A Fallen Heart (18 page)

“There’s a joke in there somewhere,” Ford deadpanned.

“I don’t really want to talk about my mother right now.”

“Oh no?”

“Nope. I have much better things we could be doing with our time.” Nash hooked his finger into the front of Ford’s towel and tugged.

NASH’S CHILDHOOD
home was exactly as it had always been. The clapboard had been painted a sunny yellow sometime when Nash had been in the second grade, and his dad had renewed the color every few years since then. It was bright and cheerful, and the white trim made it look postcard perfect.

It had taken them nearly an hour to drive there from downtown, since the traffic had been heavy going through the tunnel. It was one of the reasons Nash preferred to stay in the core—bridges and tunnels weren’t his thing. But they arrived in one piece, despite Ford’s protests that he shouldn’t be there at all, imposing on family time.

“Don’t be ridiculous. My mother lives to entertain. She’s going to love having you,” Nash assured him. There was a spark of something—excitement and maybe a little pride—at having Ford there with him.

Ford hung back as he walked up to the front door and pushed it open.

“Hello,” he called. “We’re here.”

“In the kitchen,” his mother replied.

They toed off their shoes and lined them up beneath the antique bench in the front hall before walking into the heart of the house. Nash found his mother chopping greens at the island. She put down her knife and wiped her hands on a white-and-blue-checked tea towel, then rushed over and pulled him into a tight hug.

“I’ve missed you,” she said as she released him.

“I missed you too. Mom, this is Ford. Ford, this is my mother, Vivian.”

“It’s so nice to meet you,” Ford said politely.

“It’s lovely to meet you,” Vivian echoed, not bothering with formality and instead pulling Ford into the same hug she’d given Nash.

“Where’s Dad?” Nash asked, trying not to laugh at the bewildered look on Ford’s face.

“He’s trying to fix the railing on the back porch. Roy came by to water the plants while we were gone and somehow tripped and knocked down one section of the railing.”

“And Dad’s trying to fix it?” Nash clarified disbelievingly.

“I know. I told him to call someone, but he insists he can do it himself.”

“I hope you enjoyed a back deck while it lasted. There’s no way you’re ever going to have one again. You’ll be lucky if he doesn’t take out the back wall of the house.”

Vivian sighed dramatically. “You might be right.”

“You want me to go help him?”

“Nah, let him flounder out there a little longer. It keeps him out of the kitchen and out of my way.”

Nash laughed. “Are you two sick of each other now that you’ve spent so much time locked in a tiny little room together?”

“If we’re not sick of each other after almost forty years of marriage, a little boat trip isn’t going to be the thing that splits us up.”

“My parents just got back from a cruise.” Nash turned toward Ford to explain. “They were gone for nearly six months.”

“Where did you go?” Ford asked, sounding genuinely interested.

“Where didn’t we go? We left out of Florida and curved down around the bottom of South America, then over to Hawaii and on to Asia, then up around Europe, across and down the east coast of North America, to end up back in Florida.”

“That must have been incredible,” Ford said.

“It was. I would do it again in a heartbeat. I have about a million photos if you’re interested. The only drawback was missing my baby.”

Nash rolled his eyes. “You guys travel so much I hardly see you anyway.”

Vivian threw her arm around his shoulders, standing up on tiptoe to reach. “That’s not true, and it doesn’t matter how long we’re gone for, I always miss my baby.”

She released him after smacking a kiss to his cheek and picked up her knife again, resuming the chopping they’d interrupted when they arrived.

“So, Ford, what do you do?” She turned her full attention to him.

“I’m a nurse,” he replied, and Vivian beamed.

“That’s wonderful.”

Nash could tell how pleased she was. His grandmother had been a nurse, and his mom had always talked about how much she wished she’d followed in her footsteps. Instead she’d become an accountant like Nash’s grandfather. “Which department do you work in?”

“The ER.”

“That must be very stressful sometimes.”

Ford nodded. “It can be, but I’ve worked all over the hospital. The ER feels like where I belong. I enjoy the pacing, and I love that the patients are varied. I like not knowing what to expect when I walk in and that it’s never boring. It’s always challenging, and I feel as though I’ve become a better nurse for being there.”

