Claiming Her_A Romance Collection

by R. R. Banks

  "Who used to live there?" I asked.

  He drew in a breath as he stared at the house. I could see his face better now, and the wrinkles and folds in his skin drew deeper as his face tightened, as if in consideration of the house and the legends that it held. He seemed to be debating how much he wanted to tell me. I didn't recognize him as one of the elderly community members who had been at the welcoming party, and I wondered if he knew who I was. Either who I was now as the fire chief, or who I had been as the child who had run from that house so many years ago.

  "There was a family there," he finally said. "Bad goings-on. We don't like to talk about it much around here. Nobody has lived there since them, though. Seems to me I heard that the owner never came around to look at it or keep up with it or anything. Never sold it or rented it out to another family. It just sits there."

  "Seems like a shame," I said.

  "Maybe," he said. "But I don't know many people who would want to live there. Too much darkness already in life. No need to put yourself right in the middle of it." He looked at me for a few seconds, scrutinizing me. "Are you new around here?"

  I smiled and extended my hand.

  "Garrett Allen," I said. "I'm the new fire chief."

  He smiled as he shook my hand enthusiastically.

  "That's right," he said. "I knew you looked familiar. Are you looking to buy this house?"

  I shook my head.

  "No. I bought a house on the other side of town."

  "Well, we sure are happy to have you here."

  "Thank you," I said.

  "Oh," he said. "I'm Devin McCrady. I live just a few houses down. Just out having my evening walk."

  "Me too. It's nice to meet you, Mr. McCrady."

  "Maybe I'll see you out walking again."

  "Maybe. You have a good night."

  He made his way out of the light from the streetlamp and I watched him walk down the sidewalk until he was only a dark shape. A few seconds later he passed through another streetlamp and then turned through the open gate of another house. I wondered if his wife Rose was still alive. The name popped into my memory unexpectedly along with the smell of fresh baked cookies. I looked back at the house and reached over the gate to grab the lock. It resisted my tug, but I pulled harder and felt bits of the rust flake away under my hand before the lock finally gave. The gate squealed in protest as I opened it and stepped through onto the sidewalk on the other side. I closed the gate behind me and put the lock back in place as if it was somehow blocking anyone else from entering the space. For a brief moment, I felt like I had stepped back through the years. Crossing the threshold of that gate had broken through reality and put me back into the years that I had spent here. I closed my eyes and I saw the grass again. It was thick and green, the pattern of the lawn mower's perfect rows across each side.

  I took a step and felt something hard beneath my foot. I looked down and saw an old sprinkler embedded down in the dirt. I couldn't remember if it had been on the day that I ran from the house. It was a fixture of my childhood. From the first day of spring when it felt warm until deep into the fall when the leaves were turning, and the air was getting crisp, the sprinkler sat in the front yard, oscillating back and forth as it sent its wave of water across the lawn. It wasn't turned on as often in the days after my father left us, after my mother told him to leave, even though I didn't know at the time that that was what had happened. The lawn had always mattered more to him than it did to her, and looking back on it, part of me felt like my mother had left the sprinkler off out of spite. It was a passive aggressive move, something that many people wouldn't even notice. But it was her way of taking back some of the control that he took from her and showing him that she was the one running her life now. I had heard the whispers even years after it all happened when I was old enough to understand.

  "Why didn't she leave?"

  "Why didn't she call the police?"

  "Why didn't she pack up, take her son, and go somewhere else?"

  "Why did she stay in the house?"

  I had asked myself many of the same things. I would never really know everything that had happened between my parents. I knew that they weren't always happy. I knew that they fought and that sometimes it was loud and terrifying. But I never saw him hurt her. I never heard them explain why they were so angry at each other. It was too long ago now for it to matter. It wouldn't change anything. All that was left was the question of why either of them let it get so far.

  I stepped off the sprinkler and continued through the yard on my way behind the house. The grass was harder to walk through here, and I had to watch each step to make sure I didn't step on anything else. It was still cold enough that I didn't need to worry about snakes, but I reminded myself that there was once a brick-lined garden back here. It was now hiding somewhere in the grass, but I didn't want to kick or trip over one of the bricks. Ahead of me, I saw what I had come back here to see. A tall, domed gazebo sat in the back corner. It looked like the lawn was trying to reclaim the gazebo and turn it into a part of itself. Vines had wrapped themselves around the intricate wooden lattice that surrounded the sides and up the poles that connected it to the domed top. They looked almost like the ropes were in their slumbering winter state, but the tiny buds of green leaves that were appearing occasionally along the brown length gave promise of the spring to come.

