T-shirt, thought of her?
Doesn’t matter.
Your tummy is doing little spins.
It is not.
Of course it is. You know why, don’t you?
Oh, yes, she knew why.
Jon Tucker lived next door. And she was no longer a childish fourteen-year-old with braces on her teeth.
“You figure June is the earliest we can dig up this mess, put in new brick?” Jon asked. He and his brother sat on Jon’s porch steps surveying his ragged driveway in the evening light.
Seth lifted his cap, raked back his shaggy hair and gave the lane another thoughtful study. Tall weeds sprouted at its edges. Grass tufted through spider-web cracks in the concrete. “Wish I could fit you in before, J.T., but you know how it is.”
“Yeah.” Jon did know. Seth and his crew had been booked nearly six weeks ahead since March. Seemed everybody and his dog wanted some type of contracting work done this spring.
Jon figured the driveway would take a week or so. Situated last on the narrow tree-lined street, his parcel of land was the biggest. And the shabbiest. Great for the price, not great for renovations.
Checking the sky, Seth commented, “Looks like we’ll be held up another day as it is.”
Over the Coast Range mountains, rain made a dull approach into the valley. Terrific. Another day’s delay to the house’s exterior changes. Jon wanted them done by mid-June when he could concentrate on the inside—and Brittany’s bedroom.
“Well,” he said and grinned. “Considering the price you’re charging me, I suppose I can wait for the driveway.” Besides, it wouldn’t do for his brother to bump a paying customer because his long-lost kin had hit town and wanted instant curb appeal.
The red, dented Toyota rolled up next door. His neighbor, Ms. Kitty Litter. The one he’d dubbed Ms. Sex Kitten in the past twenty-four hours.
“You talked to her yet?” Seth drawled, watching what Jon watched—slim, black-hosed legs swinging from the car. Gold skirt above feminine knees. Clingy black sweater. Small shapely curves.
“Yesterday. For about sixty seconds. Seems like a nice enough woman.” It didn’t matter one way or the other; he wasn’t into congeniality, especially with the neighbors.
“She’s single again.”
“Huh.” Jon figured as much. Mr. Kitty Litter had been visibly absent since Jon had moved into the vicinity. “Didn’t get around to the small talk.”
The woman held a brown bag. Her eyes found his across ninety feet of ratty grass. She didn’t move, didn’t open her mouth, just stood and looked back at him.
A dark-haired boy, about twelve, entered the carport from their backyard. She slammed shut the car door, the sound hollow in the quiet dusk.
“Hi, sweetie.” Her smile could liquefy a steel girder.
The kid hauled up the mountain bike propped against the house. “Can I go over to Joey’s for a half hour?”
“Where’s Emily?”
“With the kittens. Can I go?”
Lightning crinkled the navy sky and thunder growled, closer now. She looked west, past Jon and Seth, as if they were transparent. “Not tonight, Sam.”
“Aw, Mom… I’ll pedal real fast,” he added eagerly.
“No, Sammy. It’s after eight and I don’t want you coming home in a downpour.”
“Pleeease.”
She veered another look Jon’s way. “I said no.”
Without a word, the kid shoved the bike back into place, spun toward the rear of the house and vanished behind the junipers. Shoulders squared, she skipped a third look their way. Jon almost smiled. She had grit, this woman.
With her son. With him and Seth as an audience.
She hadn’t run off. That point alone was enough to jack up his admiration about two hundred notches. Offering the slightest of nods, he conveyed what he felt. Deference in the slant of her chin, she returned the gesture and walked out of sight.
Sparse drops of rain fell. Seth set down his empty soda can. “Well. This town hasn’t seen anything that pretty in a while.”
“That a fact?”
“Uh-huh.” A measured look at Jon. “You really don’t remember her, do you?”
“Should I?”
“Hell, I thought every guy from sixth grade up, living to a hundred, would remember the way that red hair used to hang past her—Hell,” he said again, clearly disconcerted about the direction of his musings.
Jon stared at the carport. “She’s…Rianne Worth?”
“Bingo.”
Clueless fool. She knew you. He took in the weathered little house. “Husband?”
“Dead, what I heard. She showed up one day early last summer from California somewhere, rented a motel for a week, then moved in there. She’s a part-time librarian or some such at Chinook Elementary. Hallie knows her. Says she subs now and then at the high school as well.”
Jon kept silent. He wondered what Seth’s daughter thought of Rianne Worth as a teacher. Jon knew what he used to think of her, as a teenager.
Too many years ago, way too many years.
The rain increased. Drops mottled the driveway. Seth got to his feet and pulled the bill of his cap low. “Okay, I’m off.”
“Yep.” Jon rose. “Talk to you tomorrow.”
Shoulders hunched against the rain, his brother headed for his green pickup. Moments later, Jon stood alone.
A steady drizzle pelted the earth like buckshot. Thunder tussled in the heavy, dismal sky. He made no move to go inside, instead allowed the storm to soak him. Harder, faster it came, collecting in puddles where the aged concrete had sunk over time. The budding trees fronting his yard glistened in a tangle of shiny, black prongs.
Since he was a kid, he’d enjoyed rain, would walk hours in it when his mother was on an extrarotten binge. When her drunken cursing defiled their home, and his father escaped out back to the shed and his brothers hid in their bedrooms or the basement.
Listening to the rain, feeling its blunt, wet needles cool his skin, helped him forget some of life’s uglies. Of course, no matter how hard it rained, how far he walked, one of those uglies would never fade.
A sound to the left drew him. Rianne Worth, still in heels, skirt and clingy top, was piloting a giant purple umbrella while lifting two bags of groceries from the trunk of her car. Success evaded her; the trunk was loaded. She, on the other hand, kept dodging a sheet of rain baling
