B008KQO31S EBOK (32 page)

“Phil, enough talk. Say thank you, Nick.”

I smiled back at him. “Thank you, Nick.”

One of his brows quirked. “Care to punctuate that?”

“What about all this talk about moderation?”

“You haven’t kissed me for a good eight hours. If that’s not moderation, I don’t know what is.”

I sighed as though being indulgent. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt.” He didn’t need much more encouragement than that to set to curling my toes and pretty soon, I considered myself persuaded.

The truck
was
a nice shade of blue.

“I hope you didn’t get air conditioning,” I complained when he lifted his head and I was tingling from head to toe. “I just hate what that freon does to the ozone.”

He laughed then and held me tighter. “That’s my Phil,” he said and I wondered just how far being “his” really went.

Call me a chicken, but I didn’t ask.

* * *

He drove me to visit the Beast, abandoned as it was at the back of the mechanic’s lot. It looked tired and dinged up, rusted and defeated. I hadn’t realized how bad it had gotten. It certainly wouldn’t make a good impression on anyone who saw me driving it up to their house to make a presentation. Nick made them show me what had to be done, and we poked beneath the hood as the mechanic explained.

I don’t know a lot about what goes on in there, but things were pretty corroded. I peeked underneath and saw that Nick was right about the exhaust—it was hanging on by sheer willpower.

The engine wouldn’t even turn over. When the mechanic held up his hands in surrender, the Beast gave a little sputter and a sigh, as though it was tired. It seemed to me that it gave it up then, and that maybe it was at peace.

I was ridiculously glad that I’d visited it at the end.

The signage, of course, couldn’t be taken off the doors. They weren’t magnetic signs, but lettering that had been hand-painted by a friend of Joel’s. I had taken along a can of the paint at Nick’s insistence and painted over the phone number while he watched.

The mechanic gave me a check for $500 for it, for scrap.

I patted the Beast and said my farewells, then turned away with a heavy step. Nick put his arm around my waist and dangled the keys to the new truck in front of me.

“I can’t. Not so soon.”

“Best thing you could do,” he insisted.

“Not in front of the Beast.”

“Show it you’re moving on.” He took the can of paint and got in on the passenger side. He looked about as immovable as Mount Rushmore, so I reluctantly climbed in to the driver’s seat.

He handed me the key and when I didn’t rush to take it, pushed it into the ignition and turned the key a bit. The truck immediately started to complain that we didn’t have our seatbelts on and who knows what else. Nick sat back, and I knew he wouldn’t intervene.

I moved to start the truck.

“Better step on the clutch,” he advised.

Now I must have been really distracted on the way to the garage, because I hadn’t noticed that the new truck had a five speed.

Interest stirred.

“I haven’t driven a car with a manual transmission since Zach took me to turn doughnuts on the ice.”

“Really? It seemed like it would be your preference.”

It was. In fact, the automatic transmission had been one thing I didn’t like about the Beast. It’s fun to shift gears and much much better for aggressive passing on the highway. You can slip down a gear for a little lunge forward that sometimes makes all the difference in the world.

So, maybe I’m fickle. It was a feisty little truck, with nice tight steering and responsive in a way the Beast had probably never been.

I was smitten before we’d gone two blocks.

And Nick knew it. He smiled as I balanced between the clutch and the gas instead of using the brake at the stoplight. The little engine purred like a well-fed kitten, the gearbox was tight and the clutch clicked in with surgical precision. He sure didn’t need me to tell him that he’d chosen exactly right.

“Where to?”

“The dealership. I’m officially on a test drive and the sales guy may be getting nervous.”

“And then?”

“You’re driving.”

I knew then the only place that would do. He had made this transition so gentle for me. The least I could do was respond in kind. There was one place he wanted to go, one rapport that probably wouldn’t be easy for him to re-establish. I’d take the choice out of his hands, supply the energy of activation for him.

I’d take him to visit Lucia.

But I would take that curvy little marvel of a back road all the way to Rosemount. Highways, you know, are for people who don’t really like to drive.

