Backwoods (12 page)

“Good bye, Alice,” he murmured, stroking her
cheek once, gently. “See you later.”

****

Because he’d made up the pretense of checking
up on his Jeep for Suzette’s benefit, and she remained within view
as she followed Alice across the yard, Andrew ducked into the
garage. There was no way in hell Santoro would have the truck up
and running again and he knew it, not that day or any other. She
might have been joking when she’d told him the Jeep needed a
salvage yard, not a mechanic, but she’d been right nonetheless.

Even before reaching the garage building,
he’d heard music, and once inside, with its vaulted ceilings,
smooth concrete floors and cinderblock walls, the garage amplified
the guitar strains of Santana from a CD boom box to nearly
deafening levels.

“Hello?” he called, trying in vain to pitch
his voice above the music. His poor Jeep listed in the corner, a
dilapidated, waterlogged paperweight. Three other vehicles, these
all of the olive drab camouflage paint job variety, sat parked in
different service bays, one with its hood up, another with tires
removed and the third still raised on lifts and left to dangle in
the air.

“Santoro?”

Because other than the music, there seemed no
sign of life inside, he walked inside, crossing the expansive open
floor, looking curiously around. “Hey, Santoro,” he called again.
“Anybody home?”

In the far corner, he spied a desk, an
antiquated behemoth made of gray-green painted steel. Circa
1960-something, it took up nearly the entire corner with its squat,
square bulk. Framed photos of children littered the top, a dark
haired boy and girl, both grinning broadly in a variety of
poses—the boy on his bicycle with a helmet cock-eyed on his head,
in his swim trunks in a green plastic wading pool, the girl in pink
plastic sunglasses or dressed up in oversized shoes and carrying an
adult-sized purse.

In another photograph, the only one not of
the children, Santoro stood in a wedding gown. Curious, he picked
it up to study it more closely. Younger, with make up on, her hair
pin-curled and coiffed, she beamed at the camera. Her dress hugged
the indention of her waist, the generous outward swells of her hips
before pooling in a wide train around her feet. She’d made a
breath-taking bride as she’d posed on the arm of a handsome
Hispanic man in a tuxedo.

Lucky guy,
he thought. He’d only ever
been in love enough to want to marry someone once—with Lila. There
had been no one since he’d ever even thought about spending the
rest of his life with, but he hoped that if he ever did, she’d look
that happy on their wedding day.

Not to mention that beautiful.

The music cut off, startling him, and he
turned to find Santoro walking toward him, wiping her hands on a
towel. “Well, hey, partner,” she said with a puzzled but pleased
sort of grin. “Wasn’t expecting to see you so early today.”

“Hey, hi.” Feeling intrusive, like he’d been
caught snooping through her underwear drawer, he set the wedding
picture back on her desk. It promptly fell face-down with a clatter
against the blotter and abashed, he propped it upright again. “I’m
sorry.”

“That’s okay,” she said, then the picture
toppled again. “The little thing on the back is kind of broken. You
have to…” He tried to set it up as she spoke, and when it fell
again, she laughed. “Here. I’ll do it.”

She leaned past him, reaching for the
picture.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

“It’s alright. It’s an old frame.” Because
she couldn’t get it to stand again, either, she finally settled for
slapping it face-down on the desk. “There.” Laughing, she swatted
her hands together. “That’ll work.”

He laughed with her. She had dark smutches of
grease on her cheeks, embedded beneath the crescents of her
fingernails, the creases in her knuckles. Loose strands of hair had
worked loose from her ordinarily meticulous ponytail and drooped
over her brow to dangle lankly against her cheeks. When she smiled,
he could see beneath that to the radiant bride in the wedding
photo.

She’s married, for Christ’s sake,
he
told himself sharply, and appropriately rebuked, he glanced back at
her desk. “So, uh, are these your kids?”

“No,” she replied. “Those pictures came with
the frames. I figure I’ll find something to stick in their places
someday.”

When he blinked at her in surprised
bewilderment, she laughed. “I’m kidding. Of course those are my
kids. This is Max.” Santoro lifted one of the photos of the boy and
handed it to him. “He’ll be eight in December.”

“He’s cute.”

