Starting Over (Treading Water Trilogy) (11 page)

“It wasn’t something I broadcasted, especially back then when there would’ve been a lot of people frowning on an alcoholic teacher and coach at the high school. I was afraid if people found out, I’d lose my job. So I never told anyone. Ever. These days, I’m retired, and I don’t really care who knows.”

“That must be liberating,” Brandon said as their coffee was served.

Joe added cream and sugar to his. “It is. But we live in a different world today. There isn’t the same kind of stigma placed on our illness, because it’s better understood than it was back then.”

“I’m still not anxious to tell the world.”

“You don’t have to. Just work the program, live your life as best you can, make your amends. You know the drill by now.”

“I sure do envy you.”

Joe grunted out a chuckle. “Why in the hell would you envy me?”

“Because you’ve got twenty-five years of sobriety under your belt, and here I am just getting started.”

“There’s a story in the
Big Book
about a guy with thirty or so years in the program coming across a newly sober guy who says exactly what you just did. Old guy tells new guy he’d trade places with him in a minute if he could. Of course new guy can’t believe that, but old guy knows something new guy never could—he’ll find more joy than he can ever imagine on this journey, and if he could, old guy would go back to day one so he could experience it all again. If I could, Brandon, I’d trade places with
you
right now. Not only are you young and handsome,” he joked, “but you’re at the start of the most amazing journey you’ll ever take in your life.
I
envy
you
.”

Brandon sat back to absorb what Joe had said. “One of the first things on my to-do list is getting a sponsor. Would you, I mean—”

“I’d be honored. It’d be like old times, huh?”

Brandon laughed and raised his coffee cup in a mock toast. “Here’s to old times.”

“And new beginnings,” Joe said, clicking his mug against Brandon’s.

The smell of new wood and sawdust hung in the damp air as Colin inspected a restaurant the new construction division had just completed in Brewster. O’Malley & Sons had put up the frame and would be turning it over to other contractors to finish. Normally, Brandon would be the one to inspect and sign off on a job like this, but Colin knew what to look for and was pleased with what he saw. As he toured the building with the job foreman, Colin’s phone beeped. He unclipped it from his belt to take the call from Lorraine, the office manager.

“Colin?” Lorraine had to be well into her sixties, and Colin had never seen her without her signature beehive hair-do and cat’s eye glasses, which she owned in an amazing variety of colors and patterns. After nearly forty years of running the office, she was the glue that held the whole operation together.

“Yes, ma’am?” He lived in mortal fear that his father’s retirement would spur Lorraine to make the same move, but so far she hadn’t said anything, and he certainly wasn’t asking.

“You wanted me to let you know when FedEx came.”

“I’m waiting for a warranty part for one of the new trucks that’s out of commission until it gets here.”

“Nothing yet. Do you want me to track it?”

“That’s all right. We’ll give them until tomorrow. Anything else? Brandon hasn’t been there, has he?” Colin was nervous about Brandon showing up to work at the yard rather than the apartment building.

“No sign of Brandon. You got a call from a Meredith Chase. Want the number or should I leave it on your desk?”

Colin’s heart skipped a beat, and he reached for the pen sticking out from under his hard hat. “I’ll take the number, please.” He wrote it on his hand as Lorraine rattled it off.

“She said that’s her cell number, and she’s on a break until ten thirty.”

Colin checked his watch. Ten fifteen. “Thanks, Lorraine.” He returned his phone to his belt and turned to the employee he was with. “Excuse me for a minute, Ray. I need to make a phone call.”

“Take your time.”

Colin went out to his truck to make the call on his personal cell phone. While he waited for Meredith to answer, the phone beeped twice, but he ignored it. When he heard her voice, an image of her in the pink hat came rushing back to him. Despite his intention to forget about her and move on, he’d thought about her often in the days since she turned down his invitation to dinner.

“Hi, it’s Colin O’Malley.”

“Hi, Colin.”

“I got your message.”

“I hope it’s okay I called your office.”

“Of course it is. I was glad to hear from you. How are you?”

“I’m fine. I was just wondering if your brother got home and how you’re doing.”

Colin was disappointed to realize this was an Al-Anon call. “He’s home. Our paths haven’t crossed yet, but we’re having dinner with him tonight. My dad spent some time with him yesterday and said he seems to be in good shape. We’ll see.”

“I’ll pray for your family.”

“Thank you. I’m actually in your school neighborhood right now.”

“Really? Doing what?”

“We’re the contractor on the new restaurant at the intersection of 28 and 6A.”

“I know just where you mean.” She paused. “Um, Colin, I feel bad about the way we left things the other night. I don’t want you to think…”

“What?”

There was another long pause during which he wondered if she was still there. “That I didn’t want to see you again,” she said in a small voice. “It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?” he asked, relieved by her confession.

“It’s nothing to do with you. I’d like to see you again. It’s just that I don’t, well, I don’t date or anything.”

“Why not?”

“Let’s just say once burnt, twice shy.”

A new level of understanding settled over him as he got his first clue as to what might’ve brought her to Al-Anon. “It doesn’t have to be a date. We could just call it dinner and leave it at that. You do go out with friends, don’t you?”

“Well, yes, I guess I do.”

“I’d like to think we could be friends.” Colin felt almost deceitful since he already knew he wanted to be much more than friends with this woman. There was something so sweet about her, and the clue she’d given him only fueled his desire to know more about her.

“I’d like that.”

“So then would you like to have dinner with a friend on Saturday night?”

“That’s date night.”

He laughed. “How about Sunday, then?”

“That’s a school night.”

“I haven’t heard that expression in twenty years,” he said with a chuckle. “Which is worse? A date night or a school night?”

