EYES ON YOU Page 11

  He let her out, watching her while she did her business, then fed her and made a cup of coffee for himself. Fog shrouded the island, making visibility almost non-existent.

  Not long after settling in with Jess’s second book, she called. The first thing he said was, “The lady was a genius, even in her earlier days.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “You won First Place in the Audubon contest that year.”

  “That was luck.”

  “The right light, the bird spreading its wings and taking off…”

  “Luck,” she reiterated.

  “You had to know when to be there and exactly how to get that shot, Ms. Wentworth.”

  “And wait and wait and wait.”

  “But, your patience paid off.”

  “You’re up early.”

  “So are you.”

  “I don’t sleep that much,” she admitted.

  “I don’t sleep well either.”

  “Will you come over today?” Her voice sounded genuinely optimistic.

  “I’m giving you time with the kids in your new house.”

  “I promise not to ask you to do any more work. Thank you again for all the painting you did. ”

  He hesitated. “I need to ice my ankle some today.” He explained about breaking it months before and about the aftermath of allowing tendons and ligaments to heal.

  “You haven’t said a word about that,” she reproachfully said.

  “I try not to bitch, moan, groan or complain about such things.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Not my thing—really. Thank you for the invitation, though.” He very much wanted to see her before the work week began, but he didn’t want to make a nuisance of himself right off the bat.

  “You’re not.”

  Had she just read his mind? “Not what?”

  “Coming on too strong.”

  He laughed outright, and she finally did too.

  “Glad to know it because I’d like to take you to dinner soon.”

  “I have someone to babysit Molly, and Aden insists that he doesn’t need one.”

  “Tell me when,” he said with excitement resonating in his voice.

  “Next Saturday?”

  “It’s a date.”

  “Yes, it is,” she said.

  Did he just hear a tone of excitement in her voice? Yes, he did!!

  *****

  All morning, he basked in the afterglow of their delicate flirting with each other, and since he had an official date lined up with her, he debated where to take her. He was riding his stationary bike that afternoon when his mother called to tell him that she’d just returned from meeting Jess and her children.

  “She and the kids are absolutely charming,” Julia announced.

  “I knew you’d think so,” he replied.

  “She’s got an outdoor look about her that’s appealing to you. Right? And the children are SO mannerly and bright!”

  “She’s beautiful, Mom. And yes, her kids are beautiful and great too.”

  “She was so thrilled to receive the beef bolognaise. I took over a fresh loaf of my sourdough bread to go with it.”

  “The perfect gift.”

  “I’m so excited, Roman.”

  “We’re just friends, Mom, but I don’t want you telling anyone. Okay?”

  “Of course not,” she too quickly responded, and his mother’s tittering prickled his ear.

  He spent the latter part of the afternoon going more slowly through We Will Remember, wondering how she had managed to get all of the breathtaking, exquisitely poignant pictures of people from all over America during the first week after 9/11. It finally occurred to him that she’d had to have driven all of those thousands of miles. Flights had been halted for days afterward. He turned back to the front matter and saw that the album of remembrance had undergone three re-printings.

  *****

  “So, how many miles did you have to drive in that first week after the attack?”

  “Over fifty-five hundred,” she said into her phone. “I don’t remember sleeping at all that week. I drove nights, photographing and documenting during the days and evenings. The collective emotional mood of our country at that time is something that I will never forget.”

  “None in New York or Washington,” he noted.

  “There were plenty of folks already there and doing that. I wanted to know what everyone else in the country thought and felt.”

  “You managed to capture the pulse and heartbreak of America.”

  She segued to a happier topic. “I’m in love with your mom. She’s such a great cook, and she’s absolutely beautiful and so petite! I wasn’t expecting her to be so tiny.”

  “So, how did she manage to have such monstrous children?”

  “Frankly, I was wondering,” she chided.

  “You should see my brother, Frederick,” he teased her.

  “He can’t be taller than you,” she said in disbelief.

  For a moment, he didn’t say anything.

  “Really?” she hesitantly asked.

  He laughed. “Just pulling your leg. I win by an inch, unless Freddie’s stretched himself, and I’m the oldest.”

  “Aha,” she quipped. “You were the model for those who came later on.”

  “Ask my sister about whether or not I was a model for much of anything,” he countered.

  “Your voice…”

  “Did you just say my voice?” He thought he’d misheard.

  She was hesitant again.

  “What about my voice?”

  “When we talk on the phone, I feel like a teen-ager again,” she tentatively admitted.

  Relief washed over him and he chuckled at her.

  “There’s this buzz that goes through me…and I feel giddy,” she further explained.

  “That makes two of us then,” Roman wished he were standing right in front of her when she said that.

  “Really?”

  “Uh-huh. Let’s do something off the wall silly and meet somewhere for five minutes.”

  “Mayer’s Fresh Market,” she breathlessly suggested.

  “On my way.” He disconnected and grabbed his keys.

