03 The Long Road Home (3 page)

"Ah!  Tim Browning's sister.  Lexi said you wanted to see me.  What can I do for you?"

Margaret's breath caught in her throat.  Matthew Magnum's question increased her uneasiness.  The scent of pine surrounded her flushing confusion in where momentary calm had been.  He towered over her like a California redwood, and she stepped back and tilted her head so she could look at him better. 

Get things into proper perspective. 

"First of all, I want to apologize for jaywalking the last time I was here."  That was better.  Her voice was steady, her words according to plan.  Disarm first, and then attack.  "The second reason I'm here is to talk to you about Timmy."

Picking up a pile of papers from a folding chair, Matthew Magnum dumped them on the ground, "Have a seat."  Switching the radio off, he turned another chair around and sat astride it.

Margaret sat gingerly on the edge of her chair and took another deep breath.  This wasn't the rational discussion she'd visualized.  There was something disconcerting in the way Matthew Magnum sat astride the chair, the fact he was only three feet away.  The morning light made his eyes seem different today...green mixed with yellow, like newly budding leaves in spring.  The look in them was far from formal too as he scrutinized her appearance.   The half smile on his face drew attention to his chin and made her forget what she wanted to say.  Margaret wet her lips.  She had to remain calm or nothing would go the way she'd planned it.  One hand came up and started wrapping the end of her silk scarf around her fingers.

"Would you like some coffee?"

"No, thank you."  She hoped the shake of her head was determined enough to prevent any further interruptions.  "I just want a few minutes of your time."

"Sure."

She licked her lips, "Timmy is very young.  Teenagers often go through phases that don't really mean anything.  If you wouldn't encourage him in this..." 

Her voice trailed off.  She was making a mess of things.  Her words weren't making sense even to her. 

"What exactly am I encouraging him in?"

Margaret twisted the soft silk of her scarf with nervous hands.  "This fascination with trucks.  Timmy's going to be an engineer."

"Why?"  The word dropped like a stone into the whirlpool of her confusion.

"He looks up to you.  All he talks of is Mr. Magnum this, or Mr. Magnum that...."  Last night during supper Timmy had kept on and on about his new job, not noticing that her enthusiasm hadn't matched his.

"That isn't what I meant."  There was nothing in his voice to show he was flattered by Tim's adulation.  "I mean why does he have to be an engineer?"

She tried to rephrase that.  "My father was a trucker.  Both my parents were killed when he had a heart attack behind the wheel, and his truck crashed."

"So as long as your brother doesn't become a trucker, he'll be safe?"  She hadn't noticed his nose before.  The flaring nostrils expressed disapproval clearly. 

"You don't know what this will do to Aunt Jan,” Margaret couldn't keep the quiver out of her voice.  A quiver of anger, not helplessness.  The scarf was crushed in one fist now. 

Matthew Magnum leaned against the old desk.  "Why don't you tell me what it will do to Janet?  She knows Tim works with me, and she has no objections."

Margaret couldn't hold her next words back, "She probably hopes, like I do, that this is some passing whim of Timmy's."

"If there was any trauma associated with trucking in her mind, I doubt if Janet would have opened a restaurant for truckers." 

As she stared at him, Margaret realized she had made a mistake coming here.  He was enjoying arguing with her.  Nothing she said was going to make a difference.  She stood, pushing the folding chair away from under her.  "I won't take up any more of your time, Mr. Magnum." 

Matt put his hand out holding her gently, just above her elbow.

"Don't."

"Excuse me?"  Her voice sounded one part sad, two parts vulnerable.  Matt felt a tightening in his gut, a response to the child he glimpsed in the woman from time to time.

"Don't run out there with tears blurring your vision.  I don't want you stepping in front of one of my trucks in this condition."  His thumb roved the surface of the skin inside her elbow and he felt her go very still. 

Matt could tell she was both angry and nervous.  He watched her crumple the scarf in her fist and heard a small sniff before she said sharply, "I cry when I'm angry." 

Moving away from her, Matt threw her a glance over his shoulder.  "Why are you angry?  Because you're not getting your way for once?"

"It's not that," she said angrily.  "It's because I can't bear the thought of Timmy being a trucker."

"Cream?  Sugar?"

She stared at him for a minute, and Matt thought she was going to slam her way out of the office or throw something at him.  As he watched, she lifted her chin and said stubbornly, "I don't want any coffee."

"It will help you calm down.  Besides, we haven't finished our discussion yet."  If Tim Browning was an open book, his sister was so tightly closed and bound it would need more than words to get through to her.  It would need time.

"A little cream and one sugar please."  The lack of cordiality in her voice didn't bother him.

Granted losing her parents had been hard on Margaret Browning, but that was no excuse for taking over her brother's life as if the boy had no mind of his own.  Matt's brows drew together as he remembered his own father's determination to tailor his life, the fight he'd had to put up for his freedom.

He handed her one of the Styrofoam cups and said, "Tim is old enough to make his own decisions."

"He's only sixteen," she said defensively. 

"Isn't that the same age you were when you graduated from high school, and left home to attend college?"

How on earth did he know their entire family history?  Margaret blinked.  It was true.  A regular bookworm, she had skipped two grades in elementary school, graduated two years ahead of others her age, so she had been sixteen when she'd left home for Berkeley. 

"Girls are more mature than boys the same age."

"Individual cases vary," he returned calmly.  "What is it that Tim says he wants to do?"

"He mentioned t...truck driving school, instead of college."  It was hard even to get the words out.

Matthew Magnum frowned.  "I may be partly responsible for that decision.  We talked the other day about life on the road, and I might have led him to think he could earn fifty thousand dollars in his first year as a truck driver.  I didn't realize Tim would opt for a career in trucking before college though."

