5. Penn
Chapter 5
Penn
I've been back in town fewer than twenty-four hours and this is the third wedding invitation I've been subjected to. For the same damn wedding .
I force my gaze from the offensive paper, though it does little to quell the indignation rising up inside me. Why am I here? Why did I return? I could've hired a company to clean out my mother's home after her passing. I could've begged Hugo to do the job for me. At this moment, I'm deeply regretting my decision-making ability.
Had I thought I could sail into town, deal with the house, and move on like it was nothing? Yes, I did. Was that na?ve, foolish, and downright idiotic? Apparently. Not only did I run into Daisy immediately, but here I am staring down her wedding invitation.
Mr. & Mrs. St. James request the honor of your company…
Ugh. Un-fucking-believable.
The worst part about it is that Daisy probably should marry Duke. The joining of the St. James and Hampton families has been in the works for decades. Their ancestors founded Olive Township approximately one hundred and sixteen years ago. Arizona, the state in which Olive Township resides, entered into statehood four years after. Royalty marries royalty, right?
The entirety of Olive Township appears to be in support of the union, including Sammich, the sandwich shop in which I'm currently standing, attempting to hide my disdain at the blown up wedding invitation pinned to the corkboard behind the counter. It's so large it outshines the all-caps casting call for the lead role in the upcoming town play. My petulant groan stays inside, but only barely. Is this sycophant level of celebration necessary?
"Two Monte Cristos, please," I say to the woman behind the register when she returns from delivering sandwiches to a table. "And two iced teas." I'm meeting Hugo at my old place, and I've promised to bring lunch.
She rings me up, and my traitorous eyes stray to the stupid pale pink invitation plastered just beyond her head. I must be a masochist. Or, perhaps I'm trying to stay in this angry state so I can keep my guard up, my armor unyielding, in an effort to get through what I came here to do.
"First time in Sammich?" she asks as I hand over two twenties.
I catch the No on its way out of my mouth and swallow it down. "Sure is," I lie. The truth is, I came here with my mom when I was a kid, and I've been dreaming about a Monte Cristo from Sammich far longer than I care to admit.
"Just passing through?" she asks, pressing my change into my palm. "Or having yourself a long weekend at the spa?"
Something tells me I don't fit the profile of people who typically visit Sagewood. Instead of pointing that out, I say, "I was hired to come here and look into a home that was kept in a family but left behind a long time ago." This is the sanitized version I dreamed up on my long drive from San Diego.
Everyone in this town knows everybody's business, but none more than Margaret, the owner and operator of this place. She is the eyes and ears of this town, and I'm not interested in supplying her with gossip about me.
But Margaret cannot be stopped. She is a 5'2", faux redheaded Jack Russell Terrier on my heels. She leans forward, eyes squinting and shrewd, propping her fleshy forearm on the counter. "You look familiar. Do I know you?"
I shake my head slowly. "I don't believe so." That's not a lie. She doesn't know me. At all. If I gave her my real name, she would most definitely remember me, though.
I nod toward the white paper bag the chef has placed in the open window between the kitchen and the rest of the place. "I better get going. My dog is waiting in my truck."
Margaret offers me a friendly smile as she hands the bag my way. "Finally nice enough outside that we can start taking our dogs on car rides."
I dip my chin in thanks and leave the store. Slim Jim stares me down from the passenger seat. My guess is that he's been mean-mugging passersby from his perch, delivering a menacing stink eye. He's doing what I wish I could do, but basic politeness dictates I choose otherwise. Dogs don't give a fuck, and I envy that.
Slim Jim watches me climb in my truck, sniffing voraciously at the bag of food. "That is not for you," I tell him, handing over one of his treats. He takes it and turns his back on me. I tell myself it's so he can stare out the window, but the truth is, he gets his feelings hurt. How I wound up with an emotionally sensitive dog, I'll never know.
Halfway through the short drive to my childhood home, Slim Jim turns my way, leaning over the center console to lick my face once. It's like he's saying, I forgive you . Not that I asked for forgiveness, or needed it. Like the sad sack I am, I accept the affection, trying not to think about what a deficit I'm in. Plenty of women like the idea of being with a SEAL, but few can handle the demands of a job we are all but married to. Few can handle me, either, and the fact I'm no good at relationships.
Slim Jim is all I have, but honestly, the guy is pretty damn good. I'm lucky to have him.
Scratching behind his ears, I stare out the windshield and fight against the gut-punch feeling left by the wedding invitations that assaulted my eyes. Thrice . "She's marrying him, Slim Jim. My Daisy is marrying one of the worst people I've ever met."
