Coming Home to Texas

by Allie Pleiter

  Ellie went back to stitching. “No. At least I don’t think so.” She pulled in a deep breath. “I mostly just want the whole thing to go away. I ran into my high school friend Dottie Howe today, with her happy family and her solid high-school-sweetheart marriage and her lovely but ordinary life, and I felt like some sort of failed social experiment. Local girl goes to big city and gets burned. She was so nice, but I couldn’t help thinking she was looking at me like I’m some sort of social charity case. She invited me to dinner with the family and to girls’ night out for pedicures at Wylene’s.”

  Brooke stuck her swollen feet out in front of her. “Someone rubbing my feet while they soak in warm water? Sounds so wonderful. I’ll go if you don’t. I may need a pair of those slippers before the month is out just because I won’t fit into any of my shoes anymore.” Brooke sighed and wiggled her pudgy toes before setting them back down on the porch boards. She gave Ellie a pointed look. “Do you know, yet, how it all fell apart with you and Derek? Do you have a sense of what went wrong?”

  Ellie tucked her legs up underneath her and kept stitching. “I still love him, I think, but I also think I was in love with the idea of him more than the man he was. Part of me was drawn by Derek’s huge personality—the talent, the notoriety, the intensity, all that stuff.” Ellie turned a row, and the memory of Derek flooding her desk with roses the day after he proposed rose bright and vivid in her mind. He was enthralling, she’d give Derek that much.

  “And that part of me blinded me to the bad side of his over-the-top nature—the tantrums, the need for attention, the blowups at even the smallest criticism, all those ego things chefs are known for. For a long time the roller coaster was fun—exhilarating, actually—but then when I had work pressures or wedding details that needed attention, he’d act like my problems or needs were too much for him to handle. As if it were my role to support Derek but not his role to support me.”

  “Did you fight a lot?” Brooke asked, picking up the green ball of yarn again and stroking it with such an air of maternal love that Ellie could only smile.

  “I didn’t think we argued more than any other couple, but looking back I suppose you could say yes. I expected Derek to pull his weight in the relationship, and I don’t think he saw marriage that way. Work made it worse, too. My job at GoodEats was to support him, bolster his image, tout him to the press and all. His job was to be spectacular and promotable—and believe me, he was.” She let the knitting drop to her lap. “It’s just that he seemed to think those roles should carry over into our personal relationship. He’d get mad when I’d call him on dropping the ball on something. He wanted a fan, not a wife.”

  The deep truth of that realization caught her up short, raising a lump of pain and regret in her throat. “I guess he found one in Katie. She is a sous chef at another of our restaurants, and I always felt she was a little starstruck by Derek, but I didn’t...” Suddenly she didn’t want to finish that sentence. She wiped one eye with the back of her hand and sniffed as she picked up the knitting again. “Well, you know.”

  “I’m sorry they hurt you like that.”

  Keep stitching. Keep creating. Keep moving forward away from the pain. “You and me both, sister.”

  “I hope next week with the volunteer program goes really well for you,” Brooke offered, still touching the soft ball of yarn. “I think it’s your turn to have a few fans.”

  As she kept stitching and watched the stars come out over the herd and the pastures, Ellie said a prayer that next week’s class would be fun and uplifting, not another reason to lick new wounds.

  * * *

  Nash had never been especially good with audiences, and today was proving no exception. The semicircle of eight boys gathered near the garage at the back of the church parking lot. Their “you’d better make this interesting” stares made Nash gulp. He’d clearly made a mistake in assuming the boys in his program would want to be here. These eight—sprawled across their chairs and glancing between him and their cell phones—looked as if they were in detention, even though Pastor Theo had told him this was voluntary. If this was voluntary, Nash dreaded to see what mandatory looked like.

  He cleared his throat, earning a shred of attention from half of the group. “A few ground rules before we get started.” That earned groans of disapproval. “First, no phones.” The groans became yelps of protest. “Second, everybody gets their hands dirty.” That earned a few “well, duhs!” from the guys. “Third, everyone gets a chance to drive.”