  *****

  Mayer’s Market was scheduled to close in another thirty minutes, and there were only a few cars out front, plus the employees’ vehicles, a couple of which were parked beneath pines with low hanging branches. Roman arrived first, pulling the Navigator into one of the shrouded parking spaces, and then removing his seatbelt. In a couple of minutes, Jess pulled up in her Rover, got out with a huge smile that was verging on laughter, her eyes sparkling in merriment in the dimly-lit parking lot. When she popped open the door, she moved rather quickly to get in and shut it and then took a deeper breath.

  “This feels rather clandestine,” she said.

  “Bordering on illicit,” Roman added, not at all caring.

  “You’d think we were having an affair,” she added.

  “Or planning on it,” he muttered, unwilling to wait a moment longer, taking a fistful of her padded jacket to pull her closer, partway over the vehicle’s console. Near her mouth, he savored the closeness of her before they kissed. With the console between them, she folded into his upper half to share in a passionate, urgent kiss. He added in some tongue action, which spurred some warm reciprocity from her.

  She was the first to pull back, breathlessly saying, “You’re driving me nuts.”

  “Yeah?” he hoarsely murmured. “That line was on the tip of my tongue as you said it.”

  “And you surprise me,” she added.

  “What did you expect to discover about me? That I’m an uptight nerd?”

  She broke into laughter, the sound of it thrilling him. Mightily, he chuckled before capturing her mouth with his. This spur-of-the-moment flight into an absurd meet-up tickled them both to no end.

  “The last and only time I did this in the parking lot of my father’s market, I wasn’t quite sixteen-
years-old. I was supposed to be gathering up the grocery carts, and the girl’s name was Deane. She was fifteen, and her mom was shopping in the market.” He smiled at Jess while recalling that distant memory.

  “But you were already so handsome and irresistible,” she guessed, imagining Roman at a much younger age.

  Slowly, he shook his head while placing an arm around her and this time kissing her tenderly, meaningfully. She touched his whiskered cheek, and her mouth were noticeably trembling as she said, “Goodnight, Roman.”

  “Goodnight, Jess.” Reluctantly, they let go of each other, he watched her getting out of his vehicle, getting into hers, and briefly waving before driving away. And he knew what was occurring, he felt powerless to stop it, and wouldn’t have wanted to halt what was happening between them for anything in the world.

  CHAPTER 16

  He began gasping while recounting the scene of the firefight in Afghanistan that had killed everyone in his unit but him.

  “Stop for a moment and take some deeper breaths,” Roman urged in a modulated voice.

  Ben Girard was lying on the couch, going over the horrible experience for the third time that day. He had used slightly different words to describe the encounter, but was basically relating the traumatic event as though he’d memorized it. Roman waited while Ben stopped and took deeper breaths before continuing. He was alert, his eyes were open, and he continued by saying, “Jackson…Jackson Fuller was my best bud in the unit.”

  Had Roman heard Fuller’s name before? After countless times of hearing the story, he was certain that he hadn’t.

  With his breath quickening again, Ben exclaimed, “Fuller had this shit eatin’ grin……two or three seconds before the upper part of him got blown to hell.” Ben had an intense grimace on his face, desperately attempting to hold back an avalanche of tears.

  “Go on, Ben.”

  Trying to continue, Ben broke emotionally apart, a gush of tears coursing down his face. Roman knew that soldiers in combat tended to develop intense friendships because of the life and death situations they dealt with in a war zone. Ben sat up, his heartbreak so devastatingly real that Roman was affected by it, tears spilling from his own eyes. He reached for tissues for Ben and then took a couple for himself. For the rest of the eight minutes of Ben’s scheduled meeting, Roman moved to the couch and held Ben in his arms, while the man cried his heart out. Afterward, he made sure that Ben stayed in the office a while longer, washed his face in the bathroom and took some deep breaths, before Roman okayed him to drive on to work.

  *****

  He was more than glad for the reprieve from the office by the time four o’clock rolled around. He’d seen six other clients that day and felt emotionally depleted. Aden walked in at four, and Roman was hopeful that the boy had remembered to bring his baseball and glove with him. He had remembered to bring his own glove, and when Aden gave a thumbs up sign while standing in the outer office, he grabbed his jacket and asked Rene if she would mind locking up for the day.

  “You don’t have to tell me twice,” Rene Sampson said with a wink at Aden, already beginning to shut down her computer. “Mondays are the pits.”

  “I’ll buy that,” Roman said.

  They left the office, and Roman asked, “You thirsty?”

  “I just had a Coke at Jerry’s,” Aden told him. “Danny and I whizzed by there with Patrick, before they had to get back to practice.”

  That was good news! Roman was hoping something further would develop from Aden having met Danny at Patrick’s game, and that had now apparently happened.

  “Patrick will talk anyone’s ear off,” Roman confided and then chuckled. “My nephew’s rarely at the loss for words.”

  “He did talk a lot,” Aden agreed with a quick grin. “Danny looked me up before school started today.”

