This Reminds Me of Us

by Julia Gabriel

  Matt dragged the coffee table over and set three of the pizza boxes atop it, while Jack dealt cards. It took awhile but after a few rounds, the guys paused for bathroom breaks and to re-up on the refreshments. It was in Matt’s kitchen that Oliver found himself alone with Sean.

  And he didn’t even have to make the first move.

  “How’s Serena doing?” Sean asked.

  “Good. She’s doing good. Thinking about going back to school.” Now that he was face to face with the man, Oliver had no idea how to broach the subject of Ben.

  “Oh yeah? What for?” Sean lifted the lid of a pizza box. “Oh good. Sausage.”

  “Teaching certification at Talbot College.”

  “Hey, that’s great. I mean, obviously I’m biased here.” Sean put two slices of sausage pizza on a plate. “You know, now that I think of it, I believe she shadowed a few teachers at the high school last year.”

  Now this was news to Oliver, and not at all what he’d been expecting. “Which teacher?”

  Sean bit off the point of one slice, a thoughtful expression on his face. “I don’t know,” he said after a moment. “It was awhile ago. Last winter or spring? Some time around there.”

  “You guys ready out there?” Matt called over.

  “Yeah, we’re coming.” Oliver followed Sean back to the poker table. He really didn’t need to ask which teacher Serena had shadowed. Of course, it was Ben. At some point, a series of coincidences becomes a pattern.

  He slumped into his chair and picked up the cards Jack had dealt. He was hard-pressed to picture Serena as a high school teacher, though. Elementary school, sure. Maybe even middle school. But there was no way she had ever seriously considered teaching high school kids. They’d eat her alive. “Shadowing” had clearly been just another excuse to spend time with Ben Wardman.

  Chapter 29

  Serena felt the other side of the mattress depress. She opened one eye to squint at the alarm clock on the nightstand. Five o’clock. She wondered why Oliver had bothered driving home from the party. Surely he could have crashed at Matt’s place?

  Not that she minded. She rolled over and snuggled up against his back. The faint scent of smoke on his skin and in his hair explained it all. She could always smell a fire on him, even though he showered at the station afterward.

  “Hey,” she said quietly.

  “Mutual aid call,” he mumbled.

  So much for Jack’s bachelor party. “Did you get any poker in?”

  “A little. I need to sleep for an hour or two before church.”

  She felt his shoulders sag as he fell asleep, and rolled onto her back. She was wide awake now. Well, at least I don’t have to worry about my husband and his brothers out at some strip club, getting lap dances and tucking money into g-strings.

  After ten minutes of staring at the ceiling, Serena rolled out of bed and put on her robe. She might as well get a head start on Easter morning and fill the boys’ baskets with their chocolate bunnies and jelly beans.

  Eight hours later, the boys were trading candy in their bedroom while Serena and Oliver stood outside on the porch, saying goodbye to her parents. Finally. They had gone to church, followed by Serena’s ham dinner. But now … finally!

  Oliver shook Peter Irving III’s hand, then kissed Georgia Irving on her dry, powdered cheek. He watched them slowly walk to the rental car. A Jaguar! Good grief! He was so tired he could barely muster the energy to be annoyed—or even to be relieved at their departure. Last night’s call had been a fire at a chicken processing plant. The building had sprinklers, but not all of them were operational, apparently. As usual, the cost of prevention was less than the cost of a fire.

  That sounds rather ... unpleasant.

  Yeah, it was. Oliver hoped never to go on a call like that again. He hated calls where animals were involved, even chickens that were destined for the fryer anyway. People were generally easier to get out of a burning building.

  The Jaguar pulled away from the curb, with his mother-in-law at the wheel. Simultaneously he and Serena let out long exhales.

  “Well, it was a good visit,” she said, “but I’m glad they’re gone.”

  Me, too. Not that Oliver was going to say that, even though Serena just had.

  “You didn’t tell me you shadowed Ben at the high school last year.”

  But you’ll say that?

