Chapter Thirteen. Duncan
Duncan found everyone at Praise Cheeses, a novelty grilled cheese truck out of Philly. With unique offerings like melted Brie and honey, apples and Gouda, and goat cheese with bacon and dates, they were one of the most popular trucks at events around the valley. They even had a vegan option with cashew cheddar on sourdough with a fat slice of heirloom tomato.
Nate wiped tears from his eyes after his first bite of a thirty-dollar sandwich stuffed full of half a pound of lobster and Gruyère. The bread was grilled crisp in Old Bay–infused butter. “I’ve peaked.” He rested his hands on his belly. “I’ll never feel this way about anything ever again.”
Maren laughed and threw a wadded-up napkin at his chest.
The kids finished their sandwiches well before the adults did. They were bored, clamoring to go to the Linden Free Clinic tent. It always had a face painter and baskets of freebies—fidgets, pencils, lip balms—but Aunt T.J. was as much a draw as all the goodies were.
Grey tugged on Duncan’s forearm. The little boy angled his butt backward to put his full weight into it, but Duncan didn’t budge. He made a fist and flexed upward, lifting a giggling Grey off the ground.
“Pleeeease, Uncle Duncan?” Alice said. Charlie stood beside Alice with her little hands clasped beneath her chin.
Nate and Maren gave him a nod and a shrug when he raised his brows their way.
“Fine, fine,” he said, and the kids cheered. “Let’s get Aunt T.J. a snack first, okay?”
Temperance was talking to another member of the clinic staff when they got there. The kids ran ahead to swarm her in a group hug. She had a stethoscope looped around her neck, along with a lanyard identification card.
Duncan held a little brown bag toward her as he approached. “Maren said you skipped breakfast.”
Temperance squinted and said, “Hmm,” but her belly betrayed her with an audible growl. She primly peeked into the bag, then popped her head up in delight. “You didn’t.” The edges of her teeth pinned her bottom lip, and her pupils widened like inkblots into a thin ring of blue.
While the kids lined up to pillage the freebies, Temperance sat in the grass with Duncan under a nearby tree. She crossed her legs and arranged her skirt around her, then unwrapped the sandwich with reverence. The thick slices of bread were an alarming shade of orangey red, crusted with crushed Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and grilled to a buttery crisp.
“You’re a horrible influence.” She took a bite, stretching the melty cheddar. She used her tongue to loop it into her mouth.
The sound of pleasure she made drilled straight into Duncan’s id.
Her eyelids fluttered in bliss. “Thank you.”
“Look in the bottom of the bag,” he said.
She pulled out a small plastic baggie filled with dill pickle slices. “You remembered.”
The wistful sweetness in her voice made his throat tighten. “You know I’m violating my personal code of food ethics to enable this behavior.”
“Don’t knock it until you try it.” Temperance tucked a few pickles into the sandwich and took a bite.
“Pass.” He snagged a pickle slice from the bag. “I’m a pickle purist.”
Temperance swiped at him as he leaned away to pop it into his mouth. “Watch it. You know what happens when you take my food.”
“Cutlery shouldn’t be weaponized, Teacup.”
She shrugged. “I expected you to be faster.”
“You stabbed me in the hand with a fork.”
“You shouldn’t put your fingers into unauthorized plate space,” she mumbled around a full mouth.
“You drew blood.”
“It was the last piece of your dad’s leche frita. The stakes were very high.”
“Sadist.” He laughed.
“Thief,” she fired back.
They both smiled and held each other’s eyes for a tiny beat too long.
Temperance was the first to look away. She dabbed her lips with a paper napkin.
“I’ve never had Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, you know,” Duncan said.
“I feel sad for you and your unsophisticated palate.”
“Listen, if you want to talk about unsophisticated, please remember how many twelve-inch hoagies I’ve seen you take down over the years.”
They both laughed.
Between bites, Temperance told him about her day. Coppery sunshine glittered on her face through the lattice of leaves overhead, and warm wind animated that loose ribbon of hair around her lovely face like a punctuation mark.
The kids ran over, calling her name. They still had on their ROWAN KEEP GOIN’ shirts.
Temperance said to Duncan, “I hope you saved me one of those shirts.”
“Of course I did,” he said.
Grey took her by the hand when she stood. “Come listen to our heart beeps.”
Thank you, she mouthed over her shoulder. She let Grey lead her back to the tent.
Duncan gathered the empty bags and followed.
