Down by the River (16 page)

“Not at all, dear. In fact, I was just looking over this chapter and marveling at the perfectly wicked
dismemberment you’ve performed on this philandering husband. Why, it makes me want to sleep with one eye open!”

She smiled happily. “Thank you, Morton. I don’t think anyone has ever quite appreciated my darker talents with the enthusiasm you have.”

“It’s my pleasure, my dear.”

June was in the clinic with a slate of patients to see. Just before beginning she made a quick call to Nancy. It was one of the most welcome new customs of her new world—a close girlfriend with whom she shared daily news, inevitable woes, gossip and everything in between. They were two women of the same age, with histories they knew, each mothers, though at vastly different stages. There were so many issues to which they related. They talked every day, often more than once.

“What’s on for today?” Nancy asked her.

“It looks like a possible flu, two sore throats, one back strain, an infected toe…ew, I hate those…baby with croup, and…oh-oh, teenager with swollen glands, lethargy, low-grade fever—”

“Mono,” Nancy diagnosed.

“You’re getting good at this. Damn, I miss the prenatals. John and Susan do all the prenatals now. He was OB-GYN before a second residency in family medicine. What are you up to?”

“Rockport,” Nancy said. “I need groceries. And now that the boys are getting around better and have
somehow managed to mysteriously grow in spite of broken bones and bedrest, I’m in search of sweats and comfortable clothing for them to wear. Plus, I want to stop by Chris’s old office and see if any paperwork has miraculously appeared on his desk.”

“How are things in that, you know, department?” June bravely inquired.

There was a pause. “Here’s something you and I have to get used to, June, old buddy,” Nancy said, a very slight catch in her voice. “There isn’t that much more time to dicker with this situation. I can make it through Christmas. I might be able to make it till your baby comes—it’s a goal of mine. But before too much longer, I’ll have to go back to San Diego and earn a living.”

This wasn’t news to June, but it still made her wince in discomfort. She said, “But I just got you!”

“Funny, isn’t it?” Nancy laughed hollowly. “Rivals if not enemies all through school, despising each other long distance for twenty years, and practically best friends in our middle age.”

“Practically?” she returned.

“I didn’t want to presume.”

Presume,
presume!
she thought. “Middle age?” she asked.

“Well, much as we hate the image that brings.” Nancy laughed. “What if I said
almost
middle age?”

“That might be a little easier to swallow.”

“All right, then. You have patients and I have shopping. We’ll catch up later.”

June sat awhile at her desk and thought about Nancy trying to hold it together economically long enough to be in Grace Valley for the baby’s arrival. It suddenly meant as much to June as her father being there, as much as seeing Aunt Myrna holding the baby.

June had money. She hadn’t been spending her modest income on Caribbean cruises or Vegas vacations. She’d barely been able to get a weekend off since coming home to Grace Valley! She’d been putting a little aside for a rainy day. And there was Jim, pulling in his retirement income. But Nancy was proud. She’d never accept charity.

Judge and Birdie likewise had a little money, and Judge would get a pension from the bench. June was sure they’d want to help keep their only son, his wife and their kids in Grace Valley, especially now that they were getting older, closer to Judge’s retirement. But June was also sure that Nancy wouldn’t allow it even if Chris would.

She rang up her dad and asked him if he’d take part of the morning for her.

“You feeling all right?” he asked.

“Great. I want to run out to the Forrest house and take a look at the boys. Nancy says they’re getting around better. But only if you don’t have plans already….”

“It’s so wet, I think even the fish have drowned by now,” he said. “I’ll be over there in half an hour.”

It was a day June thought she’d never see. She was about to go out to the Forrest house, make that
sneak
out to the Forrest house, and talk to Chris behind Nancy’s back. How far they’d all traveled to get to this point! A year ago if his name was mentioned, all she felt was that slow burn creep over her, residual anger that he’d jilted her while she was away in her first year of college and run off with her arch rival and nemesis. Now all that mattered to her was that they find a way to stay in Grace Valley, because friendship was so dear.

The car was not in the drive at the Forrest house, so Nancy must have gone to her shopping. June parked up close and knocked at the door. It was a long time before the door was opened by one of the twins. “Brad?” she asked.

