This Time, Forever (13 page)

“T
HANKS FOR SEEING ME,”
Ben said to his friend Derek Garner, whom he'd just met up with in the most unlikely of locations—the indoor pool area at a Charlotte hotel. Both men sat poolside at a glass-topped table set in a circle of potted palms. Ben almost felt like the secret agent Susie had accused him of being.

“I wish it could be someplace with a little more decorum,” Derek said inclining his head toward the pool where a group of about ten teenagers frolicked. Ben couldn't be precise about the number because they were moving around so quickly.

“The location isn't a problem,” he said to Derek. “I'm just glad to find you're in town. Things have been crazy the past few weeks. I forgot you'd be here.”

“You forgot after paying for all these kids to be at the races this weekend?” his friend asked. “You
do
have stuff going on.”

Derek was a former NASCAR Nationwide Series driver and more recently the founder and executive director of Green Flag Racing, a day camp and supplemental education program for at-risk urban youth in Detroit. Ben had been a financial supporter for some time, and the work Derek was doing only got better with each passing year.

“Way too much stuff going on,” Ben agreed. “But not much anyone who I can talk to about it.”

Though he had dozens of friends here in North Carolina, most of them were still in the business. Ben needed to talk to someone whose NASCAR days were behind him.

“I'm here to listen,” Derek said.

Ben cut to the chase. “How did you know when it was time for you to retire?”

If Derek was surprised by the question, he hid it well.

“I had things I wanted to do more than race,” he replied. He paused a beat before asking, “So I take it that the R word has popped into your head?”

“It's more like it was surgically implanted there.”

“If this is about retirement, I get why you're talking to me. It's not the kind of thing you want even whispered within the industry.”

Ben nodded. “For sure. There's no guarantee I'll be with Double S Racing past this season and if the other teams think I'm considering retirement, they aren't going to take a serious look at me.”

“Agreed,” Derek said, then turned his attention to the pool. Using his fingers to send out an eardrum breaker of a whistle, he gained the kids' attention. “Time to bring it down a few hundred decibels.”

Ben was damn impressed to see that not one of the kids so much as gave him the standard teen you're-so-boring look. Then he told the two counselors also watching the kids from poolside to get it in gear before they were all kicked to the curb.

“That's better,” Derek said to Ben. “So who planted this retirement thing in your head?”

“First, I saw a couple of random posts on my fan site. Not exactly a call to retire, but more curiosity about how long I planned to continue racing. That, I could deal with. But after the California race last week, my crew chief pretty much volunteered me for retirement.”

“Your crew chief? The new one…Chris Sampson?”

Ben nodded. “That would be the guy. We've clashed from the moment Gil dropped him into the middle of my team. I can do no right, and Sampson can do no wrong. Or at least he's that way in front of me. I've heard that he's less abrasive with others, which I have to believe because otherwise he'd be walking around with two black eyes on a daily basis.”

Derek shook his head as though he hadn't heard right. “You haven't…?”

“No, we haven't fought, but I've been damn tempted.”

“Then Sampson has to be a piece of work since you're one of the calmest guys I've ever met.”

“Usually,” Ben said. “But the farther I get into this season, the less I feel like myself. The friction Sampson is causing is a big part of it. He and I could use a session at your camp to get our teamwork skills in place. That, or a boxing ring. He's a chunk of years younger than I am, but I have life experience and a whole lot of anger on my side.”

“Instead of twelve rounds, how about an arbitrator?” Derek asked.

Ben laughed.

“No, I mean it. You don't have to hire a professional if you don't want to, but if you sit down with a neutral third party, you might be able to work through some of this.”

“I don't see it happening,” Ben said.

“Just think about it, okay?”

“Okay.”

Derek smiled. “Why don't I think you meant that?”

Ben laughed. “Because I'd sooner drive blindfolded than I'd go through something that sounds like marriage counseling with Chris Sampson.”

“Consider the subject dropped,” Derek said. “But once you do retire, whenever that might be, what are your plans?”

