The Happiness Pact

by Liz Flaherty

  “Making butter?” Libby got plates from the cupboard, handing them to Gavin to set on the table.

  “Yes.” Dan got out the silverware. “We’d been sharing Joanna’s milk with the community food co-op, but Alice had too much downtime these past few days, what with only having a baby and getting an article written for a magazine. She found a butter churn in the attic and decided we should take further steps toward living off the land.”

  Libby folded the flatware into cloth napkins, showing Mari the way to do it. “How old is the milk?”

  She looked so natural in this homey, sort-of-messy kitchen, interacting with an eager little girl but not missing a thing that went on around her. This was the kind of place she belonged, not chasing adventures with a buddy—even a best buddy. Tucker knew that as well as he knew himself, but he also knew too much of her life had been outside the lines of what she could control—he wasn’t going to try choosing directions for her.

  “Two days. I researched.” Alice grinned at her. “I may be a pioneer, but I’m not doing it without the internet.”

  “Good. Got buttermilk?”

  “We do. And cheesecloth. And some really good herbs from our own greenhouse to add to a batch.”

  Tucker raised his eyebrows at Dan. “Does this mean the next time we come, you’ll be wearing suspenders and the kids will be calling you ‘Pa’ and doing their chores without being told?”

  “I actually have the suspenders. I don’t remember where they came from, but I have some.” Dan took the snoozing baby from his wife, laid him in the Moses basket on the counter and withdrew a bottle from the wine rack. “Rhubarb? If you have even an iota of wine snobbery in your soul, you’ll hate it, but it’s Alice’s favorite. Not that she’s drinking any right now.”

  They demolished the pizza, wine and cupcakes, then Gavin and Mari went off to watch television while the adults stayed at the table.

  “You are really living the pioneer lifestyle, aren’t you,” said Tucker, looking across the table at Alice. “We know that Dan was a bank vice president who wore suits in a former life, and your byline is well-known. How do you go from that to a farm an hour away from anything?”

  Dan laughed, exchanging glances with his wife. “I came home from work one day to find Alice extremely upset—”

  “With good reason,” she interrupted, accepting the coffee he handed her.

  He ignored her and went on. “—because she’d driven all the way across Fort Wayne to buy Gavin pants for school. Everyone in our neighborhood, it seems, was buying this particular brand of jeans for their third graders, so obviously we needed to, as well. She was sitting in traffic on Coldwater Road with Mari crying in her car seat when she had an epiphany.”

  “It wasn’t an epiphany.” Alice and Libby got up in unison to clear the table, and Tucker wondered if it was a woman thing that they all moved at the same time. “It was a meltdown. I decided life was too short for my kids to wear hundred-dollar jeans and for me to sit in traffic when it was ninety degrees outside. We’d bought the farm as an investment when Dan’s cousin retired to Arizona, plus we had a ton of money saved because Dan’s salary was...pleasant, to say the least. He’d spent some of the happiest times in his life here, and I wanted a simpler life. It seemed like the perfect solution.”

  “She’s right about the happy times—I loved it here. When it comes to the salary, I wanted to keep on making it, as a matter of fact. But I didn’t much like being a weekend dad. The commute was doable, but sixty hours a week at the bank didn’t allow family time, so I resigned.” He grinned. “Now the kids are homeschooled in jeans that cost a lot less, I teach at a university fairly nearby and Alice still writes articles. She also makes butter. Or is about to.”

  From his basket on the counter, the baby made his presence known. Libby picked him up and exchanged a few nuzzles and cross-eyed grins with him before handing him off to Alice. “You feed. I’ll churn.”

  “Life on the farm will be the perfect adventure if we don’t kill each other first.” Alice arranged blanket and baby with a sigh of relief. “Or die of being tired.”

  “Nah, you won’t.” Libby’s gaze met Tucker’s, their laughter silent yet heard by both of them. He wished they were touching but realized they didn’t have to be to make their connection as tight as the proverbial tick. “Tired is good medicine.”

