The Carpenter & the Queen (14 page)

“It’s all I need,” Paul defended.

While Claire helped Sam get ready for bed,
Paul built a fire in the fireplace. He hadn’t lit it in a long
time, and they didn’t need the warmth, but he liked the atmosphere
it set in the room. Paul settled into his chair, propping his leg
up on the ottoman. It felt good to have other people in the house.
He hadn’t expected that, but it was true. Maybe he was ready for
something serious.

Paul heard Claire tell Sam goodnight. She
shut the door quietly then limped into the living room.

“Nice fire,” she said, settling on the
couch. She propped her head on a pillow and stretched out full
length.

“How’s your hip?”

“Letting me know it’s there. But I’ll live.
I’ll just have a bruise the size of Texas for weeks.”

She reached for the chess set on the coffee
table and picked up a rook. “Is this one of yours?”

Paul nodded.

“Every household should have one,” she said,
replacing the piece on the board.

“Want to play a game?”

“Oh, I’m terrible at chess. You’ll decimate
me.”

“I lost at Go-Fish,” Paul reminded her.

She laughed, turning to her side and
propping her head up with her hand. “Okay, but go easy on me.”

Paul turned the board so the white set was
closer to her. “You first.”

They played in relative silence. Claire
watched in dismay as more and more of her pieces were captured.
Paul had her in check.

“Help me,” Claire said. “I’m stuck.”

Paul pointed to his knight and traced its
attack path to her king.

She shifted her king to safety. “I always
wondered what the knight was for, why it moves that way.”

“I told my nieces he probably had a war
injury of some kind so he can’t walk straight. But he’s a good
piece because he can reach squares others can’t.”

Claire gave him a piercing glance. “Makes
sense.”

He was studying the board, determining his
next move, when Claire spoke.

“What happened to your wife, Paul?”

Shoving the ottoman off to the side, he slid
himself onto the floor, his leg under the table. With Claire
reclined on the couch, he was more at her eye level now.

“We were in trouble from day one,” he began.
“One night, after a fight, I went driving. That’s when I got into
the accident and busted my leg. She was willing to patch things up
then, but it was too late for me.” He shook his head. “We’d stopped
talking so long before that I didn’t know how to start. Got the
divorce papers the day I was discharged from the hospital.”

“I’m sorry.”

He paused for a moment, calculating the
distance between his head and hers. No more than two feet separated
them.

“How did your husband die?”

“Brain aneurysm.” Claire’s voice grew quiet
as she continued. “He’d been out on temporary duty for two weeks
and just dropped dead. That was it.”

“That’s awful.”

She smiled sadly. “But life goes on, doesn’t
it? Somehow, we all make it work. But it’s lonely sometimes.”

“Yeah, it is.”

Their eyes met. Paul started to lean closer,
aware how slow his pace was but incapable of doing anything faster.
He felt the electricity between them and wanted nothing more than
to kiss Claire and kiss her for a very long time. Their lips were
only inches from parting--

Claire’s cell phone rang.

They both jumped, and Paul backed away, the
moment lost.

Claire glanced at the caller ID, smiled
apologetically, then answered it.

“Hi, Francine. . . . Oh, that’s good news.
Thanks. . . . Yes, yes. See you tomorrow, then.”

When she hung up, she was smiling. “Francine
said the electricity’s back on, so we’re opening the library
tomorrow.”

“That’s good.”

All Paul could think about was the kiss.
They had been so close. His entire body was tense, although he
tried to look relaxed and hear what Claire was saying.

“I’m going to call my place and see if the
answering machine picks up.” She dialed her number and grinned as
she listened to the phone. “My electricity’s back, too.”

“Good news.”

But it wasn’t. Now she would want to go
home.

“I hate to impose now that my place is
livable.”

“It’ll still be cold,” Paul said. “You could
let the furnace warm up overnight then go back tomorrow.”

Claire glanced at her watch. “That’s a good
idea. Plus, it’s late. I feel like we’ve already inconvenienced
you.”