Dread hangs heavy in my stomach as I roll down Lickety-Split Lane. The last time I was on this street was the day I packed up my mother's car, with a little help from her. The vehicle had a new front bumper and hood, and engine parts that sounded complicated, repairs courtesy of Daisy's dad following the car accident.
An accident that had injured Daisy, but not me. Physically, anyhow. Plenty of pain accompanies the knowledge that I was at fault for hurting my best friend.
Some days I wish I could take it all back. Other days, I know some of it had to happen. My feelings about that time in my life are convoluted. Similar to the way I feel about my childhood home. Is that why my mom never sold it? Never attempted to deal with it at all? Alone it sat at the end of the lane, a relic, a story, a slowly crumbling structure. Was she keeping it for me, hoping I'd return to Olive Township? Did she want me to? Why?
I have questions, but no answers. Her will said only that the home belonged to me now. No instructions, no letter of explanation. I was with her before she died, and even then she said not a word.
It's confusing and frustrating, the same way I feel about the bits of excitement bubbling up around the dread in my stomach as I draw closer to my old home.
"There it is," I breathe the words, the old structure coming into view. It's smaller than I remember, but so was I when I lived here.
The paint is peeling, the windows clouded. A bird's nest clings to the chimney.
My chest constricts, but I push past it.
Hugo waits in front of the house. He leans his backside against his fancy ass cherry-red Audi R8, a car he loves with a fervor that should be reserved for a woman. His right foot crosses over his left ankle, and his hands shove into the pockets of his jeans. I can't resist rolling my window down and giving him a little shit.
"Posing for the cover of GQ?" I ask from the open truck window as I roll slowly past.
He responds with a middle finger. "Hello, Peter ."
Hugo hates my decision to come back here and use a different name. I call it identity management . He calls it a flat out lie and you're a shithead for it.
I understand where he's coming from, but he hasn't been where I've been, or done what I've done. He doesn't know I'm protecting Daisy from learning the truth about why I left.
Slim Jim and I come to a stop and pile out. He trots to a tree and lifts a leg.
Hugo pushes off his car, walking up to my truck in the short driveway. I'm surprised he didn't immediately turn around and buff out any fingerprints he may have left behind on his precious car.
"Hey, asshole," I greet him, missile-launching the paper-wrapped Monte Cristo at Hugo's chest. He catches it like a football, which is funny because it's Ambrose, Hugo's other best friend, who's in the NFL. Never in a million years would I tell Hugo this, but I brag about him every chance I get. Not many people can say their longtime best friend earned a gold medal fencing in the Olympics. He's retired now, but he'll take on brand deals he feels are right for him. For the most part, he spends his time running Summerhill.
I open my tailgate and prop my ass on the end, one foot planted on the ground and the other dangling. "Thanks for giving me a heads-up that Daisy is marrying the equivalent of a wet paper towel."
"Nice to see you, too," Hugo grumbles, hopping up beside me.
It's been three months since Hugo came to San Diego for my mom's funeral, and less than one month since I got the harebrained idea to come back here and deal with the house in person.
Hugo removes the sandwich from the wrapper and takes a large bite. "If I told you she was marrying Duke, you never would've come back here."
"Correct, because torture isn't on the list of hobbies I enjoy."
Hugo munches thoughtfully. "Please explain the wet paper towel comment."
I stare up at my old house. Memories, both good and bad, burst from the peeling wooden windowsills. "A wet paper towel is an item that cannot fulfill its intended purpose."
Hugo nods slowly. "And Duke's intended purpose is..."
I chew angrily, my back teeth mashing together. "It sure as hell isn't marrying Daisy St. James."
Hugo wipes grease from his hands with a napkin. "I'm guessing"—his hands lift in the air near his chest, one palm facing out and the other still grasping a napkin—"and this might be a long shot, that you still have a thing for Daisy."
Absolutely not. I may have loved Daisy with an insane, beyond reason fire when I was a kid, but that was when I didn't know shit about shit. Before I grew up, became a man, survived hell week, boarded an aircraft carrier and flew in a helicopter over a totally different desert than the one I grew up in. "Hugo, not wanting Daisy to marry shit-for-brains Duke Hampton is about basic human decency. It has nothing to do with whether or not I have a thing for her. Which I don't."
He delivers a nice, long, level gaze, then finally says, "Sure."
"Let me put it this way. Somebody's pant leg gets stuck on a railroad tie, and there's a train not far off. The rules of basic human decency state that you help them."
