A Soft Place to Fall (25 page)

"Don't forget to bring the deviled eggs
tomorrow," Roberta said as Claudia climbed from the car. "And Peggy
wants her Tupperware serving bowl back."

Labor Day was a major holiday for the various
tradespeople and volunteer workers of Shelter Rock Cove. Shops on
Main Street threw open their doors and sponsored contests and
giveaways and generally said thanks to the town for supporting them
all year long. The various volunteer groups – DAR, Lions Club, fire
department, and the like – sponsored a giant picnic/barbecue on the
town green that started at noon and ended after the fireworks
display many hours later.

Claudia said goodnight and didn't so much as
glance over her shoulder at Warren. Back straight, head held high,
she walked up the curving driveway and let herself into her house.
She closed the door behind her, turned the locks, then set the
alarm. The children had insisted on the alarm system, even though
it seemed foolish to Claudia.
We worry,
they had said to
her.
A woman living alone should have an alarm system.

They were always telling her something. Get
an alarm system. Get a dog. Move to a condo . . . a retirement
complex . . . a nursing home. That's the way it went. Once you gave
in to the first request, your independence began to fall like a
line of dominoes.

She leaned against the door for a moment and
closed her eyes. She saw Annie and Kevin on their wedding day, so
young and filled with hope. She saw them the day they moved into
their first house, short on money but long on happiness and plans
for the future. She saw them together year after year and something
began to take shape, a darkness she'd never allowed to enter the
picture before. The pinched look around Annie's mouth. The
exhaustion in Kevin's eyes. The silences between them that spoke
louder than words.

"I wish you were here with me, Johnny," she
said aloud.

But, as usual, he didn't answer.

#

Hall poured himself a tumbler of scotch and
took it out onto the deck. He sat down on one of the three
Adirondack chairs he'd had specially made and rested his feet on
the railing. The Scotch was old and mellow and it burned its way
smoothly down his throat.

Too bad it couldn't burn away the memory of
Annie's face as she walked out of Cappy's hand in hand with the Boy
from New York City.

He raised his glass high in a salute to bad
timing.

He'd waited out her marriage and her
widowhood. For two years he bided his time, sensitive to her
feelings, aware of her family's expectations, waiting for the right
moment to finally make his move, only to come in a day late. Hell,
not even a day. Twelve hours. That was all. Twelve goddamn hours
too late and all because some guy comes riding into town with the
stink of newness all over him and that's all she wrote.

He'd never seen her look that way, not even
on the day she married Kevin. She'd looked nervous on her wedding
day, painfully young, alarmingly innocent. It was clear to everyone
standing there that she was marrying the family as well as the
man.

But the girl was long gone. She knew life
didn't always play fair and that happy endings were found in books,
not real life. She knew all of those things and more and yet she
looked at that raggedy son-of-a-bitch like he'd hung the moon.

He took another gulp of scotch and waited for
the fire to build in his gut.

That nagging memory still tugged at him. A
sense of familiarity he couldn't define. He knew this Sam Butler
from somewhere but he couldn't seem to place him. The guy looked
like he worked the docks but there was no denying the fierce
intelligence burning in his eyes. There was something about the man
that made you want to take a step backward to put some space
between you.

It hadn't been that way with Kevin Galloway.
Kevin had greeted the world with open arms, even as he shielded his
obsession from the eyes of the town. This new guy had none of
Kevin's heft and presence. None of his poetry. Kevin was as flawed
as they come but it had never been hard to understand what Annie
saw in him.

Sam Butler was from New York. You could hear
it in his voice. That odd little glottal stop that pegged some New
Yorkers as incontrovertibly as a strand of DNA. But it was more
than that. Was it possible he'd met Butler somewhere along the way,
at a party maybe or some other social gathering? He couldn't
imagine the circumstances where their worlds would intersect but
he'd long ago learned that anything was possible. After all, it had
already happened.

#

"Don't say it," Susan warned, as she and Jack
got ready for bed. "If you value our marriage, you won't say one
single word."

Jack tossed the damp towel into the hamper
and grinned at his wife. "Told you so."

She glanced around for something moderately
lethal to heave in his direction but everything in the tiny
bathroom was either bolted down or too grungy to consider. "We
don't really know anything," she said, slipping her cotton
nightgown over her head. "So what if she left with him. All she was
doing was trying to slip away before Hall asked her out again." She
padded into their bedroom with her husband close behind. "You can't
blame her for taking the first escape route that presented
itself."

Jack pulled off the comforter and tossed it
on the slipper chair near the window. "You don't really believe
that crap, do you?"

She sank down onto the bed. "No," she said
miserably. "I don't."

The mattress dipped as he sat down next to
her. "What's the real problem here, Susie? It isn't Annie at all,
is it."

"You're a grease monkey," she said, sniffling
back her tears. "You're not supposed to be so perceptive."

"So what is it," he persisted. "You
jealous?"

"I don't get it," she said. "You couldn't
find your socks if they stood up and saluted at you in the morning,
but you always know exactly what's wrong with me."

"I don't love my socks."

She couldn't withhold a smile. "You old sweet
talker. You always could charm me with poetry."

He whispered something in her ear that did
more than charm her.

"Maybe," she said. "I'll think about it."

"Might be fun."

"Might be." She leaned against him and rested
her head on his shoulder. "She looked so happy," she whispered.
"They looked so much in love."

"We're in love."

"Not like that."

"No," he said, "not like that. We were like
that twenty years ago. Now we're like this."

"I miss the way we used to be."

"So do I."

She looked up at him. "You do?"

"With work and the kids and everything else
–" He shook his head. "Sometimes I feel like I'm losing you in the
crowd."

