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Authors: Sheila Connolly

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BOOK: A Gala Event
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“Uh, maybe?” Meg said. “Can I sleep on it? Maybe the right one will float to the top of the heap. Or not—porcelain doesn't exactly float. Can we think about dinner now? I'm pretty sure I can decide between proteins at a supermarket at the moment.”

They returned to Granford and stashed their groceries—and put the bottle of white wine in the refrigerator to chill. After that task was completed, Seth said, “I'm going to run out to the office and bring back some catalogs for you to look at. Just to remind you what you've seen, while it's still fresh in your mind.”

“Fine,” Meg said weakly. She admired his enthusiasm, but she wasn't sure she wanted to jump into the bathroom project right this minute. But still, she didn't want to disappoint him, because he was so excited about giving her something that she needed and would like, that he could do himself. It was sweet, if a bit exhausting.

He'd been gone no more than three minutes when someone knocked at the front door. She'd learned in the past that anyone who came to that door didn't know her, and often brought trouble. With some trepidation she went to the front of the house and unlocked the door, and opened it to find herself staring at someone she was pretty sure was Aaron Eastman, although he looked significantly better than he had the last time she'd seen him. She felt a flurry of panic: she was facing an ex-convict and possible murderer. Why was he here? What did he want?

He seemed to grasp her dilemma. “I'm sorry—I don't mean to bother you. I only wanted to thank you. The police chief said you were the one who found me in that shed, and if you hadn't, I might not have made it. Although that might have been a good thing. You know who I am?”

She studied the man's face: he looked drawn, and older than his years. And, if she was honest, pretty harmless. “You're Aaron Eastman. Would you like to come in?”

She hoped she wasn't making a mistake.

8

Aaron Eastman wavered on the doorstep, as if he couldn't believe Meg's invitation. She summoned up a smile. “I'm not just being polite. You look like you're freezing, and you're just out of the hospital. Don't worry—I don't bite.” She stepped back and opened the door wider.

The man stepped in reluctantly, and looked around. “You know who I am?” he repeated.

“Yes, I really do. Come on back to the kitchen, and I'll make some coffee.” She turned and walked toward the back of the house, and after a moment's hesitation, the man followed slowly.

Seth had already returned to the kitchen when they reached it, and Meg almost laughed at the shifting expressions on his face: surprise, then dismay, then a glance at Meg with one eyebrow raised. In the end his sense of politeness won out. “Hello, Eastman. I'm Seth Chapin, Meg's fiancé.”

Aaron stood in the kitchen, looking back and forth
between the two of them. “I didn't mean to barge in. I only wanted to thank Meg here for finding me and getting me help. I can go now.”

“How'd you get here?” Seth asked.

“Some guy dropped me off in the middle of town—I think he figured I would catch a bus or something. Hitchhiking's still illegal, isn't it? Not that anybody would pick me up anyway, looking the way I do.” He looked down at his clothes. They weren't the ones he'd arrived in, but most likely whatever discards the hospital had been able to scrounge up. At least they looked clean, if shabby.

“Come on, guys—sit down, will you? Aaron, is coffee okay for you?”

“Don't go to any trouble.”

“It's not any trouble; I want some myself. So sit.”

He sat. Meg got busy with coffee-making—again. Sometimes it seemed to her like an automatic reflex: when it was cold out, walk into kitchen, boil water, make coffee. In summer all she had to do was pull ice water or iced tea from the fridge. Basic Hospitality 101.

It occurred to her that Aaron Eastman had just spent twenty-five years in jail, in the company of only men, with an inflexible schedule. He must be at a loss now, when he had to make decisions about everything, like saying yes or no to a cup of coffee. Should she be direct? Or would that seem rude?

“Aaron, I've only lived in Granford for going on two years now, so I have no history with this place—unlike Seth, whose family goes back centuries. Gail and Seth between them explained to me what happened to you and your family.”

“Gail . . . She that woman at the Historical Society?” he asked.

“Yes. She didn't hear you come in and she was frightened. She acted without thinking, and she's very sorry about it.”

“I should of known better. I'm kind of out of practice with social things.”

“How'd you get to Granford?”

“Caught a ride. Walked some. I wasn't in any hurry, and it was kind of nice to be able to do what I wanted for a change.”

“Why'd you come back to Granford?” Seth asked, his tone neutral.