  Serena looked at him long and hard before replying. “I don’t know who I shadowed. I don’t remember shadowing anybody, as a matter of fact. Ashley told me I did, and I believe her. Who told you it was Ben?”

  “No one. I’m just putting the pieces together.”

  “Well, when you get done with that, let me know. I’d be interested in learning how the story ends.” With that, she turned on her heel and went inside.

  Chapter 30

  “Mom, am I going to get any shots today?” Cam’s voice was laced with concern, bordering on terror.

  Serena glanced up at the rearview mirror, where she could see her youngest son’s worried face.

  “I don’t know, sweetheart. We’ll have to find out when we get there.”

  She trained her attention back on the street ahead. The doctor had officially cleared her for driving last week, and not a minute too soon. In another month and a half, the boys would be out of school for the summer and clamoring to go to Secret Beach. And Ashley’s time was getting scarce as the Inn’s wedding season geared up. Jack and Becca’s wedding next week was the season opener.

  “I got a shot last year,” Mason chimed in from the back seat of the minivan. “It hurt like a mother.”

  “Mason Wolfe! Where did you hear that word?”

  “I dunno,” he mumbled.

  He did not get that one from me.

  “Dad says it,” Cam allowed, grudgingly.

  Even without seeing it, Serena could sense the death stare Mason was giving his little brother right now. “Well, it is not appropriate language. I hope you’re not saying that at school.”

  “The older kids say it at recess,” Cam helpfully added.

  “Well, you two are not going to use that kind of language. Understood? The kind of language dad uses at the station is not appropriate for other places.”

  “Chill, mom,” she heard Mason mutter under his breath.

  At the stoplight, she glanced at the rearview mirror again—just in time to see Cam mouth to his older brother, “you’re going to get us in trouble.”

  She let it go. She did need to chill. The last thing she wanted was for the boys to pick up on her stress levels—or the tension between their parents. Hiding it was getting harder and harder. So far, they’d been able to keep the loud arguments to times when the boys were at school. But it was hard to bite her tongue the rest of the time, when it felt like Oliver could barely stand to be around her.

  She pulled the minivan into the parking lot behind Dr. Trevor’s pediatrics practice. Mason was not happy about having to tag along to his brother’s annual well child visit, but Oliver was at the station. Besides, as she had pointed out, Cam always had to tag along on Mason’s appointments.

  Inside, Mason set himself up at the wooden train set in the waiting room, suddenly not so aggravated at having to be there. But not so magnanimous as to let his little brother follow the nurse into the back without a parting, “fingers crossed you don’t have to get a shot!”

  Cam whimpered softly. Serena filled her lungs with a deep breath of calm. She couldn’t imagine how Angie had managed with three boys.

  An infant mewled in one of the other exam rooms. I was pregnant last year at this time.

  You might have had a third boy.

  A girl would have been nice.

  “Hey there, Cam.” The nurse stopped at the scale. “Step on up here and let’s get your height and weight.”

  Cam stepped up, the nurse typed in some numbers on her tablet, and turned to Serena. “Ninetieth percentile.” Cam stepped off the scale. “You’re going to be a tall one,” the nurse
said.

  Cam dutifully followed the nurse into the outer space-themed exam room and hopped up onto the exam table, the white paper crinkling beneath him. The nurse took his blood pressure and pulse, while Serena watched from a chair against the wall. The nurse input those numbers into the tablet too, then said, “the doctor will be with you in a minute.”

  “I forgot to ask her whether I’m getting a shot,” Cam said when she was gone.

  “They don’t hurt that much, do they?”

  Right then, a piercing wail sounded from another exam room.

  “They might?” he said. “I don’t remember.”

  “Well, if they hurt a lot you’d probably remember. Don’t you think?”

  Cam’s expression said he wasn’t convinced. “Do you remember the last time you had a shot?”

  Serena thought for a moment. She could lie and say, “yes.” After all, she vaguely remembered a few childhood vaccinations. But anything more recent? Um, nope.

  “Mason says you can’t remember stuff.”

