The Unsung Hero (6 page)
“Joe?” Tom couldn’t believe it. Joe had worked as the Ashtons’ groundskeeper for nearly sixty years—ever since the two men had returned from the War. Charles was the snit master. He was quick tempered and opinionated. He’d spent a good portion of the past six decades in a snit. Tom had to smile. Snit was a good word for it.
“I was working on my computer,” Kelly told him, “and I heard shouting, so I went out to see what was going on. Joe was really upset. I heard only a little of what he was saying—something about running out of time. He stopped as soon as he saw me. My dad stomped into the house, and no matter what I said, I couldn’t get either of them to tell me what was wrong.”
Joe upset for an entire week. Tom couldn’t believe it. His great-uncle Joe may have been quick to both laugh and cry, unafraid to show his emotions, but he’d always managed to keep his temper carefully in control. He was the king of patience, of reason, of careful, measured thought. Good thing, since he’d spent most of his life dealing first with Charles Ashton, and then with young Tom.
“Maybe I can get him to talk about it,” he said doubtfully. “If I ever find him.”
“Tom! Tommy? Is that your bag in my kitchen?”
Tom smiled at Kelly. “Looks like he found me.”
She smiled back at him. “Tom, if it’s really possible, stay for as long as you can,” she said. “We could all use your company.”
No way could he leave, knowing that Charles was dying, knowing that Joe—a man who’d always been there for Tom—could probably use his support.
And with Kelly Ashton standing there, smiling at him, the idea of staying in Baldwin’s Bridge for the full thirty days didn’t seem so awful.
What could he say to her, except “Yeah, I will.”
Still, when he went out the back door to meet Joe in the driveway, all he could wonder was what the hell he’d gotten himself into now.
________________________________________
Three
MALLORY PAOLETTI PACED the tiny living room, listening to her mother bitch about all the shit that was wrong in her life. No money, another crappy, demeaning cleaning job, this good-for-nothing kid who wasn’t even going to college next year.
Except, oh, excuse me, Angela dearest, but you wanna rewind there to complaint A—no money? If there wasn’t enough money to replace the effing water heater and pay the G.D. electric bill, how the hell was there going to be enough money for Mallory to go to college?
Her mother’s brother, Tom, sat on the sofa, patiently hearing Angela out. But when Mallory looked over, he was watching her. He crossed his eyes just for a second. Just long enough for Mallory to know that he was still okay. He was still a cool guy, still on her side, despite the fact that he was losing his hair, big time.
Her mother was finally done. Or at least she made the mistake of pausing for breath. And Tom, as smart as he was cool, quickly took the floor.
“What about the Navy?” he asked, looking directly at Mal.
Her mother laughed breathlessly and lit another cigarette. “Oh, that’s a good one, Tommy. Can you really picture Mallory—”
“I wasn’t asking you, Ang,” he said, blowing right over her. “I was asking Mal. What do you want do with your life, kid? What do you like to do? If you want, I’ll go down to the recruiter’s office with you. It doesn’t have to be the Navy. Between you, me, and the recruiting officer, we can match you up with the branch of the service that’ll put you exactly where you want to be. We can negotiate four years of college for you. They like their recruits—even enlisted—to get an education.”
“Mallory wants to get herself pierced and tattooed,” Angela said. “That’s about all she wants to do these days. I know you probably don’t believe it, Tommy, but beneath that awful cut and dye job, Mallory is a very pretty girl. She looks a lot like I did when I was eighteen.”
And that was a load of crap. Mallory was about six inches taller than her mother and built like an Amazon warrior, complete with size D cups, while Angela had been—and still was—model-slender and prettily petite. Willowy, it was called in books. Thirty-four years old, and her mother could go without a bra. Mallory hadn’t had that option since fourth grade.
Tom was still looking at her, giving her that little half smile she remembered so well from his other trips home. Take me with you, she’d cried when she was eleven or twelve, when he’d blasted into town for a weekend or, worse, a too-short day.
He had been proof that a Paoletti could shake free from the shackles of this puritanical, narrow-minded, pointy-assed town. But nowadays, Tom was proof only of her own pathetic failings. Mal was more like her mother than her uncle. She was weighed down by all the bad shit, chain-smoking Winstons even though they couldn’t find the money to buy milk, unable to break free.
“Think about it,” he told Mallory now. “I’m going to be around for a while. Probably till the end of the month.”
She dropped her perpetually bored sneer, nearly dropped her own cigarette. “Holy shit.” He was staying that long?
“Watch your mouth,” Angela murmured.
Tom was going to be in town for weeks. At one time, that news would’ve made Mallory ecstatic. Now it only made her more depressed. When it was just her and Angela hanging around the house, Mal didn’t feel like such a loser. At least she had never spent her entire paycheck betting on the dogs at Wonderland. But with Tom in town as contrast, it was obvious she and her mother were in the same subset. Double losers. A mismatched pair of misfits. It was just a matter of time before she started buying lottery tickets with her last few bucks, just like Angela.
Tom stood up. “Let me take a look at the water heater,” he said. “If it needs to be replaced, I’ll replace it myself. I mean, as long as I’m in town, I might as well do the work.”
That was a good idea. If he simply gave Angela a check, the money would be spent on anything but the water heater. She’d color her hair or get her nails done and buy a new dress, betting that the ridiculous makeover would help her snag a rich husband from the crowd down at the fancy-schmancy four-star Baldwin’s Bridge Hotel. She’d take the gamble, hoping the payoff would bring the end to all their money troubles.
Yeah, right.
Oddly enough, the times Angela did okay were when she had just enough money to scrape by. It was the large sums of money that got her dreaming, and it wasn’t long until those dreams shattered, spiraling them down into the depths.
