Marrying The Single Dad

Sam, who needed to understand this was their new reality. Uncle Turo and his larger-than-life lifestyle was no longer an option.

“Those cars in the field?” Joe pointed out the window. “Those are the kinds of cars I used to work on when I lived here as a kid.” The kinds of cars that were going to provide for him and Sam for the next five to ten years. Less for good behavior.

“Ew.” She’d said that the first time they’d entered the apartment this morning. And again when she’d seen the hard-water stains in the toilet. And once more when she’d spotted a garden snake slither into a hole in the wall of the garage office.

That had made Joe want to say ew, too.

Once they were rid of the trespassers, they’d finished unloading the truck and trailer that had their beds and few belongings—the possessions the FBI let them keep. Only then had he spared a glance to the house he’d grown up in. The one he refused to live in.

Besides bad memories, there’d be too much square footage to heat or cool for it to make sense for him and Sam to move in there. He’d barely looked at the barn in back where the family had once kept their personal vehicles. It was practically drowning in blackberry bushes and would probably have more spiders and snakes than either he or Sam was comfortable with.

Instead, he’d chosen the apartment his grandfather, and later his Uncle Turo, had lived in. He focused on being thankful that he hadn’t done anything illegal, and concentrated on rebuilding his life and his daughter’s.

“We’ll inventory the cars in the field later and find out which ones we own.” He wouldn’t sell a car he didn’t have the legal title to. He led Sam downstairs, noting midway he needed to repair a soft tread. “We’ll start work on whichever one’s in the best shape once we get some paying customers.”

“Dad,” Sam said with lawyerly seriousness. “There is no best shape in that field.”

There was no best shape in his memories of this place either. Everywhere he looked he saw Uncle Turo. Around the field there were still remnants of the dirt track Uncle Turo had made for him and his brothers to race their motorcycles. In the kitchen cupboard he’d found an old container of Uncle Turo’s favorite spice, and his business cards were stacked behind the service counter. Everywhere he looked there was a memory of how Uncle Turo had shown up and held the family together after Mom left and Dad fell apart. It made Joe’s decision all the more painful.

He’d made the right choice, the only choice, a father’s choice. That didn’t mean he didn’t feel the consequences of his decision in the guilt rooted in his throat, the anger planted on his shoulders or the regret twined around his heart.

For Sam’s sake, he’d bound his guilt, his anger and his regret deep inside him. Only occasionally did the bindings unravel, crowding the air out of his lungs.

He pushed through the office door to the parking lot and unhitched the trailer he’d towed from LA. What would the trailer be worth? Enough for car parts to restore a wreck in the field? Doubtful. But doubtful was better than nothing. “Let’s go into town and pass out some flyers.” He’d typed them up and had them printed at one of those office-supply stores in Santa Rosa. “Who knows? We might get lucky and find someone with car trouble.”

“Sell the grille,” Sam repeated, opening the passenger door of their pickup. The hinges sounded like a wire brush being dragged over rusty sheet metal. “This truck is pathetic.”

“It’s a classic.” Joe tried to believe it, tried to infuse his words with optimism. “Even a pathetic truck can be the best of a bygone era.”

He’d bought the cheap red pickup last week. After a bit of work, the big block engine ran with race-car precision. The rest of it wouldn’t have been out of place in the field behind their garage.

The women picking their field for treasures had been driving a similar “vintage” truck, which was surprising. They’d looked like sensible sedan drivers. Although...

Maybe not Brittany. Stained coveralls and scuffed work boots said one thing. Short, black, polka-dot-painted fingernails and carefully applied makeup said another. Something about her didn’t add up. She didn’t look like she knew how an engine worked, much less how to pop the hood. But she’d held the socket wrench with confidence and had tucked it into a full toolbox, one lacking pink-handled tools.

Athena would’ve liked her. Athena would’ve taken Brittany’s money for the grille. Or the promise of it.

His wife had always been too trusting in others.

Joe’s head throbbed. Memories flashed. The wet road. The unexpected turn. The smell of a hot engine and cold blood.

It was better to focus on the here and now.

Joe took in the peeling paint on the garage’s outer walls, the small cracked-asphalt parking lot, the roof shingles that looked as if a gusting wind would blow them free. He needed something new to focus on. The here and now was demoralizing. He wasn’t in Beverly Hills anymore. There were no luxury cars waiting to be fixed. No roar of precision machines in service bays. No rumble of commands left in Uncle Turo’s wake.

Uncle Turo would’ve liked Brittany, too. But he would’ve sold her the entire BMW plus an expensive service plan.

Joe’s phone rang, playing the opening notes of “Jailhouse Rock.” He’d programmed the main number from the Los Angeles County jail.

Joe’s head hammered harder, the pain moving behind his eyes as he let the call roll to voicemail.

