Digging In: A Novel(68)

He sat back on his heels. Trey watched him, still holding the bucket in one hand, the other curled into a fist.

I nudged Mr. Eckhardt with my elbow. “I think you should go. It would be best.”

“I don’t . . .” He paused. Whatever he had to say took great effort. He glanced at Trey’s angry face and Petra’s puzzled one, and then finally locked eyes with me. “I don’t want to go. I’ll help you pick up the tomatoes. I’d really like to do that. Or I can work on making a nice tomato sauce. I cook for myself all the time.”

In the strangely bright porch light, the deeply etched lines in Mr. Eckhardt’s skin mapped his face like rivers leading to the tributaries at the corners of his tired, sad eyes. What had this man been through? There was a story, and part of me wanted to hear it.

“Tell you what,” Petra said. “Young Ponyboy here will help me pick up the tomatoes. Paige, why don’t you and the wanker go into the kitchen and prep it for some major cooking. Have you got some dried pasta?”

I nodded.

“Then pasta with tomato sauce it is.”

Mr. Eckhardt had only stepped foot in my house once before, yet he got up and walked in like it was his own. I followed the man into my own kitchen.





CHAPTER 28

“Are you going to tell me the story?” I asked as Mr. Eckhardt and I worked companionably to prep the meal. He definitely wasn’t new to cooking, and we achieved a natural split in duties as Petra and Trey alternately ran in with bucketfuls of tomatoes. Some were salvageable, some weren’t, but we’d do what we could.

“We’re going to be eating at midnight,” he said in response. “I’m usually asleep at that hour.”

“Oh, live dangerously,” I joked.

“I have done that,” he said. “It didn’t work out very well for me.”

“If you’re going to make tomato sauce with me in my kitchen, then you’re going to need to spill some secrets. Why did you bury your wife’s dress?”

“It was her wedding dress,” he said while deseeding a Roma tomato. “Those earrings you’re wearing were my bridal gift to her.”

I guiltily fingered my earlobes. “I . . . I didn’t know.”

“It doesn’t matter. She’s not coming back for them.”

Because she lives in New Mexico, I wanted to say. But then I didn’t want him to know my stalker proclivities, or Sean’s for that matter.

“What happened between you two?”

Mr. Eckhardt didn’t answer, but his military-straight shoulders drooped ever so slightly, and his hand stopped working the knife.

I had never, in the ten years we’d lived beside him, touched Mr. Eckhardt. I decided it was time for that to change. I carefully placed my hand on his upper arm. “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it. It really isn’t any of my business anyway. I promise not to be judgmental if you do want to talk, though.”

“You are a very judgmental person, Paige. Don’t try to be otherwise. It’s who you are.”

“I am not,” I said, incensed. Was I? I thought about judgy Charlene. Was I like that?

“Maybe not outwardly,” he said, “but you judged my behavior.”

“Your behavior was begging to be judged. The pope would have a difficult time not judging your behavior. Would it have cost you much to smile sometimes? To say hello? To invite us over for a burger? We lived next to you for ten years. Why were you so resistant to making any kind of a connection?”

He resumed chopping the onions, a slight smile on his face. “My wife lived in this house,” he said quietly. “And I lived next door while she did. It was the only way we could manage to stay together, to be separated. Then that wasn’t enough, and she took off in the middle of the night. This was before Google. I didn’t know where she went.”

Wait . . . what? “Your wife lived here? And you lived right next door?”

“We were two people who didn’t know how to live closely with another, so we came up with a solution. It worked until she wanted to move back in with me. I refused.”

“Why?” I asked, flabbergasted. I couldn’t imagine spending my married life without Jesse in my bed.

“Because I was certain it wouldn’t work.”

“Oh. Again, why?”

He shrugged. “It sounds impossible, but we fought over everything and still loved each other. If I said the day was cloudy, she’d say it was sunny. If I wanted to paint the living room beige, she wanted blue. I wanted children, and . . .”

“She didn’t.”

“No. Our differences were nearly irreconcilable. I loved her madly, though, and I was certain she loved me with the same fervor. My heart shattered when she moved away.

“She left her wedding dress and those earrings behind, and the rest of this house empty as the day we bought it. I was so furious I put her things in that metal box and buried it in the backyard. There wasn’t a fence then. She called once, about fifteen years ago, and wondered if we could get together to talk. I told her about the buried wedding dress and set my condition—if she could figure out where it was, I would talk to her. She hung up on me.”

“I would have, too. You’re kind of a jerk, Bill.” I’d never called Mr. Eckhardt by his first name either. He rolled with it.