The Chance (Thunder Point #4)(62)

“When will we see you next?” she asked.

“Summer,” he said. She knew exactly when he’d be in Boone, but she didn’t say that and she never made him say it. “I don’t go that way in winter, you know that. But I’ll see you in the summer. Is there anything you need in the meantime?”

She answered him with a small laugh. “I have everything I need. What about you?”

“Isn’t something important coming up? Birthday or anniversary or something?” He knew exactly what was coming up—her fifty-sixth birthday in May, sometimes it fell on Mother’s Day. It had when she was pregnant with Ethan. He bought her a fancy rocking chair and she made such a fuss over it.

“Another birthday,” she said.

“That’s right. Well. Listen, those boys will be coming out in a minute so I’d better get off the phone. I’ll...ah...give you a call before I head that way so maybe we can get together for a cup of coffee. Or something like that...”

“That would be nice, Mick. Now you be careful out there on the road. Be careful on your way back home.”

“You take care, too. Hope Tony keeps feeling better.”

Tony wasn’t exactly sick, but he had some kind of kidney problem that Carol described as not too serious. He was sixty and not as lucky with his health as Al was—he’d been forced to stop farming for the time being at least. Probably those god-awful winters...

Al would see Carol like he did every year. On July twelfth. Ethan’s birthday.

Fourteen

Al got the boys back home after 9:00 p.m., considerably later than he expected. By that time Eric told him to quit for the day, get himself a cold beer or something. There was a spring storm rolling in over the bay and if there was lightning, he might be shutting the pumps down anyway.

Al had a couple of beers in that little refrigerator in his motel room, but the night called for something different. He was still in his uniform but hadn’t had time to get dirty at work yet. It was getting late when he knocked on Ray Anne’s front door. She opened it without asking who was there. She had a rag of some kind tied around her hair, a green, gooey mask on her face, cotton balls between her toes and was wearing cutoff sweatpants and a baggy T-shirt. “Whoa,” he said, taking a step back.

She put a hand on her hip. “I see. You thought I was naturally beautiful....”

He lifted his brows. “Well, hell, you sure come out looking real good.”

“Did we have plans?”

He rubbed his jaw. “Nah. I just had one of those days and was looking for a beer. I can find one somewhere else. I’m obviously interrupting something very important....”

“You scared to come in?”

“I wouldn’t say so, no.” He peered at her closely, squinting. “Does that do anything?”

“It makes my pores small and my wrinkles smaller. You can come in. It’s ripe. I can take it off now.”

“Not on my account,” he said, smothering a laugh.

“Get yourself a beer. I’ll be right back.” And she turned and left him standing in the open doorway.

He got himself a beer from her refrigerator and sat on the couch. A few minutes later she returned to the living room in different clothes, her blond hair fluffed up, eyebrows drawn on and a little lipstick. There was still a little green stuff stuck at her temples. “Wow. What a transformation,” he said.

She went to the kitchen; he heard a cork pop. While she was in there, she said, “I can only assume you now plan to marry me.” She came back with her wine. “Now that we’ve been intimate.”

“Ray Anne, we were intimate before.”

She laughed. “That was sex,” she explained. “Seeing me in the throes of preconstruction—that’s intimate.”

He touched his temple. “You got a little...” Her hand went there immediately, scraping it away. “Who knew you had to go to so much trouble?”

“You’ll appreciate me more now, I bet.” She sipped her wine.

“I apologize. I should’ve called. It was just a shot in the dark.”

“Literally,” she said. “Now what has you knocking on doors at ten at night? Don’t you work late tonight?”

He started to tell her about the Russell boys but found he didn’t want to go into too much detail. It brought his own conflicted feelings out when he thought about how intensely screwed up their little lives were. He just gave her the bare facts—Mrs. Russell went to the hospital, Al drove the boys to see her, make sure she was all right, by the time he took them home it was late and Eric had the station covered. The pumps might be shutting down on account of lightning anyway....

“I heard some rumbling out there,” Ray Anne said. “When you live around here you soon learn the best thing is the sunset over the bay. The second best are the storms. The lightning over the bay.” She closed her eyes and smiled. “It’s spectacular.”

“We could drive down to the marina in the truck. Grab your wine,” he suggested.

“We don’t have to go that far,” she said. “I have a deck on top of the garage. There’s a view from there. I can’t see the whole bay but I can see the sky over the bay and one of the haystack rocks in the water. Wanna go up?”

His eyes lit up. “I wanna go up,” he said.