“Brent,” he said, teetering on crutches.

“Wow!” she exclaimed. “You’re doing awesome. How long have you been on crutches?”

“Couple of weeks now,” he said, and smiled.

“Your mom said you’d graduated to the wheelchairs, but—”

“Okay, well, you don’t have to say anything. We’re only supposed to use ’em with the physical therapist.”

She frowned, but a slight smile crept through. At least they were giving it all they had. All of this was a major change from the hellions that had first come to town. As her grin broke through, so did his. “You know why you’re not supposed to do this without him, right? Because a fall now could be devastating.”

“I’m good,” he said. “I’m really careful, too.”

“Your mom isn’t home?”

“Grocery shopping. Dad’s out in the garage, building.”

“I’m sorry I missed her. I talked to her this morning and she said she was going into Rockport to shop. I thought if I hurried out here, I might catch her. Go along.” This was probably an unnecessary lie, but just on the off chance Nancy said,
June? What was June doing here?
she wanted to head her off. “I’ll say hi to your dad, since I drove this far. But first, I’m going to make sure you get back to your room safely.”

Brent looked at her huge belly doubtfully. “No offense, but if I start to fall, what are you going to do about it?”

“Maybe I’ll get under you real fast so you have a big fat mattress to bounce on. Huh? Let’s just go. I’m stronger and more agile than I look.”

That done, June left the house. She stood on the porch and listened to the whistling hum of a power tool—saw or sander or the like—coming from the detached garage. She set off across the yard, her boots sinking through the matted grass into the soft earth. They’d gone through three years of near drought conditions with fear of forest fires, only to have the situation remedied with more winter rain than they’d had in ten years.

She knocked the mud off her boots as she rapped on the garage door. The tool stopped. “Who is it?” Chris asked.

“It’s me. June. Got a minute?”

“Hang on a sec, okay?”

She heard him rummaging around in there, moving things. “It’s pretty wet out here, okay?” she called.

“Hang on a sec. Gotta…ah…move some stuff to let you in.”

More scrapping and moving and rustling. Finally one of the large double doors opened to a fantastic workshop. June hadn’t been in the garage before, but she could tell it had been renovated. Transformed. The floorboards under the dust from sawing and sanding were new and polished. The shelves and cupboards were recently built, and tools hung from newly installed Peg-Board. The faint hum of a dehumidifier could be heard now that the power tools were turned off.

Chris led her to a chair completely covered by a tarp. “Here,” he said. “You’re kind of wet. Nancy’s old rocker is under this tarp. I fixed it, but I don’t want you to get water on it or I’ll have to sand it down and refinish it.”

“You have a lot of stuff in here,” she said, taking it all in.

“A lot of it’s borrowed. Hal Wassich fixed me up with the circular saw and table, John Reynolds loaned me the dehumidifier from one of his furniture stores that closed down and Lincoln Toopeek insisted I borrow some of his fine-finishing tools. Dad bought the sander so we could finish the cup
boards in the house. I got a shop vac from Sam—he says he’s been meaning to clean up the station, but he just never gets around to it. And I had Nancy ship some of my things from San Diego when I first bought the house.”

June’s eyes fell on a pair of cherry-wood chairs with three legs and V-shaped backs. Very sleek and dark and artistic. “Chris,” she said, surprised. “Those are gorgeous!”

“Yeah. Thanks. Sarah Kelleher said there’s a gallery in San Francisco that’ll take ’em. I’d rather build furniture that’s useful than artsy stuff, but you do what comes to you, you know? So, I’m working on a sideboard that’s going to have some leaded glass on the top. Sarah’s going to do the glass and bring it over. She says it’s okay to pay her for it when the sideboard is sold. I’ve already had one offer.”

He indicated a piece of furniture, six feet long with cupboards and drawers, the front carved in a beautiful design.

“The glass will provide a five-inch ledge around the top. Sarah does leaded designs and stained glass. It was her idea. She saw my chairs and said she’d love to work with someone that could put her glass on wood pieces.”

June could hardly close her mouth. She was silent and rocked slowly.

“It is beautiful, isn’t it?” he said.

