The Coldwater Warm Hearts Club (3 page)

Jacob gathered up the garbage and headed for the Dumpster in the alley. He shifted the bag onto the shoulder over his good leg. Too much weight on the wrong side and his stump would ache like the devil later that night. Sometimes it felt as if his absent toes were cramping and he couldn't massage them into submission. Then, too, even if everyone else “deserved” their piece of cobbler, Jake had to exercise and watch his weight lest an extra pound or two change how his prosthetic leg fit.

But he was dealing.

What he wasn't dealing with was the way folk treated him since he came back from his stint with the Marines. Oh, he was welcomed home and hailed a hero, right enough, but he'd never get used to those sidelong stares. The slight shake of the head when they glanced at his leg. Or the way a conversation would dry up as he approached—a sure sign he'd been the topic of gossip.

Or, most especially, the way women reacted to him.

Not that he was conceited or anything, but Jake knew he had a way with the ladies from the time he sprouted his first chin hair. He couldn't help it. He loved them and they loved him back.

Of course, he didn't love any of them very long.

Now they wanted to take care of him, like he was some pathetic invalid.

Except for Lacy Evans. She seemed to take his new leg as nothing particularly tragic, just something that had happened. She'd expressed as much sympathy as he could bear, which wasn't much, and moved the conversation on to greener pastures. He was the same guy. She was the same girl. They'd known each other since they were in kindergarten. Even back then, she'd caught his eye by showing off her underpants while she flipped around on the playground twirly-bars.

He slung the garbage up and into the Dumpster, where it landed with a dull thud, followed by the sound of a shattering pickle jar. Jake was instantly hyper-aware of his surroundings. The hair on the back of his neck rose to attention. He could have counted a gnat's eyelashes.

The jangle of the smashed jar seemed as loud as an explosion. The sound went on and on. It shivered down his spine and sent him back to his unit. He expected bits of glass to come flying out of the Dumpster. The real world phased out around him for a few heartbeats. Light flashed, blinding him, as the windows blew out of the Humvee. Blood trickled down his cheek.

Then his vision seemed to return. Barren hills with vibrant poppy fields in the hollows burst on his sight. Sandy grit filled every crevice and made his eyes sting. Fire shot up his leg. His buddy's scream was an ice pick in his ear. Everything was awash in angry red. He couldn't tell if it was poppies or blood.

A hoarse cry tore from Jake's throat.

“Hey, man, you trippin'?”

Rough hands seized his shoulders. They gave him a shake and the world turned round to its right colors again. Breathing hard, Jake found himself looking into the weatherworn face of Lester, Coldwater Cove's resident homeless vet.

Well, that wasn't strictly true. Lester didn't live in the town year-round. The former army grunt liked to winter in Brownsville, but he complained that summers in Texas were “hotter than hell.” He was in no hurry for a preview of what he considered his final destination. So Lester always thumbed his way back to Coldwater Cove's green hills by the time the first azaleas were ready to bloom.

“No, I'm not tripping. I'm OK,” Jake said, though his heart still pounded like a jackhammer. If someone had to catch him in a flashback, he was grateful it was Lester. Anyone else would go all frantic on his butt and demand he seek immediate help from a VA shrink.

Like I could get an appointment with one anytime this decade.
Anyway, Jacob didn't want anybody poking around in his head. It got crowded enough in there with just him.

Then he noticed a pile of greasy-looking army blankets. Lester had made a pallet for himself by the Dumpster. “Look, you don't have to stay here in the alley. Samaritan House always has a few beds.”

“Yeah, but they make me stay sober if I want one, and where's the fun in that?” Lester bent over, gathered up his blankets, and stuffed them into a grimy knapsack. Only God knew when any of Lester's belongings, or the man himself for that matter, had last seen soap and water.

“Wait here and I'll bring you some eggs,” Jake said.

Lester grinned. “That's more like it. Don't s'pose you have a little Jack Daniels to go with 'em?”

“No liquor license. Best I can do for you is coffee.”

