Crossing Tinker's Knob

by Cooper, Inglath

  36

  Searching

  The sharp thorn often produces delicate roses.

  - Ovid

  Now

  Matt loved the drive from Ballard out to the lake. Had always admired the way the land along the way dipped and rose, then leveled out to straight, flat stretches of green hay and cornfields. Loved, too, the blue-hued mountains that loomed in the distance, rising up to meet the skyline. As a boy, he’d always thought of them as a wall of sorts that protected the county from the rest of the world the way moats had once protected castles and other places of worth.

  Certainly, there were cities and towns in the world far prettier than Ballard County, and he’d seen a lot of them. Florence, Italy. Cannes, France. The Caribbean’s Anguilla. But he’d never felt at home in any of those places. He’d been a visitor there, and being a visitor to a place wasn’t the same as belonging by birthright.

  It wasn’t something he’d ever let himself think about to any extent until now. Now when homesickness swirled through him, the intensity of which he could not explain. But it was as if it had built up inside him during all the years of being away, and he could not deny, even to himself, that some part of him belonged here.

  He made the turn off 122 onto the smaller road that led to his grandmother’s house. Becca’s house now. Half-way down the gravel drive, he stopped the Land Rover and draped both arms across the steering wheel, stalling. Was he making a mistake in coming here?

  He’d lain awake half the night debating the wisdom of it, aware that he’d crossed a threshold yesterday in asking Becca to meet him. He considered turning around and heading back to town, his gut telling him it would be the best thing for them both. But logic lost its footing beneath the lure of eighteen years of wondering.

  He put the vehicle in gear and rolled forward, gravel crunching beneath his tires. A quarter mile more, and he spotted the white truck parked near the back door of the house. Matt pulled up beside it and got out, ran a hand through his hair, nervous in a way that was not characteristic of him.

  He walked through the overgrown yard and stuck his head inside the back door, calling her name. No answer. He circled around to the front of the house and found her pulling weeds from the base of the old rose bushes he remembered his grandmother planting along the porch when he’d been a small boy.

  “Champlain roses,” he said, leaning one shoulder against the corner of the porch railing and sticking his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

  Becca straightened and turned toward him. “Is that what they’re called?”

  “Gran planted them from some bushes my great-grandmother had grown.”

  “So they come with history?”

  He held her gaze and said, “Yeah. I guess they do.”

  Becca brushed the dirt from her palms. “Then that makes them even more special.”

  They were silent then, the words echoing between them. A crow cawed in the distance, another answering back.

  “Looks like the weeds are going to give you a run for your money,” Matt said.

  “It’s not too bad once you get past the stuff with real roots. Those are the ones that aren’t so easy to persuade into leaving.” Becca began pulling again, making a neat pile just out from the bush.

  Matt knelt beside her and followed her lead.

  “You don’t have to help,” she said, quiet surprise in her voice.

  “I want to,” he said.

  They worked for the better part of two hours, much of the time quiet, the only sounds the tug and release of the weeds letting go of the soil. When the pile got bigger, Matt loaded it into a wheelbarrow and dumped it at the edge of the yard, making the trip back and forth a couple of times.

  It was almost twelve-thirty when Becca sat back, wiped the sleeve of her cotton dress across her forehead and said, “Thank you. Four hands are definitely better than two.”

  Matt stood, surveying their work, pleased to see that the bushes were no longer choked with undergrowth. “They look just like they did when Gran took care of them,” he said.

  Becca’s face softened with the praise. “That’s good.”

  “It is.”

  She folded her arms, hesitating and then saying, “I brought lunch. Are you hungry?”

  “Starving.”

  She nodded once and went inside the house. Matt used the faucet out back to rinse his hands, finding an old t-shirt in the back of the Land Rover to wipe the sweat from his face. When he returned to the front yard, Becca had spread a blanket on the grass close to the water. At the sight of her waiting for him, he walked the short distance from the house under an onslaught of feelings too tangled to sort out.

  An old pear tree grew near the spot she’d chosen. He remembered planting it with Gran when he’d been seven or eight years old. Every August, they would pick up buckets of the small green pears, and Gran would make preserves on the stove in a big copper kettle, filling small glass jars with them and giving them as Christmas presents.

  Now, the tree threw dapples of shade across the containers of food Becca removed from a brown wicker basket. Matt stood by the edge of the blanket, not sure what to do.

  She scooted over and made room for him, opening a bowl of green beans with boiled white potatoes, yellow corn on the cob, biscuits that looked as though they’d been made that morning and bright pink slices of watermelon.

  “It’s a lot of food, I know,” she said. “Abby only had a half day of school today. I thought she might come out at some point.”

  “I don’t want to eat her share.”

  “She’d be here by now if she were coming.” She passed him a thick white paper plate along with a plastic fork and knife. “There’s iced tea in the cooler.”

  “Great.” He reached inside for the pitcher and filled a plastic cup for them both, handing her one.

  “Thank you.”

