Larkspur Cove (26 page)

A tingle of expectation slid over my skin, featherlight – and for just a moment, I imagined speeding over the surface in the darkness. In the fantasy, Mart was at the wheel, his smile wide and white in the moonlight, a challenge of sorts.

I looked at him, caught his face in moonlight, and his smile was the one I’d imagined. “It’s worth the trip,” he said, his eyes dark, fathomless.

The breeze tickled loose hairs on the back of my neck. I wanted to say yes, to build a wall between myself and reality, and glide onto the lake with him. But even now, a dozen hesitations were pressing at the edges of my consciousness, like the sentries of an oncoming army. What if Dustin came looking for me? What if I couldn’t think of a thing to say out there? What if, once we were in close proximity in the dark, it was uncomfortable and awkward? What if it gave Mart the impression that all of this was leading somewhere?

What if he meant for it to?

That last thought rushed through my mind like a vehicle hydroplaning out of control. A squeal of brakes quickly followed. “I really shouldn’t. I have so much work to do.”

Nodding, he rested one leg on the dock railing, so that he was half sitting on it. He crossed his arms over his chest, as if he were perfectly happy to hang out here on the dock with me. “Maybe another time.”

“Maybe.” I felt like such a loser. So much for fun and impulsive. I was back to my boring self. I rested my elbows on the railing, sighed, felt freedom just out of reach.

“Maybe tomorrow night.” The invitation in his words was obvious. My body quickened in response, and loneliness pinched in some broken part of me. Did I really have it in me to . . . to . . . What? What was he was asking for?

He was leaning toward me, his head inclined slightly to one side, waiting for an answer. “No pressure or anything, just a ride on the lake,” he said finally.

I chewed my lip, trying to come up with the right thing to say. For some reason,
no
didn’t seem like the right thing. I wanted the invitation to remain open.“I’ll have to see how Dustin’s doing tomorrow. We didn’t have the best night tonight.” Most certainly I didn’t want Dustin to see me jetting off in the company of his nemesis, the game warden. With all the problems between Dustin and me, and his latent resentment toward Mart, that would be a disaster.

“Fair enough,” Mart agreed, as if I didn’t need to explain further. Still, I felt I did, or maybe I just needed to talk to someone.

“Dustin is having such a hard time settling in. Everything here is different for him – the house, the neighborhood, the kids. It being just the two of us, instead of . . .” Without meaning to, I’d stepped onto the slippery slope of divorce history. This wasn’t the time and place to get into it, but somehow, the truth came spilling out of me anyway. “Dustin misses his dad. They were close, but . . .” There was no way to put a good light on the past, no way to say it that wasn’t humiliating. “His dad has . . . moved on to a whole new life, I guess you’d say. Dustin doesn’t understand it. It’s like he’s lost everything at once – his friends, his house, his school, his dad, his church.”
His
faith. Our faith.

My fingers gripped the rail, its texture rough and weathered, earthy and real. I shook my head, swallowing a rising lump in my throat, feeling as helpless and confused as the fourteen-year-old boy I’d just described.

“He hasn’t lost his mom.” Mart’s voice was an island in the storm, something solid.

“Sometimes I think he’d like to.”

“Well, you know, sometimes we’re hardest on the people we know we can count on not to ditch us no matter how lousy we act.”

I turned to look at him, wishing I could see this face. This wise, tender side of him was so out of keeping with the badge and the uniform and the gun. “Spoken like someone who has experience with kids.” Suddenly I found myself on a fishing expedition – trolling for details again.

“Just nieces and nephews, and the kids I run into on the job,” he admitted. “I tend to catch a lot of kids at the moment that they’re about to realize they’re not as big as they think they are. I can remember being in their shoes. My brothers and I got in more than our share of scrapes growing up. You put a kid in a tight spot, and the first thing he wants is his mama – believe me.”

“Thanks.” I felt a stone lifting from the pile weighing on my heart, shucking off into the lake. I heard it sinking to the bottom, disappearing. “I just hope things go well when school starts. I hope he’s over the obsession with this . . . Cassandra girl before then.”