"F...fifty thousand dollars?"  It was more than she’d earned as a teacher, the first year, with five years of college and a degree in education.  Their father had certainly never earned that amount.

"Who do you think you are, filling his head with lies?"  Margaret asked angrily.

Lightning flashed in Matthew Magnum's eyes.  "I don't deal in lies, Ms. Browning.  I have two truckers on my payroll earning that amount, and five who earn above seventy five thousand a year."

"It isn't the norm."

"Exactly what I was about to say.  These men have been with Bedouin Trucking for years, and they're excellent, reliable, long distance drivers.  It takes an average of thirty years in the business to get to where they are now."

"There's no guarantee that Tim will ever get to that stage."

"Just as there's no guarantee he'll ever make a good engineer." 

"He'll be safe as an engineer."

"What do you base that assumption on?  Is there some medical survey that shows engineers don't have heart attacks and die at forty three?"

It was no use talking to a man who couldn't see further than the end of his nose.  Margaret took a big gulp of coffee, in a hurry to finish it.  In a hurry to leave.

"The problem as I see it here is not him, but you."

She was the problem.  This was really great.  "What do you mean?"  Her voice held open hostility.

"You've got this cage for your brother.  Its labeled engineer and safe, and you want to coax him into it with no thought of his feelings.  Granted you're motivated by love, and it's a gilded cage, but that's no excuse for what you're doing."

Margaret felt her jaw go slack.  Who did Matthew Magnum think he was, analyzing her as if she were on a psychiatrist's couch in his office? 

"You barely spend two weeks a year here at Christmas," Magnum continued.  "Tim visits you during the summer for another couple of weeks.  On an association of four weeks a year, how can you think you know what's best for him?  You don't even know what's best for yourself."

Margaret swallowed hard.  “I know my brother.  We talk all the time on our computers.”

At least they had till he’d got this new job.  Now she knew that was when he’d started cutting their conversations short; discussing a few people they knew in common, school, then rushing out saying he had to work.  Aunt Janet had kept talking but not said a word about Timmy either.

She’d put it down to a teenager’s hurry to be doing other things.

"Have you thought about it from Timmy's point of view?"

Margaret shook her head.

"This isn't easy for him," said Matthew Magnum.  "From what he's said indirectly when we've talked he's worried about how you'll react to his working here.  He's very close to you...don't do anything to ruin your relationship with him."

"I care too much about my brother to stand by and let him make a mess of his life."

The granite chin seemed to become even harder.  "This isn't even about Timmy's job, is it?  It's about control.  You're losing control over your brother and that's what frightens you the most."

Margaret's hand clenched into a fist.  "I don't know what you mean."

"Oh yes, you do," said Matthew Magnum sternly, "so don't pretend otherwise.  You've always controlled Timmy and you want to continue to control him."

"I want what's best for Timmy."

"That's a poor reason."  Matthew Magnum swung away from her to stare out of his window.  "I know how harmful your kind of dominance is.  My father never listened to what I wanted out of life.  He was autocratic in his decisions where his children were concerned and each of us left home as soon as we could.  Unless you change, you'll lose your brother."

A frisson of fear swept through Margaret.  "Timmy's too young to know what he wants."

Matthew Magnum didn't seem to hear her.  "He's not too young to know what he wants.  I was fifteen when I ran away from home to get away from my father.  Luckily for me I met someone who talked some sense into me and made me return.  My life could have turned out very different otherwise.  In Timmy I see the boy I was: confused, frustrated, stubborn.  You both seem to share the last trait.  If you don't change your outlook you're going to lose him."

"I am not trying to control Timmy's life, only...."

"Only his decision to work here, then it will be only the college he goes to, then only the woman he marries.  Timmy's not a pawn on your chess board." 

The man was beyond reasoning with.  Why had she ever thought coming here would help matters?

Even as she stared at him Magnum said, "For the record, I have nothing to do with Timmy's decision not to go to college.  I encourage every employee of mine to get all the education they can."

Margaret looked around, found a trash can, and carefully dropped her cup into it.  Positioning the strap of her bag on her shoulder with the utmost care, she said formally.  "Goodbye, Mr. Magnum."

She stalked out of the office, her head buzzing with fury.  One jarring word more and she was going to explode.  Halfway home, Margaret ran out of names to call him.  Anger still at a rapid boil, she walked into the kitchen of The Inner Man.

"Good morning, Margaret.  You're up early."

Margaret picked up a plate, put a warm bran muffin on it, poured herself a mug of milk and was partway up the stairs, before she realized she hadn't returned Aunt Jan's greeting.

Banging the door to her room shut, she placed her hastily collected breakfast on the dresser, and flung herself on her bed. 

Drat Matthew Magnum.  Drat Timmy.  Drat everybody.

Margaret lay there for a long while, lost in the memories jostling each other in her mind.

Daddy brushing her hair with those great big hands of his, awkwardly wielding her tiny brush as he said, "All princesses have long hair."  Mommy pushing her on the swing, smiling down at her.  Daddy lifting her in the hospital, so she could look at her baby brother.  Mommy telling her she was the big sister; it was her job to take care of Timmy when they were away. 

The memories hurt.  Hurt all the more because Timmy didn't have any.  Timmy hadn't had time to get a collection of them together, like she had, before their parents died.  She had tried to make it up to him....they all had, but it wasn't the same.  Margaret swallowed the lump in her throat.  All she wanted was Timmy's happiness. 

She remembered the funeral clearly, remembered Aunt Jan holding her as she cried, whispering, "It's all right.  We'll manage."