Burnt

by Lacy Hart

  “Morning Dad,” Abby smiled. “Good morning, Sophie,” she said to me just as happily.

  Travis and I sat at the table, and I had some coffee while Abby got up and made us all eggs and bacon. Travis was astounded at what she was able to do.

  “How come you never cooked like this at home?” he asked her.

  “You never asked me to,” Abby told him. “Besides, Henry showed me a few things when I was working in the kitchen the last few days. I’ve got mad culinary skills,” she said as she twirled the spatula in her hand like it was a six-shooter.

  “You may have another cook someday Mom,” Travis said as he put another forkful of eggs in his mouth.

  “You mean we will have a chef,” Maggie corrected him.

  “You’re right. It’s going to take some getting used to,” Travis told her. He turned to look at Abby. “Abs, Sophie and I are running some errands this morning. Why don’t you come with us and give Grandma a break?”

  “Okay,” she said. “Just let me go get dressed first.” Abby put the dirty frying pan in the sink and headed off to go get dressed.

  “I don’t know who this friendly, agreeable kid is, but if you two bring that out in her I am all for it,” Travis said as he put a piece of bacon into his mouth.

  “She can stay with me if you two want some time together, Travis,” Maggie said to him as she washed the frying pan.

  “It’s okay Mom” Travis answered. “I want her to come anyway. You can have some time to do things you need to do.”

  “Okay,” she answered. “I do have some things to pick up at the dry cleaners this morning anyway.”

  “Didn’t you just pick stuff up there Saturday?” Travis asked. I saw the look on Maggie’s face like she was caught, and I quickly put two and two together.

  “It’s a restaurant, Travis,” I cut in. “I’m sure there’s stuff at the dry cleaners all the time, right Maggie?” I looked over at her, hoping she knew where I was going.

  “Absolutely,” she replied. “Uniforms, tablecloths, you name it. We’re probably the main reason Fred Perkins is still in business.”

  “Funny you should mention him,” Travis said to Maggie. “I ran into him at the florist when I was picking up flowers for Sophie on Saturday. The florist says he’s been picking up the same bouquet there for years. I guess he’s got a sweetheart too,” Travis said as he finished the last piece of bacon and gave me a kiss.

  Maggie gave me a sly smile as I kissed Travis back.

  Way to go, Maggie, I thought to myself. I pulled Travis out of his chair as I heard Abby coming down the steps. “Let’s go, Travis,” I said to him. “We’ll see you later, Maggie,” I turned to look at her as we walked down the hall and I could see her mouth “Thank you” to me.

  We met Abby at the door and climbed into Travis’ car, a beat-up old Ford that looked past its prime.

  As Travis pulled out of the driveway, Abby remarked from the back seat, “Hey Dad, why don’t you drive that truck at the house instead of this old heap?”

  “Hey,” Travis said, sounding genuinely offended, “This old heap has served us well for a long time. That is a nice truck in the garage though. I just have to have the paperwork fixed on it.”

  We drove just a few short blocks over to Warfield Bank, the local bank in town. Travis parked in the lot and hopped out quickly.

  “You two wait here,” he said to us through the open driver’s side window. “I’ll just be a minute.” He dashed off inside the bank before I could say anything else to him.

  “What’s he doing at the bank?” Abby asked me.

  “I guess it’s something to do with your grandfather,” I told her, though I wasn’t really sure what he was doing in there. We sat quietly for a minute or two before Abby piped up again.

  “Sophie?” she said to me.

  “Yes?”

  “Do you think you and Dad are going to get married?”

  I coughed a little and turned to look at her. Abby was smiling, waiting for an answer.

  “I think we’re a long way from making that decision just yet, Abby,” I said to her. “We’ve only been together again for a few days.”

  “Oh, I know,” she answered. “But he clearly loves you, and you love him, right?”

  My heart skipped a beat. It was nice to hear Abby say that her father clearly loved me.

  “I do love him,” I said to her. “Don’t worry, Abby. If he asks me one day, you’ll be the first to know, okay?”

  “Okay, great,” she said.

  Travis came walking back to the car thankfully, and climbed in, holding an envelope.

  “What were you two gir… I mean young ladies talking about?” Travis asked as he started the car.

  “Not much,” Abby said to him. “Just marriage.”

  Travis nearly got hit by a car coming down the road as he was pulling out into the street and not paying attention to the road. He slammed on the brakes as the car went past, with the driver giving us all a nasty glare.

  Travis waved to the driver, signaling a sheepish apology, as he pulled out on the road.

  “What do you mean you were talking about marriage?” Travis asked, looking over at me.

  “Don’t look at me,” I said defensively. “Abby brought it up.”

  “I just asked Dad; don’t go crazy,” Abby said as she looked at her phone casually. “I just told Sophie that since you love her, it might be nice if you got married one day is all. You do love her, right Dad?”

