Your Dream And Mine

Trace explained about the tree, and waiting on Will.

“I’d call Will, but the phone and the alarm clock are all the same ring to him. He’s good at ignoring both,” said Milt. “Speaking of ring-a-dings—how are you and your renter getting along?”

“Which one?” asked Trace.

“Antoinette Penn.”

Trace stretched his legs and crossed his ankles. “If I had it to do over, I’d stick to my no-kids, no-pets and mow-your-own-grass rules. But her kids needed a roof over their head, and she caught me in a weak moment.”

“Watch your weak moments, or it’ll be your roof over her head, the same one you’re under.”

“That’s the least of my worries,” said Trace.

“Prickly, isn’t she?” drawled Milt with a knowing grin. “Rough, losing her husband that way. Of course, she’d take your hide off if she thought you were feeling sorry for her.”

“You can save your breath. I learned my lesson,” said Trace. After Antoinette’s husband died in an icy pile-up on I-55, he’d felt sorry enough to rent the little yellow house to her. Her kids spent more time in his yard than they did in their own, which generated the usual amount of smalltown gossip.

“That-a-boy,” said Milt. “Hold out for a girl like my Mary.”

Trace nursed his coffee and chatted with Milt awhile before giving up on Will.

Once home, he showered and fell into bed and slept hard until dreams edged him toward wakefulness.

“Do you take Deidre O’Conley to be your…”

Trace awoke before the preacher in his dream got the words out. Half a lifetime ago he would have taken Deidre to be his anything. She was a do-gooder and spiritually needy and all he needed was her. He had told her so at the drive-in theater.

“You’ve got less plot than the movie,” Deidre had told him. “And what there is of it, God didn’t put there.”

It had seemed to Trace at the time that there ought to be some middle ground. But Deidre disagreed. So he walked the straight and narrow, sure he’d win her heart in the end.

But he lost on that count, too, to the courage of her convictions. To his betters, as Milt put it. It was a gradual loss—first she left for Bible college, then four years later, for the mission field. The letters and phone calls had stopped by then. She met someone out in Arizona. He had since died. Trace bought a sympathy card, a religious one. But he never could bring himself to send it. Partly because the words seemed hypocritical, coming from a guy who hadn’t been in church since she left town. Partly for fear she’d read something other than sympathy in the gesture.

Trace kicked back the sheets, thinking of subsequent relationships and how they died on the vine with mild regret and none of the pain of Deidre. He had her to thank for that. She’d taught him to put his armor on and keep his heart well guarded.

Trace showered and shaved and ate cold leftovers, then started the needed painting. After a year and a half, cosmetic improvements were all that remained of turning the dilapidated eyesore he’d picked up for a song into a grand old lady of a house. He lived in one half. The other half he hoped to rent just as he had the other fixer-uppers he’d acquired over the past fourteen years.

Between good wages and rental properties, he was building a tidy nest egg while he waited for the place of his dreams to come on the market. A place with a fishing hole and woodland trails and a nice creek for canoeing. When he found it, he planned to build vacation cabins. He would call it Wildwood. It would be his ticket out of the car plant and off the treadmill of predictability.

Beyond that, the dream got hazy. But even as a kid with building blocks, Trace never quite knew how to enjoy himself playing with what he’d built. It didn’t worry him. There was a lot of hard work between here and there. It was the work he relished. Building something from scratch, driving every nail. A world away from attaching identical pieces of trim, identical wires, on identical cars at sixty-second intervals.

It was hot in Thomasina’s third-floor apartment. She slept poorly and awoke with circles under her eyes. A cool shower helped some. So did liquid foundation, though a sheen of perspiration made wet work of it.

Thomasina tilted her damp face to the fan and coiled her long dark hair in one hand as she waited for her makeup to dry. Using a butterfly clip to secure her gathered tresses at the back of her head, she applied eye makeup, then blush, then peach-colored lipstick before reaching for the lash curler. It was old and sticky with the heat and wouldn’t let go. Thomasina winced and batted a watering eye. A tissue did more harm than good, smudging shadow and mascara and removing smearing blush from her left cheek all in one swipe. Out of patience, she flung the whole works into her cosmetic bag and picked up the classified ads, doubts mounting.

