Yesterday's Embers (12 page)

It had been a long time since he’d been in the world of singles. Maybe he just didn’t recognize a brush-off when it smacked him upside the head.

I
’m sorry I’m so late.” Doug stood in the middle of Harriet’s dining room, trying for a posture that demonstrated appropriate remorse.

But when he looked up, her dour expression hadn’t changed. She took in a breath as if she were going to say something. Instead, she folded her arms over her chest and shook her head as if she could hardly believe he’d dared to be half an hour late.

“I…I don’t think I’ll need you to watch the kids again until later in the week. Maybe Friday night? Would that work?”

“Friday
night
?” Her eyes narrowed. “What’s going on then?”

“Nothing much.” He turned toward the living room, where the kids were watching some nature show on TV. “I thought I might…go out.” His attempt to backpedal crashed, and he could see Harriet reading his mind.

“You’re taking that Valdez girl out again.”

He didn’t deny it but merely nodded, working to keep his tone casual. “We thought we might go see a movie or something.” The “we” part wasn’t exactly true. He hadn’t gotten up the nerve to call Mickey and ask her out yet. “I wanted to take her to dinner…as a thank-you for all the extra time she’s spent with the kids.”

He regretted the words before they passed his lips. Mickey hadn’t given a tenth of the time to the kids that Kaye’s mother had, and he was more likely to ask Harriet to
cook
dinner than to invite her out to a restaurant. He made a mental note to remedy that in the near future. But they were her grandkids, after all. And she claimed she wanted to spend time with them.

Besides, for as long as Kaye’s dad had been gone—probably close to ten years now—he’d helped Harriet with repairs around the house. Mowed her lawn in the summertime, looked after her house while she was in Florida, and shoveled snow off her driveway any time she happened to be in Kansas during the winter. Not to mention he’d had the kids full-time while Kaye stayed with her mother for a week after Harriet’s gall bladder surgery a few years ago. It seemed like it had been a fair exchange.

Until now, with Harriet staring him down.

She unfolded her arms and fiddled with the edge of the crocheted cloth on the dining room table. “I didn’t want to say anything until now, Douglas, but I think it’s time I tell you.”

He waited, curious about what was coming.

“I’m moving to Florida. At the end of the month.”

“Moving?
This
month? You don’t mean for good?”

She gave a firm nod. “I’m listing my house and moving to Florida. Permanently.”

He hadn’t seen this coming. It took him a minute to find his voice. “But…the kids. What happened to all your talk about moving back
here
full-time? I thought you were at least planning on being here to watch them once school is out.”

“I’ll come visit the children. And maybe they can take turns coming out to Florida to spend a week or two with me.”

Over my dead body
. “This isn’t a very good time to be selling a house. You know what the market’s like right now. And the kids need their grandmother more than ever now, not to mention it’s—”

“I’ve thought about this a good deal, Douglas. It’s simply too difficult. There are too many things here I’d rather not be reminded of. I see what’s happening with you and that Valdez girl.” Her features softened and her voice became pensive. “I know you need to get on with your life. I’m not so narrow-minded that I can’t understand that. But I thought you might at least wait a proper period of time before you started this…dating again.”

“I’m not dating, Har—”

She held up a hand that closed his mouth. “Tell yourself that all you like, Douglas. Everybody in Clayburn has a different opinion.”

Was it true? Had people really started seeing him and Mickey as a couple? But remembering how he’d danced with Mickey in front of half the town at Jack and Vienne’s wedding, he realized he had nobody to blame but himself if rumors were flying.

A couple of times they’d run into people from Clayburn while they were in Salina with the kids, but surely this town wasn’t so starved for news that folks ran home from a Doug-and-Mickey sighting and started phoning the prayer/gossip chains.

“It’s obvious you don’t really need me anymore.” Harriet’s strident voice interrupted his thoughts. “The kids will be fine.”

“No. They won’t. What will I do this summer? That’s when the kids need you most, Harriet.” It was when
he
needed her most. He and Kaye had breathed a sigh of relief each summer when Harriet watched the kids and they got a reprieve from the daycare bill for a couple of months.

“The daycare is open all summer. Let that Valdez girl take care of them if she’s so fond of you.”

“Would you stop calling her that?” He willed his voice down an octave. “Her name is Mickey.”