  “He does? Who told him that?”

  Cam pressed his lips together, protecting his sources.

  “I hurt my head in the car accident, Cammy. So yes … it’s like there are some blank spots in my brain.”

  Who told him? She contemplated the short list of suspects. Mattie. Jack. Oliver. Her ire began to rise at the thought that it might have been Oliver.

  “I get that in word study sometimes.” Cam said, nodding. “Like I know the word but I just can’t say it.”

  “That happens to everybody, sweetie. It’s normal.”

  “So what other things can’t you remember?”

  Speaking of blank spots. What could she tell him that was innocent enough? She quickly wracked her brain while Cam watched her, guilelessly expecting an answer.

  The door swung open.

  “Hello there, Wolves.” Dr. Trevor in his white coat and stethoscope strode into the room, a much bigger presence than the nurse had been. Like the nurse, he too carried a tablet. “Who do we have here? Cam?”

  Saved by the bell.

  “Am I getting a shot today?” Cam cut to the chase.

  Dr. Trevor scanned his tablet. “Nope. Looks like you’re good.”

  Serena saw the tension release from her son’s shoulders. Quietly, she watched as the doctor went through Cam’s exam, finally pronouncing him “fit as a fiddle.”

  “But you still need to eat more veggies, okay?” Dr. Trevor added. Then he turned to face Serena, “My wife says she hasn’t seen you in the shop lately.”

  She shrugged. “My parents were in town the week of Easter.”

  He smiled. “You know, you don’t have to be as crazy about quilting as the women in my family are.”

  “No, no. I enjoyed the class I took with Becca. It’s just—” It’s just that my marriage is falling apart and I don’t know what to do about it. Ollie was dead set on the idea that she’d had an affair with Ben Wardman. She couldn’t remember doing so. But she also couldn’t really remember not doing it, either.

  She went back and forth on this every day. No, more like every hour. It was hard to imagine wanting to cheat on Ollie. She loved Ollie. She had given up a lot because of that love—a chance at a lucrative career, a life of financial ease, kids who would start their lives with the same advantages she and her brother had enjoyed.

  Love isn’t enough. Those were her parents’ words when she told them she was marrying a small town firefighter. It wasn’t love that had sustained her parents’ marriage, that was for sure. It was her mother’s willingness to suck it up, to ignore her husband’s bad behavior in exchange for a secure, comfortable lifestyle.

  Serena was trying to suck it up and wait Ollie out on this, wait until he came to his senses. But so far, there was no sign of his senses on the horizon—and that worried her. Oliver Wolfe was a sensible man. As sensible as they came. Maybe she was more like her mother than she wanted to admit—insensible.

  Dr. Trevor held up his hands, warding off the rest of her sentence. “It’s okay. Quilting’s not for everyone. How’s Oliver these days?”

  Dr. Trevor’s words jolted her back to the present.

  “He’s good,” she answered.

  “He’s grumpy,” Cam chimed in.

  “Cam!” She gave her son a sharp look.

  “Well, he is.”

  “Sorry,” she apologized to Dr. Trevor.

  “Cam, why don’t you go check on your brother in the waiting room? I need to talk to your mom for a minute.”

  Cam bolted from the room, as if Dr. Trevor might change his mind on the shot if he hung around long enough. When he was gone, Dr. Trevor said, “Oliver was my patient when he was younger, like all three of the Wolfe boys. Of the three of them, Oliver was always wound tight the most.” He grinned. “I’m sure that’s not news to you.”

  “Not really, no.”

  “There’s a psychologist who’s become a customer of Michelle’s shop, and who is helping Becca and Jack prepare for Jackie’s move to St. Caroline. And helping Jackie, too. There are a lot of things to unpack in that situation. But she’s around quite a bit, so if Oliver wants to speak to her, we can arrange it.”

  Serena considered the idea. Oliver would probably benefit from a session or two with a therapist. He probably also would never consent to the idea.

  “I’ll let him know.”

