Winter Winds

by Gayle Roper

  Ryan frowned.

  “And what about paying the rent on your apartment? Or getting new clothes as you grow? Where would that money come from? Even if someone was willing to hire you at your age, how would you get to the job?”

  “But I just want to call my own shots! I just want to do what I want!”

  Trev looked Ryan square in the eye as he bit his lip to keep from smiling. “When you have the money and the transportation to care for yourself, then you can do as you want. But in the meantime, I’ll drop you at school on my way out of town.”

  The unhappy face somehow managed to become unhappier. “You’re going to make me go back?”

  Trev didn’t answer.

  “Yeah, you are.” Ryan gently pushed Jack aside and got to his feet. With a sigh he grabbed his Eagles jacket from the chair where he’d tossed it. When he pulled it on, it swallowed him whole. Mae had undoubtedly bought it for him to grow into. It would probably only take five years.

  Trev zipped his red Lands’ End Squall and grabbed his duffel. The two walked in silence to the car.

  They were almost to the school when Ryan spoke, his voice barely above a whisper. “I’m sorry, Pastor Paul.”

  Trev reached over and patted Ryan’s knee. “Sometimes life stinks, big guy. There’s no other word for it. But we have to keep going.”

  Ryan nodded, a picture of dejection.

  “Did you know that I’m an orphan?”

  Ryan looked at him, surprised. “Then who’s Pop?”

  “My grandfather. After our parents died, he raised my brother and me.” And Dori.

  Interested in spite of himself, Ryan asked, “How old were you when they died?”

  “Nine. Phil was twelve.” And Dori was seven.

  “How’d they die?”

  “Drunk driver.”

  “Yuk.”

  “You can say that again.”

  Ryan was quiet for a minute. “At least they didn’t leave you on purpose.”

  Trev’s heart stumbled. “No, they didn’t. But, you know, Ryan, God’s our Father who never leaves.”

  Ryan sat up straight and stared out the windshield as Trev pulled to the curb in front of the school. “No offense, Pastor Paul, but I’m not sure I believe all that God stuff anymore.”

  Trev nodded. “I understand.” And he did. He remembered all the years when he blamed God for everything that had happened to him. How he had teased Dori when she “got religion” at a Young Life meeting back in high school. He wondered, as he frequently did, whether she still followed the Lord. Whenever he called her, she kept the call so short that he didn’t have time to probe. The few times he’d visited her, she always made certain someone else was with them, so again no time to talk about anything of substance.

  He rubbed absently at his chest. Would the pain that speared through him whenever he thought of her ever go away? But how could it? When you lost your heart, you were bound to feel the ache of its absence.

  Ryan climbed reluctantly from the car. Trev felt like an ogre even though he knew the boy had to go back to school.

  “I’ll see you Sunday,” Trev called after Ryan as the boy dragged himself up the walk. A weak little wave over his shoulder indicated that he had heard. When the school door swung shut behind the kid, Trev drove away.

  He worried and prayed about Ryan as he crossed the Ninth Street Causeway and made his way to the Garden State Parkway. Taking the boy in had seemed such a logical thing to do when Mae got hurt.

  “Just until your grandmother comes home,” he’d said to Ryan at the hospital that first night. “We don’t want her worrying about you unnecessarily.”

  “I can take care of myself,” Ryan had answered.

  Trev looked at the determined set of the boy’s jaw and nodded. Pride was about all the kid had left. “I’m sure you can, but do you want to? It’s always nicer to be around another person. And you’ll love Jack.”

  At least he’d been right about that. It was hard to tell who trailed who, Ryan Jack or Jack Ryan. He just knew that where one was, there was the other.

  As he turned north on the Atlantic City Expressway, Trev’s mind turned to what awaited him. Pop. A heart attack. Unbelievable.

  When he and Honey had come to rescue Phil, Dori, and him the day after their parents died, Trev had responded immediately to Pop’s strength.

