“Will you go with Dayton, please?” Mercedes asked. “I’ll come down in a minute to help with your suit, okay?”
“‘kay.” Ayjia skipped to where Zack righted her bike. He gave her a nudge to get her started and she pedaled like crazy to catch up to the vanishing Dayton.
Zack followed at a jog, halting when L.C. said, “Hey.”
L.C. had been on his feet, watching while David spoke to the kids, but now looked ready to go back to pool repairs. “Set it up on the far side of the road, so they’ll be in the shade.”
Zack gave L.C. a thumb’s up and carried on.
“Thank you,” she said to David. “I know that must have been hard for you.”
“I have a photo from when I started school. It looks just like him. Just exactly like him.” The way his voice rasped, she thought he might be on the verge of tears behind his sunglasses.
“He started baseball yesterday. I’ll take some photos of his first game.”
“Thanks.” He picked up his jacket from the bench, closing his fist around it. “I’d really appreciate it if you’d stay in touch. Really.”
“I will. And I’m sorry. But you can see, can’t you, that right now all they’ve got is each other?”
“And you.” His mouth kicked up at the corner. With a nod toward the pool, he added, “And the pit bull.”
L.C. was flat on the floor, leveling the washer when he heard a knock on the back door. He ignored it, but it slid open a second later.
“L.C.”
Mercedes. He extended the leg on the right front another quarter inch, ignoring the way just the sound of her voice could make him tingle all over.
“Where are you?”
She came to the door of the laundry room like a gust of wind, restless and whirling, stirring him into heightened awareness.
“Dayton doesn’t want special help from Mrs. Garvey. Apparently she needs a really big fart so she can relax.”
“Did he overhear that? He wasn’t supposed to. And it was only because of the way her apology read.”
“You don’t think she was sincere?”
“Well—” He did, actually, and was still so dumbfounded he had been avoiding the woman, feeling weirdly self-conscious about the whole thing.
“You should accept it more graciously. And please make sure Dayton doesn’t repeat your remark when you drop him off for tutoring.”
“Hey—”
“Oh yeah, you are.” She flew out with as much energy as she’d blown in on.
He swore and said to the bottom of the washer, “No way, Jose.”
The bubble in the level was nearly centered when the door opened again. This time a smaller voice said, “L.C.?”
“I’m in here.”
Dayton came to the door. “Auntie M. said you want to take me to Mrs. Garvey’s.” He slouched into the door jamb, body sagging in a boneless plea for deliverance. “You don’t really, do you?”
L.C. scratched his eyebrow. He really didn’t, but he knew how worried Mercedes was about Dayton’s performance in school.
“Sometimes a man has to do what a man has to do, champ.”
“But she’s mean.”
“She’s not mean. She—” Has issues. Standards, he imagined she called them.
Dayton started to grin. “Needs a really big—?”
“No.” L.C. cut in and came to his feet. “We’re going to forget I said that because it would hurt her feelings. You know what Mrs. Garvey needs? To feel important. Come on. I have an idea.”
Edith opened the door to Dayton and L.C. Fogarty. She dropped her tea towel. “I expected Mercedes.” Why hadn’t she checked the peephole? Not that she would have refused to open the door, but a little warning would have been nice.
“I wanted to speak to you myself, Mrs. Garvey.” The way he swiped his hand down the side of his thigh suggested nerves, which was ridiculous. Everything about the man warned he was a killing machine.
“Yes?” she prompted, recognizing she was being rude not inviting him in, but he made her terribly nervous.
“Uh...” He had already given her a stilted ‘thank you’ in passing for her apology letter. They hadn’t spoken since. She’d barely seen him, which had been a relief.
Dayton hid behind Mr. Fogarty’s leg, the action telling of trust in the man and perhaps even qualms about staying with her since he looked up and whispered, “You said you’d stay.”
