The End of The Road (5 page)

“You can light the candles on the table while I retrieve the bread from the oven and put it in a basket,” I told her. “Then you can ring it. Everyone can fill their own bowls with stew from the kettle on the stove.”

In just a few minutes all were settled at the table, where, irrepressible, Lew glanced around with a twinkle in his eye.

“Good friends, good meat . . . ,” he began, then hesitated, noticing the warning frown that Harriet, a dedicated churchgoer, was aiming at him, and concluded with, “. . . good . . . ah . . .
oh, good grief
. . . let’s eat.”

FOUR

MUCH LATER JOE AND I SAID GOOD-BYE to our company at the door as they left. It had been a good evening, full of spirited conversation and laughter, reminding me why I like living where I do and miss it often when I’m gone. I very much like traveling to new places in my motor home and the last couple of years had mostly been full of the pleasures of discovery, meeting new people and visiting old friends. But there had been a trade-off in leaving behind the place and people I know and love that left me a little lonely at times.

“Many thanks, Maxie,” Lew said, turning to me as he zipped up his coat.

“You’re more than welcome anytime,” I told him. “And thank you for the books.”

“Let me know what you think of them.”

He had volunteered to give John a ride back to the Driftwood Inn, so they went out the door together after John added his gratitude as well.

“It was kind of you to include me,” he said as I took the hand he offered. “You have a fine collection of friends and I enjoyed meeting them.”

Harriet gave me a hug and hesitated long enough to remind me of a quilters’ gathering at her house the following Thursday.

“Bring along that pattern book you found in Hawaii,” she requested as she wrapped a woolly red scarf around her neck. “And that beautiful fabric you brought home as well, yes? The girls would like to see it.”

Girls!
Having met in grade school, most of us would always be girls to Harriet.

Smiling, I promised I would, and she was the last to go, closing the door fir mly behind her after instructing us to stay inside where it was warm. “You’ll freeze for sure if you wait on the step to wave us off this time of year.”

Taking her advice, Joe and I settled at opposite ends of the sofa with the last of the wine half filling our glasses.

“Great evening, Mom,” Joe said, kicking off his shoes and stretching his long legs out onto a stool to toast his toes in the warmth of the fire that was slowly becoming a heap of ashes and glowing coals. “It was good to see Marty and Joyce. Thanks for asking them.”

“You’re welcome, dear. I enjoyed them, too.”

A thoughtful look took the place of his smile.

“Now,” he said, “tell me about John Walker. He said you met and rescued him out on the spit yesterday.”

“Not much to tell. I took Stretch for a walk and we met him as we came off the beach. He’d walked all the way out there and it was about to pour rain. He would have been soaked hiking back, so I gave him a ride to town. Seemed the friendly thing to do for a visitor.”

“Oh, I’m sure it was. He’s a quiet sort—listens more than he talks—but I liked him. Doesn’t say much about himself though, does he?”

“I guess not, but I didn’t ask a lot of questions. I imagine that in a group of strangers—especially those that were here tonight and know all about each other—almost anyone new would mostly listen. When people get acquainted and comfortable they tend to loosen up, but some are more reticent than others.”

“He was vague when I asked where he was from. Told me he was born in the South, but that his parents lived in several places when he was growing up. He doesn’t have a hint of a Southern accent—or any accent at all that I could tell. Said he’d moved around a lot the last few years, doing mostly construction jobs. Mentioned New Orleans after the hurricane.”

“Does it matter?” I asked, remembering my impression of John’s callused hands.

“Not really—made me wonder, is all. Most folks are pretty forthcoming with information like that—unless they have some reason to hide it. Maybe he has one.”

“Joe!”
I said, shaking my head. “You’re in forensics, and too used to looking for clues to the identity and behavior of
criminals
. Give John the benefit of the doubt. There are a lot of personal and perfectly legal reasons he might not want to be more specific—or interrogated, for that matter.”

He stared at me for a long moment, eyes wide as he considered it.

“You’re right, I guess,” he fin ally agreed. “Sorry, Mom. I probably
am
allowing the job to creep into my thinking—and shouldn’t.”

“Good. Now, tell me all about you and Sharon—the Portland travel agency she’s contemplating, and how you see it impacting your relationship. That’s what you came up here for, isn’t it?”

He gave me a long troubled look with a frown hovering in it before he answered, “Yes—I guess so. Partly I came just to get away and consider it. I thought it might be easier if I could get some perspective from a distance.”

“What seems to be the source of the problem?”

“Well, obviously, it’s going to split us up if Sharon decides to move to Portland. It’s too far away to commute more than a couple of times a month, and that would mostly be up to me if Sharon’s working six days a week at first.”

“Be about like driving from here to Anchorage. That’s not too far.”

“Seems like it. I just can’t make it work in my head.”

“Does she really want to do this?”

“Yes, dammit! Or says she does.”

His fla sh of anger so startled me that I sat silently staring at him for a long minute. He glared into the dying fire and wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“You sound as if you think she’s doing this on purpose just to rattle your world,” I said slowly. “Is that what’s bothering you? It doesn’t sound much like Sharon to me.”

