Chapter Twenty-Two. Temperance
A breath of record heat blew into Vesper Valley.
The electricity had been out at the house since two o’clock that afternoon, a result of the rural power grid being overloaded by wheezing air conditioners. Temperance had a mild headache that day, but it was related more to the unrelenting high temperatures than her head injury. She hadn’t gotten dizzy in a few days, and the pain in her wrist was mostly gone. The bruise on her belly had already begun to fade to a pale olive green around the edges.
She slid on her glasses and blinked at the wall. When she’d set them on the bedside table before her nap a few hours ago, the lenses had been streaked with the tracks of salty tears. Now, they were clear and clean. Her carafe was also full of fresh ice from Nelson’s.
Frankie hadn’t been there to see her since the first day, too busy moving into her new photography studio and apartment in Linden. Harry dropped in a few times throughout the week, but with Rowan away in Spain, he picked up extra per diem shifts to fill the time. Mal spent most of his days battering the keys of an old laptop while he watched the kids. Maren and Nate were working ten-hour days running the business side of Cloud Tide, and Will rarely left his kitchen during daylight hours.
By far, the most constant presence was Duncan.
The one essential thing that Frankie hadn’t been able to find in the boxes of her belongings was the dental night guard Temperance wore to protect her teeth. She clenched her jaw so badly when she slept that she ground holes through her custom-fit guards every few months. After only one night without one, she’d woken up with a stiff neck and a tension headache that had her in tears.
Temperance did a lot of crying these days.
Later that same afternoon, Duncan brought her five different brands of over-the-counter night guards—one that was actually a mouth guard for athletes. He dumped them out of a plastic pharmacy bag in the middle of the bed and helped her open the boxes for each, giving himself a paper cut in the process. One of them fit, and she hadn’t had any more morning headaches since.
On the third day, he’d noticed how broken some of her fingernails were from the work in the vineyard before her accident. So, he’d given her an impromptu bedside manicure, complete with hand massage. He’d kissed her knuckles after.
Five nights in, Duncan and Mal had set up an outdoor movie for the kids. They’d daisy-chained extension cords to power a DVD projector, using the solid stucco wall of the west wing of the house as the screen. In a tent with the front zipped open, the kids lay on sleeping bags, and Mal lounged in a hammock strung between two big oaks. In the back of his truck, Duncan made a comfortable nest with an air mattress and blankets and pillows. Gia had off-loaded most of their DVDs to the thrift store when they’d moved a few years ago, and Twister was the only one they could find. Temperance died a little inside when Ace declared it a movie “from the old days.”
“Old days” notwithstanding, the kids had been hooked by the end of the opening scene. Temperance joined them with a little help from Duncan, but she’d barely made it to the midpoint of the movie. Fatigue swirled around her, and with Duncan as her anchor, she’d let herself drift. When she’d awakened, her head was nestled in the dip of his shoulder, and one leg was flung over his thigh. The night was utterly still and silent around them, too late even for crickets and fireflies and the wind in the trees.
He’d carried her inside sometime before dawn. She found twelve mosquito bites on her legs the next morning.
This week was the longest she’d gone without running since she was eighteen. Once she was able to safely navigate the stairs, she’d spend a few hours in the mornings on the sun-warmed wicker chaise on the porch with one of the romance books that Frankie had brought. Once it grew too hot in the afternoons, she’d retreat inside and spend a few hours on the phone with Coleman and others about the state and fate of the clinic. Her parents hadn’t called at all, thankfully.
From the recessed window seat in her room, or the wicker chaise on the porch, Temperance learned the rhythm and routine of Duncan’s workdays. Every morning, he’d arrive an hour or so after sunrise and chat with Nate and Will in the kitchen below the Primrose room. She couldn’t ever make out the details of their conversations, but the timbre of his voice and the resonant lilt of his laugh were as familiar to her as her own inner monologue. Then he’d leave again and return just after noon. Temperance knew he was coming from Linden because he brought her a fresh cup of Nelson’s ice every day.
Whenever he came to her, he smelled like the rosemary-mint hand soap from the kitchen, and the practical sweetness of wanting to be clean for her made her flush with warmth.