No doubt Tom had figured that out, too.
“It’s in the basement.” Angela opened the door and led the way down the creaky stairs into the musty dank.
But Tom didn’t follow, not right away. “I’m right behind you,” he called to his sister, then turned back to Mallory, pulling a fold of bills from the pocket of his cargo shorts. “Money for groceries.” He took out several hundred dollars.
But before he gave it to her, he took the cigarette out of her mouth and stabbed it out in an overflowing ashtray.
“Guess what,” he said. “You’re quitting smoking. As of today. When you join the Navy, first thing you’ll do is get in shape. And trust me, it’ll be easier if you’re not a smoker.”
She sucked on her front tooth, giving him her best you-bore-me-completely look. “You’re nuts if you think I’m actually going to volunteer to let assholes like you order me around.”
He laughed, grabbed her arm, and gave her a zerbert on the inside of her elbow, the way he might’ve done when she was seven. It tickled and the farting noises were so realistic she couldn’t keep from laughing.
“You’re such a jerk,” she told him.
He slapped the money into her hand. “It’s a chance to get out of here,” he said, suddenly serious. “And to do it completely on your own.”
To her horror, her eyes filled with tears. God, she wanted to escape, sometimes more than anything.
“Tommy, I’m standing down here in the dark!”
He turned away, pretending not to notice that Mallory was milliseconds from bursting into tears, giving her the space he thought she needed rather than pulling her into his arms.
God, she wished someone would hold her like she was five years old again and tell her everything was going to be okay. It was a lie, but it had always been a good lie, and for a minute, even for just a few seconds, she would feel safe.
“Think about it,” he said again, heading down the stairs.
Right. Mallory was going to do nothing but. Except thinking wouldn’t bring her any closer to doing. Because if she left, if she wasn’t around to buy groceries and sometimes even pay the rent with the money from her stupid paychecks from the stupid Ice Cream Shoppe, what would happen to her mother?
Mallory pushed her way out the door, angry as hell at the world. And angry at Tom for trying to give her hope when it was so effing obvious that everything sucked, and that nothing would change.
David Sullivan sat on a bench by the Ferris wheel, watching as most of the college-aged crowd of Baldwin’s Bridge walked by.
He had his sketch pad and pencils with him, but despite the freak-show feel of the small-town church carnival at this hour of night, he hadn’t yet taken them out of his backpack.
It was after ten, and he worked the early-morning shift at the hotel restaurant. He had to be dressed and ready to wait tables at 4:30 A.M. The room filled remarkably considering the hour. Golfers and sport fishermen. Leathery tan and rich, with big laughs and bigger wallets.
He had to move fast to get everyone on their way to the golf courses and the marina on time. Between 5:15 and 6:30, there was a bit of a lull, with a few golfers with slightly later tee times clogging their arteries with generous servings of steak and eggs. At 6:30, the women would appear, wearing tennis whites, sweaters tied around their necks. After 8:00, the sunbathers came and ordered coffee and toast. By 10:30 breakfast would be over. He would punch out, done for the day, having earned a small fortune in tips to add to his publishing fund. Another fifteen weeks, he’d have enough money saved, and Nightshade could become a reality. Problem was, there were only four more weeks before he had to be back at college.
He was thinking about getting a second job, maybe working more shifts, but he was already exhausted.
Almost every day he would vow to take a nap in the afternoon, but invariably something would catch his attention, and he’d start drawing. Before he knew it, it would be closing in on midnight again, and he’d be facing another very short four hours of sleep.
David stood, ready to be smart for once and head for his summer rental—a studio apartment on the third floor of a house two blocks from the hotel—when he saw her.
He had to be honest with himself, it was her body that first caught his eye. She was wearing one of those little nothing, clingy, thin-strapped tank tops. It was black, and so was the bra she wore underneath, its straps clearly visible.
In short, she was stacked.
She was tall, with shoulders that looked as if she could consider playing pro football without the pads. The muscles in her arms were well defined, and he would’ve guessed she was a weight lifter—except for the fact that she didn’t have muscular pecs. Instead, she had real breasts.
And that was the understatement of the new millennium.
She had a jeans jacket tied by the sleeves around her waist. It helped gravity drag her baggy pants even lower on her hips, leaving a wide gap between her waistband and the bottom edge of her shirt. That gap revealed the soft smoothness of her stomach, and the fact that her belly button was pierced. The streetlight overhead made the bluish stone she was wearing sparkle.
Her face was hidden by a short, purposely ragged mess of dark black hair. Her chin and mouth—the only features he could see—were pixieish, her chin pointed and her lips delicate in direct contrast to her lush figure.
As David watched her from the other side of the church parking lot, she stopped walking and lit a cigarette, her movements quick, angry. She took a drag, then, still angrily, impatiently, she threw the cigarette down and moved swiftly away.
He shouldered his backpack, determined to go home, when she suddenly spun around. She went back to the cigarette, but it had rolled into a puddle.
“Shit,” he heard her say, her voice exactly as he’d imagined it—slightly husky, low pitched. Sexy.
She fumbled in her pockets, took out another cigarette, and lit it.
As she did, she turned slightly, lifting her head to look up at the Ferris wheel. Her hair fell back and the overhead street lamp lit her face.
And David stopped breathing.
It was the face he’d been looking for.
She was exotically pretty, with enormous eyes and wide cheekbones that tapered quickly down to that extremely pointed, delicate chin and almost tiny, doll-like nose and mouth. Her skin was pale, which made her dark eyebrows stand out. She looked otherworldly, particularly with the rows of glittering piercings in her ears.
As he watched, she took another long drag on the cigarette, and then threw it on the ground and crushed it with her clunky-heeled boot.
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