36
As I slid the last batch of pancakes onto the children’s plates, there was a knock at the door.
I glanced at the Kit-Cat Klock on the wall, its tail swinging. They hadn’t even been gone half an hour, and I sincerely hoped Ruth hadn’t used that hatpin while Mr. Greene was driving.
“Is that Grandma?” Susie asked.
I wiped my hands on my apron and moved toward the door, asking her with a levity I didn’t feel, “She doesn’t exactly knock, does she?”
But when I pulled the door open, I saw Eddie on the doorstep instead, hat in hand.
“Eddie,” I said, smiling, then I took in his look of concern. Maybe Ruth had used that hatpin after all. “What’s wrong?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “Nothing. Sorry. I shouldn’t have come.”
He turned away, and I reached out, putting a hand on his arm to stop him. “Nonsense,” I said. “The kids wanted pancakes for dinner. Can I offer you pancakes? Or I can whip up something else if you’re hungry?”
“No, I don’t want to be a bother.”
I shook my head but was smiling. “You’re the opposite of a bother. Come in.” I pulled him gently inside.
“The pancakes do smell delicious,” he conceded.
“I’ll start the next batch. The kids and I are always happy to see you.”
He stopped walking. “I didn’t bring them anything.”
I leaned in conspiratorially. “They’ll live.” Then, when he still wasn’t smiling, I really looked at him. “What happened?”
He sighed. “Nothing. I just—my father is So excited, and Ruth seems less so—”
I put my hand back on his arm. “I know,” I said. “I felt terrible that I suggested we get them together and then ... this. But honestly, he made her laugh before they left. I think—maybe—it could be good for both of them. She did tell me not to wait up.”
“She did? You don’t think they . . . ?”
I mimed a gag. “I’d rather not think about either of them like that.”
“Me neither,” Eddie agreed. “Sorry. It’s strange to worry about your father going on a date. He just hasn’t shown any interest in meeting anyone, and then he saw Ruth, and it was like the light that burned out when my mother died suddenly turned back on.”
I couldn’t imagine my own father ever moving on if my mother went first. Then again, he didn’t seem all that interested in my mother either.
Although maybe her absence had made the heart grow fonder these two years.
My mother, on the other hand, would be on a date before his body was cold.
She had been urging me to start thinking about dating before she left.
Some people could be alone, and some couldn’t.
And I was learning I was the former, though I had never wanted to be.
“I don’t want to jinx anything,” I said. “But as long as she doesn’t use that hatpin, I think this could work.”
“Hatpin?”
I grinned. “Go sit down. I’ll let the kids tell you all about it while I make up some more pancakes.”
The children squealed with delight at the sight of him, and I didn’t mind mixing more batter. Having Eddie at the table just felt right.
Eddie said he should be going when I announced that it was bedtime for Susie and Bobby, but I told him he was welcome to stay. Bobby had started letting me leave before he was asleep in the last couple of weeks, so I would be back down within half an hour.
“Can Eddie read me a bedtime story?” Bobby asked.
I shrugged and raised my eyebrows at Eddie. “That’s up to him,” I said.
“Please?” Bobby asked. “Mommy never does the boy voices right.”
I chuckled, cuffing him playfully on the head. “Imagine that. I don’t sound like a Hardy Boy.”
Eddie smiled broadly. “I loved the Hardy Boys as a kid.” He knelt down to Bobby’s height. “It would be an honor, sir.”
As Bobby and Eddie went up the stairs, Pepper hot on their heels, I swear I felt my heart growing larger, just as Ruth had said it would.
The grief of losing Harry would always be there.
But there was so much room for happiness in our lives too.
And I realized, as I peeked into Bobby’s room as Eddie read aloud about Frank and Joe’s adventures as they worked to solve a mystery that the grown-ups couldn’t, that Bobby was going to be just fine.
Eddie and George would help with the masculine tasks that I couldn’t.
And besides, if I could shave my ankles without bleeding out, I could figure out how to teach him to shave his face eventually.
Even if Ruth never left. We were okay. I picked Pepper up and took her downstairs to let her outside, then as I stood in the living room, looking out the back door as she did her business, I turned my face skyward.
“We’ll never stop missing you,” I said quietly.
“But we’re going to be okay.” And for the first time in over two years, I felt something, like a small kiss on my forehead.
The type Harry used to plant there when I was worried about something.
Then I felt it again.
And again.
I looked more carefully at the ceiling, and a drop of water plunked onto my face right between my eyes. Not a kiss from my departed husband, but a leak from the bathroom above us.
Oh no . “Eddie!” I yelled. “Help!”
An hour and a set of wrenches later, the problem seemed to have been resolved, and the children were finally in bed.
“You got lucky,” Eddie said, replacing the wrenches in the toolbox and taking it to the basement, while I showed him where it went. “That could have been a much harder fix.”
“I was lucky you were here,” I said gratefully. “What do I do about the living room ceiling?”
“I can redo that for you this week. I don’t think too much water got in, but you don’t want mold.”
He turned to face me in the dim light of the basement, and I suddenly realized how close we were in the nook at the base of the stairs, where Harry had kept his tools.
It felt intimate in a way I hadn’t experienced in years, and I found my eyes drifting to his mouth.
What would it be like to kiss Eddie? I felt a flurry in my stomach that I couldn’t blame on a meal this time.
My eyes returned to his and my breath hitched slightly.