  I looked over at Travis, and he was looking at me, not knowing what to say.

  “Travis, you don’t have to say anything…” I was saying until he interrupted me.

  “It’s okay,” Travis said as he drove. “She’s right; I do love you, Sophie.”

  I could feel tears in my eyes as he reached over and held my hand as he drove.

  “I love you too,” I said to him quietly.

  We drove along for a bit, passing their house on Collins and then making a right. Travis drove up two blocks and then was making a right on Gentry.

  “Travis, where are you going?” I said to him quietly, knowing what he was looking for.

  “Which house is it, Sophie?” he asked me and pointed to the blue ranch house two houses down the street on the left. The plain silver mailbox had the name “Winters” on it, and Travis pulled into the driveway and turned off the car.

  “What are we doing here?” Abby asked from the back seat.

  “I have someone to talk to here, and there’s someone I want you to meet,” Travis said as he got out of the car. Abby and I each got out of the car as well and we walked up the short stone walkway to the front door. Travis knocked on the door, tapping his foot nervously as we waited for someone to answer. Moments later, the door opened, and Stephanie was standing there, with a shocked look on her face.

  “Travis, Ms. Ingram… what are you doing here?” Stephanie said nervously.

  “Hi Stephanie,” Travis said to her through the screen door. “Is your mother here? I just… just wanted to talk to both of you for a minute.”

  Stephanie stood frozen for a minute before she opened the door. “She’s in the kitchen having coffee before she leaves for work.”

  Abby and I trailed behind Travis as we walked in. Stephanie and Abby exchanged glances at each other, each wondering who the other was.

  Travis strode into the kitchen with us behind him, and Stephanie quickly walked into the room. Emily Winters was seated at her kitchen table and looked up, shocked to see three guests in her home. She looked just like her picture and as I remembered her from parent-teacher meetings like she was just a slightly older version of Stephanie.

  “Ms. Winters,” Travis stated, “I’m…”

  Emily cut him off. “I know who you are, Travis,” she said as she stood up, looking like she was feeling a bit defensive for the moment. “Why are you here?” she asked him.

  “I… was just hoping to talk to you for a few minutes,” he said, trying to sound sincere.
“I don’t want to keep you if you’re going to be late for work or anything, but I didn’t think you would want to meet at the restaurant.”

  Emily sat back down in the chair and motioned for all of us to sit at the table.

  “No, I haven’t been to the Homestead since… well since that night,” she said, her voice trailing off.

  “I don’t really have any right to take up your time. Your relationship with my father was your business. It’s obvious to me, from what I have learned over the last few days,” Travis took a look at Stephanie, “that you and Stephanie were very important to him. You were probably the most important things he had in his entire life. “

  I could see Emily was starting to tear up. Stephanie walked behind her and put her hand on her mother’s shoulder as Emily sobbed gently.

  “He was a good man, you know,” Emily said to us through her tears. “I know you may not have seen it Travis, but he always treated me well. After I got pregnant with Stephanie, I didn’t know what would happen, but he was thrilled at the chance to be a father again. He took good care of me, and Stephanie.”

  “If you don’t mind me asking,” Travis said to her, “Why didn’t he ever marry you? He clearly wanted you as part of his life.”

  Emily sighed. “He asked me to marry him several times before Stephanie was born and after. I always said no. I didn’t want people talking, saying he only married me because he got me pregnant. People in Canon never thought much of him and always gave him a hard time. It would have been worse for all three of us if I had married him and we all lived together in that house as a family. I didn’t want to be seen as worse of a homewrecker than I already was. I tried to get him to leave Canon, telling him I would marry him if we went somewhere else and started over, but he wouldn’t. He said he had to prove to… to you, Travis… that he could take care of the house and leave something for you one day. So that’s how we lived. I got a job over in Sterling as an office manager at my brother’s contracting business, bought this house and fixed it up before Stephanie was born, and we’ve been here ever since. We would go over and see your father at night or on weekends, or we would meet out at the park or other places away from everyone else so we could be together. He was actually doing well and had cut back on drinking and everything. He was a different man than you knew, Travis. The heart attack caught us completely off guard. I… I didn’t even go to the funeral.”

  Emily was openly crying now, and Stephanie held her mother tightly. Abby and I both had tears in our eyes as well. Travis stayed strong, but I could tell he was moved.

  “I’m sorry… for everything Emily,” Travis said to her. “You deserved to be happy, deserved to be recognized as his family more than I did.” Travis took the envelope he had and slid it across the table to Emily.

  “What’s this?” she said as she picked up the envelope and opened it.

  “It’s a bank check for $275,000. That’s what there was in Dad’s life insurance policy and his bank account. You and Stephanie should have it.”

