The Husband Project

The annoyingly beautiful neighbor.

Lasagna.

It was all coming back to him. The food was the only positive memory, though. Little Mrs. Swallow made a lasagna to remember. She’d also built a fire to heat his house, which he realized he should now do something about. He opened his eyes and, looking at the watch he’d worn to bed, saw that it was a few minutes after nine. In the morning.

Twenty minutes later he’d managed to add some logs, coax the fire into a roar and start a pot of coffee. There was, as Lucia Swallow had said, coffee in the freezer. He wrapped a lavender blanket around him and gazed out the kitchen window while he waited for the coffee to be ready. He’d never seen snow like this. He’d grown up in Florida, lived in England for a while, spent most of his time in South America. He knew monsoons, but blizzards? Not so much. He wanted to buy snowshoes and explore, but he’d have to heal first.

He was supposed to stay inside and work. Let his ribs knit. Plan the next project. Sam looked at the snow piled high in the backyard and realized someone had shoveled a path to the woodshed. But it wasn’t his woodshed and it wasn’t his wood.

Somehow the knock on the front door didn’t surprise him. Neither did the man standing on the porch. He was of medium height, tanned and wore a big smile, as if he and Sam were old friends.

“Jerry Thompson?” Sam guessed, opening the door to let him in.

“Yeah. Good morning.” He shook Sam’s hand and grinned. “Welcome to Willing. It’s great to finally meet you in person.”

He stopped on the plastic mat just inside the door after closing it.

Sam took a step back. “Come on in.”

“I won’t stay long.” He glanced down at his snow-packed boots. “Don’t want to track all over the carpet.”

“I just made coffee,” Sam said. “And I haven’t had any yet.”

“I don’t want to intrude.” But he was already bending over to remove his boots, so Sam assumed the guy was staying. “I just wanted to see if you needed anything, had any questions, any problems with the house.”

“I’m going to need firewood, according to the woman next door. I don’t think she wants me to keep using hers.” He opened two cabinets before finding coffee mugs. He’d expected floral tea cups, but he found serviceable white mugs instead.

“Lucia? She won’t mind till you get your own.” Jerry followed him into the kitchen. “I heard you met.”

“Yesterday.” He didn’t elaborate. He poured two cups of coffee and handed one to Jerry. “I hope you like your coffee black. I don’t have any food yet.”

“No problem. You saw the note I left? You can call Hip for wood. He’s also our resident artist and EMT.”

“Theo’s cousin?”

“Yep.”

“I’ll phone him this morning. You want to take your coat off?”

“Well, sure,” Jerry said, turning back to the living room. “I stopped by to see if you wanted to have breakfast. If not this morning, then any morning when you’re up to it. You could meet some of the folks here in town.”

“I’m not really here to—”

“People in Willing always like to welcome someone new,” he said. “Most of the time.”

Sam eyed the old couch and decided not to chance it, but Jerry set his coffee on the glass table, tossed his thick blue parka on the couch and made himself comfortable amid the fringed pillows. Sam eased himself into the recliner and hoped he’d be able to get out of it without screaming in pain.

“How do you like the place?”

An interesting question. “It’s, uh, fine. Did Mrs. Kelly have any family?”

“No, not a soul. I bought the house from the estate. She left everything to the Methodist Church and they sold it to me. Lock, stock and barrel.” He looked around the living room with some satisfaction. “Totally furnished, which is what you requested. I had Shelly—she lives in one of the cabins at the café, you’ll see them when you eat there—clean out the clothes and personal items, but we left the rest to keep it homey. The church took the canned goods for the food bank.” He glanced at his mug. “Except the coffee, I guess. It lasts forever in the freezer. You can hire Shelly to clean and do errands, if you want. She’s reasonable and can use the money.”

Sam liked the sound of that. “Can I hire her to get some food for me?”

“Probably not. She broke her arm a few weeks back and I don’t know if she’s driving. I’ll give you her number. There’s a little market, more of a convenience store— Thompson’s, no relation—on Main Street across from the library. They do real estate, too, if you decide you want to buy something. Anyway, the market doesn’t deliver, but you can walk there. How are you doing? I thought you had a broken arm.”

“Cracked ribs,” Sam said, figuring his injuries would get him out of interacting with people. He wanted to do nothing more than write the damn book and feel sorry for himself. “And a bit of trouble with my heart. I was— Well, never mind.” He didn’t want to go into the details. He felt stupid enough as it was.

“No car? Or you can’t drive?”

“Both, for now.”

“I heard you had a little trouble yesterday.” The redheaded mayor took another sip of the coffee and grinned at him. “Stealing wood from Lucia.”

“Ah,” Sam said. “She’s already complained?”

Jerry laughed and shook his head. “Twitter. You saw the babysitter? Thumbs like a machine, according to her grandfather.”

Sam’s head began to throb. “I mistook the shed for mine.”

“The photo of you in the snow was grim, but now that I know you’re okay—”

“Photo?”

“Told you,” Jerry said. “The kid’s technologically advanced. But I guess they all are these days. Sorry.” He reached into his pocket, which was buzzing, and retrieved a cell phone. “Hello?”

Sam drank the rest of his coffee as fast as he could without burning the inside of his mouth. He needed the caffeine. He also needed food. Lots of food. Enough food to last him until the first of April, when he could leave this place and go back to his day job.

“It’s fine,” Jerry was reassuring someone. “He’s okay, a perfectly nice guy. I’m here with him right now.”

So the incident yesterday had been blabbed all over town. Typical, of course. Sam had lived in villages along the Amazon and knew how fast news traveled.

“Tell you what,” Jerry said, radiating good cheer and agreeableness. “He and I are going to have breakfast.” He paused to listen. “Where else? You can meet him then.” Another pause. “Well, okay, next week then.” Pause. “Yeah, that’s Thursday at seven. You got the email.”

Sam heard Jerry say ”Fine” and “No problem” a few more times before Jerry clicked his phone shut and apologized. “Sorry. Member of the town council.”

“It’s okay,” Sam said. “I imagine you’re a busy man.”

“I just returned from L.A., as a matter of fact.” He set his coffee mug on the mahogany coffee table. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard about our town project.”

“Uh, no.” Sam’s headache intensified, as did the ache in his chest. He really, really didn’t want to hear about the town project, whatever it was. Had he seen half a loaf of bread in the freezer? Was there any lasagna left? “Where did you say the market was, Jerry?”

“Two blocks away, around the corner on Main. But it’s closed on Sundays in the winter.”

“Damn.”

“What do you need?”