“Well, I won't say no to a cup of joe, the blacker the better,” Lester said as he settled comfortably on the diner's back stoop. “You may be a jarhead, but you're a good'un.”

Jake didn't consider himself all that good, but there was no reason to disabuse Lester of the notion. He went back into the Green Apple to whip up a breakfast scramble for the old man.

And made a mental note to let Daniel Scott know his father was back in town.

 

—George Evans, Esq., terror of fluffy-tailed rodents everywhere

 

 

 

A
t 10:45 on the dot, Lacy's parents headed for church. She begged off. Having been a recent star on the Methodist prayer chain, she wasn't ready to face them en masse.

The house was so quiet Lacy could hear the occasional creak of timbers settling on the foundation. She caught herself pacing in time with the loud tick of the grandfather clock in the foyer. Fergus followed her from room to room, hopeful she'd land somewhere and provide him with a lap, no doubt. But Lacy had been sitting too long and, even after an all-night drive, the caffeine in her dad's coffee, plus the cup she'd had at the Green Apple, ensured that she wouldn't be nodding off anytime soon.

She needed to stretch her legs, so she headed out the front door and down the street. If she went north, she'd be traipsing across Mr. Mayhew's front lawn. When she was a kid, he was the neighborhood boogeyman. Fussy and argumentative, he'd pop out on his porch brandishing a rake anytime one of the Evans children put so much as a toe on his property. His picture should appear in the dictionary next to the word “curmudgeon.”

Lacy decided that between incurring the wrath of Mr. Mayhew and walking in the graveyard, the cemetery was the lesser of two evils.

The fact that the old territory cemetery was next to her house used to creep her out. If twilight descended while she was walking home, she'd run past the iron rail fencing that surrounded the rows of gray headstones and wouldn't stop until she was on her own front stoop. Of course, it didn't help matters that her dad kept assuring her it wasn't the dead ones she needed to worry about.

“It's them
live
ones,” he'd say with a waggle of his brows.

At the time, Lacy hadn't appreciated her father's humor, but she'd learned to appreciate cemeteries since then.

In Boston, they were quaint and curious, with canting grave markers so old some of the inscriptions had been reduced to mere dimples in the stone. Important people's bones rested in the little churchyards along the Freedom Trail, people with names everyone recognized—Paul Revere and Sam Adams, John Hancock and Mother Goose.

Lacy recognized the names in the Coldwater Cove cemetery, too. There were Addleberrys and Bradens, Van Hooks and Sweazys—all big landholders and early settlers. Her grandparents on her father's side were also there, lying next to each other for all eternity. This arrangement undoubtedly made it easier for them to continue their playful running argument over who loved whom the most.

It occurred to Lacy that she knew someone else there, too.

Her high school classmate, Jessica Walker.

The Walkers were a prominent family in Coldwater Cove. They owned a good number of the buildings ringing the courthouse and held seats on the town council. When Walmart wanted to come to town, they fought like demons to keep it out, but eventually folks out-voted them and the big-box store moved in.

“Makes people feel like Coldwater has finally arrived,” her dad had said, as if “low, low prices” were the ultimate source of a town's validation.

In addition to the Walkers' real estate holdings around the Square, the family occupied a choice portion of the burial grounds, too. Their headstones were grouped in the high northeast corner of the cemetery, so the dearly departed Walkers didn't have to worry about runoff from someone else's plot.

Lacy found Jessica there, next to a big bald cypress. Tired from the slog uphill, she sat down on the lush spring grass and leaned on the backside of the truly enormous
WALKER
headstone. Absorbed heat from the granite leached into her. A vision of Jessica doing handsprings for the length of the gym scrolled across her mind. Pretty, popular, and incredibly limber, Jessica had been captain of the cheerleading squad.

Lacy had played clarinet in the pep band. It was the only group she ever joined and even there, she was just one of the woodwinds. Nothing special.

If she could have traded places with anyone back in high school, it would have been Jessica Walker.

Until Jess drove her new car into Lake Jewel a week after her eighteenth birthday. With that sobering thought, Lacy decided maybe her problems weren't all that dire. At least, not at the moment.

