Take Me Home (5 page)

He realized her voice, too, was different from Anais’s. Now that he could listen without the overlay of a ghostly echo, he heard a whisper of the South in some of Claire’s words. Yet her phrasing was clipped and northern.

What had made him react so strongly to her when they’d first met? He had encountered other dark-haired women since his wife died. None of them evoked nightmares.

To get to the bottom of the problem, he had done what worked for him as a scientist: he kept asking questions and making observations.

The request to look at the Castillo had started out as a way to keep probing. Then he’d seen the painting, and buying it became more than a ploy. He wanted it—no, he
coveted
it for the living room of the house he was building halfway up Flat Top Mountain.

As he pulled into his parking slot at the Sanctuary Veterinary Hospital, he realized he was looking forward to an evening with Claire Parker.

His receptionist, Estelle Wilson, greeted him at the back door with his white lab coat in her hand. “You’re late, and you’ve got two emergencies on top of your regular appointments.”

Estelle was a retired first-grade teacher who believed in punctuality. She also knew everyone and everything about Sanctuary, so she was an invaluable resource.

“Do you still have the private phone number for the Aerie?” Tim asked, washing his hands. “The one Adam Bosch gave me?”

Estelle threw him one of her gimlet stares. “Of course I do. He’s the chef with the German shepherd. If you tell me when you want to eat there, I’ll call for you.”

“This is personal, not business.”

“I’ve never been one of those folks who is too uppity to do an occasional personal chore for their boss.”

Tim reflected that he’d never had any personal chores for her to do before this. “Well then, I’d appreciate it if you could get a reservation for two at seven this Friday.”

“
This
Friday?” Estelle looked daunted.

“Adam said he’d get me a table anytime I wanted one.”

“Yes, but even the rich people wait months to eat there. Still, you did save his dog’s life.”

A couple of hours later, he had worked his way through the patients lining the walls of his waiting room and was making follow-up calls.

Estelle poked her head into his office. “That Adam Bosch fellow really loves his dog. He swore it was no problem to get you in this Friday.”

“You’re a marvel,” Tim said. He felt again that surprising lift of anticipation at the prospect of the dinner.

As Estelle left his office, Tim dialed Claire’s cell phone. It went to voice mail, and his fizz of anticipation faded slightly. He’d wanted to hear her reaction to his choice of restaurant.

“Claire, this is Tim Arbuckle. I’ve got reservations at the Aerie for Friday night. Looking forward to seeing you then.”

Tim hung up the phone and scooped up the keys to his pickup truck. It was time for his farm visits. As he walked up front to get the appointments from Estelle, she looked at him strangely.

“You’re humming,” she said. “I’ve never heard you hum before.”

Claire found Holly in Brianna’s room, sitting on the bed with her shoulders hunched over, wearing a sheer pink baby-doll nightie. When her sister raised her head, Claire saw blotches of red on her skin and mascara smeared under her eyes.

Claire crossed the purple rug with the unicorns dancing on it and sat down beside her sister, turning to wrap her in a gentle hug. “Oh, Holly, sweetheart, I’m so sorry. I’m so very sorry.”

“Frank told me to make sure we were alone today. I thought he wanted...well, you know.” Holly fingered the filmy fabric brushing her thigh. “That’s why I’m wearing this stupid nightgown. Instead, he wanted—”

An ugly moan tore out of her mouth, and Claire hugged her sister tighter. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked softly. “You don’t have to.”

“No. Yes. I don’t know. Oh God, what am I going to do?” Holly’s sobs shook the bed they sat on.

“You’re going to get through this tough time and come out stronger on the other side.” Claire restrained herself from calling Frank all the names she wanted to. She’d learned the hard way that sometimes people changed their minds before a divorce was final. Then they remembered your unkind comments about their almost ex-spouses, which made things awkward.

“He actually looked disgusted when I walked out wearing this, like he hated the sight of me. He
gave
me this on our last anniversary. He said I looked like a Vegas showgirl in it, and it made him hot for me. Not anymore.”

“You look fantastic in it,” Claire said, remembering how insecure she felt when her marriage disintegrated. “Like a Victoria’s Secret model.”

“Not unless I was a foot taller.”

“If you can joke about that, it proves you’re going to make it through this.”

Her sister gently shrugged out of Claire’s embrace and sat up straight. “Maybe, but I don’t know what to do now.”

“Well, some people go to a marriage counselor to see if they can fix things.” Claire had believed in that once.

“No,” Holly said with a finality that surprised Claire. “There are things that...Well, it has to end.”

Claire didn’t push her to explain, but her sister suddenly slumped over again. “Frank says we have to sell the house. He needs the money to buy an airplane.”

“What the hell does he need an airplane for?”

“He says he’ll be able to cover more territory and make more money for alimony and child support. But I don’t want to sell the house.” Holly looked around her daughter’s tiny room, decorated with brightly colored fantasy creatures. “I stenciled every one of these pictures on Brianna’s walls. I did the ones in Kayleigh’s room too. This is my family’s
home
, and I made it, not Frank.”

Claire remembered how excited Holly had been when she and Frank bought the brand-new ranch house, built in a subdivision that had once been a cornfield. It was small and looked like every other house on its treeless street, but Holly was thrilled that Brianna and Kayleigh would have their own rooms, a luxury Claire and Holly hadn’t had. Almost as important had been the mantel where Holly could display the treasured Royal Doulton figurines.

