CHAPTER FIVE
HE MUST HAVE made some sound that cut through the blast of music and the jaw-dropping embrace. Maybe he screamed. He hoped he hadn’t screamed, at least not outside of his head.
But his mother—an open robe over short red pajama pants and a thin (way too thin) white tank—stepped back. Her eyes met Owen’s, blinked once.
Then she laughed.
She laughed.
Willy B had the grace to blush as red as his tumbled hair and trim beard.
“What?” Owen managed, shocked to the bone. “What—you— What?”
“I’m fixing us some breakfast,” Justine said easily, and with that laugh still fluttering on the edges. “I guess I need to break some more eggs.”
“You— But— What? Mom.”
“Try to make a complete sentence, Owen. Have some coffee.” She reached for a mug.
“Ah . . . I should . . .” Still bright red, Willy B shuffled his enormous feet. “Put some pants on.”
“Yes!” Owen felt his hands flapping in the air, but just couldn’t stop them. “That. Pants. You. Please God.”
Rumbling in his throat, Willy B scooted off like a bear toward his cave.
“Mom.”
“That’s my name.” All cheer, Justine beamed smiles. “Sit down, honey. Drink your coffee.”
“What—”
Justine picked up tongs to take the bacon out to drain. “Finish it this time. I’ll get you started. What . . . ?”
“What—” He had to swallow the tight, prickly ball in his throat. It didn’t go down well. “What are you doing? Here. With him. Naked.”
Eyebrows hiked, Justine looked down at herself. “I’m not naked.”
“Almost.”
Obviously fighting another smile, Justine closed her robe, belted it. “Better?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. My head. Did my head explode?” He patted his hands over it.
Without missing a beat, Justine took eggs and milk from the big refrigerator. “I was going to scramble eggs, but under the circumstances, we’ll have French toast. You’re partial to French toast. You haven’t had breakfast, have you?”
“No. Mom, I don’t understand this.”
“What part of this don’t you understand, baby?”
“Any of it. All of it.”
“All right, let me explain. When people grow up, they often want to be close to each other. It’s best if they really like and respect each other. An important part of that closeness includes sex, which means—”
“Mom.” Heat crept up his neck, but he wasn’t sure what emotion kindled it. “Cut it out.”
“So you do understand that part. Willy B and I really like and respect each other, and sometimes we have sex.”
“Don’t, don’t, don’t say Willy B and sex, with you, in the same sentence.”
“Then I can’t explain, can I? Suck it up, Owen,” she advised, and offered him a slice of bacon.
“But . . .” He took the bacon. He couldn’t defog his brain to speak coherently.
“I loved your father. So, so much. I was eighteen when I first saw him—my very first day on the job for Wilson Contractors. There he was, standing on that ladder, torn jeans, big boots, tool belt, no shirt. And oh my God.” She laid a hand on her heart. “I couldn’t see straight the rest of the day. Tom Montgomery. My Tommy.”
She got out a bowl, began to mix the eggs and milk with a fork. “I couldn’t even pretend to be coy when he asked me out. I never went out with anyone else from that first date. Never wanted anyone else. I never loved anyone like I did your daddy.”
“I know, Mom.”
“We had a good life. He was such a good man. Smart, strong, funny. Such a good man, such a good father. We built the business together because we wanted our own. And this house, this family—it’s all got Tommy all over it. All of you have him in you, some of it in the way you are, some in the way you look. You got his mouth, Beckett his eyes, Ryder his hands. And more. I treasure that.”
“I’m sorry.” Watching her, hearing her, he felt his heart drop into his guts. “I’m sorry. Don’t cry.”
“They aren’t sad tears. They’re grateful ones.” She added sugar, a dash of vanilla, generous shakes of cinnamon. “We had a wonderful, interesting, busy life together, and he died. You don’t know—I never let you know—how mad I was at him for dying on me. So mad, for weeks, months. I don’t know how long. He wasn’t supposed to die on me. We were supposed to be together, forever, and then he was gone. He’s gone, Owen, and I’ll miss him as long as I live.”
“Me, too.”
She reached across the counter, laid a hand over Owen’s, then turned, got a loaf of bread.
“Willy B loved Tommy. They were as close as you boys are to each other.”
“I know that. I know that, Mom.”
