by Sarah Hegger
She saw him before he noticed her. Old Man Martin. Nine years ago, she’d thought he was old along with any other adult in her radius. Now, he looked only a little past middle-aged. He worked toward the back of the shop, hauling slabs of beer off a pallet and into the fridges. Lucy watched him in silence before she spoke.
“Hello, Mr. Martin.” Her voice sounded breathless and girly.
Mr. Martin paused and looked up. He frowned as if struggling to place her.
Lucy pulled her cap from her head and stood still as the realization crossed his face. His craggy face went from surprised to wary as he straightened and looked at her.
“Lucy Flint?” He pushed his glasses up his nose with grubby, dusty hands. Those hands were as she remembered, lined with years of dirt and grime that seemed ingrained into the cracks and crevices. “You are back?”
The fact he knew her name was a statement in itself. The old man never bothered to get to know any of the names of the kids who grew up in and around his store. But he remembered Lucy Flint all right.
“Only for a short time,” she told him. His look of relief was not encouraging. “My dad is not well.”
He nodded as if he already knew that. Of course he did, this was Willow Park.
“And also,” Lucy added when he bent back to his beer, “I need to say that I’m sorry.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and stared at her impassively. It looked like he still wore the same woolen jersey he’d had nine years ago. It was a shapeless, dusty thing of an indiscriminate shade somewhere between gray and brown. It matched his trousers perfectly.
“About the thing with the window.” The compressor on the beer fridge switched up a gear and reminded her to get on with it. “And I know my parents paid for the damages, but I have never told you how much I regret my actions that day.”
Mr. Martin looked at her for a long moment, in which her heart pounded loud enough to drown out the sound of the compressor. She was not sure he would respond at all, when he suddenly turned the corners of his mouth down and grunted.
“Good,” he said with another nod.
Lucy waited for more.
He looked mildly confused.
And that was it, Lucy realized with a hysterical bubble of laughter rising up in her throat. Her first amends done and accepted. The older man gave her a small smile and bent back to his beer. She was already forgotten.
Lucy found the two-percent milk Carl liked, still grinning, and approached the cash register.
A woman stood with her back to Lucy. Her hair was an impossible shade of red and her plump figure was compressed into a pair of bedazzled skinny jeans. Something about the woman’s posture rang a large bell with Lucy. The woman turned to the side and Lucy’s stomach hit an air pocket.
In slow motion, Lucy watched the other woman turn and catch sight of her. Both of them stared. The hair was different and she’d put on a bit of weight, but her face retained the soft prettiness of a doll. It was almost the same face Lucy had seen since her first day in first grade. It had been hate at first sight. She guessed by the way the other woman looked at her not much had changed. Someone had to say something. Lucy took a deep breath.
“Hello, Brooke.”
Brooke’s blue eyes went even wider.
“Lucy Flint?” Brooke wheezed in disbelief, her pretty Cupid’s-bow mouth almost disappearing into her face. “Lucy Flint?” A huge breath rattled through Brooke as she struggled for composure.
Lucy took a cautious step back.
Brooke’s eyes narrowed viciously as shock gave way to recall. There was rather a lot to remember. Jason, the weasel, sat top of the list. Aside from that, however, the incident of the sixteenth birthday party had also been rather noteworthy. Brooke had been known to carry a grudge. As far as Lucy knew, Brooke had yet to forgive Ashley for dipping the end of her braid in purple paint in fourth grade. The absconding boyfriend, the ruined sweet sixteen, not to mention some rather creative name-calling could, quite possibly, rate much, much higher on Brooke’s shit parade.
“How are you?” Lucy made it to the cash register and put her milk down. “You certainly look well.”
“You’re back.” Brooke moved between Lucy and the exit.
“Only for a little while.” Lucy kept a sharp eye on the talons at the end of Brooke’s fingers. “I am here to see my mother, help her out a bit, and then it’s back to Seattle for me.”
