Wood U (Carved Hearts #4) Read online

  “I was about to have some sweet tea. Would you like some?” He asked as turned toward his refrigerator. His raspy voice brought back wisps of all the wrong kinds of memories. How he cheered when he finally taught me how to ride without training wheels...his laugh as he twirled my mom around in the kitchen to some old country song she had on the radio. I choked back a gasp at the vivid recollections that escaped from the back of my mind like a genie released from a long-forgotten lantern.

  “Sure.” I instantly hated myself for the eagerness I heard in my own voice. I was terribly eager to be in his company after so many years of wondering and speculating. I trembled with excitement, and I couldn’t believe my response to this man. I’d cursed him so many nights as I lay awake listening to my mother cry herself to sleep through the thin walls of our apartment. The run-down little place we were forced to resort to, when the money ran out and it was clear he wasn’t coming back.

  The ugly memories of my mom were far more visceral than the earlier Leave It To Beaver perfection that I was surely remembering wrong. Guilt consumed me as I thought about Mom and how I hadn’t yet told her that I’d heard from Francis, let alone that I was traveling to see him. When he moved forward to pull out a chair for me to sit on, I bristled. Though I caught a glimpse of surprise on his face, he ignored my reaction and conjured his winning smile.

  You’ve come this far, Kelly. At least hear what the man has to say.

  “How was your flight?” he asked, as if we were sitting down to a business luncheon. Small talk. Now, that I could do.

  We chitchatted about the airline, and I mentioned how I’d splurged for a direct flight. Since I lived on a teacher’s salary, I debated every expenditure. But in this case, I quickly decided it was a no-brainer. Every connecting flight was an opportunity for me to change my mind and chicken out.

  We hopped from topic to topic, all of which were obvious icebreakers until he finally asked about my job. I spent less than an hour catching him up on what I’d been doing since he left to woo a client and failed to return. I hit the highlights: college in Boulder, moving to Detroit to take my first teaching job. I trailed off, realizing I couldn’t dive any deeper into my past without bringing mom into the conversation or the fallout of his decision to leave us. I could tell by his wrinkled brow that he’d realized my predicament. He used the lull in the conversation to refill my tea, launching into a spiel about his new job, working in the shop below as the head of sales for a custom woodworking and furniture business. When he told me the outlandish name of the place, I couldn’t contain my laughter.

  “Good Wood?” I snorted, shaking my head. I’d been so nervous about our reunion that I hadn’t even bothered to read the sign above the store. “You’ve got to be joking. Is the owner nuts?”

  “Nope,” Dad said, his eyes twinkling in a way that reminded me of long-forgotten weekend mornings. “No more than the rest of us. You have to admit it’s a pretty memorable name.”

  “I’ll say.” I responded. An awkward silence descended upon us once more. Thankfully, there was a knock on the door.

  When my father answered it, I took in the beautiful woman in the doorway with surprise. Her bright red lips and retro hair gave her a pin-up girl quality. She was holding a giant basket overflowing with delicious scented treats, and the red scarf tied in her hair made her look like a punk rock Red Ridinghood. I eyed her impressive collection of forearm tattoos that reached the fingers of her left hand, while she beamed at me as if I were her long lost best friend. She radiated warmth, and I found myself smiling back in delight.

  “You must be Francis’ daughter,” she gushed, and though the title felt a little awkward, I brushed the comment aside.

  “I’m Kelly.” I stood as if to shake her hand, and she came in for a half hug as she thrust the basket of fat laden sugar at me.

  “Molly. I live across the hall,” she explained, and I had no choice but to accept the cornucopia of baked goods. Against my better judgement, I pulled out a brownie with white fluffy frosting and bit into it. If there was a buffet in heaven, this is what they’d served there.

  “What are y’all doing for dinner tomorrow night?” She asked, her blue eyes flitting from me to Francis and then back again.

  “We haven’t gotten that far yet,” Francis replied cautiously, and Molly’s blush matched the scarf in her hair.

