33 The Return of Bowie Bravo (5 page)

He carried Sera over to her. “She was fussing.…”

“Here.” Glory held out her arms. With care, he passed the baby to her. She started unbuttoning her pajama top.

Bowie took that as his cue to go to the bay window and looked out at the dark street in front. In the light of a streetlamp, he stared at a tangle of snow-covered blackberry vines on the far side, at the edge where the shoulder dropped off into the river gorge below. When he was a kid, during the long summer days, he used to pick the blackberries that grew on those vines. They were always small and covered with dust.

After a minute or two, he figured she’d had enough time to fiddle with her top and put the baby to her breast, so he turned to her again and found her watching him. He stuck his hands in his pockets. “So how are you feeling?”

“Like somebody ran me over with an eighteen-wheeler.” She smoothed Sera’s blanket, touched her round cheek with a brush of a finger. Then she glanced up at Bowie again. Her soft look turned instantly wary and her wide, full mouth drew tight. “Got something on your mind?”

He went for it. “That barn out back?”

“What about it?”

“I looked in. On the workshop side, there’s a cot and a woodstove. I’d like to stay there, while I’m in town.”

She raked her fingers back through her hair. “If you’re staying for a while, can’t you just go to your mom’s?”

“I need a place to work.”

“What do you mean work?”

“I’m a carpenter. I need a workshop.”

“You want to build furniture out in the barn?”

“That’s right.”

“I’m sorry. This is a lot to take in. And I have to ask…”

“What?”

“Well, just like that, you can leave your job and move in here?”

“I have my own company, okay? I’ve arranged it so I can be away for a while.”

“Your own furniture company? In Santa Cruz?”

“Yeah, more or less.”

She made a scoffing sound. “Which is it? More? Or less?”

“Look, it’s a long story and we probably don’t need to go into it now.”

“Oh, well, I hear that.”

He gave her a long, slow look. And when he spoke, he kept his voice even. “Six months after I left town, I hit rock bottom.”

“But you
weren’t
drinking when you left town,” she reminded him angrily. “You’d been sober for over a month.”

“Well, I started again after I left. That’s how it goes with alcoholics. It takes only one drink and I had that drink. And the next one. And the one after that. The day before my life finally started to change, I ended up drunk on my ass at this weird party up in the Santa Cruz Mountains and—”

“What does some party in Santa Cruz have to do with your owning a business?” she grumbled.

He refused to lose his cool. “If you’ll wait until I finish talking, you’ll know.”

“Fine. All right. I’m waiting.…”

He drew in a slow breath and continued, “The party ended. I kept drinking. Eventually I passed out on this dirt road, still up in the mountains. Don’t know how I got on that road or when I just fell down and didn’t get up. But that was when I got the help I badly needed. It was on that road that the guy who changed my life found me. His name was Wily Dunn.”

“He found you passed out in the middle of the road?”

“That’s about the size of it. He took me home, helped me to quit drinking and get back on my feet. In time, he let me work for him. I learned fast. Turned out I had a knack for working with wood.”

“So you’re saying
you
work for
him.
”

“I did. Until last November. He died. And he left his company, Dunn Woodworkers, to me—he left everything to me.” He waited for her to say something to that. She only glared. So he prompted, “Does that explain it clearly enough for you?” Her answer was a surly little shrug. But he refused to give up. “So while I’m here, I’d like to use your workshop if you’ll let me. But the main thing is that it would be better, as far as getting to know Johnny, if I lived closer than I would be if I stayed at the Sierra Star.”

She spoke then. Finally. “You really think you need to be closer than down the street?”

“I want to be…around. So he sees me all the time.”

“You can be around and stay down the street.”

“It’s not the same. If I’m staying here, he’ll see me several times a day. And I won’t have to knock on the front door just to talk to him. I’ll be in and out of the house.”

She closed her eyes, let out a heavy sigh and then forced herself to look at him again. “You mean you want to eat with us.”

“If that’s okay, yeah. And I can wash up and shave mostly at the trough by the side of the barn.”

“Oh, come on, get real. I shut off the outside faucets before the first hard freeze. At the very least, you’ll need hot water and a toilet.”

“Yeah, well. I can use the downstairs bathroom. It’s near the back door, so I won’t have to be trooping through your house. And it’s got a shower.”

