A Place Called Home Page 20

  “For the moment. Don’t get me wrong. My parents love the kids. My mother would have been ecstatic if I had married Kathy. It was hard for her to understand that Kath and I could be so close and have no romantic interest in each other. Kathy got a similar push from her parents.” The corners of Mitch’s mouth lifted in a faint smile. “To satisfy them all we went to our senior prom together. Trust me, we were about the only couple there who didn’t end up in the backseat of a car. We even tried groping a little, but it didn’t work. Our hearts weren’t in it.” Mitch got up from the table and began to clear it. “I haven’t thought about that in a long time. Thanks. It’s a good memory. We had a lot of fun that night even though our parents were disappointed nothing momentous came of it. Mom’s still got her eye out for another Kathy.”

  Thea pushed her chair back, stretching as she stood, and pitched in to make short work of the kitchen cleanup. He brewed a pot of tea while they worked and they went into the living room with their cups after they were done. Mitch saw her give the falling snow a glance as they sat down on the couch.

  “You worried about it?” he asked. Little things, he thought, like whether she was wary of driving in the snow. Those were some of the inconsequential facts he wanted to know about her. He’d learned he was up to most of the big challenges he’d ever had to face, but the oddest details could do him and a relationship in. Just witness the way Gina’s choice of an automatic transmission in the Xterra bugged the hell out of him. “Maybe you want to drive the SUV home? You paid for more of it than I did.”

  “Snow doesn’t really bother me,” Thea said, curling into one corner of the sofa.

  Mitch lounged in the opposite corner. Bookends, he thought, and kind of liked the idea. “But if you had to drive it, could you?”

  “Well, I’m not that crazy about driving someone else’s vehicle ...”

  “But you could.”

  A small crease appeared between Thea’s brows. “I don’t know much about the all-wheel-drive feature... .”

  “But you could drive the car. First. Second. Third. Shift the gears.”

  “Oh, that’s right. It’s a manual. Sure. My other car’s a stick.”

  Yesssss! He almost punctuated his thought with a little pumping arm action. “You have another car?”

  “An old Porsche. My father gave it to me when I landed my first big account for the firm.”

  “Sure. A Porsche. Old is code for antique, I bet. Mint condition. I mean, why not? If you want to show someone you appreciate their efforts, nothing says well-done like a Porsche.”

  “It was extravagant,” she admitted. “Even for my father.” She hesitated, watching him over the rim of her cup. “Does it bother you? I mean that my father could do things like that for me—and often did.”

  Mitch thought about it before he answered. She came from a different world than he did. Big money, if not necessarily old. An exclusive neighborhood. Private school. She probably finished college without a loan and paid cash for her first car, if she’d even bought it on her own. But all that was just trappings and from what she’d already told him, she’d been thoroughly trapped. Perhaps she still was. “My dad tells me when he likes my cartoons,” Mitch said finally. “That’s pretty good, too.”

  Thea smiled. “Yeah, it is.” Still watching him, she sipped her tea. “Tell me something about yourself that will surprise me.”

  He liked the question. “All right,” he said, thinking. “My second toe is longer than my big toe.”

  “Yikes!”

  “I know. Freaky, right?”

  “Carnival material.”

  Mitch laughed. “Okay, how about this? When I was kid I wanted to be a lawyer.”

  “A lawyer? Not a fireman? Astronaut? Race car driver?”

  “Wayne’s dad was a lawyer. He had this cool leather briefcase with a combination lock. Little gold tumblers that were set to a code Wayne and I could never break. I decided I wanted a job where I could have a locked briefcase like Mr. Anderson.” Mitch sighed. “Wayne has lived the dream.”

  “But does he have the briefcase?”

  “Of course. I bought one for him when he passed the bar.”

  Thea chuckled. “More, please.”

