he wondered if that would simply deepen her bitterness or finally set her free?
Chapter Two
Joshua followed Claire up onto the front porch; he and Claire had spent many evenings on the swing that had once hung there. It had been on the swing that he had asked her to marry him. They’d been barely eighteen years old and she’d been three months pregnant.
As he followed her through the front door, the house greeted him with familiar smells… The scent of old wood and lemon polish, of sun-washed curtains and the faint odor of the menthol rub Sarge had always used on his bad shoulder.
He and Claire had spent the five years of their marriage here, beneath this roof. They’d been too young to afford their own place and Joshua had no real family of his own. From the time he’d been fifteen and had begun dating Claire, Claire and Sarge had become his family.
He tried to hide his surprise as Wilma Iverson, the next-door neighbor, came into the living room from the kitchen. Her faded blue eyes registered her own surprise at the sight of him. “Land’s sakes, if it isn’t Joshua McCane.”
“Hello, Mrs. Iverson,” he replied.
She snorted. “Ah, today it’s Mrs. Iverson, but I still remember when you were nothing more than a snot-nosed kid and called me the battle-ax behind my back.”
“Why, I don’t remember any such thing,” Joshua laughed in protest.
“Where’s Sarge?” Claire asked.
Wilma nodded her head toward the hallway. “In his room, pouting.”
Joshua saw the tension that tugged at Claire’s delicate features. “What happened?” she asked.
“I caught him with a bag of candy and I took it away from him. I told him I wasn’t going to be a party to him killing himself.”
Joshua listened to all this with interest, wondering what Wilma was doing here and why she would take candy away from a grown man. An edge of disquiet surged up inside him.
“Sarge!” Claire yelled down the hallway. “Come on out. There’s somebody here to see you.”
“If it’s that creature from next door, I’m not coming out,” Sarge’s voice rang out, the strength in the tone soothing Joshua’s momentary alarm. Claire winced and offered a look of apology at Wilma.
“It’s not me. I’m leaving, you old coot,” she yelled down the hallway. She smiled at Claire and Joshua, then headed toward the door. “Let me know if you need me again, dear. You know where to find me.”
As she went out the front door, Joshua heard a bump, a resounding curse, then a strange whirring noise. He looked down the hallway, shock rocking him as he saw the frail, white-haired man in a motorized wheelchair making his way slowly down the hall.
Sarge. He appeared to have aged fifty years in the last five. He stopped short of the living room and turned his head from side to side. “Claire?”
It was at that moment Joshua realized that Sarge was not only thin and frail, but blind, as well. He shot a quick glance at Claire, wanting to know what had happened to the vital, strong man Joshua had loved like a father. But of course, she couldn’t answer his unspoken questions. Not here…not now.
“Hello, Sarge,” Joshua said.
The old man’s face lit with obvious pleasure and he gasped in surprise. “Well, I’ll be damned. Come closer, Joshua boy, so I can smell the rascal and know it’s really you.”
Joshua laughed and walked over to Sarge’s chair, then leaned down and gave the old man a hug, his heart aching as he felt Sarge’s thinness. He didn’t miss the fact that Sarge’s arms didn’t raise to return the hug.
“Ah, don’t smell no rascal, only smell fancy cologne and grown-up man.”
Joshua laughed again. “There’s a little rascal left,” he replied.
“Cookie, put some coffee on, me and the boy got some catching up to do. Joshua, wheel me into the kitchen. They got me this damned fool chair with a motor, but it just makes me run into things at a faster speed.”
Joshua set the tin box they’d dug up on the coffee table, then moved behind the chair and pushed Sarge toward the kitchen. Claire walked in front of him and he knew by the straight set of her shoulders that she didn’t intend to be a welcoming hostess.
The kitchen was just as Joshua remembered it, a large airy space with floor-to-ceiling windows that faced the east. Many a morning he and Sarge had drunk coffee while morning light filtered in through the windows.
There was no chair in the place at the table where Sarge had always sat, and it was here that Joshua pushed him up against the table.
Joshua took the chair across from Sarge as Claire busied herself making a pot of coffee. Samuel Cook, ‘Sarge’ as he had been known for as long as Joshua could remember, had been a robust, strong man who had looked and acted half his age when Joshua had left Mayfield.
Regret swept through him as he gazed at what Sarge had become. He wasn’t sure what had put the old man in the wheelchair and stolen his sight, but he felt he never should have stayed away for so long.
“You still making a killing with those games of yours?” Sarge asked.
“Yeah, business is booming and the games are doing better than I ever dreamed.” Joshua’s gaze slid to Claire, who had her back to them. Her long hair rippled down to the center of her back, sparked by the sunshine dancing in through the windows.
“Who’d have thought it, that a grown man could spend his time playing games and make a fortune.” Sarge shook his head. “In my day, kids didn’t have Play Stations and Nintendos to pass the time.”
“It’s a different generation, Sarge,” Joshua replied. It was still hard for Joshua to believe that he’d managed to parlay the fantasy stories he’d made up to sustain himself through a tough childhood into a financial empire of sorts.
Just a month earlier, Business magazine had done an article on him and his company. The article had been entitled, “Joshua McCane: The Man Behind the Magic,” and had chronicled his meteoric career from his first little company, begun in a rented space above a health-food store four years ago.
DreamQuest Games now had its own building on twenty-five beautiful acres in California. Joshua employed two hundred men and women who worked at producing and marketing the fantasy games both children and young adults had embraced.
He glanced at Claire, surprised to see her staring at him. As their gazes met, she quickly looked away and grabbed the sugar bowl and creamer for the table.
“Mind if I wash up? My hands are dirty.” Without waiting for her reply, he stood and walked over to the sink.
Claire moved aside, but not before he smelled the floral scent of her perfume.
The scent had a touch of honeysuckle to it. Instantly he remembered those summer nights when he and Claire had made out on the porch swing with the sweet scent of the nearby honeysuckle wafting in the air.
“When