“Chris, how long have you been doing this?”

“Like this? I just started. But I’ve always been good at fixing things. And I built a couple of pieces over the years. You could count on me for the best shelves in the neighborhood. The best garage cabinets. I built the boys their first bunk beds and chests. But that was all weekend stuff. Lately, I’ve been doing this all the time.”

“Can you support a family like this?”

He laughed, but without much humor. “In about ten years, I think.”

“What about your insurance business? Can’t you keep it up and do this part-time?”

“I should,” he said, and she saw the light go out of his eyes. “I should, that would make sense. But I just can’t anymore. It’s like I feel right about what I’m doing for the first time in my life.”

“But Chris—”

“You can’t imagine what that’s like, June. You always knew what you wanted to be, where you wanted to be it. You never struggled….”

“That’s not true! I had no idea I wanted to be a doctor!”

“No, you were going to be your dad’s nurse. And then in the first quarter of college you said, What the hell, I’ll go all the way and be a doctor. And it worked.” He paused. “Nothing ever worked for me. I could hardly pass in school, what with being dyslexic. Even when I thought I was getting all the answers right, the test would come back with an F on it. You can’t imagine the frustration.”

“But you said you finally got help for it!”

“June, it doesn’t go away. You learn how to deal with it, but it doesn’t go away. It remains a struggle. Sales was the only thing I could ever get away with because I like everyone. So I sold a little insurance here and there, but the paperwork killed me. And I’d lose interest all the time, get distracted, find myself taking an afternoon off for golf, go home early….”

Chris leaned his hip against the worktable that held his circular saw and June sat in the tarp-covered rocker, slowly creaking back and forth. Neither spoke. She looked around the workshop and admired the fine finishing touches inside this old garage.

“Jim helped me with a lot of this,” he said. “In the house. Out here.”

“I didn’t know he could do this sort of thing,” she admitted.

“He can’t.” Chris laughed. “I mean, he
couldn’t.
At least from scratch, on his own. But when I told him what to do, he did it
perfectly.
I think he likes woodworking. Carpentry.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

They fell quiet again for a few moments, he thinking, she rocking.

“I feel right now,” he finally said, “like I’m in the right spot. Sam says I need to take his spot on the fire truck. Tom says he can hook me up with search-and-rescue training so I can volunteer at that, too. The boys, they’re real anxious to get back to school here.
They don’t want to go back to the city. My folks, they don’t want us to go.” Then he grinned. “I’ve got good insurance!”

June did not grin. “Nancy’s my friend now,” she said. “I know this is none of my business, but…she’s worried about money.”

“I know she is,” he said, hanging his head. “I’ve never been as good as her in that area.”

“Chris, this is beautiful stuff, but you have to find a way to pay the grocer.”

He looked up and gave her a half smile. “She’s gonna be good and pissed when she finds out you stuck your nose in this.”

“Don’t tell her, then,” she said, feeling instantly guilty and horrible. “If it comes up, tell her I stopped by and said hi, but don’t…” She trailed off. “I can’t believe it myself, but we’re friends. Close friends. We laugh till we pee—I pee faster of course. We complain about our men—”

“She complains more, of course.”

“She’s had hers longer,” June said, shrugging. “She wants to stay for my baby. I want her to. She says you’re running out of money.”

“Sort of,” he admitted.

“Sort of? What the hell does that mean?”

“There’s a little left. Retirement from that investment firm she worked for—we haven’t touched that. We still have the house, not that much of a house, but you don’t need much in San Diego to make a couple of bucks. She took a leave, you know. So she
can go back. It’s more than money, June. It’s a little tough for Nancy to give up that big paycheck, that 401K, those stocks. She can’t get used to the idea that it just doesn’t cost as much to live here. I bought the house for nickels, used my personal retirement savings—IRAs—to fix it up. There’s still time to sell the San Diego house, pay back the IRAs and start over. But,” he said gravely, “there’s no country club. Nancy’s boss gave her a complimentary club membership, mainly so she could arrange functions for him and the company, but still…”

“But she said she likes it here! She wants to stay but feels she can’t! Oh jeez, I’m so damned confused.”