“Until what?” Brenna asked.
She remained silent for several seconds, and then a voice, soft and low, came from the hallway. “Until her mother died,” Mike said.
CHAPTER FIVE
MIKE’S GUT FELT as if it had just been slammed with a cinder block. Why had he said that? Five minutes ago, he’d gone into his bedroom to shed his dirty uniform and put on shorts and a T-shirt. He’d intended to walk Miss Busybody out the door to her car and wave goodbye. Yet, he just blurted out the one fact that Brenna could use to explain the dysfunction in his relationship with his daughter. No wonder Carrie was sitting on the sofa slack-jawed and wide-eyed.
“Dad, I can’t believe you told Miss Sullivan about that,” his confused daughter said. “I thought we weren’t supposed to talk about Mom.”
“I said until we knew people better.” His defense sounded weak, but he had advised his daughter that the tragedy they’d suffered was best kept secret until they’d settled into their new town and started over. He didn’t think his daughter needed the well-intended sympathies of people who were practically strangers. And he knew he didn’t.
Well, he couldn’t take the revelation back now. And in a way, he was relieved Brenna knew. This nosy home ec teacher had worked pretty hard the past few days to find out what was going on with him and Carrie—lying and snooping and telling him what she intended to do about his daughter—maybe she had earned the right to know. If Carrie seemed sad, there was good cause. And her depression wasn’t his fault. Well, not entirely.
In the quiet shock that had settled over the women, Mike’s sandals flapped loudly against his heels as he crossed the room. He supposed it was his responsibility to break the awkward silence and offer some sort of explanation. He started to, but Carrie stood and reminded him again of his mistake.
“You always say we shouldn’t bring this up.”
“I know. Before, when I said that, I was concerned that people would ask questions about your mom and upset you,” Mike said. “Remember all the questions you got in California, all the forms we filled out? It wasn’t easy for you.”
“No, it wasn’t, but now you just told my teacher!”
“Yeah, well, all the secrecy doesn’t seem so important now.”
Brenna stood and moved close to Carrie, making him feel seriously outnumbered. “Excuse me, Mike,” Brenna said, “but why wouldn’t you tell people about your wi...Carrie’s mother? It would seem to me—”
Here she goes again. He held up his hand. “We didn’t move here to draw that kind of attention to ourselves. We don’t need anybody’s pity.”
“Again, maybe I’m overstepping...”
Since when did that stop you?
“...but sincere sympathy is different from pity. And the people in this town—”
“I know. You all have hearts of gold.” He regretted the sarcasm the minute he said it, but he didn’t want folks patting him on the back, offering artificial condolences and advising him how to raise his daughter. He’d figure it out on his own, even if it took him until she went off to college.
“I wasn’t going to say that,” Brenna insisted. “I just wanted to point out that people can be very understanding.”
Yeah, sure. They’d tell him they understood how he must be feeling. They’d say they could relate to his grief. But all the platitudes would mean nothing. Because nobody could understand what it was like to be kept in the dark about your wife’s three-month illness until just days before her death. Nobody in middle-American Mount Union, a town where family ties couldn’t be broken with a machete, could know how ineffectual a man became when the only support he could offer the woman he married was a few meaningless words at the end of her life.
Brenna looked at Carrie with one of those predictable, pitying, doe-eyed looks he’d left California to get away from. “Now that I know, maybe I can help Carrie.”
His daughter glared at him. “Thanks anyway, Miss Sullivan, but he doesn’t care about helping me. If he did he wouldn’t have brought me here in the first place.”
The muscles in Mike’s chest tightened, the first sign of an anxiety attack. He took a deep breath, managing to at least gain partial control. “I think maybe you should go, Brenna,” he said. “I’ll walk you out.”
She didn’t argue. She simply told Carrie she’d see her in school tomorrow, thanked her for the tea and walked to the door. Mike followed her to her car.
Before she got in, she did the strangest thing. She stood outside the safety of her car as if there weren’t a mosquito within five miles of them and just stared at him. And she gave him a reserved sort of smile. It wasn’t even close to a big ol’ country-girl grin. It was subtle and understated, but it was genuine, and it made him feel better, calmer. His chest muscles relaxed. His anxiety began to fade. It had been too long since he’d interpreted anyone’s smile as the real thing.
He cleared his throat. “Thanks for not overreacting to what Carrie said in there. This is a process for her and me.”
“Of course it is.”
She reached her hand out as if she would grasp his arm, but instead paused and then rubbed her palm along the side of her jeans. His own palm itched in response. He felt deprived, thinking that it might have been nice if she’d reached across those extra few inches and actually touched him.
“Do you mind if I ask you something, Mike?” she said after a moment.
“Go ahead.”
“How long ago did your wife die?”
“Almost a year now.”
“It’s still very fresh.”
“You could say that.”
She looked into his eyes. He’d averted his gaze so many times when people gave him that sorrowful stare that he was surprised when he didn’t automatically do so again. But what he saw in her green eyes was real, not manufactured to convey some sort of practiced sympathy. And a little uncomfortable, as if she usually tried to hide that part of herself. Well, heck, nobody could be as good at hiding their emotions as he was.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “And I’m not saying that because I have a heart of gold.” Her lips trembled as her smile widened and seemed to cut through the melancholy of the past minutes. “Some people would say my heart is more pot metal—not worth a whole heck of a lot.”
