Chapter Fourteen. Temperance
The approaching storm made the whole world feel ominous.
The craft bazaar and food trucks wound down with the sun, and festivalgoers congregated around the fires in stone urns and beneath the lights webbed between the branches of trees. In the flat field beyond the concessions barn, an Irish tin whistle and string quartet played folk songs for a crowd of contra dancers. The scroll of bruise-blue clouds overhead gave the merry music an eerie overtone. Wind snapped pennants and awnings against their moorings, whipping skirts and hair high. It all felt deliciously wild and pagan and free.
Maren and Nate had taken the kids home about an hour ago, and the elder Bradys went home with Rowan and Harry. Temperance had arrived with Frankie, who had disappeared. Frankie often went missing at social gatherings like this. It was usually more surprising when she stayed put for very long. It wasn’t that Frankie was inconsiderate or flaky, or that she went where the wind took her. Frankie was the wind.
Temperance hadn’t seen Duncan since the sun went down.
She knew he was there, though. Like all those times she came back to the valley for a visit or a break from school, there was a low-key hum of tension in her belly that she could run into him anywhere, anytime. Being around him made her restless, and she was restless when he wasn’t around, too. He unbalanced her, simply by existing.
The last she’d seen him was an hour or so ago, through the space between the Crabtree’s Garden Center tent and the Vesper County fire safety trailer. He’d been at the Bristow sisters’ barbecue truck for the third time that day, carrying two big bags of charcoal under one arm. Another was propped up on his opposite shoulder. Millie Bristow followed close behind with a bag of her own. A low-hanging red-and-yellow pennant garland knocked his ball cap off his head when he didn’t duck low enough to clear it, and Millie picked it up after him. Laughing, she put it on her own head and followed him around the back of the food truck.
When Temperance finally spotted him again, he was with another one of the Bristow sisters. Midge, maybe. Or Birdie.
Why did they all have to have such cute names?
Duncan stood at the edge of the field of contra dancers, his head bent low in conversation with Midge-or-Birdie. As he talked, his attention remained on Millie while she danced, and Millie smiled her wide sunshine smile at him, waving as she moved between partners. Duncan returned the wave with a raised hand and a tender smile.
Temperance looked away.
That comfortable camaraderie between them stung far worse than anything else. Millie Bristow got to have a different Duncan than Temperance had ever had. A man with maturity and nuance, and without the burden of angst and unfinished business.
When Temperance looked back up again, Duncan was on the move. He headed toward the corridor of forest that separated the festival from the parking field. The glint of firelight caught on the keys in his hands.
He stumbled, once.
Had he been drinking?
Temperance sent Frankie a quick text to let her know she was going back to Cloud Tide, and to not wait for her. Then she took off after Duncan.
When she fell into step beside him, they walked in silence for a while, arms jostling against each other as they moved through the crowd. When they reached the forest, it felt cooler there, and quieter, cushioned underfoot and overhead by fragrant needles of pine and red cedar. Fireflies winked and sparked in the dark spaces between the trees. They pulsed like tiny searchlights all around them.
“I’m driving you home,” Temperance finally said.
“Nobody drives my truck.”
She crossed her arms. “Oh god, you’re one of those guys?”
Duncan stopped walking. “What guys?”
“One of those millennial Mad Max assholes whose vehicle is some kind of—I don’t know, weird proxy for their masculinity.”
He ran his tongue over his teeth. “It’s a big truck, Temperance.”
“You’re not driving like this.”
His long sigh was punctuated by a frustrated grumble at the end. “Look. I wasn’t going to drive. I’m not a fucking idiot. I was just going to sit there for a while.”
This Duncan was a very different Duncan than the flirty guy with the hiccups earlier at the clinic tent. She gave him an analytical once-over and said, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I’m just tired.”
Liar.
In one quick motion, she snatched his keys away. He reached for her, and she feinted away from the arc of his hand.
“Goddamn it.”
“You’re letting me drive you, or you can find another way home.”
When she emerged into the open field from the cover of trees, a wall of warm wind sideswiped her. Her skirt billowed sideways. Clouds bulged overhead, heavy with rain.