He tossed a short stack of flyers advertising the opening of their business on the bench seat and climbed behind the large white plastic steering wheel.

“I miss Uncle Turo.” Sam turned a too-innocent gaze toward him. “Do you think he’s okay?”

“Yes,” Joe lied, because eleven-year-olds shouldn’t worry. “Forget Uncle Turo. Now it’s you and me.” That’s what his brothers, Gabe and Vince, had told him when the law finally caught up to Turo. Get out. Get away. Protect Sam.

“So...this is our home?” Sam sighed with all the melodrama of a silent film heroine.

Joe didn’t know what angle Sam was working, but he needed to keep her on the straight and narrow. “This is the end of the road. Home sweet home.” He started the engine, listening for any inconsistencies, which was challenging given his pounding head. Hearing none, he put the truck in gear.

“We should send Uncle Turo our address.”

A muscle in Joe’s eye twitched. He drove past neat rows of vineyards, which were serene and picturesque, but he missed the frenetic pace of LA and the kaleidoscope of vehicles of every make, cost and color.

Sam sighed again, perhaps upset that her request to communicate with Uncle Turo had fallen on deaf ears. “Do I have to start school on Monday? I can wait until fall to go back. You can’t run the garage on your own.”

Or perhaps they were revisiting the argument about how this move had made her realize she didn’t need school.

Their arrival coincided with spring break. The school in Harmony Valley was minuscule, nothing like her old school with hundreds of kids. Or what Joe had experienced growing up here.

More than a decade ago, the mill—the biggest employer in town back then—had exploded and shut down, causing a mass exodus of young families in need of regular paychecks. Joe’s family had been among them. Eventually, the schools had closed as more people left. Now, after nearly becoming a ghost town, Harmony Valley was poised to thrive. Joe intended to take advantage of being the first repair shop to resume business. And Sam could take advantage of the low teacher-student ratio. The Harmony Valley School District had just reopened and had one teacher for a handful of elementary school children.

“Dad.” Sam’s voice shrunk to the level of wistfully made wishes. “Remember when Mom used to buy me new clothes before school started?”

With his head pounding and his eye twitching, Joe felt as worn-out as a tire on its third retread. “It’s April, Sam.” And they didn’t have money for new clothes. Uncle Turo had seen to that.

“Yes, but...” Sam turned to look at him, a petite version of Athena’s classic features with puppy-dog brown eyes. He might have been won over if not for the hint of dogged determination in the set of Sam’s mouth. That came from his side of the family. “Dad, it’s a new school.”

“Sam, you’ll be in class with a handful of elementary girls. They won’t care if your clothes aren’t new.” People in Harmony Valley were different. Or so Uncle Turo used to say. Joe didn’t remember if that was true. When last he’d lived here, he’d been a hell-raising, angry teenager, more concerned with rebelling against authority than being accepted.

At sixteen, he’d viewed everyone over the age of thirty as the enemy. They’d either driven too slow or complained he drove too fast. They’d lived happily within the boundaries of society, while he’d felt rules weren’t for him. He hadn’t appreciated that the very things he resented about Harmony Valley had protected him as a child. Not until he’d needed a safe harbor for Sam.

Now he hoped what Uncle Turo said was true, because he wanted to provide his kid with an environment that didn’t judge her for her great uncle being a crook.

Joe drew a steadying breath, willing his eye to stop twitching and his head to stop pounding. Starting over wasn’t supposed to be so hard. “Why don’t we put up flyers at the bakery first?” Sugar. It was just the distraction Sam needed. They could afford a little sugar, couldn’t they?

Sam slumped, staring out the window as Joe turned onto Main Street and down memory lane.

At first it seemed nothing had changed. The cobbled sidewalks, window awnings and old-fashioned gaslights remained. There was the pawn shop and the pizzeria. There was the barbershop where he’d gotten his hair cut. There was the bakery, and farther down, the Mexican restaurant.

A second glance showed him that time hadn’t stood still. The corner grocery was dark. The ice-cream parlor where kids used to go after school was vacant. The stationery store had been taken over by something called Mae’s Pretty Things.

Main Street had been the heartbeat of town. Bustling. Never an empty storefront or an empty parking space. Now it felt deserted, despite a few scattered cars.

They parked, grabbed the flyers and went inside Martin’s Bakery. Again, there was a sense of time standing still. The same mismatched wooden tables and chairs, framed yellowed photos from the bakery’s past on the wall, fresh sweets in the glass case. The smell of rich coffee was new. And the place was surprisingly crowded with retirees—which was great. They’d drive dated cars that didn’t require expensive diagnostic equipment that rivaled the cost of sending a man to the moon.

Conversation died almost the same time as the door swung closed behind them.