“I said I’d stay if Mrs. Garvey invited me. I was hoping that while you’re working with Dayton, maybe you’d help me with something as well.” He lifted his head, his ruffian face becoming something like she’d only seen rarely: that of a boy whose confidence had fallen after a bad grade when he had genuinely tried. “I’m not sure what your tutoring rate is, but I’d rather unplug a sink or something in exchange anyway. Do you have anything needs repairing? Because I’ve been trying to get my GED and things aren’t working out.”
His words had the oddest effect on her, striking in a way she hadn’t felt in years. Offering to tutor Dayton had been easy, something she’d done with dozens of young children who needed extra help. But on a very few occasions, she’d worked with adolescents. They’d been teenagers who had been pushed along through a system and wound up so far out of their depth, they had literally cried out for help, pulling on her heartstrings.
How on earth she could feel that sort of thing toward this grown man, she didn’t know. It was so disconcerting, she could only answer with the obvious. “The plumbing is fine.”
“I see.” His face went blank in the way a young man’s face did when he was trying to hide that he’d been hurt. He tried to ease Dayton to move in front of him, but the boy resisted. “So there’s nothing I could do to buy a few grammar lessons?”
She couldn’t think of anything, yet he sounded so sincere, and looked so doting, this brute with his tattoos and his careful hands on the boy’s slouched shoulders.
“C’mon bud, you have to stand up,” he said, gently insistent with Dayton.
Dread darkened Dayton’s scowl as he glanced up at Edith.
She so recalled her mother stridently insisting she leave off and get herself into the school where the schoolmaster had kept a strap he used swiftly and mercilessly on little girls who didn’t speak up fast enough.
“I do find, however,” she said, fairly trembling with unease, “now that my little treasures are out of their boxes again, they look rather cramped on the mantel. Are you much of a carpenter, Mr. Fogarty? Could you install some shelves?”
His quick, sharp gaze came back to hers, seemed to give her a moment to change her mind. In truth, she was tempted. Second thoughts rattled through her, but he smiled, revealing a crooked tooth and entirely too much masculinity.
“Whatever you need to help me pass that test, I’m your man.”
“That’s up for debate, I’m sure,” she said, making clear he hadn’t won her over, but her remark made him smirk in the way that was so annoying. She cleared her throat. “Dayton, I’ve prepared the kitchen table for you. If you could both leave your shoes on? Feet produce oils that harm carpets.”
They came in and she closed the door behind them, then crossed to the living room where she opened the patio door, leaving the screen closed but allowing sound to travel in from the courtyard, and out, if necessary.
Fingering the lace of her collar, she took a moment to search her shelves then selected the thin hardcover she’d been looking for.
“My style guide from when my mother was at Oxford. Please read the first chapter while I start Dayton on his lesson, Mr. Fogarty. Ask me questions as they arise.”
“L.C., ma’am, if you don’t mind.”
“Mrs. Garvey, sir, if you don’t mind,” she responded, and handed him the book.
Chapter 16
“Hey,” Mercedes said the next day, spinning in her desk chair to face where L.C. was taping plastic across the empty window spaces. The glaziers had just left and this was their first minute alone. The lounge was empty, the TV off, and it was the lull between lunch and dinner in the cantina. Only the distant sound of dishes penetrated. “Thank you for staying with Dayton. It made all the difference for him.”
“She said I was setting a good example. I’ve never been accused of that before.” He bit off a section of tape and smoothed it into place.
She grinned, propped her elbow on her desk and her head on her hand, admiring his lean shape as he moved so efficiently.
“Can I ask you something? Zack said something to me the other day and I’ve been curious. He said I should ask you about April.”
L.C. stalled a moment, staring at the roll of tape he held before he gave it a yank so it screeched before he bit off the next section. “Isn’t he a helpful little shit.”
“God, you two. It’s obvious you love each other, but you have this elephant in the room you both glare at each other around. Is it April?”
“No.”
“He told me you lived with her.”
“I did.” He hooked his hands on his hips, keeping his back to her. “We, uh, were going to have a baby. She died.”