Any Man of Mine (Holmes Crossing Book 5)

by Carolyne Aarsen

  "It's only a year," Dan assured me when he laid off the employees, pulled out of the lease on the shop, and filed away the blueprints we had been drawing up for our dream home. We could have lived off my salary while Dan got his feet under him and worked on our relationship away from the outside influences of a mother Dan still called twice a week. But Dan's restless heart wasn't in it. Being a mechanic had never been his dream. Though I'd heard plenty of negative stories about his stepfather, Keith, a wistful yearning for the farm of his youth wove through his complaints. We were torn just like the adage said: "Men mourn for what they lost, women for what they haven't got."

  The final push came when a seemingly insignificant matter caught my attention. The garage's bilingual secretary, Keely. She could talk "mechanic" and "Dan," and the few times I stopped at the garage, she would chat me up in a falsely bright voice while her eyes followed Dan's movements around the shop.

  When her name showed up too often on our call display, I confronted Dan. He admitted he'd been spending time with her. Told me he was lonely. He also told me that he had made a mistake. That he was trying to break things off with her. He was adamant that they'd never been physically intimate. Never even kissed her, he claimed. She was just someone he spent time with.

  I tried not to take on the fault for our slow drift away from each other or the casual treatment of our relationship as kids and work and trying to put money aside for our future slowly sunk its demanding claws into our lives, slowly pulling us in separate directions.

  I also reminded him that I had remained faithful, taking the righteous high road. Dan was chastened, Keely quit, and her name never came up again. But her shadowy presence still hovered between us, making Dan contrite, and me wary.

  Now, with each stop that brought us closer to the farm and Holmes Crossing and the possibility of repairing our broken relationship, I'd seen Dan's smile grow deeper, softer. The lines edging his mouth smoothed away, the nervous tic in the corner of one eye disappeared.

  Mine grew worse.

  A soft sigh pulled my eyes toward the back seat. Anneke still lay slack jawed, her blanket curled around her fist. Nicholas stirred again, a deep V digging into his brow, his bottom lip pushed out in a glistening pout. Nicholas was a pretty child, but his transition from sleep to waking was an ugly battle he fought with intense tenacity.

  I had only minutes before the troops were fully engaged.

  My previous reluctance to arrive at the farm now morphed into desperation for survival. I stomped on the gas pedal, swung around the two horse trailers, and bulleted down the hill into the valley toward my home for the next year.

  My cell phone trilled. I grabbed it off the dashboard, glancing sidelong at Nicholas as I did.

  "What's up?" Dan's tinny voice demanded. "What's your rush?"

  "The boy is waking up," I whispered, gauging how long I had before his angry wails filled the car.

  "Just let him cry."

  I didn't mean to sigh. Truly I didn't. But it zipped past my pressed-together lips. In that too-deep-for-words escape of my breath, Dan heard an entire conversation.

  "Honestly, Leslie, you've got to learn to ignore--"

  Dear Lord, forgive me. I hung up. And then I turned my phone off.

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  Chapter One

  By the time I left British Columbia, I'd stopped looking over my shoulder. When I started heading up the QUE2, my heart quit jumping every time I heard a diesel pickup snarling up the highway behind me.

  I was no detective, but near as I could tell, Eric didn't know where I was.

  Four days ago, I'd waited until I knew without a doubt that he was at work before packing the new cell phone I had bought and the cash I had slowly accumulated. I slipped out of the condo we shared, withdrew the maximum amount I could out of our joint account, rode the city bus as far as it would take me, and started hitchhiking. Phase one of my master plan could be summed up in three words: Get outta town.

  Okay, four words if you want to be precise about it.

  Now, as I stood on the crest of a hill overlooking a large, open valley, I was on the cusp of phase two. Again, three words: Connect with Leslie.

