The Littlest Matchmaker Page 14

INQUISITION WEDNESDAY arrived, though the day’s sharp tag had lost much of its meaning for Lisa since she and her mom had made peace. Now the talk was of the upcoming Thanksgiving pageant. Her mom and dad were going to be there, of course, but Courtney and Suz were going to attend, too. The more, the merrier, as far as Lisa was concerned. Jamie would enjoy being a celebrity, and she would feel less as though they stood out as a nonstandard Hillside Academy family unit.

  Today after school, Kevin and a group of dads had moved all the pieces they’d built for the set to the auditorium. Jamie had wanted to go along, too, but Lisa had asked her mom to bring him to her house. Lisa looked at it as a weaning process; Jamie needed to understand that Kevin really wasn’t family. It was a tough process, but inevitable. But because she knew her family expected it—and because she wanted to at least be in his company before she sent him on his way to warmer places, and probably warmer women—she’d brought him along for dinner.

  As they walked the steps to her parents’ front door, she took a moment to fix in her mind the image of Jamie gripping his hand, and Kevin smiling down at her son. It looked so classically perfect, but she knew how deceiving appearances could be.

  Once inside, they found her mom and dad in the library, enjoying glasses of wine and listening to opera. Dad sat in his favorite leather armchair, at a right angle to the sofa where her mom sat watching the flames flicker and dance in the fireplace.

  “Is the lady hurt?” Jamie asked about the soprano who’d just hit and held a tragically high note.

  “No, she’s fine, sweetie,” Lisa assured her son while trying not to laugh.

  Jamie clapped his hands over his ears.

  “Gonna go to the jungle room,” he announced, then turned heel and marched out.

  Laughing, Lisa’s mom rose and turned down the stereo system.

  “I suppose it will take some time for Jamie to develop his ear,” she said.

  Kevin chuckled. “Some of us are still working on it well into our thirties.”

  “I take it opera wasn’t part of your family’s listening fare?” her dad asked Kevin.

  “Mom likes Broadway musicals, Dad’s a country music guy, and all of us kids are rock-and-rollers,” Kevin replied.

  “Amanda’s the opera fan,” Lisa’s father confessed. “I just listen along to humor her.”

  But down that road lay ruin, Lisa thought. She glanced at her mother, but Mom looked more lovingly amused than anything. She switched off the stereo altogether, then offered Lisa and Kevin refreshments, as dinner was going to be a few minutes.

  Kevin sat in the second leather chair that flanked the right side of the sofa, and Lisa chose the end of the sofa opposite her mom. She smiled when she realized that as couples, they were mirroring each other. But once again, this was all a surface illusion. She wished that she and Kevin had that common bond that had carried her parents over the years, though she knew better. Her parents were so very lucky.

  After the talk turned away from music, her mom brought up Thanksgiving dinner.

  “I’ve contacted the rental company for tables and folding chairs,” she said. “While the café setup is lovely for what you normally do, it won’t work for a group like this.” She looked at Kevin. “Do you think you could help set up the night before?”

  “Sure,” Kevin said at the exact same moment that Lisa was saying, “He’ll be gone.”

  They looked at each other, and Kevin frowned.

  “Pardon me?” Lisa’s mom asked. “I think I just received mixed messages.”

  “Mom, Suz and I can get the tables set up. Kevin has to leave for Arizona on Wednesday morning. He’s spending the winter with his parents there.” And she dared him to say anything different, too.

  Kevin placed his beer glass on the shiny marble coaster that her mom had set on the end table for him. The sharp clattering sound made Lisa jump.

  “Amanda, how much time do we have before dinner?” he asked.

  “Is something wrong?” her mother asked in response.

  This time, Lisa said no as Kevin gave the opposite opinion.

  Her mom shook her head. “It sounds to me as though dinner needs to wait. Take as much time as you need.”

  Kevin rose. “Thank you. We should be just a few minutes.”

  Lisa felt a little like the kid about to be taken to the principal’s office.