“It’s no trouble,” Paul assured her.
“Really.”

No, it wasn’t any trouble, but it was
disappointing she couldn’t stay longer.

After making arrangements for returning
Claire and Sam to their place in the morning, Paul turned off the
generator since his electricity was back on as well, and went to
bed. He kept thinking of Claire in the next room. It was strange to
have someone else in the house with him. But he liked it. As he
struggled to go to sleep, he admitted to himself he didn’t want
morning to come when he would be alone again.

16

April 2005

Just two weeks after the ice storm, the last
part of Claire’s shelving unit was complete, although Paul hadn’t
told her yet. He was making a gift for her, and he wanted to be
able to deliver both at the same time. That way, if his present
didn’t go over as he hoped it would, he would never have to see her
again.

Still, Paul wouldn’t be rid of her so
easily. Everything in the house reminded him of the night she and
Sam had spent there. When he sat in his chair, he imagined her
lying on the couch. When he worked at his desk, he remembered she
had slept in that room. When he turned wood on the lathe, he saw
her smelling the block of maple.

Paul could get used to sharing his life with
someone again. He wanted to share life with Claire and Sam. Of
course, they had only known each other a few months, and he and
Claire weren’t really dating. But it was time for that to change.
Paul’s moment had come.

He thought about calling her to set up a
delivery time but decided he needed to see her. That afternoon,
after stopping at the post office, he dropped into the library.
Francine greeted him and gestured toward the reference room. Claire
was dusting the encyclopedia shelves and rearranging the
encyclopedias.

“Hey.”

Claire turned around.

“Hey yourself. I hadn’t heard from you in a
while. How are you?”

“I’m good.” Paul jammed his hands into his
pockets. “I’ve been busy with a special order.”

She nodded. “Have you heard back from your
Maid Marian customer?”

“He was pleased. Wrote me a great email that
I’m posting on the website. Always nice to have those endorsements,
you know.”

“If you put carpentry on your website, I’d
write you one.”

“And say how slow I am.”

“I’d say what good work you do. How everyone
should hire you.”

“Thanks, but I’m not ready to make my
carpentry public.”

“Afraid you’ll get too much business?”

Paul shrugged.

“You’re a better carpenter than you let
on.”

“My sisters want me to get back into it. I
don’t know. I think I just want to do a little every now and
then.”

“For carefully chosen clients?”

“Yeah. Carefully chosen.” He cleared his
throat. “So, I should have the shelves finished by tomorrow night.
Then, I’ll be out of your hair.”

“Oh. That’s great.”

Her enthusiasm seemed lost, as though she
wasn’t sure how to direct it. Paul wondered if she was excited to
have him out of the house, excited to have the project done, or
both.

That night he stayed up late, finishing her
gift. Although he was still unsure if he had done the right thing,
Paul put his whole effort into the project. Regardless of the
outcome, he wanted to say that he had done his best.

The next evening, he drove to her house, the
shelves in the back of the truck and a package wrapped in brown
paper on the front seat next to him. After parking in her driveway,
he pulled out the first section of the shelves to carry to the
front porch and rang the doorbell.

When she opened the door, she had a
paintbrush in her hand. “Come on in, Paul. I’m doing the trim work
in my bedroom.”

He followed her in to the living room and
set down the unit. “Where’s Sam?”

“Playing on the computer upstairs. He just
bought a new game with his own money.”

Claire excused herself to continue her
painting. This was their normal routine, but tonight Paul felt like
she was avoiding him. He had imagined the scene quite differently.
He had even hoped Sam would be tagging at his heels, wanting to
help hang the shelves. But perhaps the familiarity he had imagined
between himself and the boy was only in his imagination—a one-time
deal due to Sam’s presence at Paul’s house. As for Claire, she
treated Paul like business at usual, but Paul knew tonight was the
night that was going to change everything.

An hour later he had the shelves up. His
excuses for trips to Claire’s were over. From this moment on, if he
ever came here again, it would have to be because he had declared
his intentions, something that had never come easily for him.
However, he hoped that the package in truck would speak for him.
Linda would never have understood what he was about to do, but he
felt sure Claire would. At least, fairly sure.