“So you’ll need to be in the house several times a day—to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner
and
every time you need the use of a bathroom.”

“Glory, come on. I’ll stay out of your way as much as possible. And I could…help out around the house, clean up the yard if it needs it, fix whatever’s broken. And fill in at the hardware store, too, if you need someone there while you’re recovering. I know it’s a lot to ask.…”

“It’s more than a lot, Bowie. It’s too much to ask. Basically, you want to stay here, at my house, for an indefinite period of time. Just admit it.”

He did want to stay there, yeah. And he didn’t know yet for how long. Coaxingly, he tried again. “Look at it this way, the more time I can spend with Johnny day by day, the less time it will take overall.”

“The less time it will take for what?”

“To get to know him. To…work things out with him. To make him see that I’m here now, in his life. That I won’t go away again.”

She scanned his face as though determined to ferret out darker motives. “Get straight with me, Bowie.”

“I am being straight with you.”

“Hah. What are you planning, really?”

“I just told you.”

“I will tell you right now that if you think you can take him from me, you are very much mistaken.”

That was too much. “Stop it.” He spoke with more heat than he’d allowed himself up until then. “That is not what I’m here for.”

“You just said—”

“I meant that I won’t…disappear again, that I’ll be available for him whenever he needs me.”

She made a scoffing sound. “You’re ready for that? Really? To stick with him, to be a part of his life, no matter how rough it gets?”

“I am. Yes.”

“If you…make him love you. And then you leave him…” A sheen of tears made her brown eyes glitter. She looked away.

He felt like a complete jerk, which, if you came right down to it, he had been for a lot of his life. He waited until she faced him again before he vowed, “I won’t do that, Glory. I won’t desert him again. Not ever. No matter what.”

Her mouth was quivering. Sera fussed at her breast. “Turn away,” she commanded in a torn whisper.

He went back to the window. Sera let out more fussy little sounds and he heard the box springs shift.

“All right,” Glory said. He turned and took a few steps toward the bed. She had Sera at her other breast now. And the tears were gone from her big brown eyes. She tipped her head to the side, gave him another slow once-over. Finally, she spoke. “There couldn’t be any drinking, do you understand?”

Relief poured through him, sweet and cool as water from a mountain spring. She was going to go for it, going to let him stay. “There won’t be,” he promised solemnly.

“And no fighting.”

“Never. I’m done with all that crap. I give you my word.”

She glared at him, those dark eyes flashing fire. And suddenly, he was remembering their first time together. In his room in the attic at the Sierra Star.

She’d been working as a maid for his mom, living in a room downstairs.…

And she had chased him, from the first day she started working at the B and B. She’d flashed those famous Dellazola dimples at him every time he looked her way and she always found reasons to stop working and visit with him every chance she got.

He’d tried to do the right thing, although the right thing was never his strong suit. For months, he’d avoided her. She was only nineteen and he was five years older, too old for her, he’d thought. Especially given that he drank too much and he got in fights, that every job he’d ever had, he’d managed to get himself fired from.

And then, well, he’d known her practically since she was born, watched her grow from a skinny, loud, bossy little kid. She was the baby of her family and she’d learned early that when you were a Dellazola, you had to make a lot of noise if you hoped to get your share of the attention. He’d always thought she was cute, but still, it seemed wrong to give her what she wanted from him.

Once she started at the B and B and he was around her a lot more, he couldn’t help but finally see her as a woman, see how fine she was, gutsy and smart and full of fire. He’d felt the attraction definitely. But he’d promised himself he wouldn’t give in to it.

Now, there was a promise he was born to break.

Finally, she came to his room on a cool spring night, all dressed for bed in a little white nightie. She’d tapped on his door and slipped inside before he even had a chance to tell her to go away.

And then she stood in front of the lamp. She knew exactly what she was doing. He could see right through that little nightie of hers and what he saw made him groan out loud.

He said no. Twice.

But as soon as she threw herself into his arms, he was a goner. She smelled like rain and apples, all fresh and sweet and clean. And her mouth was under his, those soft, wide lips opening to invite his tongue inside.…

She stayed with him until just before dawn, when she tiptoed back down the stairs to her own room. After that, she came to him every night. He was the happiest man alive. He even gave up the drinking and the fighting.