  “Oh my gosh. I’m so sorry! Y’all are trying to catch up, and I’m intruding.” She had just a hint of a Texan accent, which I’d come to appreciate downstairs in my interactions with the sawdust-covered biker. I decided I loved the sound of it. “Mac texted me that Kelly was here, and I was dying to meet her!”

  “You’re fine, Molly.” My father wore a kind smile, but I noticed he didn’t invite her in.

  “You two have a lovely visit,” Molly said, without missing a beat. “If you’re free tomorrow, come over and have dinner. We’re grillin’ since the weather’s supposed to be so nice.”

  “If everything you cook is this good, you have yourself a date.” I replied, resisting the urge to lick my fingers free of the last crumbs of her sweet concoction.

  As Dad closed the door behind Molly, I grinned. “She’s a perky one.”

  My father just huffed out a laugh, an approving smile splitting his face.

  “Molly’s never met a stranger. She simply won’t allow it,” he claimed, and I could tell he was fond of her. A pang of jealousy hit me, and I blinked in surprise that I’d have such a negative reaction to something so pleasant and benign.

  “Who’s Mac?” I asked, moving to his sink to wash my hands. I was ready to move forward with more small talk.

  “What?” A crease appeared between his eyebrows.

  “Just wondering who could know I was here,” I replied. Understanding dawned on his weathered face.

  “Her brother. He works with me downstairs,” he answered, holding out the basket of Molly’s baked goods to me. I shook my head as I dried my hands, and he set it aside.

  “Rides a Harley?” I asked. I thought back to those dreamy blue eyes and over-the-top good looks. The family resemblance was there.

  “That’s him.” Dad replied, eyeing me with a hint of suspicion. I realized I’d been twirling a strand of my hair and dropped it.

  “What’s he do? Does he drive a delivery van or something?” I tried to sound casual as I picked up my cup. I figured this Mac fellow moved furniture or maybe was the janitor. I imagined what he’d look like lifting something heavy and the vivid mental image was staggering.

  Francis laughed. “No. He a carpenter. He can make anything out of old scrap people toss in a dumpster.”

  “He’s seems like a charmer.” I sniffed. I didn’t miss the concerned look that crossed my father’s face.

  “He’s a bit of a lady’s man,” he responded, and the cautionary subtext in his tone wasn’t lost on me.

  I felt my cheeks flush, more in anger at his presumptive offering of fatherly advice, than in embarrassment. It must have shown in my expression because he dropped his gaze. “You’re right. It’s not my place. I’m sorry.”

  His simple admission took me off guard, and I sat back in my chair and glanced at my phone.

  “Well, it’s three. I need to check into my hotel.”

  He frowned. “I told you I have a spare room.”

  I inhaled deeply. I’m not a fan of confrontation, and I felt an awkward conversation coming on.

  “That’s too much, too soon.” I responded, and to my surprise, he was nodding his head.

  He smiled in a conciliatory manner. “But I hate to have you spend so much on this trip just to see me,” he said.

  “I need to make this clear, Francis.” I saw him blanch when I called him by his first name, but he had yet to earn the title of “Dad” again. I could feel the tension in my jaw, but I needed to set him straight. “I’m doing this trip for me, not you.”

  “I understand,” he said. “I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you came
down here. I’d almost given up hope of ever seeing you again.” The anguish in his voice tugged at the heart of the little girl in me. Pushing her back into the past where she belonged, I took a deep breath before answering.

  “To be honest? I almost didn’t come.” I sighed and looked at the ceiling, running both of my hands through my hair. “I still don’t know what I’m doing here.”

  An expression of pain flashed across his face. And when he finally spoke, his voice was thick with emotion.

  “I’m glad you did,” he said. We sat in silence as I tried to sort through the conflicting emotions running through me. He waited patiently until I decided what I wanted to say.

  “Why did you leave me?” The question came out in a tight, squeaky voice that I barely recognized. My throat felt like sandpaper rubbing on jagged glass as I pushed the words out of my mouth. I forced myself to look at him and saw tears welling in his eyes. I felt the start of some in mine, so I looked down at my hands and furiously blinked them back.

  “Oh, honey,” he said. The tone he used held a depth of feeling I had never suspected would be there. The slight quaver in his words told me he was either an accomplished bullshit artist, or he did have feelings for me. “I never meant to leave you.”

