Kiss Me Hello (Sweetest Kisses) (7 page)

“I will be sixteen before school’s out, Sid, and we need the money.”

“Water’s boiling.” She took a sip of her coffee rather than argue. They did need the money. When she’d taken a break from the house chores yesterday, she’d reread the addendum to the contract of sale Tony had signed for the farm.

Or she’d tried to read it. Goddamn lawyers spoke in demon tongues and wrote in them too. Heretofore, wherefore, notwithstanding, except on the condition, insofar as, bullshit-of-the-first-part language.

From what she’d been able to discern, Tony had become absolute owner of the property, but he’d agreed to honor the leases and agreements made by the previous owners regarding use of the land. He was under no obligation to renew those leases, but he had to let them run their courses.

And this Inskip fellow was the guy responsible for leasing the land under cultivation. Another guy had the right to cut up the deadfall in the woods. There was some sort of rent owed by both, but not—had Abraham Lincoln himself drafted these contracts?—until crops had been sold in the fall.

If only Tony—

“You want some OJ?” Luis opened the fridge and stood eyeing the contents as only an adolescent who had never paid an electricity bill himself might do.

“Still working on my coffee, thanks. Did Knightley say when he’s coming over?”

“This afternoon. He’ll work at the riding school first, and that reminds me. Now that we live out here, can I move my lessons to midweek? That’s when the individual lessons are, and Adelia said I’m ready.”

But the checkbook was not.

“We can talk to her about it when we see her tomorrow,” Sid said. “You never did tell me what you’ll do with your Saturday.”

“I have some homework, and I’ll make some more progress on the barn, maybe give the girls a grooming.”

“They like that?”

“Didn’t you used to like it when your mom brushed your hair?” He was regarding her with puzzlement, a boy with mostly good memories of a mother others would say did a bad job.

“She was usually in a hurry. Leave the dishes. I’ll clean up after I get dressed.”

She tousled Luis’s hair as she went by, needing the touch. Luis loved his mother, loved his little sisters, even though it had been months since he’d seen them. That didn’t threaten Sid, exactly, but she was aware she was a consolation prize in his mom sweepstakes.

“Weese, Mother’s Day is coming up. You want to make a trip to Jessup?”

“Nah.”

“She’d like to see you.”

“That’s not what her letters say, and she’d ask me about the girls.”

Sid headed up the stairs. Luis’s younger sisters were a sore point, to say the least. Maybe Ms. Call-me-Amy Snyder could do something about that, because Sid’s efforts to arrange visits between Luis and his siblings had been a complete failure.

Mac tried to tell himself he wasn’t looking forward to stopping by the home place again, wasn’t pleased to have an excuse to see what Sid Lindstrom was doing with the house—with his old bedroom—or how the mares were faring in Luis’s care.

But self-deception had never been his strong suit, and he finished with Adelia’s school horses in record time. He also stopped by the Farmers’ Co-op and picked up a couple more bags of senior feed, a pair of leather lead shanks, a horsey first aid kit, and a few other odds and ends.

All of which, he admitted to himself as he pulled into the driveway, constituted procrastination.

“Mac!”

Luis waved to him from the barn aisle, so Mac eased his truck into what had been the chicken yard.

“Hullo!” Luis waved a muck fork like it was a lightsaber. “I’ve been working on the barn.” He had the diffident grin of a pleased adolescent, but he waited while Mac retrieved the halters and lead shanks from the backseat of the truck.

“Greetings yourself, Luis. Your halters and some decent leather leads. How are the ladies?”

“I think they’ve put on some weight, but, man, do they shed.”

“They need to.” Mac walked beside Luis into the barn. “Big animals like that don’t dissipate heat as well as the little ones do. And, my heavens, you must have spent the whole week in here cleaning and mucking.” The place looked worlds better, not a cobweb in sight. “Did you pressure wash these stones?”

“Scrubbed ’em,” Luis said, eyes on the cobbled flooring. “My knees aged a decade. Come see the tack room.”

He led the way to the old dairy, which was as spruce and tidy as the rest of the understory. What few pieces of grooming equipment the place still boasted were neatly stowed on hooks and in buckets. Two big metal garbage cans stood to one side of the door.

“I brought you a couple more bags of feed,” Mac said. “A housewarming, or barnwarming for the ladies.”

The kid’s eyes shifted away, indicating gifts were a delicate issue with Luis’s pride, or perhaps with his foster mom’s.

“Thank you.”

“There’s something I haven’t quite found a way to tell Sid.” Mac studied the window, noting that even the corners were clean. “My dad is the guy who bred Daisy and Buttercup. I consider I owe them.” He chanced a glance at Luis, then went back to a visual inventory of all the work the kid had done.

Luis left off working the buckles of one of the new halters, the stiffness of the leather making for a tough fit between straps and hardware.

“Owe them, how?”

“Draft horses have become something of a rarity. They take special care, and they can’t exactly be passed around from one little girl to the next like a show pony. When you bring an animal like that into the world, you have to be prepared to take responsibility for it.”

Luis held up the halter, probably inspecting it for a price, which he would not find. “You sold both mares, right?”

