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  “Don’t cry,” Josh said, reaching up to touch her cheek. “Aunt Charlotte will send you to the counselor if you let her know you ever cry.”

  They both laughed, hers a little damp and relieved. She was glad they could joke about the incident. When her managing sister-in-law had arranged Josh’s visit to the school counselor without consulting her, Becki had, despite her love for her brother, expressed her anger over Charlotte’s interference in no uncertain terms. Since then the relationship had been strained.

  “Yeah?” she asked, smiling at him. “Aunt Charlotte and whose army?”

  “She means well,” Josh said.

  She wondered if he had heard someone say that or if the thought and expression had, as seemed to happen too often, simply formed in that almost adult consciousness. Too grownup. Not by choice, but by circumstances.

  “I know,” she agreed. She leaned down to kiss the rounded cheek, the delicate skin smooth under her lips. “Go to sleep. Sunday school tomorrow.”

  “Are we eating dinner at Granny’s?”

  “God willing…” she began and stopped, waiting for him to complete his great-grandmother’s favorite expression.

  “And the creek don’t rise,” he obliged, giggling.

  Ritual. Surrounding the daily pattern of their lives with warmth like a quilt, pieced and stitched by loving hands. Softening the sometimes harsh reality of the outside world she watched on the nightly news. It held that world at bay, keeping them safe and secure in a place that seemed unchanged and unchanging.

  “I love you,” she said.

  “I love you, too.”

  Leaning down, she kissed Bear There and raised the sheet enough to slip the teddy in close beside the small, solid warmth of her son’s body. She recrossed the path she had begun before and flicked off the overhead light, leaving behind only the dim glow of the Batman night-light…like a firefly captured in a summer jar.

  BECKI TRAVERS’S SIGH as she settled down into the chaise longue the following Wednesday afternoon was loud enough to evoke sympathetic smiles from the four women who were already enjoying the fan-induced breeze on the screened-in porch at the back of Nita Fisher’s sprawling old farmhouse.

  “Get your exams graded?” Nita asked, shifting her glass of lemonade on the table between them to make room.

  “Only first period’s,” Becki answered, closing her eyes and easing a little deeper into the cushioned wicker.

  “How’d they do?” Dianne Handley questioned.

  “Like they thought school was already over, and we were just going through some archaic formality.”

  “You’re just too hard, Ms. Travers,” Donna Jackson said, drawing the hard out, her voice becoming a prolonged whine.

  It was an effective mimicry, and one they all recognized.

  “I just don’t know how you expect the little darlings to have a social life with all the work you require,” Dianne mocked.

  “My daughter’s a cheerleader, you know,” Barbara Thompson added, “and what with the games and the practices, she just don’t have time to do all that work y’all pile on.”

  A collective groan showed that Barbara’s accurate impersonation of that particular parent had led to an instant identification.

  “And all those big ole novels you want ’em to read…,” Barbara continued, adding more drawl. “Why, you act like you think those things might show up on the AP exam or somethin’.”

  “Just pure unreasonable,” Dianne agreed sarcastically.

  They all taught some honors-level classes, and this was what they heard every year. Since Becki taught AP English, she came in for more than her share of complaints, but she had really been disappointed with the quality of the essays on her seniors’ final exam, so she didn’t want to talk about students or their parents, although both were familiar topics when they got together.

  “I have a novel idea,” she said. “Let’s talk about something besides school.”

  “Now there’s a conversation stopper,” Nita argued. “What do you suggest? The weather?”

  “Hot as hell,” Dianne offered. “I think that about covers that subject. Next?”

  “How about what I’m going to fix for supper tonight?” Donna suggested.

  “What’s wrong? Your car broken?” Nita asked.

  They all laughed. Their mothers might still cook a meal every night, but their generation often gave in to the reality of working all day, of families scattered over the community when supper time came, and of the availability of fast food.

  “I guess we could eat at the ballpark. Margaret’s got a game,” Donna conceded.

  “Josh at your mother’s?” Dianne asked, lifting the sweat-dampened hair away from her neck.

  “Mike picked him up after school for practice. He’ll drop him off at home when it’s over,” Becki explained.

  “How’s the deck coming?” Nita asked. There was some nuance of tone underlying the question that produced small, knowing smiles on several faces as they waited for an answer.

  “Fine,” Becki said.

  “Fine?” Nita repeated. “That’s it? Fine is all you’ve got to say?”

  “What do you want me to say? The deck’s coming along fine.”

  “And how about buns of steel? How’s he doing?” Barbara asked. Her teasing grin was open.

  “Mr. Evans?” Becki questioned innocently.

  “No, Mussolini,” Donna said with disgust. “Of course, Mr. Evans. Who else do we know that fits that description?”

  “Not me,” Becki admitted. “I spend too many hours sitting on mine grading papers. Buns of mush.”

  “You should worry,” Barbara said. She was the oldest of the five, and middle age, four children and a sedentary job had taken a toll she readily admitted to.

  “I do,” Becki agreed, grateful that her attempt to change the subject had worked, “but not enough to seem to be able to do anything about it.”

  “You make me sick,” Nita said. “There’s nothing wrong with your butt. Men don’t like bony women. Trust me.”