He leaned forward and I ... shook my head suddenly and brushed past him to go up the stairs.
I looked over my shoulder and saw him still standing there, squinting with his bad left eye. “What?” I asked as if I hadn’t just been thinking ... well, thoughts that I had no business thinking.
“Nothing,” he said, then he gestured to the room behind him. “You know, it wouldn’t take that much work to make the basement into a playroom for the kids.”
I peered at what I could see of it from the top of the stairs. Harry and I had talked about that as a someday project. “It wouldn’t?”
“Not much at all. A little drywall, some paint, and either linoleum or carpet on the floors. Better lighting.”
“Maybe I’ll get a quote on that,” I said as Eddie climbed the stairs.
“I can do it,” Eddie said. “I like projects like that. And helping you.”
I shook my head. “You do too much for us already.” Had I moved closer to him? Or had he moved closer to me? I hadn’t noticed the flecks of green in his eyes before.
He raised a hand and brushed a lock of hair from my face, and I felt my lips part.
“Barbara,” he said softly, and I moved an inch closer, my breathing rapid as I realized what was about to happen.
What I actually wanted to happen. This was crazy.
It was Eddie ! But all I knew was that every fiber of my being felt this was right.
My head tilted slightly, and then—
The front door opened, and we jumped apart.
“Good night,” Ruth called from the doorway, shutting the door behind her and then leaning on it and closing her eyes for a moment, a fresh bouquet of flowers clasped in her left hand.
Then she opened her eyes and saw the two of us standing guiltily, looking at her.
“Oh my,” she said. “What excitement did I miss tonight?”
“I—uh—well,” I stammered. Of all the times for her to come home!
“The upstairs tub was leaking,” Eddie said quickly. “Just a loose connector. I fixed it right up.”
She looked from me to Eddie and back to me. “How fortuitous,” she said with a smirk.
Amazing how just two words could make me want to throttle her. Admittedly, it was the implication in her tone more than the words. But still. No one got under my skin the way she did.
“And how was your date?” I asked icily. “Do I need to hire a lawyer to defend you for assaulting him with a hatpin?”
“It’s hardly assault when he gave me the pin,” Ruth said. “But no. It was ... nice ... actually.”
Nice, I thought. Better than ending in a hatpin-stabbing incident, but “nice” wasn’t exactly the same as smitten and willing to marry him and leave me to raise my children in peace.
Then again, I wasn’t getting any details with Eddie in the room.
I snuck a look at him, but he was studying the floor.
The expansion I had felt in my chest earlier contracted slightly.
It was just the late hour and proximity.
Maybe there hadn’t even been any tension, and I had imagined it all.
I fought to keep my face neutral. Poor, pitiful me.
Two years without a man so much as looking at me and the first one who shows me a modicum of kindness, I practically jump on.
I wanted Eddie to leave so I could wallow in my embarrassment. What had I been thinking?
“That’s ... wonderful,” I said. “Isn’t it, Eddie?”
“Yes,” he said dully. “Wonderful.”
Ruth’s eyes narrowed as they flitted between us again. “I sense I’m interrupting something. Don’t mind me. I’m just going to put these in water—if we have anything left resembling a vase at this point—and then go on up to bed. You two just go back to ... whatever it was that you were doing.”
“Eddie was just leaving,” I said quickly.
His head turned in my direction, but he didn’t meet my eyes. “Yes,” he said slowly. “I’ll be back later in the week to patch up the ceiling.”
“I can hire someone to do that,” I said, then bit the inside of my cheek at the wounded look on his face.
He finally made brief eye contact with me, then nodded. “Whatever you want to do,” he said. “Have a good night, Barbara. Ruth.”
Ruth moved toward the kitchen, and Eddie left without looking back.
“Well, well, well,” Ruth said over her shoulder. “Lovers’ spat?”
“Eddie? A lover? No.”
She tilted her head, lips pressed together, but didn’t push the issue. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to resort to a drinking glass for these,” she said, looking through the cabinets for a vase.
“I think I have one more in the basement,” I said. “I’ll go get it.”
But as soon as I was down the stairs, where I had first noticed how close we were standing, I felt tears prickling at my eyes, threatening to spill out.
I was an absolute fool. And Eddie had run out of there so quickly, there was no pretending that I hadn’t just ruined our friendship by almost kissing him.
And for what? It wasn’t like I was ready to move on.
I looked at the hanging lightbulb and fanned briefly at my eyes, willing the tears back into my body. I would apologize. Tell him I’d had a glass of sherry after Ruth left and wasn’t myself. And hope that was enough.
I plucked the lone remaining vase—a wedding gift that I hadn’t liked much but couldn’t bring myself to get rid of—from the shelf and went back upstairs. “We’re either going to need to buy more vases or get rid of the older flowers,” I said, sounding cheerful though feeling far from it.
“Hmm,” Ruth said, taking the vase from me and crossing to the kitchen sink to fill it with water. “We should bring whatever still looks nice to the hospital. Not everyone gets visitors.”
I looked at her back as she arranged the flowers in the vase. It was a lovely idea.
“Maybe not the funeral spray though,” she said as she turned around, looking for a spot to put the vase. “That could send the wrong message.”
And despite myself, I laughed at the idea of walking into a patient’s room with a display of flowers for a casket. If Mrs. Kline were still coming in, it would have been worth it.