Chapter Seventeen. Duncan
Duncan had been fully sober by the time he’d pulled his truck off the shoulder of County Road 25 eight hours ago, but he still had a skull-cramp headache from Florence Holley’s damned mead.
It had been almost fourteen months since he’d heard Temperance’s husky sighs and shuddery breaths when he sent her over the edge. Now he didn’t want to go another fourteen hours without hearing them again.
Last night when they reached the cabin, he’d put three doors between them. The bedroom door, the cabin’s front door, and the door to his truck. He’d slept crammed into the front bench seat, determined to not fall back into the same messy pattern with her before they had an actual conversation.
It was the same every time. Right as he’d manage to convince himself she was never coming to him again, she would. Sometimes it would be a few months between, sometimes a year. He’d let her climb inside the Goldbergian scaffolding he’d built around his heart, and she’d bang around in there for a few hours. But she’d never stay. And he couldn’t ever be mad about it, either. He was a lovesick scarecrow handing a box of matches to a careless bystander, no right to be surprised when he was burned to ash.
Telling her no was the only thing as miserable as not having her at all. But at least that was something he had full control over. One of these days, it really would be the last time she came to him. She’d finally meet someone worthy of her—another doctor who could care for her like she cared for him, or some well-dressed attorney with soft hands who’d never gotten a sunburn on the back of his neck or broken off his own thumbnail with a fucking hammer.
That morning, he’d snuck in before dawn to grab some clothes and brush his teeth. The bathroom light had a built-in fan that chattered loudly when it ran, so he’d done everything by the light of a battery-powered lantern. Temperance hadn’t stirred—she’d been starfished on his bed with her palms to the ceiling and her head tipped sideways on his pillow. Angry red marched up the side of her neck where he’d buried his face against her skin hours earlier in the truck. He hated himself a little for marking her.
So, he lost the beard by the light of that little lantern.
It wasn’t rational, really. The initial swipe of the razor was impulsive, and maybe a bit of self-flagellation for daring to damage her. But the more of his face he revealed in the mirror, the more it felt like an excavation. He was still the same damned person without the beard as he was with it, but growing it in the first place had been because of her. Getting rid of it now felt symbolic somehow.
The scope of what he had to get done today to recover from last night’s storm would have been daunting even at a time when he wasn’t already juggling a truly alarming number of other things. He’d wanted to replace some of the trellis end posts in the Chardonnay vineyard for a while, but they hadn’t been in bad enough shape to justify the time to fix them when so much else was more urgent. The only good thing about the storm wreaking havoc was that it gave him a reason to deal with some of the things he’d been putting off. An excuse to rebuild them better.
Last night in the truck, Duncan had been baffled to realize that Rowan and Harry were playing them. Sure, there was a chance it was coincidence that they’d used near-identical phrasing with both him and Temperance when they’d had their try to be friends conversations. A damned slim chance.
Peace for the wedding.
It would mean a lot to Rowan.
It would mean a lot to Harry.
Hell.
He wasn’t sure what to make of it yet. Best to wait to see how it played out.
When Temperance first joined him that morning, he’d rattled off a long list of the tasks they needed to tackle. A few of the older trees on the property had fallen, and shingles had flown from the roof of the house by the dozen. The wicker cabana at the pool was blown half over. When some of Rowan’s field crew came around offering to help, Duncan waved them off and told them they had it under control.
Maybe he was punishing her a little for what she did to his truck last night.
Maybe he just wanted an afternoon alone with her.
Maybe both.
Four hours in, Temperance struggled to get through a snapped cedar post with a small battery-powered reciprocating saw. She pressed the vibrating blade into the wood, screeching in frustration when it seized up for a third time instead of slicing through.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa—stop, stop—” Duncan approached with hands raised.
She released the trigger and sank to her knees, then sat back on her heels. “I hate this.”
He lifted the saw out of her hands. “You’re making it harder than it needs to be. You have to let the tool do the work, baby.”
Temperance swung her head up. “What did you just say?”
Duncan’s heart thudded into his gut when he realized the linguistic misfire. He’d lost the right to call her that more than a decade ago. “I said—” He kept his voice steady. “You gotta let the tool do the work, lady.”
She studied him through narrowed eyes, but she didn’t push back.
Sweat ran freely down his temples, bypassing his brows to sting the outer corners of his eyes. He lifted his ball cap and dragged the back of his bare hand across his forehead. Little pieces of grit bit into his skin.
Temperance’s face was flushed, and strands of her hair were stuck to her forehead and cheekbones in a sheen of sweat.
“You doing okay?” Duncan pulled a clean white bandana from the back pocket of his jeans. He waved it in front of her face.
“White flag, hmm?” Temperance chuckled and took it from him to dab her forehead and the bridge of her nose. She laughed low. “You surrendering?”