Last night, she’d gone downstairs to get a drink around three o’clock in the morning and found him asleep at the table in the dining room, slumped over an open notepad with his head resting on his upper arm. A laptop was open beside him, the screen saver casting a glow of slowly shifting colors onto his face. A full mug of tea sat untouched just beyond his outstretched hand, like he’d tried and failed to reach it before he’d surrendered to sleep.
Temperance tugged the pull chain on the bedside table lamp. Still no electricity.
After seven days, she could judge the time of day by the way the sun shone into the window. Now, the glow that painted the room was apricot and rose, and shadows stretched long. About an hour before dusk, then.
There wasn’t enough light in the room to read by, and her phone battery was at twenty percent, so listening to a podcast or mindlessly scrolling social media were both out. The waistband of her pajama shorts was damp with sweat, as was the pillow behind her neck. At the open windows, the sheer curtains hung as straight and still as the walls beside them. The ceiling fan was motionless. Her attempt at yoga on the bedroom floor lasted approximately three minutes before she rolled sideways and groaned from boredom. After brushing her teeth and re-braiding her hair, Temperance went downstairs. The grandfather clock in the foyer ticktocked, but without the hum of appliances and music, the house seemed unnaturally silent.
Outside, the day was fading, but the heat was still oppressive. On the glass-topped wicker coffee table sat three open pints of ice cream and a tub of raspberry sherbet, each with four teaspoons sunk down inside. Duncan was there at the porch stairs, waving goodbye to a minivan that pulled down the driveway.
He turned, licking vanilla ice cream off the back of a spoon. The fabric of a slate-colored button-down puckered where it was snug around his biceps. A pair of buff chinos did the same around his quads, but they fit so perfectly otherwise they could have been stitched onto him in place. The way the flat front hugged his hips made them the business-casual equivalent of gray sweatpants.
With one last swipe of his tongue across the back of the spoon, Duncan gave her a slow head-to-toe once-over. His cheeks flooded with ruddy color, and his eyes went a little glassy.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Temperance said.
Duncan cleared his throat and lowered the spoon. “Ah—weird dream last night. You were in it.”
“Oh?”
“We were at the beach.”
“Doesn’t sound weird.”
His answering laugh was dark.
“What happened here?” Temperance asked.
“Just missed it. Freezer-clearing party. Couldn’t let these go to waste.” He spooned out another curl of ice cream and held it out to her. When she shook her head, he brought it to his mouth and made most of it disappear with a hedonistic swirl of his tongue.
The taillights of the van disappeared down the hill. “Is that Maren and Nate?”
Duncan nodded. “Dad and Mal, too. They’re taking the kids to Linden to see a movie tonight. Mostly for the air-conditioning, I think. You want to go? I can call them, tell them to turn around—”
Temperance laughed softly. “No, no.” She perched on the edge of one of the cushioned wicker chairs and stared out over the lawn.
Duncan studied her for a moment, licking the last of the ice cream off his spoon. His mouth lifted in a smug little smile. “You’re bored, aren’t you?”
She groaned and collapsed theatrically into the chair behind her. “Oh my god, Duncan. I am so bored.”
“Go put on some shoes. Let’s go for a ride.”
DUNCANthumped a hand on the green hood of the Gator. Today, the dune flag that projected off the back had a little cartoon bee wearing a cowboy hat, and BEE-HAW printed underneath.
It was an open-topped and doorless utility vehicle, with two seats in the front and a small flatbed in the back. At any moment of the day, there was usually someone zipping around the Brady property on it.
Every flat outer surface of the Gator was covered in stickers. LOVE YOUR MOTHER with a graphic of a smiling earth. BABY ON BOARD and I’M ONLY SPEEDING BECAUSE I HAVE TO PEE. The Linden Community College leopard. Pride flags, racing flags, flags from a dozen different countries. Several versions of the GREETINGS FROM VESPER VALLEY sticker from the Vesper County tourism board. Vinyl logos of everything from Vans to Esso to LEGO.
Like the Gator was a horse-drawn curricle and she was an Austen heroine, Duncan took her hand and helped her into the little bucket-style passenger seat. He had to wedge his big frame into the driver’s side and spread his legs wide around the steering wheel. His thigh settled alongside hers in the tight space.
