Girl Trouble

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So much for detachment. As for exorcism, he was going to exorcise that word from his vocabulary. What on earth had persuaded him to blurt out that ridiculous offer of help?

His eyes flicked down to the little finger on his left hand, the one that had healed crooked. Lori was the reason he’d been beaten up. She might have forgotten that. But he hadn’t.

Nor ever would.

In a foul mood he drove to the music store, spent more money than he’d planned on the speakers, and took them out to French Bay. The wind had churned the sea into a froth of white and dirty gray; ragged clouds skudded across the sky, while the spruce trees that sheltered the house were madly waving their arms. The plumber hadn’t turned up on Friday as promised, and the electrician had left a note that he’d run into a problem with the wiring. Wondering why he’d saddled himself with a rundown old house and ten acres of granite and scrub spruce, Cade paced through the empty rooms, trying to work out where he wanted the speakers to go.

He was having dinner with Sam that night, and with his mother and Wilbur tomorrow night. Right now he was exceedingly glad to be busy both nights. All the less time to think about Lori Cartwright.

Because the nights were unquestionably the worst.

That evening Sam took Cade to his favorite steakhouse. “Eat up, boy,” he urged. “You look like you’ve been dragged through a knothole backward.”

Cade raised his beer in salute and described the various problems of French Bay. Sam listened, offered some suggestions and tucked into nachos and salsa. They ordered second beers and the steaks arrived, along with steaming baked potatoes and crisp Greek salads. “I’m hungry,” Cade said. “I didn’t eat lunch, now that I think about it.”

“You planning on moving out to the shore with a woman?” Sam asked, dumping a dollop of sour cream on his potato.

Cade’s knife slipped. “No.”

Sam said obliquely, “If a car’s a real lemon, you sell it and take your losses. You don’t keep pouring good money into it.”

Cade had spent the latter part of the day trying to settle into reading, watching television or studying the stock market, all without success. “Consign it to the scrap heap?” he said ironically. “You speaking from experience?”

Sam grimaced. “Nope. After Bonnie died I never had the heart to get out there and start looking. Dating? At my age? Didn’t seem proper, somehow.”

Cade had the grace to look ashamed; he’d known what a blow it had been to Sam to lose his wife of many years. “My mother’s got a new man friend,” he said. “It’s never too late, Sam.”

“Miguel’s sister’s a real pretty gal. Hair as black as yours, loves to dance.”

“And what,” said Cade carefully, “if the car that’s a lemon is the first car you ever owned, and you’re not sure you can sell it? Then what do you do?”

“If you’re a young fellow, you park it out back on blocks and get yourself a new one for driving down the street,” Sam said. “At your age you don’t want to be spending every weekend polishing the old one. Not like me.”

It was on the tip of Cade’s tongue to tell Sam the whole sorry story. But ever since he was a kid, he’d been in the habit of keeping his own counsel; he’d always done more fighting in the school yard than talking. “I only met Bonnie a couple of times,” he said, “but I liked her. How did the two of you meet?”

As Sam began to talk, Cade listened; he was a better listener than a talker, he knew. It was one of his mother’s complaints. Her other complaint was that he wasn’t making any moves to present her with grandchildren.

Two little blond girls called Rachel and Liddy.

Sure thing, Cade. You planning on abducting another man’s children? You know darn well when you go to Juniper Hills tomorrow, you’re not even going to mention Lori’s name.

When Sunday evening came, it was a resolution Cade kept. He just wished it was as easy to stop thinking about her.

Another week passed. At French Bay the plumber finished the bathroom and the speakers were installed; at Sam’s garage Cade made noticeable strides toward being accepted by the rest of the mechanics, a couple of whom had resented an outsider from Ontario coming in as Sam’s partner. But Cade wasn’t only a hard worker and highly skilled mechanic; he was also fair in his dealings, and knew when and how to put his foot down. After a standoff one morning between him and Joel, the unacknowledged leader of the other men, a standoff Cade won hands down, the hierarchy was established and even Joel started joking with him. Cade was pleased by this development. He liked the garage. Liked it a lot. The fact that it was a small gold mine was a bonus.

On Saturday he went in early to further his acquaintance with Sam’s haphazard and highly original methods of bookkeeping. Cade had taken some business and accounting courses in Seattle; soon, and as tactfully as he knew how, he must suggest some changes. A computer, to start with. Revenue Canada wouldn’t be amused by receipts stored in an old cardboard box that had once held engine oil.

At one o’clock he called it a day. He’d go to the weight room then go for a run; by the time he got to the gym Lori would have left.

He wasn’t going to think about Lori.

But when Cade pushed open the gym door, the first thing he heard was Liddy’s unmistakably shrill voice raised in outrage. She was sitting bolt upright in one of the padded chairs, her little cheeks scarlet. “He is so coming back!”

“He’s not. Mum said he’s not!”

Even Rachel looked upset; she was. twirling a long strand of her hair with agitated movements. Then Liddy faltered, “He’s my daddy. He can’t stay away, not forever.”