  Mitch obliged her, dredging up tidbits about himself that were silly, grave, amusing, and touching by turns. There were the inevitable warts to show, those qualities he was not particularly proud of. His intolerance for standing in line. The impatience he couldn’t quite hold in check when people couldn’t make change. The grief he could communicate to the waiter or waitress who tried to take his food away before he was done. “You might as well know now,” he told her. “I’m a lousy shopper. My mother won’t even go in stores with me. I embarrass her. Gina thought she could reform me.”

  “And?”

  “And after three attempts she was happy to leave to me at home.”

  Thea thought she detected a real sense of satisfaction from him on this last count. A power struggle won.

  “I won’t hold a woman’s purse, either.”

  One of Thea’s brows lifted and her smile was wry. “I take it there was some early trauma.”

  That was Mitch’s cue to regale her with the horror story of being left in the little girl’s clothing section in a department store while his mother helped Amy in the dressing room. He was saddled with not one, but two purses, and the large blue-and-white shopping bag with all their previous purchases. Adding to the insult were the well-intentioned clerks, cooing over him for being so precious and mannerly. The final blow came when his occasional friend/nemesis Davey Druschell saw him. There were some things that took a boy a long time to live down.

  Thea had set her empty mug aside a half dozen stories ago. She was turned sideways on the sofa, hugging her knees as she listened. What she felt right now, this settled sense of self, was something that did not often happen and she wanted to hold it as close to her as her knees were to her chest.

  Mitch’s last story wound down and they both fell silent. A faint smile lingered on Thea’s lips and touched her eyes. Mitch cocked his head, studying her. “What are you thinking?”

  “That this was a good idea. Coming out here. Picking up the car. Dinner. Talking.”

  “I noticed you left out the smarmy seduction thing.”

  She surprised them both by saying, “That was good, too.” Their eyes met, held, then they both looked away simultaneously. The spark, the connection, the something that stirred when their glances caught was still there, still stirring. Thea swiveled on the sofa, unfolded her slender frame, and dropped her feet to the floor. She glanced over her shoulder to the window. “I need to be going before I have to follow the snowplows to get home.”

  Ask me to stay.

  The errant thought made her shoot to her feet. What in God’s name was she thinking? She wobbled a bit, getting her balance.

  “Are you all right?” Mitch asked. “Don’t fall over the coffee table.”

  Embarrassed by her gracelessness, Thea simply nodded. It was no good trying to laugh it off. It would come across as tremulous and uncertain and she would feel even more foolish. She could hear her mother’s voice: “Stand straight. Don’t slouch. You walk like a cow.” The dance classes that had brought Gabe back into her life hadn’t been suggested because Thea showed any aptitude, but because she had shown none. “I’ll get my jacket.”

  Mitch stood. “Get mine, too. I’ll help you clean off your car.”

  Thea didn’t argue. She told herself she was happy for the help and grateful he wasn’t pressing her even the slightest bit to stay the night. There was a truth in there somewhere. She honestly didn’t know what her answer would be if he asked. Was it that she simply wanted the opportunity to say no, or that she really wanted the chance to say yes?

  The wind swirled small eddies of snow around them as they cleared the car of four inches of powder. It was a white world everywhere they looked. Streetlights illuminated the falling snow and reflected off the surface
of what was already covering the ground. For a night with no stars or visible moon, it was astonishingly bright. Thea had the engine running to warm the interior and defrost the windshield while they worked. In the distance they could hear the grating sound peculiar to snowplows as they cleared the main road.

  “I don’t know, Thea,” Mitch said, looking up the street. The plows hadn’t been down it yet and neither had much local traffic. “You might want to rethink this. We usually have one pass from the plows by now. If they’re this busy clearing the main thoroughfares, then it must be pretty bad. Maybe you should spend the night.”

  Great. He’d finally asked her to stay and it was because of the weather. That was easy enough to turn down. She wasn’t looking for a mercy invitation. “I’ll be fine. Once I get out to the highway it won’t be a problem.” She saw he still looked dubious. “Really,” she added. “I’ve been through worse than this with the Volvo.”

  “You know, just because it’s Swedish doesn’t mean it was made for snow.”

