Authors: Addison Fox
“Sure. I haven’t quite gone rusty on my accounting skills in the last six weeks.”
“I’m sure glad you stopped in.”
As Grier pulled up an old Quicken program on Tasty’s computer—one that had matching floppy disks he proudly produced a few minutes later—she let out an inward sigh.
At least she wouldn’t be bored this afternoon.
“Oxygen. Stat.”
Grier came to a halt next to Avery where she shoveled off the front parking area of the hotel.
Avery’s smile was broad as she stopped and looked up. “Tasty?”
“How’d you guess?”
“Word travels faster than the speed of sound in this town. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”
Grier reached for another shovel sitting against the wall and took a patch a few feet away. “Yes, but how could anyone know? No one came into his store the whole time I was there.”
Avery’s eyebrows rose as she went back to her
freshly dug path. “Didn’t you see all the people passing by outside the windows, checking out what you were doing in there?”
“I guess I missed them. I spent the afternoon helping him with his accounting. It took every ounce of focus I possess.”
Avery let out a long, low laugh. “You sure your hair’s not on fire?”
Grier tapped her shovel against a thick snowbank, admiring her neat, even row of now-clean asphalt. “No, but I will cop to popping a few antacids around the start of hour three. The man sells worms, chewing tobacco and a few other fishing items. He can’t have more than one hundred SKUs in his total inventory. How’d he manage to mess them up so badly?”
“A few too many years with the wacky tobaccy will do it to most.”
“Oh no, this was a special brand of madness even a drug-induced haze couldn’t cause.”
“Let’s just say Tasty’s talents lie in his people skills, not his math skills.”
Grier positioned her shovel to begin a new, fresh row, debating her next words before simply letting them loose. “He mentioned my father.”
“Tasty was good friends with your dad.” Avery stamped her shovel with her foot, securing another wall of snow at the edge of the lot.
Grier began to push her shovel, suddenly glad for the listening ear. Sloan was wonderful and had done an incredible job of being a supportive listener, but she hadn’t known Jonas.
And it was that perspective, Grier realized, she craved.
“You knew my father?”
“Everyone here knows one another.” Avery paused a moment, indecision flashing in her dark brown eyes like a neon sign. And then the storm clouds cleared as if to say she’d made her decision. “But yeah, I knew your dad. He helped me out a few times with my mom.”
“Helped you out? What do you mean?”
“My mom was an alcoholic. She died about a year and a half ago.”
“Oh, Avery, I’m sorry.”
“I’m not. And before you say anything,” she rushed on, “I just mean that I’m not sorry she’s not living a miserable existence anymore.”
“Of course.” Although she’d have taken Avery’s side regardless, the pain she saw in her friend’s gaze hit with the force of a battering ram.
Grier suddenly realized she wasn’t the only one in turmoil.
And she wasn’t the only one who suffered from the poor choices of a parent.
Whatever support she’d expected when she’d decided to open up, Grier appreciated that she’d gained so much more in befriending Avery Marks.
“My mother is a story for another day.” It didn’t escape Grier’s notice Avery had momentarily stopped shoveling, even though her breathing was steady and even. “But your dad, on the other hand. He was a good man. I grew up in a house a few doors down from him
and he kept a lookout for us. My mother was known for the occasional bender and Jonas had a way of sensing when I needed an extra hand.”
Grier hazarded a guess. “Small-town grapevine again?”
Avery tapped her nose in the age-old gesture for “spot -on.” “Yep. Maguire could see a bad night coming from a mile away. He’d send Jonas down to check on us.”
“And your dad?”
“Was a very not-involved pipeline worker who ultimately went back to his other family when his time on the line was over.”
“Oh.”
“Oh yes, the cliché to end all clichés. My mother thought he hung the moon and instead all he hung was a baby on her.”
“It’s not a cliché, Avery. It’s your life.”
“Which is also why I have to tow the town line and tell you that your dad was a good man. Clearly misguided because he never found his way to bringing you here sooner, but a good man all the same.”
Grier let out a heavy breath and watched the mist swirl in front of her face while she considered Avery’s words. “It sounds different, coming from you. From Tasty, or from anyone else here in town, it sounds like a defense. From you, it just sounds honest.”
