Love in Maine (14 page)

“Thanks. I’ll see you later. Okay? We’ll be normal, right?”

“Sure, Maddie. We’ll be normal.” He reached up and put his thick fingers through the
strands of chestnut hair that were coming loose from her braid at the nape of her
neck. He didn’t pull her against him or dive at her. He just wanted to feel the texture
and warmth of her skin there. He stroked that tender part of her neck for a few seconds
and watched as her shoulders relaxed and her eyes dipped. Hank pulled his hand away
gently. “Thanks for coming over, beautiful.”

She opened her eyes and stared at him with gentle sweetness. “Thanks for inviting
me, handsome.” Then she pulled open his door and let herself out.

Maddie only made it about halfway down the steps before turning abruptly back. “Hey!
I forgot—”

Hank was standing at the top of the stairs, holding the glass bowl with his mother’s
coleslaw.

“—the coleslaw.”

She walked back up the steps. “Thanks. I’m starving.”

She took the bowl and went back to Janet’s house to eat coleslaw in the yellow kitchen
and then go up to her bed and wonder about whether or not to open her curtains again.
Or if maybe her imagination was a safer option.

Maybe Madison Post was a gift, Hank thought to himself later that week, back at the
bottom of the ocean. The wind farm company had put Hank’s diving team on retainer.
There was going to be lots of work for the next few months.

His shift was about to end, and he was trying to let his thoughts about Maddie sift
into something recognizable, like the way the disturbed sand around his heavy feet
would resettle when he left the ocean floor. Not a good analogy, he chided himself.
The ocean floor tended to capture everything and keep it perfectly preserved for centuries.
One of his Army buddies had just e-mailed him about a private salvage group that was
looking for experienced divers to work on a shipwreck that they’d dated to the fourth
century BC. What happened on the ocean floor stayed on the ocean floor . . . forever.

He double-checked his valves and gave the signal that he was going to begin his ascent.

Hank got home a few hours later and saw the light on in his mom’s kitchen. This week
had been much better in terms of, as Maddie would say, acting normal. He turned off
the engine of his truck and smiled to himself that the idea of
normal
still felt like acting. And maybe always would. He knew he was running out of time
before he was going to have to go see someone at the VA hospital. He’d promised himself
six months for reentry, to be a normal civilian. For normal to seem normal. But it
didn’t seem to be happening. For the most part, Hank still felt awkward and isolated
when he was around other people. He hated crowds, like that night at the movie theater.
He hadn’t had any panic attacks or flashbacks. Yet.

Shutting the car door behind him, he walked around the narrow path that led to his
mom’s back door. He tapped twice on the wood frame next to the screen and made a note
to repaint the door this weekend. “Can I come in?”

Maddie and Janet were sitting at the farm table and looked up at him simultaneously.

“Sure, sweetheart. Come on in. We were just trying these vegan cookies I made.”

He rolled his eyes.

“What?” Janet said. “They’re good, right, Maddie?”

Maddie was eating one just then and mumbled something that sounded like “Yes” around
her full mouth.

Hank pulled a soda out of the fridge and sat at the far end of the six-foot-long table,
a few seats away from Maddie.

She finished swallowing. “I mean, at first they’re kind of . . . like . . . twigs
. . . but then they’re really pretty good.”

Hank smiled at Maddie, then reached for one of the cookies. “Twigs, huh? Sounds delectable.”

Janet smiled down at the table. “Well, give me a break, you two. How in the world
am I supposed to make something without butter?”

“You’re not!” Hank cried as he tried to get past the initial twiggy bite.

Maddie smiled at both of them. She didn’t want to intrude; she could tell that Janet
wanted to spend some time with her son. But Maddie just loved being in the same room
with him when he was easy like this. He’d been much more relaxed this week. He’d wave
or call hey when they’d passed each other. He’d come into the house once or twice
just to say hi. Normal. Or what she hoped would be normal. She got the feeling that
Hank didn’t always do normal. Or maybe never had. He was seriously buttoned up.

“Okay, you two,” Maddie said, standing up, “I’m going to head up to bed. Have fun
without me.”

Janet looked up, a curious look in her eyes. “Oh, so soon? Okay, then.”