Coldwater Cove had a way of slowing the world down. The earth sort of wobbled as it decelerated. Lacy decided no one would miss her if she stepped off that spinning ball for a bit. Her eyelids drooped shut, and she winked out, but she didn't get to nap long.

Low voices woke her.

“I'm telling you, she moved back home.”

I'm right here. I can hear you,
Lacy wanted to say.
Don't talk about me like I'm not on the other side of this honking big headstone.

“In with her parents?”

The first person must have nodded because a brief silence was followed by a low whistle. “I never would have thought it. She really left him, huh?”

Lacy knew eavesdropping wasn't polite, but this was Coldwater Cove. Everyone was always in everyone else's business. She shifted her weight to one hip so she could listen more comfortably.

“Was it an affair, you think?”

“What else? I sure wouldn't kick Danny Scott out of bed for eating crackers.”

Danny Scott.
My Daniel?

“Come on, Georgina. Maybe it was Anne who had the affair.”

“No, stupe. If it was her, she wouldn't be moving in with her parents. She'd be shacking up with whoever she's . . . well, you know.”

“Sadly, I don't. I haven't
you know'd
in a long time.”

The pair erupted in laughter. Then the one named Georgina announced that she had a tee time to make and left, but the other stayed on. Lacy heard the scrape of a trowel on a clay pot.

Someone was tending Jessica Walker's grave.

Getting out of this situation was going to be a good trick. Doing it without letting the person on the other side of the headstone know she'd been snooping on their conversation would be even better. It didn't help that all Lacy could think about was the fact that the ring on Daniel's left hand might not mean as much as she'd thought.

Of course, separated was still married. Lacy wasn't about to be cast as some sort of home wrecker. That would make her no better than the thoroughly hateable Ramona. But if Lacy wasn't ready to become as detestable as her traitorous office assistant, she needed to remind her wayward stomach. It did residual flip-flops whenever she thought about Danny Scott.

The gardener showed no sign of leaving, so Lacy decided to brazen it out. She yawned loudly and stood. Peering around the headstone—it was far too imposing a monument to peer over—she found Jessica Walker's fraternal twin sister, Heather, fitting a pot of yellow tulips into the brass vase next to the stone.

“Oh!” Heather said, shooting to her feet with a hand to her chest in surprise when she saw Lacy. “I didn't know anyone was there.”

“Sorry. I drove all night to get home and I was just stretching my legs. After I sat down here, I guess I fell asleep,” Lacy said as she came around to Heather's side of the marker.

It was a little weird for someone to be napping in a graveyard, but Heather shrugged as if it were no big deal. She folded her lanky frame back into a kneeling position to continue work on the tulips. Back in the day, long-legged Heather Walker had been a power forward on the Lady Marmots basketball team.

Lady Marmots.
Now that Lacy had been away for a while, the team name struck her as beyond odd. Coldwater Cove's high school athletes had been known as the Fighting Marmots since the 1950s. The Marmots at least had the benefit of being politically correct since no one could possibly be offended by a glorified ground squirrel.

Except, of course, Lacy's dad. A squirrel of any stripe was enough to make his cheek muscles twitch.

“Heard you were coming home,” Heather said.

“For a while.” She hadn't given up on figuring out a way to pay off that note and rebuild her design business.
And when I do, no one remotely related to Bradford Endicott will even be allowed to gawk through the windows.

“Got a place to stay?” Heather asked.

Lacy shook her head. “I need to find something pretty quick.” She didn't add pretty cheap. It went without saying.

“Mrs. Paderewski has a one-bedroom on the Square. After you left, the town council required all the owners to refurbish the upper stories above the businesses. Mrs. P's rental is next to mine over Gewgaws and Gizzwickies,” Heather said. Lacy recognized the shop as her mom's favorite junk emporium. “We'd be neighbors.”

Lacy didn't connect with people easily. It was part of why she'd fled Coldwater Cove for the anonymity of a big city. But it was hard to resist Heather's friendly smile. “That sounds good to me.”