Nash couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face listening to Ford talk about his passion for the job. It was the same way Nash felt about being a paramedic, and he loved how animated Ford became. The spark that was there in his eyes held promise.

Ford insisted on helping with the salad, and moments later Ford and his mother had both forgotten he was even in the room. Nash stood and eavesdropped on two of his favorite people as his mother told Ford all about her missed aspirations of being a nurse. Ford listened with sympathetic ears and answered all her questions about the best and the worst of his patients. Nash’s heart broke a little when Ford told her about Joel and everything that had happened in the weeks before.

A loud crash coming from the backyard, followed by a litany of loud curses, had Nash up and on his feet in seconds.

“I’ll go see if he’s okay,” Nash said, darting out of the kitchen to go find his father.

THE MOMENTARY
panic when Nash left the room was quickly soothed by Vivian’s melodic voice. She hardly seemed to notice her son had gone with how absorbed she was in her conversation with Ford.

It had been so long since Ford had felt instantly comfortable with someone—that in itself was disconcerting—but charming and charismatic was the only way to describe Vivian Nash.

Ford didn’t consider himself to be the type of person to open up and dump his problems on a complete stranger, and yet here he was, unloading every emotional detail about his job and about Joel to the mother of a man he wasn’t sure of his feelings for. It felt so good to tell her, and her comforting words and sympathetic ear were like a balm for his emotional wounds.

It bothered him that he even needed that balm, but it felt so goddamn good.

“Does your family live close?” Vivian asked once she’d added in all the ingredients for the salad dressing.

“No, they’re all out east.”

“Do you get to see them much?”

“Not often enough. My parents and I have never been close, but I do wish I saw my brother more often.”

“Is he older or younger?”

“Younger. He’s the baby by six years, so I always felt a little like his protector. He looked up to me, and I took care of him.”

“It must be difficult being so far away.”

“It is, but he’s doing well. I’m proud of him. He’s finishing up university now, and he met a girl. He thinks this might be it, that she’s the one, even though he’s only twenty-three.”

“Do you think he’s too young to settle down?”

Ford shrugged. “Maybe a little. He’s always been serious, though. I’ve never questioned his judgment before, and I guess it would be stupid to start now. I think back to my life when I was twenty-three, and I can’t imagine even the thought of marriage crossing my mind.”

“And now?”

Ford looked up at her, their eyes meeting. He could feel the weight of the question bearing down on him. Her words held more there than simple curiosity, and Ford knew it.

“One day, I think I’d like to settle down and get married. To be honest, until recently, I’d never given it much thought.” He suppressed a wince at how that must have sounded. He hadn’t meant that Nash had him thinking about a wedding and 2.4 children. But he’d thought about it with Peter, and acknowledging that made him question his own judgment on the matter.

His judgment when it came to everything Peter was questionable.

“It’s a long way off, in any case,” Ford added, shrugging and trying to divert the conversation away from such serious topics.

Ford could hear the baritone of Nash and his father as they came through the back door and into the kitchen. With nearly identical voices, Ford expected Nash to resemble his father, but he didn’t. While they shared the same hazel eyes, that seemed to be where the similarities ended.

“Mom, I don’t have very good news about your back railing,” Nash said, rounding the island to stand next to Ford. “It’s not going to be fixed tonight. I’ll need some supplies, but I’ll come back to take care of it.”

“That’s fine, sweetheart. We’re not going to be using the deck until the spring anyway.”

“Dad, this is Ford. Ford, this is my father, George,” Nash said, stepping around them to the fridge, which he pulled open to grab three bottles of Granville Island lager from inside.

“It’s good to meet you, Ford,” George said as Nash handed him one of the bottles. “Glad you could make it out for dinner.”

“It’s nice to meet you too. I appreciate the invite. Nash raved about his mother’s lasagna, so I couldn’t very well turn down the invitation.”

“Speaking of the lasagna, it should be just about done. Why don’t you have a seat and I’ll bring everything out.”

