The Comforts of Home (10 page)

“Who is that?” Ronel e whispered to her mother.

“Some

high-powered

financial

planner,”

Dal as

answered in her not-so-low voice. “Must not be too good.

Don’t even look like he can afford a haircut.” One of the two heavyweights in front of them turned around and glared at Dal as.

Dal as huffed at the woman as if to say
Mind your own
business.
The woman had the good sense to turn back around.

“Don’t pay him no mind, that man who obviously thinks he’s a genius.” Dal as pointed with her head toward Winslow. “Everybody knows those financial types are always tel ing other people how to spend their money and then committing suicide when they can’t handle their own. I bet it’l be hard for him to jump from a window with that wheelchair. He looks more like the kind to blow his brains out with a forty-five. Then what good wil they do him splattered al over the wal like so much ground liver.” Ronel e closed her eyes. She knew without looking that every person within five feet of them was staring at her mother with that drop-dead-lady look in their eyes.

Thank goodness Hank Matheson stepped to the mic and said, “Let’s give Marty Winslow a round of applause for al the work he’s done. This looks like a plan we can make happen if we al head in the same direction.” One old man yel ed, “Yeah, if we live long enough,” but everyone else clapped.

Ronel e slipped out the side door. She knew the minute the crowd broke someone would confront Dal as, and that was her mother’s favorite time. She’d debate the existence of hel with the devil himself.

Standing in the cold, Ronel e tried to make herself invisible, and as usual it worked. When she’d been little she used to believe that if she didn’t see people, they couldn’t see her. She’d practice moving through stores without looking at anyone. Now, she pressed her shoulders against the wal and wished she were thin and flat-chested so she could mold against the building unseen.

The two firemen huddled by a booth set up to sel chili didn’t notice her. One was Wil ie Davis. He was younger than Ronel e, but she knew him because he was the one who usual y came out to fix the streetlight by her house. Her mother always tried to give him a hard time about why he didn’t try to catch the criminal shooting out the light and not just keep coming by to fix it, but Wil ie Davis just smiled and said, “Yes, ma’am, you’re right.”

This infuriated Dal as. People agreeing with her left little room for argument.

The other fireman beside Davis was a big guy of about the same age: twenty, maybe twenty-one. He reminded her of the man she’d seen on the motorcycle outside Marty Winslow’s house, but he looked a little older and not quite as frightening.

He might live here, but he seemed like an outsider, like her. When she glanced back at him, he caught her eye for a moment and gave a slight nod as if to say that he recognized someone who didn’t fit in. They might never talk, but Ronel e decided she would say hel o to him if he ever addressed her first.

She couldn’t see any tattoos, but he might have them.

Everyone under forty had them but Ronel e. Her mother told her once that if Ronel e ever got a tattoo she’d cut it off her skin with a potato peeler. The threat hadn’t frightened her because she’d never considered it seriously, but the knowledge that her mother was serious about the potato peeler did.

Someone inside the fire station opened the bay door and people poured out. Bowls of chili were sold for three dol ars, and a long table had been set up for baked goods.

Ronel e wasn’t much with numbers, but she figured it would take longer than one lifetime to save up for a fire truck with money from bake sales.

“Stop standing there like a doorstop,” Dal as snapped from behind Ronel e. “We might as wel go home. Al these folks are interested in is food. I’ve never seen such a basket of nuts.”

Ronel e knew Dal as would not stay to eat. She often reminded Ronel e never to eat anything at potluck dinners or bake sales. One person hating the town could wipe out the entire population with poison.

Looking around, she saw everyone eating and had a horrible thought. If they al died, that would leave only her mother and her in town. While her mother stopped to talk to Wil ie Davis, Ronel e slipped a piece of corn bread into her pocket. It would be al in crumbs by the time she got home, but she planned to eat it. Just in case.

FEBRUARY 21

WINTER’S INN BED-AND-BREAKFAST

TYLER HOPED TO LEAVE EARLY ENOUGH TO

HAVE LUNCH with Kate in Amaril o before her flight, but when he got to the bed-and-breakfast to pick her up, Mrs.

Biggs had a huge breakfast cooked. There was little in the way of food that Tyler could resist, and homemade cinnamon rol s with nuts on top would never make the list.

Kate shrugged as if to say she couldn’t hurt their feelings and invited him to join her. Of course Martha Q sat down across from them, ending any chance of private conversation.

The innkeeper wanted help with the wording for a flyer about her lonely hearts club. “I need a name that doesn’t sound sad,” she complained.

“Don’t look at me,” Tyler said. “I only write obituaries.” Kate laughed and patted his knee under the table. “I’m no more help.”

“Well,
Want to hook up
sounds too modern.” Martha Q

tapped her head with her pencil. “
Singles club
sounds like a bar.
Finding the right one
sounds too vague.” Tyler nibbled on a cinnamon rol he’d pul ed from the platter placed in the center of the table. He didn’t know if they were the centerpiece or the appetizers, but he couldn’t resist them when they were hot out of the oven with the buttery sugar mixture stil dripping. While he tasted, he tried to keep his mind on the conversation. “Do you think many people find the right one?”

Martha Q frowned at him. “Of course. I did several times.”

“How about
Ending loneliness
?” He tried again. He had little faith that any club Martha Q started would last longer than bananas in the sun.