He blinks hard, once. "In this analogy, Duke is the train and Daisy is the innocent civilian stuck to the tracks?"
"Precisely."
"She should take off her pants."
My gaze sharpens. "What?"
"You said her pants were stuck. If she took them off, she wouldn't be in them anymore, therefore she wouldn't be stuck to the tracks. Problem solved."
Using the pad of my thumb, I wipe sauce from the corner of my mouth. "Say another word about Daisy without pants on, and I will take that pretty face of yours and give you a scar that matches mine."
Hugo grins, eyeing the jagged scar that cuts down the left side of my face. "Yeah, you definitely don't have a thing for Daisy. Not at all."
I point at his sandwich. "You're lucky I gave that to you. I contemplated throwing it out the window on my drive here."
"You would never." He drinks from his iced tea until there's nothing left, and then he continues so it makes obnoxious sucking sounds. My frown deepens, and he smiles around his straw. He is enjoying my foul mood a little too much. "I'm the only free help you have."
"Dick," I mutter, but he's right.
"Asshole," he corrects cheerfully, delivering a half-gentle smack to my chest. "Get it right."
His joke, at long last, coaxes a smile from me. My first since I saw Daisy last night.
"Anybody recognize you?" Hugo asks, pointing down at the last bite of his sandwich to let me know he's asking about my stop for our lunch.
"Margaret is perceptive, but even she can't see into the future." I look nothing like the boy I was the day I scurried from this town, my head hung down in shame. Scrawny was an accurate description for my body at the time, with all four limbs being a little too long for the rest of me. My clothing never fit, but that was from lack of money, not lack of choice. My mother gave me haircuts in the kitchen until she decided to stop participating in what it took to be a mother, and I began to use clippers on myself. The haircuts were bad at first, but I developed my skill, and eventually I didn't look too terrible.
Hugo studies my face, and the uneven flesh, a bit too close for comfort. "The scar isn't that bad anymore."
I push off the edge of the tailgate, landing on my feet with a bounce. "It's not great."
"You're like a modified Harry Potter."
"But without the powers."
Hugo scratches the back of his neck. "How about your body?"
That's a different story. Keloid scar tissue has formed on my chest and over my ribs on my left side, bumpy and lumpy and unsightly as hell.
I reach for his trash, balling it up and adding it to the bag that held our food. "I need laser treatments."
"So," Hugo hops down, watching me toss our trash in my back seat and call Slim Jim over from his very important job of sniffing everything in the vicinity, "they're going to sear your ass?"
"Not my ass." I throw him a look and start for the front door of the place I once called home. "Just my chest." And my ribs. And part of my stomach. "Some fancy ass laser thing. I don't know. My doctor back home suggested it."
Hugo slaps my back as we walk over the dead-grass front yard, and as we do, I begin to realize something that should have struck me the moment I pulled into the driveway. Why aren't there mile high weeds around this place? Plants, bushes, spindly Palo Verde trees, cacti growing wherever it damn well pleases? This front yard should resemble a walk through the middle of nowhere, but it almost looks as if it has been kept up.
I pause at the foot of the likely rotten porch steps and glance at my best friend. "Have you been coming here, Hugo? Maintaining the landscape?"
He shakes his head, but my question spurs him to look around. "It's..." His head swivels, taking in the unnatural tidiness. "Not what it should be."
"Not by a long shot."
Who has been here? It had to have been more than one big cleanup, because there's no evidence of anything being uprooted, of disturbed earth. Has somebody been maintaining this place?
"If not you, then who ?"
Hugo says the last word with me, the same question hovering in his eyes. "I can ask around town, see what I dig up?"
I'm already telling him no with the shake of my head. "I don't want to stir up curiosity. Better to let sleeping dogs lie."
Using the toe of my boot, I give the first front porch step a tentative push. The wood does not crumble, so I test it using the full weight of my foot.
"Solid," Hugo comments, stepping up and lending his entire six foot frame to my testing. "Looks like you managed to avoid termites." He does the same to the next two steps, and I wince each time as I wait for him to fall through.
"You coming?" he asks, from the porch landing.
We could be nine years old again, Hugo's black, expressive eyebrows cinching as he tells me he doesn't have all day to play because he needs to train. Even then, Hugo took fencing seriously.
Slim Jim leaps from the ground onto the landing in one graceful arc.
"Your dog is an acrobat," Hugo mutters as he hurries up to walk in front of Slim Jim, just in case any of the wood is rotten.
