Bankers' Hours (27 page)

They came over to where I was standing with my rubber gloves, dust cloth, and furniture polish. Tristan asked, “Where did you put everything? I’m pretty sure there were at least some salvageable items on the surface, even though the rest was trash.”

I pointed over to my growing stack of boxes near the dining room table. “Over there. I have one box for car parts, one for receipts, and one for odds and ends that might be important but I didn’t know what they were. The other boxes next to the dishes are for stuff that’s going to Goodwill. And you’ll have to move the engine off the table, because I can’t lift it.”

Tristan wrapped his arm across my shoulders and kissed my temple. “Okay. I’ll get Jeff in here to help me on Monday. I wanted to rebuild it for the ’68 Pontiac Firebird I’ve got sitting out back under a tarp, but I never got around to it. Such a shame. I sold my motorcycle to buy it.”

Motorcycle?
Jessica had mentioned a motorcycle. At least now I knew what had happened to it. “I’m not saying you have to get rid of the engine; I’m only suggesting that you move it out of the dining room. I’d like to set the table and serve you dinner sometime, and I can’t do that if we don’t have a dining room table.”

“Gee, Dad, you’ve been married for two days and he’s already trained,” Claire said, catching me so off guard I twitched.

I turned, my face hardened, ready to rebuke her, but Tristan jumped to my defense. “Hey,” he said sternly. “That’s not very nice.”

She blinked in surprise and threw some sass his way. “Jeez, Dad, chill. I just meant he makes a great wife.”

I gaped and widened my eyes. “Ahh!”

Tristan straightened his stance and squared off. “Claire, Grant is my husband, not my wife. We’re equal partners in this marriage. If he wants to make me dinner, I’m appreciative, but he’s under no obligation, nor was he trained like some sort of servant.”

She tossed her head. “That’s not what I meant, Dad. Look at him.” She gestured. “He’s decked out in rubber gloves cleaning your house in just a couple of days. This place has been a dump for years! I’m just saying you’ve picked the right guy to cook and clean and take care of you. He’s not a servant—more like a domestic engineer.”

A small tremor rippled through me. Tristan’s arm was still around my shoulders, his fingers gripping the top of my arm. I knew he felt my body when it shook. I could have protested; but instead of anger from shock, my brain decided to get all emotional over it. My chest tightened, and my eyes stung. True, housewives all over the world battled the same comparison, trying to assert that their job was so much more than a list of chores, but I didn’t see myself the same way. I was a bank teller, and even that title was small compared to my list of duties at work. People shouldn’t be defined by their job title, but in this case the term “domestic engineer” made me feel unimportant.

Tristan turned to me instead of reaming Claire. “Grant, you know that’s not why I married you.” He spoke very directly, probably so I wouldn’t misunderstand him. “Claire is being rude, baby. Don’t listen to her.”

It was too late. Even the tiny notion that he married me to be his “housewife” whispered to my subconscious and convinced me it was true. He didn’t love me. Tristan needed a housekeeper and a cook. My eyes locked with his at the same moment one tear escaped.

Tristan’s expression dropped. “Oh, Grant,” he said quietly. He turned immediately toward Claire and growled, “Go to your room!”

Her eyes went wide. “What?”

“Go. To. Your. Room. Now!”

She took three steps and whined, “But, Dad.”

“Go!” he yelled, pointing emphatically at the stairs. I had seen the stairs but hadn’t gone up them. I had wondered what was upstairs, since his bedroom was on the first floor. Apparently, Claire’s room was upstairs.

“Okay, I’m going!” she grumbled, stomping up the steps. “Jeez, I don’t see what the big deal is!”

As soon as she was up the steps, Tristan turned back to me. He reached out, but her words had felt like a slap. I turned away, but Tristan grabbed my upper arms.

“Look at me,” he said.

I did, but I wanted to run to the bedroom and bawl. She had made me feel so small.

“I married you because I love you. Claire is a hormonal teenage girl who doesn’t think before she speaks. You are
not
my maid, Grant. You’re my husband. I appreciate your desire to clean my house, but if you think for one second that’s why I married you, then I’m calling a maid service right now to clean the rest. I am not going to stand here and have you disrespected by my own daughter and made to feel like hired help in your own home.”

“But you did offer to pay me,” I peeped.