  Tucker snorted. “Libby’s brother, her friends and I all threatened to kill her before she got the tearoom up and running, she worked us so hard. If tiredness is good medicine, we were cured of many ills.” He gave in to the need and stroked a hand over her silky brown hair. It felt as if it held the warmth of midday sun in it, and the sensation rippled through his fingers.

  What was he thinking? This was Libby. He pulled away so suddenly she gave him a startled look that asked, What’s wrong?

  He nodded toward the glass butter churn, the movement jerky. “That’s sounding pretty thumpy. Is it butter?”

  She lifted the churn to look at the contents. “I think it is. Everybody ready to try it? Do you have homemade bread, Alice, since you haven’t been doing anything this week?”

  “Fresh from the co-op. And cinnamon bread, too.”

  It was a great dessert, fresh butter spread on warmed homemade bread with blackberry and strawberry jams on the side. The coffee was hot and rich. After the kids had eaten their fill and gone off to bed, Dan brought out a couple of board games. The four of them played games and talked until nearly midnight.

  Marriage and family were on the short list of things he wanted from life, but Tucker tended to daydream more around the Leave It to Beaver option than a modern-day The Waltons. Dan and Alice’s chief support system seemed to come from the food co-op they participated in and—more importantly—from themselves. Unlike the Amish who lived near Lake Miniagua, the Parsons’ chosen way of life was vastly different from the one they’d grown up in or expected to maintain. That it wasn’t always easy was obvious in the watching, but the often noisy and seemingly dissonant unit that was their family seemed to work.

  Something else that was obvious was that throughout the disarray of the house-in-progress and the disorder wrought by a family of five ran a deep and enduring love. As different as the families were, it reminded him of Jack and Arlie and the family they were building. Love was the ballast in both situations.

  That was what Tucker wanted—ballast.

  It wasn’t very exciting, he guessed, walking to the car with Libby’s hand in his. But as far as adventures went, tonight had been a success.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE PLAY WAS FUNNY. Tucker laughed most of the way through it and tried not to care that Meredith wasn’t paying attention to the comedy on the stage or him. At intermission, he stood in line for drinks while she went to the restroom. He waited in the lobby for her, sipping his beer and feeling uncomfortable.

  He wished he knew where to go in this relationship that seemed to be stalled at an emotional crossroads that had hills on every single side of a four-way stop. No matter how much he liked her—and he did; she was smart and funny and the chemistry between them was very real—he couldn’t see over the next hill from their present position.

  “Would you like to go?” he asked when she rejoined him. “If you don’t like the play, we can have a late supper somewhere or go hear some live music and dance.”

  She looked surprised by the question but sipped from her drink before answering. “I like the play.” She looked around at the opulent interior of the old theater. “For that matter, I like being back in Indy, where everything is so available. You don’t have to drive eighty-seven miles for a professional-quality performance or access to every kind of cuisine or shopping you want. I didn’t think I’d miss it as much as I do.”

  He nodded. “The amenities at the lake are a little lacking,” he admitted.

 
; Her eyebrows rose. “A little? I have to drive twenty miles to take Shelby to dance class. Sawyer has one supermarket. One. The only grocery at the lake is the bulk foods store. If there’s a fire at the lake, it better burn slow, because chances are the volunteer firemen will be in the fields when the alarm sounds. I’ve yet to figure out what I’ll do if we have an actual emergency at the same time as a basketball game, because all the first responders will be in the gym at the high school yelling, ‘Go, Lakers.’”

  He thought of a freezing Sunday evening last December, when Llewellyn’s Lures could easily have burned to the ground but didn’t because of the volunteers who’d fought a fire for hours in an ice storm. He opened his mouth to defend...what? They didn’t need defending. And Meredith wasn’t listening anyway. Her attention was focused somewhere across the room. He wondered fleetingly if she saw someone she knew. Or wished she knew. And then he realized he didn’t really care.