  I want to be just like him, his boy’s mind had thought. Little had happened to change his mind. Even when he found Christ in college, Pop was still a model of common sense and reliability to him. If I can be just like him with the added depth of knowing Christ, I just might be a man worth knowing. And, Lord, please help Pop come to know Jesus as Savior. Honey, too.

  Pop had run a tight ship. He and Honey expected the three of them to obey regardless of their feelings on a matter.

  “This home is not a democracy,” he frequently told them. “It is a benevolent dictatorship. I am the dictator, and Honey is the dictatrix or whatever the female counterpart is. What we say is law.”

  There was always so much fun and love mixed with the law that none of them minded. Still, he never had any doubt that to cross Pop was to ask for it.

  Trev smiled to himself. Whenever he thought of the summer he was fifteen and Dori thirteen, he knew he had the quintessential Pop.

  It was the first Trev noticed her that way. Up until that day in June, he’d loved her like a sister. He considered himself her protector, her guardian, her big brother, the one whose job it was to tell her what to do and how to do it. He could pick on her as much as he wanted, but let anyone else, even Phil, bother her at his peril.

  Then that day as he was mowing the lawn, she’d walked into the backyard in her new bathing suit.

  Trev looked up from following the faint marks in the grass that showed where he’d last mowed and almost swallowed his tongue. He stood, paralyzed by the vision before him. When had she grown that figure? When had she turned from a skinny, scrappy little girl into a femme fatale? He couldn’t stop staring.

  Pop was working in the garden, and when the lawn mower seemed stuck in one spot, he looked over to see why. He got to his feet, walked to Trev, and tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Turn it off,” he mouthed, pointing to the mower.

  Trev blinked himself back to reality and let the machine die.

  “Come with me,” Pop said. “You need a break.”

  Still feeling as if he’d been hit over the head, Trev followed Pop into the kitchen. Pop went to the refrigerator and pulled out two cans of Sprite. He handed one to Trev. They popped the tabs and took long drinks.

  As if his head were attached to a lead that pulled him, Trev turned to look through the sliding glass doors at Dori, spreading a towel in the freshly mown grass.

  “Trev.”

  “Um?” She was going to lie there and sun herself. Suddenly he felt a need to get a tan too.

  “Trev.” Pop’s voice was more insistent.

  “Yep?” She lay on her stomach, her head pillowed on her arms. Her dark hair was pulled high on her head in a ponytail. Her face was turned in his direction, her brown eyes closed against the sun.

  “Paul Michael Trevelyan!”

  Trev jumped and turned to Pop, Dori momentarily forgotten. All three names? What in the world had he done?

  “Look at me, boy, and listen closely.”

  Trev blinked and nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Dori’s becoming a very beautiful young lady.”

  Trev grinned.

  “And if I ever catch you looking at her like that again, I’ll send one of you away.”

  The grin disappeared. “What?”

  “You heard me. I will not have any romantic folderol in this house.”

  Folderol? “Send her away?”

  “Or you.”

  Trev knew implacable when he saw it.

  “Pop!” “I want your word that you will leave her alone.”

  “You’d actually send one of us away?”

 
“Swear to me, Trev, that you will stay away from her in any way romantic whatsoever. Swear.”

  And so for years he said nothing about how he felt.

  Did she know about Pop’s illness? Had Phil or Honey called her? Surely she would come, wouldn’t she? As he pulled up to the hospital, his heart was thudding wildly, and he wasn’t sure which scared him most—seeing Pop or perhaps seeing Dori.

  When he reached the third floor, he saw Phil leaning against the wall outside a room whose door was closed.

  “Phil.” The brothers shook hands, then hugged awkwardly. “How is he?”

  “I don’t know. We haven’t seen the doctors yet today. I’m hopeful though. His pain level has gone way down. He knows what’s going on around him. He’s cranky and giving orders.”

  Trev laughed. “I’d say that last is a very good sign.”

  Phil grinned back. “That’s why I’m out here in the hall. ‘Go away, Phil. I want to talk to her by herself.’ ”

  Trev nodded. He’d always enjoyed watching the love between Pop and Honey. She was his second wife, his first having died from uterine cancer. Pop was fifty-two and Honey forty-eight when they married. They had five years together before Trev, Phil, and Dori arrived, putting Pop through a second stint at parenting and Honey a first. Their affection for each other filled their home and had given the young orphaned Trev the family every kid needed. “How’s Honey taking it?”