She paid Mr. Martin, intensely aware of Brooke’s eyes making smoking holes in the back of her coat. “Well,” she burst out. “It was lovely to see you. I hope to see you again before I go.”
“I’m married now,” Brooke announced, and Lucy stopped in midflight.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I’m married.” Brooke tossed her fiery hair back. “I wanted you to know.”
“Congratulations,” Lucy managed past the constriction in her throat.
“And I have two children.” Brooke stuck her chin out. “You aren’t married, are you? And you don’t have any children.”
“No.” Lucy edged a foot closer to the door, cursing herself for the coward she was as she went.
“You have nobody.” A smug smile spread across Brooke’s face.
It was a look Lucy remembered well.
“Well, I have friends.” Lucy stamped on the desire to go into a long, face-saving explanation and swallowed. “Nope. Nobody,” she agreed with a nod.
“Just like you did to me,” Brooke sneered. “But now I have my Christopher and our children and what do you have, Lucy Flint?”
Lucy got her hand on the door and pushed it open. The small bell overhead gave a cheery jingle that did absolutely nothing to lighten the atmosphere.
Even Mr. Martin looked over the top of one of his perpetual word searches to watch the action.
Outside, escape beckoned and Lucy hurried away quickly. Brooke was right up there on her list, number four behind her mother, Richard, and Ashley. She was a yellow-bellied dog, as Mads would say, to be almost running down the street in the opposite direction.
Chapter Seven
“Hi.”
“Hey there”
“Are you sleeping?”
“I was.” Mads chuckled in her Colombia roast voice. A mighty yawn crackled down the phone wires. “So, what’s going on?”
“Nothing much.” Lucy squirmed a little. It was only a slight evasion of the truth.
“Nothing much at seven-thirty in the morning, hmm?”
“Well, it’s nine-thirty here.”
“Quit stalling.”
“Okay.” Lucy took a deep breath and shifted the phone to her other ear. Outside her window, the little blond girl over the road was busy walking a scraggly looking mongrel on the end of one of those expanding leashes. The dog had the leash at full extend and went for broke. “I delivered my first amends.”
“You’re a superstar.” It always sounded so much better in that voice and Lucy preened. “Which one?”
Some of the gilt came off her cookie. “Mr. Martin.”
“The man whose shop you egged?”
“That’s the one. Only, I broke the window as well.”
“How did he take it?”
“He was nice.” Lucy watched the raddled fur ball drag his owner around the corner. “He barely remembered, but he was nice.”
“Good.”
A deep silence followed. Lucy wanted to fill it with inane chatter. Instead she watched the little girl’s vanilla braid disappear out of sight.
“And?” Mads sounded more alert, as if she’d shaken off the last vestiges of sleep and Lucy knew her moment of reprieve was over. “Have you seen him?”
“Uh-huh.” Lucy pulled a face she knew her sponsor would not be able to see, but it made her feel a bit better. “Ah, jeez, Mads, I screwed up so badly.”
“Tell me.”
“I doored him.”
“You what?” Madeline’s voice came fully awake.
“Remember last time we spoke
?”
“Vaguely, I haven’t mainlined my caffeine yet.”
“You and me talking, me cowering in the car, you kicking my butt to get out of the car.”
“Would we call it butt-kicking?”
“We most certainly would. Anyway, butt-kicking worked and I stepped out of the car.”
“Ah.” The fog cleared for Mads. “Horrible screaming coming from person lying in the snow.” Mads went silent for a long moment and Lucy waited for her to do the math. Mads did not disappoint. “Tell me you’re shitting me?”
“I wish I could.”
“What was he doing out there?”
“He was riding his bike.”
“What kind of idiot rides a bike in a snowstorm?”
“That’s what I said.”
“To Richard?”
Lucy debated whether lying to one’s sponsor was really that counterproductive. “Not in so many words,” she managed in a small voice.