“We did, but I think it’s like being a parent, Luis. Just because your darling girl marries the man of her dreams, she doesn’t stop being your daughter.”

“You have kids?”

The question, so prosaic, so commonplace, cut to the bone.
Again.

“I do not, which is probably why finding Daisy and Buttercup here sits so poorly with me. If they’ve had to shift for themselves, it’s my fault, and I’m in your debt.”

As were Trent and James, though Mac hadn’t put it to either brother in that light.

Luis opened one of the metal trash cans and peered inside as the rich scent of rice bran and molasses wafted across the tack room.

“Sid hasn’t said anything about getting rid of the horses, but she isn’t exactly running out to stock up on feed, either.”

Could she even lift a feed bag by herself? “She needs to get to know them. I never met the lady who wasn’t smitten by horses.”

The lid went back on the trash can with a hollow clank. “Sid’s not prone to being smitten. Not so it shows.”

“You know her pretty well.” Mac was not going to interrogate this kid, not about his foster mother, in any case.

“She knows me just as well.” Luis’s smile was bashful, but it made him look older. “I gave her hell and a half the first few months I was with her, but she hung on, and hung on, until one day, I realized it mattered to me whether I hurt her feelings.”

What a hell of a thing, that a kid needed months to admit a capacity for empathy.

“Riding out the bucks is half of getting any relationship under way,” Mac replied. “I’d say she loves you.”

“She says it too.” Luis’s smile became rueful. “At the strangest times and places.”

“Women.”

They shared the kind of look Mac usually reserved for his brothers, and then a shout cut through the air.

“Weese! I’m back!”

“Groceries.” Luis trotted off, male bonding clearly taking a backseat to foraging through shopping bags. He turned and took a few steps backward. “Come on, or she’ll get the best stuff put away before you even know it’s in the house. Dibs on the nachos.”

Teenage boys would never change in some biological fundamentals, no matter what else did. Mac took one last glance around the barn, pleased in his bones to see it so improved.

He approached Sid’s little red car as she hefted grocery bags out of the trunk.

“Let me help with those.” He tried to scoop a bag out of her grip. She wrestled him for it but gave up eventually. “Pass me another.”

“How will you get the kitchen door open, Mr. Knightley?”

“You’ll hold it for me,” he said, taking his burden up the porch steps. “Then you’ll start putting this stuff away while I bring in the rest.”

“But Luis…” She trailed after him and held the door open.

“Luis is inventorying the spoils.” Mac leaned closer to lower his voice. “Or doing some quality assurance on the nachos.”

Luis sat on the counter, the nachos in hand, orange-crumb dust already accumulating on his fingers.

“I skipped lunch.” Luis held out the bag. “Or I’m having nachos for lunch.”

Mac stood just behind Sid, admiring the view, taking in her scent, willing to hold her groceries all day. From this angle, the blouse she’d tucked into her jeans allowed him a hint of a peek of cleavage, and while peeking might not be exactly gentlemanly, it wasn’t illegal either.

“You should be ashamed, Luis, and get off the counter. We have company.” Sid walked across the kitchen, sexy little cowgirl boot heels thumping, the fringe on her open jacket dancing with each step. She snatched the nachos out of his hand and smacked him with the bag.

“Don’t hit me with the nachos,” Luis wailed. “Not my nachos, Sid!” But he was grinning and dodging for the chips while Sid tried to land another swat.

“You see what I have to put up with, Mr. Knightley. Insubordination, disrespect, attitude.
Nacho
hogging.
”

Luis swiped the bag back and darted for the door, yelling over his shoulder, “Mine at last! Fly, my pretties! Fly!”

Mac set down the groceries he’d been holding, unable to suppress a smile. “He’s a
Wizard of Oz
fan?”

“Old movies, old cartoons.” Sid shrugged out of her jacket, hung it on a chair, and began peering into the bags on the counter. “Vintage TV was one thing he and Tony had in common.” She stowed her plunder in the fridge: yogurt, a big brick of orange cheddar, a tub of sour cream, butter, a brand of ice cream Mac considered worth his own notice.

“You like your dairy.”

“Love it.” Her tone was flat as she kept stowing the goods.

“I’m sorry if bringing up your late brother is awkward.”

She turned then, her expression puzzled. “Not bringing him up feels awkward, like he’s not only dead but also somehow disgraced, though bringing him up doesn’t help. I’m sorry.” She turned her back to Mac again and began rummaging in the second bag. “You’ll probably want to be going, now that you’ve brought Luis the what-do-you-call-’ems. And my thanks. I’m sure they’ll be much appreciated.”

Maybe it was her tone of voice, casual and offhand; maybe it was the way she tossed things into the cupboard, or the line of her spine under that silk blouse.

Mac crossed the kitchen to stand immediately behind her. “It’s OK to cry, Sid.”

She pokered right up, her back to his chest, a jar of raspberry jam in her hand.

“No, Mr. Knightley, it is not.” She set the jar on the counter quite firmly, and kept her hand around it. “Not when I have a house to set to rights, groceries to put away, and a child to raise. Crying is for when you have nothing left to do and nobody to do it for. I’ve cried enough.”

Have
not.

