Coming Home to Texas--A Clean Romance Page 4

  “Oh, no, ma’am,” Mad Dog said again. “You don’t have to do that. We brought plenty of food and drinks with us. We know you don’t have a kitchen right now, and anyhow, you’re hurt. There’s nothing for you to do but sit and watch.”

  By now other volunteer firefighters were making their way toward the house, carrying coolers and totes and covered dishes. Burly, tattooed Wallace Griggs had what looked like a seven-layer dip in a glass trifle dish.

  “Thank you,” Dalia’s mother called out. “Thank you all! This is so very generous and thoughtful of you.”

  “It’s only fitting,” said Mad Dog. “We don’t forget everything you do for us, hosting the fundraiser every year.”

  “I don’t forget what you did for Martin,” said Dalia’s mom, her voice quavering.

  Mad Dog’s smile faded. “I only wish I’d been able to do more.”

  Dalia swallowed hard and looked away. She could feel Tony watching her. He’d come to her dad’s funeral, along with what seemed like half the town. She’d been fresh out of college, working her first job in the city and living in her new place. All through the service, she kept remembering the last time she ever talked to her father. She’d called to tell him she wouldn’t be home for Thanksgiving. She didn’t say why, just that she was busy, and he didn’t complain. He was busy himself, he said, putting up a third crop of hay at the end of a rainy summer that had yielded a superabundance of grass. He sounded cheerful. Two days later he was gone, struck down in the hay pasture by heat exhaustion. He’d worked himself literally to death.

  At the funeral, everyone kept saying how fitting it was that Martin had died in harness, doing the work he loved. No one said how ridiculous it was for a strong, fit, healthy man to die just a few years past his fiftieth birthday. They kept coming, those people, one after another, pressing Dalia’s hands, making sympathetic faces, telling her how much she looked like her father and how much he loved her, while inside her the grief rose and swelled into something close to panic. She should have come home all those Thanksgivings and Christmases instead of cowering away from memories of Tony. She might have come home without even being asked, to help with the haying.

  She was balanced on a knife edge of control, wishing they would go away and leave her alone. And suddenly Tony was there, with red-rimmed eyes and a somber face. He didn’t say anything, just wrapped her in his arms, and she breathed in his familiar scent and relaxed in an embrace that fit her as perfectly as if it had been made for her, and she was safe. Just for an instant, she wanted to whisper in his ear, “Get me out of here,” and somehow she knew he’d do it—he’d take her away without a moment’s hesitation from this suffocating mass of people, if only she asked him.

  But she didn’t ask, and Tony let go and moved on. And that was the last time she’d seen him, until one day ago when he’d shown up at the house.

  She dared a quick glance at him now. He was watching her, all right, and his eyes looked wet. He cleared his throat.

  “All right, everybody,” he called. “Those who have food or drink, come through the front door and leave it wherever Mrs. Ramirez says. Those with trailers and big trucks, back them close to the demolition site. Scrap lumber goes in Andy’s flatbed, drywall and insulation in Samantha’s stock trailer, scrap metal in the big blue Dodge. If you come across any farmhouse-chic-type stuff, put it in Alex’s stepside. We’re talking old beadboard, millwork, weathered wood, any sort of good-looking scraps that someone might want to stick on a wall or make into a rustic bookcase. Alex is gonna take it to that Architectural Treasures place for salvage. Use boxes for broken glass and trash bags for the small stuff. We’ve got crowbars and cat’s paws and sledgehammers aplenty to help with pulling stuff apart. Wear gloves, and watch out for snakes, nails, scorpions, black widows, deranged barn cats and chupacabras. If you have any questions, ask me or Alex. Oh, and be careful with Alex’s pretty little truck—don’t rough it up. Okay? Let’s go!”

  He gave a quick double clap like he used to do on the football field, and everyone hopped to it.