“That's number one on the Beats the Heck Out of Me list. I guess it always seemed so far in the future that I didn't need to think about it. And now here I am. Or potentially here I am.”

“Other than driving, what do you like?” Derek asked.

Ben hitched this thumb toward the pool. “Being around kids, teaching them…learning from them. It's amazing what they can teach an adult about life.”

Derek smiled. “I wish I could afford to have you on Green Flag's staff.”

“Not a problem. You get me whenever you want me, for free. That's a promise.”

Now Ben just needed to figure out who got him in exchange for a paycheck.

 

A
FEW MINUTES BEFORE NINE
that evening, Susie entered the front door of Maudie's Down Home Diner, carrying a bottle of red wine sheathed in a paper bag. She wasn't a whiskey woman, as Sheila had suggested, but tonight a glass of wine certainly sounded good.

As she walked through the diner's currently quiet public area, chat and laughter from the back room flowed toward her. Susie said hellos to the customers
she knew, waved to the waitress and moved on to her friends. At least all was right in this part of the world. In the room, she found Sheila, Mellie, Patsy, Patsy's two daughters, Sophia and Grace, and Rue Larrabee, who had started the Tuesday Tarts' gathering and was the owner of the Cut 'N' Chat salon, located just a few doors down from Maudie's.

“So here you've gone and turned us into the Wednesday Wenches,” Rue said. “So long as we can still be Tuesday Tarts, too, I'm all for it. The more estrogen I'm around, the better life looks.”

Susie laughed, and even that simple action lightened her mood.

“Since you're swimming in estrogen at the salon, it has to be looking pretty darned rosy,” she said.

“And don't forget that testosterone, either,” Sheila said. “From where I'm sitting, you've been looking nearly delirious ever since the Tarts bought you Andrew in that bachelor auction.”

Andrew Clark was now Rue's fiancé. The tarts had been in a frenzy of wedding planning since Rue had shared the news.

The stylist tipped back her head and let loose a laugh as big as her heart. “You might have bought him, but after that, the work was all mine!”

“I'd say the work was more his, the way you were backpedaling from him,” Patsy added in.

As Susie listened to the loving banter, she took a corkscrew from the table Sheila always stocked with treats for nights such as this. After trimming away the bottle's foil, she twisted in the corkscrew and began to carefully draw the cork out.

“Bless it all!” she snapped when the cork did the exact same thing.

“What's wrong?” Sophia asked.

Susie held out the corkscrew. “I came off half corked.”

Her friends laughed, and Sophia rose to join her at the treats table.

“Let me see that, and you go sit down,” the younger woman said.

Susie was happy to hand over the wine. She took her usual spot right next to Patsy on the loveseat and settled in.

“And speaking of romance,” Patsy said to Sheila, who was kicked back in a fat armchair, a glass of whiskey, neat, in her hand. “What's going on with you and Gil Sizemore?”

“What do you mean, what's going on? I've told you all over and over, he's a diner customer just like any other,” Sheila replied in a tone Susie would almost peg as alarmed.

“Oh, I'll agree he's a customer, but most of your customers don't look at you the way he does.”

“And just how do you think the man looks at me?” Sheila asked.

“Judging by what I saw at lunch today, he looks at you like you're the best thing since sweet tea,” Patsy said.

“He does not!”

“I don't know, Sheila. Mom's right,” Sophia said as she poured Susie's wine into one of the diner's tumblers.

“I've caught him looking your way a time or two, and I'd have to agree the man's sweet on you.”

“I'd advise both of you to skip the wine,” Sheila replied. “You're already not seeing clearly. Gil is a valued
customer and nothing more. Just because a man says hello and might talk to a woman for a while doesn't mean he's sweet on her.”

“It does if he watches her every time she's not looking,” Susie said after thanking Sophia for the wine she'd brought her.

“Not you, too?” Sheila said. “I'm beginning to think it's something in the water in this town. Do all of you have vision problems? Gil Sizemore could not possibly be checking me out.”