“We’ll figure something out,” Claire said with sudden fierceness as she thought of her sister’s carefully arranged china statuettes. “I promise you. We’ll buy out his half of the house.”

Claire’s comment set Holly off again, and the day’s events tumbled forth piecemeal between bouts of crying. It wasn’t an unusual story, Claire thought grimly. His wife was ill, and Frank didn’t have the guts or the decency to go through it with her.

Of course, what he’d said to Holly was they’d married too young, had children too young, and now he wanted some freedom to “be himself.” Claire suspected he wanted to be himself with other women—and in fact, would bet he already had—but she didn’t share the conviction with her sister.

According to Holly, Frank had made his speech and then bolted out of the house. She didn’t know where he had gone.

Claire made sympathetic comments and let Holly cry. God knew she could empathize. The day Milo told her he wanted out of their marriage, Claire had felt like a mule had kicked her in the belly.

When Holly flopped back on the bed and announced she was wrung dry, Claire stood up. “Sweetie, go wash your face and put on a robe while I open a bottle of wine. If you’re sure there’s no hope of saving your marriage, we need to do some preemptive paperwork so you and the girls get everything you deserve. We’re not going to let Frank waltz out of this marriage with more than his fair share.”

Claire might as well use her hard-won experience to keep Holly away from the traps she’d fallen into. Her naïveté had allowed Milo to abscond with all of her paintings except the Castillo, and the only reason he hadn’t taken that was because he thought it was junk. She hoped he was kicking himself now that it was worth more than all the others put together.

Claire persuaded Holly to let a neighbor pick up Brianna and Kayleigh at school and have them sleep over. Then she and Holly combed through all the papers in the family file cabinet. As they sorted through the bills, Holly was shocked by how much Frank spent.

“He always said we were saving as much money as we could, while he was buying iPods and netbooks and fancy cell phones I never saw,” she said. “Did you notice this charge for clothes at Macy’s in Detroit? No wonder he always looked so sharp. If I
spent that kind of money on my clothes, I’d look a hell of a lot better too.”

Claire kept quiet about her suspicion that not all of the items had been for Frank’s personal use.

After they gathered as much information as they could, Claire refilled their wine glasses until they’d polished off the bottle.

Holly gulped down the last of the chardonnay and put her glass down on the kitchen table. When she spoke, her voice was so soft Claire had to lean in to hear her. “I’m sorry I never talked to you about it.”

“About what?”

“Your divorce. When it was happening. I’m sorry.”

“It wouldn’t have changed anything.” That was true, but she would have welcomed Holly’s emotional support.

“Frank and I, well, we were having some problems even back then.” She turned the glass around and around on its base without looking at Claire. “I felt guilty asking you about your marriage when I couldn’t admit to what was happening in mine.”

So Holly hadn’t been uncaring; she had just had troubles of her own, troubles she wasn’t prepared to share. Claire felt as though several tons of misery slid off her shoulders and splintered into tiny fragments at her feet.

She put her hand over Holly’s to still the turning of the glass. “Don’t worry about it, sweetie. I understand.”

“Thank you,” Holly said with a hiccupping sob. “Thank you for staying. Now I think I need to go to sleep.”

A ripple of disappointment ran through Claire. She wanted to keep talking until all the constraints and barriers between them had been battered down. She sighed and stood up, bracing her sister when she staggered under the combination of emotional trauma, Lyme disease, and wine.

Tucking a nearly comatose Holly under the comforter, Claire’s heart ached. She wished she could spare her sister the pain of having her world shattered by the divorce, but all she could do was help her through it. She smoothed the hair back from Holly’s forehead as tears trickled down her cheeks. Her sister looked so small curled up all alone in the middle of the king-sized bed.

“S
O,
S
PROCKET
,
WHY
hasn’t she answered my voice mail?” Tim took a beer out of the sleek stainless steel refrigerator.

The miniature Doberman pinscher raced in circles around his feet, barking with excitement.

Tim looked down and shook his head. “A man of my size should have a Newfoundland or a Saint Bernard, not a crazed little ball of energy like you. It’s not dignified.”

When the injured Sprocket had been brought into the veterinary hospital by a distraught woman whose car had hit him when he ran in front of it, inquiries had brought forth no owner to claim him. Since the dog wore no collar and was undernourished, Tim assumed he had been abandoned. By the time Sprocket had healed enough to be adopted, he had become deeply attached to Tim.

He reached down and scooped up the little creature, letting him lick his face as he strolled to the newly delivered sofa in his freshly painted living room. The only other habitable rooms were the kitchen and the master suite. The rest of the house was still a construction site.

“She probably didn’t play my message yet. She’s a busy career woman, after all.” Tim sat down and stretched his long legs out with a sigh of pleasure, while Sprocket curled up against his hip.

The sofa was positioned so he could gaze out the wall-sized picture window at the soft undulations of mountains rolling away into the distance, their hazy blue-greens darkening rapidly as the sun slid down the sky. These ancient mountains, their once sharp contours softened by eons of wind and water, helped him put his life into perspective.

He took a swig of beer and skimmed his hand over Sprocket’s sleek skull as he considered how right it felt to be back here.