  Jose, a husky kid with thick black hair and angry eyes, looked up from his phone. “I got no car, so what am I gonna drive?”

  Nash had been waiting for that question. He grabbed the handle of the garage door behind him and said, “This.” With that, he pulled the door up to reveal his shiny Z that he’d backed into the church garage earlier this afternoon.

  “Whoa,” said Billy, who had clearly been proud of the old pickup he’d parked in the church lot ten minutes ago. “You kidding?”

  “No, I’m not. But each of you is going to have to earn the chance to get behind this wheel.” Nash walked toward the car, pleased to see all the boys get up and follow him. The Z was a stunner of a car, and he planned to use that to its full advantage. “One hundred thirty-two horsepower may not sound like much today, but she was built to be fast and still is. Her aerodynamics were groundbreaking for the time. Only twenty-five hundred of these were ever made, so she’s a limited edition, gentlemen.” He figured the lure of a chance to drive this would earn him loads of cooperation, and based on the looks on the boys’ faces, that would be true.

  “That’s your car?” Leon, a beanpole of a guy with freckles, asked with wide eyes.

  “It is.”

  “And you’re just gonna let us drive it?”

  Nash opened the driver’s side door. “No, I’m gonna let each of you earn the chance to drive it. And I expect each of you can and will.”

  “Why would you let us drive your fancy car? We could wreck it,” asked Mick, the toughest-looking boy of the bunch. The kid looked suspicious, as if no one had ever trusted him with anything valuable. It was a face Nash recognized from boys in LA—a symptom of how low expectations of young men usually were bound to come true. Step one was always to set a high expectation, communicating the idea that these kids had potential. It always twisted his heart what a foreign concept that was for many young men—no matter what city or state.

  With that, Nash opened the car door wider and gestured for Mick to sit in the driver’s seat. Mick gave a classic “who, me?” balk, but then jumped right in to take his place behind the wheel. “You like cars. Guys who like cars can respect them. If you all show me you can respect the car we’re going to rebuild, then I’ll know you can respect a car like this. Once I know you’ll treat her right, I’m happy to share the Z with you. But,” he continued, giving them his best “tough cop” glare, “if you show me, our project car or this car any disrespect, then I won’t let you behind this wheel. Do we have a deal?”

  Heads nodded around the room. Establishing a joint partnership was always step two. A goal—one that was separate and more tangible than “stay out of trouble”—got everyone on the same team. The Z was a big, snazzy and powerful incentive—provided it didn’t get stolen or rolled by the end of the program. Based on the looks filling the boys’ faces, Nash was pretty sure his baby was safe.

  “Want to hear how she sounds?” When heads nodded again, Nash motioned for Mick to come out of the car, then slipped into the driver’s seat and gunned the ignition. The lush, throaty roar of the car’s engine filled the garage, gaining looks of admiration and outright envy from the boys, as Nash had known it would. The Z wasn’t flashy in a rich-guy “look at me” way, but she was gorgeous in a classic way any car guy could appreciate. And these were car guys in the making.

  But, like most boys their age, they thought they
knew everything. And that was the first thing that had to change. Nash killed the engine and popped the hood latch. He gathered the boys around the front of the car as he propped the long hood on its support rod and began pointing to various engine parts. “Who can tell me what that is?”

  “The radiator.”

  “And that?”

  “That’s where the spark plugs are.”

  On it went for twenty minutes, a game of informational one-upmanship between the boys that gave Nash a perfect glimpse of how much the guys already knew. It also told him a lot about the dynamics of the group, such as who took charge, who started arguments, who backed down when challenged and who bluffed when he didn’t know. It shouldn’t have surprised him how some things about teenage boys were universal. What did surprise him, as he drew out details of their home and school life, was how little attention it seemed these boys received from their parents; he’d expected the rural happy-family model to rule the day out in the country like this. The load of family problems, broken homes, economic hardships the boys hinted at even on this first day stunned Nash. Serves me right for making assumptions, he chided himself as he handed out a worksheet at the end of the day.