Each year, the Linden Free Clinic was a regular presence at area fundraisers, festivals, and school events, offering a range of wellness tests like glucose and blood pressure checks. Brennan Everett was there in his Linden Township Fire Station ball cap doing car seat safety talks, and Reese Culpepper offered free haircuts. There were informational brochures and postcards about everything from nutrition guides to vaccination facts to Lyme disease symptoms. There were even boxes where people could donate old pairs of eyeglasses and old cell phones.
Temperance washed up at a portable sink with a foot pump. Grey side-eyed the digital blood pressure monitor when she approached with it. “Does it hurt?” he said.
“It’s a little squeezy,” she said. “And you have to sit very still. Can you do that?”
Grey thoughtfully pushed out his bottom lip. “Do Uncle Duncan first.”
Their eyes met over the little boy’s head, and Temperance comically raised her eyebrows.
The pediatric cuff she held would barely fit around his wrist. Temperance swapped the cuff on the portable monitor for the largest adult size they had and strapped it around his biceps. When she bent toward him, her braid fell heavy over her shoulder, bringing with it the cool floral scent of her.
“My usual patients are much cuter than you,” she said, loud enough only for him to hear.
Duncan cupped his hands over his knees. “They probably don’t follow directions as well as I do, though.”
“Mm. Debatable.”
As she attached the cuff, her fingertips grazed the sensitive skin of his inner arm, and her knuckles brushed against his rib cage. He twitched and cleared his throat.
“Still ticklish?” she said.
“Never was. I just couldn’t handle being touched by you back then.”
“Liar.” Temperance’s eyes twinkled. “Put your arm across your belly and be still.”
He did. “See? Good listener.”
She held his gaze and pushed a button on the monitor. The cuff squeezed.
Ow, he mouthed.
She pressed her lips into a little pout and made a faux tsk of sympathy. Her eyes danced.
Moments like this reinforced how much he just—liked her.
“Try to breathe normally, Mr. Brady,” she said, and damn it if she didn’t intentionally brush her breasts against his arm when she reached for a drink of water from her tumbler.
He chuckled. “Trust me, I’m trying.”
A familiar tightness gathered in his chest, and his throat constricted.
Ah, shit.
Hiccup.
Temperance leaned back to look him in the eye. “You still get hiccups when you’re nervous?”
“No.”
Hiccup.
When the cuff released its pressure, Temperance removed it from his arm.
“Blood pressure is a little high right now, Mr. Brady. Pulse is elevated, too.” Her tone was serious, but her expression was playful. “Have you been feeling okay?”
“I guess—” Duncan rubbed his arm. “Ah—doctors make me nervous.”
“How did it feel, Uncle Duncan?” Alice said.
He gave the kids a reassuring smile. “Like a nice hug.”
Hiccup.
Grey pointed at the stethoscope around her neck. “Listen to his heart beeps now, Aunt T.J.”
“Ah, yes.” She tucked in the earpieces and laid the chest piece flat against Duncan’s upper back, then held a finger to her lips with her free hand. “Lung sounds first.”
Duncan squared his shoulders and sat up straighter as she bent toward him again. His heart kicked like a stalling engine. She had a clinical front-row seat to the way she affected his physiology.
He focused on a spot on the ground to count individual blades of grass.
When she moved to the front of his chest, he said, “Might not hear anything in there.”
“Hm?” She hesitated.
“Been living without a heart since I was eighteen.”
“Wow.” Temperance pressed her lips between her teeth. “Red flag.” She laughed.
Duncan grimaced. “I know. That was bad.”
She sighed through her nose, but her eyes twinkled. “No more talking.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Temperance finished the exam and reported to the kids with a formal tone. “Well, my friends. My diagnosis is that your uncle Duncan has a very big and very strong heart.”
Duncan stood. He thumped his hand against his chest and gave the kids a stoic smile.
“Me next!” Grey climbed into the chair.
Temperance gave all three kids the same treatment she gave Duncan, verbally guiding them through everything she did. She spoke to them gently, with clarity and a touch of humor, and she tailored her language and movement to each child. With Grey, she pretended to listen to his brain with the stethoscope in the middle of his forehead. “This brain is full of fart jokes and random facts about—one moment, please. I’m picking up a different signal.” She moved around to the side of his head. “Ah, yes—sea turtles, Roblox, and, oh, my goodness—your favorite auntie, Temperance. I love you, too, buddy.” Then she let Ace listen to her heart through the stethoscope, and she had a few dry one-liners for Charlie. Temperance had always treated Charlie with the same affection as Ace and Grey, even though she wasn’t her niece by blood.