  “She’s doing fine. She’s a strong lady. She’s down in the cafeteria getting coffee and something to eat. We had to practically throw her out of the room.”

  Trev’s gut clenched. “If Honey’s in the cafeteria, who’s in with Pop?”

  “Brace yourself, little brother.”

  “Dori?” Trev tried to be casual, but he feared he was failing miserably.

  Phil nodded. “Dori. I called her last night. She flew in on the red-eye. I picked her up at the airport.” He slanted a glance at Trev. “She looks great, by the way. Prettier than ever.”

  Trev wondered how that could possibly be true. She’d always been beautiful to him.

  “Look,” Phil said. “Do you know what happened that made her bolt? I’ve never pushed for somebody to tell me what happened, but I’ve always wondered.”

  Trev had to grin. Phil had pushed and pushed for information, not that he’d gotten any from Trev.

  Phil looked at the door to Pop’s room. “I always figured it must be something Pop did, and I’d probably be happier not knowing.”

  “Pop?” Trev couldn’t hide his surprise.

  Phil nodded. “He can be awfully heavy-handed sometimes, and she could be easily hurt.”

  “Pop didn’t do anything.” Of that Trev was certain, even if he wasn’t certain about much else.

  “You sure?” Phil looked amazed.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Well, I certainly didn’t do anything, and Honey couldn’t hurt anyone if she tried.” Phil narrowed his eyes at Trev “That leaves you.” His voice grew hard. “Just what did you do to her?”

  Trev gave a sad half smile. “I married her.”

  Five

  JOANNE PILOTTI STARED at the contents of the black suitcase in confusion. Paperbacks. Millions of them, or so it seemed. What was this, a bookstore on wheels?

  She pulled the books out and stacked them neatly on the table beside her. Eight of them with titles like Don’t Look Behind You and You Can’t Run Too Fast and Shadows at Stillburn Keep. All the covers had women running, and they all ran looking over their shoulders. Some ran from a mysterious shadow or dark woods. Some ran toward an old mansion and some an old castle, all with one light lit in the attic window or in the top of a castle tower.

  Joanne snorted. Give her a good horror film any day. Besides, if she was going to read, which she wasn’t if she could help it, she’d try Stephen King. Fortunately, she hadn’t had to read anything since the last book cover she read for a book report back just before she quit school in tenth grade. That was three whole years ago.

  Still, it was very clever of whoever sent the suitcase. If some security guy checked like they did sometimes these days, he’d think she was some smart lady who liked to read. A lot. They’d never think courier. Never in a million years.

  “Want to earn some big money?” Vinnie’d asked when he came to her house a week ago.

  “Big money? Sure. Who doesn’t?” she said, but she wasn’t completely dumb. It was a rough world, and a girl couldn’t be too careful. “What do I have to do?”

  “Pick up a suitcase.”

  She stared at him as he reached in her refrigerator and got out the first of many beers. She kept it stocked for him. “Just get a suitcase? That’s all?”

  Vinnie nodded as he tore the tab from the can and sucked out the contents.

  Joanne eyed him, trying to see the catch. There had to be one somewhere. She had never been one of those pampered princesses like some of the girls she had gone to school with, the ones who got everything they wanted, the ones who somehow attracted all the breaks. Not her. She attracted all the hard knocks.

  Of course with Vinnie’s new job, they were hoping things would be different. Maybe sometime soon they could even get married, not that Vinnie had actually asked her. Still, she was hopeful.

  And suspicious about the suitcase gig. “Why aren’t they sending you to get the suitcase?”

  He let out a loud, “Ahh!” of satisfaction as he crumbled the beer can in his hand. A loud belch followed.

  “You aren’t setting me up to carry on a bomb to blow up the plane, are you?” She looked at him with sudden fear. “ ’Cause I don’t want to get blown up.”