Mart clicked his tongue against his teeth, producing a speculative sound. “Cassandra. We’ll be seeing Cassandra in the water safety class, actually. Her folks don’t come from big money like the other delinquents in the boat.”

“Oh, great. I was hoping at least
that
complication would be gone before school started.”

Mart chuckled. “Well, now, Mom. A cute girl’s the best motivation I know of for regular school attendance.”

I groaned inwardly at the idea of Dustin taking up an interest in girls when everything else was such a mess. He had enough issues to deal with right now. “He just doesn’t need any more disappointments . . . temptations . . . whatever. I don’t know what to do to make it better for him. I try to talk to him about things, but it’s like he cringes every time I walk into the room.”

Mart leaned closer, so close that the space between us felt intimate. “He’s a fourteen-year-old boy, and you’re his mom.” His voice was low, as if he were divulging a secret.“There’re things a fourteen-year-old boy can’t tell his mama.”

“He never used to be that way.” The sentence trembled with a ridiculous amount of emotion. I pressed my fingertips to my forehead and closed my eyes, embarrassed.“Sorry. Some psychologist, huh?” I needed to steer this conversation back to the information Mart had learned about Birdie. We’d drifted way too far into personal issues, and I was making an idiot of myself.

“Could be there’re some things they don’t tell you in psychology school.” Mart chuckled softly, an empathic sound. “He’s in that rough period when everything changes with boys. One minute, you’re a stringy little kid, chasing frogs, and your mama is your best girl. You go to sleep, and you wake up three inches taller, with a voice you don’t even recognize. Next thing you know, there’s a whole world of girls out there who look interesting.You can’t exactly tell that to your
old
best girl, can you?”

I buried my face in my hands. “Ohhh, I’m not ready for this.” Dustin’s entire childhood flashed before my eyes. Why did he have to pick now to become a teenager?

Somewhere in the storm of mom emotions, there was a small island of comfort. Perhaps not all of Dustin’s issues were related to the divorce. Perhaps some of this was normal – just growing pains.

“It’ll sort itself out.” Mart’s voice was kind, surprisingly close. I felt the nearness of him, and when I looked up, he was a tall shadow blocking the stars.“Be patient,” he said quietly. Suddenly, his presence there felt so normal, so reassuring and right.

I butted him softly with my shoulder, the way a friend might after a joke. “That’s not my strong suit, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“I’ve noticed.” He chuckled again, and I knew I should move away, but I leaned into him instead. The palm of his hand slid over my cheek, brushed my hair, tilted my face upward. I didn’t stop it.

His eyes met mine in the soft glow of the night, and I felt the dock shifting, breaking free of the land, drifting out onto the water. I raised a hand, braced it against his chest, felt the strong cords of muscle underneath. His fingers slid over mine, lifted them, and he pressed a kiss, featherlight against my skin. The sensation burned through me like a flash fire, and I caught a breath, then let it go, shivered with a strange expectation at the touch of his skin against mine, his arm slipping around me, strong, solid, unexpectedly natural. The pad of his thumb caressed my chin, tipped my head back. I closed my eyes, felt his breath, then his lips touching mine.

The night swirled like a vortex, a whirlpool of sound and sensation, desire and surprise. I abandoned myself to it, let myself be swept away on the water, the storm too powerful for the anchors of fear or hesitation. For now, there was only Mart and me, floating off into the night, free of all ties to shore.

All good things come to those who bait.

– Anonymous

(via Nester Grimland, retired
     mechanic and regular customer)

Chapter 16

Mart McClendon

My mama had a theory that I’d never settled down and found the right woman because that first heartbreak with the pretty student teacher had left behind some sort of lasting damage. She was sorry she’d ever let me sign up for the play.

When I kissed Andrea, I sure wasn’t thinking about that student teacher, but I did feel like Robin Hood. I felt like I’d slipped into the stronghold, stolen something valuable, and whisked it off into the night. Some sappy, poetic line from the play – stuff about the moon and the stars and Maid Marian’s lips – dredged from my memory banks. Luckily I was kissing Andrea right then, so nothing stupid spilled out my mouth.