Duncan and Temperance stood in momentarily awkward silence after the kids scurried away to line up for face painting. The little ones had provided a buffer between them that made the playful flirtation easier. Now that they were alone, the air seemed charged.
“So what’s going to happen now?” Duncan said.
Temperance tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “With—?”
“The clinic.”
“I don’t know. It’s complicated. Remember the grant I mentioned to you a few weeks ago? My parents offered to fund the clinic through Capewell-Talbot if I help them. I’ve been trying to get a loan to keep the lights on. My codirector has talked a bit about fundraising, but that would take months for us to even begin. We could probably try an appeal to the university trustees, but that would involve a lawyer, which means money, and there’s no guarantee it would even work. It’s just so much uncertainty.”
“So you only try for something if you know you’ll succeed?” Duncan said.
She looked unamused. “Not the time for teasing.”
“I’m serious.”
“Well, maybe, I guess? It’s a good way to never be disappointed.”
“You must not want it bad enough.”
Temperance slipped her thumb and forefinger beneath her glasses and squeezed the bridge of her nose. “Don’t tell me what I want.”
“You could just try. Trust the process.”
She laughed. “Duncan, trust the process is one of those skeevy corporate heuristics used to gaslight employees. It’s right up there with assume positive intent.”
Duncan made a face. “I think assume they tried their best with the information and resources available to them at the time is much better.”
“Hmm. That one wouldn’t look as nice as a tagline on a motivational poster, though.” Her throat tensed, her mood darkened. She looked away. “This clinic is where I fell in love with medicine.”
The effort it took to not reach out and touch her knotted the muscles in his shoulders and cramped his fingers. “Tell me,” he said.
“My second year of med school, there was a little boy brought in by his parents. A toddler. Bruises all over his legs, his arms. Bloody nose.” She glanced at him, then looked down to nudge her foot around in the grass. “Some of the social work students got involved, and the parents were beside themselves once the questions made it obvious they suspected abuse. I butted in, advocated for an immediate CBC. Thankfully, the attending who was there that night agreed with me.”
“He had ITP, didn’t he,” Duncan said.
“He did. He was so tiny, Duncan.” Temperance rubbed her nose and looked up at the tent top. “It helped me finally feel some peace about my own diagnosis. Some meaning. Like I was meant to be there that night. Recognize what I was seeing.” She twisted her name badge around in her fingers. “His platelets were so low by then, just a sneeze or a cough could have caused a brain bleed. For weeks after, I thought about how—if they’d tried to separate him from his parents that night instead of listening to me, and he’d started crying hard, like toddlers do—” She shook her head and took a shuddery breath. “It was the first time I felt like being a doctor was more than just what my parents wanted. It felt like it could be mine. Important.”
Duncan didn’t realize he was staring until she glanced up at him. She shielded her eyes from the sun slanting in through the open front of the tent.
“What?” she said.
“Ah—I was just thinking about how I never got to know that version of you.”
The tilt of her head was stubborn, but her eyes were gentle. “I’ve always been the same me, Duncan.”
“I’m starting to realize that.”
Softness on Temperance Madigan was a double-edged blade. Any hint she might still feel something real for him had the paradoxical effect of making him feel that much worse. Give him adversarial Temperance any day, or frosty Temperance, or the Temperance who rolled her eyes at his stupid jokes and mixed idioms. He knew exactly where he stood with her. That Temperance made it easy for him to not have to try.
This one, though. This Temperance he wanted to bury himself in—physically, metaphorically, existentially. This Temperance was the opposite of a distraction. She was the force that grounded him, made him want to slow down.
Hell. They were all the same Temperance, and he’d never stopped being in love with her.
“Hey.” Duncan knuckled his jaw. “Can we talk later? Somewhere else?”
Temperance began to answer, then looked past him. Her posture drew up straighter, like an invisible hand had tugged marionette strings above her head. Duncan turned. Two men approached.
“Hey, Temperance,” said the shorter of the two. He had a leathery tan and curly nineties-sitcom-dad hair. A lanyard ID similar to Temperance’s hung around his neck. In his badge photo, he looked to be at least ten years younger. He smiled and extended a hand toward Duncan.
