“Exactly. What?” he said when Blake shook his head again.
Dark-brown eyes met his. “They call it starting over for a reason, dumb-ass. There’s never gonna be another Amy, and thinking that’s even possible isn’t fair to anybody. Especially you. But aren’t you jumping the gun a little here? Thinking you’re gonna find the next Mrs. Lindquist right off the bat without taking a couple of test drives first? Why limit your options by automatically tossing out any woman who doesn’t immediately make you think wedding bells?”
“Because it’s a waste of time? Because…” He glanced toward Karleen’s house, then lowered his voice even further. “Because the enhanced look has never done it for me?”
“Must’ve been one helluva trick of the light, then, that poleaxed look on your face. And anyway, what makes you so sure they’re not the genuine article?”
“Educated guess.”
“Huh. Never realized MBA stood for Master of Boob Authenticity. Hey!” Laughing, he ducked when Troy threw his empty soda can at him, the crushed aluminum making one hell of a racket as it bounced across the wooden deck. Karleen jerked her head in their direction. They both waved. She waved back. A little reluctantly, Troy thought.
“And anyway,” Blake said, “haven’t you always wondered what fake ones feel like?” only to laugh again as he dodged Troy’s smack upside the head. Then, hearing the boys’ voices as they trooped around the side of the house toward the backyard, Blake stood, checking his watch. “I need to get back, I told Cass I’d be home by five. You ready to drop off the truck and pick up your car?”
“Might as well.”
Which Troy had fervently hoped signaled the end of the discussion. Except, after the U-Haul had been returned and Blake dropped Troy and the twins back by their old apartment to pick up the Volvo, Blake called Troy back to his car.
“So, you gonna put out feelers with Karleen or not?” Blake said quietly over Shaun’s hip-hop on the stereo, and Troy glared at him.
“This is payback for all the grief I gave you when you were trying to get back with Cass, isn’t it?”
Chuckling, Blake put the SUV in reverse, then gave Troy one final, concerned glance. “No. But I am wondering how you think looking for another Amy is being open to possibilities. Just something to think about,” he said, then backed out of the driveway.
Twenty minutes later, Troy pulled up in front of his new house, the boys springing themselves from their car seats the instant he cut the engine. “Stay in the backyard!” he yelled out the window, a moment before they vanished in a cloud of dust and giggles. Then he sagged into the leather seat, his head lolling against the rest as he looked at his new home, waiting for the dust storm of memories to settle inside his head.
Several years before, when Troy had finally felt confident enough that the business wasn’t going to disintegrate out from under him, that he and Amy could actually apply for a mortgage with a straight face, they’d driven the poor Realtor in Denver nuts, looking at house after house after house. But it had been their first and it had to be perfect. Especially since they’d start raising their family there.
Meaning, the minute they’d walked inside, it had to say home. And the way his and Amy’s tastes had dovetailed so perfectly had almost been spooky. They’d both craved clean lines, openness, light woods and walls—a house nothing like their parents’ slightly disheveled, suburban two-story pseudo Colonials. The house they’d finally fallen in love with had smelled of fresh plaster, new wood, new beginnings, even if they’d filled it with the comforting, muted colors and traditional styles of their childhood.
After Amy’s death, Troy had assumed he wouldn’t be able to bear staying there. He’d been wrong. Instead, the familiar, the routine, had succored him in those first terrible weeks, months, after the unthinkable had happened. The house, and their beautiful, precious babies, had saved his butt. And his sanity. Leaving it hadn’t been easy.
So after the move, he’d again taken his time, driving another Realtor crazy, looking for a new home for him and his boys. Another new start. He could have bought pretty much any house he wanted in Albuquerque. But he hadn’t wanted any house; he’d wanted the right house. Only, who knew “right” would be this quirky, lopsided grandmother of a house, mottled with the patina of mold and memories? That his new definition of home would include bowed wooden floors and a wisteria-and-honeysuckle choked portal, weathered corbels and windows checkered by crumbling mullions and pockmarked wooden vigas ribbing the high ceilings?
Damn thing was twice as big as they really needed, even after getting everything out of storage. And he’d have to buy one of those John Deere monsters to mow the lawn. Still, he thought as he finally climbed out of the car, hearing the boys’ clear, pure laughter on the nippy breeze, this was a house that exuded serenity, the kind that comes from having seen it all and surviving. A house that begged for large dogs and swing sets and basketball hoops and loud, boisterous boys.
Troy walked over to inspect what turned out to be a loose, six-inch thick post on the porch, shaking his head. And, because he’d clearly lost his mind, smiling. The house needed him. Right now, a good thing.
A flimsy wooden screen door whined when he opened it, the floorboards creaking underfoot as he walked through the family room to check on the boys in the backyard. The French doors leading outside were suffocated underneath God-knew-how-many coats of white enamel paint; Troy dug his trusty Swiss Army knife out of his pocket and scratched through to the wood: maple. Maybe cherry. Pocketing the knife, he pushed the doors open, his lips curving at the sight of the kids chasing each other around and around the trees, their yells competing with doves’ coos, the occasional trill of a robin.
“You guys want pizza?” His voice echoed in the half-empty house, the emptiness inside him.
“Yeah!” they both hollered, running over, their faces flushed under messy, dirty hair. Find towels, he thought. Wash kids.
“C’n Karleen eat wif us?” Grady said, five times louder than necessary, and Troy thought, What? even as he stole a please-don’t-be-there glance at her yard.
“She probably has other plans, guys. You go back and play, I’ll call you when it gets here.”
God, kids, Troy thought as he tromped back into the house, thumbing through the phone book for the nearest pizza delivery. After ordering two larges—one cheese, one with everything—a salad and breadsticks, he soldiered on upstairs to the boys’ new room. Since it faced the back, he could work and still keep an ear out. Blake and Shaun had helped him set up the bunk bed, but the boxes of toys and clothes and heaven knew what else had clearly multiplied in the last two hours.
Shaking his head, he got to it, only to discover a couple boxes of his junk among the kids. After another glance out the window at the boys—huddled together underneath a nearby cottonwood, deep in some kind of twin conspiracy, no doubt—he stacked the boxes and carted them to his bedroom across the hall, no sooner dumping them on the floor at the foot of his (unmade) bed when his cell rang.
“Just called to see if you were settled in yet,” his mother said in his ear.
“In, yes,” he said, shoving one of the boxes into a corner with his foot. “Settled?” He glowered at the pile of boxes sitting in front of him, silently jeering. “By the time the boys graduate from high school, if I’m lucky.”
“Which is where a woman