“Yeah, I’m wiped.” She was. The summer crowds were starting to pile into the diner
in the mornings, and her tips were starting to mount up. “But at least I’ve got a
little bit of cash to show for my efforts.” She held on to the back of the old kitchen
chair. “So I’ll see you guys around.” She smiled from Janet to Hank and tried not
to acknowledge the slow roll of what must be desire as he smiled at her and said,
“Sleep well.”

Maddie took the stairs two at time and walked quickly to her room. Her attraction
to Hank didn’t seem to be going anywhere except up. Maybe he’d been right to try the
amputation approach after they got back from canoeing. She stood in the middle of
her room, holding the flat of her palm against her fluttering stomach. She was seriously
crazy about the guy. She knew she acted like a silly puppy when she was excited, but
she couldn’t help it. She knew it bothered him. She could feel Hank looking at her
sometimes when she was particularly happy or exuberant about something. She could
feel him judging her while they’d watched
Troy
the previous weekend. She could feel his judgment like a palpable thing between them
that night.

But if Maddie claimed to want “normal,” she had to try to understand what that meant
for Hank. She got ready for bed and picked up her Agatha Christie as she slipped into
the cool sheets. She sniffed the smell of sunshine and fresh air that clung to the
old floral sheets. Janet had changed her linen that day. Maddie reminded herself to
thank her for that.

They were all puttering around Janet’s for the rest of the weekend. Hank had taken
it upon himself to remove all the screen doors, strip and repaint the frames, and
replace the screens. Maddie tried not to be too much of a gawker, strolling past Hank
in the driveway, where he’d set up a couple of sawhorses to rest the door frames on
while he sanded and prepped them.

She wasn’t the only one, she realized, when she noticed a couple of teenage girls
who just so happened to be bicycling past the driveway. Repeatedly.

“Hey, Hank!” one of them called, then laughed and got all embarrassed.

“Hi, Emily. Say hi to Karl for me.”

Maddie was walking by with a box of old clothes from the attic, which she was helping
Janet clean out.

She must have laughed or done something to indicate that she’d seen the exchange.
After Maddie put the box in the back of Janet’s car, Hank said, “What are you laughing
at? She’s the younger sister of one of my oldest friends.”

“Just how all the girls in this town have a crush on you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” He scowled and went back to hand-sanding the trim on the door
that he couldn’t reach with the electric sander. Maddie felt her heart pick up, and
her pulse followed the beat of his movements. She was rapidly moving from crush to
full-on lust when it came to Henry Gilbertson. He had on his usual fitted gray T-shirt
and worn-in cargo shorts. He looked so damn good. So natural in his skin. His shoulders
and arms exuded strength and power. His hands held the sander with familiar confidence.
His back and neck flexed and relaxed through the repetitive strokes. His hips and—

“Cut it out, Maddie. I can’t concentrate.”

She must have stared too long.

She shook her head. Guilty.

“Oh, sorry.” She walked quickly back into the house and returned to the attic for
another box of old junk to bring to the VA hospital thrift shop down in Portland.

About two hours later, Janet and Maddie agreed that they’d done enough for one day.
Janet suggested they all three go to dinner in Portland.

Hank had finished stripping and sanding all three screen doors—his mother’s two and
his own—and the first coat of primer was done, set to dry overnight. He was in the
midst of moving all of his tools and the sawhorses back into the garage when his mom
came out with a tray of three iced teas for them.

“I don’t know, Mom. Why don’t you two go on without me.” A statement, not a question.

“Because it would be more fun to go all together. You could go shower and look nice
and the three of us could go to that great place with that new chef that everyone’s
been talking about. Phil said it was supposed to be really good.”

Maddie looked up from her glass of iced tea. “When did you see Phil? I don’t remember
you being in the diner this week?”

Maddie realized too late that she had totally violated the sisterhood of the . . .
sisterhood. Janet looked cornered and then overly blasé. “Oh, I bumped into him at
the Safeway the other day, I think. I can’t remember exactly.”

Hank looked skeptical. “Maybe we should invite him to come with us? Even up our numbers.”

Maddie looked at him. He was a cruel beast.

“Well,” she hesitated, then looked right into Hank’s sparkling eyes, “that might be
nice.”

