“Yes, that’s true. The difference is the comfort of my lifestyle. And whether I get to keep the car.”
“So you know you can keep living here.”
Roseanna sucked in air, almost involuntarily, then let it out in a loud, deep sigh.
Earnest turned to glare at her, as if to say, “Could you keep it down, please? I’m trying to eat.”
“Yes,” she said. “And that’s the most important thing, isn’t it?”
“I’d say.”
And with that, Roseanna felt herself thaw. Her stuck body unstuck itself. Just that easily.
She walked to where Lance stood in the open doorway. Into that beam of light made for one actor only. Asked it to spotlight two.
She took his hand and squeezed it firmly.
“Thank you for not being mad at me,” he said.
“Let’s go play a few hands of cards before dinner,” she said. “It’ll give us something to keep our mind off things.”
And they walked to the house—the house that Roseanna would continue to call home—hand in hand.
Roseanna stepped out of the shower and wrapped herself in a bath sheet, then walked out into her living room. Lance was nowhere around.
For a few minutes she waited for him. Stayed up for his return. But it had been a long, tiring day, and she was more than done with it. More than ready to put it—and herself—to bed.
She lit a candle for him and left it on the steamer trunk coffee table. The way she had that first night.
He slipped in quietly about half an hour later. Right around the time Roseanna was accepting that her exhaustion would not necessarily translate to the sleep she so desperately needed.
“I’m awake,” she said, because she could tell he was trying hard to be quiet.
“Oh. I guess that makes sense. Under the circumstances. But I’m sorry you can’t sleep.” He came into her room and sat on the edge of her bed. “I hope you don’t mind. I told Patty and Nelson that you get to keep the place.”
“That was thoughtful. I guess I probably should have done it myself.”
“You had a lot on your mind. But they’ve been nervous about it and I knew it. They didn’t want to let on. To you, I mean. They wanted to stay positive for your sake, and they understood that it was a much bigger deal for you than it was for them. But it’s been weighing on their minds.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
They sat in silence for a moment or two, Roseanna watching through the window as a huge, yellowish full moon rose to the right of CPR Hill. Or, at least, the former CPR Hill. Maybe now it was just a hill like any other. Pretty enough, but with no real relevance to her life. Ignorable, as all good hills should be.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “You went all the way down that giant slope and across the creek to talk to Nelson in the pitch dark?”
“No. He’s not down there. He’s at Patty’s.”
“Oh, he’s at Patty’s,” she repeated. “That’s interesting. So that’s an actual thing?”
“I hate to shoot off my mouth and try to say. I’m not even positive what’s an actual thing in my own life. But that’s where he was all right.”
Another silent moment of moon watching. This time she looked at her son’s face in the soft light. He seemed to be watching the moon rise as well.
“I guess I’m off to bed,” he said. “Though I still can’t get the hang of sleeping this early.”
“Don’t go yet. There’s something I need to say.”
He had been halfway to his feet, bent at the waist and rising. He froze, stayed bent for a moment. Then he sank back down onto the edge of the bed. The light whump of him touching down and the sinking movement of the mattress reminded Roseanna that excessive solitude is not a proper goal. So many of the little things served as reminders these days.
“I should have said it when you first gave me Franklin’s message. But my brain was going a lot of different directions.”
“Mom, I know,” he interjected. “I’m sorry.”
“If you’re sorry, then you don’t know.” She waited a moment to see if he cared to interrupt again. But he only waited in return, so she plunged on. “I should have said thank you, right away. But I’m saying it now, which is the next best thing.”
“For . . . ?”
“For? You don’t know what you did? You saved the most important thing I own. You talked Jerry out of taking it away from me.”
“We don’t know for a fact that my little talk was the reason he backed down.”
“Oh, come on, Lance. ‘Extenuating circumstances’?”
“Yeah. I guess I see your point. It was dicey, though. It was a risky thing to do.”
“Life is dicey,” Roseanna said. “But if it’s a win, you just shut up and take it. Now give your old mom a kiss before you go off to bed.”
And he did. Enthusiastically. Right in the middle of her forehead.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Go the Hell Home
Roseanna knew Lance had wakened up for the morning because he sat up on the couch and looked around until he located her. She was sitting on the floor, staring at the phone receiver, which she had set on the floorboards in front of her. She saw him rise up in her peripheral vision, without once taking her eyes off the receiver.
She met his gaze briefly.
He rolled his eyes dramatically and flopped back down.
“What time is it?” he asked in a voice dulled and muddled by sleep.
“A little after seven.”
“And how long have you been staring at that phone?”
“About three hours.”
“Because you honestly thought it would ring at four in the morning?”
“No. I’m just waiting for it to be late enough so I can call Franklin back.”
“And you figure that’ll come faster if you stare at the phone?”
“I had nothing else to stare at. It was dark pretty much everywhere else.”
Lance sat up again. Shook his head and then placed his forehead in the palms of both hands.
“Let’s gather the facts here,” he said without undoing the facepalm. “Franklin’s office opens at nine. Like every other office in the whole freaking—”
The phone rang.
