Читать книгу The Happiness Pact - Liz Flaherty - Страница 13

CHAPTER FIVE

“NO KIDS?” INSIDE the town house in Sawyer where Meredith lived, Tucker looked around and raised his eyebrows. There were no toys in the small living area, no TV noise in the background, no sounds of sibling joy or its noisy opposite. “How did that happen?”

Meredith smiled, although her eyes looked shadowed. “Their dad got an unexpected long weekend and asked if he could have them. He picked them up from school and is taking them for pizza and the movies and then to spend two nights in a motel with an indoor pool. They told me I wasn’t any fun anymore and Daddy was.” The shadow came perilously close to being tears, and she turned away abruptly.

Charlie had played that con-the-parents game with Jack, telling his father that Uncle Tucker was the fun brother. Jack had called Tucker and asked if Charlie could come and live with him because being a dad wasn’t fun anymore. Tucker yelled, “No way!” over the phone, and they all ended up laughing.

He didn’t think Meredith would see the humor in the story, so he didn’t tell it. “Let’s go do something,” he suggested instead, hooking her arm with a gentle hand and turning her back toward him. “Hey.” He thumbed the tears from her cheeks. “They’ll be home in a few days, Mer, and he’s a good dad. It’s not like he’s going to abscond with them.”

“Oh, I know.” She leaned against him, and he held her, dropping a kiss on the top of her head. Her spiky hair felt odd against his lips. Not hard, exactly, but not soft and warm like Libby’s, either. Meredith was taller than average, too. When they’d gone to a wine-tasting party, she’d worn skinny high heels and they’d been eye to eye. He’d liked that. She’d been fun to dance with. She was fun to be with, for that matter. She liked football, made really good potato soup that went well with the crusty bread he bought from the Amish bakery and had nice kids. He was attracted to her.

And yet.

It was the and yet that got him. It was okay that he wasn’t falling in love—other than Jack and Arlie and a few friends here and there, he’d never really observed being in love as all that healthy a part of a relationship. Plus, he and Meredith had only been seeing each other for a short while. He liked her more than anyone he’d dated in a very long time. He enjoyed the kids—he’d even taken Zack with him to play basketball with Jack and Charlie at the elementary school on open gym night. They’d played for an hour, working on Charlie’s jump shot and teaching Zack how to do layups. Afterward, Tucker sat quietly with Zack at the ice cream counter in the Silver Moon and heard between the lines of the eight-year-old’s conversation how much he missed his dad.

“I know he’s a good dad. It was husbanding he failed at.” Meredith shrugged, the movement slight against Tucker. “What would you like to do? We’ve already seen both the movies at the theater.”

“You want to go roller-skating?”

“What?” She pulled away from him, laughing. “I’m thirty. All I do at the rink these days is tie the kids’ skates and be ready with Band-Aids when they fall down.”

Disappointment nudged, although he couldn’t have said why. “Pool?” he suggested. “We could go to Kokomo or even back to the Hall. The table there is regulation.”

She shook her head. “Can we just stay here? Maybe order pizza and stream something on TV? I’m sorry. I’m in kind of a crummy mood.”

“Sure, we can do that. It’s okay.” It wasn’t. They’d seen each other nearly every day since their first date, but they hadn’t reached that stage of comfort and conversation with each other. He didn’t know how either would bear up through an evening of inactivity.

At first, it was okay. They wrangled, laughing over what pizza to order, then again over what to watch. The movie they finally agreed on didn’t hold Tucker’s interest, and he had to work to stay awake. Halfway through, she said, “This is crummy, isn’t it?”

At first he thought she meant the two of them trying to make a relationship out of too little substance, but it was too early in the dating game to make that assessment. At least, according to Libby it was. He still wasn’t sure if she’d forgiven either him or her friend Allison for being completely unattracted to each other from the get-go.

“Crummy.” He let the word percolate between them for a moment. “Why?”

“There’s no plot. The only conflict is stupid stuff Shelby’s first-grade class could have developed. What’s her name has had so much plastic surgery she’s unrecognizable.”