Both women shook their heads. Kate sighed. “It needs to be something uplifting. Something like
Embracing
change in your life
.”

Martha Q thumped her forehead with the pencil a few more times. “We’d get as many women wanting to divorce as we’d get ones looking to marry. It’s been my observation that some of the loneliest people in the word are lingering in bad relationships.”

“It would be like a swap meet. One woman’s bum might be someone else’s Prince Charming.” Tyler was proud of his idea until he saw both women glaring at him. After that, he decided he’d just eat his breakfast and let them figure it out.

While the women talked, he did what he often did in the presence of people he didn’t particularly like; he began planning Martha Q’s funeral. Final y, when it was time to go, he stood and said, “You ladies wil have to continue your dreaming and scheming another day.”

“That’s it!” Martha Q yel ed. “We’l cal the club Dreaming and Scheming.”

Apparently, to Tyler’s surprise, women didn’t consider scheming a derogatory trait in looking for a man.

When he and Kate were final y in the car heading toward Amaril o, she was in a talkative mood, wanting to know al about Martha Q’s colorful past. Tyler told her what he knew, but he wasn’t good at coloring. His father had taught him two things: Never judge and never gossip. It was hard to talk about Martha Q without doing one or the other.

When the conversation slowed, Kate began to talk about her work. She described three burned bodies she’d had to maneuver around in the last arson fire she investigated and how horrible they smel ed.

Tyler didn’t need details. He’d picked up bodies burned to death before, but he let her talk. He told himself he should be glad she was confiding in him. She probably had no one to just talk to. He tried to listen to every word she said, but the hope of how he thought this weekend could have gone kept drifting though his mind like deadwood on a midnight lake, shadowing reality with what might have been.

They were at the airport before he realized he hadn’t said anything he’d meant to say to her. He wanted to ask her to wait a while before rushing for the security check, but she seemed in a hurry and talked about al she had to do when she got back to the office. By the time he unloaded her bag, she was on the phone, already back in her world.

“Good-bye,” she said, shuffling her carry-on bag to her shoulder.

“I’l see you next time.” He tried to smile.

She kissed his cheek. “Of course. E-mail me.” She was gone before he could answer. He watched her moving through the maze, checking in, showing her ID, tugging off her shoes.

He watched, wondering if his Kate was running toward or away from something.

His feet felt heavy as he walked back to his car. By the time he drove out of the airport, snow had begun to fal . He knew he should stay on the main roads, but he veered off onto a farm-to-market two-lane. Nothing helped him think better than driving in the country. It would take him an hour longer to get home this way, but he didn’t care. No one was waiting for him. Not even his housekeeper.

Tyler was a man who never al owed himself self-pity. He knew from the time he could reason that he was the only son of an aging funeral director. He would be expected to take over the responsibilities of a family business and, to his surprise, he loved them. When he wasn’t thinking about being alone or why Kate didn’t want to see him more than once every few months, he stayed busy. He helped people.

He was there when they needed him.

He’d ask Kate to stay with him the next time she came.

Or, he wouldn’t. Passion was not something either one of them seemed to have in their lives, so why expect it now?

They were both beyond the years of thinking about having children, so time could drift for a while. Maybe al they were meant to be was friends. Maybe they’d find a quiet kind of love in their later years.

That was al he could hope for. A quiet kind of love.

Tyler pul ed off at a smal gas station and got a few snacks. Even in winter, he liked ice cream. The kind with chocolate wrapped around it. Since he knew there would be no meal waiting for him later, he picked up a dozen homemade tamales and hot sauce. Remembering he hadn’t gotten anything green, he grabbed a large bag of M&Ms, figuring he’d eat the green ones first and have the others for dessert.

Laughing at his own joke, he walked to the car and thought he’d have the greens right now with his Dr Pepper.

By the time he passed Lone Oak Road it was getting dark, but Tyler had had a long talk with himself. He’d even decided he wouldn’t e-mail Kate tonight to check if she made it home. He’d never been al that special to anyone; why would he have thought he would be to Kate? He should be happy with what he did have. Good friends, a job he loved, and long drives to clear his head.

Tyler smiled, thinking of the people who did think he was something. Saralynn, Hank’s niece. She might be only eight, but she thought he was her knight. Hank, his best friend, always cal ed if he didn’t make breakfast at the diner every Tuesday. A good-looking rancher and a chubby undertaker might look like a strange pair to be friends, but it worked. Tyler thought it was because they both cared about people.

Names, one after the other, came to him as he drove toward the cemetery. People who’d cried on his shoulder and told him they couldn’t have made it without him. The guys at the fire station, who depended on him to man the phones when there was an emergency. Tyler decided he might live alone above his office, but he had a whole town for family. Maybe he should just be thankful for what he had and stop wishing for more.

He circled by to lock up the cemetery and noticed that the old Ford was stil out by the back gate. Since he was in his Rover, he plowed down the dirt road to have a look.

The banged-up car looked like it hadn’t been moved al day. Judging from the shape it was in, it might have been abandoned.

Tyler’s four-wheel drive might have held the icy road steady, but his leather dress shoes almost slipped beneath him as he climbed out to take a closer look. A thin layer of snow had settled over a sheet of ice. Halfway to the car, he thought of turning back to the warmth of his Rover, but he felt like this was one thing in his life he could get settled tonight. Clicking on his flashlight, he moved forward.