Harriet bowed her head in what Doug took for an apology. But the set of her jaw told him she’d made up her mind. “Kayeleigh’s almost a teenager. She’ll be old enough to babysit come summer.”

“I wouldn’t saddle her with that kind of responsibility. Especially after what happened…”

“I’m not telling you what to do, Douglas. I have no doubt you’ll figure something out. But I’m sorry. It’s too hard.” Her face softened, and she looked up at him with eyes brimming. “It’s not just…Mickey. It’s Kaye, Doug. It’s too hard for me to be here with all the memories of her. I’ll visit when I can, but I can’t stay here.” She moved toward the living room and beckoned the kids. “Kayeleigh, your dad’s here. Come on, kids. Turn off the TV, and run and get your jackets.”

Panic swelled Doug’s throat. End of discussion? Harriet was leaving…leaving him in the lurch. And blaming it—in part anyway—on his friendship with Mickey. A purely platonic friendship. The thought stalled him, and he set it aside to deal with later. But platonic or not, Harriet had no right to decide his life for him. He’d been counting on her help with the kids when summer came.

He avoided her eyes and herded the kids out to the car. Pulling out of her driveway, he fought the childish temptation to lay rubber on the highway in front of Harriet’s house.

“What’s the matter, Daddy?” Sadie’s worried face stared back at him in the rearview mirror.

“Nothing, sweetie. I’m…thinking about what to make for supper.”

“Dairy Barn!” Landon yelled from the backseat.

“Not tonight. We’ve been doing that too much lately.”

“You’re not gonna try to cook, are you?” Sarah said.

Any other night he might have laughed at the quartet of scrunched-up faces reflected in the mirror. But with the prospect of a thousand
nights of trying to come up with something for supper, he suddenly felt overwhelmed.

“It doesn’t matter,” Kayeleigh said. “I’m not eating anyway.”

He couldn’t ignore that. “You didn’t eat last night, either. Do you feel okay?”

“I ate at Grandma’s.”

Doug looked over at her, a question in his gaze, but Kayeleigh avoided his eyes and turned to stare out the window.

“That was only a snack, Kayeleigh,” Sadie challenged. “Besides, you didn’t even eat yours.” Her voice kicked into tattletale mode. “Grandma made chocolate chip cookies, and Kayeleigh gave hers to me and Sarah.

“So now you’re telling on me for sharing? Nice, Sadie. Real nice.”

An alarm went off in the back of Doug’s mind. He’d written off Kayeleigh’s eating habits to impending adolescence. But looking at her sitting beside him now, in spite of the fact that she was developing a womanly figure at an alarming rate, he thought her arms looked a little thin. Maybe it was just that he’d only seen her in thick sweatshirts all winter. Since she was a baby, Kayeleigh had been a little on the pudgy side. He’d worried about the teasing she might face, but Kaye always said she’d outgrow it when she hit puberty. Maybe watching what she ate now was part of that.

Puberty
. Now there was a terrifying thought.

He shut off the warning bells and concentrated on the road. And on how he was going to turn a refrigerator full of moldy leftovers and half-empty cartons and bottles into something he could call supper. Dairy Barn was sounding pretty good. Maybe he’d drive through tonight, and then Sunday they could eat someplace nice. Except Sunday was Easter, and Mickey would probably go to her brother’s house. All the more reason to ask her about going to a movie Friday night.

Of course, Harriet hadn’t exactly agreed to babysit. But maybe she was right—maybe Kayeleigh was old enough to watch the kids for two or three hours if he was only twenty minutes away.

He hadn’t talked to Mickey in over a week. He’d been in the field late almost every night, and either Harriet had picked up the kids from daycare or Mickey had gone home by the time he got there. She’d bowed out of last Sunday’s trip to Salina. Said she was going to mass with her brothers and a family dinner afterward. But now he wondered. Was she giving him the brush-off and he didn’t even recognize it?

Come to think of it, he’d tried to call her on Wednesday night and got no answer. As far as he knew, she didn’t go to church on Wednesday nights. But everything had seemed fine when he’d talked to her on Monday.

They hadn’t exactly discussed what had happened between them, but judging by their brief exchanges, something had changed in the way she responded to him. Something good, he thought. But maybe he only imagined that she was friendlier. A little flirty even.

