Authors: Elizabeth Bass

Wherever Grace Is Needed (11 page)

BOOK: Wherever Grace Is Needed

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W
HEN THE
B
OUGH
B
REAKS

G
race moved quietly around the kitchen making coffee, almost as if she were performing a pantomime. A noisy summer storm had blown in just past midnight. Then, after it had died down, late into the night the sounds of Horowitz playing Beethoven sonatas had drifted down the hallway from her father’s bedroom to hers. She would be surprised if her father had managed to get to sleep at all before dawn.

Lou had always been an early bird, but now later mornings were becoming a pattern for him. What did he think about at night as he played his CDs, or even just listened to the wind in the trees outside his window?

Following the initial diagnosis, her father had spoken of doing things just the same as always. That had been back when Lou was pestering her to return to Portland. Everything had changed with the fire. The fire had given the diagnosis teeth.

She’d spent the following week arranging to get the Sheetrock above the stove replaced. After that, the kitchen had needed repainting, which she had done herself. A new stove was going to be delivered the next day—an electric stove, so they could hook up an automatic shut-off device that Steven had found on the Internet.

She had been busy, but not so busy that she hadn’t noticed the change in her father. He’d stopped griping at her to leave and didn’t fuss at her for doing things. He never spoke of his worries, but she sensed them nevertheless.

After all her efforts to be so quiet this morning, the knock at the front door struck her nerves like a gong. She glanced at the old kitchen clock as Iago exploded in a series of yodeling barks that lifted his front paws off the ground. It was still just after seven, a little before the time Dominic usually made it over. But Dominic rarely came to the front door. He was at home enough now to traipse around the side yard and bang on the kitchen door. If no one answered, he knew the hiding place for the spare key.

Iago finally worked up enough steam to launch himself into a lumbering run. Grace was then forced to wrestle past him to wedge the front door open.

Ray, Dominic’s dad, was waiting, his expression impatient. The step down the porch put him just slightly above eye level to her.

“What are we going to do?” he asked.

Alarm gripped her. “Has something happened to Dominic?”

He looked as if the name jarred a distant memory. “Dominic?”

“Your son.”

“I know, but . . .” He stopped, confused. “Haven’t you seen your tree?” He angled to one side, making way for her to join him on the porch.

At once the problem became clear. The storm had taken out a massive branch from the elm tree, which now bisected Lou’s front yard and half of Ray’s, too. By some miracle, Ray’s car hadn’t been demolished; the limb had missed his vehicle by inches. Unfortunately, his Prius was now trapped between the branch and the garage.

No wonder he was perturbed.

“We’ve got to move it,” he said.

We?
The branch was big, it was heavy, and it was still attached to the tree by a sinew of bark. She could no more move it than she could have picked up his Toyota and carried it to the street.

“I need to get to work,” Ray said. “I have meetings.”

“I’ll have to call a tree company,” Grace said. “I’ll try to get someone out as soon as possible, but after a storm like this . . .”

Ray gave the branch the evil eye, as if hoping to move it through sheer willpower.

Didn’t his office accept acts of God as an excuse for absenteeism? She’d never seen someone seem so mournful at the idea of missing business meetings, but she shouldn’t have been surprised. From what she could gather, he certainly wasn’t throwing himself into his home life. Dominic made it sound as if Ray spent most of his evenings at home hibernating in his den.

At a loss for what else to say or do, she and Ray ambled over to the tree, stopping where the fallen branch seemed its thickest and most immovable. The elm had been there as long as Grace could remember. Would they have to chop it down now? She hoped not. But it was frightening that something so solid looking could just come crashing down without warning.

“I’m glad no one got hurt,” she said.

Ray toed the branch a couple of times, testing it, and glanced back at her. “Hurt?”

“It could have fallen on someone.”

“It was the middle of the night.”

“I know, but if it had happened during the daytime . . .”

“Oh, I see,” he said, apparently not interested in following her train of thought.

Maybe he’d had enough of real tragedy to know better than to go looking for the hypothetical kind.

The screen door to Wyatt Carter’s house banged opened, and Wyatt’s teenaged son came out and jogged around to their garage. He yanked open the manual garage door, rooted around for a bit, and finally emerged with a pair of protective goggles around his neck and a chain saw in his hand.

“I can clear it out for you,” he said. “A hundred dollars. And the firewood.”

Grace frowned.

“That’s not too much, is it?” the boy asked.

“No, but . . .” She shook her head. She barely knew this kid. “It’s Crawford, isn’t it?”

He nodded.

“I’m sure a hundred dollars is a lot less than what a tree guy would ask,” she said.
A damn sight less.
“But I’m not so sure you should be out here wielding a chain saw. Is that your dad’s?”

“Dad won’t care.”

“I would care if something happened to you. You’re fifteen, right?”

“Practically sixteen,” he said.

She tossed a questioning glance at Ray. “What do you think? Is practically-sixteen chain-sawing age?”

“I wouldn’t let my sixteen-year-old anywhere near a chain saw,” Ray said, arguing against his own interests. “For the safety of the community.”

Crawford shifted back to Grace. “You can ask my dad, if you want. I’ve done this kind of work a lot. My granddad has a Christmas tree farm. I’m very responsible.”

“Okay, I’ll ask him.” Grace looked at her watch. “But I’m not sure he’ll be up at this hour.” On his days off, Wyatt usually stumbled out in his robe to retrieve the
Statesman
sometime around ten.

“Oh, he’s up,” Crawford assured her, beckoning her toward his house.