Everything about that moment, even the random lines in my head, seemed to suit, though. I didn’t understand those lines as a fourteen-year-old lovesick boy, but now I could relate to Robin Hood’s motivation.

Moments like that have to end, of course. The thing about borrowed time is that it always runs out quicker than you want it to. Andrea pulled away a little, and I let her go, and for a minute, we stood a few inches apart, her face turned upward, her eyes searching mine.

I probably should’ve said something, but I felt like one of Nester’s tackle boxes after a fishing tournament – everything in a jumble.

She watched me like she wondered what I was thinking, or she was waiting for me to explain what’d just happened.

A whippoorwill called in the distance, and from the tangle of branches stretching over the boathouse, its mate trilled out a reply. Andrea’s hand left my shirt, and she reached for the dock rail, leaving a cool spot on my skin. Instead of pointing out the whippoorwill’s call, maybe saying something intelligent and romantic, I cleared my throat, straightened my hat, and said, “I guess you’re wondering what I found out about Len today.”

Man, what a hunyak I was. She probably didn’t have Len on her mind right that minute, and I didn’t, either. I really needed to get out around people more. You could sure tell I’d been spending most of my time alone in a boat or a truck.

Her eyelids fluttered, like she was trying to clear up her vision. Then she blinked hard and nodded. “Oh . . . umm-hmm . . . yes, I was wondering about that. That was what you came up here for.”

Well, not exactly.
I didn’t admit that, of course. I had wanted to tell her what I’d found out about Len and what’d happened when I’d gone to his cabin with the stuffed raccoon for Birdie, but when I saw Andrea’s light on, I wasn’t thinking about a business meeting. The truth was that I was thinking of a pretty night and a pretty girl. It felt good to be focused on the here and now, or maybe even the future, instead of rehashing the past, for a change.

Andrea stiffened and moved away a step.“Guess we got off track a little, huh?”

“Maybe not,” I said, and felt a little less like a hunyak. Not a bad answer, and it opened the door to . . . well, something anyway.

She looked down and smoothed the front of her T-shirt, then threaded her arms over her stomach, hugging tight.

“Cold? I’ve got a jacket in the boat.” All of a sudden, I was John Wayne. My mama would’ve been proud. The spare jacket was mossy oak camo, and it probably smelled like carburetor cleaner, but it’s the thought that counts. At least I’d thought of it.

“I’m fine.” She checked the house, like she felt a tug. “What did you learn about Len and Birdie?” Now she was nothing but business. Disappointment nipped me like a red ant, but even shoptalk was better than heading back home to the contraband raccoon on my screened porch.

“Well, after a few days and some favors, I think I’ve got it pieced together, pretty much. Looks like right before Len shipped off to Vietnam, he was married. They divorced even before he came back injured, but he did have a daughter, Norma Barnes. The name matches the information from the medical clinic in Moses Lake, except her last name is Marsh now, or at least that’s the name she’s using.”

Andrea smoothed her hair from her face. “But where did she go when she left Len’s house, and why did she leave? Is she gone permanently or temporarily?”

A muscle twitched in the back of my neck. Even with a few dozen phone calls, I hadn’t been able to track down much about Len’s daughter, Norma. There was no work history, and the information she’d given at the clinic – address, phone, Social Security number – looked to be fraudulent. Her driver’s license hadn’t been renewed in six years.

“As near as I can figure, Lillian Jane, the name she wrote on the clinic form, probably is Birdie’s real name, but I checked the address Norma gave at the clinic, and it’s actually for a hardware store in Buna,Texas. Nobody there knows anything about Lillian or Norma. Just from the paper trail, it’s like they’ve been living under a rock. Usually in situations like that, what you eventually find is a string of aliases with rap sheets, but so far, nothing.”

Andrea drummed the railing with her fingernails.“So do we know for sure that Birdie really is this Lillian Jane, Len’s granddaughter?”