“We needed each other when Tommy died. We needed somebody else who’d loved him, who could tell stories about him. Somebody to lean on, to cry on, to laugh with. And that’s what we did, all we did, for a long time. Then a couple years ago, we . . . let’s just say I started fixing him breakfast now and again.”
“A couple . . . years.”
“Maybe I should’ve told you.” She shrugged as she dunked bread in the milk and eggs. “Maybe I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk about my sex life with my grown sons. And the fact is, Willy B’s shy.”
“Are you . . . in love with him?”
“I love him, of course I do. I have for years, just like Tommy loved him. He’s a good man, you know that. He’s a good father—and he had to raise Avery alone when her mother took off the way she did. He’s got kindness layered all the way through him. In love?” Coated bread sizzled on the griddle. “We enjoy each other, Owen. Like being together when we have time. We each have our own place, our own lives, our own family. We’re happy the way things are, and that’s enough for anyone.
“Now, can I tell him to come on down, have some breakfast?”
“Yeah, sure. Maybe I should go.”
“You sit right there. I made enough egg batter for a damn army.” She stepped out of the kitchen, set her hands on her hips and called out. “Willy B, you’ve got your pants on by now, so come on down here and have your breakfast.”
Stepping back, she flipped another line of bread, plated bacon and French toast, slid plates over the counter.
By the time Willy B shuffled in, she’d put another line of bread on the griddle. “Sit down and eat,” she ordered. “Don’t let it get cold.”
“It looks real good, Justine.” Rumbling in his throat, Willy B sat on the stool beside Owen.
Out of the corner of her eye, Justine gave Owen the look.
“Um, so . . . how’s it going, Willy B?”
“Oh, you know.”
“Yeah.” With no real choice, Owen dumped syrup on his toast.
“Ah . . . the inn’s coming along real nice,” Willy B ventured. “It sure makes a picture on The Square. Your dad, he’d be real proud and pleased.”
“He would.” Owen sighed. “The women have put some of your fancy work around. It looks good in there.”
“Don’t that beat all?”
At the stove, Justine flipped more bread, and smiled as the two men stumbled their way through breakfast conversation.
He got through it. He still wasn’t sure what to think about it, but he got through breakfast with his mother’s . . . with Willy B. The dogs trooped out to the shop with him, with Cus, always hopeful, carrying one of his balls.
Owen flipped on the lights, the shop radio, boosted the heat up. And after thirty minutes of fumbling, gave it up. His brain just refused to engage, and he wouldn’t risk his hand at the fancy work.
He turned down the heat, turned off the radio, the lights. The dogs dutifully followed him out. To please Cus, he gave the ball a solid kick before climbing back into his truck.
Straight, sweaty carpentry, he decided, and headed over to Beckett’s property. He had enough brain in him to do some framing in on the extra rooms they’d added on for Clare’s boys.
He spotted his brothers’ trucks as he drove back, and couldn’t decide if it relieved or unnerved him.
What did he say? Did he say anything?
Of course he did. He had to tell them—plus it meant he wouldn’t be flustered and weirded-out alone.
He heard the music from hammer and saw, and Beckett’s iPod as he got his tool belt out of the truck.
The place was coming along, Owen thought, especially considering work on it was squeezed in and juggled around the inn project. They had the addition to the original, unfinished structure under roof—thank God, considering the weather. Windows looked good, he decided, and would offer a nice view. The decks and patios for outdoor living would have to wait till spring, but if they could knock the rest out by April, Beckett and his new family could move in right after the wedding.
He went in through what would be the kitchen door, did a short walk-through before climbing the temporary stairs to the second floor.
Freaking huge, he thought, but supposed that made sense for a family of five. The generous master suite included a full-size fireplace the boys had told Beckett their mom had always wanted. Another full bath linked two more bedrooms. Another bathroom, another two bedrooms spread out on the second level, he recalled.
As he headed toward the noise, D.A. wandered over to greet him. The dog sat, eyes trained on Owen’s face. He thumped his tail.
“I got nothing.” Owen spread his empty hands before giving D.A. a rub. He avoided saying the words food or eat so D.A. didn’t get any false hope.
He walked into one of the bedrooms, where Beckett ran the saw and Ryder framed in a closet.
“You don’t call, you don’t write,” Owen said over the din.
With a grin, Beckett straightened, pulled off his safety glasses. “Ry just showed up. I should’ve known you wouldn’t be far behind. Appreciate it.”
