by Beth K. Vogt
A black BMW sedan circled the cul-de-sac, the odor of burning oil staining the fresh winter air as the car stopped in front of her house with a wheeze and a rattle. Unless Sam’s brother had a second car, she didn’t have to worry about facing Stephen Ames until their agreed-upon dinner tonight.
“Mrs. Ames?” The man waited beside his car, the driver’s-side door open. A navy blazer, patterned blue shirt, and basic blue tie gave him a professional—if monochrome—look.
Haley stumbled to a stop, Sam’s coat slipping off one shoulder. “Yes?”
He shut the car door. “I’m Sterling Shelton, the president of the Contrails Homeowners’ Association.”
Of course you are. Haley’s body flushed hot, then cold. A letter—even a letter every day of the week—was better than Shelton showing up at her house. “Is there something I can do for you, Mr. Shelton?”
“I thought maybe a face-to-face discussion might help clear up any confusion about your responsibilities as a new homeowner.” He offered a smile that thinned his lips across crooked teeth, without ever reaching his dark eyes.
“There’s no confusion—and you really should have called before showing up today. My schedule’s full.” He didn’t need to know that the first thing on her list was putting a load of laundry in the washing machine, followed by a midmorning snack and unpacking one box of household stuff.
“Then perhaps you can explain why you have so many violations?” He positioned himself beside her, surveying the house. “Wrong-size house numbers. A stained driveway. Paint peeling off your shutters and porch—”
“I bought the house in this condition.” The shrill tone of her voice shocked Haley. She scraped her hair from her face, swallowing the sharp retort that wouldn’t change anything—especially the man’s attitude. “Why didn’t you address these infractions with the previous owners?”
“That doesn’t concern you—you are the current homeowner.” Shelton rocked back on the heels of his worn black dress shoes. “You do realize I have the authority to fine you when you’re in violation of the association codes?”
First there were written threats. Now there were verbal ones? “I just moved in—I haven’t even unpacked all of my boxes.” If the man saw inside her garage, he’d realize she’d hardly unpacked any of her boxes.
“I’m a compassionate man, Mrs. Ames—but to be blunt, none of those excuses are my problem.”
Haley tugged Sam’s coat tight around her. A never-ending stream of letters and showing up unannounced didn’t even hint at compassion. The man was throwing his weight around—and wasting her time. Haley needed to see Shelton for what he was: a bully. She couldn’t deck him like her brother David had taught her to do in fifth grade, but she could keep her guard up and not let him hassle her anymore.
“Mr. Shelton, I know you are only doing your job to the best of your ability.” Let him think what he wanted about that statement. As she talked, she put distance between them, leaving him at the foot of the driveway. “I am not ignoring the covenants—and will deal with the problems you point out as quickly as I can.”
“I’m not finished talking—”
“But I am.” She tossed him a mock salute. “Good-bye.”
Back inside the house, she tossed the mail in the basket on the breakfast bar between the kitchen and the dining room and dropped her coat on the arm of the couch. She would not look outside to make certain Sterling Shelton III had left. She could only hope the man understood the meaning of good-bye—and resorted to writing letters again.
After the unexpected face-off with the man, Haley was thankful Wes had decided he didn’t need her help behind the counter at the gun club. The day stretched ahead of her, empty of her regular schedule. Fine. She’d list out the home projects. Unpack a box in the garage.
And, thanks to Claire’s prodding, she’d meet with Stephen Ames.
Powering up the television and the DVD player, she grabbed a notepad and pen, determined to create the to-be-tackled to-do list. So there, Mr. Shelton! Stretching out on the couch, the dialogue of Hellfighters filled the empty rooms. Imaginary people were better than no one at all. Between the list and the almost-memorized movie, she’d manage the hours until her meeting with Sam’s brother.