He shrugged and shook his head ruefully, closely examining the level of the wine in the glass he was holding.

“No—I guess not,” he admitted.

“But there’s a piece of that mixed into your feelings somehow?”

“Maybe,” he confessed. “I’ve been happy with things the way they are—or were. You know?”

“Stop for a minute and turn it around,” I suggested. “If it was a job
you
wanted to take in Portland, how would that seem to you—and to Sharon? Would it be any different if you were the one who wanted to make a change?”

He frowned again, thinking about it. “I hadn’t looked at it like that.”

“I thought not. Might there be just a bit of chauvinism mixed into your thinking?”

“I guess it’s possible.”

We sat quietly for a few minutes, Joe clearly turning the idea over in his mind.

I thought back to Becky’s reaction on hearing about the situation the evening before.
Oh, for Pete’s sake!
she had said.
Why doesn’t he just marry the woman? She’s a honey!

“Joe?” I asked him, finally, cautiously. “Don’t take this as a suggestion from an interfering mother. You know that’s not my style. But would it make a difference if you and Sharon were married? Part of a really good marriage is the freedom for both parties involved to be honestly themselves. It’s recognition of the trust you share, that you know is basic and depend on. I think you’re feeling threatened—that things are changing and out of your control. There! That’s the word—
control
.

“And, by the way, you don’t have to answer that question—just consider it, okay?”

He turned to give me a grin of approval.

“I will—am—have been,” he told me. “But I appreciate the suggestion. Thanks, Mom.”

“You’re welcome. Now it’s bedtime for me and the bonzer here.” I stood and picked up Stretch, who had been dozing next to me, his chin on my knee. “Your room is ready for you.”

“I’ll be up in a few minutes,” he told me and turned back toward the dying fire, a contemplative expression on his face.

“Good night, then, son. See you in the morning.”

I didn’t hear him come to his room upstairs, but went to sleep that night turning Joe’s problem over in my mind. I had been lucky that both my marriages had been good ones, easygoing and well balanced in terms of decision making. Maybe it would have helped if his father had lived to be a sounding board for him. But, whatever resolution resulted from the current situation, I could only hope for the best for them both, and leave it to Joe and Sharon to solve, one way or another. He was not a child anymore and some things you have to work out and learn for yourself.

The smell of coffee drifting up the stairs—along with the scent and sizzle of bacon frying—brought me back to life the next morning. Stretch’s bed on the flo or next to mine was empty, so I knew he had joined Joe in pursuit of breakfast. Donning my robe and slippers, splashing some water on my face and running a comb through my hair, I went downstairs to find them both in the kitchen.

“Morning, Mom,” Joe said with a grin. “I thought cooking bacon would probably bring you down.”

“It did indeed, especially with someone else cooking. You’ve even set the table.”

“That’s because my mother taught me right. How do you want your eggs?”

“Over easy, as usual.”

“You’ve got it. I’ve already let Stretch out and fed him.”

I filled a mug with coffee and sat at the table, pleased to watch him moving around familiarly in my kitchen, thinking how nice it was to have him home, even briefly.

Saturday’s storm was long gone, and glancing out the glass doors that led to my deck and yard I could see that the sky was blue and the waters of the bay sparkling in the morning sunshine. The mountains beyond looked sugar-frosted with snow halfway down—termination dust, as the miners called it in the gold rush days, as it signaled the end of the year’s mining season. I knew it would soon make an appearance in Homer, but the day promised to be a pleasant one, if cool.

“What have you in mind for today?” I asked as Joe set a plate in front of me containing my eggs and bacon and an English muffin slathered with butter and Becky’s peach jam.

Sitting down across the table with his own plate and coffee, he picked up his fork and told me between bites that Marty Berman had offered him some frozen halibut and salmon to take back to Seattle.

“I’ll need a small cooler and ice to carry it in, so before I go to Marty’s for the fish, I’d like to stop at Ulmer’s and pick one up. Do you have duct tape I can use to tape it shut?”

“Does anyone in Alaska
not
have duct tape?” I asked him. “In this state, along with blue plastic tarps, it’s practically building material, as well as being used for a hundred other things folks outside never even heard of. What color do you want? I have several.”

We had a good day, enjoying each other’s company with no further mention of Joe’s relationship with Sharon and the possibility of her moving to Portland. He was cheerfully upbeat, joking with the clerk at Ulmer’s Drug and Hardware who sold him a cooler for the fish, tooting the car horn and waving to another friend from high school that we passed on our way to Andy’s bookstore, where he found a book he’d been wanting to read again and couldn’t locate in Seattle. We had lunch at Café Cups, where we chanced upon Lew and joined him for an hour of great food and conversation, stopped at Joyce and Marty’s, then took Stretch for a walk on a beach close to town. In a quick stop at the grocery, we picked up another loaf of French bread to accompany the last of the stew left over from the night before.