“I had my last drink thirty minutes ago,” Duncan said.
“Blood alcohol concentration peaks thirty to forty minutes after consumption of a single drink. Impairment while driving is still a concern at the two-hour mark if you’ve had three or more drinks—”
He fell in beside her. “My pants get tight when you use your doctor voice on me, you know.” His tone was bland.
Something was definitely wrong. Even his jokey innuendo was a faded version of the real thing.
Lightning blinked in the sky, followed by a roll of thunder. Temperance hit the lock on the key fob to make the truck’s headlights flash. “As soon as this storm opens up, everyone at this festival will try to leave. Then we’re going to be stuck bumper-to-bumper in this lot. You want to get home? We need to leave now.”
Two fireworks exploded overhead. Behind them, the festival crowd cheered, and thunder answered back in kind.
Duncan hooked her arm and pulled her to a stop.
Three young women approached. They stood in a tight shoulder-to-shoulder battle formation. The shorter one in the middle said to Temperance, “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” Temperance said. “But thank you.”
The taller woman with a pixie cut frowned at Duncan. “Aren’t you dating Camilla Bristow?”
Boom, boom.More fireworks, more far-off cheers.
Duncan closed his eyes and let out a ragged sigh. He let her arm go. “It’s complicated.”
“We’re good,” Temperance assured them again.
All three women gave him a final side-eye before leaving. Temperance overheard one of them say, “That was Duncan Brady. She’ll be much more than good tonight.”
Again, Temperance hit the fob to make the truck lights flash. Duncan stayed on her heels as she hustled to it. When they reached the truck, he grabbed her again by the arm.
She looked down at where his hand gripped her. “Who is Millie to you now, Duncan?”
He stared her down, expressionless. Tension rolled off him, and he dropped her arm. “You know what? Never mind. I don’t want to do this with you. There’s no point. We’ll hash some things out, shit will get too real, and you’ll decide we’re done. You’ve always got your shoes laced tight and ready to run.”
She put her hands on her hips. “I’m wearing sandals.”
“It’s a fucking metaphor, Temperance.”
She bent down to slip out of her Chacos. Looking him straight in the eye, she hurled them overhanded, and they landed in the bed of his truck with consecutive thunks.
“Okay, now I’m not wearing any shoes,” she said. “Try me.”
“You’re a pain in my entire ass.”
“Tell me.”
“She’s a friend.”
“She’s on the wedding guest list as your date, Duncan.”
“So?”
Boom.She felt that one in her teeth.
“You don’t bring a friend as a date to a wedding.”
“Is that right?” Duncan quirked a brow. “You were Harry’s date at Patrick and Mercy’s wedding last spring.”
“That’s different,” she said.
Boom. More explosions in the sky, sent rapid-fire, one after the other to beat the rain. The shower of sparks sizzled and hissed, lighting Duncan’s face in green and gold and red. “Exactly. Whose bed were you in that night, Temperance?”
Well. She fell right into that one.
Duncan planted his hands on his hips and tipped his head back. He closed his eyes. “I haven’t been with anyone since April.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“It’s not my story to tell.” His tone fell flat. “But Millie and I aren’t together. I swear it.”
More fireworks burst above them. Five, ten at a time. Each detonation seemed to echo inside her chest. It was hard to tell them apart from the pound of her heart.
“You called me Teacup today. In front of everyone.”
Temperance smelled the sweet earthiness of mead on his breath when he sighed through his nose. She tasted it.
Duncan rolled his shoulders. “It slipped.”
“You want them to find out. About us.”
“Everyone in my family has a nickname. There’s no way they’d think it meant anything.”
“But it does mean something. That’s why you say it.”
“It slips, damn it. It’s always there.” He paced for a moment and breathed up at the sky. The muscles at his temples pulsed when he faced her again. “You’re still holding a big piece of me hostage inside you, and I don’t know how to get it back.”
“Did you go looking for it in other women’s pants? I’ve heard about the size of that box of condoms at your place—”
He laughed and pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. “Ask Mal sometime what’s in that box.”