It was so loud, so unexpected, that it made Roseanna jump, even from a seated position. She lurched away from the sound, which almost caused her to fall over backward.
She grabbed up the phone.
“Hello?”
“Roseanna?”
Franklin had a deep speaking voice and a telephone manner that was wonderfully calm. It never failed to comfort her. Which is a good quality in a person who narrates the various lawsuits against you, she thought.
“Franklin. I’m so glad you called.”
“It’s awfully early. I hope I didn’t wake you. But I just got up and there’s this text on my phone from Jill. She said Lance called the office yesterday afternoon and was quite keen to know which offer. So I figured you might be on pins and needles waiting to hear. But then I also figured you might be asleep.”
“Sleep? What’s that?”
It was in her nature to joke at a time like this, so she did. Despite the fact that she was in serious danger of imploding if he didn’t get to the point, and fast.
“I owe you an apology, Roseanna,” he said. “It never once occurred to me that you wouldn’t know which offer I meant. It’s the second one. There was really no way he was going back to that first offer you made. Frankly, I’m amazed he backed down at all. I don’t know what ‘extenuating circumstances’ he’s referring to, and of course I don’t need to, but I would have voted him the man most likely to wring every cent he could get out of you. His change of heart was a surprise, to say the least.”
Roseanna glanced over at Lance, who was staring at her intensely. She gave him a thumbs-down as an answer and watched his shoulders slump in a sort of human deflation.
“One of those mysteries of life,” Roseanna sa
id into the phone.
“But, really, Roseanna . . . I know this hits pretty hard. It’s a big number. But if he’d gone for the number he wanted, and then all the legal fees you would have been on the hook for if we’d played this thing out to the bitter end . . . it’s really not a bad outcome for you, based on the outcomes we had on the table. I think you lucked out, my friend.”
“I think I did, too,” she said.
“We’ll draw up some papers and send them out for you to sign.”
“Thank you. Oh. One other thing.”
“Yes?”
But then Roseanna stopped, and did not go there.
“No. Never mind. Thanks for calling, Franklin.”
She hung up the phone and sat looking at the hardwood boards of the floor. Processing where life had just taken her.
Lance came over and sat on the floor near her in his pajama bottoms. He draped an arm over her shoulder. Then he pulled her in close and kissed her firmly on the temple.
“Sorry, Mom. Could’ve been better.”
“Could’ve been worse.”
“True. What were you going to ask him there at the end? And then you didn’t.”
“Oh. That. I had it in my head to ask for one other bit of legal help. I wanted his office to look into the zoning around here. See if anybody can make us take down the metal zoo. I heard some locals were going to make a stink about it, and I wanted to know where I stood, but there’s just been so much other, more important stuff going on.”
“So why didn’t you ask him to do it?”
She looked up into Lance’s face, knowing he would see everything. That she was giving away the key to how all this was hitting her. She did it anyway.
“Because I can’t afford it.”
“Oh.”
“And it was kind of a shock. To realize that. Like, this is my new reality, hitting home. Every time I turn around I’ll need something, and then it’ll dawn on me that I can’t afford it. I’ve kind of adjusted to the idea that in a minute I’ll only own a pickup truck, and I can’t get it that bumper sticker that says, ‘My Other Car Is a Maserati.’ But for some reason I didn’t see this bigger part coming.”
“Got it,” he said, and squeezed her shoulders more tightly.
It helped.
“I’m not feeling sorry for myself. Or I’m not trying to, anyway. It’s just an adjustment.”
“I get it,” he said.
“I know people all over the world are getting by knowing there are tons of things they can’t afford, but—”
“Mom, you don’t have to apologize for what you’re feeling.”
They sat in silence for a time. How long a time would have been hard for Roseanna to judge. A minute or two, most likely.
Then Lance said, “You know . . . we have an attorney in the family.”
“It’s really not worth it to me to—”
“I was referring to Neal.”
“Oh. Neal. Are you saying you think he’d look into my zoning problems for me?”
“I’m thinking he probably would. Because he really, really wants you to like him.”
“But I already do like him.”
“Well . . . how about we just don’t tell him that until after he’s finished the work?”
They turned to look at each other, both at the exact same time. Then they both burst out laughing.
It felt good to laugh.
“I’m laughing,” Roseanna said, “but I’m also hoping you’re kidding.”
“I’m kidding. But I’m still pretty sure he’ll do it.”
Nelson came knocking shortly after ten a.m., right around the time the sun drove Roseanna back indoors. Lance was out, but she didn’t know where.
She opened the door and smiled to see the young man standing on her doorstep. Her smile was not forced or painted on. It wasn’t even fully on purpose. He just brought a smile to her face, a natural and unplanned reaction.
He held his hat in his hands and fidgeted with its brim, his eyes cast down to her welcome mat.
“Mind if I come in for a talk, miss? I won’t waste too much of your time.”
“You’re not prone to wasting my time, Nelson. That’s why you’re still here.”
She stepped back out of the doorway, and he came in and stood in the middle of her living room as if about to recite a memorized speech.