Just as they reached the porch, the door crashed open and a blonde in a maroon uniform jacket and skirt hurtled out the door.
“Bastard!”

The woman nearly plowed into Ray, who jumped back, embarrassed and confused.

“Not
you
,” she assured him in an irritated voice, thumping her compact wheelie suitcase down the porch steps. She stopped, eyed them all, and gulped in a breath. “Do any of y’all know where there’s a bus stop?”

All together, they pointed mutely toward the corner. The blonde rolled her eyes and let out a huff. “How often does it come by?”

“About every twenty minutes?” Grace guessed.

At that moment, a bus could be heard trundling down the street.

“Crap on a stick!” The woman took off running.

Wyatt appeared at the door in a red robe, a cup of coffee crooked in one hand. “Enjoy Albuquerque, Susan!”

“Go to hell!” she hollered without a backward glance.

They all turned back to Wyatt, who was smiling appreciatively after her. “You should see her on an airplane. Woman wields a drink cart like a weapon.”

“Lucky for you she didn’t have a weapon handy this morning,” Grace observed.

He shrugged. “My day off, and she expects me to drive her all the way out to the airport. Go figure.”

Crawford cleared his throat. “Dad, will you tell them it’s okay for me to use the chain saw so I can get the branch out of the driveway?”

Puzzled, Wyatt glanced left, finally noticing the world beyond his own front porch. “Holy Moses!”

“They’re afraid I’m going to saw my leg off or something.”

“He won’t saw his leg off,” Wyatt said, stepping gingerly by them in his bare feet to take a closer look at the damage. “Damn!” He took a slurp of coffee. “What were you trying to do, Grace? Get yourself a chip for the other shoulder?”

Ignoring the father, Grace turned to the son. “One hundred dollars and firewood. And please be careful. If you could start by clearing the West driveway, that would be best. Ray has to get to work.”

“Sure!” Crawford said, eager beavery.

She turned to Ray. “Okay?”

He nodded and then pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose, studying her. “Were you over at my house one day?”

She laughed. “Evidently I made a big impression.”

“I had forgotten,” he explained.

Wyatt chortled. “Way to turn a woman’s head, West!”

Ray looked at him, confused, and then, as realization dawned he turned back to Grace with a mortified expression. But she could tell it wasn’t just mortified on her behalf. He seemed equally stunned by the idea that someone would think that turning a woman’s head was anywhere on his agenda.

“Don’t worry,” she reassured him. “I have that effect on people. Remarkably unmemorable.”

Whatever Ray intended to say was swallowed by the earsplitting whine of the chain saw.

Since the incident at the Salt Lick, Uncle Truman had been avoiding the house almost as assiduously as Peggy had been. But a fallen branch was too much for him. He knocked on the door and barged in past Grace.

She was as relieved to see him as she was irked. It would have been bad if her losing her temper had cost her father the companionship of his brother, geriatric old coot though he was.

“You have a branch down,” Truman announced.

The town crier of the blatantly obvious.

“I know.” Her father had barely managed to make it out to the living room assisted by his cane. His cast was gone, but he still treated the leg with distrust.

“I don’t know why it decided to fall like that,” Truman wondered. “Storm wasn’t that bad. Are you going to chop down the elm? It’s a big’un.”

“Not as big as it was last night,” Grace muttered. The absence of the one branch had exposed one patch of yard to the sun for the first time in decades.

Lou sat down in his chair. “I hope we don’t have to chop it down.”

“Are you feeling all right today?” Truman asked, his brow crinkling. Grace could read his thoughts.
My brother’s going downhill fast. And he’s five years younger.

“Of course I am.”

Truman sat down next to him. “That boy out in your yard looks like he’s doing an okay job. I watched him for a good long while.”

“Grace hired him,” Lou said. “A neighbor boy.”

Truman darted a nervous glance at her.

“Do you want something to drink, Uncle Truman?” Grace asked.

“No, thank you.”

“Well, what do you want?” Lou asked.

Truman pivoted. “Pardon?”

“What are you doing here? You surely didn’t come by just to tell me that the elm tree had lost a branch. I had that all figured out on my own.”

“I just happened to see it, was all,” Truman explained.

“How did you happen to see it this early in the morning?” Lou tightened his grip on the foam handle of his cane. “Coming by to see if I’d fallen apart yet?”

Truman looked shell-shocked.

Grace stepped forward. “Are you sure you don’t want something to drink, Uncle Truman?”

“I’m not going to suddenly go catatonic, you know,” Lou continued. “That’s not the way it happens. I do have some time. Not that we’ve seen too much of you since I was diagnosed.”

Her uncle looked so stricken, even Grace felt sorry for him. And guilty. It was probably her fault he hadn’t wanted to come over. “I don’t think that’s why Uncle Truman was in the neighborhood, Dad.”

“Well then, why?”

“I was over at Peggy’s.”

“What were you doing over there at this hour?” Lou asked.

Truman darted an uncertain glance over at Grace.

“Also, I think there’s still some banana bread left,” she said, “if anyone would care for a piece. I’ll go check.”

She fled to the kitchen just as Dominic, Iago, and Crawford were filing in for a break through the side door. Iago trotted toward the living room, while the boys beelined it for the fridge.

It hadn’t taken Crawford long to figure out the routine, Grace thought.

“Are you out of root beer?” Dominic asked, put out.

“Uh . . . yes. There’s ginger ale, though. And orange juice.”

Both boys reached for cans of ginger ale and flopped into chairs at the table.

BOOK: Wherever Grace Is Needed

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