after my father left. My mom had a lot of health problems—a bad valve in her heart, some immune-system things, bad digestive issues—so she hadn’t been working, and the stress of my father leaving made her sicker. We had to move in with my grandparents, who really did more of the parenting than my mom did because she was just too sick. She died when I was eleven, and I just went on with Gramma and Grampa.”

  “So you were raised by grandparents, too.”

  “I was. And they were great. They spoiled me rotten, but who’s going to complain about that? I loved them dearly.”

  “But they’re not around anymore?” he asked cautiously.

  “They were killed in a car accident caused by a drunk driver just before I graduated from college....” Another lump in her throat paused what she was saying and kept her from eating ice cream for a moment. Then she blinked back the tears that came with the memory and went on.

  “I didn’t go through the graduation ceremony because they weren’t there to see it—it felt so bad to finish the education they’d paid for and not have them around for the grand finale.” And then she’d leaped into marriage to fill the gap—not only with Elliot and the possibility of a family of her own, but also thinking that the big, close-knit Grant family would embrace her and take the place of her grandparents.

  Grief-clouded reasoning...

  “Wow, I’m doing a lot of talking about myself tonight,” she said in a lighter vein.

  But he must not have minded, because he stuck to the topic. “So it seems like the Bronsons are replacement grandparents for you. But you didn’t have them until three years ago, when you were going through another tough time....”

  “Divorce that round. My marriage came out of losing my grandparents and finding myself with no one—except Tyson, but you know, no family—and Larry and Marion came out of the divorce. They’re a much better deal,” she joked.

  Looking perplexed by that, he part smiled, part frowned. “Two eighty-plus-year-olds in hard times are a better deal than your marriage was?”

  “Believe it or not,” she said with a laugh of her own. But she didn’t offer more than that because she really did feel as if she’d been talking about herself for too long.

  And since they’d finished their ice cream, she also didn’t think she should draw out her time with Derek more than she already had, because it worried her how much she wanted to.

  “I should get home,” she said then. “I’m harvesting in Broomfield all day tomorrow, so I have to leave here a lot earlier in the morning.”

  He gave her a slow, victorious smile. “The Tuscan Grill is in Cherry Creek—that’s a long way from Broomfield,” he said, calling her on her subterfuge.

  Gia made a face and laughed at the same time. “Oh, yeah...”

  “What are you going to do, order the takeout on your way back from Broomfield and pick it up before you go home?”

  She merely shrugged as they stood and started back toward her house. “Shh...don’t give away my secrets.”

  “Will the salmon be cooled off enough to cover your tracks?”

  “I’ll come home, put it in my fridge while I shower and then bring it to them.”

  “So you’re a little sneaky,” he teased.

  “Only when I have to be, and for a good cause.”

  “I’ll bet,” he said as if she were predictable that way.

  And somehow that made her feel a little boring....

  “Is there anything I can do for Saturday’s yard sale besides bring stuff over in the morning and work it with you?” he asked then. “Do you need help tagging things or setting up or—”

  “Thanks, but I have it under control.” She wished she could say the same about her responses to him.

  Because she’d been overly aware of every tiny detail since watching him get out of his car earlier.

  Because each and every time she so much as glanced at him something tingly went off inside her.

  Because there was a part of her that kept willing him to take her hand or her arm, to touch her some way, any way.

  Because just walking along the sidewalk with him was so nice that she was keeping her pace ultraslow in order to prolong it.

  And all of that was out of control....

  “Minna left Sunday for Reno to visit her parents and didn’t get back until today, so Tyson and I have been going over to the church in the evenings to mark and organize things,” she added. “We have almost everything ready, so Friday night I’ll just be directing traffic when the church group gets it all here,” she explained, sticking to her resolution to resist having him come then.

  “You and Tyson...” Derek said then. “You’re just friends, huh?”

  Even the faintest suspicion that they were more than that made her laugh. “Just friends,” she confirmed. “Since we were both seven—”

  “When your dad left.”

  “And when Mom and I moved in with my grandparents. Tyson and his family had just moved into the house behind theirs.”

  “Did you go to school together?”

  “We did.”

  “But you never hooked up as boyfriend and girlfriend?”

  Gia laughed again. “We were seven when we met. I’ve seen him do yucky, disgusting kid things. We had chicken pox together, we’ve gone through bad skin, braces, the worst of puberty, getting drunk at thirteen on stolen liquor at a wedding and throwing up in matching trash cans. I think we’ve just never had enough illusions about each other to be anything but friends.”

  “You think people need to have some illusions to be something other than friends?”

  Gia shrugged again as they reached her house and she stopped by his car. “I just think people do have illusions about the people they get involved with as more than friends. They probably shouldn’t, but attraction seems to put on blinders and narrow your vision.”

  “Are we talking about your marriage again?” he asked.

  Rather than answer that, Gia said, “Were your eyes wide-open right from the start with Tyson’s cousin, Sharon-the-wannabe-psychic?”

  He smiled a slow smile, conceding her point. “Attraction makes you overlook anything except what you’re attracted to. Then, later on, what you overlooked—o
r missed altogether because of the blinders—is what makes the relationship not work....”

  “Exactly,” she said.

  He nodded toward her house. “Can I walk you up?” he offered.

  “No, I’m fine—the porch light is on, you can see no one is lurking in the bushes waiting for me....”

  He actually took a glance around to make sure, but he didn’t insist.

  He also didn’t make any move to go around to the driver’s side of his car, staying where he was and looking down at her much the way he had when he’d left on Saturday night.

  Just before he’d given her that friendly kiss that had been sooo disappointing....

  “I guess I have fewer illusions about you after tonight,” he joked then, returning to their conversation. “Chocolate everything except ice cream—very strange. Sneaky when it’s called for and for a good cause. And you wore braces and got drunk at thirteen....”

  “And I talk too much if you let me,” she added.

  “You only answered my questions. Most of them...” he said, likely referring to what she hadn’t said about her marriage.

  But the way he was looking at her and the small smile that curved just the corners of his mouth made her think that there wasn’t anything about what he’d learned tonight that he didn’t like.

  And no matter how much she wished she would have discovered something about him that she didn’t like, she hadn’t yet....

  Then, just when she was looking up into that handsome face and those shockingly blue eyes and starting to think about kissing again, he must have read her mind, because he said, “How about kissing—did you and Tyson try that out together the first time just for the sake of experimentation or for practice?”

  “No,” she said as if that was unimaginable. “I wouldn’t have kissed a brother if I’d had one, and Tyson is like that to me.”

  Derek’s smile grew. “I don’t know why I’m so glad to hear that,” he said, his eyes staying on hers.