Wonderful You (16 page)

* * *

S
omehow Ben thought it would have taken longer to get there. But there was little traffic at that early hour of the day, and so it had been a mere twenty minutes from Delaney’s condo to the gates of Delia Enright’s home.

A gentleman’s farm, people called it. No crops were grown and no animals raised to be sold for livestock or for food. The old farm had been purchased strictly as a family home. The acres purchased years ago must be worth a fortune now, Ben ventured. He pulled a little closer to the fence and leaned on the steering wheel hoping to get a better view.

The last tattered bit of morning fog floated over the fields. It looked eerie, somehow, and he almost expected to see fairies dancing on the slight ridge just to the left of his car. But then again, he’d always thought there was just a touch of magic here.

The pine trees that used to be little taller than he and Nick had once been now rose twenty-five feet into the air, totally blocking out any view of the house. Part of him wanted to back up and go right on past the old stone
pillars that the original owners had erected at the foot of the driveway, right on up to the house. Another part of him wanted to run like hell.

For so many years, this place had appeared almost nightly in his dreams. He wasn’t sure he was ready to face the reality of seeing it again for real. Perhaps another time. Tomorrow, maybe, or perhaps next week, after he’d gotten used to the idea of being there. But not right now. He put the car in gear and drove off down the road.

It was early when he arrived at the office. Pauline would still be in New York, and his new secretary was not to start until Monday, so he was pretty much on his own for a few days. Which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, he reasoned, since it gave him an excuse to wander around the building on his own. Seeking a cup of coffee, he stopped into one of the studios where a personable young man was on-air, selling electronics. The backstage area was more interesting and better organized than he had suspected, with tables displaying the products for the next several shows lined up across one wall. Everything seemed to be itemized and neatly arranged. He joined a flustered producer for a cup of coffee in the hosts’ lounge, then sat with several customer service representatives and walked through the telephone ordering process with them. By the time he actually made it back to his office, it was well after noon, and his mind was filled with multiple images of this giant his grandfather had so recently purchased.

Ben requested the personnel files of all active employees so that he could review them and become acquainted with their backgrounds before he actually met them. He wanted a handle on who they were, where they had come from. The staff, he found, was diverse. Several former radio disc jockeys, former television news reporters. A few teachers. People with sales backgrounds, marketing, advertising. And then there was Zoey. He pulled her resume out from the stack as if it was made of fine parchment. The list of her previous employers brought a
smile to his face. She’d certainly run the gamut. It appeared that she had been at the HMP longer than she had been with any other job. He read the comments from the producers, one of whom described her as the backbone of the salesforce. Popular and respected by everyone, it seemed, she was also their top-selling host. No wonder they all spoke so highly of her. Her sales figures and percentage of items sold per number of items pitched were the highest at the network.

Ben leaned back in his chair and smiled. Zoey had done well for herself. He was happy for her, happy that she had found something she apparently enjoyed doing. Delia must surely be proud of her. He tapped his fingers on the desk blotter, wishing he could go back in time to the moment when she had stepped through the doorway with a cup of co
f
fee in her hand. He wanted a second chance to greet her the way she deserved to be greeted by an old friend, with joy and welcome. The way she had attempted to welcome him, with open arms and an open heart.

And what had he done? He’d
grumped
at her, that’s what he’d done, squashed that welcoming smile and chased the joy from her face.

And what a face it had been, he recalled.

Had her eyes been that blue when she was a little girl? Had she always had those deep dimples on either side of her mouth? And he hadn’t recalled that her mouth had had that pouty
kiss me
look back in those days. And her legs hadn’t been that long, come to think of it, and the rest of her bo
dy had been far from lush…

Snap out of it,
he chastised himself. It’s obvious she still thinks of you as a big brother-type figure. After all, she was your best friend’s little sister. You taught her how to throw a baseball. You climbed trees with her. You and Nick even let her sleep in your tent a few times.

He sighed. He owed her an apology. A big one. And she would have it. As soon as he could figure out what to say.

He walked to the window overlooking what had once
been a cow pasture and looked out at the complex that had grown up in the middle of nowhere. There was plenty of room for expansion here, more warehouses, more sets, if needed, more parking. Over the past few days he had spent hours in conference with Delaney’s top staff members, more hours back at the condo going over reports and projections, trying to get a feel for the business. All indications led him to believe that his grandfather had been right. In time, with the right hand at the wheel, the company could become a major force in the retail industry, a cable giant that could dominate the field. All the right pieces were there. It would be a challenge to the one who tried to put it all together. He found himself almost regretting that he would, in all probability, be long gone by the time that challenge would be met.

Two long hours later, after sifting through the company’s investment portfolio, Ben stood up and stretched. His right leg protested painfully when he attempted to put weight on it, reminding him that he’d been sitting for far too long. It was almost one o’clock. Maybe he’d drive out to the small sandwich shop he’d passed on his way in this morning and grab a bite to eat. It was a beautiful day, and he could use the fresh air.

Ben eased the roadster around one curve, then another, his foot testing the accelerator cautiously, wondering if he’d ever have that sureness again, that confidence in his ability to control a speeding machine the way he’d once done. It was an issue for another day, he told himself as he pulled into the dirt and gravel parking lot of The Well (Sandwiches to Go) at the corner of Everett and Lanning’s Co
rn
er Roads, where the lunch hour had already peaked. He ordered the corned beef special to go, and grabbed a bottle of Arizona Green Tea out of a refrigerated case, paid for his purchases, and was back in the car in less than seven minutes. He started out of the parking lot, then pulled back into the space to put the convertible top down.