  “We can do this later, okay?” she asked, actually hoping to avoid it right to the bitter end.

  “Now,” he said, holding out his hand.

  Automatically, she took it, and he helped her to her feet.

  “Lisa and I are going to step outside,” he said to her parents. “I think some fresh air will do us both good.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “That was a little dramatic, don’t you think?” Lisa asked as Kevin took her jacket off a hook on the antique high-backed bench in the front hallway and handed it to her. Nerves had pushed their way straight into anger. She hated confrontation…didn’t know how to handle it.

  “Dramatic would have been arguing in front of your parents. This,” he said while ushering her out the front door, “is diplomatic.”

  She paused to zip her jacket, and waited while he did the same. Though it wasn’t yet six, the sun was well down in the sky, casting long shadows from the maple trees, which were now bare of leaves. Maybe it wasn’t quite bleak midwinter, but it felt that way in her soul. She walked down the steps and just off the sidewalk to stand on the lawn.

  “Let’s go around to the backyard,” Kevin said.

  Lisa shook her head. “Jamie will see us from the conservatory windows.”

  “Right. Okay, then, I guess this is the spot.”

  “It doesn’t have to be. We don’t need to do this. You could just go on with your plans, and I’ll be waiting when you come back in the spring.”

  She hated the way she’d just sounded…panicky.

  “Why are you doing this?” Kevin asked.

  “Doing what?”

  “Come on, Lisa. This is me,” he said, briefly placing the flat of one hand on his chest. “You know I feel it. You’re closing yourself away.”

  “No, I’m not.” She preferred to think of it as preserving the status quo.

  “Bull. What’s up with telling your parents I’m going away for the winter? I’m not, and I’d think you’d be okay with that. More than okay, actually. I’d think that you’d want us to have the time together.”

  “What I want is for you to go on with your plans. You go to Arizona every winter, and that’s where you should be.”

  “What about us?” he asked flatly.

  She said the first words that came to mind. “We were a product of outside pressures…me being alone, Jamie needing some help…all that stuff. On our own, we don’t mesh.”

  He shook his head as though clearing a discordant noise from his head. “We don’t mesh? You’re joking, right?”

  He’d started this, but she needed to get through it in order to feel strong again.

  “No, I’m not joking.” But she was feeling ill with stress.

  “You know, I like to think of myself as a pretty perceptive guy, but it took me a while to catch on to you. Now I think I get the full picture.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked.

  “It means that when I look at you—really see you—I see someone who’s beautiful, kind, talented and probably the love of my damn life.”

  Her heart beat faster, but excitement wasn’t driving the rhythm. Fear was. “Did you just say that you love me?”

  “If you haven’t figured that out by now, we have a lot more to work on than I thought. Of course I love you. I have for years.”

  She shook her head and took a step backward. “But it will never work. It can’t.”

  “Not unless you work with me, it won’t. You need to see me for who I am, just as I see you. You need to let go of whatever happened in that marriage of yours.”

  “What…what could you possibly kno
w of my marriage?”

  She had worked so hard to keep the truth at home, where no one, not even her parents, could know how wrong things had been. All she’d had left was her pride, and it looked as though that had been an illusion, too.

  “Come on, Lisa. James worked for me. I saw what he was like. He was drowning in bitterness.”

  “He was Jamie’s father. Don’t talk poorly of him.”

  He took her by the arms. “This is us. I told you I’d always give you the truth. That’s not going to change now, even if you don’t like what I’m saying.”

  “But he was Jamie’s father,” she repeated, hanging on the one bright spot she’d taken from that part of her life.

  “Of course he was. And I’d never talk him down in front of Jamie. Come on, you have to know me well enough to see that.”

  The hurt she’d been holding back, the anger, all of the insecurities she’d carefully cobbled over…all of it came spilling out. She wrenched free of Kevin’s grasp.

