reminded me of a jack-in-the-box.
A jack-in-the-box who kissed, I added.
Nana yelled that she was starting bread so I decided to haul our potted plants up to the bedroom. With the walls painted and sheets made into curtains, the rooms upstairs had lost most of the drab they’d clung to.
An hour later, I glanced out the window and noticed Paul’s car was still out front. He sat in the dirt beside his passenger door with the open letter in both hands. He wasn’t crying, he just stared as if looking at something he couldn’t believe was real. I could feel his sorrow so raw I almost looked away. I didn’t even know this man. We’d only said a few words. It wasn’t my place to get involved in his problem.
But I remembered that first night when his wife had asked for wine and we didn’t stock any. Maybe that was the turning point, the last straw, and somehow I was responsible.
While I watched, Mary Lynn pulled up in her rusty Volvo. She drove over the dam road twice a week to see if any of her orders had come in. She’d said she was redecorating, but the mailman swore she must be “one of them compulsive shoppers,” because he was always delivering something she’d ordered.
The old maid took a few steps, then noticed Paul. Unlike me, she didn’t hesitate. She walked right up to the banker and knelt down beside him.
I couldn’t hear what they said, but after a while, Paul stood, dusted off his jeans, and they headed toward the store. I ran downstairs feeling guilty that I’d watched.
“Afternoon,” I managed as they came in. “I’ll get your package, Mary Lynn.”
“Thank you,” she said in her polite, shy way. “And would you mind if we had a pot of tea, Allie? I think that might just hit the spot.”
“Of course,” I said, thinking that we didn’t usually serve tea. It didn’t seem to go with worms.
But Nana and I managed to find an old steel pot. While she heated water, I stacked Lipton bags on a saucer. We added the old sugar bowl and a small plate of cookies. Nana spread one of her bandana napkins over a cookie sheet and I served tea to our guests sitting in the bay window.
“Thank you,” Mary Lynn said. Her gentle smile somehow didn’t touch her eyes.
Since she didn’t invite me to join them, I moved to the other side of the store. As the afternoon aged, I watched her pour him tea. Neither seemed to talk much. Once I saw him nod when she pointed at something on the lake.
They were still there when the fishermen began to dock for the night. Luke’s canoe slipped in just as the sun touched the water. He pulled out a string of fish and walked up the dock.
Without a word to me, he handed the catch to Nana. “Same deal?”
My grandmother smiled. “Same deal.”
As they disappeared into the kitchen, I walked over to Mary Lynn and Paul for the first time. “Could I interest either of you in joining us for dinner? Looks like Luke caught twice what we can eat.”
They looked at each other, then turned to me and nodded. Paul stood slowly, like a man finding his footing on new ground. “I’ll help him clean the fish.”
Mary Lynn looked up at him. “You know how?”
He shrugged. “I’ve done it a few times.”
When he disappeared out the back, I sat down by Mary Lynn. “Is he all right?”
She nodded. “He will be.” She hesitated before sharing. “His wife wrote to tell him she filed for a divorce. She said buying a dusty little shack on a nowhere lake was the last straw.”
“Why’d he do it?”
Mary Lynn shook her head. “He said he’d always dreamed of having a place, a retreat from the world. He thought she understood.”
“He might be in time to stop the sale.”
“No. I don’t think he wants to. Maybe his life with her was part of the reason he needed the retreat.”
I felt like a voyeur looking into someone else’s pain so I changed the subject. An hour later, as we sat on the porch eating Luke’s fish and Nana’s cottage fries, I tried not to act as if anything was wrong even though I guessed this must be one of the saddest days of Paul’s life.
He ate little, stared at his plate, and forced a smile when he did look up.
Mary Lynn told us the story of how Jefferson’s Crossing got its name. It seemed Jefferson Platt was named after his ancestors who operated a raft so wagons could cross Twisted Creek. When they dammed the water and created the lake, his people stayed on, first with a trading post and later with the small bait store.
Luke backed her up, saying that when he was a kid he’d heard old Jefferson tell the same story. Except for the army, he’d lived his life in one spot.
I tried to picture Luke as a boy. Reason told me he couldn’t have been born six-feet tall and hard as a rock, but I couldn’t visualize him younger. Knowing that he’d come here for years ended my worry about him being a drifter, but I couldn’t see him living anywhere else. If this were his getaway place, where did he live?
When they’d left and Nana had gone up to bed, I walked out to the campfire Luke had built. Fall drifted in the air, chilling the breeze off the lake.
We sat for a while looking at the flames. I loved to watch the colors dance toward heaven. Once I’d tried to paint the firelight, but I could never make it come alive. An instructor told me that the only way I’d ever make fire look real on canvas was to burn it.
Finally, I could stand the silence no longer. “The banker’s wife is divorcing him because he bought a place out here.”
He stirred the fire. “Good a reason as any, I guess.”
I tried to see his face in the shadows. How could someone who kissed so good show no sympathy?
“That’s all you have to say?”
“Would you rather she left him for another man, or because she bankrupted him, or because she had a gambling problem?”
I got the point. “You’re right. The reason doesn’t matter, I guess, because it’s not the real reason. She left him because she doesn’t love him anymore.” Somehow that sounded so much worse than all the other reasons.
I wanted him to say something like loving someone for even a short time was better than never loving at all, but he didn’t. He just turned his back and watched clouds reflecting shadows on the water. I wondered if this quiet man had ever said he loved some woman. Did he understand Paul’s pain?
I stood. “Good night, Luke,” I said as I started up to the house.
He said good night so softly I couldn’t be sure I’d heard it.
When I reached the porch, I glanced back and saw him standing on the far side of the campfire staring out into the lake. His legs were wide apart, his body at parade rest. He seemed to be looking for something. Watching for something.
Chapter 17
Luke noticed a thin line of gray smoke circle and rise against the nighttime sky. He could feel someone or something moving in the night. From patrolling the streets years ago in Houston, he’d learned that evil craves the shadows. As soon as he knew Allie was safely inside, he pulled his backpack from the canoe and began his search with night vision equipment. Today, he’d moved silently in his boat around the shoreline, trying to think like a drug dealer. Trying to guess where they’d set up next.
Smiling, he remembered how his cover of fishing had slowed the search because the fish kept biting. He’d even dropped the hook once without bait and somehow managed to snag a water moccasin. When he accidentally flipped the snake into the canoe he almost dove into the lake to avoid it. Only the fear that the slimy creature might have been traveling with friends kept him from the water.
He’d thought of calling it a day and going into town for a steak and a visit with the guys at the office. Luke had moved around enough over the years to know men at every ATF office in the state. He also knew they wouldn’t be