  They loaded their plates and in silence, began eating with the kind of appetite fostered by working outdoors. The summer day was warm but not unpleasant, and a breeze drifted in off the lake. A grasshopper found its way onto the blanket and then made a perfect landing atop one of Matt’s potatoes.

  Becca gently picked it up and put it back in the grass.

  Matt smiled. “I thought ants were the picnic invaders.”

  “Apparently, they have competition.”

  “Keeps things healthy, I guess.”

  With amusement in her eyes, Becca took a sip of her tea, then set it down at the edge of the blanket. “So tell me about you and what you do, Matt.”

  “You first.”

  “There’s not much to tell. I’ve turned my gardening into something of a small business.”

  “Your grandmother’s Heirloom seeds.” Matt could see that she was pleased he had remembered.

  “People seem to like things grown with a little extra care.”

  “As I remember it, you have a special touch with making things grow.”

  “It’s not complicated,” she said. “It’s just paying attention to what they need.”

  “That’s something most of us have trouble with when it comes to anything other than ourselves.”

  She considered the words, but didn’t deny them. “So tell me about what you do.”

  “I work for a pretty big law firm. Litigation. Contracts. Refereeing disputes between battling corporations.”

  “Sounds complicated.”

  “It can be. And boring. It can be that, too.”

  She hesitated. “And your wife?”

  “She’s an attorney, too.”

  Becca nodded, looking at her plate. She didn’t say anything for several moments, and then, “Pretending not to care. It’s hard, isn’t it?”

  He put down his plate, his appetite suddenly gone. “Yes.”

  She glanced away, her eyes suddenly turbulent with uncertainty. When she finally looked at him again, she studied his face for several long moments before saying, “We shouldn’t be doing this.”

  “Eating?” he s
aid, trying for a light note.

  “It’s more than that, and we both know it.”

  “Becca.”

  She held up one hand, looking off at the lake. “Matt, don’t. Please.”

  “We need to talk,” he said.

  “It’s too late for that.”

  “Why is it too late?” he said, anger igniting inside him like kerosene beneath the flick of a match.

  She made a sound that was half laugh, half sob. “Because we both have other lives.”

  “And that means we can’t talk to each other?”

  She glanced back then, resignation in her voice. “And where would it go?”

  “Is it so wrong for me to want to understand what happened to us?” he said then, the words harsher than he’d intended.

  “There’s nothing to understand.”

  “There’s everything,” he said.

  She looked down, rubbed a thumb across the back of her hand. “I wrote you that one letter, and I never heard from you again.”

  “That one letter changed my life.”

  She glanced up then, her voice soft when she repeated, “And I never heard from you again.”

  He looked at the lake, not answering for a minute or more. “You remember how I told you once what happened to my parents. That they died when they did because I pressured them into doing something they didn’t want to do.”

  She nodded. “I remember.”

  “After you wrote to me and said that you couldn’t be with me, that things would never work between us, I actually got in the car and started driving home. About halfway here, I had this awful feeling that if I talked you into doing something you didn’t want to do, something bad might happen, and I would have to live with that the way I’ve lived with my parents’ death.”

  “Matt,” she said.

  He held up a hand, as if he needed to finish. “A week or so later, I’d finally convinced myself that I had to at least talk to you. I came home and drove out to your house. Your mother told me you’d gone away for a while. She said that you didn’t want me to know where you were. And then, later, I heard that you’d married Aaron.”

  Matt’s words hung in the air, moments ticking by, and then Becca stood suddenly and started putting the bowls back in the picnic basket, her hands clumsy and shaking. “It’s pointless to dredge all this up. To create regret for something that can’t be changed.”

  “Becca.” Matt got to his feet, reaching out to stop her with a hand on each of her shoulders. “Wait.”

  “I can’t do this,” she said, her voice breaking.

  He tipped her chin up, forcing her to look at him. “We’re not doing anything wrong.”

  “Oh, Matt.” She was silent for a few seconds, and then with a hand to her chest, “I know you’re sad now. That you’re grieving, and I think not just for your grandmother.” She stopped, started to say something, then hesitated, as if struggling for words. “You’re obviously going through a lot of changes in your life. Coming back here must not have been an easy thing. But what happened between us was. . .we were just kids. And looking back isn’t going to help fix anything for you now.”

  Matt blinked once, considered his response and then, “Is that how you see this?”

  “I think you’re searching,” she said, her voice soft, not unkind. “But there’s nothing here, Matt. Don’t look to the past to fix the life you have now.”

  She gathered up the rest of her things and straightened. “I shouldn’t have let this happen today.”

  “Nothing happened.”

  “We opened a door. And now we have to close it again.”

  She was halfway back to the house when he called her name again. She faltered, as if she might change her mind and turn back. But she didn’t. She kept walking, disappearing around the corner of the house, the still afternoon interrupted only briefly by the sound of her truck heading down the gravel road.

  ∞

  Then

  THE SIGHT OF her made him nearly dizzy with longing.

