Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Dennis
Bilbee’s Tavern was the last place he should bring a sugar glider, but his mom put him in a double bind.
“You go out with your brothers and sister and have some fun or I will personally call Annabeth and set you up on a date.”
“I’ve been blackmailed by professionals, Mom, and they were far better than you.”
“That right there is the key difference.”
“Huh?”
“Mom. I’m your mother. Not a professional. Now shoo.” She had literally waved a kitchen towel at him like he was a fly she needed to evacuate.
As he drove slowly through town, he let out a long, grumbly sigh. All his regular parking spots were taken, the sidewalks thick with tourists. It was the week before Valentine’s Day and all the gullible, shallow people who thought the love-themed crap in town was fun were here.
In abundance.
“Okay, that’s harsh,” he said aloud. “They’re just gullible. Not necessarily shallow.”
And they were annoying him because he couldn’t find a place to park, eyes scanning for–
Aha! Tail lights. The big SUV pulled out just as Dennis approached, as if God himself heard Dennis’s curmudgeonly complaint and provided assistance. The spot was in front of Love You Chocolate, all the way across the downtown area from Bilbee’s, but beggars couldn’t choose.
Or something like that.
Parking his truck, he made sure Magic was safe in the pouch of his Army-green hoodie and pulled his coat on over it, the creature curled up nice and sweet in there. Luview was hopping tonight, and Bilbee’s would be packed.
Steeling himself for the onslaught of people, he began walking along the sidewalk, deep in his thoughts, when he heard someone call his name.
A shaky voice, more frail than he’d ever heard it.
“Miss Lucinda?” he asked, turning to find her standing in the doorway of her store, clutching her unzipped coat to her chest.
“Come on! Come in!” she said, waving her arm.
You didn’t defy an order from Miss Lucinda.
Stepping fast, he walked over and entered the store, the lush aroma of chocolate assaulting him, salivary glands activated. Working at Love You Chocolate had been his first real job at age fourteen, other than chopping wood for his dad.
And Lucinda Armistead was like a grandmother to him.
“I understand you have developed an unnatural affinity for carrying a rat on your person?” she said, upfront and direct as always. Time had shrunk her. The imperious woman who scared the hell out of him as a teen was just a little old lady.
Regal and composed, sure.
But her time on Earth, living and breathing, was winding down.
“Not a rat,” Dennis said with a chuckle, surprised to hear himself reply from a position of certainty and stability. Maybe he really had grown up. Cupping Magic in his hand, he pulled the little beastie out to show her. “A sugar glider.”
Unimpressed, her face was a sheet of granite. “Normal people don’t walk around with a rat in their sweatshirt, Dennis.”
“Since when have I ever claimed to be normal, Miss Lucinda? He’s injured and needs a little extra foster care.”
Her penciled-in eyebrows shot up.
“Why didn’t you say so in the first place? I see Mel Chassi has gotten to you.”
“Just helping her out.”
“You always were a tender boy, Dennis. But then you left and lost so much of that tenderness.”
“Can’t be tender in the Army. They’d chew me up, spit me out, and let me roast in the sand until I desiccated.”
“Then it’s good you’ve moved back home to stay. Gives you access to your full humanity.”
He just blinked. The old woman could pull out some zingers.
“I hear you’re breaking ground on a new addition,” he said, making small talk.
The room felt like a chocolate womb, though the chatter of employees in the storage room and cooler at the rear of the store cut through their private conversation.
The shop must have just closed for the day, which meant everything needed to be restocked.
How many thousands of pounds–tons!–of chocolate passed through these doors? he wondered.
“We are. It will start February 20th, right after the big day.” By that, she meant Valentine’s Day. “It was Rachel Hart’s idea, you know.”
“I heard it was Boyce’s.”
“Hah. Rachel just made Boyce think it was his idea.” She winked, eyes glittering.
“Won’t a reception hall add to the traffic here?” he asked, musing.
Her back stiffened. Oops.
“Plenty of other businesses expand.”
“Didn’t mean it that way, Miss Lucinda.”
“You are the only child in this town who is allowed to call me that,” she said with a soft smile.
“And you are the only person, other than my mother, who refers to me as a child.”
“Then we are special to each other, Dennis,” she replied, those red-lipsticked lips stretching across old teeth, crooked on the bottom, straight on top, and impressively intact for a woman in her nineties. “I’m not supposed to have favorite employees, but you definitely stood out over the years.”
He wandered over to the wall where the famous picture–famous by his family’s standards–hung on the wall, behind a display of a 25-pound chocolate heart. In the photo, he was fourteen and dressed in a red velvet heart costume, holding a platter of chocolate samples.