From downstairs drifted the faint sounds of her mother rattling around in the kitchen. A quick glance at her watch confirmed it was getting close to second teatime. Carl Flint liked his second tea at ten, which meant his wife would make it so. The familiar tightening of rebellion grabbed onto Lucy’s gut and she took a deep breath.
On the other side of the phone, Mads grew serious again. “Make the amends, Lucy. You have to do this now.”
“I know,” she replied into the building silence. “I will get to it, but this is … harder than I thought it would be.”
“I know, babe.” And the instant understanding wrapped around her like a comfort blanket. “But you can do this.” A warm, loving silence stretched between them. “You have to do this, to move on with your life.”
“I know.” The fight bled out of Lucy and she reached for the small, hovering peace fairy dancing just outside of her grasp. The fairy allowed herself to be caught and Lucy took another, healing breath. “And I will speak to Richard. I was kind of working my way up to him.”
That earned her another one of those dark roast chuckles that made Lucy smile automatically.
“I saw Brooke Taylor as well,” Lucy added.
“Remind me?”
“Sixteenth birthday party, me getting naked and jumping into the pool and everyone following. Brooke in a pretty pink dress crying as her party dissolves into a wet T-shirt competition.”
“Hmm.”
“And I stole her boyfriend.”
“Of course you did.”
“Hey!”
“Hey yourself. Was he worth it?”
“Hell, no.”
And Lucy got another chuckle and this time she joined in. “The only one who was ever really worth it was Richard.”
“I don’t like that tone, girlfriend.”
“What tone?”
Mads ignored her token protest. “You are not there to make things worse or repeat old mistakes.”
“I know that.”
“Good. Now get it done and come home.”
“I will.”
“Soon.”
“Soon,” Lucy lied, crossing her fingers.
“You’re lying,” came that voice. Shit, Mads could be scarier than God sometimes.
“Okay, I’m lying, but only a little bit.” Lucy squirmed again. “And I will get to it.”
“And then come home.”
“Yup.”
Home, Lucy thought as she hung up. Now that was an interesting concept.
He knew it was from her before he even bent to retrieve the parcel on his doorstep. It had been a truly miserable day. The Willow Park jungle drums had worked with their usual, ruthless efficiency.
With few exceptions, almost every one of his patients had been happy to share the glad tidings. Lucy Flint was back in town.
It was a relief to pack up for the day and come home. Until he saw the parcel sitting on his doorstep, right in front of the door and tied up with a big, red bow.
He ignored the uneven thud of his heart as he bent to pick it up. It was a brand new helmet, complete with reflector stripes. With it was a small horn siren. And despite his shitty day and the even shittier fact that Lucy Flint was back, Richard smiled. She always could make him smile. The wave of nostalgia totally broadsided him.
This was how she operated and this was what she did. She ripped his world upside down and inside out and then made him laugh, despite it all. It was those eyes, lurking beneath his awareness all the time, all green and sparkly and peering at him through the veil of her hair. Laughing up at him, drawing him closer, sucking him into her world. Richard shook his head in irritation.
He was a thirty-two-year-old man and not some testosterone-driven boy seized by his first major crush. She was not going to do this to him again, because he wouldn’t allow it. He dropped the gift into the snow by the side of the door. If it was still there in the morning, he would return it with a polite note.
Knowing Lucy, she would be watching, wrapped up in the delight of her little plan. Her eyes crinkling in the corners and her wide mouth split in a goofy grin. He shut his door and removed his coat. Been there, done that and bought the entire shipment of Tshirts.
With a soft curse, he ripped open the door and snatched up the helmet. She’d even gotten the size right. That was Lucy for you. She could drive you absolutely fucking crazy and then turn around and do something so sweet and thoughtful it almost swept the pain away—until the next time.
And of course, his pisser of a day would not be complete without a visit from his mother. And Richard knew from the moment he saw her marching toward the front porch, Donna had heard the news.