“Only so you could take off a few days and not feel taken advantage of. This is our house, Grant. Even if we decide to sell it so we can buy a house together, this is still
our
house. You’re cleaning your own house because you’re good at it and you like doing it. You
do
like cleaning, right?”

“Yes, but the way she worded it made me sound like—”

“Don’t listen to Claire. She’s an only child, and she lives with a psychopathic alcoholic. Teresa doesn’t teach her how to filter anything.” He took a deep breath and admitted, “I haven’t taught her much either. I see her every other weekend, and we play. We work out at the gym, we eat at restaurants, we watch movies and go bowling. When have I ever taught her not to say things like that? I’ll go talk to her.”

I nodded slightly and bowed my head.

Tristan pulled me to his chest and hugged me before going upstairs to talk to his daughter.

I discarded the rubber gloves in the kitchen and walked into the bedroom to sit on the bed. A chilly breeze floated over my arms, and I noticed the window was open. “Why did Tristan open the window?” I stepped over to shut it and saw that the screen was on the ground in the bushes outside. “Great. This place is falling apart, and he expects me to live here.”

As I turned back to the bed, something caught the corner of my eye. I shrieked as a wolf spider darted under the bed. As I ran from the room, I collided with Tristan.

“What is it?” he asked, alarmed by my reaction.

“Spider!” I cried, pointing emphatically and practically crawling up his body to escape the floor. He started laughing, and I glared. “It’s not funny,” I growled. “They are evil creatures, and I’m not sleeping in there with a spider on the loose.”

He lost his silliness and led me to the couch. “Okay. Stay here and I’ll go kill it.” A minute later, he returned with a smashed spider. “See, here it is.” He opened the paper towel he had used. “It’s a big one.”

My body quivered with the heebie-jeebies. I jumped up, ready to run if he brought it any closer. “I don’t need to see it,” I said, looking away.

He tossed the body in the trash and returned to the living room. “It’s all taken care of, Grant.” He sat and gently pulled me down next to him. “I talked to Claire. She’s being stupid and doesn’t see why I got mad, so she’s cleaning her room and scrubbing the bathroom floor. I’m sorry she spoke to you like that. She didn’t think anything of it. Again, I’m sorry. I didn’t marry you because I needed a housewife, or a domestic engineer. I do make enough money that if you chose to stay home, you could, but that is your choice.” He took my hand and gazed into my eyes.

“But I like counting other people’s money,” I said weakly.

He chuckled quietly. “Okay.”

“I think my job is fun. Cleaning this place isn’t fun. It’s disgusting.”

“You looked like you were having fun.”

“That’s because I had music playing, and I like to dance and sing. It doesn’t mean the task was fun.”

“Okay.” Tristan closed his eyes briefly. “I’m sorry. Then maybe asking you to clean the whole house was too much. I guess we’ll have to live apart longer than I’d like.”

“No, I didn’t say that. You can move in with me while we clean this place up.”

His voice went up when he said, “But everything I own is in here, and I work fifteen feet away from the side door.”

The frustrated tone rubbed me wrong. “Okay, but doesn’t it make more sense? Why should I move in here when it barely passes as living space? I opened the closet door and almost got buried under twenty feet of crap,” I argued. “This house should be condemned.”

“It’s not that bad,” he rumbled.

“Not that bad?” I countered. “I found a dead mouse in your cabinets! Not in the cabinets under the sink where anything could crawl in and die, but the ones where your dinner plates and glasses are. The FDA would shut this place down!”

“It’s not a bed-and-breakfast.”

“No! Far from it. By the way you get flour all over the floor when you make breakfast, I can see why you have mice moving in.” I jumped off the couch and headed to the bedroom.

“Where are you going?” Tristan asked as he followed me.

“Back home! This place gives me the creeps.” I pushed my sweats down and sat after snatching my jeans off the floor. As I pulled them on, another wolf spider the size of Iceland scurried across my leg and over the comforter. I screamed bloody murder and fell to the floor as my legs got tangled in my pants leg. I shook and shivered in terror as I scrambled to get away from the hairy beast, but as I planted my hand to hoist myself off the floor, I crushed something large and squishy. I lifted my hand slowly and turned it over to find another wolf spider stuck to my palm, its gooey center oozing out.

The sound that came from my throat could have shattered glass. I stumbled forward, clawing my way to the shower. My jeans had slipped off by the time I reached the tub, but I didn’t even bother removing my shirt as I climbed in and turned the water on full blast. Using the hottest water possible, I scrubbed every inch of my body, hoping to burn away the tickling sensation that remained on my skin, telling my brain something was crawling on me. Logically I knew it wasn’t there, but I still felt it as I scrubbed and scrubbed.