But it had been a long time since he’d been in the world of singles. Maybe he just didn’t recognize a brush-off when it smacked him upside the head.

Maybe she wasn’t even aware that he’d actually planted a kiss in her hair that night on her deck. Still, remembering that night, he thought otherwise. And he
hadn’t
imagined that she’d responded to him. Physically. He pushed away thoughts that took his mind places it didn’t need to go.

Driving through downtown Clayburn, he noticed the lights were still on at Latte-dah. He whipped into an empty parking stall. “You guys stay right here. I’m going to get sandwiches for dinner.”

“Plain mustard on mine!” Landon yelled.

“No mustard!” The twins took up an antimustard chant.

“I’m not taking special orders,” Doug said, unbuckling his seatbelt. “You can put your own mustard on them when we get home. Or not.” Before they could argue, he jumped out and shut the door.

Fifteen minutes and as many dollars later, he carried a soggy sack of smoked turkey and swiss sandwiches into the house. He followed the
kids in and flipped on lights that spotlighted kitchen counters strewn with this morning’s cereal boxes and yesterday’s dinner dishes.

The dining-room table was worse. It would be a major undertaking just to clear off a space for supper. They’d just cleaned the place up a few weeks ago. How had things gotten to be such a wreck again?

He would organize another cleaning brigade Saturday morning. The kids wouldn’t be happy about it, but that was tough. Kaye hadn’t worried so much about whether they were happy or not. She was more concerned with whether they were learning important life lessons and growing into responsible young men and women. But then, Kaye hadn’t faced the challenge of trying to be both mother and father.

He rushed the kids through dinner and helped them clean up the worst of the kitchen mess. When they were settled in with homework, he took the phone to his bedroom and dialed Mickey.

For the first time his palms were damp and his nerves a jittery mass, waiting for her to answer.

I
’m coming…I’m coming.” Mickey set down the overflowing wheelbarrow and ran up the back steps to the deck. So much for getting the flowerbeds cleaned out before dark. Oh, well. It was only the third of April. A little early to put anything out anyway.

Brushing garden dirt from her hands, she slid the screen door open with one elbow. The evening air was balmy, and she’d left the French doors to the dining room open. She’d heard the phone at least twice before, and she’d let it ring until now. But this time her imagination started conjuring bad news scenarios involving her brothers and their sweet families, and she couldn’t ignore it another minute.

She kicked off her Crocs outside the door and wiped bare, damp feet on the rug before stepping inside. She grabbed the handset, barely registering the
DeVore
on the Caller ID before she answered, “Hello?”

“Mickey? Hi, it’s Doug.”

“Oh, hi. Did you try calling earlier?”

“Um…yeah. A couple times.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve been working out in the yard.”

“Oh. Sorry. I can call back later if that’s better for you.”

“No, it’s okay.” She reached to close the door. The yard would still be here tomorrow evening. It was nice to hear his voice.

“So…how was your day?”

She hesitated. Did she imagine the trepidation in his voice? “It was okay.” Somehow she didn’t think he’d called just to chat. She gripped the phone tighter. She’d halfway expected this call. Expected he would call to cancel Sunday. And thinking about that possibility earlier this week, she’d felt mild relief. But now, with his voice soft in her ear, she knew that wasn’t what she wanted at all. She missed him.
Please don’t let me cry, Lord. At least not until I hang up
.

“I haven’t talked to you for a while.” He kept his voice low, but she could hear the kids chattering in the background. Or maybe it was the TV.

“Yes, it’s been a while. How’d the bowling go Sunday?”

“Oh. We didn’t go bowling.”

“No?”

“No, we went to a movie instead.” He hesitated. “That Disney show we were going to see a few weeks ago.”

“Oh. Did you like it?”

He cleared his throat. “Since when did Disney movies get so stinking sad?”

She laughed softly. But remembering the movie, she realized he might not be kidding. “I told you that one was a tearjerker.”

“You did. I should have listened to you.”

“You should have.”

He sighed. “I let the kids talk me into it. Next time I’ll take you at your word. Maybe I can make up for it Sunday.” She could hear his smile.

“Sunday?” She didn’t like playing dumb, but she wasn’t going to assume anything either.