Aaron turned to look at him. “It was home. It was the only place I ever knew. I don't know what I was expecting to find. I mean, I know the house is long gone. My sister and brother live somewhere else. I thought maybe I should visit the cemetery, pay my respects to my parents and my grandmother. That's as far as I planned, I guess.”

Truly a lost soul
, Meg thought.
Nowhere to go, no one who cares.
“Would you like to have dinner with us?”

Aaron looked startled by the offer. “I don't want to make any trouble . . .” he began.

“Why would it be trouble?” Meg asked. “I'm making dinner anyway. I'll just make a bit more. You look like you could use a good meal.”

He looked at her steadily, his expression unreadable. “Thank you. I'd appreciate that.”

He turned to Seth. “Wasn't your dad a plumber near here?”

“Good memory,” Seth said. “His shop was just over the hill, on the highway. He's been gone for over ten years now. I took over the business, but I'm trying to shift to more general building renovation and historic preservation.”

“You would have loved our house, I bet. You must have been, what, ten, when it burned?”

“I was. I wish I could have seen it, up close—I work on a lot of old-house renovations around here. Until it burned, though, I didn't have any reason to go over to that side of town. Of course I had to go look after the fire—sorry. I've seen pictures of it before the fire, of course. It must have been at least twice the size of Meg's house here.”

“Probably. It was one of those places that started out kind of like this—you know, simple—and then every generation decided they had to do something to it to make it bigger or finer. You'd have seen the front face, but behind it was kind of a jumble of additions.”

“That's pretty typical of New England. Did it have . . .”

Meg turned away to hide a smile: the guys were talking guy stuff, about building construction. She'd better pull something together for dinner. She was pretty sure it didn't have to be fancy, if Aaron had been eating prison food for decades. Chicken, bacon, potatoes, herbs—she had plenty to work with. The coffee was ready, so she filled two mugs and set them in front of the men, then filled one for herself. This was not the evening she had expected, but it was probably going to be interesting, to say the least.

“You got any plans now, Aaron?” Seth asked.

Aaron shrugged. “I'm free to go wherever I want. I need to find a job, so I can eat, and sleep somewhere. From what I've been hearing, prices are kind of high around here, what with all the fancy colleges nearby. Maybe I'll head west.”

“What kind of skills do you have?” Seth asked.

“Maybe you remember I was still a kid when I . . . was arrested. What I picked up in prison was mostly computer training. It was kind of fun, and challenging—and, of course, it kept changing. And it was clean, you know? But I don't know who's going to hire me, with a twenty-five-year hole in my résumé.”

Meg flipped over the chicken in her pan, then turned to face the men. “Did you hope to stay around here?”

Aaron looked at her, his expression bleak. “What for? I don't know anybody here, not anymore. All people know about me is what their parents told them, that I was some kind of monster who burned my house down with my family inside. Why would anybody want me around here? And don't give me any BS line about how I've paid my dues and I'm rehabilitated and I deserve a second chance.” Now there was a spark of anger in his eyes. “I've seen what happens to guys like me when they get out, and it's nothing good, most of the time.”

It was hard to argue with him, Meg admitted to herself. He was right: a generation of Granford kids had grown up with the story of the fire and the deaths. And right now, Aaron was kind of an unknown quantity.

“Would you like a glass of wine, Aaron?”

“No thanks. I got clean in jail, and sober, thanks to AA. Haven't touched drugs or alcohol in years, and I don't plan to take it up again.”

“Do you mind if Seth and I have one?”

“It's your home. Don't worry—I won't go nuts if I see you drinking. I was a stupid kid when I was doing all the hard stuff.”

Meg was torn. She would enjoy a glass of wine, but it seemed wrong to flaunt it in front of Aaron. On the other hand, drinking was a fact of life in current society, and he'd have to get used to that sometime, unless he went to live in a cave in Alaska. She looked at Seth, and he gave her an infinitesimal shrug: it was up to her. She went to the cupboard and pulled out a pair of wineglasses, then handed the chilled bottle and a corkscrew to Seth. Then she turned back to the stove.

Half an hour later she was just ready to dish up when the
phone rang: Gail. She went into the front parlor to answer it. “Hi, Gail . . . What's up?”