E
vening was falling when we pulled into Lucia’s driveway. Nick hadn’t said anything for a long time, though I knew he’d figured out where we were going miles before. I killed the engine and the sound of sea carried through the window he had rolled down.

“I owe you one more answer,” he said quietly.

The sense of finality was inescapable. Nick was going back to his grandmother, crossing the threshold into a world that excluded me. The truck was his way of settling whatever debt there was between us.

I couldn’t honestly say that I had any regrets about what we had done.

“How about the big one?”

He turned from studying the house to look at me, his features shadowed. “Which one would that be?”

“Why? Why did you ever cover for him, Nick? Why did you do it?”

He leaned back, his eyes narrowed. I thought he wouldn’t answer me, but he was just choosing his words.

“I saw my father before he died,” he said softly. “Someone called the house in the middle of that night and the sitter got us up to take us both to the hospital. Sean went back to sleep in the car, because no one told us anything.

“But I knew that something was wrong. The sitter was upset and she drove badly, which wasn’t typical of her. She was crying and evasive. In fact, she got angry with me for asking questions, which also wasn’t her way.

“I remember the nurse who came and took my hand. She met us at the door of the ER, as though she had been waiting for us and knew exactly who we were. She had a kindly face and I remember thinking that she was somebody’s mom. She didn’t tell me much either, except that my dad wanted to see me.

“When she let go of my hand, I thought she’d taken me to the wrong place. I couldn’t connect the man all bandaged up in the bed with my father. A few hours before, he’d been whirling my mother around the living room. He’d been wearing his tux and she was wearing this ball gown that was covered with flowers. They liked to go dancing and that’s where they had gone that night.

“But the man in the bed could barely move. I was afraid of him, but the nurse left me there. I might have run but he spoke to me, with my father’s voice.

“I went closer, just as he asked, and saw that he had my father’s eyes. But everything was wrong. There was blood on the bandages and tubes coming out of him and what I could see of his face had no color at all. I guess he knew that he was going to die.

“He told me that he loved me, though it took a long time for him to make the words. And he made me promise to take care of my mother and my brother. He told me that I was going to be the man of the house.”

Nick swallowed as I watched, that memory clearly un-faded by the passing of the years. “I promised, but I didn’t know what he meant. Not then. I wanted to ask him where he was going and where my mother was, but he had a convulsion of some kind. He started to choke and blood spurted. The monitors went wild and people came running. The nurse came back and pulled me outside the curtains around his bed.

“But I was eight and I peeked. I couldn’t see much, but I heard a lot. I heard him die. I heard the monitors stop. I heard the doctors step away and sigh. And I saw as they pulled the sheet over my father’s face.”

He looked at his hands. “Lucia told me years later that they had a car accident on a country road. The people in the other car had been killed immediately. My mother had been badly injured and my father had practically crawled to a nearby house to get help. The doctors didn’t know how he’d managed it with all his injuries, and the suggestion was made that the effort had cost him dearly.”

His eyes clouded with tears as he looked at me. “They never told him that my mother wasn’t at the hospital. They never told him that she had been pronounced dead at the scene.”

He looked away again, before I could reach out and touch him, his words spilling fast. “I couldn’t take care of my mother, but I could sure as hell keep part of my promise to my father. Things were vague for a few days, it wasn’t clear what was going to happen to us. I was adamant that Sean and I had to stay together. They might not have listened to me, in fact I’m sure they would have split us up for fostering, but Lucia turned up in the nick of time.

“We had never met her before that. No one talked about her and I didn’t know who she was. We just lived in Connecticut, but we’d never visited Rosemount before.

“Later I found out that she and my father were estranged over something and no one had expected her to step in. But Lucia
did
step in.

He laughed under his breath, his fingers moving as though he turned a cigarette, his profile sharply drawn. “I remember my first sight of her. She was dressed in black from head to toe, veiled and gloved. She blew into our house, where we were staying with the sitter until the funeral, like a diva sweeping onto the stage or a hurricane touching shore.

