They arrived at her van and she slid open the door. “He runs his own landscaping business.”
“Oh, that’s right. He went off to some sort of agricultural college, didn’t he?”
“Yes.” Four years of letter-writing and carrying on a long-distance romance, but somehow she and Dylan had endured. “When he graduated, he worked for another landscaper, but after a few years he ventured out on his own. It was shaky at first. We had a mortgage and a toddler and another baby on the way.”
“You have two kids?”
Cathryn reached into the van, batted away a basketball, pulled forward the box containing her thirty-five-cup coffee urn and deposited it in Tucker’s arms. “No. Three.”
“Three!” The box slipped a little.
“Yes.” Cathryn lifted two warming trays. “Where to?”
Pointing with the cigarette clenched between his teeth, Tucker indicated a black sedan, a rental, across the lot. They mushed on.
“Anyway,” she resumed, “before long, business picked up and Dylan hasn’t looked back since.”
“Doing well, I take it?” Tucker’s shapely winged brows lowered just enough to remind Cathryn that his disapproval had included more than just her early engagement. For reasons beyond her comprehension, he’d never seemed to care for Dylan, either. In fact, one afternoon just before leaving the island, having spotted her and Dylan on her porch, Tucker had crossed the lawn between their houses and stomped up the wooden steps in his trademark boots. “You be good to her,” he’d warned Dylan in a deceptively soft voice. “Or I’ll come back and break your kneecaps.” A joke, but oddly no one had laughed, least of all Dylan.
“Yes. He’s very busy,” Cathryn replied. “Very much in demand. Even today, only February, he’s consulting with a client about a spring project. Gone are the days when we had the winter months to ourselves.”
Tucker unlocked the trunk of his car and laid the box inside. Cathryn fit in the warming trays. When he began to lower the lid, she cried, “Wait. There’s more.” And they slopped across the parking lot once again.
As she handed him a large chafing dish, he growled, “Jeez, what do you do, Shortcake, run a restaurant?”
“No, I just—” she shrugged “—have things like this. Families often do, you know.”
Tucker grunted, and they headed back toward his car. “So, tell me about your kids.”
As usual, a request to talk about her children set off an internal geyser of love and pride. “Well, my oldest is named Justin. He’s eleven and into sports, big time. Cory is eight. He’s my scholar, quiet, always reading. And Bethany, who’s six, is my little shadow. She loves to bake and sew and do all the things I enjoy. Incidentally, she’s the reason I couldn’t attend Winnie’s funeral. I was in the hospital giving birth to her.”
“That right?” They’d reached his car. He tossed his cigarette, deposited the chafing dish, and after closing the trunk, turned his full attention on Cathryn. “Who do they take after?” he asked, bracing his foot on the bumper and leaning on his thigh.
“Justin clearly looks like Dylan, but the two younger kids are a blend. Each has features from both of us. Beth, for instance, has my hazel eyes and Dylan’s blond hair. Cory has Dylan’s smile, but my build.” She added “unfortunately” to herself.
“I bet they’re great kids.”
“They are, if I do say so myself.” Cathryn began to grow uneasy under Tucker’s close regard. While she spoke, he gazed straight at her, his eyes unwavering. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone, especially a man, had listened to her so interestedly or watched her so intently, and for a moment she thought she understood something of Tucker Lang’s fabled appeal. “So, what about you, Tuck?” she asked, hoping to deflect his attention.
“Me?”
“Yes. What’ve you been up to?”
He dropped his foot, straightened to his full six-foot height and shifted his attention to the fog swirling over the meadow across the road. “Oh, just the same old same old.”
She had no idea what that meant. “I heard you’ve taken up car racing…?”
“Uh-huh.” He nodded rhythmically for several seconds as if that might take the place of further conversation.
“So, where are you living?”
He shuffled his feet and added a few more inches to the distance between them. “Alabama.”
“Really? I’ve never been to Alabama. I haven’t been anywhere, really. Except Florida. We went to Disney World with the kids two years ago. Best vacation we ever took.” Only vacation we ever took. “Ever been to Disney?”
Tucker pulled out his cigarettes again, stared at them a moment and then repocketed them. “Uh…no.”
She swallowed. “Anyone special in your life these days?”
He didn’t actually answer, just made a face as if to say, “Are you kidding?”
Cathryn knew a stone wall when she was hitting one, especially when that stone wall was so familiar. Tucker hadn’t liked personal questions when he was a boy either, particularly when they involved his life in New York. A couple of times she’d heard him lie about it, but mostly he’d just clammed up, holding the truth, and all the pain that went with it, tight inside him. Until one day when she was ten and couldn’t take it anymore and admitted to him that she knew his background, knew his mother was a hooker and a drug addict. She’d overheard her parents talking. And if he wanted to discuss it or cry or go for a fast walk like she did when she was angry, that was okay with her. She only wanted to help, and she wouldn’t tell anyone about it, honest. Tucker, being Tucker, hadn’t cried. But he had talked. A little. And he had walked. A lot. Damn fast, too.
What did he have bottled up inside him now? she wondered. Anything? Nothing? And whose business was it, anyway?
Even as Cathryn was still musing, Tucker glanced over his shoulder toward the funeral home and said, “Well, I’d better get back inside before someone sends out a search party.”
“Oh. Of course.” She clutched her purse in two hands and caught her lower lip in her teeth. “It was good seeing you again, Tuck.”
His grin returned, all confidence and male sass. “I know.”
Cathryn laughed. Some things never changed, and she was just as glad they didn’t.
TUCKER STOOD under the portico of the funeral home, puffing on a cigarette and feeling a sense of loss after Cathryn drove away. Not that he wanted to continue their conversation, especially considering the direction it had taken. Rather, his sense of loss rose solely from himself. Cathryn’s role had simply been to remind him of it, of the life he’d made a religion of avoiding until now. Married life. The life of a husband and parent, home-owner and mower of lawns, coach to Little Leaguers and reader of bedtime stories—the life of a responsible adult. “And look where that’s landed you,” he muttered in self-disgust.
Clamping