  Matt had been waiting for an hour or more at the back of the house, watching for her car to appear in the curve of the gravel drive. His palms were sweaty, and he kept checking his watch to make sure she wasn’t yet late.

  At just after one o’clock on Sunday afternoon, he heard a car turn in off the main road. A minute later, she pulled into the driveway and cut the engine. Matt walked out to meet her, leaning down to kiss her through the lowered window. “Hey,” he said.

  She smiled. “Hey.”

  “This might have been the longest day of my life.”

  “Why?” she said, her voice teasing as if she already knew the answer.

  He opened the door and pulled her out, backing her into the side of the black Impala and anchoring his hands in her thick blonde hair. “Because of this,” he said, kissing the side of her neck. “And this.” Another kiss at the back of her ear. The tip of her nose. And finally her mouth. Long, deep, lingering. “And that.”

  “And that,” she repeated, her eyes soft in the way he lay awake at night thinking about when they weren’t together. When all he could think about was wanting her, needing her as he had never before needed another human being.

  They leaned back to stare at one another, taking their time. Matt was glad to be able to look at her fully, to not think about who might see them, her mother, her father, Wilks. This wasn’t something he’d ever had to think about with any of the girls he’d dated. For the most part, parents liked him. And while he told himself that the Millers didn’t have anything against him personally, their disapproval made him uncomfortable.

  “You up for a canoe ride?” he said.

  “Only if you’re doing all the rowing.”

  He took her hand and pulled her toward the house, “Deal. Come on.”

  “Wait,” she said, running back to the car and grabbing a canvas bag from inside.

  “Bathing suit?” he said.

  Her cheeks brightened with color. “I went into town last night and bought one. I felt like I was buying something illegal.”

  Matt reached out to touch her face. “You don’t have to wear it if you don’t want to.”

  “I want to,” she said.

  They went into the house, and Matt showed Becca a room where she could change. “I’ll be outside getting the canoe ready,” he said.

  She nodded and closed the door, while he thought about the bed in that room and all the things they could do there. He forced himself to walk outside and down to the dock where he’d tied the canoe earlier.

  He got everything ready to go and then sat down, letting his feet dangle in the water. Ten minutes passed. Another five. And then another. Just as he was heading back to the house to check on her, Becca let herself out the back door and walked toward the water in a light blue one-piece that while modest by some comparisons, made his heartbeat kick up several notches.

  He met her half-way. “Wow,” he said. “You’re beautiful.”

  She glanced down, looking awkward. “I feel like I’m trying to be someone I’m not.”

  “Funny, you look just like this girl I’m crazy about.”

  She smiled then, clearly pleased. “So you’re rowing?”

  “I’m rowing.”

  Matt untied the canoe, held it steady while she slipped into the front seat. He handed her an oar and then slid in the back with his own. He pushed them off, and the canoe glided across the surface, light and quick.

  The July air was thick and hot. The sun sat high in a blue sky, the lake water reflecting back the same hue. The pinks and purples of thistle and blueweed colored the fields along the shoreline. “We might have to take a swim before long to cool off,” Matt said.

  She looked over her shoulder, shot him a grin. “You just want to see me in this bathing suit again.”

  He dipped his head. “Not denying that.”

  Becca laughed and trailed her hand in the water, letting her fingers make little wakes while Matt moved them through the cove wit
h long, steady strokes.

  He had a destination in mind, a spot around the bend where the land formed a u, natural sand blanketing the shoreline, a poplar tree lending shade to part of the beach.

  It only took five minutes to get there, but Matt was sweating by the time he brought the canoe to a stop.

  “It’s beautiful here,” Becca said.

  Matt climbed out first, then helped Becca from the front. The canoe tipped side to side, and she lost her balance at the last second, falling forward against his chest. He caught her with one arm around her waist, and they stood there in the shallow water, looking into each other’s eyes.

  Matt was suddenly conscious of their breathing, the sound of it drowning out everything else around them.

  Becca drew his head down to hers and kissed him, her lips soft and searching. In that single moment, Matt felt as happy as he had ever felt in his life. Still holding her in the air with one arm, he carried her to the beach. She was giggling now and telling him to put her down. He ignored her until he reached the grassy area just beyond the sandy beach.

  He dropped to his knees then, both arms around her. They studied each other, the laughter fading away, leaving behind a stillness, a sudden understanding of his own feelings. The moment hit Matt like an axe to the back.

  “Becca,” he said.

  “I know,” she said, pressing a hand to his face. “Me, too.”

  “I want to say it, though.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “It might—”

  “What?”

  “Change things.”

  “It won’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  He tipped her chin back with one finger, looked into her eyes. “I know.”

  “But—” She shook her head a little, her protest weak now.

  “I love you. Becca Miller. I love you.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. She blinked them away, pulling his face to hers and kissing him with her own deep and thorough answer. She didn’t have to say anything. He knew she felt the same way, knew it with a kind of certainty he had never known about anything else in his life. She filled spaces inside him, sealed seams where the edges had come undone.