  His statement slammed into me like a freight train, and I felt my walls return. I snorted, pushing the pain away.

  “Did you get lost?” He flinched, and I wanted to take the words back. I could see that he was trying, but damned if I was going to make this easy for him.

  “I deserve that. That and so much more. I wondered every day since I’ve been sober if contacting you was the right thing to do. In the end, I decided that you deserved to hear from me, if only so you could tell me off.” The guileless way that he said it, so matter of fact that he could have been telling me to squash a bug, put me off balance.

  I sat back and folded my arms. “I think I deserve an explanation.”

  He sighed and shook his head. “This isn’t how I hoped this would go.”

  I blinked in surprise. “I’m so sorry to disappoint.”

  “Kelly…”

  “What do you want from me?” The words fell from my lips without me having a chance to think about them. “Why did you want to see me? So that I could scream at you and then you could feel absolved of your guilt because I grew up and became a bitch?”

  “Hon…,” he paused. When he spoke again, his voice was barely above a whisper. “I don’t expect anything from you. I wanted to let you know where I was. There’s no defense for what I did, no explanation that matters. If you walked out that door right now and never wanted to see me again, I would understand. I hope you will stay. I would really like the chance to try and mend things between us.”

  I won’t say I wasn’t tempted to bolt, right then and there. I don’t think anyone has ever been given a better setup to storm out of another person’s life than I was that day.

  Instead, I stopped long enough to deliver this precious exit line: “Do you have any idea what it’s like to have the one man that’s supposed to love you unconditionally just walk away?”

  His stricken expression didn’t satisfy me; it just made me feel worse.

  “I’m going to go check into my hotel.”

  As I dressed the following morning, I realized I wasn’t quite ready for Round Two of the Palmer Family Reunion. I had a lot of things I needed to say, and now that we’d broken the ice, I needed to gather my thoughts a bit. I turned on my laptop and the first site I had bookmarked for the trip was The Austin Country Flea Market. Since it was Saturday and the website said they were open year-round, I hopped in my sporty rental car.

  Saturday morning traffic was much lighter than what I’d waded through the day before, and I was able to relax and take in the colorful sights of the city. Austin was full of murals, and it seemed shop owners took every opportunity to display funky art and neon.

  The landscape was surprisingly hilly, and parts of town reminded me of a scaled down version of San Francisco. Craggy rock walls jutted from between green trees, which really added to the beauty of the city. I should have expected this, since Austin was smack dab in the center of what Texas aptly named “Hill Country”, but the added bonus of this scenery to my vacation was a delightful surprise.

  I was trying on pair, after pair, of used cowboy boots and contemplating which of my outfits I’d have to throw out to fit them into my suitcase, when I spotted a nearby stand selling Christmas ornaments. My mother collected them, and I figured I’d go pick one out for her while I debated about whether I wanted cowboy boots in pink or something a bit more traditional.

  The ornaments were all handmade, and when I spotted one shaped like an apple, I reached out for it. Someone else grabbed it at the same time, and I turned to the woman and smiled.

  “Great minds.” I chirped, releasing the ornament. The woman, who was an adorable redhead with oodles of freckles, thrust it at me with a grin.

  “No! You had it first.” She argued.

  “I’ve got another.” The woman behind the table announced and handed a nearly identical ornament to the woman.

  “Yay! I wasn’t going to say anything, but I would have been heartbroken. I was gonna hang it on the tree in my classroom.” The impish dimples that appeared when she smiled endeared her to me.

  “You’re a teacher?” I laughed. “Me too.”

  “Cool.” Her wide-set green eyes lit up. “I’m Jerry.”

  “Kelly.”

  As we both paid for our purchases, we exchanged information about the grades we taught. When she asked which school I was at, I explained I was not from Texas.

  “Oh, honey.” She laughed, stuffing her wallet back into her bling covered purse. “Everyone from Texas is from someplace else. I knew right away you weren’t native.”

  “How?” I asked, truly baffled.

