After Amy’s death, Troy had assumed he wouldn’t be able to bear staying there. He’d been wrong. Instead, the familiar, the routine, had succored him in those first terrible weeks, months, after the unthinkable had happened. The house, and their beautiful, precious babies, had saved his butt. And his sanity. Leaving it hadn’t been easy.
So after the move, he’d again taken his time, driving another Realtor crazy, looking for a new home for him and his boys. Another new start. He could have bought pretty much any house he wanted in Albuquerque. But he hadn’t wanted any house; he’d wanted the right house. Only, who knew “right” would be this quirky, lopsided grandmother of a house, mottled with the patina of mold and memories? That his new definition of home would include bowed wooden floors and a wisteria-and-honeysuckle choked portal, weathered corbels and windows checkered by crumbling mullions and pockmarked wooden vigas ribbing the high ceilings?
Damn thing was twice as big as they really needed, even after getting everything out of storage. And he’d have to buy one of those John Deere monsters to mow the lawn. Still, he thought as he finally climbed out of the car, hearing the boys’ clear, pure laughter on the nippy breeze, this was a house that exuded serenity, the kind that comes from having seen it all and surviving. A house that begged for large dogs and swing sets and basketball hoops and loud, boisterous boys.
Troy walked over to inspect what turned out to be a loose, six-inch thick post on the porch, shaking his head. And, because he’d clearly lost his mind, smiling. The house needed him. Right now, a good thing.
A flimsy wooden screen door whined when he opened it, the floorboards creaking underfoot as he walked through the family room to check on the boys in the backyard. The French doors leading outside were suffocated underneath God-knew-how-many coats of white enamel paint; Troy dug his trusty Swiss Army knife out of his pocket and scratched through to the wood: maple. Maybe cherry. Pocketing the knife, he pushed the doors open, his lips curving at the sight of the kids chasing each other around and around the trees, their yells competing with doves’ coos, the occasional trill of a robin.
“You guys want pizza?” His voice echoed in the half-empty house, the emptiness inside him.
“Yeah!” they both hollered, running over, their faces flushed under messy, dirty hair. Find towels, he thought. Wash kids.
“C’n Karleen eat wif us?” Grady said, five times louder than necessary, and Troy thought, What? even as he stole a please-don’t-be-there glance at her yard.
“She probably has other plans, guys. You go back and play, I’ll call you when it gets here.”
God, kids, Troy thought as he tromped back into the house, thumbing through the phone book for the nearest pizza delivery. After ordering two larges—one cheese, one with everything—a salad and breadsticks, he soldiered on upstairs to the boys’ new room. Since it faced the back, he could work and still keep an ear out. Blake and Shaun had helped him set up the bunk bed, but the boxes of toys and clothes and heaven knew what else had clearly multiplied in the last two hours.
Shaking his head, he got to it, only to discover a couple boxes of his junk among the kids. After another glance out the window at the boys—huddled together underneath a nearby cottonwood, deep in some kind of twin conspiracy, no doubt—he stacked the boxes and carted them to his bedroom across the hall, no sooner dumping them on the floor at the foot of his (unmade) bed when his cell rang.
“Just called to see if you were settled in yet,” his mother said in his ear.
“In, yes,” he said, shoving one of the boxes into a corner with his foot. “Settled?” He glowered at the pile of boxes sitting in front of him, silently jeering. “By the time the boys graduate from high school, if I’m lucky.”
“Which is where a woman comes in handy. Although listen to me,” Eleanor Lindquist hurriedly added, as if realizing her gaffe, “I’ve still got unpacked boxes in the garage from when we moved in here when you were five! At this point, I think we’re just going to leave them for you and your brothers to ‘discover’ after we’re dead.”
“Can’t wait.”
Eleanor laughed softly, then said, “I’m sorry, Troy. About the woman comment—”
“It’s okay. Forget it.”
A brief pause preceded “Anyway. Your father and I are thinking about coming down there for a visit. In a couple of months, we thought.”
Troy stilled. “Oh?”
“We’ve always wanted to see the Southwest, you know—” News to him. “But we thought we might as well wait until you got your housing situation straightened out. Of course, we can certainly stay in a hotel if it’s inconvenient—”
“No! No, of course not, there’s plenty of room here.” Good one, Mom. “But…how’s Dad? Is he up to the trip?”
“Of course he’s up to the trip, it’s been more than five years, for goodness sake!”
The doorbell rang. Wow. Domino’s must be having a slow night. “Pizza guy’s at the door, I’ve got to run,” he said, digging his wallet out of his back pocket as he thundered down the stairs. “My best to Dad.” He clapped shut his phone and swung open the door, only to jump a foot at the sight of Karleen on his doorstep.
Bookended by a pair of slightly smudged, grinning, yellow-haired boys.
“Lose something?” she said.
Chapter Two
Troy allowed himself a quarter second’s worth of sexual awareness—the perfume alone was enough to make him light-headed—before the hindsight terror thing kicked in nicely and he grabbed two skinny little arms, yanking the bodies attached thereto across his threshold.
“What’s the big idea, leaving the yard? You know you’re not supposed to go anywhere without a grown-up! Ever,” he added before Scotty could snow him with the pouty lower lip.
“We didn’t cross the street or nothin’,” Grady said, his defiance trembling at the edges. “We only went to Karleen’s.”’
“Why on earth did you do that?”
“’Cause we wanted her to come over, only you said she prob’ly had plans. ’Cept she doesn’t. Huh?” Grady said, twisting around to look up at her.
“I am so sorry,” Troy said, following his son’s gaze, which was when it registered that Karleen was wearing one of those painted-on exercise outfits that left little to the imagination, and that her skin was flushed—From exercise? From being pissed?—and her lipstick was eaten off and she’d pulled her hair back into a ponytail, leaving all these soft little bits hanging around her face and her eyes huge underneath her bangs and—
“We were coming right back,” Scotty said softly, cruelly derailing Troy’s train of thought.
Kids. Right.
Troy straightened up, forking a hand through his hair. Giving them the Dad-is-not-amused face. “That’s not the point. You’re too little to be by yourselves, even for a minute.”
Grady’s little forehead crumpled. “Then how come you always tell us what big boys we are?”
“Yeah,” Scotty said, nodding, looking impossibly tiny and vulnerable. Not for the first time, responsibility walloped Troy square in the chest.
So he pointed a hopefully stern finger in their faces. “You’re not that big,” he said, just as a compact sedan with a Domino’s sign clamped to the roof screeched up in front of the house, and the kids started hopping around