  I walked up to the gazebo and climbed the steps so that I stood inside. This is where I had played in my earliest memories. I could turn this space into anything that I wanted it to be. It could be a rocket ship hurtling to the stars if I wanted to be an astronaut. It could be a castle that I was defending against impending enemies as a brave and valiant knight. It could be a trench where I huddled with my little plastic brothers in arms and planned out our battle strategies. On my quieter days, it was where I would sit to read. In the last months before I left the house, the gazebo had become my sanctuary. It was where I came during the dark times when things were bad. I could bring a blanket out here with me and stay for as long as I felt like I needed to until everything went silent in the house again. Sometimes I brought snacks and drinks with me and could pass the entire day out here. My parents never questioned where I was, which was something that I never thought about then. Now that I was a father, however, I knew that it was only an indication of how bad things had really become between them. Either my mother never thought about the fact that she didn't see me and wonder where I was, or she knew and simply thought that I was better off outside than I was in the house with them.

  I couldn't remember why I wasn't outside that day. I don't know what kept me inside, playing in the living room rather than bringing my army men out here. There was a sense in the back of my mind that as horrible as those moments had been, I was meant to have been there. I was meant to be in that room and to see everything that happened as it unfolded. I was the only one who could be. I was just a little child, one who never should have seen what I did, one who was nearly crushed beneath the weight of the responsibility that was put on me. But it was my responsibility. If I had come out here that morning, I wouldn't have been there to see my father come home. He always parked in front of the house rather than using the gravel driveway that had long since lost most of its gravel and been mostly overgrown with grass. That meant that I would never have seen his car when it got there. I would never have seen him get out and walk into the house. My mother would have spent her last moments with no one to witness them and no one to carry the truth of them, out of the house and down the street to the police.

  I sat on one of the benches inside the gazebo and thought about what he had said about the owner not coming around to take care of it, sell it, or rent it out to anyone. I knew that the neighbors had probably waited curiously to see who would come after my family left the house behind. They wanted to see who would take possession of it and what they would do with it. Some probably wondered if the new owner would try to sell it quickly or if they would use it as a rental propert
y. Others probably hoped that it would be torn down.

  I also knew that the owner had gone through all those options countless times before, but could never settle on exactly what to do. That was because, for years after my family left, the house remained in the possession of my father. How many people expected that he would sell it to fund his defense? But he had no defense. He didn't want a defense. He didn't care. After he died, the one to take possession of the home was his heir, his only living relative.

  I had asked myself many times before why I didn't just get rid of the house. The lawyer who had handled the estate could have taken care of it for me, but I couldn't bring myself to sell it then. Over the years, the house had drained my bank account as I continued to pay taxes on it, and I had sold off nearly everything that had been inside just so that I could continue to pay for it. Sitting here in the gazebo again, I knew that I had been lying to myself since the moment that I stepped foot in Silver Lake again. I had told myself that I wasn't coming back here because of my history with the town. I wasn't coming back here because I felt like I was returning home. I knew now that was a lie. This house was why I had come back here. It had drawn me back, luring me to it after decades had passed. I still didn't know what I was going to do with it. Maybe I would keep it, and someday pass it to Jason so that he could have a home of his own. Maybe I would burn it to the ground.

  I was still thinking about the end of my parents’ marriage as I walked home. When I got old enough to understand the concept of divorce, I was angry that they had never told me what was happening. The few people that I talked to about it tried to reassure me with all of the same platitudes and sentiments that are said to every child whose parents have split up. It wasn't my fault. I had nothing to do with it. I couldn't have changed it. There was nothing that I could have done to help them. They didn't tell me because they didn't want to hurt me.

  None of those things helped me. I never questioned whether them breaking up had anything to do with me. I had just been a casualty. One of the casualties. I promised myself that I would never be anything like my father. I would never have a broken marriage or devastated child. What I hadn't considered then, is that it wouldn't be me that would destroy my marriage, but my marriage that would destroy me.

  I thought of the night that Valerie left for good. She hadn't come back to the house in four days after following Patrick out, the night I told her I was done. I braced myself for when she would come back. During even our brief time together Valerie had been known to throw temper tantrums and storm out, only to return several hours, or even a day later pretending as though nothing had happened. It was like she craved the drama of it. She craved the chaos and turmoil that she was able to create, but then when that initial peak was over, she didn't have any use for it anymore and came back to where she was provided for, to where she needed only to take care of our young son. She had never been away for this long and I had never been more ready to tell her to leave again. I didn't want to see the smile on her face that she always had or hear the silly story that she would tell to distract me. Sometimes she would show back up with food from one of the fast food restaurants just off the base as if in all that time that she had been away she had just been running that errand.

  This time when she came back, she wasn't smiling. She walked into the house, down the hallway, and into what had been our bedroom. I had already taken down the pictures of us. It was my bedroom now. That night I watched her shove all of her belongings into boxes and bags, waiting for her to say something. Finally, she turned and glared at me.

  "I'm not taking Jason with me."

  I had had no intention of allowing her to take my son away from me, but hearing her say it was something I hadn't expected.

  "What?" I said.

  "I'm not taking him with me," she repeated. "You're going to have to take care of him from now on."

  "What do you mean?"

  "This isn't the life that I want, Garrett, and you know that. It's never been what I wanted. I can't do it anymore. I have too much to do and I'm going to be too far away to take care of him every day."

  "So that's it?" I asked. "You're just going to throw him away?"