“They’re divorced,” Rachel retorted. “Mum told you all about that, you know she did.”

Liddy looked on the verge of tears. “I don’t care about their silly ol’ divorce. I just want him to come home.”

“Well, he’s never going to,” Rachel said sullenly.

At the same moment that Liddy burst into noisy and copious tears, Cade looked up. Lori was standing in the doorway that led from the front desk. Standing as if she were glued to the floor. Staring at him.

You lied to me, he thought, impaling her on his gaze. You’re not a married woman, you’re divorced. You’re free.

Like two drums with different rhythms, the words banged at his skull. You lied. You’re free. You lied. You’re free. Dimly he wondered if he looked as stunned as he felt. By the way she was transfixed to the floor, he probably did.

Then Liddy saw her mother, too. She erupted from her chair and flung herself across the carpet into her mother’s arms, sobbing, “Daddy’s coming back someday, isn’t he, Mum?”

“No,” Lori said steadily, still staring at Cade, “he won’t be coming back, darling. I told you that.”

“I didn’t think you meant it,” Liddy wailed.

“I knew you meant it,” Rachel said, slouching over to join them.

“He moved to Texas,” Lori said with the same dead calm. “That’s a long way away, Liddy.”

“Cowboys live in Texas,” Liddy snuffled.

“Your father lives in a city, darling. He doesn’t like the country, remember?”

Rachel patted Liddy awkwardly on the shoulder. “We’ll be late for the movie, Liddy, and you know how much you want to see it,” she said and pulled a ragged bunch of tissues from the pocket of her jeans. “Here, you can have these.”

Liddy scrubbed her cheeks with the tissues, Lori dragged her eyes away from Cade’s and glanced up at the clock, and Rachel said in an agony of frustration, gesturing through the tall glass windows, “Oh no, there goes the bus—we’ve missed it! And we’ve waited all week to go to the movies.”

She, too, looked about ready to burst into tears. Cade said stiffly, “I’ll drive you. That way you’ll get there in time.”

“We can’t do that,” Lori protested. “We’ll—”

Rachel gave Cade a dazzling smile. “You’re Mum’s friend, aren’t you? The one who spoke to us the other day. Come on, Mum, you know how much Liddy wants to see all the dalmatians, and it might not be on next week. Let’s go.”

There were no flies on Rachel, thought Cade. “My car’s out in the parking lot. What time does the movie start?”

“One forty-five,” Lori muttered. “My class ran late.”

“We can make it in lots of time,” Cade said. His smile was mocking, because Lori was caught and she knew it. Once the three of them had been for a drive in his car, he’d be officially accepted as a friend of the family. As a friend of Lori, single mother and divorcée. A woman who was no longer the wife of Ray Cartwright.

Texas wasn’t far enough away for the likes of Ray Cartwright. But it sure beat Halifax. Cade felt quite extraordinarily happy.

Rachel grabbed her mother’s hand while Liddy glowered at Cade. Liddy didn’t like him, that much was clear. Cade knew very little about children, and in consequence tended to treat them as smaller size adults. He said calmly, “I know I’m not your dad, Liddy...all I’m doing is giving you a ride to the movies.”

Liddy buried her face in her mother’s jacket. “The movie will cheer you up,” Lori said, “so we’re going to accept Cade’s kind offer... although weren’t you just arriving, Cade?”

“Yep. But I’ve got all day.”

“No heavy dates?” she flashed, then blushed scarlet as if she’d meant to think the words, not say them.

“Not unless you call dinner with my mother in return for fixing her car a heavy date,” he said, and recklessly decided to call the emotion that crossed her face relief. “What about you?” he added.

“If we’re going, we’d better go,” she said crossly. “Blow your nose, Liddy.” Liddy complied and Lori dropped the tissues into the nearest wastebasket. Cade led the way out to his car. He unlocked it, opened the back doors for the girls and showed them how the seat belts worked. By this time Lori was sitting in the front. She blurted, “Isn’t this a Mercedes?”

How can you afford a Mercedes? That was what she meant. Smoothly he started the car and drove out of the parking lot. “I picked it up secondhand when I was here in June, and Sam, my business partner, worked on it in his spare time all summer.”

Lorraine would have tossed her head haughtily without a hint of apology. Lori, however, looked ashamed of her artless question; the differences between Lorraine and Lori were beginning to intrigue Cade a great deal. She said clumsily, “It was raining so hard the other day I didn’t even notice the car.”

“Plus you were surprised to see me.” To say the least.

She said in resignation, “We only live two blocks north of Whitman, that’s why we keep bumping into each other.”

“Celtic Street,” Rachel supplied. “In an apartment.”

So his two sightings of Lori, once at the secondhand store and once at the bus stop, hadn’t been coincidence at all, but merely the result of location. Nevertheless, questions were seething through Cade’s mind. Ray must have left her well provided for; and if he hadn’t, her father was a wealthy man. What was she doing living on Celtic, a street that was lined with apartment blocks? He’d checked a couple of them out before he’d found his own apartment, and hadn’t liked them at all. Cramped rooms, old carpeting and cheap appliances.