  “You’re thinking of those ABBA chicks. My car will do fine.” Thea opened the door and lifted one foot to the runner, ready to slide inside. Something she saw in his face made her hesitate. It was there, the invitation that she really wanted from him, hovering on his lips, reaching out to her with his glance. And then Thea understood and she put it into words for both of them. “It scared you, didn’t it?” she asked him softly, searching his face. “The things I told you tonight about my drug abuse.”

  Mitch didn’t respond immediately. His lips pressed together and his smile was at once wry and regretful. “Yeah,” he said finally. “It did.”

  “I’m glad. It should. I know it still scares the hell out of me.” She recalled with clarity the moment she realized that her best friend was right: she was an addict. The epiphany came to her weeks after Gabe’s confrontation when even a steady diet of benzos and narcotics couldn’t keep the gut wrenching terror and pain at bay. She’d fallen asleep in her car in the garage and couldn’t make herself get out of it in the morning. She thought about starting the engine and letting carbon monoxide put her to sleep again. Instead, she called Gabe. He came. Rescued her, really, and three days later he and Kathy put her on a plane. It was the last time she’d seen them. The memory was bittersweet.

  Thea raised herself over the edge of the open door and kissed Mitch on the mouth. It was brief, just a gentle tugging of her mouth on his, and she could almost taste his bemusement. When she drew back her smile was a trifle watery. “Thank you.” She ducked inside the car, pulling the door shut while Mitch stepped back. Raising her left hand in a farewell salute, Thea pulled away from the curb. When she reached the stop sign at the corner, she glanced in her rearview mirror. Mitch was still standing in the middle of the road, his figure hunched against the cold and illuminated in a pale wash of light by the street lamp. She kept him in her sights until the falling snow drew a curtain over him.

  Oblivious to the cold, Mitch slowly walked back to the house. He passed on a beer from the fridge and chose a soft drink instead. Wandering back to the living room, he picked up the TV remote, turned it on, flicked through a few channels, and flopped on the couch. He didn’t want to watch anything, didn’t even want to listen. He left the TV on, tuned to a financial station with a ticker tape of news running at the bottom of the screen, and hit the mute button, silencing the talking heads.

  Thea had scared him with her revelation. She had always scared him a little with her poise and frankness and cool demeanor. He had the suspicion that on the occasions they’d met over the years, she was sizing him up and had decided a long time ago that he was a boy’s size Large. Maybe that had changed recently, Mitch thought. He certainly hoped that was the case, but he also knew it was no longer so important what she thought of him. He needed to decide what he really thought of her.

  He knew he liked her. At the rehearsal dinner for Gabe and Kathy he had acted four kinds of stupid around Thea Wyndham. That was his first hint that his feelings were engaged. At the wedding reception the following day, he had offered an absurd number of toasts to the new couple’s happiness in order to knock back another flute of cheap champagne and get his courage up to ask her out. Everything had come out wrong, of course. His invitation, the one that he hoped to communicate in a tone that was both smooth and casual, came out in fits and starts. He was pretty sure he actually stuttered. Mortified, he changed direction, and fell back on humor to help him get out from under Thea’s patient, but mildly derisive smile. Somehow he managed to suggest they retire to the fire truck in the garage to do the wangy-bangy. Suave. He remembered her refusal as being flat and firm. There was really nowhere to go from there.

  It was true, he knew, that his interest in her had begun before the moment of their first meeting. He had hedged a bit when he told Thea that he was trying to remove her as a potential rival for Gabe’s affection. It was more to the point that Kathy had begun to speak so often of Gabe’s friend Thea, that Mitch wanted to meet her himself. Okay, so maybe that photo of the striking redhead he’d seen in Gabe’s wallet had roused his curiosity and jangled his hormones, but he’d also paid attention to the little things they dropped in conversation about her. Most of it he still remembered.

  Not once had anyone hinted that she had a drug problem.