He glanced at the spotless skin of the doctor’s palm and instinctively wiped his own hand on his jeans. No matter how much he scrubbed, the evidence of his livelihood was as indelible as the ink tattooed into his forearms. But the doctor didn’t match Duncan’s hesitation. His shake was firm and congenial—a strong-fisted pump-pump-pump. “Ike Elias,” he said.
“Hi there.” He nodded. “Duncan Brady.”
The other guy appeared to be barely older than Duncan. He was so smoothly bald that the midafternoon sunshine gilded the top of his dark brown head with gold. His lanyard also identified him as a doctor. “Coleman Bello.” The man smiled and nodded toward Duncan’s forearms. “Incredible ink. I’m just getting started myself.” When they ended the handshake, he turned his wrist up to reveal a tattoo of a stylized rib cage in the shape of a heart.
“Nice.” Duncan returned the smile. “Hell of a tender spot for your first, though.”
Temperance smiled up at both men. She was unmistakably fond of them. “Ike was my favorite attending at the clinic when I was in med school. He volunteers for us sometimes. I’ve known Cole since high school. He went to Duke for residency, but for some reason he left that lovely North Carolina weather to come back here. Now he’s my codirector.”
Another man approached. Tall, built like a fitness model, wearing teal scrubs. He had a disproportionately small head with an airy tuft of blond hair, and a weak chin that no number of hours in the gym would improve for him.
“Afternoon, Doctors,” Weak Chin said. He stood close to Temperance and towered over her in a way that made her have to tip her head back to look at him.
She stood her ground. “Erik.”
“Dr. Erik Uttridge.” The guy met Duncan’s eyes, and, unlike the other two men, he wielded the doctor honorific like a weapon. He turned his head to Temperance and grinned like a mule eating briars. “You going to introduce us?”
When she hesitated, Duncan felt a potent slither of shame in his gut.
“This is”—she cleared her throat—“my friend Duncan Brady.”
Friend.An invisible cloud padded the word from either end—just a friend, and nothing more.
Uttridge snapped his fingers and pointed at him. “Hey, I think I recognize you, man. Were you the one who fixed the scrub sink in the SICU last week?”
Duncan gave him a blank look and crossed his arms over his chest.
Temperance ignored the question. “Why are you wearing scrubs for a wellness event, Erik?”
“Oh, I’m not here to volunteer. I didn’t even work today.” Uttridge gestured to his chest. “Impresses the little barista at the coffee shop in Chapel Ford.”
Bello’s answering look was sour. “Wow, you’re a dick.”
“Indeed.” Uttridge owned it with a quick nod. “Gentlemen. Declan.” Another nod, then he moved on.
“It’s Duncan,” Temperance called as he walked away.
Ike Elias huffed a laugh and shook his head. “What an ass.”
“Good meeting you, Duncan,” Coleman Bello said. “Back to it.”
Once they were alone again, Duncan said, “That guy sucks.”
“I’m sorry he was shitty to you. He has a tiny, tiny mind. Some of the interns last year called him Buttridge.”
“Buttridge, really? I assumed doctors were above that kind of thing.”
She laughed. “Assholes are assholes, even if they’re Doctor Asshole.”
The kids came back. All of them sported cartoon art on their cheeks. A butterfly for Grey (with half a wing smeared because he’d tried to touch it before it was dry), a grinning alligator face for Alice, and a flower with petals the colors of the rainbow for Charlie. Temperance gasped in delight when they came back, as if they’d been painted in gold and diamond dust.
“I’ll be here the rest of the afternoon,” she said. “I’ll find you all later, okay?”
ITwas nearly dark, and Duncan was nearly drunk.
Enclosed firepits were lit at dusk. String bulbs and lanterns flickered on in the half-light. The huge gambrel barn near the front of the park had dusty concrete floors and booths along the inner walls, all serving standard festival fare. Weathered wrought-iron chandeliers hung from the high ceiling, a permanent fixture from the Renaissance festival held there for six weeks every fall.
A storm was inbound. Armchair meteorologists in the concessions barn used phrases like jet stream and wind shear, and something called a derecho. Others mumbled about crop damage, or the threat of Lake Vesper flooding. For Duncan, severe weather had a new weight to it now. Instead of sturdy homes in the suburbs, his family had fifteen acres of land with outbuildings in various states of disrepair and an actively growing vineyard to worry about. And his cabin was smack in the center of a massive flood plain.