“The poor social worker never knew what hit him. She shed birth certificates and family genealogies in every direction, talking nonstop all the while. And she blew smoke rings at the ceiling, which impressed both Sean and I. I was convinced at the time that her purse was magical, because it didn’t seem to have a bottom. Everything they asked for, she had in there.

“She said she was our grandmother, that she was taking us to Rosemount and that that was that, and if they gave her any shit about it, she’d see that they rued the day.”

“She actually said that?”

“Oh yeah. And in those days, people swore a lot less than they do now. She was more than a bit intimidating. And then she left.

“She never spoke to you?”

“Not then. I saw her at the funeral, but I don’t think I was supposed to. She was at the back and she was crying, though she tried to hide it behind her veils.

“Some social worker, a very earnest guy, sat down with us to ask what we thought. I knew that the only way we could be together was with Lucia and I had to keep my promise to my father. Even though she was terrifying, seeing her weep made it a little easier to insist. I did insist, for whatever that was worth. Everyone was probably relieved to have things so easily resolved.”

He straightened his shoulders. “A week later, the house was cleaned out and put up for sale. Charities had picked up clothing and the furniture had been sold. I remember thinking that it was as though my parents had never been. The sitter, who was the last person we really knew, took us to the airport and handed me two airline tickets to Boston. She kissed us goodbye and told us to be good. That was the last time we ever saw her.”

He paused.

I touched his shoulder. “You could look her up.”

“I don’t even know what her name was.” He shrugged. “Dawn or Donna or Doreen. Something like that. No one remembers. I tried a few years ago to find out, just to thank her, but none of those social workers bothered to write her name down.”

“But it worked out with Lucia?”

“I don’t think it was easy for any of us. It had been a long time since she’d had children around. Sean hated it here. He missed his friends and he didn’t like Lucia. He hated the house. I wasn’t crazy about it either, but I’d made that vow and I was going to keep it, whatever the price. I was determined to be so good that Lucia couldn’t change her mind.”

“Surely she wouldn’t have.”

“I knew that she was unpredictable. I knew that having us around wasn’t her first choice. I discovered that she sold off that theater and taken a loss, because she couldn’t pursue her dream and keep us, too. I knew that she preferred to travel on a whim and be carefree, which you can’t be with two kids underfoot. I knew that she found sensible meals and doctor’s visits and assignments for school a pain in the ass.”

I took a guess. “So you minimized how much trouble you were.”

“Well, Sean didn’t share my goal of being good. He got into everything, I think just to spite Lucia. Maybe he was hoping to go back to his friends and the familiar life we’d had. But I knew we couldn’t go back. Lucia caught him once and was so livid that I thought she’d chuck us into the street right then and there. I don’t remember what he did but I remember what she said.”

“What?”

“That he was just like his father, that he didn’t know how to accept that someone loved him.”

He studied the house, his features composed. So this was how he had come to the conclusion that Sean was Lucia’s favorite.

“After that, I never let him get caught again.”

“Keeping your promise to your father.”

“Something like that.”

“Don’t you think she knows, Nick?”

He gave me a sharp look. “If she does, then I haven’t done a very good job.” He frowned, then pushed one hand through his hair, visibly forcing himself to smile. “I guess I can’t put this off any longer. What time should I meet you at your parents’ place tomorrow?”

There was a lump in my throat, and it wasn’t just from his story. “I should pick you up. It’ll look better if we arrive together.”

He nodded, we agreed on three o’clock and he leaned over the seat. His pack was there, a bit of planning that I hadn’t expected.

So, he’d known this would be it. Maybe the truck was about last night, after all. If you think that didn’t take the fizz out of my ginger ale, you’re dead wrong.

Nick seemed hesitant to get out of the truck, his fingers drumming on his knee. “Somehow, a thank you doesn’t seem enough.”

I would have given anything to hide my expression from him. “Wait until tomorrow,” I said a little less evenly than I might have liked. “You’ll be sending me a bill if you survive that dinner.”