  Dalia pulled on her old ropers and went to work alongside them. What else could she do? Sit on a deck chair beside her mom and sip bottled iced tea and watch? No way. The sooner all this mess was cleared away, the sooner the rebuild could start...and end.

  * * *

  THERE WAS A certain way people moved in Texas when it was really hot—spare and steady, with no wasted energy. The volunteer firefighters set a good moderate pace and stuck to it. Mad Dog made sure everyone stayed hydrated. Hats and neck cloths guarded against the brutal sun, along with long sleeves for those really inclined to burn.

  Then there was Tony.

  He moved fast, bouncing from place to place like a pinball—lifting, hauling, directing, joking and never seeming to tire. He shed his shirt well before noon, and Dalia stole a few quick glances at him. It was as she’d thought: he was a little heavier than in college, but not much, and his form was as beautifully sculpted as ever.

  He’d always been sturdy and muscular, even as a little boy, always athletic, always in motion, always surrounded by a crowd. Dalia had kept to one or two friends at a time, and often she’d go off by herself inside one of the concrete cylinders on the school playground. They looked like culvert cylinders, and maybe they were. The insides were shaded and cool, and perfect for curling up by yourself or with a friend. Dalia was in one of these with a library book one day in seventh grade, when Tony joined her, sliding into the space across from her, in an abrupt transition from ...And Now Miguel to Suddenly, Tony.

  He smelled of the playground, of dust and sweat and the metallic tang of monkey bars. He grabbed the book out of her hand. “Whatcha readin’?”

  “This book,” she said. “It’s about a ranching family in New Mexico.”

  It felt weird, actually talking to him. They hardly ever spoke to each other in those days, and yet she was always aware of him. No matter which direction her gaze was pointed, he was always the clearest thing she saw, and she knew somehow that he was watching her, too.

  “Huh,” he said. He turned it around, saw the big shiny medal on the cover and said, “Ooh, it won an award.”

  He laid the book facedown on his other side. Dalia would have had to reach past him to get it back, but she didn’t want it back just yet.

  Her braid was hanging over her shoulder. Tony looked at it, and for a moment she thought he was going to pull it, like he had done approximately once a week since kindergarten. But then he looked away. He looked at her face. And looked away again. He seemed nervous, almost jumpy, which wasn’t like him.

  And then he leaned over and kissed her.

  It was a quick, innocent kiss, nothing salacious for a twelve-year-old boy, but it made her heart leap into her throat. The feel of his lips on hers, the sight of his face afterward, his big dark eyes startled and happy.

  Then he was gone again, running back to the monkey bars with a wordless yell, twice as loud and rambunctious as before. Her heart pounded. She could still feel the pressure of his lips against hers, the brush of his damp, springy hair against her forehead.

  She could feel them now, fourteen years later, watching him clear wreckage at her mother’s house.

  * * *

  THE BUSTED PORCH swing lay on the ground amid a heap of other debris that had been cleared from the porch and kitchen and set aside for further deconstruction. Tony stood looking down at its splintered wood and broken frame. He’d been hoping to see that it wasn’t quite destroyed after all, that it just needed a couple boards replaced and some gouges repaired and then it could be hung up again good as new, but there was barely a board left that wasn’t smashed.

  “It’s a shame, isn’t it?”

  It was Dalia’s mom, watching him from her deck chair under a live oak. She had her hands full of some sort of fluffy knitting thing.

  “Yes, ma’am. If it was still in o
ne piece, I could carry it under that tree for you, and you could sit there in it with your hurt foot up on a cushion.”

  “That’s exactly what I keep thinking. But wishing won’t make it so.”

  Tony was working in this area because it was where Dalia wasn’t. He moved as fast as he could, trying to keep his mind occupied and his eyes off Dalia. It wasn’t working.

  She was wearing her hair in that long single braid like when they were kids.

  “Just how old is this thing, anyway?” Tony asked. “Couple decades at least, right? I remember seeing it the first time I ever came out here, at Dalia’s birthday party. The one where our entire third-grade class was invited.”

