started. “He told you?”
“No. Josie did. Yesterday, after you left.”
“Hell.”
“Yeah. Still haven’t wrapped my head around the fact that he said something to our kid but not me. So I already know why you’re here—”
“Because I made a promise, yeah. And I know you don’t like me, or trust me, or whatever, so this is every bit as awkward and uncomfortable for me as it is you. Except the longer I think about it, the more I realize none of that matters. Because what matters is making sure my best friend’s kids aren’t living someplace that’s gonna fall down around their ears. That here’s something I can do to maybe make things better for somebody, to honor the one person who saw through my BS when we were kids, more than even my parents, my brothers. This is about...”
He felt his throat work. “About my debt to my best friend. One I fully intend to make good on. So it might make things a little easier if you’d get on board with that. Now. You want to pay for materials, I won’t object. But my labor... It’s my gift, okay? Because this is about what Tommy wanted. Not you, not me—Tommy. So deal.”
That got a few more moments of the staring thing before Val released a short, humorless laugh. “Wow. Guess you found your words.”
“Yeah, well, don’t get used to it, I just used up at least three months’ worth. So are we good?”
Another pause. “Except what are you supposed to live on?”
“Never mind about that. But here.” He dug the rumpled Lowe’s receipt out of his pocket, handed it over. What he kept to himself, though—for the moment, anyway—was that he knew how much the family had set aside for repairs, because he’d asked Pete Lopez the night before. Not nearly enough, if his hunch was correct about the extent of the work needed. Especially if she ended up having to call in pros. “Also,” he said as she looked it over, “you don’t need to stick around. I brought my own lunch. And the woods over there will work fine when nature calls.” Her eyes shot to his; he shrugged. “I’m used to making do.”
Shaking her head, she grabbed her purse off a table on the porch, stuffed the receipt inside. “The house is open, feel free to use the facilities—”
“You’re very trusting.”
“Don’t read too much into it—there’s absolutely nothing worth stealing. Unless you have a thing for Disney princesses. In which case, knock yourself out. I’ll be back around three-thirty, after I pick up the girls. The dog can stay out front as long as his water dish is filled, but don’t let him out back, since there’s no fence. And no, I don’t get it, either, why he won’t leave the front yard but heeds the call of the wild the minute he hits the back deck.”
Levi swallowed his smile. “Got it.”
She started down the steps, only to turn around before she reached her car, a dinged-up Toyota RAV4 with a small American flag hanging limply from the antenna. “If you do a crap job on my porch? There will be hell to pay.”
“Fair enough.”
With a nod, she finished the short walk to her car, stripping out of the hoodie before getting in. And Levi couldn’t help noticing how the sunlight kissed her hair, her slender shoulders...the shoulders, he knew, that had borne far more burdens than they should have. Not only recently, but before, when they were still in school and he’d hear the sniggering. Like it was somehow Val’s fault her mother was the way she was, that her father had left them high and dry when she was a little kid.
No, he thought as she backed out of the drive, took off, he didn’t imagine trusting had ever come easy to Valerie Oswald. With damn good reason. By comparison he and Tomas had led charmed lives, with parents who loved them, were there for them, even if Levi’s had sometimes been a little more there than he might’ve liked. But it hadn’t been like that for Val, who must’ve figured it was simply easier to keep to herself than to either live a lie or apologize for her mother. Which naturally led everyone to think she was either stuck-up or weird.
Almost everyone, anyway, Levi thought, as he yanked a large toolbox out of the truck, grabbed a crowbar to start prying up the rotten floorboards. So how could the girl who’d worked so hard to overcome her past not look at Levi without being reminded of what she’d lost?
Clearly Tommy hadn’t thought that part of his plan through.
With a grunt, he wrenched up the first board and tossed it out into the yard, chuckling when the dumb dog first scampered back, then growled at the board like it was a snake.
Which pretty much said it all, didn’t it?
Val shoved the last of the peach pies into the commercial-size freezer, then crossed to the stainless steel sink in the gleaming kitchen to wash her hands.
“All done?” AJ Phillips, who with his wife, Annie, had run Annie’s Café for thirty years, called from the other side of the checkerboard-floored room, where he was molding a half-dozen meat loaves to bake for the dinner rush. On the massive gas stove simmered cauldrons of green chile stew and posole, although the fried chicken would happen later, closer to dinnertime. In any case, the kitchen already smelled like heaven. A New Mexican’s version of it, anyway.
“Yep,” Val called back, shaking water off her hands before grabbing a paper towel. “A dozen.”
Grinning, the bald, dark-skinned man noisily shoved the trays in the oven. “My mouth’s already watering,” he said, and Val laughed.
It wasn’t ideal, though, having to make the pies during the afternoon lull, then freeze them to bake the next morning. But between the kids and not having a health-department-approved kitchen—yet—this was the best she could do. And since nobody was complaining, neither would she. Take that, Marie Callender, she thought with a slight smile as she walked back out into the dining room, where the only customer was Charley Maestas, hunched over a probably cold cup of coffee at the counter. His part pit bull mutt, sporting a blue bandanna around his neck, lay on the floor beside him, still but alert, as if he knew he wasn’t supposed to be inside. Although Annie said as far as she was concerned Loco was a service dog, and that was that.
Val squeezed the older man’s shoulder, his vintage denim jacket worn soft, as she passed him on her way to the ladies’. “Hey, Charley—how’s it going?”
Charley grunted his acknowledgment, his hand shaking as he lifted the heavy crockery mug to his mouth. The Iraq vet wasn’t homeless, although the cabin on the town’s outskirts next to his old cabinetmaking shop was no palace. But his graying beard was always neatly trimmed and his clothes clean, smelling of pine needles and menthol. She knew he’d served a couple of tours overseas with the National Guard, back before she and Tomas were married, that he’d been medically discharged when an IED went off close enough to inflict some brain damage of indeterminate severity. Some days were better than others, but according to Annie the poor guy would never be able to hold down a real job again. As it was, he often had trouble simply holding on to a thought.
“Can’t complain, honey.” He took a sip, swallowed, then turned droopy-lidded dark eyes to hers. “You?”
Val smiled, even though seeing him nearly every day was hard on her