  “Homework?” Davey, the quietest of the bunch, and the one who actually seemed to know the most about engines, finally piped up in obvious protest. “You gotta be kidding me.”

  “Relax. It’s not homework,” Nash replied.

  Jose squinted at the paper. Did the boy need glasses and not have them? “Looks like homework to me.”

  “I want each of you to tell me about your dream car. If I were to hand you a million dollars tomorrow, what car would you buy? Go research that car. Tell me the options you’d get, fill in the specs for fuel consumption, brake horsepower, torque, all the goodies. Even the color—interior and exterior. As many details as you can find. That’s not homework, now, is it, boys?”

  Billy looked up from the worksheet. “What would you buy, Deputy Larson?”

  “You can call me Nash. What car would I buy? You’re looking at her.”

  “You have a million dollars?” Doug gawked.

  “No, I don’t need a million dollars. I want a car I can work on and drive anywhere, and for me, that’s this car, not a fancy Lamborghini or some other European number. That’s the thing about cars. I said you could spend a million for your dream car, but you don’t have to. Would I drive a Lambo? In a minute. It’d be fun to drive. But would I want to own one? Not so much. See you next week, dream car papers in hand.”

  “Sixty-five Mustang,” Davey offered as he stuffed the worksheet in his pocket, making Nash suspect it would show up next week with grease stains and tattered edges. “Red.”

  As they headed out of the garage, the boys started in on a boisterous argument over what the ultimate dream car was. They’d only grunted at each other when they had come in. Already they were getting better at communicating as a group. It had begun. He’d gotten a toehold on the project. From here anything was possible. Nash recognized the spark of satisfaction deep in his chest—a sensation he’d been pretty sure was gone from his life. Thank You, Lord, he prayed as he folded up the chairs against the garage wall. You know how much I needed that.

  He’d just closed the hood on the Z when Ellie walked into the garage looking a bit frazzled. “How’d it go?” she asked in a high, tight voice.

  Nash would have said “great,” but her expression made him take it down a notch to “Pretty good, actually. How about you?”

  Ellie chewed her bottom lip. “In all honesty, I’m not so sure.” She took a few steps toward him. “They want to be here, don’t they? I mean, this wasn’t forced on them, right?”

  Nash wiped his hands as he walked over to her. “You haven’t worked with teens before, have you?” Knowing her, she’d expected everyone instantly to share her enthusiasm for crafts, to be as eager to learn as she was. Teens could get there, but they usually hit you with a lot of apathy before they engaged. And really, hadn’t he had the same thought about the boys’ reluctant attitudes? “They test you at first, hide any enthusiasm, even if they really are interested.”

  “Oh, these girls were hiding their enthusiasm, that’s for sure. One girl—Marny?—she had what Gran calls ‘the eye of death’ down pat. I’ve never felt so much bored annoyance in the space of ninety minutes.”

  She looked crestfallen. She’d probably done a great job with those girls, even if she didn’t realize it yet. Ellie was authentic, and kids recognized that and connected with it—they just rarely showed it. He searched for something he could say or do to cheer her up or at least distract her. “I’m hungry,” he offered, looking at his watch. “Want to show me where the best barbecue is in town?”

  “Buck’s is good, but it’s Wednesday night. Everyone will be there.” Her words declared loud and clear that she didn’t care for everyone’s company right now.

  “So, who’s got the best barbecue out of town?”

  Her eyes caught on to what he was suggesting. “Red Boots. About twenty miles east of here. But you don’t want to drive all that way.”

  “You clearly don’t know about car guys. A nice drive on a warm spring night on a back country road? You don’t have to ask me twice. Come on.”

  Chapter Eight

  Ellie lifted her hands over her head through the car’s open T-top roof, letting the warm summer air flood around her fingers. Freedom. It felt like freedom to be barreling down the road, away from the bored-looking girls, away from everything that wasn’t working in her life, away from all the prying eyes in Atlanta and Martins Gap. Away. She’d fled back to Martins Gap thinking she was escaping, only to discover her problems and shortcomings followed wherever she went.