“No donuts?” Ryder asked, and D.A. thumped his tail.
“Not on me.”
“Clare’s opening the store this morning, then picking up the kids from her parents’ about noon—running some errands. She can pick up some subs or whatever. They’re coming here to help anyway.”
“Pity him.”
Beckett gave Ryder a shrug. “Dad gave us plenty of on-the-job training when we were their age.”
“I didn’t know enough to pity him at the time. And speaking of time, you could’ve saved a lot of it by cutting back on the bedrooms. What do you need five for anyway? Unless Clare won’t sleep with you.”
“One for each kid,” Owen said, “master suite, guest room.”
“Pull-out down in the family room would take care of anybody who stayed over. Or same deal in the office.”
“Actually, we’re going to need five. We’re going to have another kid.”
Owen paused in the act of pulling off his coat. “Clare’s pregnant?”
“Not yet. We’re waiting until after we actually get married, but then it’s full steam ahead.”
“You don’t make a kid with steam,” Ryder pointed out, then lowered his hammer. “Four kids? Seriously?”
“It’s just one more than three.”
Owen shook his head. “I think, when it comes to kids, the number increases exponentially. But what the hell. You guys are great with three, you should be great with four.”
“Mom’ll go nuts at the idea of another grandkid.” Ryder pulled out some framing nails.
“Ah, speaking of Mom. I figured to do some shop work, so I stopped by the house this morning.”
“To mooch breakfast,” Ryder concluded.
“It was a factor. So anyway, Willy B was there.”
“Another breakfast moocher.” Pulling down his goggles, Beckett reached for the saw.
“Don’t turn that on yet.” A man could lose a finger, Owen thought.
With a frown, Beckett pulled his glasses off again. “Is there a problem with Mom?”
“No. I don’t know. No. It’s not a problem for her, anyway.”
“Who’s got a problem?” Ryder demanded.
“Just let me finish, damn it. I went in the kitchen, and Mom was already cooking breakfast, and Willy B was there. In nothing but his boxers, and they’re . . . you know.”
Now Ryder set his hammer aside. “They’re what? Exactly?”
“They’re . . .” Owen made a circle with his arms. “Except Willy B’s hands are on Mom’s ass, and she’s wearing a robe, but it’s open, and there’s not all that much she’s wearing under it. And I don’t want to talk about that part.”
“He had his hands on her?” Ryder said softly. “Okay. He’s big, but he’s old. I can take him.”
“Hold on.” Beckett shot out a hand, shoved Ryder back. “Are you saying Mom and Willy B are . . .”
“That’s what I’m saying. And they have been for a couple years now.”
“Fuck,” Ryder muttered.
“Don’t say fuck when he’s telling us about Mom and Willy B. I don’t want that verb and those names together in my head.” Beckett walked over, picked up the liter of Coke he’d brought along, gulped straight from the bottle. “Everybody take a breath, okay. You’re saying Mom and Willy B are . . . involved.”
“She says they’re . . . involved now and then. She laid it out for me when he went up to put some pants on. They’ve been friends forever. They both loved Dad. You know he loved Dad, that’s no bullshit.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Ry,” Beckett murmured.
“Okay, shit. Okay, yeah they were tight. It’s not bullshit. But if this is all good for Mom, why are they sneaking around?”
“It’s more being discreet, I think, at least that’s how it struck me once she’d laid it out. She talked to me about how she felt when Dad died, and she cried.”
“Shit.” Ryder paced to the window, stared out.
“She and Willy B care about each other, we know that. They leaned on each other when Dad died, we know that, too. I guess, after a while . . .”
“They started leaning on each other naked.”
“Goddamn it, Ry.” Beckett pressed his fingers to his eyes. “Stop putting those pictures in my head.”
“They’re in mine, so they might as well be in yours, too. It still feels like I should go punch him—at least one good punch. On principle.”
“She wouldn’t like it.” Owen shrugged. “And he’s still Willy B, so you know he’d let you punch him if you needed to do it.”
“Goddamn it, he would, too. It’s no good that way. I’ve got to think about this.” Jaw tight, Ryder picked up his hammer, set a framing nail, and whaled on it.
“I guess we all do.” Beckett put his safety glasses on, turned on the saw.
Nodding, Owen strapped on his tool belt.
