Wherever Grace Is Needed (27 page)

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Authors: Elizabeth Bass

BOOK: Wherever Grace Is Needed
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Lily thought she’d already won the war, but she was so wrong. Jordan hadn’t even begun to fight.
32
I W
OULDN’T
D
O
T
HAT
I
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I W
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Y
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n Houston, Lou underwent one more brain scan and met with yet another neurologist, whose patiently earnest stonewalling and nondivulgence of useful information made Grace realize with textbook clarity that he was a man with no good news to tell.
During the tense moments, the waiting, she found herself daydreaming about Ray and wondering how the spray painting of the patio furniture was coming along. At one point she was on the verge of calling him to remind him to buy protective goggles. It would have been just like him to be so wrapped up in what he was doing that he would forget and end up spattering a pair of glasses beyond all repair.
And then she gave herself a stiff mental slap.
Enough with the mother hen already, Grace.
Enough with thinking about trivialities so she didn’t have to focus on her dad’s painstakingly dignified gait and sad expression as they navigated the unfamiliar medical complex.
She couldn’t imagine what was going through her father’s head. Beyond mentioning the scenery, Lou didn’t speak much on the way home. She didn’t even know what hopes he’d had when they went to Houston, or if he’d harbored any hopes at all. Steven had recommended he go, and now he’d gone, and he didn’t seem inclined to confide in Grace about his disappointment over the medical evidence that his condition had deteriorated since last summer—something that Grace—and probably Lou, too—had already known.
The only real conversation they had on the way home had been about the party, and Ray’s family.
“I don’t know how this party is going to come off,” she said as they approached the fringes of Austin. “Planning it seems to have popped Ray back to life a little, though.”
Her dad had grunted at that. “A man doesn’t get over a tragedy like his in a year, or two, or even a decade. I didn’t, when I lost Joyce. And I guess I made my big mistakes during that time.”
She gritted her teeth. Her mom was the mistake he was talking about.
He drummed his hands on his knees as he looked out at a patch of Indian paintbrush and observed, “We don’t see as much of Lily anymore.”
“She’s been busy helping Ray—and I think she’s trying to avoid Crawford.”
“Why should she do that?”
“Why do you think, Dad?”
He frowned. “Is she breaking his heart?”
“Other way around. According to Dominic, he likes someone else. Lily’s sister, actually.”
Lou pivoted, shocked. “I should give that boy a thump on the head. Lily’s got twice as many smarts as that crazy-haired hoyden.”
“Don’t mention it, Dad. Crawford knows nothing about how Lily feels. Anyway, he’s brokenhearted, too. According to Dominic, he asked Jordan to a dance and she turned him down flat.”
“So it’s good times all around.” He drummed his fingers on his knees. “Well, maybe this thing of Ray’s will liven up everyone. Is it this weekend?”
“The next.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
Grace couldn’t decide if watching Ray pop back to life that April was gratifying or frightening. For the past several weekends, he had been a whirlwind of action. Whenever she gazed across the fence now, there were always ladders out, or tarps spread, or gutters being cleaned. He would return from Saturday morning shopping outings laden with plants, hanging baskets, and even Chinese lanterns. Dominic would come over to walk Iago, looking tired or exasperated, and tell them what his dad and Lily were up to.
One of the biggest mysteries coming from the West house now was the question of what had happened to Lily’s diary. At some point, the journal had disappeared, and Lily wasn’t at all reticent about placing the blame squarely on Jordan’s shoulders. The war between the West sisters continued to escalate.
On the day of the delivery of a long cedar table—the table Ray had bought when he decided the old patio furniture alone just wouldn’t suffice, even after he and Lily had gone to the trouble of painting it—Grace went over to inspect the new purchase. Jordan made a rare appearance in the backyard to look at it too.
“This is going to be a two-table affair then?” Grace asked.
“Oh, yes,” Ray said. “We’re still going to be squeezed as it is.”
Jordan folded her arms. “If there’s a kid’s table, I’m not sitting at it.”
“What about if there’s a thief’s table?” Lily asked.
Jordan turned on her, laughing. “Give it a rest. I didn’t take your stupid diary.”
“Why don’t I believe you?” Lily wondered aloud.
“Because you’re a paranoid ’rhoid,” Jordan said. “What the hell would I do with it?”
Ray busied himself inspecting the connecting braces of his table. If he had heard the exchange between Lily and Jordan while he was hovered underneath that wooden tabletop, he pretended not to. When he came back up to standing, he announced, “This thing is actually pretty well constructed. I bet we’ll still be using it a decade or two from now.”
Grace felt an ache in her chest as she looked at his pep rally smile. He was trying so hard but still missing the connection.
Say something to them,
she wanted to tell him.
“If
I’m
still sitting in this backyard two decades from now,” Jordan muttered as she stalked away, “someone please put arsenic in my Geritol.”
Ray watched her go, mystified, as if he’d never heard a discouraging word and the skies were not cloudy all day. “What’s the matter with her?”
When Lily went inside to get something, Grace brought up a subject that had been bothering her. “It’s awful to have your heart set on something and then have it pulled out from under you.”
He frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“Jordan. She’s so alone. I haven’t even seen her hanging out with that weird woman anymore.”
“Good.”
“But she doesn’t seem to have anyone she relates to. At the art program, she might find a bunch of people just like herself.”
“Oh, Lord.”
“Or people who would be sympathetic to her.”