“Sorry to interrupt you when you're probably sitting down to dinner. I heard from Art that Aaron Eastman had been released from the hospital, but Art didn't know where he was headed. I feel bad about it because I wanted to apologize to him for what I did. You wouldn't know anything, would you?”

Now, why would Gail assume Meg would know about the whereabouts of an ex-con she'd only just met? The awful thing was, she did. Karma? Lucky guess? “Gail, he's here. He came by to thank me for, well, I guess, saving his life, and I asked him to dinner.”

That statement met with a long moment of silence from Gail. “Are you sure that's a good idea?” she finally said carefully.

“You mean, do I think he's going to murder me and make off with all my nonexistent valuables? No. Right now he seems like a sad man who could use a friend and a good meal. Besides, Seth's here to keep an eye on things.”

“Oh,” Gail said. “Did he say he was leaving town?”

“We've barely scratched the surface about his plans. If he has any. If you want to talk with him, maybe you should come over now.”

“I . . . but . . . how . . .” Gail fumbled for words, then stopped herself. “Then that's what I'll do. My husband can keep an eye on the kids after dinner. I'll be there, say, eight?”

“Sounds good. We should be finished eating by then. Bye, Gail.”

The two men looked up when Meg returned to the kitchen. “Gail said she's going to come over after supper,” she announced. “Don't panic, Aaron—she just wants to say she's sorry to your face. She's a very nice woman.”

Aaron did not look convinced. “Her family from around here? What's her last name?”

“Selden,” Meg told him. “She's married, but she once told me that if she was going to be working at the Historical Society, she should hang on to her historical name.”

“Eastman was an old name in Granford, too,” Aaron said, to no one in particular. “And Chapin. How about Corey, Meg?”

“That's my father's name. But my mother was a Warren, and an ancestor of hers built this house. She inherited it, but she's never lived around here.”

“So all of our great-greats would've hung out together, like, two hundred years ago.”

“Probably,” Meg said. “The 1790 census is only one page long, so they had to have known one another.” She stood up quickly. “You guys must be starving—I know I am. Let me dish up.”

Aaron seemed to relax over the course of the meal. It could have been the effect of a full stomach, or it could be that he had begun to trust them, Meg thought. She still wasn't sure that she trusted him completely, but she had no basis for judgment: she'd never met someone who had spent substantial time in prison. She didn't doubt that prison, particularly over the course of an extended term, could change a person . . . but for better or worse? Aaron had been a rebellious child when he was convicted; what was he now?

As the meal came to a close, Meg was faced with another problem: where was Aaron going to spend the night? Worse, she wasn't sure how to ask him, and if he said something like “I'll find something,” would she feel right sending him out into the November night, when she was pretty sure he'd been sleeping rough? But what were her alternatives? Offer him a bed? He'd probably turn it down. Her couch? Better, maybe. A pile of hay in her barn? She'd slept there once, not
willingly, and it hardly fit the definition of basic hospitality—at least, not in the current century. She looked at Seth in mute appeal.

Somehow he got the message. “Aaron, I'm going to guess that you don't have anywhere to go when you leave here tonight.”

Aaron neither confirmed nor denied what Seth had said, but looked at him warily.

“We can offer you a couch here,” Seth went on. Meg cheered silently: he'd chosen her middle ground.

“I don't want to make any trouble,” Aaron said.

“Aaron, it's no trouble,” Meg protested. “I'd be more upset thinking about you wandering around out there somewhere in the cold. You just got out of the hospital this morning, and you're in no shape to look after yourself. I don't mean that as an insult; it's simply a fact.”

Aaron regarded her, his expression blank, and Meg felt as though she were being weighed. For what? Sincerity? Good intentions? Stupidity or gullibility? Finally he said simply, “Thank you. It's been a long time since anybody worried about me.”

Meg was spared from making a corny response when there was a knocking at the kitchen door, and Meg got up to let Gail in. Gail walked purposefully into the kitchen and stopped in front of Aaron. “I am so sorry!” she said. “I didn't mean to hurt you. Please say you forgive me?”

Aaron regarded her solemnly. “I forgive you. I should have been more careful about how I approached you.”

The tension seeped out of Gail, and she dropped into the remaining seat at the table. “Thank you. You sure look better than you did the last time I saw you.”

Aaron gave a faint smile. “I'm tough. It looked a lot worse than it was.”

BOOK: A Gala Event
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