  Vinnie looked at her like she had just crawled out from under a rock. “Geez, Joanne, where do you get your crazy ideas? The idea of a courier is for the courier to deliver something safely.”

  “Yeah, well,” she said defensively, “I just gotta be sure. So, why aren’t you taking the job?”

  “Well, you see,” he began, and Joanne went on high alert. Well, you see was a warning. He always gave himself away when he was trying to weasel out of something.

  “It’s like this.” He grabbed his second beer. “Mr. J is looking for a woman to be the courier, and he asked me if I knew anyone I could trust.”

  Mr. J. Neal Jankowski. Now there was a name that made all Atlantic City quake, Vinnie told her, and Vinnie knew what he was talking about. After all, Mr. J was Vinnie’s new boss.

  “He’s already asking your advice?” She felt so proud. Maybe she had been wrong about the well, you see.

  Vinnie nodded, trying to make believe he didn’t feel proud too. “So, you interested?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. How much money, where do I get the suitcase, and where do I got to deliver it?”

  “One thousand dollars, Chicago, and to me right here in Seaside,” Vinnie told her.

  At first all she heard was the one thousand, and she could hardly breathe at the thought. How many tables did she have to wait on in that little bitty restaurant before she had a thou free and clear? She giggled. She could already imagine all the new clothes she’d buy with her payment, and not from Wal-Mart, oh, no. This time she was going to Sears or Penney’s to get really good stuff, maybe even stuff made in the USA.

  Then she heard the rest of the deal. “What? I gotta go to Chicago?”

  Vinnie was halfway through can number two.

  “Sure.” “And just how do I get there?”

  “You fly.”

  She stared at him in disbelief as she started to hyperventilate. “No way I can’t! You know I can’t. Planes crash and all the people die! In little pieces!”

  Vinnie shook his head in exasperation. “Jo, what do you care about little pieces? I mean, dead is dead.”

  Gasping for air, she began pacing, wiping her sweaty palms over and over against her jeans. “I care, especially if it’s me!”

  Vinnie stepped in front of her and stuck his face in hers. “You’re going to Chicago. I told Mr. J you
would.”

  His voice was soft and lethal, and she closed her eyes against it. “I can’t,” she whimpered. Not even for gorgeous new clothes. Not even for Vinnie.

  “You don’t have no choice, Jo.” Vinnie grabbed her hair and forced her to look at him. “Mr. J is counting on me.” He gave an extra tug and she winced at the pain. “And you.”

  So she’d flown to Chicago yesterday, so zoned out on tranqs that she barely noticed the takeoff, the flight, or the landing. It was all she could do to get out of her seat and walk off the plane, dragging her big purse with her clean underwear in it behind her. Her thighs were all black and blue from where she kept bumping into the seats, and she literally bounced off the walls of the Jetway but she didn’t care. She was on the ground again!

  She finally found her way to the transportation stand and climbed in a cab.

  “Where to, lady?” the cabbie asked.

  “Chicago,” she said.

  He turned around and stared at her. “Can we be a bit more specific?”

  For a minute Joanne didn’t know what to say. Then she remembered the piece of paper in her pocket. Vinnie had stuck it there. “Give this to the cab driver. He’ll take you here.”

  And he did, right up to the door of the Holiday Inn O’Hare. She dragged herself out of the cab and slapped one of the five twenties Vinnie had given her into his hand. “Thank you, and keep the change.”

  He blinked, then looked at her with a wide grin. With a wave, he was gone.

  She felt like a high roller with two queen-size beds and a gleaming bathroom with enough towels for a small army. There was a big TV with a remote, and by playing with the buttons, she found she could get all kinds of movies right here in the room. She decided to watch every single one to keep the fear of tomorrow’s return flight at bay.

  When the third movie ended, she thought about going out to eat all by herself. Nasty. Everybody would think she was some ugly person that no one liked. Then her eye fell on an ad for pizza delivered right to your room. She watched the next three movies as she chomped her way through a large pizza with everything including anchovies, which she could never get at home because Vinnie hated them. She fell asleep happy.