“And this is
mi cariño
, my daughter,
Emerita. We call her
Eme
for short.” Her smile grew soft,
nearly wistful as she showed him the girl. “She’s four.” Slipping
the photo from his hand, she laughed. “Well, hey, I’m sure you
didn’t come out here just so to see pictures of my kids. What can I
do for you?”

Because he had no real reason to be there, he
looked around. “Uh,” he said. “Actually I just thought I’d swing
by, say hello. See if you needed any help with anything.”

She raised her brow. “Not unless you know
anything about running a STE/ICE engine diagnostic on an M-923
five-ton cargo truck.”

“Uh,” Andrew said again and she laughed.

“Come on.” Slapping the back her hand against
his stomach, she turned and walked away. “You can keep me
company.”

He stood to the side, watching with
undisguised fascination as Santoro shoved back the tilt hood on a
huge, six-wheeled transport vehicle, stepped up onto the ledge of
the front bumper and leaned purposefully into the maw of the engine
compartment.

“So how did you wind up working on engines?”
he asked, taking the tanker trailer into account because he was
hard-pressed not to check out her ass, given her position.

“My dad taught me,” she said, connecting
cables from a hand-held testing unit to engine components beneath
the hood. “And I used to work with the New York City Transit
Department as a track equipment maintainer, a heavy duty mechanic.
That was how I met Antonio.”

“He’s your husband.” Now Andrew had no
trouble tearing his eyes guiltily away from her ass.

Santoro nodded. “He’s a firefighter. Ladder
fifty-eight, South Bronx. I met him my first week on the job. He
asked me out a week after that. A month later, we were
married.”

“Wow,” Andrew said. “That was…fast.”

“Yeah.” She studied her hand-held console for
a moment, frowned, then fiddled with some of the gauges and knobs.
Turning, she set the console and cables on a nearby workbench then
wiped her hands on a towel again. “So are you ever going to
really
tell me where you learned to play pool?”

“I
did
tell you. Last night in the rec
room.”

“Yeah, yeah, the North Pole. I mean it.
Where’d you learn?”

“Not
the
North Pole,” he corrected.
“North Pole. It’s this little town just outside of Fairbanks.
That’s where I grew up. My dad taught me. He’s an airline pilot and
was gone a lot while I was growing up. Shooting pool was one of the
few things we ever really did together. Beth called it our male
bonding time.”

“Beth,” Santoro said quietly. “She’s the one
in the picture, right? Your sister.”

He nodded. “Again, I’m really sorry about the
way I acted yesterday.”

“It’s alright.”

“I was an asshole.”

“Yeah, you were,” she said, smiling. “But I
told you, it’s okay.”

“Thanks,” he said. “And thank you, too, for
saving my life the other night. I’ve been meaning to say that.”

“My pleasure,” she replied, offering her fist
to him, that little knuckle tap she’d apparently offer only to her
friends.

He returned the gesture, noticing for the
first time that although she’d extended her left hand, her ring
finger—where her wedding band should have been—was bare.
Must
not want to catch it on anything while she’s working.

“I ought to get back to the compound,” he
said. “Out of your way.”

“You’re not in my way. I kind of like having
you here, talking to you.”

He smiled.
Me, too,
he wanted to say,
this little voice in his mind immediately shot down by a sharper,
sterner one:
She’s married. Get your head out of your
ass.

So instead, he said, “Thanks, Santoro.”

“Dani,” she said and he blinked at her,
curious. “My name. It’s Dani. You don’t have to call me Santoro.
Makes you sound like one of the guys or something.”

He raised his brow. “I
am
a guy.”

She laughed. “Yeah, but you’re not one of
the
guys. You know.” She nodded to indicate the
barracks.

He smiled again. “Fair enough. Thanks,
Dani.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, then motioned
with her hand. “Come on. I’ve got two more trucks just like this
waiting over there.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

She’s married.

Andrew kept telling himself this, over and
over, even as he took the stairs up to his room in the barracks two
at a stride, whistling all the while.

“My squad’s got KP, kitchen duty tonight,”
Dani had told him as they’d left the garage together earlier. “Why
don’t you help us? We’re making enchilada casserole and I’m heading
it up. I could use another pair of hands.”

“Sounds good,” he’d replied.

Dani Santoro is married,
he told
himself in his room.
Didn’t you learn your lesson with Lila
about messing around with a married woman?