  I let the backpack slip off my shoulders onto the brown grass in the ditch and sank down beside it in an effort to rest my aching feet and still my fluttering nerves. I was leery of the reception I would get from my sister and not looking forward to what she might have to say. Since August, nine months ago, I'd tapped out two long, rambling e-mails telling her what was happening in my life and laying out endless lists of reasons and excuses. But each time I read the mess of my life laid out in black and white on a backlit screen, guilt and shame kept me from hitting the Send button.

  I knew she had a cell phone, and I knew the number, but a text message couldn't begin to cover either apologies or explanations.

  So I was showing up after nine months of nothing hoping for a positive reception.

  But at the same time my heart felt like a block of ice under my sternum, the chill that radiated out of it competing with the heat pouring down from above.

  The click of grasshoppers laid a gentle counterpoint to the sigh that I sucked deep into my chest. I slowly released my breath, searching for calm, reaching into a quiet place as my yoga instructor had been yammering at me to do.

  I reached down, tried to picture myself mentally going deeper, deeper.

  C'mon. C'mon. Find the quiet place. Anytime now.

  The screech of a bird distracted me. Above, in the endless, cloudless sky, a hawk circled lazily, tucked its wings in, and swooped down across the field. With a few heavy beats, it lifted off again, a mouse hanging from its talons.

  So much for inner peace. I guess there was a reason I dropped out of yoga class. That and the fact that my friend Amy and I kept chuckling over the intensity of the instructor as she droned on about kleshas and finding the state of non-ego.

  The clothes were fun though.

  I dug into my backpack and pulled out my "visiting boots," remembering too well how I got them. Eric's remorse over yet another fight that got out of control. On his part, that is. He had come along, urging me to pick out whatever I wanted. I had thought spending over a thousand dollars could erase the pain in my arm, the throbbing in my cheek. But those few hours of shopping had only given me a brief taste of power over him. His abject apologies made me feel, for a few moments, superior. Like I was in charge of the situation and in charge of the emotions that swirled around our apartment. That feeling usually lasted about two months.

  Until he hit me again.

  I sighed as I stroked the leather of the boot. For now, the boots would give me that all important self-esteem edge I desperately needed to face Leslie.

  As I toed off my worn Skechers and slipped on the boots, I did some reconnoitering before my final leg of the journey.

  Beyond the bend and in the valley below me, the town of Holmes Crossing waited, secure in the bowl cut by the Athabasca River. For the past three days, I'd been hitching rides from Vancouver, headed toward this place, the place my sister now called home. In a few miles, I'd be there.

  I lifted my hair off the back of my neck. Surely it was too hot for May. I didn't expect Alberta, home of mountains and rivers, to be this warm in spring.

  In spite of the chill in my chest, my head felt like someone had been drizzling hot oil on it, basting the second thoughts scurrying through my brain.

  I should have at least phoned. Texted.

  But I'd gone quiet, diving down into my life, staying low. I wasn't sure she'd want to see me after such a long radio silence. I knew Dan wouldn't be thrilled to see me come striding to his door, designer boots or not. Dan, who in his better moments laughed at my lame jokes, and in his worse ones fretted like a father with a teenage daughter about the negative influence he thought I exerted on my little sister. His wife.

  Leslie had sent me e-mails about my litt
le nephew Nicholas's stay in ICU and subsequent fight for his life, pleading with me to call to connect. I knew I had messed up royally as an aunt and a sister by note being there. Not being available.

  And I'd wanted to be there more than anything in the world. But at the time, I’d been holding onto my life by my raw fingertips and had no strength for anyone else.

  You had your own problems. You didn't have time.

  But I should have been there for my only sister. I could have tried harder.

  The second thoughts were overrun by third thoughts, the mental traffic jam bruising my ego.

  I pulled a hairbrush out of my knapsack. Bad enough I was showing up unannounced. I didn't need to look like a hobo. As I worked the brush through the snarl of sweat-dampened curls, I promised myself that someday I was getting my hair cut. I stuffed my brush back into my backpack and brushed the grass off my artfully faded blue jeans, thankful they were still clean. Zipping up my knapsack, I let out one more sigh before I heard the sound of a car coming up over the hill. My low spirits lifted as I turned to see who might rescue me from walking on these stilettos all the way to town.

