Maureen Child - Love - From His Point Of View! - Meeting at Midnight

“Buying lumber.” Seely’s voice was steady. Her face was blank and much too pale. “Why? What are you doing here?”

“Don’t you smart off to me! You’re not supposed to be here! You said you were leaving. You don’t belong here. We don’t want you here. Don’t think you’ll get a penny from me, whatever tricks you pull!”

“I don’t want your money. I never did.” Seely started to turn away.

“Nasty baggage! You’ll listen when I talk to you.” The woman started after her. “I won’t have you confusing John, making him miserable again—”

“Mrs. Lake,” I said loudly. “Do you realize how worried your daughter has been?”

She jolted. I don’t think she’d noticed me until that second, which says a lot about how focused she’d been on Seely. I’m not easy to overlook. Faded-blue eyes blinked behind her bifocals. “What? I’m not—”

“I know,” I said soothingly, and switched my walking stick to my right hand so I could take her arm. My shoulder twinged. “Not yourself these days, are you? But if you’d take your medication you’d feel better. You have to stop wandering off this way. Poor Melly is frantic.”

She stared up at me as if I were mad. “If you don’t take your hand off me this instant I will have you arrested.”

I leaned closer and muttered, “You’ve drawn quite a crowd. Maybe you like scenes. If so, go right ahead and screech some more.”

She looked around. People were staring, all right. The clerk had stopped ringing up her customer.

Color flooded the old woman’s scrawny neck.

Seely spoke from behind me. “I can handle this, Ben.”

“So? You don’t have to.”

The old woman drew herself up. “You’ll be sorry you interfered. I’ll tell the judge, and he’ll see to it. As for you… ” She leaned around me, her eyes glittered with malice. “Devil child! You stay away from me and mine.”

She jerked her arm out of my grip and turned away with surprising dignity. I watched just long enough to make sure that she was really leaving, then looked at Seely.

Her lips were tight. There was a lost look about her eyes I didn’t like. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know…I didn’t expect to see her at a place like this. I wouldn’t have subjected you to that scene if I’d had any idea she might…” Her throat worked as she swallowed.

“Yeah, I’m all torn up about it.” I gripped her elbow and started for the doors. “Come on.”

“But—the wood! You can’t…Ben?”

“Give her the ticket.” I nodded at the clerk as we passed the checkout. The others in the line glared at me. “McClain Construction,” I told the clerk. “Charge it, save it, toss it, whatever. I’ll call.”

We went through the automatic doors at a better pace than I’d managed since falling off the mountain. No doubt my knee would complain later. I didn’t care. Seely needed to get out, away from all those curious eyes.

She didn’t mention my knee or my shoulder, either out loud or with her eyebrows. Which just confirmed how upset she was. She did say something about me being high-handed.

“You need to scream, cry or throw things. You don’t want to do that here, so we’re going home.”

“I am not going to cry.”

“Yeah, I figured you were more a thrower than a crier. Here we are.” I released her arm and opened the passenger door.

“Wait a minute. I’m driving.”

“No, you aren’t.” I headed around the front of the car. “Power steering, power brakes and my right leg and left arm work fine. I don’t know why I let you talk me into the passenger seat in the first place.”

“I’ve got the keys. You are not driving, Ben.”

“You’ve got a set of keys.” I used the ones in my hand to open my door, tossed my walking stick in the back seat, and lowered myself carefully behind the wheel. Damn. I’d been right about my knee. “You coming?”

She came. She slammed the door, but she came.

Seely didn’t say a thing for several blocks, just sat there hugging her elbows tight to her body, as if they might get away from her otherwise.

Making her mad hadn’t worked, except as a temporary fix. She’d fallen right back into whatever unhappy thoughts held her prisoner. I was hunting for another strategy when she broke the silence. “What was that bit about Melly?”

“I made that up. Got the old biddy’s attention.”

“It did do that,” she said dryly.

“So who is she? Looked like someone freeze-dried June Cleaver’s mother.”

Her laugh broke out. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her arms loosen. “Don’t surprise me like that! I nearly choked. Her name is Helen Burns. Mrs. Randall Burns, to be precise.”

“Who’s the judge she threatened me with?”

“Her husband. Who hasn’t sat on the bench in twenty years, but she isn’t about to let anyone forget that he used to.”

“Hmm.” I’d heard of the judge, of course. Didn’t think I’d ever met the man.

I turned onto Oak. My street was one of the oldest in town, more level than recent construction, which has to crowd its way up the slopes that cradle Highpoint. The houses here have a settled look; some are large, some smaller, but all have good-size yards. For a short stretch, trees from both sides of the road clasped hands over the street.

We emerged from the tree tunnel onto my block. Smoke puffed from the Berringtons’ chimney. Jack Robert’s truck was in the driveway. Looked like he still hadn’t found another position after being laid off two months ago. The Frasers were out front, old Walt cleaning out a gutter while Shirley steadied the ladder.

I knew the houses along here, the changes that had been made in and around them over the years, the names, stories and people who belonged to those houses. Some people don’t like seeing the same faces and places all the time. Take my brother Charlie. He drove a truck for years because he liked staying on the move, always seeing something new. And I’m not sure Annie’s husband, Jack, will ever settle permanently in one place.

That’s hard for a rooted man like me to understand. Did the world’s wanderers have any idea what they were missing? Or were they so busy chasing the horizon they never realized what they’d given up?

I pulled into my driveway, cut the engine and glanced at the woman beside me…one of the wanderers. I shook my head. “If you’re keeping quiet in the hope that I’ll be too tactful to ask why Mrs. Randall Burns hates your guts, you’re out of luck.”

She snorted. “I’m not such a blind optimist. Anyway, you’re due an explanation.” She looked down, plucking at a snag near the hem of her sweater. “Helen Burns hates me for being born. Bad blood, you see. She’s my grandmother.”

I closed my mouth before any more stupid comments could escape. “Inside. We’ll talk about it inside.”

She didn’t quite slam the door when she got out. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

That remark was obviously the product of wishful thinking. “I take it she’s your father’s mother. The father you don’t know anything about.”

“When I told you that I was trying to preserve a little privacy. Not a concept you have a lot of respect for…oh, do slow down, Ben. You’re obviously hurting.”

“I’m okay. So does he live here, too? Here in Highpoint?”

“Yes.” She didn’t wait for me to obey—or not—but moved up beside me and slid her arm around my waist, forcing me to move slower. “And yes, that’s why I came to Highpoint—sheer, bloody-minded curiosity.”

A quick jolt of heat distracted me…and a quieter warmth seeped inside, unknotting muscles I hadn’t realized were clenched. The pain in my shoulder eased to a dull ache.