Grace Green - Twins Included

He glared at her for a further moment…and then his laughter rolled out, free and easy as an eagle on the wing.

“Sears,” he said. “Off-the-rack.”

She leaned back in her chair, her expression mocking. “Whatever happened,” she asked, “to the teenager who swore that when he graduated from law school, he’d never buy off-the-rack clothes again?”

“What happened,” he retorted, “was that he found much better ways to spend his money. Besides—” he threw her a lazy smile that curled her toes “—most of my clients are from the local farming community. They come into my office in their working clothes—oftimes reeking of manure, if not trailing it in on their boots!—and we all feel more comfortable if I’m not dressed up like some city slicker.”

“But yesterday—”

“Yesterday I had to go to court with a client, but normally I wear jeans to the office.” He wiped a forearm over his brow, leaving a glaze of sweat. “So…did you sleep well?”

“Yes,” she fibbed. “I did. I’d been on the road for over a week and I was bushed. Besides, there’s nothing to beat sleeping in one’s own bed.”

A green-and-white striped hand towel dangled from a hook on the wall by the door. Reaching for it, he said in a teasing voice, “You think?”

She felt her cheeks grow warm. The last thing she wanted was to get in a conversation with this man about sleeping in any bed other than her own. “Yes.”

“Ah, well,” he drawled, “to each his…or her…own.” He rubbed the towel over his damp hair and then ran it over his neck and arms. Slinging it back on the hook, he glanced at the carafe of coffee she’d made earlier. “Can I have some of that?” Without waiting for an answer, he poured himself a mug, and pulling out the chair across from her, he sat down.

“So,” he said, “you’d been on the road for over a week. Where’d you come from?”

“New York.”

“Ah, a city gal. So, city gal, how about filling me in on what you’ve been doing the past thirteen years. That’s one expensive vehicle you’re running. You must either have a good job…or you married into money.”

“Neither,” she said. “I don’t have a job and I don’t have a husband.”

Silence swelled between them, broken only by the hum of the refrigerator. He was the first to speak.

“You’re on your own?”

She hesitated. Eventually he—and everybody else in Tradition—would learn that she was pregnant. But for the time being, she wanted to keep that secret to herself.

“Yes,” she said. Then, to divert him, she said, “I want to go and visit my father’s grave. Is he at Fairlawn?”

“No, they built a new cemetery ten years ago—it’s out past Miller’s Farm, take the second road on your left…or is it the third?” He scratched a hand through his tousled hair. “I know how to get there but—tell you what, I’ll drive you—”

“Thanks, I’d like to drive myself. I’ll buy a map.”

“You didn’t use to be so independent!”

He’d said it without thinking, but when he saw a shadow darken her eyes, he could have kicked himself. If she was independent now, it was because she’d had to be. When she’d most needed support, when she had most desperately needed support, she’d been let down by those she should have been able to depend on the most.

She pushed back her chair and got to her feet. “I am independent, Matt.” She spoke quietly. “And I cherish my independence. I’ve learned the hard way that the only person I can count on is myself.”

He stood, too, and fisting his hands by his sides, faced her steadily across the table. “You’re wrong, Beth. If there’s ever anything I can do for you, just say the word.”

She looked at him, for the longest time. And then she said, with a twisted little half smile. “There is one thing you can do for me, Matt.”

“Sure.” His heart leaped in anticipation. “What?”

“Please,” she said, “don’t call me ‘Beth.’”

And without another word, she flicked back her long flaxen hair and stalked regally out of the kitchen.

Liz bought a recently published map of the area, in the London Drugs on Jefferson Street.

She asked the obliging clerk to mark the position of the new cemetery, and fifteen minutes after leaving the store, she was pulling the Porsche up in the carpark of the Greenvale Burial Grounds.

“Way to go, kid!”

“Thanks, Uncle Matt!”

“Well done, Stuart.” Molly Martin gave her breathless eight-year-old son a warm hug. “That was a great game and you were a star!”

“Where’s Iain?” Stuart whipped off his baseball cap and sent a searching look around for his younger brother.

“He’s gone to book us one of the picnic tables.” Matt popped open the can of lemonade he was holding, and gave it to the flushed youngster. “You ready for lunch?”

“Am I ever!”

“Then let’s get this show on the road.”

As the threesome made their way from the baseball field to the adjoining park, Stuart ran on ahead while Molly tucked her arm through Matt’s.

“Too bad you couldn’t have come to that movie with us last night,” she said. “You’d really have enjoyed it.”

“Yeah. But I didn’t get out of the office till after seven. I don’t remember when I was ever quite so busy.”

They stopped by Matt’s dusty black Taurus, which he’d left in the carpark adjacent to the street, and he hefted his picnic cooler from the trunk. Molly slammed the lid.

“I hope,” she said as they headed into the park, “that you took time to eat dinner.”

“I took home a pizza.”

“There’s lots of nourishment in a good pizza.”

“I guess.”

What he didn’t tell her was that he hadn’t eaten one crumb of the takeout pizza. By the time he and Beth—he and Liz!—had finished talking—had finished arguing!—the last thing on his mind had been food.

Frowning, he mulled over his present situation.

He knew he had to tell Molly that Max Rossiter’s daughter had turned up and had moved back into her old home.

His home, now.

Although she was, apparently, determined to battle him for it.

He hadn’t found quite the right moment to tell Molly of this new development; and he wasn’t sure he knew why he was so reluctant to bring it up.

“Hey, Mom, over here!” Iain waved to them from a picnic table. “Let’s get that cooler open, I’m starving!”

“Hold your horses, young man!” Matt placed the cooler on the table, and the two boys immediately set themselves to unlatching the lid.

Matt helped Molly to her seat, but as he sat down beside her, his eyes were on the two brown-haired boys kneeling on the bench at the other side of the table as they eagerly unpacked the food and set it out.

He’d made a point of spending as much time as he could with them after they lost their dad. And with Molly, too. Unknown to Molly, before Dave died he’d asked Matt to take care of her after he’d gone. And that promise, made to his longtime best friend, was sacred to Matt.

“You seem a bit distracted,” Molly said. “Is something wrong?”

“Sorry. My mind just wandered for a bit. Everything’s fine.” He made an effort to concentrate, and kept up his part in the conversation during their lunch.

After they were finished, they packed up, and the boys ran over to a set of swings by the nearby tennis courts.

He and Molly walked back to the car, and as he put the cooler in the trunk, she said,

“I’m going to pop over to the washrooms. Be right back.”

Matt strolled over to the swings. Leaning against one of the uprights, he smiled as he watched the boys fly high.

After a couple of minutes, they jumped off, and they all three walked back to the Taurus.