  They did a swan dive all the way down to the heels of my designer boots.

  A cop car, bristling with antennas and boasting a no-nonsense light bar across the top, was slowing down as it came alongside me.

  Did Eric sic the Mounties on me?

  I teetered a bit, wishing I were a praying person. Because if I believed that God cared even one iota about my personal well-being, I'd be reciting the Lord's Prayer, Hail Mary--anything to get His ear right now.

  My nerves settled somewhat when I saw two young girls huddled in the backseat of the cruiser. They didn't look older than seven or eight. What could they have possibly done to warrant the heavy artillery of a police car and two officers?

  And what would the cops want with me?

  ……….

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  My life had come full circle.

  Abandoned child. Check.

  Uncertain guardianship of said child. Check.

  Only this time I wasn't the one crying upstairs, cast off yet again by my biological mother, rejecting hugs offered by a loving foster parent.

  The time it was my niece who lay prostrate, staring sightlessly at her bedroom wall, so quiet it seemed she was afraid to draw even the smallest bit of attention to herself.

  Earlier in the evening, I had sat beside her until she fell into a trouble sleep, my hand curled around hers, my heart breaking for so many reasons. I wanted to stay there, at her side, all night. To drink in features I had imagined so many times. To be there for her if she woke up, crying.

  But I had other issues I couldn’t put off, and she was finally asleep. So I reluctantly drew myself from her side, and returned downstairs to find a small blaze crackling in the living room’s corner fireplace. The heat warmed the house but did little to melt the chill in my bones. It had settled there, deep and aching, as I watched her parents’ coffins being lowered into the icy ground.

  Duncan Tiemstra, Celia's uncle, hovered by the fire as if attempting to absorb all of its warmth, one arm resting on the mantle, looking at a picture he held in his other hand. He had aged since that first time I met him at Jer and Francine’s wedding. Then he looked young. Fresh. Ready to face life.

  Now he looked like a grieving Visigoth, with his blond hair brushing the collar of his shirt and framing a square-jawed face. The hint of stubble shadowing his jaw made him look harder and unapproachable. And in spite of the years that had fallen between our last meeting and this one, in spite of the circumstances under which we were meeting—the death of his sister Francine and the death of my foster-brother Jer’s re-ignited that old tingle of attraction.

  However when we met at the funeral all I received was a taciturn hello. No memory of the previous attraction we had shared eight years ago.

  My heart folded at the contrast from then to now.

  Then we were dancing on the edges of attraction, flirting with possibilities. I was twenty-two, my life ahead of me. He was twenty-seven, looking to settle down.

  Now, we were separated by years and events that had pushed us apart, yet connected by the little girl that lay upstairs.

  "Is she sleeping?" Duncan asked setting the picture he had been holding on the mantle.

  "Yes. Finally." I plumped a throw pillow and set it on the large recliner I guessed had belonged to my brother. I folded an afghan that had fallen onto the floor and laid it on the matching leather couch.

  "Poor kid. She must be exhausted." He dragged his hand over his face and heaved out a sigh. "I know I am." Then he glanced my way, his eyes holding mine. "How about you, Miriam? How are you holding up?"

  His concern touched me, but I sensed he was merely being polite.

  "I'm tired. There were a lot of people here," I said, pushing a loveseat to face the fire, resisting the urge to gather the few coffee cups remaining on the low table, traces of the mourners that had filled the house only moments before. "I didn't think Jer and Fran got to know that many people in the few months they lived here."

  "That's Holmes Crossing," Duncan said, stifling a yawn as he shoved his hands in the pockets of his crisp blue jeans. "Everyone knows everyone, and we all show up at each other's funerals." He moved closer to a second love seat flanking the fireplace. "You going to keep fussing, or are you going to sit down? We need to talk."