For a while, anyway. But eventually, his troublesome nature got the better of him. He came home drunk now and then. He got in a few fights. He knew he was a disappointment to her, and that only seemed to make him drink more and stay out all night and come home in the morning bruised and battered from some brawl he couldn’t even remember being part of.

It only got worse when she found out she was pregnant and refused to marry him.…

“Don’t you tell me any of your lies, Bowie Bravo.” Her low, angry words snapped him back to the here and now.

He faced her squarely. “I’m not lying. I did a lot of things wrong, made a lot of bad choices. But I never lied to you and you know that.”

“You never lied to me? What about all those times you promised to quit drinking, to stop fighting, to get a job and keep it?”

She was right. Faintly, he heard Wily’s wry voice in his head.
The truth may not set you free, son. But it’s a start.

He made himself bust to it. “Okay, you got me there. When it came to the drinking, I had no control. I lied when I was drinking—to you, to Ma, to everyone I cared about. To myself, most of all. But I’m not drinking now. And I am telling you honestly that I don’t want to take Johnny away from you. That would be wrong and I really am trying to do the right thing here. I only want to find a way to be a father to him, like I should have been all along.”

She stared up at him for a long time, cradling her baby’s head so gently against her breast. Finally, she asked in a ragged little whisper, “You mean that?”

He didn’t let his gaze waver. “I swear it, Glory.”

“Fine. Take the workshop. It’s yours.”

Chapter Five

“H
e’s had a phone installed out there in Matteo’s workshop,” Glory said, leaning close across the table so only Angie would hear. “And cable, too, for his fancy computer.”

It was one week after Sera’s birth and Glory’s first time out of the house. With Sera all bundled up in the stroller, she’d walked from her house to Dixie’s Diner on Main Street and met Angie for lunch. It was cold out, but at least the winter sun was shining. What remained of the snow from the big storm the previous Monday was piled in dirty mounds along the sides of the streets.

Angie sipped her iced tea. They always had iced tea when they met at the diner for lunch, no matter what time of year it was. It was kind of a tradition with them. Angie asked, “But…it’s working out all right, isn’t it?”

Glory made a humphing sound. “He also had a lot of equipment delivered…tools and fancy saws and stuff.”

“Well, Glory, if he’s going to work, he’s going to need the tools to do it with.”

“I know that.” She sounded snappish to her own ears and made an effort to gentle her tone. “It’s just…oh, I don’t know. He’s been great, really. Fine.”

“So he hasn’t been out drinking and brawling till all hours?”

“He swore he wouldn’t. And he’s kept his word for a whole week.” She piled on the sarcasm. “I am so impressed.”

Angie kept after her. “He cooks breakfast for you and Johnny every morning, right? And he fixed that leaky faucet in the downstairs bathroom.”

Glory nodded grudgingly. “Yeah, and if there’s a problem at the store, he hustles right over there to handle it, follows my instructions to the letter. I swear I can’t leave unfolded laundry in the laundry room. When I go back to deal with it, it’s all in neat little stacks.”

Angie laughed. “It’s what I said yesterday, the last time we talked about this. He sounds like the perfect man to me.”

“Not funny,” Glory said bleakly. “Not funny at all.”

“Johnny warming up to him any yet?”

Glory shook her head. “Only speaks to him when spoken to. Avoids him if at all possible.”

“Give him time.”

“Yeah, right.” She bent over the stroller, which she’d parked at the side of the booth, and smiled at her baby, who was lying there quietly for once, waving her tiny hands and making soft cooing sounds. “What a good girl you’re being,” she said indulgently. And then she sat up straight and faced her sister again. “Johnny won’t give him the time of day. But Sera…”

“Yeah?”

“Adores him. I’m not kidding. He’s magic with her. She’s not like Johnny was. She’s colicky and fussy a lot of the time—well, you know that.” She waited for Angie’s nod of confirmation before she continued, “All he has to do is hold her in those big arms of his and she coos and giggles and acts like a perfect little angel.”

Angie swallowed a bite of BLT and whispered, teasingly, “So, Glory, just how big
are
Bowie’s arms?”

Glory dredged a french fry in ketchup and stuck it in her mouth. “Please, don’t.”

But Angie had no mercy. Not about this. “You’ve still got it bad for him. I can see it in your eyes.”

“Oh, God, you’re saying I’m that obvious?”