  Nash glanced over at her and smiled. He was having fun, too, pointing out how the car handled certain curves, opening up the engine on straightaways and generally being a kid showing off his favorite toy. She was almost sorry when he pulled the sports car into a parking place at the crowded Red Boots Grill—the temptation to tell Nash to just keep driving off into the sunset pulled hard on her tired spirit.

  “You enjoyed that,” Nash said as he walked around and opened the car door for her. Ellie had forgotten guys even did that anymore—Derek never had. For all Derek’s modern pizazz, there was something to be said for good old-fashioned manners. “I’m glad.”

  “It was fun. I feel like the wind washed all the knots out of my neck.” She tried to tamp down her windblown hair, then gave up. There isn’t anybody in the Red Boots who would know me anyway, so who cares what my hair looks like right now?

  “That’s what I feel when I drive her—washed off. Some days I think I can almost see the stress lying scattered on the road in my rearview mirror.” He flushed, running a hand through his own tousled hair. “That sounds cheesy, doesn’t it?”

  They both must look like windblown scarecrows. It was wonderful not to care. “Not a bit.” She nodded up at the sign—a neon-red boot that kicked. “Hope you’re hungry.”

  “Starved. Disgruntled teens always make me hungry.”

  Ellie laughed. “Disgruntled. That’s a good name for what those faces looked like. A cross between grumpy, bored and unimpressed. I’ve faced hostile catering clients that were an easier sell.”

  Nash opened the door for her. “Do you care about the girls? About what they think and whether or not they’re getting anything out of your time together?”

  “Of course I do. Why would I do this if I didn’t think they would enjoy knitting and get the same things out of it that I do?”

  “Then that’s what matters. They’re just testing you to see if you really care. And you do. They’ll figure that out and come around. Trust me.”

  “Name?” a scrawny girl in a red shirt asked from the hostess desk.

  “Natsuhito,” Nash replied in a totally ordinary v
oice.

  Ellie and the girl both blinked at the strange name.

  “Wanna spell that?” the hostess asked, clearly stumped. “Or should I just say Nat?’

  Nash leaned over the clipboard. “N-A-T-S-U-hito. Just like it sounds.” Ellie watched in astonishment while Nash smirked like a kid in on a joke.

  When they’d moved aside to the waiting area, Ellie raised an eyebrow at him. “Natsu-what-o?”

  He leaned back against the wall and crossed one foot over the other. “Natsuhito. You didn’t think Nash stood for Nashville, did you?”

  “That’s your full name?”

  “The Japanese part. My full name is Natsuhito Joshua Larson. Natsuhito was my mother’s grandfather’s name, and Joshua came from my dad’s side of the family.” He nodded back toward the hostess. “I pull it out for fun now and then.”

  As if on cue, the hostess looked right at them and drolled out “Nash-tu-hillo party?”

  Ellie found herself laughing as the hostess led them to a booth. “I thought we were being incognito tonight,” she remarked as she slid into the red leather seats.

  Nash slid in across from her, the smile still lingering on his features. “We are. Nobody will ever know Natsuhito is us. And we needed to have some fun.”

  “You’re one surprise after another, Nash-tu-hito.”

  “Nat-su-hito,” he corrected. “And Nash will be just fine. I think most people in Martins Gap would choke at the name if I used it there anyway.”

  “Maybe not,” Ellie countered. “Sure, it’s a small town in the middle of Texas, but they’re a welcoming lot. They won’t care much where you came from.”

  The server set down big plastic glasses of water and Nash took a long drink. “So now you’re defending the place? Before it sounded as if you couldn’t get out of there fast enough.”

  “Oh, Martins Gap can be annoying and quirky sometimes, but it’s still home. I just needed more...possibilities than I could see here. The ranch was always Gunner’s thing—even when he ran away from it for a bunch of years. I want to do something to support the family business, but I need to make my own mark in the wider world. One that’s much wider than here.” She exhaled and fiddled with the place mat. “I’m not even sure my future will be at GoodEats Inc. anymore, either.”