“I am that.” Avery started on another row of snow and Grier did the same, grateful to know about another side of her father.
“Since I am unflinchingly honest,” Avery shouted over the heavy crunch of her shovel, “I can’t help but
notice that your sexy bush pilot didn’t spend the night last night.”
“He just came upstairs to check on me. Kate and I also left the room with quite a lot to discuss.”
“The man wanted you.”
And I wanted him, too,
she wanted to add. “It’s not the right time in my life for this.”
“So when is the right time? When you’re dead?”
“This sounds suspiciously like a lecture.” Grier stopped at the edge of the lot and kicked her shovel to pack the snowbank in a pitiful attempt to hide from that unrelenting stare.
“I never lecture. It’s bad form. What I am doing is trying to talk some sense into you. That man is so crazy about you, it blinks off him like the Christmas lights on Main Street.”
“He should be blinking for someone else,” Grier muttered. “I’m damaged goods. Oh wait, make that damaged goods that will be leaving in six weeks.”
Whatever lighthearted note had tinged Avery’s words up to that point turned serious as she walked over and wrapped an arm around Grier’s waist. “You deserve love. You really, really do.”
The tears she’d held back the night before welled up before Grier could stop them. “I know I do.”
“Then why won’t you reach out and take what’s right in front of you?”
That arm never left her waist and Grier wondered how she’d come to trust this woman in so short a time. With a quick look around the empty parking lot, she took a deep breath.
Trust meant risk.
“You want to talk about clichés, Avery. I’m a walking cliché and you know it. My father’s never been a part of my life and my mother sees relationships as a social tool. I’m not exactly a good bet.”
“You can’t—”
“Wait. If you want me to talk about this, you have to let me get it out.”
Avery nodded, but her brown eyes, the color of rich sable, never wavered.
On a heavy breath, Grier swallowed around the constriction of tears in her throat. It was a new year and damn it, she was not going to cry every day. “I’m not exactly a good bet and I know that. But I also know, under the right circumstances, with the right person, I
could
be a good bet.”
“I’m so glad to hear you say that. You mean it?”
“Yeah, I really do.” Grier held up her mittened hand. “Scout’s honor. You have to believe me on that. And you also have to believe me when I say the circumstances just aren’t right here.”
Avery’s eyes narrowed. “If you’re so sure about that, then why won’t you just enjoy yourself with him for the next few weeks?”
“Because that’s just selfish.”
“Mick’s a big boy. I think he’s more than capable of handling a little selfish.”
“It doesn’t make it right.” Before Avery could argue, Grier added, “I’ve been the one left behind, Avery. It damages you.”
Avery’s mouth opened, then closed again as a small
line marred her forehead. When she finally spoke, her lighthearted tone was absent. “I thought you didn’t care about him.”
“Jason? In hindsight, I really didn’t. I mean, I cared for him—but I didn’t love him. And it still hurt to be the one left. And if the way I do feel about Mick is any indication of how he feels about me, I just can’t do that to him.”
The two of them stood there for a long time in silence, breaths misting before them, both lost in thought.
And then Avery dropped her arm and stood before her. “You’re sure about this?”
“About what?”
“Why you can’t have it all. Why this isn’t different from what happened with your ex.”
“The time’s not right.”
Her new friend nodded but didn’t press as she turned to walk back to finish off her nearly cleared area.
Avery and Sloan and even Mick seemed to think the time was
exactly
right. And so she didn’t risk her heart and start believing them; she had to stay strong.
She simply couldn’t give in and do something stupid.
Like fall in love with the man.
“My fingers are going to fall off.” Grier leaned over to whisper it in Sloan’s ear as they moved into their third hour of cutting out red construction paper hearts. Someone had unearthed a few sets of scissors from the elementary school and she’d used the small torture device for so long, her palm was actually cramping.
Sloan gritted her teeth and kept a proper Westchester smile on her face as she muttered back, “You do realize someone will have to hang these, too?”
“Oh good God.”
“You gals having fun?” Julia cooed from the end of the table. She was unraveling a string of pink and red beads that Sophie had unearthed from a giant rubber tub.
“The best, Mrs. Forsyth,” Sloan sang out.