“Hello, darling.” She gave him that special smile he’d been getting since she fetched him after his first day of kindergarten. Donna was not a beautiful woman, but it was easy to forget that in the charming symmetry of her neat, delicate features. Her eyes were the same as those he saw in the mirror, the sort of clear, impenetrable blue that was not merely a shade of green in disguise.
Her skin was flawless and her bone structure good, if a little too definite for feminine beauty. But it was her smile that drew people to Donna. It appeared as suddenly as the sun through the clouds and was as welcome. She turned that celestial grin on him now, but Richard wasn’t fooled.
“You’ve heard.” He folded his arms over his chest and planted himself in the middle of the Oriental rug Ashley had insisted would give the entrance hall a “pop” of color. Whatever that meant. Beige was good enough for him; it went with the wood and the walls.
“What, darling?”
“Are we really going to do this tonight?” Richard wasn’t buying the vague thing for a second. Donna was her most penetrating and deadly like this. His mother looked up at him, her smile at half wattage, but just as charming. “I’ve had a living shit of a day, I’m tired and I’m hungry and I don’t feel like playing games.”
“You never did feel like playing games, Richard.” She used the mother voice that took all the starch out of his shorts and made him want to squirm. “Even as a little boy. You were always so serious.” She amped up on the friendly and waved a shopping bag at him. “And I brought dinner with me.”
“What is it?” Richard eyed the bag warily; man enough to know the way to his heart and not too proud to go with it.
“Spaghetti and meatballs.” She had him and her eyes told him so.
“Your spaghetti and meatballs?” He would at least go down swinging.
“Richard Hunter,” she said, taking a menacing step forward. “Have I ever, ever fed you store-bought spaghetti and meatballs?”
“Non, maman, je m’excuse.”
The French got her every time and she melted like a snowball in front of him. Richard could reach out and touch the glory now.
“Verse-moi un verre de vin, espèce d’enfant ingrat.”
Yes, indeed, her ungrateful child would pour her a glass of wine. The prospect of a good feed always made Donna’s boys more malleable.
“So, tell me?” Donna s
ettled on the opposite side of his kitchen table.
More of those “pops” of color in the bright, green flower things on the seats. He didn’t get it. He really hated those cushions, he realized, as he watched Donna get comfortable. He didn’t like flowers and he especially didn’t like flowers that looked like they should be painted on the side of a sixties passion wagon.
Stripes. He dug into his dinner with relish. What he needed in this room was something manly, like stripes. And not in that girly green color either. Blue. Blue stripes. When Ashley came back, he would speak to her about it. Make her see that stripes were a much better option. That settled, he risked looking over the edge of his wineglass at his mother.
Donna looked at him, her eyes unfathomable but full of love, and Richard sighed. Her love wound around him like a spider’s web and he knew she would outpossum him.
He tried for nonchalant. “She’s back.”
Donna, however, had the advantage of having handled him since the day his ass was cracked and she sat perfectly still and waited.
“Aw, jeez, Ma. What do you want me to tell you? Lucy Flint is back.”
“I want you to tell me how you feel, Richard.” Donna took a hefty sip of her wine.
“I am a guy,” he barked at her. “We don’t have feelings. We have urges.”
“Richard, tu me tapes sur les nerf, fais pas le niaiseux et dis-moi ce que tu penses de tous ça.” It all came out in a torrent and he knew he was beat. She was not going to back down and Donna could turn this into the War of 1812 if she chose to.
“All right.” He threw up his hands in disgust. His fork clattered noisily against the side of the bowl. “She’s back and she’s as beautiful as ever. No.” He slashed his hand decisively through the air. “She’s even more beautiful. Leave it to Lucy not to get fat or dumpy looking. She’s smoking hot and just as deadly.”
“And you feel?”
“FREAKED OUT.”
Donna looked at him for a long moment, her face inscrutable. And then she just smiled. His mother did a dumb little Mona Lisa thing with her mouth and went back to eating her dinner.
