Angel's Peak (31 page)

Carl turned from the stove and grinned. “She might be just slightly prejudiced about that. We have a nice little practice. We do some good work.”

“So, your partner hired her, and then what happened?” Maureen boldly asked.

Both Vivian and Carl turned and gave her their full attention for a moment, as though it was curious she asked. Then Carl answered, “We had good rapport but, at the time we started working together, my wife was very ill, and shortly after that she died. Honestly, I couldn’t focus on much else at the time. It was a year after my wife’s death before I asked Vivian for a bona fide date. We’ve been dating since—a little over a year. But my wife has only been gone two years, and my kids, still under twenty, haven’t adjusted very well. My nineteen-year-old daughter, especially. She really can’t imagine me with a significant other and I’m giving her plenty of time.” Then he smiled broadly, put his arm around Vivian and pulled her closer. “Plenty of time, but not forever. She’s in her second year of college and soon we’re going to talk about how everyone gets a life, not just the kids.”

Carl prepared an astonishingly good goulash and they sat around the dining table long past dinner, visiting and laughing. Carl was the one to clear the table and serve slices of cheesecake with coffee, extending their good time. When it was time to clean up, Vivian and Carl wouldn’t let Maureen in the kitchen. She was shuffled off to the living room to watch TV, read or do her needlepoint, and they promised to join her in just a few minutes.

While she sat in the chair that had become hers, she found herself thinking that even though she’d lived independently, happily, she’d somehow allowed her life to become too narrow. She had quite a lot of friends, but they were acquaintances really—people she’d known for years, but none of them felt as close as Vivian had become in just weeks. She’d been constantly busy—activities day in and day out, and yet nothing really got her motor running. She never took chances, never tried anything the least bit daring. She was stunned and embarrassed by her surprise to find Vivian in love with a black man, and how narrow was that?

Or how about an almost-nun traveling the country in an RV with a minister?

In the end it was what she heard in the kitchen that filled her with envy. When the water stopped running and she could hear the quiet sounds of conversation and soft laughter as dishes and flatware were being stored away, she longed for that in her life. A deep and romantic relationship, love and affection, laughter and adventure.

She heard Vivian giggle and Carl purr. Six months suddenly seemed like a very long time, and right then she offered up a promise to herself.

I’m in my sixties; it’s late to become enlightened. I hereby vow to be relentlessly happy, ridiculously daring, outrageously open-minded and passionately optimistic.

At the onset of Thanksgiving week, specifically on Sunday at noon, Jack’s Bar was full of people with bags and boxes filled with nonperishable food items. Jack and Preacher had been collecting the donations for Thanksgiving baskets for a couple of weeks. Jack liked the idea of presenting the food in a classy Harry & David type basket with a beautiful arrangement of food, but that was impractical for what they had in mind. Instead, he went to a shipping outlet and bought some sturdy boxes.

For the past couple of months Jack and Preacher had had a jar on the bar with a sign on it that said Donations for Thanksgiving Baskets. They had collected more than enough money to buy nonperishable canned turkey and ham and some apples and oranges. In this, the first year of their project, they estimated they would deliver fifteen boxes of food to needy individuals and families. Noah Kincaid and Mel Sheridan had managed to come up with a list of folks who could use some help. If they had surplus after arranging these boxes of food, Mel would have no trouble coming up with more names; she was the one with the most experience in outreach.

Jack was supervising the stocking of the boxes—cans of vegetables, powdered milk, instant potatoes and rice, gravy mix, boxed stuffing, even canned cranberries. There were things that didn’t really fit on the Thanksgiving menu that people would be happy to have if their budgets were tight—fruit cocktail, canned pork and beans, chili mix, lentils, black-eyed peas, chicken soup. “Cocktail weenies?” he asked, holding up a little can. “Who gives cocktail weenies to a needy family?”

“I mighta done that,” said Hope McCrea, pushing her big black glasses up on her nose.

“The can is bulging,” Jack said.

“Been a while since I had a yen for cocktail weenies,” Hope replied, unrepentant.