Shaking like an aspen leaf, shivering like I had hypothermia, I pulled off my sodden T-shirt and removed my boxers. I washed again and then curled up in a ball under the spray.

“Grant,” he said, outside the shower curtain but in the room with me, “I killed all of them. I checked under the bed and behind a few chairs. The spiders are gone. Grant?” he questioned when I didn’t answer.

I heard the curtain move, but I couldn’t look up. My fetal position felt much safer than unfurling.

Tristan gasped. “Oh, Grant.” He turned off the water, but I refused to move. Spiders generally didn’t like water. I wanted to stay where I was. He laid a towel over my shoulders and petted my hair. “Grant, they’re gone. They’re all gone. I checked.”

“What if there are more in the other room?” I mumbled, my head still resting on my knees.

“There aren’t. But just in case, I’ll go look around if that makes you feel better.” I didn’t answer. His solution was a given as far as I was concerned. Tristan returned after a short while and confirmed, “No more spiders. I promise. I don’t know where they came from or how they got in, but I killed all of them.”

I looked up, wide-eyed. “H-how many were there?”

“Twelve. Big hairy things that even started creeping me out as I found another and then another.” He shivered. “Yeah, they’re gone. Once we get this place cleaned out really well, I’m sure we won’t see things like that again. I’m sure it was a nest or something that got disturbed while you cleaned.”

“T-twelve?” I felt the tremors rippling through my body.

“Yes. But they’re gone. Come on, Grant, you can’t stay in that tub all day.” He reached for me, and I shrank away. “Grant, don’t be ridiculous. They’re gone. I understand spider phobias, but they’re all dead. I don’t know how many times I can say it. You need to trust me and get out of the tub. You can get dressed, and I’ll take you home.”

I shivered, half registering his proposal. Tristan was trying to help in the only way he knew how, and part of me appreciated that, but the other part knew there was nothing to be done until the quaking inside subsided. He didn’t understand how deep my fears went.

Just as I touched the tub wall to steady myself while I attempted to stand, I heard Claire’s voice. “Where’s Grant? I want to tell him I’m sorry about what I said.”

Tristan jumped away from the tub and angled the door so she couldn’t see me as he blocked her path. “You could think of knocking before entering my room. You know I’m married now. We’re going to have to lay down some rules.”

I could imagine her rolling eyes by the sound she made. “Seriously? Since when do we have rules? Dad! You’re the guy who said rules are for those who don’t like to have fun.”

He conceded. “Um, true.” I could hear the embarrassment in his voice. Then he amended, “But for fifteen years, it’s only been the two of us. Things are different now.”

“Because of him,” she huffed.

He stressed, “Yes, because of him. I love Grant, Claire. I will do whatever necessary for him to be happy. So if I have to set down a few rules for my spoiled teenage daughter, I will. Number one, no barging into the bedroom like you did this morning or just now.”

“Because you might be having sex,” she said matter-of-factly.

“No! Good God, Claire. Why would you even say that?” he asked, shocked out of his mind. I was alarmed by her statement as well, and mildly wondered if she’d come in hoping to find us.

She made another disgusted sound. “I don’t know. Mom does it, so I figured you’d probably do the same.”

“Claire,” he said, concerned, drawing her away from the door and into the bedroom. I stood up and dried myself off. I removed my glasses, wiped off the water droplets, and set them back on my face. I wanted to hear what they were saying, so I leaned closer to the door. Tristan continued, “I would never have sex while you were in the house, or at the very least I’d lock the door. Has your mom…? Have you…?” He didn’t finish his thought, but it was implied strongly enough.

She snorted. “All the time.”

My heart actually hurt for her. She was a kid. It wasn’t right for her to see things like that. But her next words made me gag on bile.

“When I was ten, I walked in on her with this guy she’d been seeing. I didn’t know what they were doing, but he was mounting her from behind like the elephants I’d seen at the zoo. I stared for a few seconds, listening to her moan. At first I thought he was hurting her, but she kept saying, ‘Yes!’ When I finally asked, ‘What are you doing to my mom?’ they both yelled at me to get out. She rarely remembers to close the door, let alone lock it. I’ve seen all kinds of things.”