Purling Road - the Complete Second Season: Episodes 1-10 (27 page)

They stared down at him.

“No, I’m being serious. That’s my wife.”

They folded their arms.

“Jon? Is that you?”

Jonathan could have used his shoulder as a battering ram for an hour and not gotten through these two. Ava parted them with a touch of her hand.

“You came,” she said, lighting up. “How long have you been here?”

He took her hand and kissed her cheek. “Long enough to see that I was wrong. You are amazing.”

She smiled so hard it made her squirm.

He glanced at the large men standing just to the sides of her. “And amazingly protected. That was my biggest worry.” She turned, leading him out of the ballroom.

“I’m boiling,” she said, getting a glass of water in the kitchen. “I take my breaks here. I can eat if I’m hungry, but usually, I’m too hot to have an appetite.”

There were two cooks preparing orders. Damn if it wasn’t boiled beef and cabbage. Ava refilled her water and led Jonathan to a table by the open window.

“That breeze feels so good.” She closed her eyes. Jonathan sat back throwing his ankle over his knee.

“I’m speechless. I honestly never, in a million years, would have guessed you could do this.”

Beaming, she walked over and sat in his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck.

“I’m so glad you came. It’s not so bad, is it?”

“No, it’s not so bad. In fact, I’ve decided I’d like to come every Friday night. We could get here early and have dinner. Pretend along with everyone else.”

“Pretend?”

He shook his head, not certain if he could explain it to her even if he tried. This wasn’t an escape for her, she wasn’t pretending. Nonetheless, her reality fed their illusion, whether she realized it or not. He supposed it wasn’t all that important she understood the role she was playing beyond that of a singer. “It’s nothing. Just something I observed that made me both happy and sad.”

She straightened the collar of his shirt. “I don’t understand.”

He changed the subject quickly. “I’m sure we can find someone for the kids. We’ll rotate them through our friends if we have to.”

She smiled and kissed him. “I’d love that.”

***

In the late afternoon heat on the fourth of July, everyone was relaxing outside around tables that were moved every few hours to follow the shade beneath the trees. Children weaved between chairs, scampered off to the blueberry trees, up to the field and back down again to the well to dump buckets of water over themselves. There was food, but appetites were scarce. There was lemon water and ginger water. Arianna and Maura could barely keep the pitchers filled. Talk was lazy, of nothing significant, and everyone was happy to spend the afternoon not doing much of anything. Claire kept a dozen cookies wrapped in a handkerchief close by. Every so often Jac would toddle up, bat his long eyelashes, and ask for one. Claire had finally gotten him to say ‘Peas’ and that was a milestone. Aryl watched him, and her, and whenever she caught him, he looked away quickly or started up conversation with the men.

Arianna and Caleb were speaking civilly and more often. Everyone was polite enough to ignore the remaining tension. It wasn’t so bad as to hamper the mood. Tarin and Gordon sat a distance from everyone else. Tarin was a sweaty, swollen, and miserable nine months pregnant. Gordon was unhappy, too, unable to do anything to help her.

Muzzy and Peter arrived on separate bikes, her apologizing for work making her late. Peter held her chair out and smiled when she got that look—the startled crab look.

“You’re my wife now,” he said loud enough for everyone to hear. “Get used to this kind of thing.”

All heads turned as a car pulled into the Jenkins driveway.

“Who’s that?” Ava asked. “Everyone’s here.”

Arianna stood and admitted she’d been keeping one final secret.

“We don’t have any fireworks this year, but I have another surprise. Shannon and Patrick telegrammed a few days ago.”

The black sedan parked in the grass and the back doors flew open. Aislin and Roan scrambled out, running toward the other children. Shannon got out of the driver’s side and waved.

Everyone looked on with concern as Patrick emerged, his arm in a sling, his face still puffy and discolored in places.

Everyone rushed up to greet them, admired the car they’d bought, and pulled them into the shade.

“We hope ye don’t mind our inviting ourselves,” Patrick said as he settled in a chair and accepted a glass.

“You never need an invitation, you know that, Pat,” Jonathan said.

“We weren’t sure if we could make it, but the doctor said Pat was okay to travel.”

The men grimaced in unison. “Tough fight?” Aryl asked.

“Were ye listenin’?”

“No,” Jonathan admitted. “At least, we weren’t,” he said, looking at Ava.

“Us either,” Aryl said, not admitting that silent tension was the only thing airing at his house.

“I didn’t tell them,” Arianna said. “They’d only have worried.”

Patrick shrugged his good shoulder. “It’s better ye didn’t. Embarrassing, that’s what it was. Besides, I didn’t come all the way out here to talk about how I got my arse beat worse than when I was new. Me and Shan have something to tell ye all.”

“You’re quitting and moving back!” Arianna blurted out.

Shannon didn’t look as happy as she should. “We’ve been fighting about it for a week solid.” She looked at Arianna. “You said you couldn’t imagine Pat and I fighting. Well, the last few were
spectacular
,” she said with a teasing eye. “He refuses to quit.”

“But, I do understand that Shannon doesn’t like it in Boston. It’s noisy, dirty, and expensive. We’ve managed to save quite a bit thanks to my frugal wife, and we’re going to see if there isn’t something we can find here so at least when I’m away fightin’, Shan won’t be alone.”

Though everyone was thrilled, the smothering humidity kept the reaction from being more exuberant.

“Caleb, if ye’d be kind enough to put us up fer a few days, we’d like to start looking right away.”

“I’d be happy to,” Caleb said. He was smiling, and when he looked over to Arianna, he didn’t lose it.

“Jon, I hear you’ve had a successful season so far?”