What she wanted was an argument, a fight, a rousing battle to keep her together. Mac could understand better than she’d ever know, but he could not oblige.

“My dad died when I was little more than a kid myself, Sid. I can still, right this minute, feel the lump in my throat that took the better part of five years to ease. Just when I thought maybe I was regaining my balance, my mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.”

Some of the starch went out of her. Her shoulders dropped, and she braced herself on the counter. Mac didn’t step away.

“Luis doesn’t know what to do with me when I mope.”

She didn’t know what to do with herself.

“When you grieve.” Mac reached around her and put the jam up on the shelf next to a jar of apricot preserves. “It’s called grieving, Sid.”

She nodded, and only then did Mac move off, going to another grocery bag. “What was he like, your brother?”

“Tony was the best.” She didn’t march up to Mac and chase him off her groceries, so he put frozen vegetables into the freezer. Snow peas—she was a snow peas kind of lady. Knowing that about her pleased him.

“My brothers are the best too,” he said. “Though sometimes they require pointed guidance.”

“Tony didn’t.” She stared at a jar of guacamole dip. “He was the kind of guy anybody could talk to. That came in handy in his line of work.”

“What did he do?” Snow peas and a cruciferous medley. Mac approved of both.

“He ran his own video production company. I was the second in command, the one who stepped and fetched and caught up all the loose ends. My title was head of HR, but I had my fingers into everything. We were quite successful, while Tony was well.”

“He was ill?”

Mac purposely didn’t look up from the grocery bag he’d nearly emptied. Going through Sid’s provisions like this, putting them away with her was intimate. Almost as intimate as listening to her reluctant admissions of grief.

“Tony was ill.” She sat at the table, her chin resting on her stacked fists. “I could tell you it was lymphoma, but it was AIDS. Damned, rotten, stupid AIDS. He always promised he was careful, but he was a guy. That was talk to placate the womenfolk, or maybe he only started being careful when I came to live with him.”

Mac opened the guacamole dip, set it in front of her, found the backup bag of nachos, and put that at her elbow.

“You haven’t had lunch yet. Eat.”

She gave him a measuring look, then tore open the chips. “My brother died of AIDS. You may now start compulsively washing your hands or something.”

Mac turned a chair around and straddled it. “It’s an illness, not a curse from the angry gods of right-wing morality. What do you want to drink?”

She studied her chip now, one sporting a little dab of guacamole on a corner. “It’s hard for me when people are nice, Mr. Knightley.”

“Mac,” he said, reaching into the bag. “It’s hard for you when they’re not nice, too, would be my guess. Stubborn people deal better with a little traction, a dash of sand in the gears.”

She peered up at him through sad, shiny eyes. “You are an unlikely philosopher.”

“I’m stubborn too.” Mac patted Sid’s hand and rose, going to the fridge. “I’m putting together a sandwich, and you’re eating it.” He set fixings on the counter: turkey, Swiss cheese, bread, mustard, a tomato, mayo, butter…

“What is it with men and food?” Sid bit off the corner of the nacho and considered the uneaten portion.

“It’s life and food. The two are related, and you’re alive, which is nothing to be ashamed of. What happened to the production company?”

“Tony’s spouse, Thorvald, inherited Tony’s share, though without Tony, it’s just a lot of equipment, a leased studio, and a few contracts.”

“You really know a guy named Thorvald?”

“He’d like you,” Sid said, eyeing Mac as he fished a knife out of the silverware drawer. “He was a tramp, and I’ve wondered if he didn’t kill Tony indirectly.”

“AIDS killed Tony, and you are only torturing yourself by trying to read more into it than that. Mayonnaise or mustard?”

“Just mustard. How long ago did your dad die?”

“I was out of high school. Mom died about twelve years ago, but I still stumble, sometimes.”

“Stumble?”

“She loved this…life. Loved each little crocus, each daffodil, each robin. She loved the way the light was so clear the sunset before the first frost. She loved the first snow. She simply
loved
, and when Dad died, she folded in on herself. I’ll be walking along and identify a particular birdsong, and I think ‘I’ll tell Mom.’ But it’s a decade later, and I won’t tell Mom ever again. I stumble.”

“I stumble to my knees.” Sid dipped a second nacho into the guacamole. “The people who ought to be tidying up Tony’s estate don’t seem to care whether we live or die while they twiddle their thumbs at an obscene hourly rate. I want the paperwork, the bullshit, to be over, you know?”

Mac passed her a turkey and Swiss on rye. “Probate is a detailed process, done right. How about milk with that?”

Sid crunched her nacho. “Moo juice is fine by me. Do you know about probate from your parents’ deaths?”

“Mostly.” Mac busied himself putting away the sandwich fixings. Trust and estate—stiffs and gifts—wasn’t his legal area, but he owned part of a law practice that had a T&E department.

“I purely hate lawyers, Mr. Knightley. Hate them with a cold-blooded, unrelenting passion.”

“A lot of people feel that way.”
Until
they
were
arrested, or were served with divorce papers, or found themselves permanently disabled by some incompetent doctor
. “There have been lawyers in my family since forever, and they can be useful people to have on your side.”