That’s more like it. He grinned to himself as he slipped
a CD into the car stereo—Springsteen’s
Thunder Road
—feeling all of a sudden like a man who had just about everything he needed at that particular moment— a sunny day, the top down, lunch in a brown paper bag, and music. He opened the bottle of tea and sipped at it as he drove off, looking for a suitable pl
ace to stop and eat his lunch.

He hadn’t consciously planned on it, but he wasn’t surprised when he found himself in front of Delia’s house for the second time that day.

Delaney is right. It’s time,
he told himself as he drove very slowly to the entrance to the drive and stopped the car, pausing to look around. There was no sign of life, no cars, no sound other than birds excitedly circling a feeder half filled with seed that hung from the lower limb of a small oak tree. He drove a little further up the drive,
then parked the car, and sat for a long time with his eyes closed, remembering the sounds and the smells. Then, still fingering his key ring, he got out and walked, slowly, toward the big stone house that Delia had bought years ago, mentally noting the
changes the house had under
gone through the
years since he had been away.

The shutters, once black, were now chocolate brown, to blend better, he supposed, with the tans and gray-browns of the native fieldstone. Around one side of the house, an enormous addition stretched—home, he guessed from the condensation on the glass windows that formed two walls, to an indoor pool. New gardens led to the ba
rn
, which sported a fairly new coat of red paint, and a new addition there too caught his eye. More room for Delia’s horses, he guessed. More pasture had been fenced in, and he leaned over the split rail to
ru
b the muzzle of a curious bay that had come to investigate his presence. Overhead a hawk circled slowly, and from somewhere in the ba
rn
a
nother horse nickered softly. Around one corn
er of the ba
rn
, a large black and white shepherd came flying, growling gruffly.

“Here, boy.” Ben held out a hand for the dog to sniff. “It’s okay.”

The dog leaned into the offered hand, his tail wagging tentatively. Having decided that Ben was okay, the dog nuzzled his leg. “Okay, so we want our head petted, do we?”

He spent five minutes petting the dog, scratching behind his ears and c
arrying on a one-sided conversa
tion, soothed somehow by the dog’s presence. He took off his suit jacket and swung it over his shoulder, stopped and rolled up his shirtsleeves, then walked behind the barn to see if there were any remnants of the vegetable garden that was once the pride of old Tom Larsen, who had been the gardener there in Ben’s youth. The weatherbeaten fence still stood to keep out the deer, and by peering over it he could see that the soil had been worked and readied for this year’s plantings by someone, and he wondered if old Tom could still possibly be alive. He strolled down to the pond, the dog still by his side, and stopped to listen as the frogs splashed into the water at his approach. He sat on a large gray rock and watched several ducks dip their heads in and out of the water.

He walked back to the house and walked around outside, never thinking to knock on the door. He peered into the ba
rn
and walked around it one more time. He had rambled around the property for nearly an hour before he permitted himself to acknowledge what he had really come there for.

For a long, hard moment, Ben stood before the carriage house he and his mother had once called home.

His fingers unconsciously took the key ring from his pocket as he looked up at the second floor of the old stone and clapboard building, and his thumb and forefinger slowly rubbed the old metal key he’d never been able to bring himself to throw away. He touched the door, as if testing to see if it was real, then slid the key into the lock, wondering why he was not surprised to find that Delia had never had the lock changed. He pushed the door open and stepped inside quickly, lest he lose his nerve, and went up the steps.

Everything about it was familiar, and if he closed his
eyes, he might be fourteen again, or twelve. The smell was the same, a savory, herbal smell, and for a moment it overwhelmed him and stopped him where he stood. When he could, he poked into the kitchen to see if any of his mother’s bunches of rosemary and coriander still hung from the window sashes. Entering the room Maureen had loved so much was like a walk back through time. Nothing had changed. From the wallpaper—now slightly faded—to the collection of small colored bottles on the wide window ledges, nothing had changed. It squeezed his heart until he thought it would rupture inside his chest, and he turned into the living room. There, too, the furniture remained the same. An old magazine—
House & Garden
—dated March 1981, sat on the end table, and an old blue sweater was folded neatly on the arm of the sofa. Numbly he followed the short hall to his mother’s bedroom and stood in the doorway.

The first thing he noticed was that the charcoal drawing he had made of Maureen—a passable likeness, considering his young age at the time—still hung on the
wall above the room’s small corn
er fireplace. The pale yellow bedspread with the pink and blue flowers was still on the bed, along with a small square pillow she had made one year when she had taken a sewing course at the local community college. She had never made anything else. Having decided that she lacked both the skill and the patience to become accomplished at the pastime, she had plunked the pillow down on her bed after the last class and told Ben dryly, “Next semester,
I
think I’ll try karate.”

Ben sat on the edge of the bed and lifted the pillow. It was floral and had a deep eyelet ruffle, and felt weightless in his two hands. It occurred to him then that he was sitting in the exact spot he had been when his mother had told him that she was dying.

It had been winter and the first real snow of the year had begun to fall that afternoon. She had been to the doctor earlier in the day, and the week before she had
been in the hospital for yet another round of tests. He had known that she was sick, but the thought that she could be seriously ill was not within the realm of possibility in his fourteen-year-old mind. He had come into her room—this room—to tell her that he and Nick were going sledding on the big hill across the road.

Maureen had been standing at the window, the fingers of one hand splayed against the glass as if to touch the snowflakes as they fell. The room was so quiet, that in retrospect, he had thought that his words had seemed to boom forth from his mouth in cartoon balloons to hang over his head. When she turned to him, he had stopped in mid-sentence. Maureen’s face was wet with tears, her eyes big and frightened. And without even asking, he had known.