  She shrugged. “I know it’s a nice community with nice people, and I’m everlastingly grateful to Arlie for the job at a time when I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I’ll never feel at home there. Finding culture at the library, the local theater and bingo at the lake clubhouse just doesn’t work for me. I don’t mind ordering clothes and makeup online, but I don’t want to have to.”

  They went back inside then, and it wasn’t until he was driving home later that Tucker thought about what she’d said. He liked cities, too. He loved the convenience of living in them. But Miniagua was home. He could live with driving two hours to a Colts game or to the airport easier than he could handle being that far away from Jack and Charlie.

  Or Libby.

  That addendum to his thoughts startled him. What was going on here?

  * * *

  “YOUR CHOICE. The White Sox, the Cubs, the Indians or the Reds. They’re all having preseason night games, and we can make it to any of them.” Tucker poured coffee from the pot Libby had made when he stopped by after church.

  Libby had to give it some thought. The only baseball that really interested her was played at the local sports park and the high school campus. It came with buttery popcorn and fountain soda that sold for a dollar. She knew almost everyone there, both on the field and off, and had sponsored a softball team called Libby’s Longarms ever since Seven Pillars opened.

  “Where would you rather go?” she asked, stalling for time. She knew he didn’t care, or he wouldn’t have offered such a wide range of choices. She wished a little resentfully that he’d offer to take her to a play. She loved anything that took place on a stage, probably because her greatest dramatic talent had to do with selling tickets at the door.

  But the theater and concerts—those were places he took dates. Places he dressed up for, even occasionally stopping by Libby’s to ask which tie he should wear with which shirt.

  He shrugged. “I’m not big on baseball unless I’m playing it or I’m watching Charlie. I just thought it might be something different for you.” He handed her a cup and sat at the table, waiting for her to join him.

  She did, sipping her coffee and fighting back the ill temper that was pushing to make itself known. “I’m not crazy about it, either.” There was a play at a local theater in the county seat, less than twenty miles away. If she suggested that, would he think she was asking him on a date?

  “Want to go to Peru?” he asked. “I think Ole Olsen Theater’s having a matinee, although I don’t know if there are any tickets left.”

  Oh, thank goodness, he’d saved her from herself. “I’d like that. Why don’t you check for tickets while I make you a sandwich?”

  The theater building was Peru’s old depot, a former station of the C&O Railroad. It had fewer than a hundred seats and lots of restored paneling. Libby was charmed by both the venue and the production. She and Tucker leaned into each other and laughed at the comedy onstage, and when they moved back to their original positions, he laid his arm across the back of her chair, his hand occasionally stroking the soft knit of the cotton sweater she wore. He left his arm where it was until the end of the show, when they rose to their feet with everyone else in a standing ovation.

  After shaking hands with the cast, they stepped out into the chilly afternoon. “Let’s walk awhile.” He gestured toward the paved path beyond the gazebo by the depot. “You’re not wearing heels, are you?”

  “No.” And if she had been, she’d have gone anyway. It was disconcerting, she had to admit, this sudden, deeper enjoyment of Tucker’s company. Actually, enjoyment wasn’t a strong enough word. If she were being completely honest with herself, it probably wasn’t sudden, either.

  She thought maybe it had started with that unexpected kiss on their birthdays, the one that had landed on her mouth and lasted a little longer than usual. That had certainly given her a new awareness of him as more than her best friend.

  After that, he’d held her hand more often than not when they went walking. Their goodbyes, which had always included cheek kisses and brief hugs, had become a little self-conscious. Mari Parsons had referred to her as Tucker’s sister once, and Libby had blushed and Tucker had looked away, turning studious attention to Gavin’s calf.

  Then had come that little niggle of relief Libby felt when none of the introductions on his hunt for a wife had worked out. There hadn’t been the chemistry he’d mentioned at least once in every conversation until she’d threatened him. At least until Meredith, when he didn’t have to mention it because it came off them in waves every time they were together. He saw her nearly every day and was uncharacteristically quiet about her, although he talked about the kids.

