Nobody's Angel (10 page)

 

 

“So what’s with the chair?”

Lucy jerked her attention to the malodorous mess she was heaving around. “This,” she said, patting it gingerly, terrified of what might be hiding in there. “This is more than a chair. This is a moral victory.”

“Uh-huh?” He folded his arms over his chest.

He was different today, a bit more relaxed and almost—approachable? The air between them felt clearer, freer, as if they had both managed a bit of breathing space. If she’d done nothing else with her amends, she’d done that.

“I managed to liberate this from the house. Over the voluble protests of my father, mind you. This chair is a portent of change.”

“And here I thought it was a really old La-Z-Boy.”

“That’s because you lack vision,” Lucy said, grinning at him. For once he didn’t stare at her as if he were cast in granite. He cracked another smile and Lucy’s cup ranneth over.

Then, he did one of those Richard things she hadn’t remembered, but it all came back to her in a rush. He strolled over and hefted the chair onto his shoulder. He carried the chair effortlessly to the sidewalk. It would stay there until somebody decided they must have it or the city came to get it. Lucy’s money was on the latter. She was reasonably sure it should be condemned as a biohazard.

She followed Richard down to the sidewalk and smiled. It was always like this with Richard. He opened doors, carried heavy things, stood when a lady left the table, a hundred small, old-fashioned, and nearly forgotten courtesies he performed as easily as if he were breathing. All the brothers were the same.

“What are you smiling at?”

“You.” Lucy’s smile widened when he looked surprised. “You always had the most beautiful manners. Other boys were not like you. If they did do something polite, they made a big deal. You got on with it as if it were the most natural thing in the world.”

“Aw, Lucy, stop already.”

“Are you actually blushing?”

“No.”

“You are too.”

“It’s the cold.”

“Pshaw!”

The moment drew out long enough to feel ungainly. Lucy looked at her feet.

He shifted on his.

The hostility was missing and in its place was a wide abyss that throbbed with possibility. Lucy was not entirely sure what to do with that, yet.

“Um . . . Luce?”

“Yup.” It was a relief one of them spoke.

“I think it’s incredible.” He pushed his hands into the pockets of his coat. “You getting sober. I’ve seen people come through the practice who are struggling with addiction. I don’t absolutely understand what it is you guys go through, but I am in awe of what you manage to achieve.”

“Thanks.” She wanted to squirm like a happy puppy.

“I was in shock when you came around. It was hard to listen to you dredge up the past.” His breath hit the air in white plumes of vapor. “For the most part I try not to think about it and then, you appear out of nowhere and want to hash it all out. I haven’t thought about some of that stuff for years. Truthfully, I didn’t want to think about it ever again.”

“I didn’t do it to upset you, Richard.”

“And I get that, Lucy.” He cleared his throat. “I guess what I am trying to say is, I am finding this harder than I would have thought. And because of that, I didn’t tell you last night how much I admire your courage in getting sober.”

Lucy looked up at the clean, classical lines of his face. The snow had thickened into fat, sleepy flakes that clung lovingly to his head and shoulders.

Inside her chest, her heart gave a queer tug.

“It’s not as if I don’t want to let the past go, Luce, but being angry with you has become a sort of habit.” He scrunched his shoulders next to his ears and dropped them down. “I never foresaw a time when it would stop.”

“Would it help if you gave me some sort of task?”

“Hmm?”

His look of confusion made her chuckle. “Some of the old-timers say when you make an amend you should ask the person if there is anything they need you to do to prove yourself to them. Would that help?”

“Like what sort of thing?” He frowned in concentration and it took her right back to the days she had lain on his bed and watched him study. So serious and so focused on what he was doing. It had been a sort of challenge to see if she could get him to look up. In the end, she’d always managed it. And a whole lot more.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Lucy said, and shrugged, keeping it light. “You seem to have the shoveling pretty much under control.” He was still studying her carefully. “Anything you can think of that will reassure you I am sincere and you can trust me again.”

He raised one of his dark, dark eyebrows in disbelief. “That’s a pretty big blank check you’ve handed me.”

“Well,” Lucy said, grinning up at him. “You can ask. It doesn’t mean I have to do it or anything. You ask and I will make a judgment call at that point.”

He nodded abruptly. “I’ll think about it.” The snow was starting to settle all around them as they stood, not looking at each other, but intensely aware of the other person.

Richard shuffled his feet suddenly and Lucy looked up. She watched with fascination as his cheeks went a little pinker. “As for the . . . um . . . other thing.”

Lucy felt her own face heat. “Don’t . . .”

“A reaction to the situation . . .”

“Absolutely, I totally understand . . .”

“Shouldn’t . . .”

“Right, clearly.”

