by Liz Flaherty
“The city council will probably want one of you to be there, although I don’t know why it would matter. They know Jack owns property here. You not only make money here, but you spend it, as well.”
After dinner, Tucker walked back to the bed-and-breakfast. He’d missed a call from Libby last night, but when he’d called back this morning, she hadn’t answered. He’d left a voice mail, but all he’d heard from her since was a one-word text that said, BUSY! He knew she was—Hershberger Construction was working on the carriage house—but it seemed odd not to have talked to her since he’d left for the airport the day before.
He’d never lost the sense that something was not right in her world, but he also hadn’t been able to pinpoint the source of his unease.
When Jack called, Tucker filled him in on the events of the day, then said, “I’m headed to Michigan tomorrow. I was going to drive over, but I think I’ll fly instead. I don’t feel much like being away right now.”
“Whatever you want to do.” Jack sounded surprised, but not unhappy. “It grows on you, doesn’t it, being settled into one spot?”
“It does.” More and more, Tucker realized Miniagua was his spot. Sometimes he wished he’d never left, but then he wouldn’t have known. He wouldn’t have understood how much of a laker he truly was, and how much the little community and all its idiosyncrasies meant to him. He wouldn’t have understood the axiom “no friends like old friends” if he’d never parted from the old ones.
That made him think about the Parsonses. They weren’t old friends at all, but it seemed as if they were. Gavin texted him and Libby every time Liberty the calf made a forward stride in the bovine scheme of things. Mari sent crayon drawings through the mail that decorated their refrigerators. Alice and Dan were coming to Miniagua for dinner and a boat ride the first week of May.
There was, Tucker was starting to realize, a common denominator in the long problem that was his life.
It was late and she’d probably be asleep, but that was too bad. She should have called him back today. He reached for his phone and tapped the place on the screen that would connect him to Libby.
* * *
THEY SAT ON the bleachers at Charlie’s baseball game on Tucker’s first night back in town after a week away. Jack and Tucker were side by side between Arlie and Libby. Holly and Jesse sat on the next row down. Gianna and Max were working in the concession stand. Kendall, who had come into the tearoom after school to help in the kitchen, sat beside Libby.
“Don’t embarrass him.” Arlie scowled at Jack and Tucker.
The two men exchanged a look of such outrage that Libby had to bury her face against Tucker’s sleeve to hide her laughter.
“I am not the one who tried to climb the backstop when Charlie slid into home at the last game,” Jack said mildly, “nor am I the one who texted his mother with a high-five emoji and a link to Queen singing ‘We Are the Champions.’ I also didn’t cave and buy him the new bat he just had to have.”
“We bartered for the bat.”
“Him admitting to the entire eighth grade that you helped Tucker, me and him with algebra is not barter.” Jack grinned at her. “Neither is the fact that he let you kiss him when you dropped him off at school.”
Arlie sniffed. “Sure it is.”
“If you feel like arguing, ask Libby what skinny-dipping is first,” Tucker advised his brother. “You won’t win either argument. They learned their thinking from a much higher power than we did.”
“That’s right.” Libby beamed. “Gianna taught us all. Too bad you guys weren’t listening. But we won’t talk about the skinny-dipping question, will we, Llewellyn? I may have been a little wasted at the time of the original discussion. Besides—” she covered Kendall’s ears “—I am nothing if not a good influence.”
“That’s what I’ve always said about you, too,” Holly volunteered. “Jesse seems to think otherwise.”
“Older brothers are seldom either truthful or appreciative,” said Tucker righteously, “which explains why Libby and I are the way we are.” He hesitated. “I guess you could take that however you wanted to, couldn’t you?”
“Yes, they could, so let’s just leave it at that.” Libby joined in the laughter.
After the ball game, during which Charlie and his new bat proved themselves in a base hit and a double, they went to Anything Goes, sitting in the dining room instead of the bar because Charlie, Kendall and the Phillipy children were all part of the group.
When Libby and Tucker walked Kendall home, the house was dark.
Kendall reached under a rock, coming up with a key in a plastic sandwich bag. “When Mom left this morning, she said she might not be back tonight. It’s okay.” She met Libby’s eyes. “Really, it is. I’ve stayed by myself before.”
Libby understood that sometimes children had to take care of themselves. She had friends who left their adolescent kids alone or in charge of younger siblings while they worked the overnight shift at hospitals or factories because they couldn’t afford child care. She was on the emergency call list for a few of them. Those children were left with cell phones, and a deputy’s patrol car made extra trips past their houses. Their parents were home by the time their teeth were brushed in the morning.
She knew very well that even in Miniagua not everyone had a safety net, but most people kept watchful eyes on others’ children. Not everyone even had a home, but there were vacant buildings with unlocked doors and blankets and pillows inside so that no one ever had to sleep under the proverbial bridge.
No matter how utopian its residents considered the little community to be, occasionally someone slipped through the cracks of its boardwalks. A child was abused, a spouse battered, a homeless person found half-starved.
“I’ll text your mom,” said Libby, taking her phone out of her pocket. “You can run in and get some pajamas, then you’re coming home with me. I have a guest room that never gets used.”