Angie shook her head. “Uh-uh.
I
can see it. But I know you better than just about anyone. Everyone one else thinks you’re barely tolerating him.”

“Good.”

“Mamma says you really ought to be nicer to the poor guy. And then Aunt Stella quotes scripture about how a woman ought to be gentle and forgiving—and you’re not.”

“Mamma and Aunt Stella can just mind their own damn business.”

Angie chuckled. “Yeah, like that’s gonna happen.”

Glory knew she was a fortunate woman to have a sister she could trust absolutely with even her most shameful secrets. She ate another french fry, and then leaned across the booth again and spoke very softly. “He’s always been my big, bad weakness. When I think of the way I chased him way back at the beginning…”

“You were crazy about him and you were young. It’s hardly a crime that you went after what you wanted.”

“Well, I’m not so young now.”

“Oh, stop it. You’re not even thirty.”

“Sometimes I
feel
old.”

Angie’s shrug was philosophical. “Don’t we all?”

“And you’d think at least I would have gotten a little smarter over the years, huh? Especially after Matteo, after I finally learned all it
can
be, between a man and a woman.…”

“You feel what you feel. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

“Easy for you to say. You’ve got Brett. He’s as good a husband as Matteo was
and
as hot as Bowie.”

Angie arched an eyebrow. “So Matteo wasn’t hot?”

“Of course he was. You know what I meant.”

“And
you
know that Brett and I have had our issues.”

“Yeah, and you worked through them. Brett didn’t just vanish from your life—and then never bother to come back.”

“Bowie came back. And at the right time, too, considering that he was the only one there to lend a hand when Sera was born.”

Glory let out a humorless laugh. “You’re my sister, remember? You’re supposed to be on
my
side.”

“Just keeping you honest.”

“Oh, right. It’s for my own good that you keep pointing out all the crap I don’t even want to admit to myself.”

“Yep, that’s about the size of it.”

Glory leaned close again. “You don’t understand. It’s…humiliating to feel this way about him after the way he left us cold for all those years.”

“People change, Glory. It’s obvious to everyone that Bowie has changed.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t care. He’s not getting close to me again, not getting a chance to break my heart a second time.”

“Does he know you’ve still got feelings for him?”

Glory sucked in an angry gasp. “He does not. And he will not. I get that it’s the right thing, to let him have his chance with Johnny. I get that my son needs to make his peace with his natural father. So I’m doing my bit to make that happen. But if he screws up this time, if he abandons my boy again, well, I’m going to make his life a misery. Just see if I don’t.”

Angie shook a French fry at her. “Gee, Glory, don’t go being too open-minded about all this.”

Glory made a snarling sound and tucked into her BLT.

A few minutes later, Charlene, the owner of the diner and also Brand Bravo’s wife, came by the booth to say hi. Charlene had blond hair and blue eyes and she was six months pregnant with her and Brand’s first baby. They already had one child at home, though. They’d raised six-year-old Mia, who was Charlene’s younger sister’s daughter, since Mia was only a few weeks old.

Charlene refilled their iced teas, set the pitcher on the table and bent over the stroller. “Most gorgeous little girl I ever saw—well, next to our Mia, of course.”

Glory beamed. “You want to hold her?”

“Do the robins show up in the spring?” Charlene reached out eager arms and scooped Sera up out of the stroller. She cradled her bobbly little head against her shoulder and cooed at her tenderly. “Oh, aren’t you the sweetest thing?”

The usually fussy Sera laid her cheek against Charlene and looked around the diner with wide eyes as though she’d never seen such marvels as a long, Formica-topped counter and chrome stools with red vinyl seats—and come to think of it, she hadn’t because this was her first time outside of the house.

Charlene swayed gently from side to side, rocking the baby. “Oh, I want one just like you,” she said. Then, with some reluctance, she bent and put her back in the stroller and picked up the pitcher of tea. “This Saturday,” she said to both Angie and Glory, “dinner up at our house. Say, six o’clock? Bring the kids.” She grinned at Angie. “And my brother-in-law, too.”

“Will do,” Angie promised. “Can’t wait.”

“I called Chastity last night and invited her,” Charlene said. “And Bowie came by for lunch yesterday. I asked him to come. He said he’d be there.”

Glory kept her smile in place. “Great.” After all, Bowie
was
Charlene’s brother-in-law. Of course Charlene would invite him. She said, “Johnny and Sera and I would love to come. What can we bring?”