Paul rapped his knuckles softly on the
doorframe of Claire’s bedroom. She had the windows open and was
painting the trim work around them. Looking up, she tucked her hair
behind her ear with a paint-spattered hand.

“I’m finished with the shelves. Come take a
look.”

She moved to stand. Paul limped a few steps
in and gave her an arm up.

“How’s the hip?” he asked.

“It’s turned some really ugly shades of
purple and green. Aches sometimes, but I imagine that will go away
after awhile. I’ve got to get some new gutters so the run-off
doesn’t fall on the steps anymore.”

“I guess you never run out of projects.”

“Maybe not. Although I’d like to think a
time will come when I can stop trying so hard and just enjoy the
fruits of my labor.”

“Do you think that time ever comes . . .
when we get to stop trying?”

“I don’t know.” Claire’s face was
thoughtful. “I guess we always should be trying. But maybe it comes
easier with time.”

He hoped so.

When they entered the living room, Claire
surveyed the shelves, her hands clasped at her chest.

“Beautiful,” she exclaimed. “Exactly what I
wanted.”

“I’m glad you like it.”

“Let me get my checkbook, and we’ll square
up.”

“Take a hundred off what I quoted you.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“Expenses were less than I budgeted.”

“Do you always do this? Sell yourself
short?”

He hadn’t expected this response. Most
people were delighted to get a deal. He rubbed the top of his buzz
cut and shifted his weight between his feet. He had no idea how to
respond.

Claire sighed. “Let me run upstairs.”

“Sure.” Paul felt more confident now that
she was back on the script he had imagined. “While you’re doing
that, there’s something I need to get from the truck.”

He limped outside and pulled out the package
wrapped in brown paper. Now that the moment for his boldest move
had come, he wondered if he had made the right decision. But he had
gone to all that trouble. Better to give it to her, even if it did
scare her off. At least he would have done something, even if a
relationship with Claire didn’t work out.

When he came inside, Claire was just signing
the check. She tore it out and handed it to him. He could tell she
tried not to look at the package in his hands.

“I was thinking about what you said when you
were at my place,” Paul began, feeling a catch in his throat,
“about wanting a castle. I can’t make you a real one, but maybe
something like this will do.”

He held out the package to her. She gave him
a questioning look but accepted the gift with a smile. Paul
silently thanked her for not making him feel more foolish than he
did.

When Claire opened the box, she gasped.
Inside was a wooden castle twelve inches high, eight inches deep
and ten inches wide. Paul had modeled it loosely on pictures of
Burg Eltz he downloaded from the Internet. The walls, lined with
rows of tiny windows, went straight up to steeply sloped roofs
accented with conical towers painted blue gray. Just below he had
painted in red and white a wattle-and-daub design.

On the side of the castle, meant to be the
front, sat the gatehouse with its stone arch and sloping roof. Paul
motioned for her to set the castle on the shelf. When she did, he
pressed the release on the door of the gatehouse which allowed the
door to separate at the right and the entire castle to open up on a
hinge at the back. Inside each half of the castle held four rooms
with painted stones and tapestries on the wall.

At the apex of the two halves stood another
tower with a conical roof. This hadn’t been visible in Claire’s
painting, but Paul had found it in the Internet photos. With the
sides parted, the interior of the tower was exposed, revealing a
painted balcony that overlooked the rest of the castle and the
living room before it.

Paul tried to look at his gift through
Claire’s eyes as she ran her finger along the thin floor boards and
studied the painted details. He had worked on the castle for so
many hours that it floated before him whenever he closed his eyes.
While he could never put into words what he wanted to tell her, he
had shown her. He prayed she understood.

But she wasn’t saying or doing anything in
response to what he thought was a very clear message. She only
stared.

Maybe he should leave.

“I don’t know what to say.” Claire’s voice
trembled slightly, her eyes never leaving the gift. “This is one of
the nicest things anyone has ever given me.”