  "I'm not throwing him away. I'll come visit him. I'll see him plenty. When I'm able to. I just won't be here every day."

  After that night, Jason saw his mother two times. It had been years since either one of us had even heard from her. In truth, I hoped that she was gone forever. I knew that it hurt Jason, but I would rather him miss his mother than to have to deal with the fresh pain of her coming in and out of his life.

  The further I got from the house, the more the thoughts of my parents and Valerie faded, and the stronger the thoughts of Gwendolyn became in my mind. As hard as I tried, I couldn't deny the feelings that were growing inside me. I couldn't pretend that the attraction wasn't there, or that the passion that I felt for her was unlike anything that I had ever experienced. I just didn't know if I could let myself feel them.

  Chapter Twelve

  Gwendolyn

  "I am so glad that you are bringing new life into this world and I'm so sorry that I'm not going to be there to celebrate your shower with you... but I don't want to." I looked over at The Reverend. "What do you think? Would that work?"

  He looked at me and I swore he narrowed his little eyes. I sighed.

  "I know. I have to go. Tell them congratulations and show them how happy I am for them and all that crap. She could at least have the common decency to be pregnant when my personal life isn't a big old failure."

  Feeling like, if nothing else, I was nailing the self-pity angle, I dragged myself into the kitchen to start making yet another trifle. I was feeling pretty determined that once the last mouthful of cake, fruit, and cream was eaten, I was going to accidentally shatter the dish so that I didn't have to make another one of these.

  The dish.

  Damn it.

  I suddenly remembered that when I brought the trifle to Garrett at the firehouse, I was too distracted to remember to bring it home with me. That meant that the only dish that I had in my kitchen that was capable of containing the dessert, that I had been assigned to bring to what promised to be the most annoying baby shower ever thrown, was still at the station. Maybe that can be my excuse to not go to the party. I really shouldn't be around those happy, excited women anyway. I wasn't exactly the best guest right now. If I wasn't me, I probably wouldn't like me much and wouldn't want me at my party anyway.

  Hell, I was me and I didn't much want me anywhere near myself.

  The truth was I had been pretty miserable company for the last several weeks. Work had gotten into a steady groove and things were going much more smoothly, even with Jason Baxter. But even though that was exactly what I had said that I wanted, I wasn't happy. I couldn't stop thinking about Garrett and as much as I hated myself for admitting it, I missed him. That didn't change what I had seen in him, though, and the type of person I now knew that he was. A beautiful body, mind-melting kisses, and fingertips that seemed capable of creating magic just weren't enough to make me overlook the sick feeling in my stomach that I had gotten when he faced me in the classroom and I saw the fury in his eyes.

  Now, I would get to see those eyes again when I went to get my stupid trifle dish. I looked around the kitchen, opening, and closing cabinets, hoping upon hope that the magical kitchen fairy had left me another dish or gadget that I could use that would stop me from having to see him.

  No such luck.

  I was reaching for my jacket, ready to drive over to the station to get my dish, when I stopped. I looked at The Reverend.

  "Why should I have to go to him?" I asked. "I've gone to him every other time. He should have to come to me for once."

  I picked up my phone and sent him a text message telling him that I needed my dish and giving him my address. I tried my best to maintain the perfect balance between terse and civil, not wanting to come across like I was concocting a layered fruit dessert booty call, bu
t also not wanting to incite him to leave a bag full of glass shards on my porch either. My phone buzzed a few seconds later to tell me that he had responded.

  "K."

  That was it. Not even an entire word. Just a single freaking letter.

  I went to work baking the sponge cake and making the fruit compote that would go into the layers, and twenty minutes later I heard my doorbell ring. I brushed flour from my hands on to the dish towel that I always kept tucked in my apron pocket. He might have been able to warp my brain enough that I had forgotten my dish, but I sure as hell wasn't going to answer the door all streaked with flour and looking like a complete mess. I opened the door and felt my breath catch in my throat when I saw him. I hoped that he wasn't able to see my reaction on my face. I expected him to hold the dish out to me and continue on his way, but instead, he looked at me expectantly.

  "Aren't you going to ask me to come inside?" he asked.

  "Seriously?" I asked. He continued to stare at me and I made an exasperated sound before stepping out of the way and gesturing for him to come inside. "Of course, come on in."

  He stepped in and I noticed that he was holding the trifle dish by his side. It was still full of the remnants of the last trifle that had now mummified against the glass. I took it from him and glared.

  "Oh," he said. "Yeah. Sorry about that. The guys at the station are not really the best about washing the dishes."

  "So, what do you do? Just eat everything take-out off of paper plates?"

  "Sometimes," he admitted. "Other times one of the wives will bring food in, and then that firefighter just brings the dishes back home and lets her take care of them. Since there wasn't a wife to bring this home too, apparently it just got shoved into the back of the refrigerator. That's where I found it."

  I resisted the urge to shudder. I could count at least five things wrong with what he just said, but now wasn't the time for me to start arguing about that too. There was enough tension between us already without bringing social justice and laziness into the conversation.