  “Your accent,” she responded with a shake of her short red bob. “You remind me of home. I only moved down from Ohio three years ago. I came for Austin City Limits with a couple of my sorority sisters. My first day in town a hot guy in a cowboy hat held the door for me and called me ma’am. I was hooked.”

  Jerry wandered along with me back to the cowboy boot vendor and advised me to invest in the distressed brown leather boots.

  “They’ll go with everything,” she explained, and I couldn’t fault that logic. As I paid for the boots, my stomach growled, and I remembered that I’d skipped breakfast at the hotel.

  “I’m starving,” I confessed.

  “Come try a kolache,” Jerry insisted, leading me to the collection of food vendors nearby.

  We continued our conversation over arguably the most bizarre and awesome breakfast of my life. What Texans refer to as kolaches, were like a fancy pig in a blanket. We washed them down with Dr Peppers, and I felt the guilt set in almost immediately.

  “That was so good, but so bad for me!” My hand went to my mid-section, as if I could will the calories away. “I’m supposed to be training! Now I’m going to have to spend the rest of the day swimming laps in my hotel.”

  “I’m going biking this afternoon. You should come along. You won’t believe the trails we have here.”

  “I don’t want to intrude…” But I really did. I already felt like I’d known Jerry forever, and I was thrilled at the idea of having a local tour guide with no ties to my father.

  We exchanged numbers, and she told me she knew a place near the trails where I could rent a bike. I was so excited on the way back to my hotel that I didn’t even think about my dad until his number popped up on my phone as a missed call.

  “Shit,” I muttered, and I waged a private battle about whether to call him back before or after my biking excursion. As I parked the car, I decided my strategy would be to deal with the bad before getting on with the good. I dialed his number.

  “Hello, darlin.” His familiar greeting twisted the knife a bit deeper.

  “Hi,” I replied. He paused, as if waiting for me to cont
inue the conversation. “I saw I missed your call…”

  “Yes. Molly stopped by on her way out to the store. She wondered if we’d decided on dinner.”

  The corner of my mouth lifted as I considered. Easing Francis back into my life might be easier in a group setting. There’d certainly be less pressure with a buffer like Molly around.

  “Sounds like fun,” I heard myself say. “Ask her if I can bring a bottle of wine.”

  I heard him laugh as clearly as if he was sitting next to me. “You’d be better off bringing beer.”

  MY LITTLE SISTER Molly could turn raw shoe leather into a meal to die for. That comes from growing up with a father who was one of the all-time great barbecue pit-masters. I normally have a standing invitation to Molly’s and Joe’s regardless of who’s going to be there. So when Joe said they were having Kelly and Francis over, I thought my reaction was pretty suave.

  “Y’all got room for one more?” Joe stopped dead, doing one of those slow turns, normally reserved for horror villains in the movies. The look of maniacal glee that appeared on his face made it clear to me that he’d seen right through my clumsy attempt at subtlety.

  Joe looked at the ceiling, making a big show of considering my question. “Well…Molly did say that she wanted to keep it simple. I’m not sure if she made enough food for more than four people.”

  My face flushed, and I glared at the jackass. “When, in the history of the world, has Molly ever made too little? Your fridge is a forest of Tupperware!”

  Joe kept his face turned away from me for a second, and when he turned back he had that annoying, shit-eating grin on his face.

  “I’m just busting your balls, Mac. You know you’re always welcome. Maybe Molly can put in a few good words with Kelly for ya.” He waggled his eyebrows like some old vaudeville comedian. I resisted the urge to slug him and turned to look out of the front window of the shop.

  “Molly couldn’t think up a good word about me if someone paid her million dollars to do so,” I said irritably. I could feel him watching me as I pretended to sort through tools. A few minutes later, he took the hint and went back upstairs. I figured his half-assed invite was good enough for me. It was worth putting up with a bit of Joe’s razzing for a chance to roll up on the hot number I’d met out front yesterday. It’s not often that a woman makes a big impression on me, but when I turned around and saw her, she damn near stopped my clock. That long hair framing those beautiful eyes got to me. It begged to be tugged on. Her jeans hugged her tight body, and the words “Life Is Good” were emblazoned across her perky breasts.