“Hope you don’t mind, miss. Your son told us the outcome of your legal case. And I just came here to tell you . . . I think I told you this once before, or something very close to it. But I need to spell it out real plainly now. You don’t be worrying about anything when it comes to money, miss. That’s not to say you’ll have it coming out of your ears, because we don’t. But you’ll never be in it alone, we can say that for a fact. Not only are we prepared to help out financially, with a little actual cash money, but we’ll be bringing trout from the creek, and eggs from our laying hens, and food from the vegetable garden we’ve been planting. You made what was yours ours, and now’s the time when we pay you back for it, and you’re going to be just fine, miss. Just fine. We plan to see to that.”
He glanced up from her wooden floorboards to see how his oration was being received. Then he cast his gaze down again.
“‘We’ being you and Patty?”
She watched his face flush almost crimson.
“Yes, ma’am. That’s the ‘us’ I had reference to.”
“So it’s going well between you two?”
The red of his face deepened, if such a thing were possible.
“So far so good, miss.”
“Well, I’m glad. And I appreciate what you just said. This is very good timing for being told I’m not in this alone.”
“No, you’re not, and you never will be if you don’t want to be. We’ll both be working a job just as soon as Willa’s in kindergarten this fall. That’s how come Patty’s not here with me now to tell you all this. She’s in Walkerville on a job interview. And I’ve been looking, too. We figure we’ll pay you some rent, and that’ll be a help to your situation. Maybe not a big rent like somebody else might charge us, but it’ll be enough for you to eat on, and if you own the roof over your head and have enough money to feed yourself, well, that’s the main thing, right?”
He still would not look at her. So he didn’t see her cross the room to him. She figured he must have caught the movement in his peripheral vision. Still, he seemed surprised when she wrapped him into a hug. Surprised enough that it took several beats for him to unlock his limbs and hug her in return.
“Thank you, miss,” he said, a light mumble against her ear.
She broke away and regarded him.
“Where’s Lance?”
“Chopping wood.”
Roseanna sighed audibly. “Why does he do that? I keep telling him he doesn’t have to.”
“He doesn’t want you getting cold when the winter rolls around. You know. After he’s gone.”
“I’ll have to go have a talk with him,” she said.
Nelson broke his statue-like pose and headed for the door, the soles of his boots making a scuffing sound on the floorboards.
“Before you go, honey,” Roseanna said.
He paused with his hand on the knob.
“Yes, miss?”
“That question you asked me a while ago . . .”
“Which question was that?”
“The one that involved new construction.”
“Oh, right. That one.”
“The answer is yes.”
His head shot up and he looked directly into her face for the first time since arriving that morning.
“Really?”
“Really.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life, honey. It’ll be winter in a few months, and I have to figure out how to keep myself warm. I’ve never even lived in a place where I was responsible for my own snow removal. I don’t want to be in this all by myself.”
“You�
�re not, miss. You’re not.”
And with that, he plunked his hat back on his head and left her alone.
And yet not alone. Not in any of the ways that counted.
She found Lance around the corner of the barn. He was stacking and covering firewood, which explained why she hadn’t heard the familiar thump of the splitting maul.
He had his earbuds in, the wires running into his shirt pocket. When he saw her he pulled out one earbud and allowed it to dangle.
“I keep explaining to you how you don’t have to do that,” she said.
“That you do, Mom. That you do.”
“And you always do it anyway.”
“I don’t want you to freeze. Well, actually . . . you’re not going to freeze. You’re getting a nice big propane heater that can sit outside the house and vent into your bedroom. It’s a present from Neal and me, and Nelson’s going to install it. But smart people have a backup. In a big storm you might run out of propane, and the trucks might not be able to get through to deliver. A good fire in the woodstove’ll keep you from freezing.”
They stood a moment, neither quite looking at the other, Roseanna pondering just how painful a long, snowy winter would prove to be.
Then she decided it didn’t matter. She would deal with that situation when it arrived, and come out the other side. Every year millions of people managed it. She would manage, too. And besides, she realized, she had a son thoughtful enough to make sure she had a propane heater.
Then she chastised herself for putting those thoughts in the wrong order of importance.
“I came to ask two big things of you,” she said.
“Okay.” He pulled out the other earbud. Slid the phone out of his shirt pocket and tapped the screen to silence the music. “Shoot.”
“Number one. I love you like crazy. I love you more than I love my own life. But I’m saying this in spite of that . . . no, I’m saying this because of that. You need to go the hell home now.”
“I do?”
“Yes. You do. You have a life there. Right?”
“Something that passes for one,” he said, a small smile tugging at one corner of his mouth.
“You have that nice young man waiting for you. And, as he so eloquently pointed out, there’s a lot of work involved in relationships. I worry that . . . I mean, at the bottom of the thing, Lance, are you really still here just to help me at this point? And I ask that with no lack of gratitude, but I still have to ask. Or has it started to feel safe here because you’re postponing doing that relationship work?”
Heaven Adjacent Page 26