Jack pitched the can in the trash. “Sorry, Hope. Can’t take a chance on killing anyone our first try at this.” He pulled out a bag from the Dollar Store that was filled with little can openers. He passed them out to his wife, Noah and Ellie, Preacher and Paige, Mike and Brie. George Davenport was on hand to help, of course. “Make sure one of these goes in every box. Mel, are you taking care of the boxes for families with babies? We’ve got diapers, formula and baby food.”

“I’m on it,” she said. “The neediest people Noah and I see are either families with small children or the elderly. Right, Noah?”

“Right,” he affirmed.

“There’s more than fifteen families who need help, huh,” Jack said, and it wasn’t a question. “We should’ve been doing this for years. Preacher, why didn’t we ever do this before?” he asked.

“Because we do everything else,” Preacher said. And this was true—wherever help was needed, they tried to pitch in. It wasn’t unusual to see Jack and Preacher under the hoods of cars and trucks, or picking up groceries for widows and young mothers while they bought their bar stock. They helped Mel and Cameron at the clinic when asked, and of course they were on hand for any kind of search and rescue around the mountains. Last winter a school bus slid off the road and down the mountainside and all the men from town were there instantly, ready to assist emergency responders. Jack was the first one on the scene and Preacher was the second.

Noah laughed at Preacher’s remark. “From all I can see, people in this town do a fine job of lending a hand wherever they can. My house is almost habitable, thanks to the neighbors. We might not be able to cook a turkey in it this year, but we’ll be in there for Christmas. The kids are going to have Santa in their own house.” He looked around the bar. “Who’s on board to deliver these boxes of food?”

Every hand went up and Noah laughed again. “Then I guess the job gets done fast and easy! Just don’t leave anything on a doorstep—you have to put it in the hands of an adult, otherwise wildlife could get into it. If there’s no adult, we’ll go back a second time. I know it’s not Thanksgiving till Thursday, but I think it’s practical to distribute now. Those who are able might try to save this for a holiday dinner they wouldn’t otherwise have and those who are not able…” He paused. “Are not able to wait,” he finally said.

“I’m a little embarrassed it took some city-boy preacher to get a project like this going in our own town,” Jack said. “We should’ve been on this. We start for Christmas right away. And then we get going on holiday baskets for next year in July. And, Hope, don’t be throwing any of your old weenies in the basket.”

“You never know who’s in the mood for a weenie,” she said with a sparkle in her eye.

“I would give anything to see the inside of that mausoleum you live in,” Jack muttered.

“It’s filled to the ceiling with little cans of cocktail weenies,” she said.

The door to the bar opened and Dan Brady and Cheryl Creighton came in. Dan was carrying a large box and Cheryl held on to two bags. “Are we too late to add to the Thanksgiving baskets?” Dan asked. “We meant to get this done sooner…”

“You’re in time, no problem. In fact, if we figured right, you might be bringing us surplus, which means we can add a couple of families to our list,” Jack said. He looked in the box Dan held and pulled out a jar of dark liquid. “Prune juice?” he said.

“I am not drinking that stuff. Ever,” Dan said.

“Jack,” Noah said with laughter in his voice. He put a hand on Jack’s shoulder and gave a little shake. “Really, you can’t be judging people’s contributions.” But he laughed some more.

“It’s icky, but it’s nutritious,” Cheryl said. “Lotta vitamins in it. And I stopped in at the truck stop diner I used to work in and talked the owner out of some bulk-size canned goods—they’re out in Dan’s truck. You can probably figure out a way to use them in your food drive.”

Jack was just standing still, looking at Cheryl with a smile on his face. “It’s nice you’re here,” he said. “I don’t know what possessed you to hook up with that lunatic,” Jack said, smiling at Dan.” But it’s real nice you’re here. Thanks.”

She threaded her fingers in Dan’s, staking her claim, but she smiled at Jack. “No thanks necessary.”

“Did you put that house of yours on the market?” Jack asked.

“I did. The Realtor seems to think it’ll sell pretty easy. Dan made it beautiful.”

“Will you come around sometimes after it’s sold?” Jack asked. “Maybe let me buy you dinner?”

She laughed. During her drinking days, Jack wouldn’t let her in the door. “You serve food in this place?” She slipped her arm around Dan’s waist and he put his arm around her shoulders. “Yeah, I’ll pop in once in a while, just to say hello.”

“We’d like that, Cheryl,” Preacher said. “Come Thursday if you don’t have other plans.”