  “Grief is an unpredictable thing,” Dr. Trevor went on. “What looks like grief in one person can be ‘totally holding it together’ in another. I don’t think Michelle has yet to fully grieve her sister’s death and that was over twenty years ago. When Penny died, we rushed out to Ohio to get Becca out of foster care. We had two toddlers at home already and went on to have two more after Becca. Then when the girls got a little older, Michelle opened the quilt shop …” He took a deep breath. “It’s going to slam into her one day like a hurricane.”

  “I suspect Oliver didn’t really have time to grieve for Angie last year, what with taking care of the boys and all.” In fact, knowing Ollie as she did, she was one hundred percent certain he hadn’t. Her husband prided himself on order and control.

  “Well, you can’t really force someone into it. But seriously, let us know if he’d like to meet with the psychologist.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind.”

  Oliver watched as St. Caroline’s town planner drove off in his grey pickup. Now he was alone with one Mr. Finn Brody, a partner in a Washington, DC construction firm. Mr. Brody was also an architect, and so far the favorite for designing and building the new fire station. Oliver had lobbied hard to be the person managing this project on the fire department’s end, even though his only relevant qualification was that he was a firefighter. On the other hand, no one else in the department—save his father—was any better qualified.

  Oliver had his reasons for putting this project on his plate. He wanted to be able to drive past the site with the boys and point out what daddy was doing. He wanted the boys to drive past the new station with their own children someday and point out that their grandfather was responsible for building that station.

  He wanted a reason to spend more time at work.

  And he wanted to show up Ben Wardman.

  You’re trying to show up a dead man?

  So maybe Oliver didn’t have a college degree. So maybe he spent a lot of time washing fire trucks. Maybe he worked with his hands.

  Maybe?

  Okay, no maybes about it. But he wasn’t just a pretty face and a good body.

  Modest maybe, too.

  He had a brain, too.

  You’re starting to sound like the Scarecrow.

  He ignored the voice in his head. Finn Brody was walking the site, taking pictures and making notes on a yellow legal pad. Every so often, he would stop and stare hard at … something. Oliver wasn’t sure what.

  The site was just a flat field right now, covered in scrubby grass and goose droppings. They’d had a good meeting back at the station.
The town planner explained the town’s architectural guidelines. Because the new station would sit on the eastern edge of town, close to the large estates on the water and where most of the new residential construction was taking place, the town wanted it to fit in. No boxy brick building like the main fire station, built in the sixties.

  “So a fire station that looks like George Washington built it.” Fortunately, Finn Brody had grasped right away what the town needed.

  At the moment, Brody was headed Oliver’s way, tucking his pen into an interior pocket in his leather jacket. The man didn’t look the way Oliver had pictured an architect looking. He was expecting someone skinny, nerdy-looking, with glasses and smooth hands. Finn Brody looked more like a construction worker—or someone who was a gym rat. Oliver was no slouch in the muscles department, but this guy made him look like a hundred-pound weakling.

  Wonder what he bench presses. Not that it mattered. The guy wasn’t going to be physically pouring the foundation.

  “Nice piece of land you got here,” Brody remarked as he stopped next to Oliver. “Town’s really growing, huh?”

  Oliver was getting a military vibe from Brody, too, and he wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was just the really short hair. He was a good looking guy. Piercing blue eyes. His face and hands were the color of brown sugar. Mixed race, possibly.

  “You’ve been here before?” Oliver asked.

  “Yeah, once. End of last year. For a funeral, sadly.”

  “Oh? Whose funeral?”

  “Ben Wardman. You know him?”

  Seriously? Oliver was starting to feel like Ben Wardman was following him around. Not to mention, if he gave Finn Brody’s company the contract to build the new fire station, now he was going to be reminded of Ben every time he saw this guy.

  “Not really. My wife is good friends with his wife, though.”

  “Oh yeah? Ashley?”

  Oliver nodded. Brody knew the name of Ben’s wife. So clearly they were more than just passing acquaintances. Oliver didn’t want to delve into that. Better if I just don’t know.