It was better to work, he decided, better to push through the strange day with the smell of sawdust and the sounds of nails hammered into wood.
By the time Clare and the kids arrived with provisions, they’d finished framing in on the second floor, and had started on the main level.
“You work so fast!” Clare wandered what would be her office—her own home office!—off the kitchen.
“We got a system.” Beckett draped an arm over her shoulders as the boys stomped around the subflooring.
“It works. Well, we’re here to help, if we can. And as payment I’ve got beef stew in the Crock-Pot. A manly meal for manly men.”
“I’m in,” Owen told her.
“I hate to miss it, but I’ve got a date.” Ryder tossed a hunk of his sub in the air. Dumbass caught the high fly like a veteran center fielder.
“Can you teach Ben and Yoda to do that?” Liam demanded. “Stuff just bounces off their face mostly.”
“D.A. here, he was born knowing how to field food, but yeah, we could teach them.”
“Not in the house,” Clare said absently as she pored over the blueprints.
Ryder just grinned at the boy, broke off another small hunk. “Go ahead, practice with D.A.”
“D.A. stands for Dumbass,” Murphy announced, “but we’re not supposed to say ass. It a bad word.”
“Depends, doesn’t it?”
“On how?”
“Well.” Considering, Ryder took a pencil out of his tool belt, drew on the subflooring. “What’s that?”
“It’s a donkey. You draw good.”
“Nah, it’s a jackass.”
“Mom! Ryder drawed a jackass on the floor!”
“Drew,” Clare corrected, and sent Ryder a sighing look.
“I like to draw. Can I draw on the floor?”
Ryder handed over the pencil. “Have at it, midget.”
Happily, Murphy sat on the floor and drew a box with a triangle on top. “This is gonna be our house when we get married.”
Liam trooped over to Owen. “I need more for D.A. to catch.”
Owen obliged him with a chunk of sub.
“You’re gonna be our uncle.”
“That’s what I hear.”
“So you have to buy us Christmas presents.”
“I guess I do.”
“I got a list.”
“A man after my own heart. Where is it?”
“On the frigerator at home. It’s only ten more days till Christmas.”
“Then I better get on it.”
Liam looked across the room where Beckett was teaching Harry how to hammer in a stud. “I wanna hammer, too.”
“Then you better help me finish framing in the pantry.”
“What’s the pantry?”
“It’s where your mom’s going to keep food.”
“That’s the frigerator.”
“Not everything goes in the fridge, kid. How about cans of soup?”
“I like Chicken and Stars.”
“Who doesn’t? Let’s get it done.”
Despite the endless stream of questions, he liked working with the kid, showing him how to measure, how to mark, how to hold a hammer. And he figured it showed their simpatico when Liam lasted nearly an hour before he joined Murphy on the floor with a pile of action figures.
He gave Clare credit, too. She fetched, she carried, she drove in a few nails herself—and rode herd on the kids.
He remembered his mother doing much the same when they’d added on to the house.
His father always had a project going.
After they knocked off, he found himself flattered when Liam asked to ride with him. They strapped the booster seat in the truck, strapped the kid in it.
“Where’s your house?” Liam wanted to know.
“Right down the road—or through the woods if you’re walking.”
“Can I see it?”
“Ah. Sure, I guess.”
It wasn’t much of a detour. Owen made the turns, cruised up his lane.
He’d strung a few lights, had the tree centered in the front window—all on timer so they sparkled against the December dark.
“Ours is bigger,” Liam announced.
“Yeah, it is. There are more of you.”
“Do you live here all by yourself?”
“That’s right.”
“Why?”
“Because . . . it’s my house.”
“You don’t have anybody to play with.”
He hadn’t thought of it quite that way. “I guess not, but Ryder lives right over that way, and when your place is finished, you guys will be right over that way.”
“Can I come play at your house?”
“Sure.” He hadn’t thought of that either, but hell, it might be fun. “Yeah.”
“Okay.”
Owen turned the truck around, started toward the road. “I’m going to get a dog.”
“Dogs are good.” Liam nodded wisely. “You can play with them, and you have to feed them and teach them to sit. They keep bad guys away. A bad guy came in our house, but the dogs were just puppies.”
Owen debated a response. He wasn’t sure how much the boys knew about Sam Freemont. “You have good dogs.”