He swallowed a chuckle. “Carrie would say that’s a step up. She’d tell you my heart is made of scrap metal.”
“No, I don’t believe that’s true.” She lifted her hand and touched his T-shirt just above his heart. His breath caught. It was a featherlight connection—her manicured fingernail just brushing the part of him that he’d thought had died. A muscle in his chest rippled with a pleasurable jolt of energy.
“I believe that under that shirt beats a real flesh-and-blood well of emotion,” she said as she withdrew her hand and opened her car door. “Maybe you just don’t show it often enough.”
That’s the safest way to be, Teach.
She slid into her car, but before she started the engine, Carrie came onto the porch. “Hey, Miss Sullivan, don’t leave yet. I’ve just had the greatest idea.”
Mike and Brenna both waited as Carrie bounded down to the parking area. “What’s going on, Carrie?” Mike asked, confused by her rare burst of enthusiasm.
“Tomorrow is Friday,” she said. “The first football game is tomorrow night. It’s a home game.”
“Okay. Do you want to go?”
“I definitely want to go.”
He couldn’t have been more surprised if she’d told him she wanted to wade into the river outside of Mount Union and catch trout with her bare hands. The idea that she wanted to go to a game with him warmed a spot deep in his belly. “Great. I’ll take you.”
She frowned.
“What’s the matter?”
“I didn’t think you’d
want to go.”
“Why wouldn’t I? You know I like football.” He looked at Brenna. “Can I get tickets at the gate?”
She shrugged. “I think you can, but I don’t really know for sure. I don’t go to the games.”
“You don’t?” He didn’t know why he was surprised. Maybe because when he was on his high school football team, the stands were always filled with parents and students and every teacher he’d ever had. The whole community supported the team.
“I don’t have an interest in sports.”
“Oh.” He turned back to Carrie. “We’ll go, watch the game together. Maybe grab some dinner out. Would you like that?”
“Ah, Dad...”
“What?”
“I was kind of thinking you could just drop me off and I could go by myself....” She stared hard at Brenna. “Actually, I was going to ask if I could sit with you, Miss Sullivan. Maybe you could introduce me to some kids.”
When she looked back at him, Mike tried to keep his expression neutral. Once again, Carrie’s rejection hurt him, though he should be used to it. He’d thought maybe they’d found some common ground.
“I see. Well, Miss Sullivan just said she doesn’t go to the games, and I’m not going to let you go by yourself.”
“Dad, come on!”
Brenna’s mouth moved, and Mike anticipated that she was going to point out that the activity was perfectly safe. She didn’t follow through, however, and it was just as well. Mike wasn’t letting Carrie go unless he went with her. They were still new in town. School had just started. The game was an after-dark activity. She didn’t know anybody. There were all sorts of reasons he wouldn’t consider dropping her off at the game and leaving her there, not the least of which was his own insecurity about fatherhood. “Sorry, Carrie, but...”
Carrie’s mouth pinched in displeasure. “I can’t believe you!” she said. “It’s not fair!”
He took a deep breath and did a quick mental ten-count. “Take it or leave it. You don’t want me to go. I won’t let you go by yourself. That’s the way...”
Brenna held up one slender finger. “Ah, if I may...”
It was coming now. Whatever she’d been about to say a minute ago was going to gush forth and prove once more that gender is thicker than blood. He was going to be the one against two again.
He spoke before she could. “This isn’t up for debate. I’m her father, and my decision stands.”
Carrie moaned, stomped her foot.
Brenna put her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Oh, we know that, right, Carrie? Mike is your dad. He’s only looking out for your safety.”
Carrie gawked at her as if she’d just broken a female bond in effect since the Middle Ages. “Miss Sullivan!”
Mike echoed her, expressing a different kind of shock. “Miss Sullivan?”
“I was just going to say that I’d reconsidered. I’ll go to the game and the three of us can sit together. Then if I see any kids from your class sitting near us, I think your dad would let you go join them as long as he can see you.” She gave Mike a look that dared him to say no. “How would that be, Mike?”
Carrie scuffed the toe of her sandal in the dirt for a moment and then appeared to conclude that the compromise was better than nothing. “Okay, I’ll do that,” she said. “What about you, Dad?”
Mike switched his gaze from his scowling daughter to her sweetly smiling teacher. “I guess that would be all right,” he said at last. “As long as Miss Sullivan knows the kids you’ll be sitting with.”
“Oh, boy. Football,” Brenna said with feigned chirpiness. “I can give Carrie tickets at school tomorrow, and I’ll meet you two somewhere in the middle of the bleachers about ten minutes before the game, okay?”
“Middle of the bleachers?” Mike repeated. “Are you talking fifty-yard-line seats?”
“I’m not even sure what that is,” Brenna said. “But my friend’s husband is the coach and she’s always offering to let me sit with her. She says her seats are in the middle somewhere.”
“Then they’ll do fine,” Mike said.