  His words were ominous. I knew exactly what he wanted to discuss and it wasn’t our previous relationship. This conversation had been lingering on the edges of my grief ever since the lawyer had called me to let me know that while my brother had named Duncan as Celia's guardian in his will, in a strange and unexpected complication, Duncan's sister had named me.

  I lowered myself to the couch across from him, folding my ice-cold hands together, trying to still my wavering emotions.

  "It was a nice service," I ventured, not ready to delve into the convoluted guardianship issue. And for sure not ready to make a trip down memory lane.

  "Nice." He almost snorted the word as he leaned back on the couch. "I don't know how a double funeral could possibly be considered nice."

  I understood his anger. When I got the news of my brother’s death, I was in the cramped little apartment I shared with my friend, Christine. Alone.

  I remember clutching the phone in both hands as my world spun, yet again, out of control sinking to the floor, trying to make sense of what Duncan was telling me. All I heard were the words accident, snowmobiling and mountains.

  My first thoughts were of their daughter Celia, and what would happen to her. Behind that came an unreasonable fury that Jer and Fran would be so stupid and reckless.

  Then came the waves of grief, and everything after that was a haze.

  "You're right," I murmured. "Nice is a lame word. But I did appreciate the message."

  "How the dark threads of our lives give contrast to the others?" He released a harsh laugh.

  I let the rhetorical question lay. I'd had enough dark weavings in my own life that kept me tossing and turning with regret in the lonely hours of the night. Losing my foster mother—Jer's mother—six years ago, had added yet another dark thread. She had been the only solid anchor in my life.

  And now Jer was gone as well.

  "So, how do you see this happening? This guardianship thing?" Duncan stretched out his long legs, crossing his muscled arms over his chest.

  My feet and head both ached, pounding with the beat of my grieving heart. I wanted nothing more than to drag myself upstairs and slip into bed beside Celia. Pull the covers over our heads, and give in to the grief that held me in a relentless grip.

  Not to be reminded of the one thing I wanted more than anything else but couldn’t allow myself to.

  Take care of Celia.

  "I don't know," I said.

  "The estate isn't settled yet,
either," Duncan said. "I'm worried about what will be left for her."

  I was too. The house we were in now was huge. I wasn't sure how my brother had afforded it on his income as an electrician. Phil, the lawyer for the estate, had hinted that there were a few insurance and estate issues to be dealt with, and not to make any hasty decisions.

  "For now, until all the legalities are done, I feel I should stay here at the house with Celia," I said. "I want to make sure everything is settled in her life before…"

  I stopped, realizing I was jumping ahead of the scattered plans I had made on the flight here.

  "Before what?" Duncan asked, his voice curt.

  I looked up at him, trying to hold his narrowed gaze, reminding myself that his anger wasn't directed at me. At least, I hoped it wasn't.

  "Actually, to be honest I haven't thought beyond getting to bed tonight and trying to figure out what to do tomorrow morning."

  My throat thickened at the thought of Celia living the rest of her life without her parents. However, years of suppressing my own emotions for the sake of peace, for the sake of the greater good, kicked in. Lessons learned the hard way through the dark and rocky paths my life had taken. I tried a different tack.

  "Do you know why they each made separate wills? Why they named different guardians?" Or why Francine thought that I, with my itinerant lifestyle and too many scars from the past, would be a suitable guardian?

  The slow shaking of his head was his only answer.

  "I thought maybe, because you lived close to them, you might know their reasons…" my voice trailed away, and I pulled in a deep breath.

  "They'd only been here a couple of months, and I hadn't spent a lot of time with them." He sighed again, tunneling his fingers through his thick and unruly hair. He looked over at me and for a moment his gaze softened, and I caught the faintest glimpse of the old attraction. But this wasn't the time or place and we both had other priorities.

  "Jer had always said they'd agreed to make your parents Celia's guardians," I said. Though part of me had struggled with his reasoning, I knew I wasn't guardian material.