  Everyone at the table was staring with their mouths open. Emily opened the envelope and looked at the check.

  “Travis,” she said, wiping the tears from her eyes, “I can’t take this from you. He left this to you for a reason.” Emily tried to hand the envelope back to Travis, but he wouldn’t take it.

  “He left it to me for the wrong reason,” Travis said to her. “He left it to me because he felt guilty about how he was with me and my mother. It belongs to the people he was closest to, and that was you two. He left me the house, which was more than he needed to, but that house is all I need for my family.” He reached over and took my hand and Abby’s hand and held them together. “Please, Emily take it. Use it for Stephanie’s college, take a trip, do whatever you want, whatever you think he would have wanted you to do.”

  Travis pushed the envelope back to Emily, and she slowly picked it up, tears flowing from her eyes again.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Emily said, sniffling through the tears. Stephanie came over to Travis and gave him a big hug.

  “Thank you, Travis,” she whispered into his ear.

  Travis and Stephanie broke their hug. He turned and looked at Abby, who was stunned by all this.

  “Abby,” he said to her, “This is Stephanie. She’s my sister.” Stephanie gave Abby a shy wave, and Abby didn’t know what to say.

  “Wait a minute,” Abby said, interrupting the moment. “If she’s your sister, does that mean she’s my aunt?”

  We all looked at each other and realized it was true, making us laugh through the tears.

  “It’s okay,” Stephanie said to Abby. “You can just call me Steph instead of Aunt Stephanie,” she said with a smile.

  Abby laughed out loud at this as well. Travis stood up from the table and Emily came over and hugged him, and then give me a hug as well, and then gave one to Abby for good measure.

  “Okay, we don’t want to keep you any longer,” Travis said as he readied to go. We started walking towards the door as Emily and Stephanie followed us out. Travis got into the driver’s side of the car, and Stephanie walked over to that side of the car.

  “Would it be okay if I stopped by to see you at the house?” Stephanie asked.

  “Any time you want,” Travis told her, giving her a kiss on the cheek.

  We backed out of the driveway and turned to head back towards Collins where the house was.

  “Wow,” Abby said. “That was pretty wild. You know what Dad?”

  “What’s that honey?” Travis said as he drove.

  “You’re a pretty awesome guy,” she said proudly.

  I saw Travis smile. “Thanks, Abby,” he said sitting taller in his seat.

  “You are an awesome guy,” I said to him, holding his hand as we turned on Collins to go past the house and head towards the center of town.

  24

  Travis

  Several days had passed since I drove over to give Emily Dad’s money. I felt better that they have it, and I was sure they would make good use of it. In that time, I had gotten Dad’s car straightened out with the DMV, so it was now in my name, making it okay for Abby to be seen with me while driving. Danny had started work on the exterior of the house, and the place already looked much better, with new gutters and new windows done, and Danny’s crew working to fix the porches. I had gone back to Ridgefield to turn in my retirement papers at the department, and to give my landlord notice that we were leaving. I hired a local mover to clean the apartment out as fast as they could and get our stuff up to the new house so that everything was already arriving today.

  Abby was all excited about the prospect of starting over in a new town. She and Stephanie had hung out a couple of times, getting to know each other, and I was glad to see she had made a new friend around her own age instead of just hanging out with the waitresses at the restaurant. Sophie had helped to get Abby enrolled in school, getting her paperwork together from her old school and setting her up with a schedule, though both Sophie and Abby were nervous that Abby would be in her English class.

  I was doing my best to get settled in at the restaurant as well, giving my new career my all. I picked up on the inventory and ordering pretty quickly, made contacts with vendors, got to know the staff, and even hired another part-time bartender to help us out, so I didn’t have to work seven days a week. Mom seemed to be glad that some of the burden was off of her now, and she even took to showing up later at the restaurant a few times instead of getting in so early each day.

  Life with Sophie couldn’t get much better either. We spent as much time as we could together, making up for all the time we didn’t have together and got to know each other better again. I would go over to her place after work every night while they were working on my house and before it was furnished, and we would spend all night together talking, telling stories and getting to know each other physically and emotionally.

  It had been a long, busy Friday night at the restaurant and I was glad t
o get out of there after cleaning up. Mom had even left a little earlier than I did tonight to give herself a break, and Abby walked over to Stephanie’s house so they could have a sleepover there. I drove over to Sophie’s and parked in her driveway. I walked up to the house and saw her sitting in her rocking chair, as usual, wearing a light blue cotton dress. I walked in and over to her and gave her a kiss as she went to stand up and took her by the hand and walked her out the door.

  “Where are we going?” she asked me quizzically as we walked down the driveway and past my car.

  “I thought we would take a little walk tonight,” I said to her as I put my arm around her as we walked.