  “What do I know? Who am I to figure this stuff out? Oh, I know how you seem on the surface…all kind and wonderful…but even you have to have your breaking point. I refuse to love another man who will have to change himself for me. You said you wanted to go to Arizona for the winter, so go!”

  “Lisa, what are you talking about?”

  “I know what happens if you don’t go. If not six months from now, then a year from now, you’ll start resenting me. It’s inevitable. And then we’ll start arguing, and you’ll tell me that I ruined your life. You’ll tell me that I don’t know how to love, that I’m incapable of it. And then, God forbid, if anything happens to you like it did to James, I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering whether it was an accident or by design.”

  Had she said that aloud? It was horrible enough to even think it. So horrible that she’d never allowed herself to do more than skitter past that particular demon on dark and sleepless nights.

  Kevin shook his head. “You think he…You think it wasn’t an accident?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about it. Not now. Not ever.”

  He took a step toward her, but she held out her hand, staying him. “Don’t.”

  She watched as Kevin drew a deep breath, then slowly let it go. “Well, if he did, that was the cruelest exit, ever. And you think that I’d do something like that?”

  Did she, really? She was too mired in emotion to think clearly. “How do I know? How do I know anything?”

  “Look at me,” he said in a calm tone. “Do I look like a selfish, spoiled bastard? I love you, Lisa. I’d never intentionally hurt you. If you can’t see the kind of man I am—one about as far removed from James Kincaid as you can get—it’s going to be a huge loss. Not just for me, but for us as a couple, and for Jamie, too.”

  She stood silent…scared. She wanted to agree with him, but the price was too high. She would not risk ruining another man’s life.

  Kevin jammed his hands back into his pockets. “So that’s it? You have nothing to say?”

  She looked at the dead brown sod beneath her feet.

  “Maybe you’re right. Maybe we don’t mesh,” he said. He looked down the driveway, to where her car was parked. “Look, I think I’m going to walk home. Tell your parents I’m sorry I couldn’t stay for dinner. And tell Jamie…Just tell Jamie that I’m sorry.”

  But not nearly as sorry as she was.

  “I’VE HIRED PAUL NAUGHTON to do the fine carpentry,” Kevin said to Scott on Friday as they stood in the office going over the renovation plans for the Aldens’ home. Two days had passed since he’d walked away from Lisa. They had been the longest two days of his life.

  This coming Tuesday, Kevin was going to drive Scott to Carefree for Thanksgiving. The Sunday after, Scott was going to fly home. Kevin planned to hit the ground running in Arizona and find so much work that he’d have no time to brood. The irony of brooding in Carefree didn’t escape him, after all.

  But for now he needed to dump as much information as possible with his brother. Rose knew how to keep the office going, but she’d never been involved in estimating or bidding, other than prettying up the finished product.

  “Paul’s more per hour, but the job will be done right and faster than with the other bidders,” Kevin said to his brother.

  “Makes sense,” Scott replied.

  “You’re sure you’re going to be okay to handle this while I’m gone? Four months is a helluva long time.” Not long enough to get over Lisa, but it would have to do.

  Scott hitched a thumb toward the wall. “That degree in business and construction management might give you a hint.”

  “Schoolwork isn’t the same as doing it,” Kevin pointed out.

  Scott smacked down the notebook he’d been using. “It’s as damn close as you’ve let me come. I’ve been a full-time part of this business for six years and I’m lucky if you let me find my way to the office by myself. I don’t want to throw around threats because I’m here for better or worse, but I’m getting sick of the worse, you know? I don’t know why, but for some reason I’m fixed in your mind at age seventeen.”

  “That’s stupid,” Kevin said.

  “Yeah, it is.”

  “No, I mean that I don’t think of you as seventeen.” At least, he didn’t think he did.

  “Then stop treating me that way. I’m a Decker and I deserve to be more than your hired hand. While you’re down there sulking at Mom and Dad’s, you might spend some time thinking about that, too.”

  Rose stood and applauded. “It’s about time, Scott Decker. Now you’ve earned that piece of paper on the wall.”