Yes. For weeks.
He picked up her tumbler of water and extended a hand down to her. “I think we need a break.”
THEYsat in the shade of Cloud Tide’s old beech tree near the pond. By the size of it, it was at least a hundred years old. Decades ago, someone had carved the initials RJ + BS into its massive trunk. Late last fall, Duncan had hung a simple swing made from a wide slat of reclaimed barnwood and some leftover hemp rope. Temperance sat on it, and Duncan lowered himself to the grass beside her. He ached from his shoulders to the beds of his fingernails.
Alice, Grey, and Charlotte stood at the end of the pond’s floating dock. Little Grey wore a life jacket faded to a sad grayish pink by the sun. In the shade of another nearby tree, Malcolm sat jotting in a notebook. He greeted them with a simple raise of his palm and a tight smile, then he returned his attention back to his writing.
The world felt slow-motion—even the birdsong overhead seemed to play at half speed, and there was no breeze. The humid air was as still as cold honey.
Temperance let go of the swing’s ropes. She winced as she took off her work gloves. Duncan got to his knees in front of her and cupped her right hand in both of his, raising it to look more closely. Matching oval blisters had formed on her middle fingers, just above the first knuckle of each.
“Hang on.” He removed his own gloves and pulled out his pocket first-aid kit—a sealed plastic baggie with a few adhesive bandages, alcohol wipes, and a twisted, nearly empty tube of antibiotic cream inside.
She let him tend to her hands, and her attention stayed locked on his face as he worked. When he finished, he rubbed sweat from his cheek with a quick lift of his shoulder.
“Not perfect. Should help cushion the blisters, at least. Make sure to wash with soap and water later, and try to leave them alone—”
Temperance had her lips rolled between her teeth to pin down a smile, and her eyes were soft.
“Shit.” Duncan chuckled and tucked the baggie into his back pocket. “I’m giving basic first-aid advice to a doctor.”
“Your bedside manner is impeccable.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he growled.
“Really. Thank you.” A drop of sweat caught and hovered on the high arch of her cheekbone. It streaked like a tear down her jawline.
Temperance reached down to lift his hands. She rubbed her thumbs gently over the stained calluses at the base of his fingers. Compared to the willowy softness of her hands, his looked like bear paws. A fresh scrape arced across the heel of his palm—not enough to bleed, but enough to make his skin sandpapery. There was a black bruise under the fingernail of his left thumb where he’d glanced it with a framing hammer.
“You abuse your hands,” she said.
“I work hard. Can’t help it.”
Another gentle swipe with the pads of her thumbs. “You should be more careful.”
He tilted his right hand. The scar along the outer edge was silvery pink. “Remember this? We were fifteen, I think?”
She let his hands go and stood from the swing. “Oh god.”
“That gnarly old fence at Maren and Nate’s. You marched me into the house—”
She tightened her ponytail. “Don’t say it.”
“And you got that stuff out of the cabinet under the sink in the bathroom—”
Temperance sat beside him in the grass and put both hands over her face. “You are the worst.”
“Poured it on—”
“No,” she moaned.
“You used nail polish remover”—Duncan paused for dramatic effect—“on my open wound.”
“I panicked. I thought it was peroxide—”
“Christ, I almost passed out from the pain.”
“You screamed so loud, Harry and your dad both came running—”
“Then you started crying—”
“I felt horrible, Duncan.”
“Clearly, you’ve always had the instincts of a medical professional.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She echoed his dissembling from moments ago.
Quieter, Duncan said, “I mean it, Temperance. You are the best person I know.”
Bees drifted between clover blossoms tucked into the grass, and other bugs zinged through filmy rays of sun like tiny shooting stars. They sat in silence for a long time. Now that he’d loaded the conversation with something heavier than silly teenage nostalgia, neither of them was sure how to carry it forward.
“Uncle Duncan!” Grey waved from the dock with both little hands.
Grateful for the distraction, Duncan left Temperance in the shade and went to greet the kids. When he crouched to their level, they wiggled around him like tadpoles. From his pocket, he pulled out a second small plastic baggie, this one filled with leftover breakfast sausage for the kids to use as bait.
Seconds after he plunked his hook into the water, Grey reeled in a big bluegill. The fish swung through the air, thrashing at the end of the line. Alice squealed when it smacked her in the back of her head, and Grey’s excitement quickly turned to horror when the gravity of the situation hit him. There was an animal swaying in front of his face—spiny and cold, its eyes bulging open in a permanent expression of surprise.
Grey screamed.
The fish flailed itself free, dropping back into the pond with a graceful plonk.
Duncan kneeled beside Grey. His fingers spanned the entire breadth of the little boy’s back.
“Hey, buddy, look. He was fine. Just needed to get back in the water. Fish breathe different from us.”