The Gator rumbled to life. “What’s with all the stickers?”
“There were a few already on the back when I bought it at the farm auction in Linden. A few old political campaign stickers, a few agricultural brand logos. One day last year, there was a new sticker on the hood. It said, TGIF: THIS GRANDPA IS FABULOUS. Over the next few weeks, more kept showing up. Stuck in different places.”
Duncan glanced over at her and smiled. She smiled back.
“Anyway. Pretty sure Rowan started it. Then it just escalated. I think everyone does it now. Vineyard folks, my crew. I find a new one about once a week. I watched Mercy add the one of the rubber duck wearing sunglasses a few days ago,” he said. “Even she’s calling me Ducky now.”
Temperance chuckled. “Where are you taking me?”
“I usually take a spin around at the end of the day to check in before everyone goes home. Hang on.” Duncan pulled away from the house, extending a forearm across her body when the Gator lurched forward. Each knuckle at the base of his fingers was scraped, and his fingernails were freshly bitten since she’d seen him last night.
“Rowan told me about your little rivalry. She said she has to fight you to use this thing every day,” Temperance said. “Why don’t you just get a second Gator?”
“Eh, that’s no fun.” A brow lifted. “She ever tell you about the prank war she started?”
“No, but now I have to know.”
“She left it parked in the vineyard one night last fall. I couldn’t find it that morning when I needed to haul a bunch of stuff down from the equipment garage, so I gave her hell about it. When she brought it back later that morning, she’d left a rubber snake on the floor.” He pointed down between his feet. “Nearly pissed myself.”
“If you’d fussed at her, it’s what you deserve.”
“Probably.” Duncan glanced over with a quick smile. “Things devolved from there. We’d go back and forth—a whoopee cushion under the seat. Raw trout under the hood. She put tasseled nipple pasties on the headlights once.” He shook his head and sighed. “I can’t win. It’s like being in an ass-sniffing contest with a Doberman.”
“Rowan definitely doesn’t like to lose.”
Despite keeping her entire lower body in a controlled clench that would’ve made her Pilates teacher proud, Temperance’s sweat-slick thigh rocked lengthwise against Duncan’s with every sway of the Gator. It growled down the hill to the west pasture barn, where Rowan’s Katahdin sheep lived with their notoriously overprotective bodyguard—the donkey with an inexplicable dislike of Duncan. Asparagus.
As they pulled up and parked, the sheep crept like synchronized swimmers along the outer fence of the Chardonnay vineyard nearby. The donkey followed close behind, nibbling clover.
Temperance stayed in the parked Gator while Duncan chatted with the two men who’d finished the new metal roof on the barn. There were lots of nods, lots of laughter, and at least one “I’ll be damned” from Duncan. As he left, his hip knocked into the tin bucket hung on a fence post. The Bradys didn’t have a sheepdog, so Rowan had trained the flock to come when she rattled treats in the bucket every evening. A chorus of excited bleats went up in the distance, and the little flock rumbled toward them. The donkey trotted close behind.
“Ah, shit,” Duncan muttered. He did an about-face and disappeared into the barn.
Temperance hopped out of the Gator and hustled to the open double doorway of the barn as the sheep arrived, nudging around her legs to get to Duncan. She put herself bodily in the donkey’s way, splaying her arms wide and making what she hoped was a threatening hissing noise in the animal’s face.
“No,” she shouted when the donkey tried to push past her.
Asparagus stopped and flicked her ears forward and back, then blew a bored breath out of her big nostrils. It was warm, smelling of grass and grain.
Over her shoulder, she warned, “Duncan. Your friend is here.”
Then he was behind her, his body warm against her back. He settled his hands on her shoulders, and she dropped her arms. Against her ear, he whispered, “Don’t move. She smells fear.”
A few tense seconds passed. Asparagus swished her tail and took a slow step closer, and Temperance planted her feet wider. Duncan’s hands slid down to her elbows, holding her gently against him.
The donkey raised her head and let out a squeaky vibrato heeee right in Temperance’s face.
Duncan laughed.
Temperance made an annoyed sound. She tugged her arms free and whirled on him.