Tucker checked the house quickly before allowing Kendall to go inside to collect her belongings. He pulled Libby in close, kissing the top of her head.
“No, ma’am,” he said. “Absolutely not.”
She looked up. “No, what?”
“No, you wouldn’t be the kind of mother Marie Williams is. You’d be more like Crystal Worth or Ellen Curtis or Gianna Gallagher.”
Libby hadn’t been wondering that. Unlike Arlie, who’d wanted children and worried that she’d never have any, or Holly, who intended to have at least four, Libby hadn’t even wanted them. They didn’t fit in particularly well with adventures. At least, not the kind of adventures she hoped to have.
However, she had to admit she liked that Tucker thought she’d be a good mother.
The guest room in the apartment was small but cozy, and Kendall was charmed by the window seat that matched the one in Libby’s room. Elijah and Pretty Boy, being polite hosts, joined Kendall when she went to bed, and they were all asleep within minutes.
“How’s the carriage house coming?” Tucker asked when Libby rejoined him in the kitchen.
“Come on out and see it. Neely’s so excited. We already have at least ten events scheduled for the summer, and we’ve barely advertised.”
They toured the building that sat at the lake end of Seven Pillars’s driveway. “Look at this,” she said when they’d climbed the stairs at the end of the large room. “Isn’t it a neat apartment? I can’t decide whether to rent it for someone to live in or as a vacation condo, since the lake is right out the back door.” Her voice echoed in the empty space.
Tucker asked questions and she answered them. He promised Llewellyn’s Lures would bring business to the Seven Pillars Event Center. She thanked him. They stopped on their way back to the house to listen to the sounds of the lake, and Tucker’s arm came around her shoulders, scooping her into him.
“Now that we’ve been so extraordinarily polite and correct with each other ever since I got home, when are you going to talk about what’s wrong?”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“SHE’S MAD AT ME,” Tucker said flatly.
“I know.” Jesse gave him a sidewise glance from where he sat beside him at the Thursday night poker game. “I asked her if she wanted me to beat you up, and now she’s mad at me, too. What did you do, anyway?”
“I asked her what was wrong. I said we’d been too good friends for too many years for her to be shutting me out the way she is. She said she wasn’t. It became a battle of ‘am not’ and ‘are, too,’ and I appear to have lost. She hasn’t spoken to me in two days. She even let me pay for my coffee at the tearoom.” That had been the biggest shock of all. “I have absolutely no objection to paying for my coffee, but in the ten years she’s been in business, she’s refused to take a dime. Suddenly, because I showed what I considered to be natural concern for her well-being, I’m paying full price.” He glowered at the cards in his hand—the game wasn’t going so great for him, either. “If I wasn’t mad right back at her, and if my feelings weren’t hurt, I’d think it was funny.”
“I’ve been married a long time,” said Sam, laying down cards and holding up two fingers. “I’ve learned to just say I’m sorry and that I didn’t mean it.” He flinched at the cards Jack handed him—Sam didn’t have much of a poker face. “For what it’s worth, that’s exactly the same story Penny tells about me.”
Tucker frowned. “Is that supposed to be helpful in some way?”
“Probably not, but if you were married to Libby, you would just expect these things and not be talking about them on poker night when we should be talking about NASCAR and football and beer.”
“Libby’s dating the football coach at the high school. I don’t think marrying me is on her list of adventures.” Saying that stung some. Tucker thought he knew why it did, but he didn’t want to go there in his mind, at least not while she was mad at him over nothing and definitely not while sitting at a table with a bunch of guys who knew them both way too well.
“See, he got football into the conversation, Sam, so we’re good to go. Besides, that’s my little sister you’re talking about. Her marrying Tucker isn’t gonna happen.” Jesse’s voice was even. His gaze went from his cards to Tucker in another sidewise glance.
Tucker looked hard to see if there was a smile in his eyes and didn’t see one.
“Lib could do worse than my little brother,” said Jack. “I’m not quite sure how, but she could.”
Sam snorted. “Seems we said the same about Arlie not too long back.”
“You know what?” Tucker tossed down his cards. “It’s not funny. I’m sorry I started the conversation and that I kept it going, but we’re not talking about Libby anymore. I won’t marry her because she’s too smart to have me, so no worries, Jess. And there’s never been any question in the world that as far as husband material goes, I’m the scrapings from the bottom of the barrel.” He got up, pushing his chair under the game table in the Dower House’s den. “I’m going for a walk. See you guys later.”
He might have let the door slam on his way out.
Wind gusts were whipping the lake into frilly whitecaps again. Clouds scudded across the sky, their edges lit by the moon. This was the stormiest spring Tucker could remember. He walked into the breeze, his eyes drying and his face beginning to burn. His hair peeled back from his face.
Another storm was coming. He could smell it on the wind. Hard, driving rain that kept the farmers out of the fields. Wind damage. Power outages. Warnings on television. “Seek a place of shelter” had been said so often this year that people had stopped paying attention.
Turbulence. Not just in the weather, but in everything. Nothing felt right. “Count your blessings,” his mother always urged him, and he did. He had an embarrassment of them to count and he knew it, but still...