  “Just look at the magazines. And the movies.”

  “Breasts and hips. I’m waiting for those to come back in style,” Dianne said plaintively.

  “And you’ve been waiting now since what? About 1959?” Nita jeered.

  Again, the comfortable laughter of old friends. The other four were married, but since the group seldom did anything as couples, Becki had never felt like an outsider. They were an unofficial support group, female, but not necessarily feminist. They liked men, and although sex was almost never a topic, they openly admitted their devotion to the men they lived with, so they also felt free to discuss the things about the males in their lives that drove them up the proverbial wall.

  “And you neatly avoided my question,” Nita reminded. “So how’s the poster boy for the strong, silent type?”

  “Strong and silent?” Becki offered, smiling.

  “Cut the crap, Bec. You trying to tell us you don’t talk to the guy? Late afternoon sunsets in the backyard. You slip into something soft and sexy, fix him something long and cool, take it out to him and…?”

  “I hired Mr. Evans to rebuild my deck because it was so rotten it was about to fall down. We don’t talk. I don’t fix him anything to drink. He brings his own thermos. And I certainly don’t bother to slip into something sexy.”

  “Why not?” Donna suggested. “You might be surprised at his reaction.”

  “I’d be surprised if he bothered to look up from sawing and nailing,” Becki said truthfully.

  “That doesn’t sound too promising,” Dianne said.

  “Trust me. Our relationship is strictly professional.”

  “But you might like it to be a little more personal?” Nita asked, watching her face.

  There was a long pause.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted finally.

  “Does he turn you on?” Nita asked bluntly.

  “Turn me on?” Becki repeated, laughing, relieved a
t the break in the tension that had grown as they had waited for her answer. “What decade did you get stuck in?”

  “Okay, whatever the current terminology is. Does he do it for you?”

  Again Becki hesitated. These were feelings she’d never before openly articulated. It had taken her a long time to admit them to herself. To confess them aloud seemed a betrayal of Tommy, but these were her closest friends. If she couldn’t talk to them, then there was no one. And she somehow needed to verify that what she felt when she was around John Evans wasn’t all that unnatural.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, he does.”

  “Well, thank goodness,” Barbara said softly. “I was beginning to worry about you, honey.”

  “It just seems wrong, somehow. Like I’m betraying my marriage vows. I know that’s crazy. At least with my mind I know it, but…”

  “Tommy’s been dead a long time, Bec,” Nita said when she didn’t go on. There was no teasing in her voice now. “There’s nothing wrong with you still being alive.”

  “Then you don’t think it’s…unnatural? The way I feel?”

  “Not by a long shot,” Donna said. “And if it’s any comfort, I’ll admit that he turns me on, too. When he was building the girls’ playhouse, I ’bout wore Sam out. He made me promise to stop reading those historical romances. Little did he know…”

  The comment trailed off in the shouts of laughter that followed that confession. Becki laughed, too, relieved that nobody thought it was strange that she was aware of the good-looking man living next door. Still, she was glad when Barbara’s daughter Angelon came out on the porch to ask permission to use her mother’s car. And when she left, the conversation moved on to other topics, eventually coming back to the high school where they taught. It was their common bond, and they seldom strayed far from what went on there, despite the fact that the academic year was almost over.

  She sat and let the conversation and their friendship swirl comfortingly around her, occasionally throwing in a comment, but mostly content just to listen. Aware again, in their acceptance of what she’d said about John Evans, of how much these friendships meant to her.

  WHEN SHE GOT HOME, at least half an hour before baseball practice was scheduled to end, she put her briefcase on the kitchen table and walked to the sliding-glass doors in the den. She edged aside the curtains enough to look outside where a new deck was emerging from the load of wood the local building-supply company had delivered on Monday.

  John Evans had already torn down the old deck and hauled the rotten lumber away in the rattletrap pickup he drove. He had been working methodically for three days, arriving before she and Josh left for school and working until darkness forced him to stop.

  She was surprised to find two heads bent over the board lying across the sawhorses. The blond one she had expected, but the dark raven’s wing fall of Josh’s bangs, so close to John Evans’s head they were almost brushing against one another, took her by surprise. Despite her natural curiosity as to why her brother would have delivered Josh at home at least thirty minutes before he should have, she stood inside, watching the interaction of the two, who apparently had no idea she was here.

  “Two and a fourth,” John Evans said, the tape measure he held stretched carefully along the board.

  Josh made a small mark with a thick carpenter’s pencil. The procedure was repeated on the other side of the one-by-four and Josh again was allowed to make the mark. When the man straightened, returning the tape to its pocket in the cloth carpenter’s apron he wore, the little boy looked up into his face, apparently for approval of what he had helped to do.

  Becki held her breath, hoping. A smile, she thought. Or maybe a quick tousle of Josh’s hair with one of those beautiful hands she’d admired on Saturday.

  “Good job,” John Evans said softly. No smile, no touch.

  The little boy didn’t smile either, the moment apparently too serious for that response. He nodded, and then the spell was broken. Evans turned to find the electric saw and Josh stepped out of the way, pressing his small back into the board-and-batten of the house. She realized that must be what he’d been told to do while the cuts were made, to stand at a safe distance, and no one ever had to give Josh directions twice.