She was a city girl. Why had she ever agreed to look at rent property in Liberty Flats? It was a one-school, onechurch town with a post office and a grocery store. Quaint and charming, granted. But it was fifteen miles from all the amenities to which she was accustomed.

Regretting yesterday’s impulse that had led to today’s appointment with the landlord of the property, a man whose name now escaped her, Thomasina scanned the ad again. No name, just a number. Thomasina donned a shortsleeved, trim-fitting uniform and dialed the number. She would just have to tell the guy she’d changed her mind about seeing the Rush Street property. But there was no answer. It seemed rude to be a no-show. Thomasina sighed and relented. Peeking at the place didn’t obligate her. She was passing through anyway on her way to Milt and Mary’s.

Trace’s two-story house sat at a right angle to the street on a shady double lot. The foyer beyond the main entrance took a bite out of the corner of the house. The veranda, which gave access to the entrance, wrapped the corner. The west side of the porch was Trace’s. The south side went with the tenant apartment.

Trace tucked his burgundy shirt into his dark gray work trousers. He crouched on the entrance threshold, leaned past the step and stretched down a hand to see if the porch floor had dried. His finger came away forest green. The paint was as wet as when he’d put it down.

He retraced his steps to the back utility room where he’d stored the paint can. Twenty-four hours to dry. Now how had he overlooked that earlier? He had, with his slick efficiency, painted himself in and his prospective renter out.

Leaving his door standing open, Trace climbed out a window, backed his truck up to the porch and let the tailgate down. He was looking for a board in the carriage house when he heard a car pull up out front. Hastily he grabbed a long two-by-four and crossed beneath the widespread blue ash. He spanned the wet porch with the two-by-four, one end supported by the tailgate, the other thrust through the front door into the parquet floor of the foyer.

Hearing footsteps on the brick walk, he turned, an apology ready.

“The porch floor is wet If you can…” The rest of the explanation faded away, so unnerved was he at finding himself looking into the deep-set darkly fringed eyes of Milt’s nurse.

“Tommy Rose!” he blurted. “What are you doing here?”

Chapter Four (#ulink_ab0d0f07-da9d-5b1a-9dde-b0608f1ad114)

The disheveled man Thomasina had met at Milt and Mary’s early that morning was no longer so disheveled. Just surprised. And discomfited at having blurted out Milt’s pet name for her.

Thomasina buried her own discomfort in a smile. “Hello again, Mr. Austin. I’m here to see the apartment.”

“It was you I talked to on the phone? I didn’t take down a name.”

Thomasina nodded.

“I’ll be.” Trace shifted his feet.

“Small world, huh?”

The house, with its fresh coat of white paint, white carpenter’s lace and green porch begged to be seen.

Thomasina smiled and moved out of the sun, asking. “How did you get along with your tree cutting?”

“It went about like the rest of my day.” Trace gestured toward the board spanning the porch. “The paint’s wet. The only way in is over that board. Or have you lost interest?”

“I was having second thoughts. But,” she admitted. “I’m here. I may as well look.”

When she phrased it that way, Trace wanted to tell her not to put herself out, that he’d have no trouble renting the place. With the city limits near by, Liberty Flats had become a bedroom community. It was a seller’s market, and renters were even easier to find than buyers. But he didn’t want her mistaking his words for pressure. He said instead, “I’ll get a wider board.”

“This’ll do.”

“You’re sure?”

“Why not? If Nadia can trip the light fantastic on a balance beam, I can inch across a two-by-four.” Thomasina tossed her purse into the back of his truck. She slipped out of her shoes and set them on the tailgate beside her purse.

“Nadia?”

“You know. The gymnast?”

“Oh, her. Sure!” Trace grinned and vaulted onto the tailgate to offer her a hand up. “You’re dating yourself, though. That was a few Olympics ago.”