“Date night, definitely. Sunday it is.”

“I’ll call you,” he promised.

“Okay. Are you coming to the meeting on Friday?”

“I’m planning to.”

“I’ll see you then. I’ve got to get back to class.”

“See you Friday.” Colin ended the call and let out a whoop. It wasn’t a date, but it was a start. He looked up to find his employee, Ray, watching him from the door of the restaurant. His face heated with embarrassment as he got out of the truck.

“Everything all right, boss?” Ray asked with amusement. The men had called him that since Dennis announced his promotion at a meeting Monday morning.

“Let’s get back to work,” Colin grumbled as he put his hard hat back on.

Ray laughed. “After you, boss.”

Brandon groaned when he pulled up to the house on Old Queen Anne Road. The rambling Victorian had been added on to over the years, and Dennis said it was structurally sound but needed some major aesthetic work to bring it into the twenty-first century. There were six apartments in all, five of which were rented.

As Brandon walked up the cracked front walk, he surveyed the overgrown landscaping and faded yellow paint peeling off the exterior. The wooden front steps sagged under his weight, and he found more peeling paint, gray this time, on the front porch where an ancient swing hung from the ceiling at the far end. “You’d be taking your life in your hands to sit on that thing,” Brandon mumbled.

Dennis came out the front door. “Hey, there he is!” He clapped his son on the back. “The man of the hour!”

“More like the chump of the hour. Sorry I’m late. I ran into Coach Coughlin in Harwich this morning.”

“How is he?”

“He’s great. It was good to see him.” He pushed a finger into the rotted frame around one of the front windows. “What the hell were you thinking buying this place, Da?”

“It’s a great tax write off,
and
it has real potential. Come on, I’ll show you.”

An hour later, Brandon had been given a tour long on low points and short on highlights. The place needed everything. But while he grumbled to his father, inside, Brandon felt a spark of excitement at what he could do here. As he and his brothers had assumed more responsibility within the company, they’d gotten to do less of the actual work, and Brandon was surprised to discover he missed it. “So what’s the budget?”

“I’d like to keep it under fifty thousand, not counting your time.” Dennis handed his son a credit card he’d allocated to the project. “Do you think you can do it for that much?”

Brandon tucked the card into his back pocket, scratched his head, and took a good look around again at the downstairs apartment that would be his for the time being. The carpet had to go, the bathroom and kitchen would be torn out and replaced, everything needed paint, and this was just
one
of the six apartments. “I don’t know. I can try. We’ll get quantity discounts on a lot of it since there will be six of everything. If I’m getting close to fifty, I’ll let you know. So where do the tenants live when I’ve got their places gutted?”

“Well,” Dennis said, his eyes twinkling with amusement, “I was thinking you could do this place first so they could take turns staying here while you do theirs.”

Brandon’s eyes narrowed. “So I get to live in chaos to keep the tenants comfortable?”

“Something like that.”

“I definitely have ‘sucker’ written all over me, don’t I?”

Dennis became serious. “I thought you might enjoy this, but after what we talked about yesterday, I don’t trust myself to make that decision for you anymore. If you really don’t want to do it, you certainly don’t have to. I can put it back on the market.”

“I was just thinking that it’s going to be fun,” Brandon confessed as he realized he was committing to a project that would take much longer than a month or two. “It’s the kind of stuff we used to do in the summers before we grew up and became important.”

Dennis laughed. “Yes, and it’s exactly what Aidan’s doing in Vermont.” His smile faded at the mention of his oldest son.

“What?”

“Something’s up with him. Your Mum called him just to say hello this morning. She could tell something wasn’t right, but he wouldn’t tell her anything.”

“Maybe she just caught him at a bad time.”

“No, it was something more than that.” Dennis looked up and went pale as a willowy blond walked past the window where they were standing. He grabbed his son’s arm to pull him back from the window.

“What the hell is wrong with you, Da?” Brandon asked, tugging his arm free.

“
Shhhh
, she’ll hear us. She already saw the trucks, so she’s looking for us.”

“Who is?” Brandon whispered, feeling like an idiot.

“The tenant from hell,” Dennis whispered with a look of sincere fright on his face.

“Mr. O’Malley?” a woman’s voice called from the hallway. “I know you’re here somewhere, and you’re hiding from me, but I can wait all day if I have to.”

“Shit, shit,
shit
,” Dennis whispered.

It was all Brandon could do not to dissolve into laughter. “Are you seriously hiding from a woman? After living with Mum for forty years?”

“That woman makes your mother look like a pushover,” Dennis whispered.

“This I have to see.” Brandon moved to the door.

“
Brandon!
” Dennis continued to press his huge frame against the wall between the windows. “Do
not
open that door!”

With a withering look for his father, Brandon opened the door to the most breathtaking woman he’d ever seen. And she was some kind of pissed off.

“Is Mr. O’Malley hiding in there?” she asked, hands on slender hips. Golden brown eyes narrowed with anger as she tried to look around Brandon into the apartment.

“I’m Mr. O’Malley.” Brandon extended a hand to her. “What can I do for you?”

She ignored his outstretched hand and appeared briefly unnerved to be dealing with another O’Malley.

Brandon’s mouth went dry when, in a gesture of anger, she tossed her long blonde hair over her shoulder, revealing high, full breasts under a form-fitting tank top.

“I’ve been trying to reach the
older
Mr. O’Malley for two weeks. There’s a leak in the ceiling, my kitchen sink is backed up, and I’m
still
hearing the pitter-patter of little feet at night. You can tell him if he doesn’t do something about it
today
, I’m calling the housing authority. I have a child living in that apartment.”