“I have,” Jonathan said. “I think we’ll have a comfortable winter. But that’s thanks to her. Not the tours.” He took Ava’s hand, brought it up, and kissed it. Her eyes widened as she turned to him. “Ava has been singing at a nightclub. The money she makes trumps mine even on the best of days.” He winked at her.

Arianna pursed her lips. “How on earth did you keep that a secret?” she asked.

Embarrassed and blushing, Ava turned. “By not telling any of
you
,” she said with a laugh. “It’s just for a few hours on Friday nights. I take the early set for the tamer crowd.” She physically resisted looking at Arianna. “They bring in a more energetic band later on.”

“We should all go together and watch Ava sing,” Shannon suggested. “It’d be a fun time.”

Caleb’s light mood faded and Arianna reacted quickly. She reached over and brushed her fingers on his leg.

“I’d rather stay at home. But you all should go. We’ll watch the children.”

Multiple conversations broke out across the table as the children laughed and shrieked behind them. They talked about houses for sale, Jonathan and Ava’s adopted son, who was off with the other members of his secret club, and plans for a grand Christmas party now that they’d all be living close again.

Well, after dinner, with the sun hanging low in the sky, Grace sat in her wheelchair beneath the sweeping limbs of a tree. She watched everyone. She was good at that. The only benefit to being stuck in one place, unable to run around, was being able to study those that did. She glanced up frequently while taking notes.

“What are you working on?” Peter asked, dropping down to the grass next to her. She flipped the page, hiding her scribbles.

“A new idea.”

“A new book?”

“Right now, it’s an idea. We’ll see if it wants to be a book.”

“How will you know?” Peter lay back on his elbows and crossed his ankles.

She shrugged and with him being unable to see, went back to taking notes.

Across the way, Muzzy was trying to gather all the children in so she could take a photograph. Arianna had arranged hay bales, two high in the back, one in the front and decorated them with red, white, and blue ribbons. All the children had clambered over each other to climb on them, but now that it was time to sit still and smile, they wanted to do anything but.

He couldn’t help but laugh as she ran after one and sat them down, only to have another pop up and take off on her. Arianna and Claire helped arrange them all and right as she got ready to snap the photo, Jac pulled Savrene’s small pigtail and she let out a piercing scream.

Muzzy threw her hands up. Arianna ran over to calm Savrene and Felicity raced past her on all fours. Muzzy ran, slinging her up and under one arm and nabbed Jac just as he, too, tried to take off.

“Hey, Muzzy!” Peter yelled.

She turned around, the humidity and the children having thrown her hair into a fuzzy state of revolt.

“Now you know what it’s like trying to keep up with you!”

She twisted her lips and before she could make a rude hand gesture, remembered how many little eyes were around her.

He laughed again at the visible restraint she was showing.

“You two are perfect, you know that?” Grace said, writing madly.

Peter glanced at her and then at Muzzy. He hoped she was right. It was like reading tea leaves trying to figure out what was going on in Muzzy’s head at any given time, but he knew how he felt. He’d never been happier. Never wanted to work harder and never, ever felt like he belonged anywhere more than he belonged here with these people and with her.

“You should write a book about a guy who had nothing going for him, belonged nowhere and was just about to give up when a crazy little journalist took him in like a stray alley cat.”

Grace lay down her pen. “That’s a good start. What happens after that?” she asked.

“And then, he married her. Every day, he chases after her, trying to prove how much he loves her and attempting to get her to admit that she loves him, too.”

“Sounds like a classic romance. Although the chasing usually comes before the marriage,” she said with a grin.

“Well, there’s nothing usual about her or us.”

“So how does it end?”

Peter looked over the yard, glowing in the shadows of a fiery sunset. The picture had been taken, Muzzy was recovering, and the children were getting cranky. Adults gathered together in twos and threes while Caleb piled wood in the large fire pit.

“It ends with the guy finally finding where he belongs. Finding a home. The girl finally admits she loves him and then—” He watched as Muzzy walked toward him, pulling the camera strap over her head. Though she was sweating and still overwhelmed from the children’s photo, she smiled, crooked and goofy.

“And then they lived happily ever after.”

Muzzy put her camera in its case and stopped to take a deep breath. “If any small part of me ever wanted to have children, this pretty much cured me of it.”

“What do you mean?” Peter asked. “They’re cute.”

“Yes, they are cute. But up close, they sort of smell like wet dog in this heat. And they’re loud, and messy, and unorganized.”

Grace covered her laugh with a cough.

“What?” Muzzy asked, plopping down, crossing her legs.

“I can’t believe you dare cast a stone on being messy.”

“Okay, maybe I’m messy, but it’s only because I’m so damn productive.”

“I can’t argue there,” Grace said. “I am going to go talk to Arianna. I have an idea for a new serial, and I need her guidance.”

“What could she possibly guide you on in your writing?” Muzzy asked.

Grace centered the notebook in her lap and got a good grip on the wheels, propelling herself a few inches.

“Fashion and scandal, of course,” Grace said, grinning as she wheeled herself away.

After Grace had left, Muzzy was digging through copy that she’d pulled from her bag and caught Peter staring at her.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Why are you staring at me?”

“No reason.” He continued to stare.

“Well, stop. It’s strange. You’re strange.”

“I’m strange?” He laughed loudly.

“Are you saying that I’m the one that is?” Muzzy asked. She tried not to smile. She wanted to. His laughter was infectious. Only she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

“I’m happy,” he said. “Can’t I just stare at you and be happy?”

“Can you not stare at me and still be happy?”

He loved these pointless conversations that would because she was stubborn, go on forever if he let them.

“No, I can’t.”