“See you then.” Brenna got in her car, turned around and drove off. And Mike was left wondering if this was going to be the best game he’d ever been to or the worst—fifty-yard-line seats and all.
* * *
“I CANNOT BELIEVE I am doing this,” Brenna said as she drove onto the grassy field that served as overflow parking on game nights. “And even more alarming, I can’t believe I’ve been thinking about doing this most of the day.”
She’d fussed over what to wear to this game and finally settled on jeans and a nice blouse. And now she was practically late. Did these games always start on time? she wondered, or was it okay to be fashionably late? Probably not the latter.
She headed toward the glow of flashlights directing her to a parking space at the end of a line of cars. She waved to the high school maintenance man as she followed his beam into a narrow spot. “Thanks, Phil.”
He peered into her car. “Is that you, Brenna?”
“’Fraid so.”
“I’ve never seen you at a game before.”
“No, you haven’t,” she said, cutting her engine.
“Should be a barn burner tonight. Both of these teams were nine and one last year.”
“Well, goody,” she said, getting out of her car. “Nothing I like better than burning barns.” Like everyone in town, she remembered that the Mount Union Ravens had enjoyed a winning season last year. But unlike most of her fellow citizens, she hadn’t observed one play.
But there was no way she was going to miss this game tonight. In school today, Carrie had questioned her several times about showing up. Diana had been so excited about sharing her prime seats with her best friend that she’d told half the faculty that Brenna was going to attend. Even some of the players, the ones who took her home ec class for what they figured would be an easy passing grade, said they heard she would be in the stands.
Okay, so she would do her duty, this once, and show school spirit and help a lonely kid form a few bonds of friendship. But try as she might to deny her interest in one particular brooding male who was meeting her at this game, his possible eagerness at seeing her again was really occupying her thoughts.
“Do not make the mistake of thinking of Mike Langston as just another guy, Brenna,” she warned herself as she went through the stadium gate. “He’s not interested in you as anything other than a buffer between him and his daughter...if that.”
She was well aware that Mike wasn’t the typical sort of man she usually dated. He wasn’t out for a good time. He wasn’t a good conversationalist or an educated up-and-coming career-oriented type. He wasn’t looking for a clever, fun-loving woman to be by his side. And what if his current job was the most he’d ever accomplish?
Could Brenna really care for a man whose goals didn’t exactly mesh with hers? She had long ago decided that she wasn’t going to backslide into the life she’d worked so hard to escape. “It’s just as easy to love a rich man as it is a poor one,” her mother told her often enough, always ending her words of wisdom by lamenting that she hadn’t followed her own advice.
Her mother’s words had been mercenary and self-serving, but they’d also stuck, and Brenna had ventured down the dating road with one principle guiding her steps: marriage was fine, if it happened, but she had to think about her future and the strides she’d made escaping that run-down trailer. She also had to accept that she would probably end up supporting her parents, which could prove difficult on a teacher’s salary.
So why was her heart pounding as she approached the middle of the bleachers? And why did it threaten to stop altogether when she looked up and saw Mike Langston looking nothing like a mechanic from Alvin’s Garage?
“Miss Sullivan, up here!”
Brenna waved at Carrie and climbed up to the fourth row of seats.
“Hi, Bren,” Diana said. “Look who’s here? Our favorite mechanic.” She slid down and nudged Carrie and Mike to do the same. Brenna sat in the last space beside Diana.
Carrie leaned across her father and Diana and spoke to Brenna. “I see some kids from my home ec class in the next section. Do you think I could go sit with them?”
Brenna stole a close-up glance at Mike and swallowed a sigh. His dark hair, seeming longer now than when she’d first met him, was expertly mussed. The tousled look was perfect for his rugged, slightly bearded face. And the short-sleeved beige knit shirt tucked into a pair of faded black jeans fit his solid chest oh so well. One booted foot tapped against the seat in front of him.
“What do you say, Dad?” Brenna asked. “I can take her over and make sure she settles in.”
“Okay, but try to pick a seat where I can see her from here.”
“You’re not going to stare at me all night are you, Dad?” Carrie asked. “You’ll give everybody the creeps.”
“I’m here to watch a football game, Carrie. But if my eyes wander over to the next section a few times, just know that you’d better be sitting where Miss Sullivan takes you.”
Carrie half stumbled over her dad and Diana in her haste to be away from the adults. “I’ll see you at the end of the game,” she said. “Mrs. Montgomery invited us to go for pizza after. I’d really like to.”
Mike glanced at Diana, who nodded. “I suppose that would be all right,” he said.
“Great.” Carrie hurried down the steps.
Following her, Brenna looked over her shoulder at Diana and Mike. “Be right back. Don’t let them start without me.”
She spoke to Mary Sue Mayberry, a student she knew well, and introduced Carrie as a new arrival to Mount Union High School. Mary Sue was friendly and asked Carrie to sit with them. Once Brenna was certain that Carrie was welcome in the group, she returned to her seat, but Diana wasn’t there.
“She went down to the fence to wish her husband good luck,” Mike said when Brenna stood looking down at the two vacant spaces on the bench.
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