  Mrs. Ramirez gave him a sly, knowing look. “The one where you carved your graffiti into the siding on the house?”

  Tony actually felt himself blushing. It had been ambitious of him, carving all that with the sharp tip of the weed-pulling tool he’d found next to the watering can. He could have just put T+D and called it good, but no, he’d gone all in. He remembered the thrill he’d felt as he spelled out their two names and that daring word loves. No ambiguity, no way it could mean Tamara and David, or Travis and Dancy. Still, he hadn’t been quite bold enough to make his statement completely public. There’d been a big planter against the house. He’d shoved it forward and done his work, then pushed it back in place. The words were hidden, but they were there, and he knew it even if no one else did.

  Only it sounded like someone else had.

  “You knew about that?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “I thought I was being so clever, putting it behind that big planter.”

  She laughed. “Who do you think potted up the geraniums every year? But I kept your secret. Martin would have flipped out if he’d known Carlos Reyes’s son had defaced his property.”

  He laughed, too. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Thank you, Mrs. Ramirez. You probably saved my life.”

  “Oh, you’re very welcome. And to answer your question, I’m not sure how old the porch swing is. It was there long before I married Martin.”

  “Do you want me to put it aside somewhere? I feel kinda funny taking it to the dump. Seems disrespectful somehow.”

  She smiled at him. “You’re a good boy.”

  To his surprise, tears stung his eyes and he had to look away, because no, he really wasn’t.

  “Put it in the burn pile,” she said. “It can be fuel for the bonfire at the firefighter fundraiser. That’ll be a more fitting send-off.”

  “Okay. If you’re sure.”

  “Oh, yes. It was a good porch swing, and it did its job well, but it’s broken now and there’s no point keeping it around to look at. It’ll only make me sad. That’s what Dalia would say, anyway.”

  “Yeah. Minimalism, right? No clutter, no baggage. No living in the past.”

  “Mmm-hmm. I’ve heard her lectures so many times I know them by heart. She was always so driven and determined, even as a little girl, and she had no qualms about speaking up or reorganizing my kitchen cabinets. She was ruthless when she was sure she was right.”

  Tony nodded. He’d been on the receiving end of that ruthlessness more than once. But it was weirdly comforting, talking about Dalia with her mom, like they were the ones who really knew her. Mr. Ramirez had never left any doubt that Tony was not worthy for Dalia to scrape her boots on, but Tony had always suspected that Mrs. Ramirez secretly liked him a little.

  He ran a hand along the porch swing’s top board. He used to rest his arm there as he sat in the seat’s corner with Dalia’s back against his chest and her head on his shoulder.

  “I hate to let it go,” he said.

  It was a dumb thing to say. It wasn’t like it was his porch swing.

  “So do I,” said Mrs. Ramirez. “It’s rocked many a baby, and many a barn cat, too. But we can’t turn back the clock. Things break. Sometimes they can be fixed, and sometimes they can’t.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  DALIA STOOD BESIDE her rented SUV and stared across the street. A lot had changed in downtown Limestone Springs, and a lot had stayed the same. Tito’s Bar, a fixture since the 1980s, had acquired a gentrified vibe and apparently doubled its space, but the movie theater she and Tony used to visit, together and separately, hadn’t changed a bit.

  They hadn’t actually started dating until spring of their senior year. By then, college plans were made. Tony had his football scholarship, and Dalia had her academic scholarship to a little liberal arts school in Pennsylvania that no one had ever heard of.

  In a way it was a drag they got together so late. They’d hardly had any time together before going their separate ways. The start of college in the fall had been a big, loud, ticking clock. Every time Dalia turned around there was another “last”: last summer, last Fourth of July, last week at home.