Haley doodled a row of boxes across the top of the page. Why had she called the man and suggested they meet for dinner? Oh, that’s right. Claire had guilted her into it. She repositioned herself, placing a cushion under her knees in an attempt to get comfortable. She wasn’t being fair to her friend. Claire had made a reasonable suggestion, and she’d agreed to it.
Not that she was going to be some sort of “answer woman” for Stephen Ames. If he wanted to know how she and Sam met or how long they dated before they got married—fine. But if he started asking questions about Sam’s life before then . . . well, Haley wasn’t going to be much help. After they’d married, she’d quickly learned her husband focused on now. When she asked about his family—him and his mom—he glossed it over, saying things were “typical.”
The arrival of his twin brother shattered that word into mirrored shards of truths and lies—and she was left to clean up the mess.
Five fifteen. No Haley Ames. Was she going to leave him sitting in Johnny Carino’s, staring at a basket of cloth-wrapped bread?
Stephen powered up his iPad, opening his Paper by Fifty-Three sketchpad app. He roughed out a tree. First the trunk, then the leafy branches. Next, he outlined a tree house.
Always the same simple tree house.
It had never occurred to him that Haley wouldn’t show, although he had no reason to assume she would keep her word. Of course, he hadn’t expected Haley to call him half an hour after she’d shut the door in his face, much less suggest they meet for dinner and talk. He’d been too shocked to say “What about lunch?” and had spent the rest of the day bumming around Colorado Springs, finally ending up at a Williams-Sonoma cooking store for an hour. Not that he had anywhere else to go—like a job. He had plenty of tools from Lowe’s and Home Depot—he didn’t have to defend the fact that he also had a well-stocked kitchen . . . well, the beginnings of a well-stocked kitchen. A guy had to relax some way. He’d limited himself to purchasing a rice cooker, an item that had been on his wish list for a while.
Stephen gulped down some ice water and was debating ordering Italian sangria when the waitress returned to check on him. But how sorry would he look if he ended up sitting in a booth, drinking by himself ?
Should he call Haley? See if she’d changed her mind? He tapped the “Recent Calls” button on his phone, scrolling through to find her number.
“Sorry I’m late.”
Haley’s voice yanked his attention from the phone screen. She slipped into the seat across from him, even as he started to rise to his feet. Her head tilted to the side, an eyebrow arched in a silent What are you doing? Stephen settled back against the cushioned booth.
“I overslept.” She ran her fingers through her honey-blond hair, which still looked tousled, as if she’d rushed to meet him without bothering to brush it. “I, um, started watching a movie and fell asleep.”
“Understandable.” Stephen paused as the waitress appeared at the table, two short brown braids framing her round face. “I’ve gotten all the way to water—” He motioned to the basket. “—and bread. Do you want something else to drink?”
She turned her attention to the waitress. “Sprite or Seven-Up, whatever you serve.”
“And we’ll need a few minutes to look at the menu, please.”
By the time he finished his request, Haley was flipping through the selections, leaving him to do the same. Again. When the waitress returned, they placed their orders and then sat in silence. Haley Ames was not the chatty type.
Fine. He’d start. “Thanks for agreeing to meet with me.”
“My best friend, Claire, convinced me it was the right thing to do.” She unwrapped her silverware, clinking the forks and knife against the wooden table, and began folding h
er cloth napkin.
If he knew how to contact her best friend, he’d have thanked her. Maybe sent her flowers. “I suppose I should have called instead of just showing up at your door.”
Electric-blue eyes snared his. “You don’t think that would have freaked me out, picking up the phone and hearing Sam’s voice on the other end? You sound exactly like him. That’s what threw me the other night.” Haley looked down. Smoothed out the napkin, only to start folding it again. “I mean, I know Sam is dead . . . but there I was, hearing his voice again . . .”
Stephen kept his eyes trained on Haley’s fingers as they folded the cloth napkin. Fold. Unfold. Fold again. She didn’t mince words. No saying Sam was “gone” or “in heaven” to soften the reality that a sniper’s bullet had killed his brother. He blinked once, twice, hoping to relieve the sting of tears at the back of his eyes, the dryness gathering in his throat.