“I can guarantee my vision's 20/20, or I wouldn't be working on any of your heads, and I've got to say I've seen you watching Gil, too, Sheila,” Rue announced.

The diner owner had blushed as red as her fiery hair. “I have not! Gil Sizemore isn't my type at all. He's all smooth and glossy and polished. He might as well have been dipped into varnish!”

“Un-huh. Right,” Rue said, one perfectly plucked eyebrow arched with skepticism.

“Me thinks the lady doth protest too much,” Susie added.

Sophia handed Patsy a glass of wine, then took a seat in the chair next to Sheila's. “I'm going to stay out of this since my mom told me to mind my own business, but if I were to jump in…” she added with her perpetually serious expression in place, “I'd have to agree.”

“Thanks for
almost
staying out of it,” Sheila said to her friend in a teasing voice. “It's a good thing I adore you, isn't it?”

Sophia smiled in return.

“And not just to save myself from further speculation, but because she's the reason we're here tonight, would you like to tell us what's happened, Susie?”

With all this talk of crushes and new love, it felt more than a little odd to be talking about what she feared was fading love, but Susie had no place else to turn.

“I don't suppose there's any good place to start this,” she said. “I've always kept my own counsel when it comes to my marriage. Ben's been my very best friend since the day we met, and I've always been able to talk to him.”

Her friends nodded in understanding, and Susie tried to relax. “Except…except lately, every time I try to talk to him about something of more substance than where the kids and I have to be or if the trash has been put out, he bolts from the room…or the state.”

“What do you mean?” Sheila asked.

“Well, you know when you asked me how the California trip was?”

“Yes.”

“I omitted one thing. I had tried to get Ben to stay with me and the kids on Coronado Island for a few days of R & R, but he refused. He told me he had things to take care of back here, and really, it's more the way he said it than the words themselves.”

“You saw firsthand what I went through when Dean and I separated,” Patsy said. “You know I understand. But it
is
the season. You have to give him a little leeway for that.”

“I know, and if it were just that, I wouldn't have asked Sheila to get you all together.”

“So what else has happened?” Rue asked.

“It all sounds silly when looked at as a single incident, but when I put it all together, it doesn't seem so silly.”

“Give us a ‘for instance,'” Patsy requested.

Susie took a sip of wine and then replied, “Well, for instance, he was late to the airport to pick us up this afternoon, which never happens. Then when we got home, he more or less dumped us in the driveway before taking off.” She gave a small shake of her head. “I swear the tires squealed. And worst of all, before I got out of the truck, when I asked him where he was going, he refused to tell me.”

“Refused?” asked Sheila. “That's a strong word.”

Susie nodded. “I know. He told me that he doesn't ask what I do all day long, so I shouldn't do that to him. Except I don't. I just wanted to know what the big rush was this evening.”

She looked around the room, wondering if she could work up the courage to ask the question that had formed in her mind as she'd sat next to Ben in their own driveway and watched the geography of her world shift.

“Do you think it's possible that he's seeing someone?”

“You mean like a chiropractor?” Rue asked.

“No, I mean like a mistress.”

Rue laughed. “No, really. Ben, of all people?”

“I'm serious,” Susie replied. “After the way he behaved tonight, it's something I need to consider. And it's possible, too. For the first time since we married, he's been on the road without me. I know he wasn't fully behind the choice we made for the kids' sake, and I know he's been lonely and stressed over how poorly he's been doing.”

“And so you think he could be having an affair?” Patsy asked.

Susie nodded.

The group sat silent for a moment, deliberating. Susie took another sip of wine to mask her nervousness.

“I'm not seeing this,” Sheila finally said. “What in blue blazes would make you think Ben would be unfaithful just because he's not happy with his racing? Because as much as y'all have been watching me, I've been returning the favor. I've seen the two of you in here for lunch enough times that I can tell you point-blank that Ben Edmonds is crazy in love with you.”