Still laughing, Duncan gave her a quick pat on the ass and moved out from behind her. Asparagus made little wheeze-whistle sounds of donkey joy as he took her blocky head in his hands. “Were you”—he looked back at Temperance over his shoulder—“protecting me?”
“You’re a jerk.” She shoved him in the arm.
His laughter faded. “I’m sorry. You were so ferocious. I’ve never seen anything more terrifying.” He rubbed the donkey’s cheeks and pressed his forehead between her eyes, and she made a contented snuffling sound. “Asparagus and I are buddies now. Must have been the beard she hated.”
Temperance crossed her arms over her chest. “So what happens when it grows back all the way?”
“Maybe I won’t let it.” Duncan turned away from the donkey and rubbed the dark shadow on his jaw.
“I thought you had reasons”—she used her fingers to curl air quotes around reasons—“for the beard?”
His attention dipped to her neck. “I’ve got reasons to leave it off, too.”
THEYwere waved down several times on their way to their next stop, by people wanting to chat with Duncan before they left for the day. Each person he encountered was genuinely pleased to see him, and everyone got at least a few minutes of his full attention. One of the guys from his maintenance crew planned to propose to his girlfriend tomorrow, and Duncan asked about her by name. He even checked in with one of the vineyard workers about her dog—a mastiff named Gravy who struggled with seasonal allergies. By the way the young woman’s eyes and posture softened—and by the way she gnawed the inside of her lip when she glanced at Temperance—she had a devastating crush on Duncan Brady.
Temperance couldn’t blame her.
Their next stop was south, down the hill to the bank barn.
A crew from a landscaping contractor in Linden was on day two of laying pavers for the firepit patio adjacent to the winery’s tasting room. An electrician was there, too, plotting placement for two electric vehicle charging stations in the parking area. Temperance remained with the Gator while Duncan jogged over to socialize and get a recap of the day.
Finally, they went north to a pasture of gently rolling hills. The far side of the field looked like a lumberyard now, with massive wooden beams, planks, and boards arranged on the ground in parallel stacks next to the post-and-beam skeleton of the former barn.
Duncan barely had time to cut the power to the Gator before five people converged on him. Handshakes were passed, then he stood with his hands on his hips, listening intently while the others spoke and pointed to the lumber stacks. An elderly man in denim overalls and an ancient Eagles ball cap said something while he gestured to where Temperance sat. She raised her hand to wave, and Duncan turned. He gave her a long look, then said something that made the other man give him a few hearty thumps on his back, laughing.
He made his way back to her ten minutes later, haloed by the disappearing sun. She’d always loved the way he walked. Loose-limbed and confident, but without the pretense of a swagger. The moment felt very Mr. Darcy striding across the moors.
The shape of his shoulders was a bit more bent now, and the sleeves of his button-down were rolled up to his biceps. He wore fatigue like an extra layer of clothing. She recognized that quiet vulnerability, the invisible load he carried. They were both people-pleasers, driven by a genuine desire to do for others. Her own need to please had externalized as academic ambition so she could fit the Talbot-Madigan family paradigm. She’d always assumed Duncan had chosen to stay in the valley to work for his family, with no personal ambition at all.
Until today, she’d had no idea how wrong she’d really been.
This man was hardworking, but for the right reasons. Assertive but compassionate, and resilient without being hard. Imaginative and funny and gentle and—
He could be mine.
The thought was so abrupt and intrusive, her chest and neck flushed with heat. She pinched and lifted the front of her tank top to fluff air against her chest.
Duncan breathed out a rumbly sigh as he sat down in the driver’s seat. He sat there for a moment with his hands on the steering wheel. “Sounds like most of the wood here is American chestnut and white oak.”
“Is that good?”
“Yeah. Real good.” He rubbed the back of his hand across his forehead, looking a bit dazed. “Like—five-figures-of-profit good.”
“Whoa. How?”
“Lumber like that doesn’t exist anymore. Some of those big beams were from trees that would have been hundreds of years old when they were harvested, even back in the early 1900s. Valuable.”
“What did the man in the Eagles hat say to you?”
Duncan knuckled his jaw. “That’s Hugo. He’s got a timber-testing lab in Chapel Ford.”
“He said something that made you turn around to look at me.”