“Okay.” He blew out a long breath. “I’m glad we got that out in the open and cleared up.”

The small space between them seemed alive with all the wasted possibilities. The sadness nearly sent Lucy to her knees. If it hadn’t happened the way it did, where would they be now? Would that be her house? Would this be her beautiful, kind, strong man?

She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Only that his eyes were trying to probe the layers of her and see beyond.

“It’s cold.” Lucy looked away first.

“Very.” He gave a jerky motion toward the house. “Is your mom inside?”

“Yes,” Lucy answered, snatching at the conversational gambit.

“Um—good.” He straightened his shoulders and his expression firmed into purposeful lines. “I thought I might try and visit with Carl.”

“Oh?” Lucy realized what he meant and smiled. “Oh.” She motioned toward the chair. “He was in fine voice this morning about that.”

“And Lynne?” A small frown creased the skin between his eyes. “Is she all right?”

“Actually,” Lucy said, “she handled him very well. It was quite an eye opener.”

He frowned as if weighing his words. “You know, Lucy, it might not be the best thing for Carl or Lynne to have him placed in a home.”

“I know that,” Lucy responded quickly, but there was none of the former accusation in his eyes and she settled down again. “I know that. And I want to do the best thing here. Whatever that is.”

“Okay.” He nodded slowly and motioned for her to proceed.

Lucy made a face and stepped out of his way. “All things considered, it’s probably best if I make myself scarce while you visit. I only bring out the worst in him.”

“Oh, right.” He opened his mouth to speak and then stopped as if his mental censorship board had reached for the red pen.

She waited a moment more for him to finish what he was going to say. It didn’t look like he would, so she turned.

“Let me know if you think of anything,” she called over her shoulder. “About the amends.”

He raised one hand and waved it in acknowledgement.

“There you are. I thought I’d hear from you first thing this morning.” Mads didn’t keep her waiting.

“Yeah.” Lucy wrapped her scarf around her neck as Richard disappeared into her house. “I had a thing this morning, with my dad, but it’s done now.”

“So, how did it go?” Mads wanted to know about the amends.

“It went . . . okay.” And she really didn’t have any other words to describe the scene with Richard.

Mads listened in silence as Lucy went through the details, omitting the last part.

“You did well, Lucy Locket,” Mads said after a pause and Lucy’s conscience twanged. “We all have a few that feel like an open nerve ending.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I don’t like the sound of that.” Mads was like a bloodhound on the trail.

“Let me ask you a hypothetical question.” Lucy tramped up the street as Mads went silent to listen. “Say, a person was trying to get her life in order and needed to make peace with her past to do that?”

“Hmm?” Mads rumbled softly. “Hypothetically speaking, right?”

“Um, right.” Lucy tucked the phone securely against her ear as she checked for traffic before crossing. “And that person discovered, or thought maybe it was possible, that her feelings might not be what she thought they would be.”

“In what way?” Mads pricked her ears.

“Like, say, there were still residual feelings for a past flame.” She really shouldn’t be asking this. She knew the answer, but that stubborn part of her couldn’t let it lie.

“What sort of residual feelings?”

“Complicated ones.”

“I see.” Mads took a deep breath. “Then I would have to, hypothetically, remind that person that they were not there to screw anyone over any more than they already had.”

“Right.” Lucy swallowed past the dry lump in her throat. Stupid to have expected anything else. “Right.”

“Ah, babe.” Mad’s instant empathy made Lucy’s eyes sting. “This program can help you free yourself, but it can’t always give you a happy ending.”

“I know.” And she did know. Time to man up a bit. “It could be because it’s all so fresh and I haven’t seen him in so long. I look at him and suddenly my head is full of what-ifs.”

“Lucy, girl,” Mads said gently, “are you good for him though?”

There it was. The uppercut straight to the chin. “Maybe I could be now.”

“What about Elliot?”

Lucy groaned and looked up. Snowflakes drifted down and fell like a cold kiss on her cheeks and lips. “I think I have an answer for him.”

“Okay, then,” Mads said. “Then that is one good thing going there accomplished. For the rest, I really don’t know. I think you should do what you need to do and get out of there.”

“I know.” Lucy’s heart twisted and withered. It was the right thing to do. Nine years ago, she’d gone after a man for all the wrong reasons. She couldn’t spend her life making the same mistakes.

“Finish up and come home,” Mads said.

 

 

All along the street, the snow had stopped and the sunlight played tag with the icicles, turning the residential neighborhood into a picture postcard. Already the clouds that would banish the sun were starting to create wisps on the horizon. But for now, the day had turned clear and crisp and beautiful. It was the right sort of day for blowing the cobwebs out of your brain and she started to walk.