Alice looked on, scowling after the unexpected bluegill assault. She’d be grumpy the rest of the afternoon if he didn’t distract her out of it. “Hey, Ace,” Duncan said. “What do you call a boomerang that doesn’t come back?”
Alice looked at him suspiciously, but her posture softened. “What?”
“A boomerwrong.”
She cracked the tiniest grin and returned to fishing.
Duncan could feel Temperance’s attention on him the whole time. He smiled up at her, and she smiled back. The moment felt uncomplicated and easy, but their eye contact held a little longer than it needed to.
He turned his attention back to Grey. The little boy sniffed and took a shuddery breath. “He was so scared.”
“Nah. He was excited. I do that same dance every time I see you for the first time each day. You’ve just never noticed.” Duncan shimmied his upper body and wiggled his eyebrows. Grey smiled a little. “Hey. You wanna go back to fishing without a hook?”
Grey nodded and sniffed again. Duncan picked up a net and led the little boy to the opposite end of the dock from the girls. He lay on his belly to show him a better technique for catching minnows, and left the little boy to swipe haphazardly through the water, catching more bubbles than fish.
Duncan rejoined Temperance under the tree. He sighed. “I’ll need to remember to dance every time he sees me now.”
“You’re a good uncle.” An enormous dragonfly with wings like miniature stained-glass windows landed on her wrist. She blew gently on it, and it flickered away.
“Eh.” He cracked his knuckles. “I lied to him.”
“He’s eight,” she said. “You didn’t lie, you softened the truth.”
“Same thing. Eight is plenty old enough to learn that if you’re not ready to deal with a hooked fish, you shouldn’t bait a line.”
“Wow. When did you get so philosophical?”
“That’s not philosophy, that’s fact. Maybe I have hidden depths you’ve never seen before.”
Softly, she said, “I guess there’s a lot about each other we don’t know.” She cleared her throat and gestured to the pocket he’d pulled the baggie from. “Case in point—when did you start to carry leftover sausage in your pocket?”
Duncan smiled. “Can’t use worms. It upsets the kids to hook ’em.”
“See? Good uncle.”
“Did you know Maren tried to get them to call me Duncle? One word. Like Usher, or Adele.” He cut his eyes over to her. “But cooler. Obviously.”
“Obviously.” Temperance matched his earnest tone, but her lips twitched in a small smile.
The dragonfly was back. This time, it landed on Duncan’s forearm, its colorful body camouflaged against his ink. He waved it away and squinted against the glare of late-day sun on the water.
“Your dad jokes are top tier, by the way.”
Duncan’s hand was close enough to hers in the grass that he felt the heat from her skin. “It’s a little-known fact that uncle jokes are superior to dad jokes.” He laughed low and picked a blade of grass. “You still want to have kids? Someday?”
“Yeah. You?”
“A dozen,” he said. “At least.”
“Always figured I would’ve by now.” She twisted his bandana around her hand.
So did I.
“Temperance—”
“Uncle Duncan!” Charlie cried. “Come see!”
In unison, they both swiveled their attention to the kids. Duncan hung his head for a moment and blew a frustrated laugh through his nose. He stood and looked down at Temperance. “We’re not done yet,” he said.
He hustled back to the dock as Alice reeled in a long glob of stringy green algae. Charlie squealed out a protracted “Yeewww.”
Duncan took the pole and laid it on the dock. He sank again into a squat. “Ah, my friends, this is a prize catch here.” Strand by slimy strand, he removed algae from the hook.
All three kids looked at him with a healthy dose of skepticism. Under the tree, Mal set aside his notebook and tipped his sunglasses down his nose to watch. Duncan felt Temperance’s eyes on him, too.
“Listen, this is the rare and mystical grass bass, and we are very lucky to be in its presence,” he said.
“Ohh,” Grey said.
Duncan pulled more strands away. “You each get a wish.”
Charlie scoffed. “That’s not true.”
Duncan put on an exaggerated academic-sounding accent. “Says whom?”
“Uncle Duncan.” Charlie made a frustrated sound in the back of her throat. “That’s not even a fish.”
Unlike his cousin, Grey was eager to believe in the magic of the mystical grass bass. “I wish for a puppy!”
Alice spoke in a rush. “I wish for Anthony Roanhouse to fart in social studies, and everyone hears it, and he’s embarrassed forever and ever, amen.”
Charlie gave her an odd look. “You don’t say ‘amen’ after you make a wish, Ace.”
Duncan waved a hand. “It’s fine. The grass bass isn’t very particular about phrasing formalities.” He lowered his voice, and the kids leaned in toward him to hear. “Sometimes, it can even grant wishes you’ve only said inside your head. You don’t even have to say them out loud.”
“I want a mom,” Charlie blurted. She flicked her eyes to where her dad sat under the tree. Then she looked at Alice and muttered, “Amen.”