And there went the air out of the driveway. That might have been all the air leaving
the town of Blake, Maine.

“You and Phil?” Hank blurted before he could think better of it.

Janet kept looking at him. She didn’t say a word, just nodded. She was steely when
she wanted to be, that was for sure. Maddie watched the little power struggle play
out, taking a slow sip of iced tea and reaching for an imaginary bucket of popcorn.

Front.

Row.

Seat.

It dawned on Maddie that this was exactly what Janet had been hoping for, to draw
Hank into something—anything—that would make him take an emotional stake in life.

He must have seen the trap as quickly as Maddie had, because he retreated immediately.
He coiled back into himself just like he had on the drive back from the canoe trip.
Total shut-down.

Hank shrugged.

“You three should go. You’ll have fun.”

Maddie nearly spit her iced tea out. “I’m not going to Portland with Phil Campbell
on my night off.” She turned quickly to Janet. “No offense! I mean, he’s my boss—”

Janet looked at Maddie as if the younger woman had just revealed the details of the
Manhattan Project to the Russians. Traitor!

“Oh, fine!” Janet finally conceded. “We don’t need to invite Phil. I don’t know how
I got painted into this corner in the first place. I just thought it would be fun
to drop off all this stuff at the thrift shop in Portland and then get a lobster roll
while we were there.” She shrugged, a blatant mockery of Hank’s similar movement.
“Call me crazy!” She pivoted on the heel of her blue Keds and stormed back into the
house.

Maddie whistled with low accusation. “You are in deep shit, Hank!” Then Maddie laughed;
she just couldn’t help herself. “Your mom basically just confessed that the secret
mystery man is none other than Phil Fucking Campbell and you rained all over that
particular parade. Nice going, buddy.” Maddie patted him on the upper arm with a dismissive
swat. “Good one!”

Still laughing to herself as she walked through the front door, Maddie called out,
“Quit sulking, Janet! I still want to go to Portland! Let’s leave Mopey home and go
have some fun!”

Within half an hour, both women were showered and had changed into casual sundresses
and sandals. Hank was sitting on the bottom step of the stairs that led to his apartment,
reading what looked to be some sort of mechanical engineering magazine.

He looked up when they walked past him.

“Have fun, ladies,” he said.

“Oh, we will!” Janet said with a defiant lift of her chin.

Hank smiled despite himself, feeling a slight tremor of that ephemeral “normal,” watching
his mother and his beautiful . . . friend . . . get into the small, piece-of-crap
Japanese car and drive off like a pair of teenagers on their way to the mall.

The following week was the Fourth of July, and Blake, Maine, had done a little bit
of primping. Bunting stretched across the storefronts on Main Street, and sparkling
little white lights had been strung from the rooftops on the north side of the street
to the rooftops on the south side of the street and back again. The parade was happening
on Saturday, and then there were huge fireworks on Sunday over in Freeport.

The sun cast long shadows across the sidewalk on Saturday afternoon. Janet, Hank,
and Maddie sat on the curb along with hundreds of other people who’d grabbed a plastic
cup from home and come to watch the antique fire trucks and small-scale military bands
parade past.

Hank was sitting in the middle, between Janet and Maddie. At one point, he turned
to look at Maddie’s profile. She was gazing contentedly at the bagpipers from a few
towns away. To his right, Janet was talking to a friend of hers with whom she worked
at the library on weekends.

“Hey,” Hank said softly.

Maddie’s head spun to face him. “Hey . . .”

“Really exciting, huh?” He was trying to bait her into admitting how boring their
small-town existence really was.

“I love it!” She didn’t clap her hands against her thighs or sigh or do anything overly
enthusiastic, but her eyes gleamed and, Jesus, if Hank didn’t feel it like a punch
in the gut. “I am so happy right now. Just to be sitting here.”

So much for baiting Maddie. If anyone had been snared, it was Hank: he felt like he’d
been hooked and gutted. How could she just feel, and experience, and express like
that? It was so foreign to him. And it was beginning to dawn on him that the Army
and his deployments might not be entirely to blame. He had never been comfortable
around this kind of vitality. It felt messy and threatening. It was like being drunk.