"You don't have to tell me that," I reply, following my dog and my best friend. "Should have seen him counter surf after I made beef tacos a couple weeks ago. Damn stealthy about it, too." If it hadn't been for the tap, tap, tap of the glass leftover container hitting the countertop, I wouldn't have realized what he was doing.
Hugo stops at the front door. "You know that's bad for them, right? Not only can they eat food that's harmful to them, but they could touch something hot or sharp."
I roll my eyes to the porch overhang, taking note of a giant wasp nest in the corner. "Thank you, Uncle Hugo. You've saved me from almost tying a dinner napkin around Slim Jim's neck and making space for him at my table."
Hugo slaps my back as I fit my old key into the lock. "Someone has to look out for you."
Pretending like his comment doesn't remind me of exactly how alone I am in this world, I shove open the door and stare down my past. "After you." I extend an arm. "If there are any furious raccoons in there, they'll scratch you up instead of me."
"Nice. Then we'll match." He elbows me out of the way and stomps inside.
Hugo has never, not for a single second, allowed me to feel bad for myself. Not when he came and saw me in the hospital on base in San Diego. Not when I stopped returning his calls and he showed up without notice, threatening to kick my ass if I didn't shape up. There definitely won't be any naval gazing allowed now, either.
I understand why. I might have been in a terrible accident that resulted in a handful of surgeries and some massive scarring, but I'm alive. That's more than he can say about his father.
I think I'll tone it down.
Following Hugo into the old home is like being reintroduced to my childhood, albeit with an inch of dust and what is almost definitely mouse droppings. Through the west-facing windows, sunshine bulldozes its way through layers of dust and dirt, relentless and undeterred. The filtered natural light gives the place an eerie quality, leaving parts of it dark and other places dully highlighted.
"I forgot about this wallpaper," Hugo muses, moving to the far wall of the small living room. With one finger he swipes over the royal blue background, the gold flourishes stretching out like fingers, and the tigers in position to pounce. Why the tigers, I'd asked my mom when she finished papering the wall. I was seven. Maybe eight. Because, she'd replied, running her warm palms over my shoulders, tigers are majestic and bold, and they are self-sufficient. It took me a long time to figure out my mother saw such qualities as something to aspire to. She wanted to be self-sufficient, to not let her heartbreak over my dad's departure pull her into the depths. Neither of us could have known that one day, in the not too distant future, it would. And it would be the beginning of the end.
"Yeah," I answer Hugo as he wipes his hand on his jeans. "My mom liked weird shit."
A stab of guilt assails me. I don't mean to sound crass or reductive, but I can't wax poetic on the subject of eclectic wallpaper right now. There are too many feelings, too much emotion to wade through, and what I'd really like to do is set them all on fire.
I knew it was going to be a lot coming in here, coming back to Olive Township at all, but I wasn't expecting to feel quite this affected. Nor was I expecting to see Daisy right away, to talk to her, to watch her tuck away a part of herself, to watch her lips form the words that knocked me over even as I stood tall.
That's Duke. My fiancé.
I wanted to snatch the words out of the air, crush them in my palm. Instead, I snapped. Practically stormed off. She must have thought Peter was a few bricks shy of a load. Maybe I frightened her. It would be for the best, maybe encourage her to stay away from me if she sees me again.
Daisy is an engaged woman, and I am here for a short time to offload a house that should've been dealt with a long time ago. I'm not here to make friends or rekindle foes. No reminiscing, no I remember when , no nothing.
That's it. That's all.
Thunk .
In unison, Hugo's and my head whip toward the sound. Slim Jim bounds to the window, and we follow. A dove lies on the porch floor, unmoving.
Shoulder to shoulder, we stare out the window. "I think that's a bad omen."
"Maybe if it were a raven," Hugo argues. "But doves are, you know, sweet and shit."
"Sweet and shit," I mimic.
The dove blinks, spending half a second in the space between stunned and reality, and begins flapping its wings manically. It rights itself, hopping around before giving its wings a try. It takes off, flying low and unsteadily across the unexpectedly short dead grass.
Hugo turns away from the window, walking into the kitchen and cursing about something he finds there.
I spend another moment gazing out at the yard, mentally sifting through who would keep the yard from disrepair. Someone who only had access to the front yard, which is everybody. Someone who cared, which narrows it down. And someone with the fortitude, loyalty, or just plain stubbornness to keep coming back to a thankless job and zero recognition.
As much as I would like to write this off as an anomaly, or something of little consequence, the truth is, this mystery is going to keep me up at night.