“Just yourselves—and that means you, too, Angie. Don’t bring a thing. You both could use a night off from cooking, I’ll bet.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Glory.

“Can we ever,” Angie agreed.

“See you Saturday.” Charlene carried the pitcher back behind the counter and picked up the coffeepot. She got to work filling empty cups.

Angie let out a big, fake sigh. “Saturday dinner with the Bravo boys, Bowie included…”

“Do you have to rub it in?”

“Keep smilin’,” Angie teased.

“Oh, I will. Just you watch me.”

In the barn behind Glory’s house, Bowie wrapped up a video conference with his office at the Santa Cruz workshop. He sat back in the old easy chair and felt pretty good about how the business was getting along in his absence.

The jobs in progress were all on schedule. He had good people and he paid them well. They did fine work. And the few top customers who expected him to build their stuff personally were willing to wait for him to have the time to give them.

The tools and equipment he’d ordered so he could work while he was in the Flat had already arrived. Within the next few days he’d be receiving a shipment of good red oak reclaimed from a collapsed South Carolina grist mill. That mill had stood for well over a hundred years. Bowie would use the old, weathered boards to make a dining-room table and chairs, as well as a bedroom suite for a client who was building a house in Salem, Oregon. Bowie was looking forward to getting started on that project.

In the meantime, he’d brought some bits of old basswood with him. He whittled as a hobby and basswood was about the best wood there was for a whittler. It was soft and yet not prone to splitting. He picked up the piece he’d sketched out the evening before and he grabbed his bench knife—a plain, serviceable knife with a fixed single blade and a wooden handle. He started whittling away at it, working to shave off the wood along the lines he’d drawn.

As he worked at the bit of wood, he thought about what
wasn’t
going so well.

Johnny. And Glory, too. Glory treated him civilly, but never with anything resembling warmth or friendliness. At this rate, making peace with her was never going to happen. He had hoped by the time he was ready to leave town again that he and Glory would be on good terms.

And Johnny? The boy never said a word to Bowie unless Bowie spoke to him first. And, except at mealtime, he very rarely hung around if Bowie was in the room.

Sometimes, in the past couple of days, he’d caught the kid watching him. Johnny always turned away so fast that Bowie couldn’t tell if the boy was looking at him with hostility or curiosity—or maybe even something resembling interest. Bowie told himself to consider the boy’s furtive glances as progress.

Did he believe that? Not really.

Bowie set the bit of basswood aside and put his knife away. It was lunchtime. Johnny was in school. He had no idea what Glory might be doing. Seemed a good time to get out for a while, maybe stop at Dixie’s Diner, say hi to Charlene and enjoy a big bowl of her famous chili smothered in cheddar and onions.

Funny how things change, he thought as he strolled down the street from Upper Main. People waved and smiled at him. That had surprised him the first few days. He’d expected a lot of scowls and disapproving glances.

But he’d been gone quite a while. And so far, he hadn’t made trouble for anyone, hadn’t drunk himself into a stupor or beat anyone’s face in. Folks seemed willing to accept him and treat him with kindness. Maybe they saw that he’d grown up a little in the time he was away. Maybe they were willing to give him a chance, to see how he acted before they judged him—unlike a certain dimpled brunette he could mention but wouldn’t. Because he wasn’t thinking about her now. He was just walking down the street in his old hometown under the washed-out winter sun, on his way to the diner for lunch.

“Bowie! Man, I heard you were back in town. How you been?” A tall, wasted-looking dude with his long graying hair tied back with a strip of leather and a couple of teeth missing in front came at him from the St. Thomas Bar across the street.

Bowie smiled and wished he could remember the guy’s name. Someone he used to get drunk with, no doubt. “Hey.” He held out his hand and they shook. The guy clapped him on the back and as he did it, the name came. “Zeb. Zeb Bickman.” Bowie seemed to remember a couple of brawls he and Zeb had gotten into together. And maybe one fight, at least, where the two of them had been drunk on their asses and ended up on opposite sides. Details were fuzzy. As they generally were when he looked back on that time of his life.

“Come on across the street,” Zeb lisped through his missing teeth. “Let me buy you a beer.”

“I don’t drink anymore.”

“Hey. Well. Whatever works. A tall club soda, then?”