When I Fall in Love(61)
She wanted to run. But growing up without a father around, having to stand her ground to teachers, social workers, and finally her brother, she didn’t possess a huge amount of flinch. “No.” She cleared her throat. “Why?”
That sounded mousy. She added a smile but knew it was off-kilter.
He considered her another long moment as if weighing her words. Then, “Pizza, huh?”
She nodded, too vigorously. “Pepperoni.”
John came around the truck, wiping his hands on a rag. He wore a pair of grimy, oil-slicked jeans, a stained shirt, a gimme cap with a worn, cupped brim. “Ingrid’s in town. I think Casper and Darek are working on a cabin.”
She glanced past him toward the cabins and heard the faint scream of a Skilsaw. “Then we’ll save them some.” She put the box on the hood of her car and opened it, retrieved a napkin and handed him a slice.
He set his wrench on the side of the engine compartment and took the pizza. “Thanks.”
“Is this a Chevy?”
“Yep.”
“A 1980s model?”
“Yeah, a 1984. I got it not long after Ingrid and I were married.”
“My dad had one of these. Diesel. He used to work on it when he was off the road.” She peered into the engine compartment, the smells of oil and grease luring her closer. “I’d come home from school, and I’d know whether Dad had an overnight turnaround or a few days off by whether the hood was up on the truck. He was always tinkering with it.” She leaned in, noticing cables to the battery, a new radiator. “What’s wrong with it?”
“Won’t start.” He’d folded the pizza like a sandwich to eat it.
“You tested the battery, right?”
He raised an eyebrow.
“It’s the first thing Dad would do. Are you getting fuel?”
He stepped up to the truck, wiping his fingers. “Yep. I just changed the fuel filter too.”
“So maybe it’s a spark?”
“Nope.” John indicated a spark plug kit on the ground. “I was just ready to take off the distributor cap and test the timing.” He leaned over the engine. “Hand me that screwdriver down there. The one with the star-shaped head.”
She found the toolbox. “The Torx driver?”
He raised another eyebrow, accompanied it with a hint of smile.
She leaned over, watching him. “I helped my dad rebuild the entire engine one summer. We had parts all over the garage, but we got the truck running. I remember him piling me and Joey into the cab and driving us to Dairy Queen in celebration. I hadn’t seen him smile since my mom left, but he ordered us both large cones and got one for himself. He put ice cream on my nose and dared me to lick it off.”
She didn’t know why she’d decided to tell him that, but he didn’t react, didn’t suddenly look at her like she’d taken out a piece of her heart. He simply removed the cap and handed it to her. Raina put it on the ground next to the toolbox.
“Get in and give her a crank,” he said.
She climbed into the driver’s seat, the smell of age and grime embedded in the cab. “Ready?”
John stuck his hand out from beyond the hood to give her a thumbs-up. She cranked. The engine didn’t turn over, but she could hear it working.
“Okay!”
Raina turned the truck off and got out. “So?”
“Timing is good, and the belt looks okay.” He stepped back, scratching his head at the base of his cap. He’d already left a black smudge there. “I’m going to have to remove the spark plugs, see if we have enough compression.”
She grabbed a piece of pizza and leaned against the truck, catching up with her memories. “What I didn’t know was that Dad was planning a trip to see my great-aunt in South Dakota. We were about thirty miles from her house out in the middle of nowhere when the truck died again on the side of the road. We pulled into this grassy truck stop, and my dad climbed under the hood. He tested everything and decided that we had to replace the cylinder gaskets.”
She watched as John pulled out the spark plugs, then disabled the ignition coil. “He called my great-aunt and asked her to come get my brother and me while he fixed the truck. She lived in this tiny house on the edge of this Podunk town, but it had a swimming pool and every day, while we waited for my father to show up, we’d go swimming. The pool had a slide and a diving board, and I made friends with all the kids in town. An entire week went by before I caught on that he hadn’t shown up yet.”
She put her pizza back in the box. She hadn’t realized she would end up here—the day when she stood on the stoop of Aunt Rae’s house, her hands on the screen door, refusing to go to the pool until her father arrived.