To his right was a laughing man, bright white teeth showing as he tipped his head back, dark hair messy.
The man had his arm around a little girl, who was doing her best to hold up a big chocolate heart like the one on display.
Hair in two perfect French braids, her eyes were crossed, tongue peeking out, as she fixed all her might and concentration on that giant chocolate heart.
“Still hanging here?” he asked Lucinda, who chuckled.
“Of course! It made The Boston Globe. Remember?”
“I do. And the man wouldn’t give his name to Bert Boutin.”
“Good old Bert. A true newspaperman,” Lucinda declared. “God rest his soul. But the picture was still so wonderful, Bert sent it to The Globe. How long ago was that, Dennis?”
“If I was fourteen, it would have been twenty-eight years ago.”
“Time flies,” she said gently. “I was just about to turn, let’s see… sixty-four. A spring chicken.”
Uncertain whether it was impolite to laugh, Dennis kept his mouth shut and moved on from the picture. His mother had a copy of it in a photo album at home.
It was the last time he ever wore a love-themed costume. That picture may have been amusing, and a well-composed shot, but it led to too much teasing.
Teasing that hurt.
Teasing that made him turn on the love theme of his hometown. Blaming the touristy element in Luview, he’d turned bitter and disaffected, though puberty had plenty to do with it, too.
Nostalgia meant he could look at the picture now and laugh. In the image, his tray was held high above the laughing man whom Dennis had tried to pass, but some of the chocolate hearts had rained down on the man, caught in suspended drop.
The picture really was iconic.
“You were walking past when I saw you. I presume you’re off to Bilbee’s?” Lucinda’s sniff made it clear she disapproved.
“I am. Mom’s making me.”
“You are a very strong, fit man in his early forties, Dennis. A retired Army colonel. I suspect no one makes you do anything.”
“Do you make Boyce do stuff?”
She reconsidered with pursed lips, then smiled.
“You have a point.”
“And… I have to admit, it’s time to stop hiding.” Why he was confessing anything to her was a mystery. Maybe he was cracking. Who knew?
“Hiding?”
“I’m here, right? Back in Luview forever. Spent my entire adulthood somewhere else, and now I’ve come back.”
“It’s changed.”
“Yes, ma’am, it has.”
“But let me guess. People treat you the same.”
“Mom sure does.”
“That’s her prerogative.”
Lucinda waved her hand and he laughed.
“It’s not so much that people treat me like I’m eighteen. It’s more that they treat me like I never left. It’s hard to explain.”
“I’d imagine it is. Luview is the kind of place where you’re either an insider or you’re not. And you’re both.”
“Hadn’t thought of it that way.”
“Listen to a very old woman, Dennis. Every feeling you have right now is fleeting. You won’t feel it for very long. Let yourself experience it.”
“You sound very Zen.”
“I am a proper Christian woman, young man,” she said seriously. “Nothing I said contradicts that.”
“No, ma’am.”
“People worry too much. Worry about what others think of them. Worry about making the wrong choices. Worry about losing chances. Worry about taking chances. Do you know what all that worry adds up to at the end of your life?”
“What?”
“Waste. Garbage. Trash.”
“I’m not worried, Miss Lucinda. I’m just not eager to deal with a bunch of people who stick their noses into my life.”
Astonishment wasn’t an emotion he’d ever seen on her face, until now.
“Why, Dennis Luview!” she said with a whoop of laughter that made decades fade away. “Why on earth would you move back here if you didn’t want people in your business?”
His phone buzzed in his pocket as his face turned hot with embarrassment.
“Your turn to make a good point.”
“I believe,” she said, laughter winding down, “that is the only point tonight. If you don’t want anyone interfering in your life, why go to Bilbee’s?”
“Because the pain of not going and being chewed out by my mom for being a recluse is worse than having a bunch of people intrude in my private life.”
“Life is nothing but compromises, isn’t it?” She winked, then returned to her default.
Being serious.
“Why move back here if you don’t want the interconnectedness of small-town life? Especially when your family is so prominent?”
He shrugged, buying time, unwilling to tell the truth.
Uncertain he even knew the truth.
“I missed the slower pace of life. And Dad’s not getting any younger.”
“None of us are.”
“I meant in terms of the tree business. He needs help. Kell’s been great, but he needs more freedom to pursue his own business.”
“You mean walking around town looking like an astronaut.”
“Yep.”
“That boy always was odd.”
“Can’t argue with that.”
“Dean must be happy, regardless, to have you home.”