“I work at the community college during the week.”

Dan laughed and gave her a squeeze. “Not this week, honey. It’s Thanksgiving.”

She looked momentarily startled. “And you’re open on Thanksgiving?” she asked.

“A few of us like to get together,” Preacher said. “And I put on a real culinary show. You shouldn’t miss it. Four o’clock.”

Franci had been so busy over the past few weeks that she didn’t give a second thought to T. J. Brookner. Sometimes when she was at the college, she thought about their brief period of dating and the harsh words from him at their parting, and thought, What a close call! She wondered how long she might’ve hung in there with T.J. ordering her dinner, telling her what to like and not like, if Sean hadn’t turned up. She was just grateful it hadn’t gone on any longer, especially having faced his incredible anger. That had been spooky.

And then, suddenly and accidentally, she stumbled upon a whole new dimension to the man.

After a brief workout in the college weight room and a shower before going home, a couple of female voices carried across the lockers, just as she was drying off.

“Gone, I hear,” one said. “Suspended and likely to be fired. God bless the Internet, huh?”

“Was it like I heard?” asked another female voice. “Caught red-handed? By a nanny cam?”

“Literally with his pants down,” said the first. “It must have been fantastic. How about that? All these years he’s been claiming that just because he’s marginally handsome and the girls flirt with him, he’s been victimized by gossip. Poor, poor Professor Hottie, caught on tape with two naked eighteen-year-old blondes.”

Both women giggled. Franci gasped and dropped her towel to the floor.

“The story is that this particular ménage à trois started in Cabo on his last diving trip. I suppose he thought he was in control of the girls and it turned out they were in the driver’s seat! One of them had a hidden camera and put the movie on the Internet. From the comments on the site, they were hardly the first. This has been going on forever.”

Franci wandered closer to the voices to hear better. Cabo? she thought. What about his “buddy system”? Sounded as if he had a couple of buddies, all right. He was supposed to have been Franci’s boyfriend on that trip to Cabo. So much for that.

“I think he’s scum, but what’s the actual big deal? Is it against the law or something?”

“I dunno what’s against the law—the word is they were all consenting, but the dean didn’t appreciate him boinking the students on a field trip. There’s policy about that sort of thing—no diddling the students. And the gossip has been pretty damning—he’s been manipulating female students into sexually compromising situations for years. Old-timers around here say his wife left him because he couldn’t keep his hands off the freshmen girls.”

“He’s not the first guy who likes younger women…”

The voices drifted off as the door to the locker room opened and the two women exited. And Franci thought dispiritedly, I believed every word he said.

Franci pulled on her jeans and sweatshirt. She was in such a hurry to get out of there, she stuffed her bra in her purse and pulled on her boots without socks. She left the gym without drying her hair and went out in the cold with a wet head. Her stomach flipped and churned as images she just couldn’t block came into her mind. Fresh young women, vulnerable students, taken advantage of by a man of forty, an instructor. Did he trade sex for grades?

You give me credibility, he had said to her. No one gossiped about him when he had a woman with looks and brains as his girlfriend.

So, there was a lot more about the whole relationship than just his controlling nature. She was nothing more than a decoy. She felt violated.

She drove home in a daze.

She drove too fast; she couldn’t wait to get to Sean. It never even occurred to her not to tell him! When she walked in her house, Sean was sitting at the dining room table with the newspaper spread out in front of him. “Where’s Rosie?” she asked, before she even said hello.

“My mom is picking her up and they’re stopping at the store. Maureen’s cooking to—Hey, you’re white as a sheet.” He stood. “What’s the matter? Were you in an accident or something?”

She just stared at him for a long moment. She thought about spilling the whole story right there, but instead she just walked into his arms. “Close call,” she said. “Hold me. I’ll tell you all about it later.”

“You okay?”

She nestled in closer. She realized uneasily that she hadn’t really known as much as she should have about T.J., but she knew everything about Sean. She knew his strengths and weaknesses. He had never lied to her. When she first saw Sean a month ago, she thought he’d reappeared to screw up her life. She’d literally wanted to rearrange his face. Now, she ran into his arms for comfort and support. Her best friend. A man she knew she could trust. “I’ll be fine now,” she said.