Fool that he was, he wasn’t ready to say good-night. “Are you going to work at the winery tomorrow? Or from home?” It wasn’t as if there was a pressing need for her to be on-site yet.
“May do a bit of both.” She turned and crossed the lawn. “I’ve got an early-morning yoga date with Mayor Larry. See you.” She disappeared into the house.
Leaving Slade worried, because he knew Mayor Larry practiced naked yoga.
The question was, did Christine know?
Still wondering, Slade retraced his footsteps. He turned the corner at Harrison and caught sight of his house. Or rather, he heard it.
Laughter.
Drifting out the open windows. Chasing away his efforts to keep the place a somber reminder of his horrendous mistake.
Something in Slade’s chest shifted, tried to lighten. He promptly ignored it.
“Nice to hear some life in there again.” A disembodied voice drifted from the house on the corner and had Slade’s pulse pounding double time until he realized it wasn’t a ghost who spoke. It was Old Man Takata.
He had to add tree trimming to Flynn’s list of improvements needed around town. The too-tall, too-bushy trees blocked streetlights.
Slade moved up the walk to Takata’s front porch. The old man was smoking a cigar. He’d been Slade’s neighbor since forever and the town’s undertaker until recently. Crummy time to retire. People in Harmony Valley were in need of a good undertaker.
Takata puffed on his cigar, the deep scent of peppery wood enveloping Slade. His knobby knees stuck out of his cargo shorts like toothpicks out of a sausage. “Are your girls home to stay?”
“No.” Heaven help him if he had to raise those girls in that house.
“When it’s cool, I can sit out here all night.” Takata’s voice was smoke roughened and oddly hypnotic. “That’s when I miss your dad most.”
The old man was one of the few people in town who talked about Slade’s father without speculating aloud why he’d committed suicide, or, worse, avoided mention of him at all. Takata treated what happened with an acceptance that was oddly similar to Nate’s reaction when he’d dropped off the skunk-removal supplies.
“Your father would sneak out the back after you and your mother went to bed, and we’d sit out here smoking cigars. He liked people and he liked to talk.” Takata took a big drag off the cigar. “He came less frequently after your mom passed. And then not at all after the explosion at the mill. Daniel didn’t want anything to do with a match after that...or people.”
The novelty of the smoke wore off. Slade felt nauseous. He shoved his hands into his pockets. “You seem to be the only one who remembers him.” It was the way Slade tried to remember him.
Growing up, Slade and his father had been close. His dad coached his Little League team, and later, his school baseball and basketball teams up until his mother died. Like Slade’s twins, he and his dad had been able to look at each other across the room and know what the other was thinking. They’d fished together and watched sports together, sharing a special bond that Slade hadn’t seen his friends have with their dads.
Until his mother died. Until the mill exploded.
At sixteen, his dad became a stranger, a man who had little interest in Slade other than to warn him of impending doom. Their relationship disintegrated. Back then, it’d been a relief to be accepted to Harvard, a reprieve to land a job on Wall Street four years later. For the first time in years, Slade had money to spare and no one bringing him down.