Lois Richer - A Hopeful Heart and A Home, a Heart, A Husband

Mitch nodded grimly. He did know. Very well, as it happened. He’d worked on a few cases involving fathers who had died in Vietnam. It wasn’t pretty.

“Okay. Good old Jean came back but minus a few facts—like who he was. Met a volunteer at the vet hospital and they married. She had money and he put it to good use building an empire. Ever heard of Papa John?” Clarence looked at him through his wire-rimmed glasses and saw Mitch’s astonishment.

“This means something to you?”

“Yeah, it does.” He stared at Clarence, seeing not him but the elderly white-haired man he’d met at the Bismarck television station. “Let me get this straight. The Papa John’s Peanut Butter magnate is Hope Langford’s Jean LeClerc?”

“One and the same, we think. Only I’m not sure if he knows it. Legally his name is John Lexington. A nurse at the hospital said they called him that when he couldn’t remember his name. He apparently responded to John, and they adlibbed his last name.” Clarence left half his doughnut on a napkin as he dug through his notes.

“Nurse Mary said he had lots of nightmares and kept mentioning the same words over and over. One of those words was hope. They didn’t realize it could be a name until I offered it as an explanation. Apparently this guy was worried that someone would think he’d reneged on their deal. But whenever he woke up, he remembered nothing and couldn’t tell them any more about what he was hoping for.”

“And she waited,” Mitch muttered to himself. “She held on until she was sure he was dead. All this time she’s been mourning his loss, and he’s alive and well and married to someone else.” He thought. “Have he and his wife any children?”

“Clarence shook his head. The wife’s dead. Six years ago. Cancer. Long, drawn out and very painful.”

“And children?”

“One. A boy.”

“Can we talk to him?” Mitch snatched his pen, prepared to write down the name and address.

“No. He’s dead, too. Drive-by shooting. And it almost did the old man in last year. Some of my contacts in his company say he found solace in his loss with some woman. Don’t have her name yet.”

“Wow!” Mitch sighed, turning it all around and around in his mind, wondering what this new information would do to the prim and proper woman ensconced in his apartment.

“Want me to keep on digging?” Clarence asked diffidently, as if it was none of his business either way.

“Heavens, yes.” Mitch exhaled heavily. “The more we know, the better. I’d like to know who he’s interested in and where she lives. I’d also like to know if he’s remembered everything and is just too much of a coward to come and explain it all or if everything is still a blur.”

“Do what I can,” Clarence assured him, snapping his notebook closed and rising to his feet in one practiced motion. “I’ll check in when I’ve got something. See you, Mitch.” And with those words, Clarence disappeared as silently as he’d shown up.

Mitch snatched his phone and stabbed out his grandfather’s number.

“This is Mitch,” he told the guardian secretary. “Is he there?” He listened, frowning. “As soon as he gets out of court, have him call me. It’s important, Dora.” He slammed the phone down in irritation and stood up to pace around his tiny office.

“Oh, Lord, oh, Lord,” he groaned. “I know You’re omnipotent and in control of everything. And You can make good things happen from bad.” This was all so new to him. Mitch tried desperately to remember how the minister had told him to talk to God.

“Like a son talking to his father,” Pastor Dave had told him.

Well, he hadn’t had the typical father-son relationship, and he wasn’t too sure just what that included, but Mitch decided to give it a try anyway.

“Father, I think a lot of people could be hurt by this. Please show me what to do. And help all those involved. Amen.” Satisfied that he’d laid it all before the One who could deal with it, he returned to his desk and sat down.

A moment later, his head was bowed once more.

“And help me in this situation with Melanie so that neither of us get hurt. Just friends, that’s all I want. Thank You,” he murmured quietly.

It had finally happened, Mitch decided three weeks later.

He had begun to lose his sanity.

Thing was, he wasn’t surprised. Not really. In fact, he’d half suspected she would be trouble. It had taken her just one week to move in and throw everything out of whack. Melanie Stewart had thoroughly upset his placid life, and now he was going nuts fantasizing about a woman he barely knew.

He tugged the pillow over his head, trying to drown out the sounds of Melanie in the shower. It was impossible. Jumping Jehoshaphat, those two women got up before dawn every blinking morning! And they didn’t care who knew it, either.

Resigned, he placed the pillow behind his head and lay back, calmly accepting his fate. The way he figured it, he’d once done something really terrible and now it was payback time. Fine, he would take his punishment, but why did this torture have to begin so early?

It wasn’t the panty hose hanging in the laundry room, slapping him in the face every night, that got to him. It wasn’t that light but lingering scent she always wore that clung to everything in the apartment and refused to be doused by the strongest room deodorizer.

It wasn’t even that she brought some of her residents to his apartment for a meal, a game of cards or just a night out—and more often than not, they conned him into playing crazy eights, too.

He could deal with all that, Mitch told himself firmly. He’d even managed to tolerate Hope’s insistence on chaperoning every second of time they spent in the apartment.

But this daily trauma of pretending he wasn’t aware when she showered, wasn’t waiting for the faint hint of her lemony shampoo to carry to him, wasn’t visualizing her rosy cheeks and that fresh-scrubbed look she wore so well—that’s what was really getting to him.

“Blast it,” he bellowed, without thinking, and then wished he had zipped his lip.

“Mitch?” she called quietly. “Are you okay?”

“I will be if I can ever get into the bathroom,” he hollered, stubbing his toe on the nightstand as he reached for his shirt.

“I’m getting darned tired of taking cold showers,” Mitch grumbled sourly twenty minutes later. Hope’s short, economical showers after her early—emphasis on the early—walks would probably have left enough hot water for him.

But Melanie’s extended steam baths left little but the most frigid of showers which were, of necessity, very short. He’d taken to shaving in his room because the mirrors in the bathroom were too steamed up to let him shave properly even if there had been room for his razor among the multicolored little bottles, vials and tubes. He couldn’t figure it out. As far as he could tell, neither woman wore much makeup.

When at last Mitch sauntered into the kitchen, he was in no mood for pleasant conversation. He was desperately searching for a cup of coffee. Melanie did make good coffee, he’d give her that. That is, if he got any. More often than not, Hope would pour the “vile black drug” down the drain as soon as her niece was finished.

Today Melanie sat alone at the breakfast bar, staring vacantly out the window. In front of her was an empty cereal bowl testifying that she had already eaten. Bran flakes, no doubt. A shudder tickled Mitch’s back.

“How can you eat that stuff?” he demanded.

Melanie stared at him for a moment before answering.

“It’s very healthy,” she murmured as she strolled with that long-legged grace to the counter to rinse her bowl before bending to place it in the dishwasher.