An Unfinished Story(32)

A voice from the neighbor’s yard startled her. She whipped her head around.

An old man with a long face and hollow cheeks was smiling at her. He carried a rake in his hand, and Claire thought he looked like the man holding a pitchfork in Grant Wood’s famous painting American Gothic. “Ya lookin’ for Whitaker?” he asked in a deeply southern tongue.

“I sure am,” Claire answered, glancing at the rake again, making sure it wasn’t a pitchfork. “Do you know where he is?”

“Prolly at work.”

“Oh, I guess the morning is over, isn’t it? Where is he working now? We’re old friends.”

“Still over there at the Bank of South Florida, far as I know. That’s what he told me, least. He used to write, you know. Wrote that big movie.”

“I do know.” And he will write again, Claire thought. She thanked him and backed out of the driveway. She pulled over along the park and searched for the closest bank branch. With a glance at the composition books in the passenger seat, she reaffirmed her decision not to take no for an answer.

Parking at the far end of the lot, she entered the white, four-story building under a sun-bleached yellow awning and found herself standing in the bank lobby under bright fluorescent lights. Her photochromic lenses lightened quickly. Two lines of people waited for the next available teller. Sitting behind a desk, a woman with gorgeous curly black hair welcomed her.

“Aren’t you lucky?” Claire asked, her eyes on a fresh bouquet of sunflowers resting on the filing cabinet. A small card dangled from a straw bow.

The woman lit up. “Aren’t I? They’re from my son. He’s stationed in Germany, about to go to Afghanistan. But he’s thinking of me on my birthday.”

Claire smiled in sympathy. “Aww, what a sweetheart. Happy birthday.”

“Thank you. Now, how may I help you?”

Back to the mission. “Does Whitaker Grant work here, by chance?”

“He sure does. Let me check and see if he’s available.” After a quick call, she said, “He’ll be here in a moment. You can take a seat right over there.”

Claire sat in one of the chairs in the waiting area, watching people tend to their banking needs. But on her mind was the woman’s son stationed in Germany. Claire touched her stomach, wondering what it would have been like to be a mother. Would she have been a good one? Definitely better than her own mother, who had all but abandoned her and her dad.

A few minutes later, as Claire reached for one of the magazines on the table in front of her, Whitaker appeared. He looked surprisingly put together in a suit, reminding her more of the man she’d met years ago.

Claire felt her nerves fire as he drew closer. “Can we talk?”

Whitaker clasped his hands at his waist. “You don’t want to give up, do you? I can see it all over your face.” He looked down at the composition books in her hand. “Are those what I think they are?”

Claire stood. “Give me five minutes. If you still have no interest, I won’t bug you again.”

After a long pause, he conceded. “Come on back.”

She followed him down a hallway with beach photographs hanging on the walls and turned left into an office. He gestured for her to sit, and she sat across from him. Other than his nameplate, there was nothing marking this as his office. No pictures. Nothing to reveal his personality. Only a laptop, a phone, and a few stacks of paper.

“How long have you been doing this?”

“Almost a year now.” He loosened his tie and leaned in, resting his elbows on the desk. “Did you close on your house? You mentioned that was coming.”

Claire fidgeted with her hands. “Yeah, on Tuesday.”

“I imagine it was pretty tough.”

Claire nodded and whispered a yes.

“Hey, do you guys still serve that oyster omelet?”

Claire welcomed some small talk. “We do.”

“I used to love it. And I haven’t seen it on a menu anywhere else in the States. Right after college, I backpacked from Bangkok to Singapore, and the oyster omelet became my street food of choice.”

“When were you in Thailand? I did the whole backpacking thing too. Didn’t cross into Malaysia, though. My girlfriend and I got waylaid in Phuket.”

“Sounds like a song, doesn’t it?” Whitaker said. “Waylaid in Phuket.” Catching Claire totally off guard, Whitaker broke into a quiet country song reminiscent of George Jones. “We were waylaid in Phuket. Nothing to eat but an omelet.”

Claire couldn’t help but smile.

“The beers they poured were tall. And the woman I loved was . . .” He ran out of words and searched for them on the white wall. “The woman I loved had . . .” He shrugged, as if giving up on finding a workable rhyme. And then as an afterthought, he added, “claws.”

He was actually funny. But how did he know about the claw?

“Are you done?” she asked, stifling a grin.

Whitaker shrugged his shoulders. “Couldn’t help it. Anyway, this would have been almost twenty years ago.”

“Ah, long before me.”

“Yeah, I’m a dinosaur.” When he smiled again, she could tell she was breaking through to him. He was a nice guy, and nice guys do nice things.

She sat back. “Well, that’s where our oyster omelet came from.”