  She released the breath she had been holding and watched the man employ the saw against the board they’d measured together, his movements quick and sure. When he’d finished the cut, he put down the saw and picked up the board to fit it in place. As he began to nail it in, Josh moved closer to watch. The blue eyes of the man lifted at the movement—granting permission, perhaps. Josh certainly responded as if he had, edging nearer, seeking a better vantage point from which to watch the competent hands employ the level and then complete the nailing.

  Becki eased up the latch of the door and pushed it open. She couldn’t step out because the planks of the new deck had not made it this far. There was still only a void in front of her. The noise of the opening door attracted the attention of the two workers, and both pairs of eyes tracked upward.

  “Hi, Mom,” Josh said.

  “Hi, yourself,” she answered, nodding at John Evans, who met her eyes politely before turning away to select the next piece of lumber from the stack on the ground. “What are you doing home?” she asked Josh.

  “Bobby Phillips broke his thumb and practice ended early.”

  “And Uncle Mike brought you home? Without checking to see if I was here?” she asked. She couldn’t believe her brother would be that careless. Mike had no kids of his own, but surely he would realize you didn’t drop off a six-year-old at an empty house, no matter how bright that six-year-old was.

  “Mr. Evans was here. He told Uncle Mike it was okay. He needed to check on Bobby.”

  Becki automatically sorted out the masculine pronouns. She glanced at John Evans who was laying the board he’d picked out over the horses.

  “It seemed to be an emergency.” He offered the explanation without looking up.

  “Thanks,” she said softly. If she asked Josh any other questions, it would appear she was ungrateful for Evans’s agreement to look after the child. Or that she didn’t trust him.

  She knew Josh well enough to know that he would like nothing better than an opportunity to spend some time with their neighbor. He’d probably managed to convince Mike this was a good idea, told him that they were friends or something. And after all, this man had lived next door for more than three months. Mike probably figured she knew a lot more about John Evans than she really did.

  “You better come in and get your bath,” she suggested to her son.

  “Just a little while longer, please. Just while John’s cutting. I’m doing the marking, and he’s going to let me measure the next one. Aren’t you, John.”

  “Mr. Evans,” she corrected.

  “He said I could call him John,” Josh argued.

  “How about Mr. John,” she suggested.

  “Mom,” Josh protested.

  “Why not?” she asked reasonably. Children did not call adults by their first names. That was one of the rules, and Josh was certainly aware of it.

  “We tried that,” John Evans said, his eyes rising to meet Josh’s, “but we decided it sounded like something you’d call a hairstylist.”

  A joke, she realized in amazement. He had just made a joke, and although she was too shocked to respond, Josh giggled appreciatively. She watched the minute reaction of that hard mouth to Josh’s laughter, and then his gaze returned innocently to the board he’d selected. She noticed he hadn’t taken out the tape, and she knew it was because he’d promised Josh he could do the measuring. All they were waiting for was for her to go inside and get out of their way.

  “Fifteen minutes,” she said, tacitly admitting defeat.

  “Thirty,” Josh suggested.

  “Don’t push your luck,” she threatened, sliding the door closed. Once inside, safely separated by the curtains from the masculine conspiracy, she allowed her own smile. Mr. John did sound
like a hairdresser, she admitted. She was still smiling when she opened the refrigerator to see what looked possible for dinner tonight.

  It was longer than the thirty minutes Josh had begged for before she opened the sliding door again. John Evans was kneeling on the edge of the finished section of the deck, which extended halfway across the door opening now. Josh, who was on the ground, was holding a level against the board, which Evans was attempting to lever into its proper alignment so he could nail it into place. Neither looked up this time at the sound the door made.

  She waited without speaking while they completed the job. Evans put in the last nail and eyed the bubble of the level himself. “That’s it,” he said softly, and only then did Josh place the tool on the finished portion of the deck and look up at her. She hadn’t realized how dark it had gotten while she’d worked in the kitchen. And she hadn’t examined her motives in preparing a meal that was far more elaborate than those she usually fixed for the two of them.

  The cut-up chicken she’d bought the previous day was frying in the cast-iron skillet on the back of the stove, and she had boiled several ears of corn Nita had shared from her garden. There was a bowl of leftover green beans warming in the microwave. She had sliced the best of the tomatoes that she’d had ripening on the kitchen windowsill, and corn muffins from a quick-mix package were already in the oven, just beginning to turn golden on top.

  “You need to come in and wash up for supper,” she said to Josh. “It’s almost dark.” Maybe reminding him of the fact that Evans wouldn’t be working much longer might prevent any stalling.

  “Are we having fried chicken?” Josh asked.

  She knew the smell had floated out into the dusk through the opened door.

  “And corn on the cob,” she tempted. Two of his favorites.

  “And there’s plenty?” Josh’s question was hopeful. It was an expression he’d heard all his life, relatives urging them to stay, their offered hospitality sincere. Y’all stay for supper. There’s plenty. And there always was. She knew Josh was praying she wouldn’t let him down.