The new snow crackled and squeaked beneath her feet. She rapidly searched the pockets of her coat for her cap and pulled it down over the top of her ears. They gave a grateful throb as warm blood started to flow to her extremities again. She was sober. She tasted the clean air on her tongue. She was alive and she was living each day as it came.

She made it to the end of the street and turned right toward the town hall. A great, square, brick edifice, the city hall stood in pride of place at the corner of Main and Clarke. The Christmas lights were still strung around the windows and doors, but the tree had already been hauled away. Lucy went past the town hall and toward the cenotaph. Every Veterans’ Day, Lynne had brought her here to watch them lay the wreaths of poppies at the feet of the stone soldier. Behind the soldier, the children’s fountain lay closed and boarded up against the cold.

That was the place for the hot summer days of July and August. She and Ashley had stripped down to their underwear and danced in and out of the water sprays. The roads were quiet as Lucy crossed over to the community park. On the corner, the old billboard still stood. Every happening in the small neighborhood was religiously recorded and advertised here.

Life went on and sometimes it hurt to stand up and feel it flow through and over you. It was why she drank, to escape this. There was no escape, however; sooner or later you had to start facing each moment and living it.

And in the center of the park was the outside skating rink that went up every year. There were only a handful of hearty souls braving the cold today. A group of four boys matched up in a game of hockey. At the edge of the rink, a small girl skated in tentative circles around her father.

Lucy felt as if she had gone miles into the darkest parts of her soul, yet life in this place plodded on much as it always did. Lucy was not sure if she hated that thought or drew a strange sort of comfort from it.

The little ice fairy wobbled, regained her balance, only to wobble again and go over on her butt with a thump. Her father was there immediately, dusting off the ice and wiping her tears. That had never been her. She had never been that little princess.

Instead, Lucy had been one of those boys. Trying so hard to impress and look like they didn’t give a shit at the same time. From the time she had strapped on skates or soccer cleats or whatever, she had been one of those boys. She always had to be better, faster, tougher, and stronger. Most of the time she had been. Lucy was blessed with a healthy athletic ability, but it wasn’t enough. She hadn’t been a boy. Sometimes that meant a severe disappointment to Carl and, at best, an almost-good-enough. But she wasn’t that anymore and that was the bit that mattered.

“You used to skate rings around all the boys,” said a voice Lucy knew well. She nearly didn’t turn around. The urge to run and hide was like jungle drums in her chest.

“Hey, Donna.” Lucy braced herself and turned to greet the coolest mom in Willow Park.

Only Donna was nothing like Lucy remembered her. Gone was the shoulder-length hair; it was cropped and tousled like a boy’s. It suited her. Donna had never been a pretty woman, but this new haircut showed up the clean lines of her face and drew attention to those amazing blue eyes. Richard’s eyes, Lucy thought, with a little slither of regret.

“Lucy.” Donna wasn’t smiling, but there was no hostility in the measured stare she turned on her. “And back in Willow Park.”

“Um . . . yes.” Lucy hunkered into her scarf. Another regret and another person whom she’d hurt. Donna had been like a second mother to Lucy.

The boys on the ice shouted and cheered as Donna studied her. Donna frowned slightly and sighed. The soft exhalation hurt more than all Carl’s bluster. “I didn’t think it was possible, but you are even more beautiful than you were when you were a girl.” She gave a short, wry laugh. “No wonder Richard is in such a confusion.” Donna was taking every inch of Lucy in. Looking beyond the surface, as if she could see more.

“Richard’s in a confusion?” Lucy found her voice.

“What did you think,
chérie?
” She clasped Lucy’s face tenderly between two mittened palms. Lucy gasped as much for the unexpectedness, as the sweetness of the gesture. “Did you think he could not be affected by you, ever? You underestimate the size of the footprint you leave.”

“I don’t think I do,” Lucy said.

Donna looked at her deeply and then took her hands away from Lucy’s face. Her expression grew sad all of a sudden. “Perhaps you don’t, at that.”

“No, I don’t.” Lucy cleared her throat. Donna had welcomed Lucy into her home and her heart while Lucy had done what she always did, hurt people. “But I didn’t want . . . I never meant . . . I want to try and make it right.”

“So I’ve heard,” Donna said, nodding slowly. Her blue eyes were still avidly eating up Lucy’s features, as if she could find some great truth there. Lucy wanted to tell her not to bother. “Des always hoped you would come back,” she said. “He passed two years ago, did you know?”

“Yes.” Regret tightened her chest into a hard ache. “I am sorry for your loss.”

Des had been the blueprint for his son and, like Richard, Lucy was candy to him and he had spoiled her rotten. Lucy, desperate for any fatherly approval, had lapped it up. One of her true regrets was that Des’s funeral had been and gone and she had lacked the courage at the time to come back. Des had deserved more from her. Hell, she had deserved more from her.