  It seemed likely they hadn’t known back then, or perhaps Gabe had suspicions that he never shared with Kathy. Thea had been his boon companion, after all, and Mitch understood the urge to protect someone close. It was not as if Thea wasn’t a functional abuser, at least as far as Mitch could tell, and that would have made her substance use problem more difficult to detect and confront. She probably hid it from everyone, most especially herself.

  Mitch had done some drug experimentation as a teenager and college student, and when he looked back on it, it was with a mixture of astonishment at his stupidity and wonderment at his good fortune for emerging from adolescence alive. Drinking had always been more popular with his friends and he had participated enthusiastically in a mind-boggling variety of mind-numbing drinking games, driving or being driven under the influence, and sneaking home to collapse in bed still smelling like a brewery. Alcohol was plentiful, but there were opportunities to smoke a little weed at a football game or drop some acid, and Mitch was interested, so he never said no. On the other hand, he never went out of his way to say yes. If it was there, he didn’t turn it down; if it wasn’t there, he didn’t go looking for it.

  Even before he graduated from CMU, he’d lost interest and moved on. Now he drank the occasional beer and got his drugs at the pharmacy. Mitch sighed, and let his head loll back against the sofa, as this last thought brought him around to Thea again. She also bought her drugs at the pharmacy and he suspected she probably always had. He doubted she had ever done an illegal drug in her life; prior to Gabe’s intervention and her stint in rehab, she might have considered Mitch to be the more serious drug abuser.

  Thea Wyndham was a good girl.

  He smiled a little wryly as he recalled telling her that. It wasn’t that he had changed his mind, but now he wondered what had gone through hers when he’d said it. She knew firsthand about the cost of trying to be a good girl. There was a connection there, a small piece of the puzzle that was Thea Wyndham that Mitch could fit into place on his own.

  He thought about what he knew of her childhood, then of all that he didn’t. Except for a single, offhanded allusion to her biological father not caring for her, she hadn’t said anything about her birth parents. She remembered them; Mitch recalled her sharing that much, but nothing else. The Wyndhams. The Reasoners. And then there was some couple whose name Mitch had never learned. What memories did Thea have about them? What part was fact? What part fiction?

  Three sets of parents, Mitch thought. Biological. Foster. Adoptive. How was a child supposed to make some sense of that?

  Thinking of the three children staying with his parents right now made Mitch’s chest tighten uncomfortably. God, what if h
e screwed this up? What if they did all the stupid things he did as a kid and weren’t as lucky to come out on the other side? He wasn’t their parent. What the hell did he know about it anyway? Gabe and Kathy trusted him with their kids but it wasn’t like they’d left an instruction manual behind. The closest thing he had was Kathy’s recipes and he’d already proven he couldn’t make her meat loaf to please the troops.

  What kind of dad fed his kids spiced couscous with fruit and nuts?

  Awww, jeez, he was losing it. Next he’d be asking Thea for a list of doctors that would prescribe him the choice drugs.

  That thought made Mitch flash back to something Emilie had said about Thea weeks ago. We make her nervous. Thea had denied it, Mitch had covered for her, but Emilie, repeating something she’d overheard from her mother, had been telling the truth. Being around the kids did make her nervous, and it always had. Mitch realized that he was just ready to join her.

  “Great,” he whispered. “That’ll really help the kids. Kathy? Gabe? What the hell were you thinking putting us in charge?”

  There was no answer, which Mitch, in his present frame of mind, took as a good thing. Thea Wyndham, high school honor student, fledgling ballerina, Bryn Mawr grad, ad exec at the family-founded firm, and award recipient, was making him a little crazy.

  What was he supposed to do with what she’d told him? Had her confession been in the way of an excuse or simply the explanation he’d been asking for from the start? Was he supposed to keep the kids out of her hair or let them pull her in? If she relapsed, who would be to blame?

  “Strike that,” he said at the end of a long sigh. “It’s got to be on you, Thea.”

  The phone rang and Mitch almost let the machine pick up. At the last moment he realized that it was probably the kids calling to say good night and he made a mad dash to the kitchen, catching it a second before his recorded voice did.