Oh, the movie. He almost laughed, but thought once again that she wouldn’t see the humor in the situation. “It’s not great,” he admitted. “Let’s go have a drink somewhere. We shouldn’t waste an evening on a movie we don’t like. I’ll even buy.”

“Okay,” Meredith said reluctantly, turning off the TV and standing up. “I don’t know any place to go in Sawyer, though. If it’s not kid friendly, I haven’t been there.”

“Sawyer has places, but we can go to the Grill. It’s only five miles over to the lake.” He hoped she would go for that, because he didn’t want to stay here. Her sadness was heavy and all-consuming, filling the room with an unhappiness he couldn’t begin to penetrate.

She nodded. “All right.” She brightened. “What about darts? Do you like to play?”

He did. He and the Thursday night poker players often played when the cards weren’t falling right. Plus, he was glad to see her be enthusiastic—he’d have probably joined the dominoes table in the corner of the bar if she’d wanted to, and he didn’t even remember how to play.

On the way to Anything Goes, they talked about her job and the move from a practice in an affluent suburb to a small-town one with many Amish patients. She liked it, Meredith maintained, because she loved working with Arlie, but she wasn’t completely comfortable with the differences between the two practices.

“The rules are the same, and the laws, and I’m glad to have people call me by my first name and ask how my kids are doing, but it’s just so informal. I never expected to work in a facility that had a hitching rail and a water trough in addition to regular customer parking.”

He nodded. “The Amish workers at Llewellyn’s Lures ride their bicycles to work or ride with one of the English. Jack asked one of the guys if we needed to add hitching rails, and Fred, who’s a supervisor, said no—they weren’t going to leave their horses standing there for eight hours. It wasn’t one of my brother’s brightest questions.”

She laughed, the sound quiet and polite. “You don’t travel much these days, do you? Do you miss it?”

“No. I still go on the road once a month or so, but I really like being settled here.” Although he got lonely sometimes. He’d probably gotten lonely when he lived in Tennessee and spent half his time on the road, too, but he didn’t remember it. Of course, then he hadn’t been in pursuit of the whole wife, kids and four-bedroom house dream.

The dartboard was already in use in the Grill, and literally every table was occupied. Libby and Nate were sitting in one of the booths beside the windows overlooking the lake. Nate waved them over, and Tucker captured Meredith’s hand as they wove between the tables. He waited until she’d slid into the booth beside Libby, then sat next to Nate. “’Sup?”

Libby pointed an accusatory finger in his direction. “You sound like Charlie.”

Tucker grinned at her. “Only because Jack and I practiced sounding like Charlie. The kid can’t start a conversation without saying that.”

“So that’s why Zack’s been saying it.” Meredith beamed over the discovery. “When I asked him to stop doing layups in the living room, he paused for the moment and said ‘’Sup, Mom?’ and dunked the ball right into the ficus tree.”

Libby and Nate laughed, and Tucker did, too, but he wondered where this cheerful woman had been when they were at her house trying to watch a boring movie she’d chosen. She’d been taciturn and moody and on the verge of tears.

They talked about spring—surely it would come eventually—and about golf and the state high school basketball tournament. Tucker asked about Libby’s plans for remodeling the carriage house at Seven Pillars to be used for larger meetings than the tearoom could accommodate, and Nate promised her more business when the expansion took place. Meredith listened and contributed to the conversation and laughed as long and loud as everyone else when it was warranted. Or when it wasn’t—clients in the Grill weren’t picky about what they laughed at.

All four of them left at eleven, parting in the parking lot with hugs and handshakes.

“They’re such nice people,” Meredith said when they were in the car driving toward her house. “How long have you known them?”

“Always.” His answer was immediate, but then he thought about it. “Well, Nate just from kindergarten. I’ve known Libby since she was twenty-seven minutes old. She was my first roommate the night we were born.” He glanced at Meredith. “Do you have friends like that?”

She hesitated, not looking back at him, then said quietly, with pain adding shaky needles to her voice, “I used to. Just one.”

* * *

LIBBY KISSED NATE’S cheek and grinned at him. “See you later. I’m glad you had such a great trip to North Carolina.”