  “Very good,” Roman said. “They’re both good kids, besides the fact that I’m their uncle.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Roman glimpsed another grin. They walked up the hill, past some commercial buildings, to a park that was entertaining a few youngsters on a cool, but sunny late afternoon. Aden got his baseball and glove out of his backpack, they paced off from each other, and warmed up for a bit to get their arms loose. Roman was again impressed by how good an arm the boy had. After just a few throws, his hand was already smarting from the bullets that Aden was shooting, and if there had been a home plate, they would have been blazing strikes. Roman came back with some fairly hard ones of his own, using his upper body strength and natural ability, but the boy could clearly throw harder than he could, and after about ten minutes, when Roman had missed a couple of fast balls that glanced off his glove, he yelled out, “Shortstop, huh?”

  Unwilling to admit that he wasn’t, Aden held his glove ready and yelled back, “No comment.” He tempered his subsequent throws, however.

  By five o’clock, they joined the many commuters who were walk-ons for the ferry, Aden remaining quiet as they took seats inside the enclosed area on the top deck.

  “My left arm’s had a work-out,” Roman admitted.

  “Too much?” Aden asked.

  “I didn’t say that,” Roman defensively volleyed back. “When does practice start?”

  “Next week.”

  Roman was reminded that this was the last week of basketball for the junior and senior teams and that some of the basketball players went right into baseball practice.

  “Are you going to try for the shortstop position?”

  The boy looked back at him. “I’ll play any position coach’ll let me.”

  “New guy…I can see that. Don’t make any waves right off with teammates.”

  Aden kept looking at Roman as the ferry full of commuters began plowing toward Whittler. “Sort of like you’re doing with Mom?”

  Momentarily, Roman showed surprise at the comment. “That’s true,” he admitted. “You okay with my seeing her? I don’t tell her anything you say to me in confidence.”

  “I’m okay with everything you’re doing,” Aden quickly assured, and Roman believed him. “And I’m hoping you’ll throw some shade on my Uncle Bill.”

  “What?” Roman asked, suddenly hyper alert.

  “He’s flying in tomorrow, and he doesn’t know we’ve bought a house. He’s been thinking that Mom just needed to get away from Seattle for a few months.”

  After slowly exhaling, Roman asked, “I thought you liked your uncle.”

  “I do,” Aden said. “But he’s my uncle. Mine and Molly’s. He’s had…other ideas about Mom, but when he sees that she’s not going back and that you’re now her squeeze, maybe he’ll cool it and just go back to being our uncle.”

  “How long is he going to be here?” Roman asked in a hollow voice.

  “I don’t know,” Aden said with a shrug. “He sent me a short text while I was in school and said that he’d like to surprise her tomorrow.”

  “Has he been here before?”

  “Nope…I mean no.” The kid was suddenly looking uncomfortable, talking about the situation.

  “Your mom’s the one who has to decide what’s up…with this,” Roman said with as much forbearance in his tone as he could muster.

  “I thought you should know,” Aden announced while hefting his backpack.

  Roman managed to say, “Thanks for a heads-up.”

  *****

  Once they were off the ferry, following the hoard of folks who broke toward either the parking lot or kept walking on foot toward their destinations, Roman walked with the boy further up Baymont Street to where they could see the top of Aden’s house.

  “Can you make it the rest of the way, Shortstop?” Roman asked with a dry smile.

  The boy grinned back at him. He then turned and walked on.

  Roman returned to his mother’s to pick up Mona, too disillusioned to think. Carl Ramsey was playing ball with her, kicking the ball a short way into the air for Mona to run with when it hit the ground. The mentally challenged man who lived with hi
s grandmother next door to Julia was a godsend, especially on this day. He spoke to Carl as the man was focusing on kicking the ball, intent on providing Mona with her daily exercise. Roman stood numbly watching until Julia stuck her head out of the door and asked Roman to come inside.

  When he went in, she said, “I made chicken chunky.” Chicken chunky was basically chicken soup that was loaded with all kinds of vegetables and pasta. “I’ve made plenty, as you can see.”

  “Can I take some of it home?” he asked.

  “You’ve had a bad day, haven’t you?” She looked steadily at him, seeing the troubled look in his eyes that he could never completely hide from her. “Of course you can. I’ll pack you some sourdough bread to go with it.”

  While his mother began ladling one of his childhood favorites into a container, Roman kept his mind on how lucky he was to have someone as dear as she was who was also as perceptive about life’s endless, complicating aspects. She busily said, “I’ll give some to Carl and Mable too.”

  “Save some for yourself,” he reminded her.

  “Of course,” she answered, turning to lift her arms for a hug from her mammoth son. He had to bend his knees to gently embrace her birdlike presence, suddenly struck by the thought that he wouldn’t always have this exquisite model of perfect love—his mother—to lift his weary spirits.

  “I love you, Mom,” he said before gradually pulling away.

  “And I love you, Roman,” she answered, clearly affected by her son’s change in mood.

  *****

  He went home with his dog and his mother’s soup, feeling a numbness begin to settle into his psyche, like it often had before meeting her. But he stopped sliding into that familiar tangle of depressed thoughts after pouring out Mona’s dinner into her bowl, and watching her eat, while his thoughts of Jess rose from a muddled morass to a startlingly clearer picture.