“Huh.” Duncan’s heart grew a size and broke clean in two. “I’m not sure moms are within the grass bass’s magical purview, sweetheart.”
“What’s your wish, Uncle Duncan?” Alice said.
The kids looked at him in anticipation. Beneath the tree, Temperance sat cross-legged, watching. She leaned forward, elbows on knees. Mouth soft, eyes like a summer sky. He stared back at her so long, her smile slipped, and she looked down at the limp white bandana in her hands.
White flag.
“It’s okay, Uncle Duncan.” Grey patted him between the shoulders with a tiny hand, the same way Duncan had soothed him earlier. “You don’t have to say it out loud for it to count.”
“Ah, well.” He knuckled his jaw and looked back to the kids. “We already used up all the wishes anyway. That’s all we get, friends.”
A collective aww of disappointment rippled through his tiny audience. Duncan hopped to his feet, effortlessly switching back to fun-uncle mode. He held some of the green stuff above his open mouth like spaghetti. The kids screamed with laughter.
After he sat back down under the tree, Temperance put a bit of extra distance between them by inching sideways in the grass. “You shouldn’t sit so close. I smell awful. Weapons-grade.”
“Come on, don’t you run marathons in ninety-degree heat?” Duncan made a half-assed attempt to grab her.
She leaned away, laughing. “I never want anyone to know my body is capable of this.”
“‘Never’ is for cowards.”
“Listen, sometimes ‘never’ is very necessary.”
“Like, never fry bacon while naked?”
She plucked a clover blossom and twirled it under her nose. “Never use the ass-end of a towel to dry your face.”
When he advanced again, Temperance squealed and swatted him with the sweaty bandana. She tried to scuttle backward, but he crawled to her on hands and knees, caught her ankle, and surged over her.
Her fingernails dug into the fabric of his damp T-shirt. Whether she realized it or not, she subtly tugged him toward her instead of pushing him away. “You’ll regret this.”
“Doubtful.”
He snagged her opposite wrist to lift her arm high. Temperance writhed and screamed with laughter, tipping her head back in the grass. The hand that grabbed his shirt pulled tighter, lifting the cotton right out of the waistband of his jeans.
Duncan made his way up her body. He pressed his face to her ribs, the bend of her elbow, her armpit. “Mmmm. This is artisanal,” he moaned against the side of her neck.
There was something musky and primal about her after last night in the truck. His scent was all over her.
She smelled marked.
Duncan released her wrist and rose up over her. Laughter faded, and her arm fell gently down, draping loose around the back of his neck. Her hair was a thistle gone to seed, strands of it threaded through the grass around her. Her glasses were foggy along the bottom edge from the heat of her body, and her pupils spread into the blue of her eyes.
He was hard against her leg. Conspicuously so.
Hell.
Duncan rolled sideways and shot to his feet. He extended a hand down to help her up. Then he bent to retrieve his ball cap, setting it on her head instead of his own. Her cheeks were lit with a heat that had little to do with the ambient temperature. Other parts of her body flushed that very same color when she—
“You drink tea,” she said out of nowhere. She glanced up at the bill of the hat, but she left it on.
Interesting pivot. He rubbed the back of his neck where her hand had been. “I do. Why?”
“It’s just—something I didn’t know about you.” She brushed blades of dry grass from her shoulders. “We’ve known each other for so long, it just feels like we should already know everything about each other. But we don’t.”
“But we don’t,” he echoed.
“It’s what made your beard smell like cloves, isn’t it?”
Duncan nodded once. “Mal calls it my granny tea. It’s, ah—faster and more consistent than coffee in the mornings.”
“You planning to grow the beard back, granny?” Her eyes twinkled.
He chuckled. “Haven’t decided yet.”
They both turned their attention back to the kids on the dock. Softly, Temperance said, “Sometimes it feels like you and I could actually be friends.”
“No.” The single word came out harsher than he intended. It dropped like a stone between them.
“Why?”
“Look at me. Look me in the eyes, Temperance, and tell me we can be friends.”
“We have to. We can’t get back to a place we burned the bridge to.”
“I build things—I fix things, damn it. It’s what I do—”
“Duncan—”
“And if it’s too broken to fix, I figure out how to build it new—”
Suddenly, raindrops poured down on them, even though the sky was as bright and blue and cloudless as it had been moments before. They both looked up, squinting into the overhead branches of the tree.
Everything happened faster than Duncan could process in the moment, though he would replay it in his mind countless times in the following days.
Branches above shuddered and sent down dozens of burgundy beech leaves to join the fall of water. Then, an abrupt crack of sound. An eerie whoosh of something massive moving faster than physics should allow.
A dead limb the size of a canoe broke loose high in the tree—and it swung straight for Temperance.