River Road (5 page)

W
hat was it about the beautiful old house that made her so uneasy? It wasn’t just the general gloom, Lucy thought. That would soon be rectified with the new lightbulbs she had picked up at Fletcher Hardware.

She set the sack of groceries, the six-pack of beer and the lightbulbs on the ancient, scarred wooden table that occupied the center of the kitchen. She paused to look around, searching for whatever it was that was bothering her. She remembered the house as warm and welcoming, but now it felt cold. True, it was late in the day, but the place seemed darker than she remembered it.

The paneled walls, faded drapes, wooden floors and heavy, vintage furniture had always been atmospheric, but in a cozy way. Now the two-story house was saturated with shadows. She wasn’t sure the new lightbulbs were going to help all that much.

Perhaps the problem was that while Sara was alive the house had reflected her bright, positive, spiritual personality. Now that she was gone, the old house was simply an old house.
Missing its owner,
Lucy thought.

“I miss her, too,” she said into the silence.

Her phone chirped. She took the device out of her tote and glanced at the screen. The very pricey online matchmaking service with which she was registered had identified another match. All she had to do was log on for more information. Mr. Almost Perfect was waiting out there somewhere in the ether.

She deleted the message and dropped the phone back into the tote.

She put the baby bok choy, the fresh salmon, the white wine and a few other items, including a wedge of excellent cheese from a local artisanal cheesemaker, into the vintage refrigerator. Thirteen years ago the selection of cheeses available in Summer River had been limited to what the chain supermarket on Main Street carried. That afternoon she had spotted two specialty shops stocked with a dazzling array of exotically named cheeses, many made in the surrounding area.

She placed the loaf of crusty French bread on the counter and then turned to contemplate the six-pack. The brown bottles wore designer labels, but there was no getting around the fact that the stuff inside was beer. What had she been thinking? She didn’t drink beer. She didn’t know if Mason drank it, but she had a feeling he would prefer beer to white wine. Manly men drank beer, didn’t they? Or possibly whiskey. She wasn’t sure, because she hadn’t met a lot of manly men. Mostly the thirtysomething guys she knew were still boys waiting to grow up.

Maybe she should have bought a bottle of whiskey instead of beer.

“You’re an idiot, Lucy. It is probably not a good idea to get tangled up with Mason Fletcher.”

But she was not getting tangled up with him. He had been gracious enough to offer to see if he could save her some money by tearing out the tiles that blocked the fireplace. The least she could do was give him a glass of wine and feed him. That did not constitute a date. A real date was having coffee or drinks with one of the string of possible matches the dating service had come up with in the past three months.

“Nice job rationalizing,” she said. “Spoken like a true commitment-phobe. Dr. Preston would be proud.”

Six weeks of cognitive therapy taught a woman a lot about herself.

She got busy opening up the packages of lightbulbs.

W
hat the hell do you mean, you’ve got a date?” Deke demanded. “I’ve been trying to get you to go out with a woman—any woman—ever since you landed on my doorstep two weeks ago. You kept saying you weren’t in the mood. I figured you were depressed or something.”

“Or something,” Mason said. He did not pause in the act of stacking rolls of duct tape on a shelf.

“And now, out of the blue, you announce you’ve finally got a date?”

“Breathe, Deke. Don’t hyperventilate on me. You can deal with this.”

Deke snorted. “Don’t be too sure of that. It’s a shock to the system, I tell you.”

It was doubtful that anything, not even the apocalypse, would come as a stunning shock to Deke Fletcher, Mason thought. If any man could roll with the punches, it was his uncle. He’d sure as hell taken enough of them in his time. And delivered his share.

Deke Fletcher had run through three wives before he’d given up on marriage. All three women had filed for divorce claiming irreconcilable differences. Mason suspected that the term was a polite gloss for the real truth—none of them could take the demanding life of a military spouse married to a soldier who always chose deployment over hearth and home.

Mason and Aaron had had only limited contact with Deke when they were very young. They were vaguely aware that he spent a lot of time abroad fighting wars in far-off places. He was a larger-than-life figure in their vivid imaginations, and they were proud of him. But most of what they knew about him came from overheard conversations between their parents. Their mother had complained that Deke drank too much and that he was a womanizer, and said that it was no wonder he couldn’t keep a marriage together. Their father said Deke probably had some form of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Once in a while Deke surprised everyone by showing up for Thanksgiving or New Year’s, and when Mason turned ten he and Aaron had spent a memorable two weeks with Deke while their parents took a cruise. Deke had taken Mason and Aaron camping and taught them how to fish. Deke didn’t drink much during that visit—a beer in the evenings or a glass of whiskey late at night was about it—so Mason couldn’t tell if Deke had a drinking problem. Deke hadn’t brought a woman along, either, so it was hard to gauge whether or not he was a womanizer.

The car crash had been caused by a drunk driver, and it had changed everything. Mason was thirteen at the time; Aaron, eleven. Rebecca Fletcher had died at the scene. Jack Fletcher had survived long enough to make it to the hospital—just long enough to say good-bye to his sons and give Mason his marching orders.
Take care of Aaron. You two stick together, no matter what happens.