Turbulent was how he felt, and he couldn’t seem to shake it. He was not a profound individual. The reason he’d decided on pursuing marriage and family without necessarily falling in love was that he didn’t think falling in love was in his DNA. No, that was wrong—he fell in love just fine; it was the staying that escaped him.
Sam and Penny had met the first day of their second year of college and never looked back. Jack and Arlie had loved each other since they were in high school. They denied it, insisting they’d fallen in love again when Jack moved back to the lake after sixteen years, but Tucker didn’t think so. He thought their love for each other had kept a firm hold on both their hearts.
Other than his mother, Jack and Charlie, Tucker didn’t think he’d ever loved anyone for very long.
Except for Libby.
* * *
“I DON’T WANT to talk about it.” Libby served quiche, salad and coffee to her brother and glared at him all in one smooth motion. If she could have figured out a way to kick him at the same time, she would have. “You never eat lunch here and now suddenly you are?”
“I was hungry.” Jesse hesitated, then grasped her hand and pulled her into the chair beside his. “Last night, Tucker walked out on the poker game. You’ve been mad at me all week. I admit to not being the sharpest knife in the drawer when it comes to anything requiring emotion—Holly has told me that more than once—but even I know something’s going on. Can I help?”
Libby would have been fine if it hadn’t been for that last question. But she couldn’t let go. What if the viper broke free and unleashed the pain and anger that were consuming her? What came out would hurt. She would not only reveal her secret, she’d use words she couldn’t unsay.
“You know, it’s a little late for the devoted-brother act, Jess.”
Oh, no, where had that come from after her stern admonishment to herself? Of all the people in the world, her brother was the last one she’d ever want to hurt. He’d had her back nearly as long as Tucker had. He was the only person she absolutely knew loved her. Maybe he just did it because he had to, but he loved her nevertheless.
“I’m sorry,” she said immediately. “I didn’t mean that. You’re a very good brother.”
“No, I’m not. I’m an emotional vacuum. I know that.” He turned his cup around and around on the saucer. Then he stopped and turned it back the other way. “I wasn’t there for the awful things. I was in the barn when Mom died. I was stationed in San Diego when you found Dad. Even after the accident when you were in a coma, I wasn’t there. I was milking cows and planting corn and swearing into the navy.”
“You were supportive every way you could be.” He had been. She hadn’t always given him credit for it, but he’d done all he could. If it hadn’t been for his support of her dreams, Seven Pillars would still be a series of sketches and notes on lined yellow paper.
She had wanted more from him. She still did. She wanted affection. She wanted to believe that if he knew her secret, he wouldn’t judge her for it. She wanted conversation more often than the couple of times a year he took care of her animals.
She wanted to know he’d miss her if she was gone. God help her, she wanted to know if anyone would.
Dismayed that she had hurt Jesse and frightened by the panic that was rising in her throat, she moved to get up. The lunch rush was over, but a private party was still taking place in the side parlor. She had to see if they needed anything. If she could just get out of the room long enough to catch her breath and force back the scream that was choking her, she’d be all right for a little while longer.
But he stopped her. His hand grasped hers again and his eyes held hers. “Libby, let me help.”
For just an instant, she hesitated. Maybe she should tell him. It would take away part of the load. Sharing it with Arlie made it bearable most of the time; maybe it would be even better if her brother knew. She didn’t want to drag him
down the viper’s path with her, but he had emotional strength that she obviously didn’t. Surely he did.
But then she remembered how he’d described himself. An emotional vacuum. He had baggage of his own to carry—she couldn’t add to it.
Someone came into the room, and she pulled her hand away. She couldn’t do this now. Maybe not ever.
“Hi!” Holly approached the table, limping slightly. She wore ragged sweatpants and a faded Ball State University sweatshirt. If she’d combed her shiny dark hair lately, it wasn’t noticeable. Instead of contacts, she wore horn-rimmed glasses that sat crookedly on her face and no makeup. She had a zit square in the middle of her chin. “It’s going to rain again—my leg is telling me so. I realize I look like hammered poop, and I just can’t make myself care.” She approached them, hugging Libby when she got up from the table.
Libby hugged her back, holding on a second too long and too tightly. Holly drew back and looked hard at her. “I’m sorry. You’re having a private conversation, aren’t you?” She clasped Libby’s hands, holding her gaze. “I’ll see you both later.”
“You will not. Sit down here. You’re just in time to stop me from embarrassing myself and Jess from swearing he’ll never come in here again. Want some lunch?”
“I’d love some. I swear I haven’t eaten since January. But why don’t you let me get it? You two go ahead and—”
“No, ma’am.” Libby gave her hands a squeeze. “Sit. Do you want the special?”
“Yes, and if you have an extra-large serving or a piece that fell out on the table, I’ll take that.” Holly took the chair Libby had been sitting in and turned her thousand-watt smile on Jesse. “Good afternoon, Dr. Jesse. How are you?”
He frowned at her. “I thought you couldn’t go anywhere today.”
“I couldn’t.” Holly’s beaming grin might have dimmed a little, but not very much. Libby envied her that—a scowl from Jesse could make his sister whimper like a puppy.