“They’re bigger now, but they’re still puppies. But they’ll keep bad guys away when they grow up. The bad guy came in and scared my mom.”
“I know. But she’s okay, and the bad guy’s in jail.”
“Beckett came and stopped him. And you and Ryder came, too.”
“That’s right.” If Liam needed to talk about it, Owen concluded, it worried at the kid. “You don’t have to worry, Liam. We’ve got your back.”
“’Cause Beckett and Mom are getting married.”
“Because of that, yeah, and just because.”
“If the bad guy tries to come back, and Beckett’s not there, Harry and I will fight him, and Murphy’ll call nine-one-one, then Beckett. We talked about it. We practiced.”
“That’s smart.”
“And when the dogs get big, if he tries to come back, they’ll bite him.” Liam slid his gaze toward Owen. “In the dumb ass.”
With a laugh, Owen gave Liam a light slap on the head. “Damn right.”
After dinner, while Clare hauled the boys up for a bath, Owen relayed the conversation to Beckett.
“Bite him in the dumb ass. Kid’s got a way. Clare and I talked to them after it happened. Played it down, but played it straight. Still, they heard stuff at school. So Harry called a powwow, and they came to me about it.”
“Keep the women out of it?”
Beckett glanced toward the stairs. “Maybe that’s not politically correct, or even correct, but it feels right in this case. They need to know we’re covered, and that I trust them to help take care of their mom.”
“We’d’ve done the same.”
“Yeah, we would. Speaking of, I was able to tell Clare about that situation on the way home. You pitch the radio to a certain level, your voices to another, you can actually have a conversation that doesn’t carry to the backseats. Plus we used a lot of code.”
“What did she say?”
“What you’d expect. Mom’s entitled to a life. She’s a vital woman, Willy B’s a good man. Blah blah. I mean she’s right, but still.”
“It wasn’t her mother and Willy B mostly naked in the kitchen.”
On a sigh, Beckett closed his eyes. “And thank you for that fresh image to add to my growing collection.”
“We could start trading them, like baseball cards.”
That triggered a laughing shake of the head. “The other thing? When I talked to Clare about it, she didn’t really seem surprised.”
“What do you mean?” Owen lowered his after-dinner beer. “Like she already knew?”
“That or one of those woman’s radar deals. With stuff like this? They’re kind of like bats. Anyway, I started to ask her, but then Harry and Murphy started on each other, and that was the end of adult conversation.”
The thought slapped hard into his brain. “If Clare already knew, then Avery . . . Son of a bitch.”
“Coulda been that radar.”
“Avery’s a woman. She has radar. She’s as much of a bat as any of them. Plus, it’s her father groping our mother.”
“Stop. Stop.” Beckett covered his ears.
“If she knew, she should’ve told me.” Now the thought rooted in his brain, sprouted like a weed. “I’d’ve told her.”
“We know now. And I guess we’re going to have to get used to it.”
Owen started to respond, but Harry ran in, shiny from his bath in his X-Men pajamas, and announced a Wii tournament.
Roped in, Owen gave it an hour. He liked the kids, he liked Wii, but he just couldn’t get the idea of Avery keeping the situation from him out of his head.
He chewed at it all the way home, sat in the truck chewing over it some more. Then he turned around, drove back to town. He went into Vesta from the back.
“Hey, Owen!” Franny stood behind the counter slicing up a large pizza. “What can we get for you?”
“Is Avery around?”
“You just missed her. She’s running some deliveries. More people calling in than coming in tonight. I’m closing, so she’s going to go right on up when she gets back. I can give her a call if it’s important.”
“No. Nothing important. I’ll catch her later. How are you feeling?”
“Back to normal. Are you really opening the inn next month?”
“Yeah, we are.”
“I’m spreading the word.”
“Keep spreading. I’ll see you later, Franny.”
He went out the back and, after a quick debate, went up the stairs rather than down.
She had to come back sometime.
He considered the fact that he had keys; he was the landlord after all. But that crossed the line.
Instead, he sat on the floor outside her apartment door, took out his phone. He passed the time reading and answering emails, texts.
He checked the time, wondered where the hell her deliveries were? Portugal?
He wished he’d hit Franny up for coffee, tried to entertain himself with some Angry Birds.
He closed his eyes—just to rest them for a minute—and the restless night caught up with him. He fell asleep on the floor, his trusty phone still in his hand.