“He said—” Duncan hesitated. He had a far-off look in his eyes when he breathed out a laugh and shook his head. “Ah, hell, Teacup.”
“Tell me.” She laughed.
“He said that maybe with all that money, I’ll be able to afford an actual car to drive my wife around, instead of a shit-kicking old John Deere.” Duncan looked her right in the eyes. “I told him I’d have to ask you to marry me again first.”
“Ah.” Temperance pressed her lips between her teeth and straightened in the seat. She clenched her knees together in the little footwell in front of her.
Duncan shrugged and gave her an amused smile. “You asked.” He hit the gas.
She braced a hand against the dashboard as the Gator pitched forward.
In a span of forty-five minutes, Duncan had interacted with nearly thirty people. They all received a hearty handshake, a squeeze on the shoulder, and the full force of his incandescent smile. He knew everyone by name, what they’d worked on that day, what they needed from him, and who they’d go home to that evening. He brought his entire self to each interaction, and left people better than they were before. He gave all of himself away, every day.
Then he got up the next morning and did it all over again.
“You still feel okay?” he asked.
“Yeah. Just hot.”
The sun dipped behind the tree line to the west, and the world dimmed.
“You want in on a secret before it gets fully dark?”
“Always. It’s getting late, though—”
“I have time for this,” he said, quickly. “I mean, if you do.”
Temperance’s belly thumped. “Okay.”
He drove them to the equipment garage at the top of the hill, on the opposite side of the property from the greenhouse. It was a sprawling four-bay building with red-paneled siding. When the Bradys first bought the property, Duncan had lived in the second-floor apartment above it for a while, but now the family used the entire loft as an office space.
Duncan gave her a wide-beam flashlight and kept a smaller one for himself. They entered from a side door, into a bay that seemed to have served as a dumping ground for orphaned household items from the previous owners. Temperance waited in the doorway while Duncan unlatched and manually opened the huge garage doors to let in the remains of natural daylight.
She lifted the lid of the cardboard storage box closest to her and shone the beam of her flashlight inside. It was full of plates and saucers with a vintage floral pattern around the edges. Her heart ached a little. She imagined this very dishware at a fully set table, and the family around it. Sharing each other’s company. She imagined the person who had carefully packed this box. Surely they wouldn’t have intended for it to have been forgotten in this dark old space.
“Ma means to go through all the boxes in here, someday. You could help.”
“Maybe.” She gave him a small smile and traced a fingertip through the dust on a box marked CHRISTMAS in faded red ink. Why would a family leave all this behind?
The back half of the bay was tidy and more open, and there was something big beneath old beige drop cloths. A foot or so taller than Duncan’s six foot three, and half again as wide. The covering billowed gently as he pulled it down.
Temperance gasped. She approached and whispered, “Duncan.”
“This is the only place on the whole property Rowan never goes. I had to scream and pretend I saw a spider to chase Harry out of here a few weeks ago when he snooped around for a watering can.”
It was a wooden arbor. A lattice of grapevine canes embellished the inner corners where the vertical beam at the top met the horizontal ones at the sides. No hardware was visible—each piece notched into its adjacent pieces with such precision it might have grown out of the ground exactly as it was. The craftsmanship was remarkable.
She stepped beneath it, reaching up to run a finger along the underside. “You made this.”
“Yeah.” He looked down and toed an old tennis ball.
“For the wedding,” she said.
“Something new from something old, you know? It’s reclaimed wood from the barn we just came from. I took it when they first started demolition a few weeks ago. Those grapevine canes are the ones we used to decorate the greenhouse for Harry’s proposal.”
“Duncan. This is art.”
He could be mine.
The tennis ball rolled to her, and she nudged it back toward him. “You said it was a secret?”
“They don’t know about it.” Duncan recaptured the little ball under his foot. “Ah—they didn’t ask for it, either. I hope they like it.”
Temperance’s heart squeezed. “I think when you know someone well enough, you can usually predict how a surprise will land.”
“No idea how we’ll get it into the vineyard the morning of the wedding without them noticing, though.”
“You’ll figure it out.”
“Usually do.”
Temperance smiled, and they shared a long look.
“It’ll still be hot in the house,” Duncan said. “Let’s make one more stop.”