  But in another way the timing was perfect, because if they’d gotten together sooner, she might have done something really stupid, like go to the same in-state college as Tony and convince herself it was what she actually wanted. No, this way was better. Healthier. They would both be where they wanted to be, doing the things they cared about, not gripping each other so hard they squeezed the life out of their relationship. She trusted Tony. She wasn’t jealous or possessive at all. Not the least bit worried about her gorgeous, charming star-athlete boyfriend going to school halfway across the nation from her, surrounded by adulation and temptation and girls.

  Okay, so she’d had her doubts. But not Tony. He’d been dead sure of himself and her, and he’d said so.

  “What’s there to worry about?” he’d said. “Sure, it’ll suck, being so far apart, but we’ve got our plan and we’re sticking to it. You’re gonna do amazing things at your fancy Yankee school and learn all about finance, and I’m gonna work hard and keep my nose clean and impress the coaches. And with any luck I’ll stay healthy and go pro, but if I don’t, at least I’ll have my degree. And then we’ll be together—really together, not just on holidays—and nothing will separate us ever again.”

  She shook her head. “You can’t know all that. A thousand things could go wrong.”

  “Like what?”

  You could get tired of me. “Just things. Most high school relationships don’t last, Tony.”

  “So? We’re not most people.”

  “We need to be realistic.”

  They were on that darned porch swing, Tony in the corner with one leg against the back of the seat and the other foot resting on the wood planks of the porch, lazily rocking, Dalia with her back against his chest. It was easier to say these things when she didn’t have to look at him.

  Tony stopped rocking. “Realistic,” he said. “What does that mean? We should go ahead and break up now because you think we might break up later?”

  “No! That’s not what I mean.”

  “What do you mean? What are you so afraid of, Dalia?”

  “I’m not afraid! I just...”

  She swallowed hard. “You can’t know that we’ll make it.”

  “But I do know. You would, too, if you could feel what I feel.”

  She wanted to believe him. But the odds were against them, and she’d never been one to indulge fantasy.

  “Hey,” he said in an unbelievably tender voice. “Look at me.”

  She didn’t want to. But he shifted behind her, changing their positions so that they were side by side.

  He lifted her chin. His eyes were full of love and hope and confidence. Then his face turned to a blur as her tears spilled over.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” he said, his voice all high and soft, like he was comforting a small child. He wiped her tears away with his thumbs.

  Then he said, “Let me show you something.”

  He got out of the swing and knelt by the big geranium planter that stood against the house. He pulled back the p
lanter...

  And there it was, on the very bottom board of the cedar siding. A message carved roughly into the wood. Tony loves Dalia.

  She left the swing and crouched beside him. She heard herself laughing. The letters had a childlike look to them. “When did you do this?”

  “Third grade.”

  “Third grade! That birthday party.”

  “Yep. First time I ever came out here.”

  A flood of memories washed over her. “The kittens!”

  One of the barn cats had just had a litter, and she’d shown Tony the little nest the mother had made on an old saddle blanket in the feed barn. He’d gone completely nuts over the kitties. Cuddled them gently. Baby-talked softly to them.

  “Yep. That sassy calico, Calypso—she was one of them. I said you should call her that because I thought it was a cool name for a calico. And you did. I remember how pumped I was about that years later when I found out you’d actually kept the name. And your brother was running around like some kind of commando with all his machetes and things strapped on him. He was eleven years old and I thought he was the coolest. You see? I’m a part of your history, and you’re a part of mine, and I’ve loved you since we were little kids. There was never anyone else for me, and there never will be.”

  He took her hand, laid it over his heart and covered it with his own.

  “There. Can you feel that?”

  It was a melodramatic teenage thing to do. All she could feel was the beating of his heart, which proved nothing other than that he was alive. But it thrilled her to her core.

  “Yes,” she said. “I can feel it.” Like an idiot, like the kind of girl who fell for such things.

  And then she’d kissed him. Her mind had known perfectly well that the letters carved into the siding didn’t guarantee anything, but her heart had taken it as proof positive.