"Yes! That's it, that's exactly the way I
feel, like I'm calling your name in a crowd and you just don't seem
to hear me."

"I hear you now, Susie. I'm right here next
to you and I hear you."

"What if he hurts her," she whispered as they
lay down on the bed they'd shared for so long. "She doesn't have
any idea what it's like out there."

"Was it so good with Kevin?"

Susan froze. "What did you say?"

"I loved him, Suz, but your brother wasn't
perfect."

"Meaning what?"

Jack sighed. "Forget I said anything."

"No," she said, suddenly angry. "I won't
forget. Tell me what you're talking about."

"His gambling."

She made a face. "That was never a real
problem."

"Open your eyes, Suz. Take a look at Annie.
She didn't sell the big house because she was tired of the view.
She sold it because he left her with nothing."

"You don't know that."

"I know what I see."

"She wanted to start fresh," Susan said,
trying to ignore the hollow ringing of her words. "She was rattling
around in that big old barn all by herself."

The expression on Jack's face was so sad –
and so knowing – that it brought her up short.

"I think you're wrong," she said as the fight
drained out of her. "Kevin was a wonderful husband. They were the
happiest couple I've ever seen. Nobody will ever make her as happy
as Kevin made her."

But how happy was that really? No matter how
hard she tried, she couldn't come up with examples to prove her
thesis, not unless she went back fifteen years or more. Annie threw
herself into making the flower shop a success and the hours she
worked became a source of debate within the family. Of course
everyone knew teachers didn't make huge salaries, even if Kevin was
the most gifted English teacher the town had ever seen. He worked
long hours too, meeting with parents and children after the school
day ended, giving workshops and taking classes on the weekends. The
wonder was that he and Annie ever saw each other at all. How many
family gatherings had they had to decline because Kevin was out of
town or Annie was too swamped with work to break away? After a
while everyone had lost count. Invitations to the big old Victorian
house dwindled until they became once or twice yearly
occasions.

Was that happiness? She had no answer to that
question.

"We can't stop her," he said, stroking her
hair. "Annie deserves some happiness and she won't find it if she
doesn't take a few chances."

He was right. She knew he was right. But the
thought of Annie out there somewhere with a man who wasn't family
sent a chill of foreboding through Susan and not even Jack's warm
kisses could make it go away.

#

Warren sat in his library with a glass of
brandy in his hand and poor old Max asleep at his feet. It was a
few minutes after midnight and unless he missed his guess Max would
be spending the night.

"You can sleep at the foot of the bed," he
told the dog, "and Nancy will make you bacon and eggs for
breakfast."

The yellow Lab looked up at him with mournful
eyes.

"Don't worry," Warren said, reaching down to
pet the old guy on the scruff of his neck. "He hasn't abandoned
you." That was one thing Sam Butler never did, even if the boy
didn't quite believe it himself yet.

He heard himself and started to laugh. Now
did that beat all? There he was, the man who was on the cover of
last month's
Forbes
, trying to explain love to a dog who
drank water from the toilet bowl. Hell, he had himself a nerve
trying to explain love to anybody since he knew so damn little
about it. He knew love complicated matters. He knew that when it
went wrong it made a man's life a living hell.

And he also knew that without it, nothing
much else mattered.

Were Sam and Annie in love? He wasn't sure.
They'd barely known each other three days but stranger things had
happened in a lot less time. His own parents had met on Sunday and
married on Monday and spent the next thirty years telling the
tale.

He hoped they were happy. He hoped they would
be kind to each other. He hoped that if it didn't work out they
would each be left with hearts that were better off for the
experience.

Patience wasn't his long suit but he would do
his best. He had brought them together. There was nothing more he
could do. Nobody yet had found a way to make love happen when it
wasn't meant to.

Or to deny it either. He thought of the
scared look in Claudia's eyes, the bristling anger that didn't
quite hide her fear that their beloved Annie just might slip away
with a man who wasn't Kevin. They still saw her as the vulnerable
young girl whose parents had been lost the year she turned sixteen.
The entire Galloway clan had opened their hearts to her and
welcomed her into their fold and she had gone gratefully, eager to
be one of the crowd, to be so indispensable she would never have to
worry about being alone again.

That was how they still saw her. Needy.
Vulnerable. Unsure of herself and her place in the world. They
hadn't a clue. Not a one of them had an inkling of all she had done
to protect the reputation of the sainted Kevin. She was the one who
had held it all together and never once asked for help from
anyone.

Warren had never told Annie that he knew
about Kevin's gambling. He wondered how many other people in town
kept Annie's secret and never let on. Sometimes he thought he
should sit Claudia down and tell her the whole story, tell her how
her daughter-in-law worked around the clock to keep a roof over
their heads and food on the table while Kevin fell deeper into
despair.

That conversation at the dinner table still
rankled. They had all teed off on Sam like he had come to town with
the express purpose of ruining their happy family. Where the hell
did they get off, passing judgment on a man they'd never met? And
who did they think they were, trying to run Annie's life for her
like she was still sixteen years old and scared to death. She was a
grown woman now. If the gods had been kinder, she could have had
kids in college who came home on weekends so mom could do their
laundry. She could have had a husband who –

Well, no sense going there. Some things
couldn't be changed.

Sam Butler was the best thing that could
happen to her and if those narrow-minded morons were too blind to
see that, then to hell with them.

They would learn soon enough.

And maybe so would Sam.

Chapter Twelve

Sam and
Annie were in her kitchen making scrambled eggs and
toast.

"This is crazy," Annie said as she pulled the
carton of eggs from the refrigerator. "We should be asleep." She
wore nothing but his denim shirt and a loopy smile.

"You're tired?" Sam, clad in nothing but a
towel, popped two English muffins into the toaster and depressed
the lever. "Can't imagine why."