Ray’s brow crinkled, and he stood with his hands on his hips, staring at the grass. He released a long sigh. “Maybe you’re right. I’ve been worried about her, the way she wanders around by herself with that rabbit, or else shuts herself away. The only one in the family she seems to talk to is Dominic. I asked her if she wanted to go back to the therapist and she just laughed at me. Maybe she does need something else.”
Grace felt as though she had made a little headway. Though as the cookout approached, when she was helping Ray more and started catching more glares from his older daughter, she sometimes wondered why she had bothered.
She didn’t understand those glares. It wasn’t as if she was actually a threat. She might have had a bit of a thing for Ray, but she had never acted on it. She had no idea what Ray was thinking about her. Only occasionally would she feel his gaze following her. But they were never alone, and usually they were arguing good-naturedly with one another about things such as whether the Chinese lanterns were a decorative touch too far.
Ray liked the lanterns.
She shouldn’t have cared one way or another about him. He was at a difficult spot in his life, he had a daughter who despised her, and he appeared to have kept his emotions sealed off even in the best of times. And however hard he was trying to hide it, he was still grieving.
She didn’t want to become someone’s biggest mistake, like her mother.
Not to mention, she had her own problems. First and foremost, she had her dad to worry about and take care of. And
rigolettosmusic.com
to oversee. Beside which,
she
was on the rebound, after Ben. Although she wondered how long a person could remain on the rebound without actually hitting anything. At some point didn’t you become just a loose ball, a dud?
But then Ray knocked on the door one evening to ask if they had a former neighbor’s e-mail address.
“Bob Cassidy,” he told Lou.
“I do have it!” Lou said with a certainty that lifted Grace’s spirits. “Bob sends me those end-of-the-year update e-mails. Like a family advertisement. I’ve never understood how those caught on.”
Grace and Ray exchanged amused glances. “I can send the e-mail to you,” she said.
“Why?” her dad asked. “I’ve got it. I’ll just go and write it down for Ray right now.”
“Or just e-mail it to Ray, Dad.”
Lou raised a brow. “Why e-mail it to him when I can run upstairs and write it down? He’s right here.”
She opened her mouth to answer but her dad was already stumping up the stairs as if he’d won the argument.
She turned back to Ray with a gesture of amiable surrender.
Ray obviously hadn’t been inside Lou’s house often, because he scanned the room, inspecting the bookshelves and furniture as if he were a traveler taking a house tour. It occurred to her that they usually talked outdoors, where they mostly crossed paths by chance. Indoors, he seemed to take up more room, and she could actually smell the soapy scent of his skin—after his day’s work he’d apparently taken the time to get Zestfully clean.
“Thank you for helping me think of all this, Grace. You were right. It’s made all the difference to be focusing on something. I feel as if I’m about to be relaunched into the world. Sounds stupid, I know.”
She shook her head. “No. I sometimes feel I need to be relaunched, too.”
His brows arched in surprise. “You?”
“You don’t think?”
“No—that would be terrible. My launch is sort of a leap over a mental hurdle. If you launched, I worry you’d leave.”
She lifted a brow. “That would be bad?”
“Awful.”
She couldn’t help smiling.
“Dominic would be heartbroken,” he added.
She tried to keep the smile in place, but she wasn’t sure how successful she was.
Dominic
would be heartbroken, the man said.
Her father came down, leading with his outstretched hand holding a sheet of paper. “Here’s the address.”
Ray gave the impression of snapping to attention. He took the paper without looking at it. “Thanks.”
“Care to sit a while?” her father asked Ray.
“No, I should get back.”
“Game of chess?” Lou pressed.
He shook his head. “I’ve never been that great at chess.”
“You could still beat Grace.”
Ray smiled awkwardly, as if he didn’t know whether he should actually be smiling or not. “Thank you anyway.”
After he was gone, Grace suddenly went saggy with disappointment.
Dominic
would miss her.
Her father sat down and leaned back. “That poor man. Such a tragedy. He’ll never get over it.”
Gritting her teeth, Grace went to the kitchen and swept, even though it didn’t even need sweeping. Iago was trying to take his prebedtime nap under the kitchen table and made growly sounds whenever the broom came too close to his snout for comfort.
When she heard another knock, she grumbled all the way back to the door. Her father must have gone upstairs to get ready for bed, because the living room was empty. She swung the door open and was surprised to see Ray again.
He held up the strip of paper. “Your father gave me a phone number, not an e-mail.”
“Oh. Well, can’t you just call Bob? That sounds simpler anyway.”
“This is not Bob’s number. It doesn’t even have an Austin area code.”
She squinted at it. “That was my number when I lived in Oregon.”
He smiled. “So I got your number without even having to ask for it.”
“It’s defunct. I can give you my real one.” His gaze froze, and she immediately wanted to kick herself. “Kidding,” she assured him. “I mean, not kidding—but you know. There’s no reason you’d want my number.”
“Yes, there is.”
She blinked.
He hesitated but then blurted out, “What I said before, about Dominic missing you? That was only half the story. I’d miss you, too. That is, I think I would.” He grabbed her hand. “I’m so . . . I don’t know how to say it.”
“Don’t then.”
He looked into her eyes. “You’re right.” He tugged her hand and she seemed to slide right toward him. It helped that he was still standing on the porch, which put them on equal footing. Their lips met and she was amazed by the hunger she sensed in him in just a brief kiss. He held her tight, almost like a man hugging a life buoy, until she pushed away.
“I’m not sorry,” he said.
She laughed. “I’m glad to hear it.”
He wasn’t laughing, though. Instead, he was studying her face as if he’d never really noticed it before. “I half suspect I could fall in love with you, Grace.”

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