Duncan’s first cup of Florence Holley’s mead was intended to wash the taste of Erik Uttridge’s disrespect out of his mouth. It was so strong that the first couple of sips made his eyes water. He knew more people there than not, so he socialized for a while, slipping into the neighborly, smiling veneer that everyone had come to expect from him. Good-time guy Duncan Brady. Youngest son of the Westfall Bradys, and all-around helluva nice dude.
Before he was done with his third cup of mead, he lined up for a fourth. He was halfway through the line when two of his architecture classmates from Linden Community College entered the barn through a side door. Maren and Nate were there, too—about ten yards from where Duncan stood. His brain connected the dots like string on a conspiracy board, and his belly bottomed out. He imagined the five of them converging, and the awkward moment where he’d have to explain how he knew these two fresh-faced twenty-one-year-olds.
Hell.
He bailed from the mead line and slipped around the deserted far side of the barn, where a gravel path gave way to hiking trails into the forest. A bank of bloated purple clouds hovered above a horizon of sooty orange.
Out there, the noise of the crowd inside the barn was muffled, overtaken by the shrill calls of tree frogs and katydids. Three picnic tables were snugged in a dark nook between the back of the barn and a strip of woods, illuminated by a lonely string of old-fashioned multicolored Christmas bulbs. They hung like an afterthought between a hook on the side of the barn and the branches of a tree.
What—who—Duncan saw there almost made him choke on his mead.
Malcolm sat on top of one of the tables, feet on the bench seat, legs wide open. A woman stood between his knees, leaning into him with her hands clamped high on his thighs. The two were engaged in a hungry, devouring kiss—so consumed with each other they didn’t even come up for air when a twig snapped under Duncan’s foot.
The woman was Frankie.
Mal had two white-knuckled fists buried in her hair, kissing her like he was suffocating, and she was pure oxygen.
What the fuck?
Before they saw him, Duncan turned and hauled ass around the dark side of the barn.
He almost laughed. Malcolm—misanthropic, surly Malcolm—was face-deep in Frankie Moreau ten feet away, while Duncan had spent the past hour drinking mead out of paper cups in a dusty-ass barn to try to cope with his feelings for a woman who was no longer his because of his own shitty choices.
Don’t use your past as an excuse to not have a future, Mal had said, a week ago.
When he and Temperance ended, it wasn’t only her he’d lost. His dreams and aspirations had been so tangled up in a life with her, unraveling the two would have been like separating a wheel from its axle and wondering why the damned thing stopped turning. His entire future felt like it had been ripped away. He’d been utterly unprepared for the emotional dead zone left in its wake, incapable of powering through, or moving on, or any of the other bullshit platitudes he was supposed to swallow like a pill then spew out positivity in the next breath.
Mal had been absolutely right that night at the cabin a few weeks ago. It had been far easier to live inside the false narrative that Temperance was meant to be with Harry instead of facing the fact that he’d fucked up so magnificently losing her and the rest of his future at the same time.
And he’d hated himself for it.
But now, he was trying to fix it. Fix his future, anyway. The sheer scope of Cloud Tide’s renovations had lit the fire under him to get back to school and do the thing he’d always wanted to do. And now he was literal weeks away from wrapping up a two-year investment of his time and energy—the first two years of a seven-year plan down. A plan to finally finish his architecture degree.
God, he was tired, though. Already maxed out in every possible way. But Temperance was right there, all the time. His soul itself felt fragile, as if one more tap in just the right place would fracture it clean in two. Even if he had the extra bandwidth to try to make it work with her, there was no time—
“You stack a mountain of responsibilities and tasks and bullshit sky-high on your back so you can barely breathe. Why do you do it?”
Duncan stopped cold. More of his conversation with Mal a week ago came at him like a kick in the gut.
“You’re smart, Ducky. You’ll figure it out.”
He’d spent the last fourteen years piling on responsibilities and distractions, convincing himself the burden was nonnegotiable so there was no way he could logically give it up. What everyone else saw on the surface was a competent, dependable man who got shit done. Underneath, though—he’d kept himself in a constant maxed-out state as one big, multidimensional coping mechanism. Filling the void she’d left. And now that coping mechanism was the very thing making it near impossible for him to even consider trying to make Temperance Madigan his again.
Fucking hell.
He’d figured it out.
Duncan tossed back the last drink of his mead and headed for his truck.