Temperance held his gaze. “Weird. But okay?”
“Great.” He gave her a tight smile. “Let me know what you find out.”
“Tell me why you’re in Linden every day.”
Duncan looked at her for a long time, and Temperance felt the tension in his body like it was an electric charge. A few fat raindrops fell, landing loud against the parked cars. In minutes, the field would be flooded with people trying to get the hell out of there.
“That—I can’t tell you.”
Temperance watched his face for any sign of reluctance or dishonesty, or anything other than a stony mask. But he was locked down tight in a way she’d never seen before. “This moment,” she said, her tone tight. “Remember it. It was an opportunity to avoid a misunderstanding, and you missed it.”
The fireworks were a barrage now, impossible to tell apart from the lightning and thunder.
“Ah, Temperance. You’re so used to being the smartest person in a room, but there’s a lot you don’t know shit about.”
“Why do you always weaponize my intellect? You’re just as smart as I am. I’ve always been so pissed off at you for never trying to have a future outside the valley—”
That hit a nerve. His upper lip twitched. “You were my future.”
“No.” She thrust a finger forward. “You don’t get to pin that on me, and you especially don’t get to stay mad at me about it for fourteen years.”
The fireworks were a geyser of sound and light now, blowing up the sky.
“You’re still chasing your parents’ validation—”
Boom, boom.
“No. I made my own plans and went after my dreams—”
An explosive laugh. “So, you left the valley. Chased your dreams. Congratulations. But now you’re too fucking scared to stop running long enough to actually start living them.”
“You’re the one who’s still stuck here in the valley, doing the same crap you’ve done since you were eighteen. I grew up.”
Duncan moved fully into her space, crowding her against the truck. He radiated heat like a dark star. “You want to know how grown up I am now, Temperance?”
The words made her lightheaded and heavy-limbed all at once. Another burst of lightning. Answering thunder rumbled so loud and long she felt it in her lungs. Her body was a blood-and-bone barometer. The storm’s agonizingly slow approach felt almost sexual, an elemental edging. A familiar lick of adrenaline lit through her veins, prickling her skin with goosebumps and raising the roots of her hair.
“Go to hell, Duncan.” She pushed past him to get to the driver’s-side door of the truck.
“Already there, sweetheart.” He caught her by the wrist. Again.
The gentle cuff of his fingers against her skin lit up nerve endings through her entire arm. It would have been easier if he’d grabbed her hard. Squeezed, pulled, claimed. This touch was a plea, not a demand, and it was far harder to resist.
“How about this.” Frustration pumped out of him like steam from a kettle. “How about you tell me why this matters to you? Maybe you could give me something for once? Why do you care?”
Warm wind whipped her braid sideways across her throat and thrashed her skirt around her ankles. Night creatures sang shrill and frantic around them, like they were egging on the storm.
“Is it a woman?” she said.
Duncan dropped her wrist. “You are something else.” He studied her for a moment, tipping his head sideways like a curious Labrador. “For the past fourteen years, you barely look at me when you come around, Temperance. I don’t owe you anything.”
Those words landed like a blow. “Do you have a child? Multiple children?”
Duncan froze. “Are you serious?”
“You use these secrets as leverage—”
He barked a short laugh and swiped a palm over his face.
Temperance crossed her arms over her chest. “Why is that funny?”
“Leverage. Millie used that same word.”
“You talk about me—with Millie?”
Behind his lips, he ran his tongue over his teeth. Headlights began to come on in the field as people rushed to their cars.
“You want me to be jealous,” Temperance said.
“I don’t want you to be jealous.” His composure slipped, and he got loud. “I want you to be with me.”
The words landed with unimaginable weight, knocking the wind out of her so completely she felt dizzy. It was a targeted emotional shot across the bow. A little seed of hope cracked open inside her, but it hurt even worse than the absence of it did. Hope was a stubborn, hungry thing. It devoured caution and good sense, and the more you fed it, the bigger it grew. But big hope wasn’t a promise of big possibility. It just meant bigger stakes.
Bigger disappointment.
All at once, the sky ruptured wide, unloading rain like a belly split by a blade.