“I hadn’t thought about that. And, to be honest, it never occurred to me that Sam wouldn’t have told you about me.”
“Did you tell people—friends, girlfriends—about Sam?”
Stephen couldn’t dodge the questions in Haley’s gaze. He remembered all the times he hadn’t mentioned Sam, treated him as if he were the invisible man instead of an unadulterated reflection of himself. When someone asked if he had family, he usually mentioned his father, his stepmother—and Pete, his half brother. But not Sam.
Haley had no problem interpreting his silence. “I didn’t think so. If you didn’t tell people about Sam, why did you think he would talk about you?”
“You’re his wife . . .”
“Obviously he didn’t want me to know about you. Estrangement ripples out to other relationships.”
His pressed his lips together. Now she was some kind of psychoanalyst? “I told my best friend, Jared, about Sam.”
“One person.”
Why was she excusing Sam and accusing him? Ridiculous question—she’d married Sam and didn’t even know Stephen existed until last night. Beneath the table, Stephen clenched and unclenched his fists. He didn’t have to justify the last twelve years of his life. That’s not what this meeting was about. He just wanted answers.
“So how did you and Sam meet?”
“Oh, that.” She released the napkin and moved it to her lap, then tucked a wayward strand of her hair behind her ear. “At a mutual friend’s wedding. Sam was a groomsman and I was a bridesmaid—so cliché, right? One of the few times he ever saw me in a dress.”
“When did you and Sam get married?”
She closed her eyes, as if mentally calculating. “It was three years last October. We got married in 2009, right before one of his deployments.”
“So Sam loved being in the military?”
Her mouth twisted into the semblance of a smile. “Yes. He re-upped a few weeks before he was killed. Another two years. He was good at what he did.”
“He went into the military right after high school graduation.” Amazing how the memory still caused tightness in his chest.
Haley traced a droplet of condensation on the outside of her glass. “I know. He told me.”
“We always talked about going to college together—getting an apartment.”
“Plans change.” Haley slumped back against the seat, the too-large coat she wore sliding off her shoulders. Sighed. “If my friend Claire were here she would slap me right now—and then she’d make me apologize. Well, actually, Claire’s too much of a lady to slap anyone.”
Was it too late to invite Claire to join them for dinner?
“But I do apologize.” The smile on her face was a mere shadow of the real thing. “Claire would be proud of how quickly I recovered my manners. I’ll pretend she’s sitting next to me and we’ll see if things go better the rest of the time.”
“Did Sam deploy often?”
“Yes.” She paused when their salads arrived, allowing the waitress to grind pepper over hers. Her hair shimmered in the lamplight when she bowed her head for a moment, eyes closed. Saying grace? If she was, she didn’t include him in the process.
Silence settled in the booth as they ate their salads even as the conversation and laughter of other people in the restaurant ebbed and flowed, buoyed by the upbeat music piping through the building. Haley seemed content to let him handle the one-sided conversation. He asked questions. She answered them. And that would be the routine from salad to dessert. And then what? She’d exit the restaurant and never look back? He’d have a sixty-minute sound bite of his brother’s life. Was that enough to fill the yawning relational gap between him and Sam? Hardly.
Stephen helped himself to more salad. “What did Sam like to do?”
“Pardon?” She paused with a forkful of lettuce in midair.
“Besides work, what did Sam like to do?”
“Um, I met him the second time when he and some buddies came to the shooting range where I work.”
A laugh slipped past Stephen’s take-it-one-step-at-a-time approach. “I noticed you’re, um, comfortable with guns. What do you do at the range?”
“I participated in competitive pistol shooting in high school and college.” For once, the distant look in Haley’s eyes disappeared. “I’ve been teaching gun safety classes at the club.”
When she didn’t elaborate, Stephen moved the conversation on. “So Sam liked to shoot, too?”