  Kevin looked at his brother and shook his head. “So you’ve been feeling this all along?”

  “For the past couple of years, for sure.”

  “Why didn’t you say something to me?”

  Scott shrugged. “You’ve been trying to be Pop ever since you were a little kid. I figured that sooner or later, you’d take a look around and see that Pop is Pop, I’m me, and you’re you.”

  Why was it, Kevin wondered, that the most obvious things were often the toughest to grasp?

  JUST BEFORE SIX IN THE morning, Lisa stood at Jamie’s bedside watching her child sleep. Tonight was the Thanksgiving pageant, and she knew that she had much to be thankful for. She had her son, safe and secure in the knowledge that he was loved. She had her parents and her friends. She smoothed Jamie’s covers, let her gaze skip the yellow truck that rested at his feet, and left her son to his dreams for just a little while longer.

  Intent on starting her day, Lisa went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. Once the water’s temperature was as stingingly hot as she liked it, she peeled off her nightgown, stepped under the flow, pulled the curtain, and shut herself away from the world.

  During their marriage, she had hardly viewed James as a saint. He’d had his shortcomings, but had offered his compensations, too. Before they’d moved back to her hometown, they’d had their adventures, backpacking across Europe, he writing while she worked in cafés for spending money. They’d laughed, made love and done whatever they’d wanted to.

  But even back then, he’d known how to be quietly hurtful, throwing sharp verbal darts, eroding her self-confidence so subtly that she hadn’t even noticed its disappearance until long after it had gone. About now, she resented him for that. Deeply.

  James had been five years older than she. Despite that chronological measurement, in so many ways he’d still been a rash adolescent. Had she not married him, he would have been a blast to travel with…for about six months. Had they never had Jamie, he would have kept that pampered central role in their lives. But Jamie had come along, and James hadn’t been willing—or maybe even able—to step up. And grow up.

  Lisa sluiced her hair back against her head as the water pelted her. She didn’t hate James. But as she thought about all that she’d done alone, she would have loved to have him back just long enough to tell him what she thought of his total opt-out
of their lives.

  Because there was no one there to watch her, no one there to judge, she allowed herself to own her anger, to make it hers and let it burn hotter and higher. She closed her eyes and envisioned grabbing James and shaking him. No, she would tackle him and rub his nose in what he’d done, how he’d hurt her. Bad James! Naughty James!

  What? Had she finally lost it?

  She laughed, first tentatively and then straight from the gut at the total craziness of her thoughts. And then she laughed because she was standing in her shower laughing like a loon. Then finally, she cried.

  Hot water eventually ran warm, and then cool. Before she made a shivering wreck of herself, Lisa turned off the shower, dried off with the thick towel that Kevin had given her, and let the day draw her forward.

  Chapter Fourteen

  By six that evening, Jamie had been delivered backstage in his pilgrim best, and Lisa and Courtney were back out front scanning the crowd in the auditorium’s reception area for Suz. Lisa’s mom and dad had been accounted for, but were occupied making their social rounds. Lisa was cool with that, as one more sad shake of her mother’s head was going to send her round the bend. And for this evening, at least, she was determined to hold it together.

  Just then, a hand settled on her shoulder. She permitted herself a brief fantasy that it would be Kevin. It wasn’t, of course. Lisa recognized one of the dads she’d seen working on Kevin’s set building crew.

  “Hi, John,” she said.

  He distractedly returned her greeting before asking, “Is Kevin here?”

  “No,” Lisa replied. “He couldn’t make it.”

  She ignored Courtney’s rather inelegant snort.

  “Think you might be able to reach him?” John asked.

  “Sorry, but he’s on the road, so I don’t think so. Is something wrong with the set?”

  “No, the set’s great, but we’re having a little issue with Jamie.”

  Lisa automatically began heading toward the backstage area, but the milling crowd was too thick to move quickly. “Why didn’t you just say so?”