  Meredith was perfect for him. Libby knew that. The nurse-midwife was bright and beautiful, with a certain aura of sophistication Libby couldn’t match, even if she was trying to. Which she wasn’t.

  They walked the nearly mile-long path, stopping to sit in a swing that hung from a crossbar just because it was there. At an enclosed playground farther down the path, they stood for a minute and watched the children playing. They climbed, swung and slid, shouting and running the whole time. The late-afternoon sun shone golden in its descent.

  The beauty of it all was enough to make Libby’s heart ache.

  She looked at Tucker. He was watching the kids, his mouth lifted in a crooked smile. When a timid little girl made her reluctant way to the top of a slide and slid down into her mother’s waiting arms, he raised his hand in a thumbs-up, and the little girl clapped her hands in response.

  This was what he wanted and needed. Kids and playgrounds and a wife who felt the same way about such things. This was Tucker’s chemistry.

  They walked on. He pointed at a building near the end of the path. “It used to be a bowling alley.”

  She squinted at the sign. “Tuck, that’s a mortuary.”

  He nodded. “And an event center.”

  “So if you die at the event, they just haul you into the next room?”

  “I don’t think that’s quite the way it works.”

  She laughed. “It’s a small town. It might. Remember after the accident? The fire department took Arlie and Holly’s dad’s casket to the cemetery on the back of the fire engine after his funeral. He’d been a volunteer firefighter for years, and they were happy and honored to do it, but the truth was, every hearse in the county was already in use.”

  Of course Tucker remembered. His father had been both the cause of and one of the fatalities in the accident. One of the county hearses had carried his body to the cemetery in Kokomo. “Oh, Tuck.” She stopped, horrified at what she’d said. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” He pulled her to him, holding her and watching the sun sink below the building that housed the funeral home and event center. “Jack and I have talked about it, and as awful as it all was, it would have been even worse if our father had survived. If he’d still been walking around in an alcoh
olic stupor, responsible for Dave’s and Linda’s deaths and everyone else’s injuries, I don’t know how anyone could have stood it.”

  Libby didn’t, either. She leaned into him without meaning to, and his arms tightened. “You need to forgive him,” she said quietly. “Jack has, since he and Arlie got back together. You need to, too.”

  He shook his head, his chin rubbing the top of her head. “Like you’ve forgiven your dad, Lib?”

  She stiffened, and his arms tightened even more. “He chose to leave us, and he knew I’d be the one to find him.” Her voice sounded brittle. She felt brittle.

  She also felt the familiar hopelessness stirring inside, feeling cold and crawly under her skin. It was usually easy to push back when she was with Tucker, to keep depression’s insidious presence the secret she needed it to be, but sometimes it was hard even then.

  “I know.” He turned her so that her cheek rested against his shoulder, and stroked her hair back from her face, leaving warmth on her skin where he touched it. It would have been a romantic moment with anyone else, but this was Tucker. It couldn’t be romantic. It couldn’t.

  “I can’t take that away.” He chuckled, though the sound was more harsh than humorous. “I guess I haven’t forgiven him, either. Maybe we should make a new pact. We’ll be thirty-five on our next birthdays—by then we will have found a way to forgive our fathers. What do you think?”

  I think I’ll never forgive Dad. For what he did to Jesse. What he did to me. But Tucker would be disappointed if she didn’t agree. She didn’t think he understood how much harder it was sometimes to forgive someone you loved than someone you didn’t.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let’s do that.” It wouldn’t be the first pact either of them had ever broken. He’d sworn not to tell the story of the bats in her attic, but one night at the Grill after three mugs of hot chocolate, he’d told everyone there. It had been the day the Indianapolis Colts had played in the Super Bowl, so the bar had been full and everyone there had heard it.