“Yeah.” She ate some salad, chewing for so long he wondered if that was all she was going to say. “I mean, he had to pass firearm certification—but he liked shooting for fun, too.”
“Did you guys shoot together—you know, as a hobby?”
“No.”
Another dead-end topic—and time for a different question. “Sam and I wrestled from middle school into high school. Do you know if he kept that up?”
“He never said.”
“What did Sam do in the army exactly?”
“He was a medic.”
“Wait . . . a medic?” His hoot of laughter broke the stillness in the booth once again. “Sam hated the sight of blood when we were kids.”
“Guess he outgrew it.”
“And aren’t medics considered noncombatants? Why would a sniper—”
“Do you really think enemy snipers have a code of ethics? Don’t be naïve.”
“I’m not naïve—”
“Forget it.” Haley shook her head, eyes closed. “Believe me, you didn’t say anything I haven’t thought.”
How did she switch gears like that? “Did Sam plan on making the military a career—I mean, was he going to stay in until retirement?”
“I don’t know. We hadn’t discussed it that much. It was a possibility.”
The waiter delivered their entrees: a steaming serving of sixteen-layer lasagna for him, and a trio of lasagna, chicken parmigiana, and spaghetti for Haley. After a healthy dose of grated cheese was applied over both their plates, Stephen sliced half his lasagna into small pieces, relishing the aroma of meat, marinara sauce, cheese, and Italian herbs. He looked up and locked eyes with Haley again.
“What?”
“Do you always do that?”
“What?”
“That.” She waved her fork at his plate. “Cut your food up before you eat it.”
“Yeah. It’s somewhat grade school-ish, I know. Why?”
“Sam did that, too. He also liked to dip his potato chips in—”
“Ketchup. We started doing that when we were kids. Drove our mom crazy.”
Haley turned her attention back to her meal. “For his birthday last year, I bought him some of those ketchup-flavored potato chips. He told me they weren’t as good as dipping chips in the real stuff.”
“He was right. Our parents said we had our own personal language when we were toddlers—no one else understood us.”
“Huh.” Haley seemed to file away the information. “How long have you had your car?”
“The Mustang? I bought it a couple of months ago.” Back when he thought he was headed for a prom
otion—not volunteering for a pink slip. “It’s my dream car.”
“Sam’s, too. He used to talk about winning the lottery and buying a ’65 or ’66 Mustang.”
“That was always the plan.”
“What do you mean?”
“Besides Marvel comics, my dad loves cars. Sam and I used to read his automotive magazines. We decided Mustangs were the coolest cars, so we were both going to get one. Sam wanted—”
“A black one.”
“Yep. I said the only color for a Mustang was red.”
“You didn’t change your mind.”
“Nope. So, Sam never got his Mustang?”
“He rode a Harley. The closest he got to a Mustang was the Christmas ornament I gave him the first year we were married.”
“I bet he loved that.”
“I think so. He was deployed at the time, so I didn’t get to see him open it.”
“Was Sam excited about becoming a father?”
Haley’s eyes searched the restaurant as if looking for an answer. His brother had wanted a family, right? Not that he could ask that question out loud.
“We’d talked about starting a family.”
“When are you due?”
“The first week in April—the fifth.”
Silence.
What was there to say? They were two strangers, eating a meal together, talking about a man they both knew. But Stephen’s memories of Sam were frozen in time. For him, Sam was forever a teenager, walking out the door—away from all their plans—to go sign on the dotted line and find his future in the army. Haley’s Sam was a grown man. A soldier. The father of her unborn child.
“I’m not sure what you want from me.”
Haley decided she might as well be honest with Sam’s brother—to a point. Her memories of Sam were few, a montage that started and stopped whenever months of deployments interrupted their marriage. And now Stephen wanted her to put her relationship with Sam on display so that somehow he could feel closer to his brother. Were there enough memories of Sam to create an image of a father for their son? There was no way she could make up for the years Stephen had lived apart from his twin brother. Was that even her responsibility?