He let himself into his room, fished his
wallet from his back pocket and tossed it onto the dresser. After a
moment’s reconsideration, he picked it up again, flipped idly
through the billfold and pulled out the letter from his father.

The paper felt old and crisp in his hands as
he unfolded it, smoothing the wrinkles out of the sheet from where
he’d crumpled it the day before. He didn’t read, just held it,
looking at it, the interlocking whorls and loops of Eric’s slanted
handwriting. It was enough to quell that simmering eagerness he’d
felt since leaving the garaging, the anticipation of seeing Dani
again, the excited enjoyment at the time they’d shared that
morning.

She’s married,
he told himself, firmly
this time.

In the letter, Eric had invited Andrew out
for dinner, pleading for the chance to explain himself, his reasons
for the divorce, in person.

I’ve found someone else, someone I want to
spend the rest of my life with.

He’d asked Andrew to meet him for dinner at
the Pagoda Chinese Restaurant in North Pole. Besides the finished
portion of their basement, in which Eric and Andrew had played
pool, the restaurant was one of the few places Andrew associated
with his father from his childhood. It had been a sort of tradition
for Eric to take Andrew and Beth to Pagoda for dim sum dinners
whenever he’d been in between the flights that had kept him away
from home for weeks and sometimes months at a time. Because of
this, even though Andrew had been angry with his father about the
divorce, he’d reluctantly agreed to meet there, a sort of
emotionally neutral ground, if nothing else.

It had been three years since Andrew had last
seen Lila Meyer at that point, so he’d been stunned, surprised and
more than a little bewildered to find her standing in the
restaurant foyer upon his arrival.

“Hello, Andrew,” she’d said, smiling as if
she’d been expecting him, as if stumbling upon her young former
lover, whose heart she’d pretty much ripped out, stomped on, pissed
on, then handed back, was something pleasant and anticipated.

“Lila?” He’d blinked in confusion, then
realized she’d been sitting next to someone—his father, Eric, who
stood now, clasping Lila lightly by the hand.

“It’s good to see you again,” Lila had
said.

“We’re so glad you came,” Eric agreed.

And Andrew had understood.

I’ve found someone else, someone I want to
spend the rest of my life with.

“It’s not what you think,” Eric had said,
recognizing that the confusion in his son’s face had yielded to
anger and pain. “Lila and I ran into each other at our lawyer’s
office right after Beth died.”

“I left Gordon,” Lila had said with a smile,
as if this should be something Andrew applauded, for which he’d be
proud of her.

“And I was there taking care of some
paperwork about Beth,” Eric had said, as if Beth had been nothing
more than an incident, something secondary and insignificant, a
matter he’d dealt with in between golf outings or commuter flights.
“We recognized each other from that time you brought her out for
dinner.”

“It took us both a moment to figure out where
we’d seen each other before,” Lila had cut in, her voice
overlapping, the two of them looking at each other and laughing
like it was all some big joke.

“Then we got to talking and went out for
drinks, talked some more,” Eric said. “One thing led to another
after that.”

“And here we are,” Lila finished with a giddy
laugh, draping her hand on Eric’s chest—just like she’d once
touched Andrew.

“We’d both been unhappy for a long, long
time,” Eric had said. “We didn’t mean for it to be more than
friendship, but it grew from there.” Smiling at Lila, he’d drawn
her hand to his lips, kissed her knuckles. “We’re getting married
next week in Anchorage.”

Something in Andrew had snapped and at this,
he’d balled his hand into a fist and punched Eric in the face,
knocking him flat on his ass.

“Eric!” Lila had cried, falling to her knees,
clutching at him.

“You son of a bitch,” Andrew had told him as
Eric had looked up, wide-eyed with shock, a thin, crooked line of
blood trickling down from his left nostril.

Careful to preserve the existing creases,
Andrew folded the letter into quarters again. He’d gone to his
mother’s house upon leaving the restaurant that fateful day, and
had sat at the kitchen table while she’d placed a bag of frozen
peas on his swollen, aching knuckles. She hadn’t asked what had
happened and he hadn’t volunteered to tell. Instead, she’d pulled
out a Scrabble game and they’d played together until long into the
night, the way they always had when he’d been a kid, when Beth had
still been alive and had joined him.