The authorities had put Mason and Aaron into foster care while they set out to track down next of kin. Everyone had an excuse. Rebecca’s parents explained that they were living in a retirement community and could not bring in young children. Jack’s parents had divorced and remarried years earlier. Neither of them wanted to start all over again with two young boys. An aunt on Rebecca’s side refused on the grounds that she had never gotten along with her sister and, besides, she was a single mom with two kids of her own to raise. An uncle declined because he had recently remarried and his new wife refused to get stuck with someone else’s children.

And so it went. Everyone expressed sympathy; everyone maintained that they wanted to stay in touch with Mason and Aaron—everyone presented a logical reason for why they could not take on the responsibility of raising two boys.

That left Deke.

No one, least of all Mason and Aaron, expected him to step forward and shoulder the responsibility of two boys. After all, he had the very best excuse of all. He was single, and he frequently deployed to war zones. Certainly no one thought that he was fatherhood material—just the opposite. The general opinion was that he would be a bad influence on impressionable youths.

At that point, Mason had understood with blinding clarity that he and Aaron were staring down the very real possibility that they would both end up permanently in the foster care system. If that happened it was likely that they would be separated. He would not be able to carry out his mission to protect Aaron.

He was making plans to disappear into the streets with Aaron when Deke Fletcher arrived, fresh from yet another war zone.

Mason and Aaron had been sitting in the office of their very nice, very kind caseworker, having the facts of foster care life explained to them, when a gleaming gray SUV rolled into the parking lot. Mason knew that neither he nor Aaron would ever forget the sight of Deke striding into their lives. He was pretty sure the very nice, very kind caseworker would never forget it, either.

Deke had not been in uniform that day, but one look at him and you knew that he was hard-core military. It was there in his ramrod-straight bearing—his clean-shaven face, the high-and-tight hair, the neatly pressed shirt, polished boots, sleek wraparound dark glasses and the you-don’t-want-to-mess-with-me attitude.

When he walked through the door of the office, Mason and Aaron had stared at him, awed and thrilled. Mason knew in that moment that Uncle Deke had come to save them. For his part, Deke had taken one look at his nephews and nodded once, evidently satisfied with what he saw.

“Let’s go home, boys,” he said.

The very nice, very kind caseworker had given Deke close scrutiny, asked him a few questions, and then she had smiled. She, too, had been satisfied with what she saw.

Not everyone else in the office, including the very nice caseworker’s boss, was of the same mind. There had been some hasty, behind-closed-doors conversations, but the caseworker had triumphed. She had blazed through the formalities with lightning speed—a warrior of another sort, Mason thought.

And then Deke had taken Mason and Aaron home.

Home had been a series of military bases for a few years. Deke stopped deploying, but he stayed in the Army. There was a lot of relocating, but none of them had a problem with that. They had one another.

In the end they wound up in Summer River. Deke deployed one last time the summer Mason turned nineteen. Everyone knew why. The family needed the extra money. Three divorces had wiped out what little Deke had managed to save, and Aaron was destined for college.

Living with Deke gave Mason a chance to discover the truth. In addition to taking a couple of beers or a glass of whiskey in the evenings, Deke did like women. But he treated both the alcohol and the women with respect. He taught Mason and Aaron to do the same.

Mason concluded that Deke was neither an alcoholic nor a womanizer. But he was pretty sure that Deke had possessed another secret. Deke had been more than a little addicted to war. He had given up that addiction to take on another mission—raising his nephews.

He had gone to war one last time to help pay for Aaron’s education, but when he came home that time he hung up his shield for good. He bought the old hardware store and settled down to live a different life. As far as Mason could tell, Deke was content now. Either the old addiction had burned out or Deke had changed.

“Who are you seeing tonight?” Deke asked. “You might as well tell me, because we both know it will be all over town by tomorrow morning.”

“It’s no secret,” Mason said. “I’m going to drop by Sara Sheridan’s old place.”

Deke did look genuinely shocked now. “You’ve got a date with little Lucy?”

“She’s not so little anymore.”

Deke chuckled. “Gained a little weight, has she? Generally speaking, that’s a good thing in a woman.”

Mason turned and looked at him. “I meant she’s not sweet sixteen anymore. She’s still little, though. Sort of. But she’s all grown up.”

Deke grinned. “Yeah, I hear that happens. That was quick work on your part. She just got into town yesterday. How’d you manage a date so damn fast?”

“She’s planning to do some repairs before she puts the house on the market. Her first priority is to open up the fireplace in the front room. She says her aunt blocked it with a lot of tile because it was inefficient. I told Lucy I’d see if I could handle the job and maybe save her a few bucks. She’s going to need the name of a reliable contractor, by the way.”

“Hang on here, you call tearing out some old tiles a date?”

“I’m going over to her place at approximately five-thirty in the evening. I’m doing her a favor, and she is going to repay me by cooking me dinner. What do you call it?”

Deke pondered that briefly and then smiled his slow smile. “You could call that a date.”

“Certainly struck me that way. As long as you’re here, I’ll let you close up by yourself.” Mason took his keys out of his pocket. “I need to go back to the cabin and clean up.”

“Don’t use all the hot water. Remember, I’ve got a date tonight, too. Becky and I are going to shoot some pool and do some dancing out at Hank’s.”

Mason shook his head. “You’ve got a pool game lined up and I’m taking out some old tiles. We’re a couple of real wild guys, aren’t we?”

“Definition of
wild
changes as you get older.”

“I’m starting to notice that.”