So after helping Heather finish her grave tending, Lacy went home, called Mrs. Paderewski, and made an appointment to see the rental. Then she finished her nap on her mother's hundred-year-old settee. It was much more comfortable than the cemetery.

And Fergus finally found the lap he'd been looking for.

* * *

“Is up here. Come, come.” It was a warmish Monday afternoon when Mrs. Paderewski motioned Lacy up the wrought-iron stairs on the back side of the brick building. The steps led to a second-story metal deck that stretched the whole length of the structure. Mrs. P's sensible shoes clanged on the iron work. For a round little woman, she hoofed it up the stairs pretty quickly. All those years of teaching piano to the tone-deaf children of Coldwater Cove hadn't hurt her spryness one bit.

“Is $575 a month,” she said in her harsh Polish accent as she ushered Lacy into the apartment. “Water, heat, is all included.”

Lacy didn't blame the piano teacher for branching out into real estate. Most of Mrs. P's students would never do her proud. Even Lacy had spent one summer squirming on the Paderewski piano bench for thirty minutes every Tuesday before her parents realized she'd do better with a clarinet. At least with a wind instrument she could only butcher one note at a time.

“$575?” Lacy said as she looked around.

In Boston, that wouldn't rent a closet. In Coldwater Cove, it'd bag a funky one-bedroom walk-up. The place didn't have granite countertops or stainless-steel appliances, but the kitchen was adequate, considering how infrequently Lacy cooked. Fortunately, the “refurbishing” Heather had told her about hadn't updated away the charm of the old building. The ceiling was still punched tin and the big farmhouse sink looked original and in surprisingly good condition.

“Is OK, $550 then,” Mrs. Paderewski amended hopefully.

A peninsula with bar stools separated the kitchen from the rest of the open space. The old hardwoods creaked under foot as Lacy moved into the living room. Realtors called a room “cozy” when they meant small. This one qualified as both, but the floor-to-ceiling built-in shelves on one wall would help Lacy make the space work. There was no separate dining room. She'd have to shoehorn her bistro set into a corner.

She checked out the view of the courthouse. The old Opera House was on the corner to her right, next to the
Coldwater Gazette
. Across the Square, the Green Apple Grill was also within her line of sight.

The bedroom was small, but it would handle her sparse furniture, and the closet would do for her newly pared-down wardrobe. She'd sold her Jimmy Choos on Craigslist before she headed west. Where would she wear them in Coldwater Cove? Besides, if a special occasion did present itself, she still had the strappy Manolo Blahniks she couldn't bear to part with.

The bathroom had a deep claw-foot tub. Lacy checked the water pressure. The pipes banged a bit, but the faucet flowed just fine. Hot water arrived before she counted to ten.

Lacy had looked at half a dozen semi-depressing places that afternoon before meeting with Mrs. P. She saw duplexes with linoleum floors that looked as if someone had been flamenco dancing in football cleats on them. Big dogs were invariably chained in the neighbors' backyards. This apartment was miles better than those and besides, this place spoke to her.

“I'll take it.”

“Good.” Mrs. Paderewski smiled. A bit of her bloodred lipstick had smeared on her upper incisors, making her look like a middle-aged Polish vampire. “Oh, I almost forget. Is $25 pet rent, too.”

“I don't have a pet.”

“Well”—Mrs. P waddled back to the kitchen—“now you do.”

She followed as the piano teacher opened a door next to the refrigerator. Lacy had thought it was probably a pantry, but to her delight, the small space housed a stackable washer and dryer.

And a litter box.

A large Siamese glared down at her from the top of the dryer. How the cat had gotten all the way up there, Lacy had no idea. It yowled a greeting, which might be roughly translated as “Get your citified butt out of my apartment. I was here first.” The cry was punctuated by a sharp hiss.

Lacy stepped back a pace. “I don't want a cat.”

“You want apartment?”

She nodded.

“Then you want cat,” Mrs. P said, folding her arms over her ample bosom. “Is package deal.”