“Do you know when we started this little event?”
“Um, no.” Grier looked around the town hall at the various groupings of women. Another table was busy using a pattern to draw the hearts—in all three sizes they’d ultimately hang—and yet another where Avery sat unraveling the same type of beads Julia had.
“It was a celebration for Mick’s parents when they got married. We’d so wanted a couple to get married on Valentine’s Day in this town and they obliged us.”
A delicate elbow hit her in the ribs as Sloan muttered, “Say something nice.”
Grier shot her a dirty look back as she pried her fingers out of the small scissors and reached for a can of Coke someone had pressed on her. “That’s really nice, Mrs. Forsyth.”
“It wasn’t just nice.” Mary O’Shaughnessy floated over to their table as if she carried a radar device. “It was dreamy. Just as we’d hoped. Mick arrived the following November.”
Grier almost choked on her soda. “That’s great.”
“His parents didn’t waste any time making me a grandmother.” Mary’s beatific smile shone down on
her and Grier had the sudden urge to scream,
Fire!
and flee the building.
When neither she nor Sloan said anything, Mary continued on as if there had never been a silence. “I’ve always thought Mick would make an excellent father.”
“I agree.” The words were out before she could stop them and Grier quickly realized she had no interest in holding back the compliment. “He’s a wonderful man, Mrs. O’Shaughnessy. He’ll make a great father.”
Giant hearts practically floated from Julia’s and Mary’s eyes as they exchanged glances down the table. Grier wondered abstractly if she and Sloan came off nearly so scary when they got together.
If she was honest with herself, she sort of hoped they did.
And then slightly scary turned into completely diabolical as a deep male voice echoed—hale and hearty—through the hall. “Hello.”
“Well, speak of the devil.” Mary dropped her mouth into an
O
of surprise. “Mick is here and he’s brought our supplies.”
If the thought of a roomful of women staring on as she and Mick danced around each other was daunting, the image of more construction paper had Grier’s stomach bunching up in knots.
“You mean there’s more?”
“Why don’t you go relieve the delivery boy?”
Grier shifted to avoid another one of Sloan’s razor-sharp elbow pokes. “And why don’t you mind your own business before I dig up some lefty scissors to really torture you with.”
“Oh, come on, it’s sweet. The grandmothers are playing cupid.” Sloan pointed at their overflowing table. “It’s oddly festive.”
“I hate you.”
Sloan offered up a mock sigh before reaching for another piece of construction paper. “It’s a thin line between love and hate.”
“Grier!” Mary waved her over. “You’re on heart duty. Could you give me a hand?”
“You’re being summoned, Ms. Thompson.”
“Screw the thin line. I well and truly hate you.” Grier stood to cross the room. The feeling wasn’t unlike being naked as each and every eye in the Montgomery Meeting and Recreation Center focused on her.
So why was it the only eyes she could concentrate on were the vivid blue pair belonging to Mick O’Shaughnessy?
“A
nd would this be your idea of subtle, Grandma? Or simply crafty and opportunistic?”
Although his grandmother’s eyes widened in mock innocence as her hands went up into a “who me?” pose, he wasn’t buying the act for one moment.
Besides, she’d taught him that look when he was four.
“Never admit guilt, Michael Patrick,”
she admonished him as she caught him with his hands full of melted chocolate chips from where he’d swiped a few fresh cookies off her stove.
“Make someone prove it.”
Although his four-year-old’s reasoning skills hadn’t quite grasped the lesson, she’d exhibited the behavior enough times over the years for him to figure it out.
“Grier, dear. Mick’s brought more supplies.”
Grier never cracked a smile, but he didn’t miss the lighthearted tone as she sized up the load of supply boxes he carried. “Oh good. Now we can make twenty thousand hearts instead of just ten.”
“You can never have enough, dear. However”—Mary reached over and patted her arm—“you’ve been toiling away for hours. You must be famished.”
“I’m positively light-headed.”
“Mick, get this woman to the diner. She needs sustenance immediately.”
Whatever joke was afoot was lost on him as he took in Grier’s raised eyebrows, his grandmother’s hopeful expression and the avid gazes of a roomful of women. “Of course. I could use a burger myself. I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”