“Des always did have a big, soft spot for his Lucy.” Donna echoed her thoughts. “He was devastated when you left.”

More pain, more regret, and more guilt and Lucy’s shoulders sagged beneath the weight. So many good people had been hurt, people who didn’t deserve her treatment of them. She had no words, so she looked at Donna mutely and shook her head.

Donna took a bracing breath and gave her shoulders a small shake as if she could free them from some invisible pressure. “Enough,” she announced suddenly and Lucy jumped slightly. “Des would have been thrilled to see you and he would have been proud of the way you are facing your troubles now.”

Lucy couldn’t keep the skepticism from her face.

Donna smiled, as if she accurately read her expression. “He was not angry with you,” she insisted. “Des always saw so much more than we gave him credit for. He was angry for you. Me”—she shrugged—“I wanted to take a piece out of your hide for what you did to my baby boy, but Des, he saw things differently. He said if you had been his, you would never have felt the need to run so far or so fast. It made me look at the whole thing differently. It took a while, but I saw what my Des was trying to say . . . eventually.”

Lucy’s mouth dropped open and Donna reached up and shut it gently with one finger. “And I am glad, because now I can say, with some fairly large reservations, that I am glad to see you again, Lucy.”

Lucy blinked rapidly. “I . . .” The rest came out as a garbled strangle and Donna, thank God, took pity on her and changed the subject.

“And this is Rasputin.” She gestured to a rather ratty looking mongrel, unhappily trying to pick snow out of his paws. “He does not like to walk, this dog of mine.” Donna threw Rasputin a disparaging glance. “But he likes to eat and he likes to sleep, so we get along fine.”

“I see you changed your hair as well.” Lucy marched them into safer territory. Hair was the ultimate equalizer amongst two or more women. Forget fashion, weight was too fraught with pitfalls. Hair was the tried and true game changer.

“Yes.” Donna patted her hair into place before pulling a cherry-red cap on over her curls. “Des, he liked it longer and you know how he could be.” Donna pulled an expressive face. “I wore my hair that way for over thirty years, to please the man. But after he died, there was nobody to tell me how to wear my hair anymore.” She winked at Lucy and then said, “I am walking my ungrateful dog, but what are you doing out here on a day like this? You must be soft after living in Seattle all this time.”

Lucy laughed. “I needed some fresh air,” she said. “But I think it’s fresh enough for me and, you’re right, it’s time to get out of the cold.”

“I will walk with you.” Donna tucked her arm through Lucy’s. “I am going your way.”

“How are the other boys?” Lucy ventured tentatively as they tramped along together. “Joshua and Thomas, are they well?”

“Ah, oui,”
Donna responded, smiling. “Thomas, he is an engineer now and working over in South Africa on some project.”

“Really?” Lucy tried to imagine the awkward boy she’d left behind doing anything but chewing gum and skateboarding. She gave up the attempt.

“Oh, yes.” Donna nodded and gave a tug to the recalcitrant Rasputin. The dog got to his feet with a small doggy moan. “Thomas is over there now and he e-mails me all the time and we talk on Skype. Do you have Skype?”

“No.”

“You should.” Donna patted her arm. “It is the most marvelous thing. I can see my Thomas, clear as anything.” She leaned into Lucy. “I can see when he is trying to lie to his mother.”

“Does he do that a lot?” Lucy couldn’t resist.

“Pftt!” Donna threw up her arms. Rasputin almost left terra firma. “That one.”

They walked to the end of the street.

“And Joshua?” Lucy asked about the second oldest brother. A year younger than Richard, Joshua had been the best-looking brother. The other two brothers were no slouches, but Joshua held the undisputed title of heartbreaker. In his time, his reputation had spread beyond the sleepy streets of Willow Park into the neighboring areas. Joshua Hunter was hot. H. O. T. Strangely, he had held no appeal for Lucy, nor she for him.

“Joshua.” Donna rolled her eyes. “He is still around, but he has this big, fancy apartment in downtown Chicago. It’s one of these modern ones with all the exposed piping and lots of light. I would love to live there. My son doesn’t have any idea how lucky he is. He’s never there. He uses it as a place to put as a mailing address and bring women home to.” Despite her words, Donna’s voice radiated warmth. Joshua had been the sort of charmer it was hard to get angry with and impossible to stay angry at. “He is doing something with computers, but he was always good with money, that one.” Donna gave a short laugh. “Two things Joshua could always find without even trying: girls and money.”

“I’ll bet.” Lucy smiled, remembering that twinkle in the middle Hunter brother’s eye.

“So, tell me, Lucy
belle fille,
where you have been and what you have been doing? I asked Lynne once about you, but she got terribly embarrassed and upset and I didn’t want to do it again.”