Nash walked to the cupboard and lifted a stack of plates.

“Let me help you,” Ford said, and Nash gestured to one of the drawers to his right. He dug through and picked up the silverware they’d need for dinner before following Nash into the dining room.

Together they set the table, and a minute later Nash’s parents joined them, Vivian using two crocheted pot holders to carry the bubbling lasagna and George bringing the caesar salad.

“This looks absolutely amazing,” Ford said, and he meant it. Home-cooked meals weren’t something he ever had much of, growing up. He and Aaron had been latchkey kids, and since their parents’ schedules often ran through mealtimes, there was a lot of reheating previously prepared meals, rather than family gatherings with made-from-scratch pasta dishes.

“I hope you enjoy it,” Vivian said, obviously pleased by the compliment.

Everyone dug in, and the conversation never stopped. Nash might not have looked much like his father, but they shared the same sense of humor, and between the two of them, there was more than enough entertainment for the entire meal.

Vivian attempted several times to shut down their swapping of horror stories from the job, George trying to outdo his son with the things he’d seen during his time as a paramedic. He had nothing on Nash. Being that George spent most of his years picking elderly women up off the floor in their hamlet of a town, Nash had far more gore in his repertoire of stories.

When Vivian’s glares had become murderous, Nash finally steered the conversation to much more pleasant topics, and his mother seemed happy.

After dinner, Nash and Ford took over the cleaning of the kitchen—despite Vivian’s protests—then joined George and his wife in the living room.

Ford sat back and watched the interaction with a sort of envious quiet. Nash’s family seemed perfect. He knew he was only looking at a small snapshot of their relationship, but everyone seemed so happy to be spending time together. Ford felt like Norman Rockwell was going to pop out of the kitchen at any moment and start painting.

Before Ford realized, Nash was standing and telling his parents that they should probably get going. Ford had been so caught up in things, he’d hardly noticed how much time had passed.

They said their good-byes, and Ford thanked Vivian again for dinner as she handed him a Tupperware filled with leftovers and hugged him a second time, making him promise he’d come back before she let them walk out the front door. He exhaled when it closed behind them, as if he’d been holding his breath all night.

It kind of felt like he had.

“Are you okay?” Nash asked. He looked at Ford, his head quirked to the side as though he was trying to read Ford’s expression.

“Yeah. I’m just not good with parents.”

“You were great tonight. They loved you.”

“They are too polite to say anything if they didn’t.”

Nash laughed. “They are not. My mom may seem sweet, but she’s as passive-aggressive as they come. If she didn’t like you, you’d know it. She wouldn’t say anything directly, but there’d be no missing it.”

“If you say so.”

“I do.” Nash nodded again, decisively. “Are you tired?”

“Not really. Why?”

“Do you wanna go for a walk before we drive back?”

Ford thought about it for a moment. He felt a little overwhelmed, and maybe fresh air was a good idea. The evenings weren’t too cold yet to be outside, and a walk might help clear his head, which at the moment was cluttered and chaotic.

“Sure. Where are we walking to?”

“The promenade to the pier?” Nash asked as he stashed the leftovers in the back of the vehicle.

“I’ve never been down there.”

“Seriously? How long have you lived here?”

“Eleven years, but I never leave downtown if I can help it. Everything you’d want is there. The ocean is there. Why would I drive an hour to a different bay? It’s the same water.”

“It’s not, though,” Nash said, taking Ford’s hand and leading him down the steep hill toward the beach.

“You liked growing up here?” Ford asked.

“In some ways, I guess, but I was like all teenagers. I wanted to be able to go to movies and concerts and hang out with my friends. I couldn’t wait until I was old enough to move out on my own. I’d always wanted to live downtown.”

“And yet you ended up joining the Army instead,” Ford noted.

“Yep. Maybe that was my way of busting out of here. Go big or stay home?”

“I can imagine, after having met her, how pissed your mom would have been when you told her.”

“She was. I don’t know if you could tell, but she dotes on me. Being an only child, I was the focus of all her love and attention, which is great in theory….”