The Trouble With Valentine's Day

Fifteen

Easter Sunday, Stanley Caldwell stayed home from church, which he never did unless he was ill. He had a few important things to do, and he wanted to do them in private.

Kate slept in her room with the door closed, and he figured that when she woke up, she'd feel the effects of partying late with Tiffer Cladis. Watching her dance all night with a female impersonator instead of Rob had been a big disappointment. She'd never get married if she danced with men who were more interested in sharing makeup tips than making out. Which is what the two had been discussing when he and Grace had approached them during a break in the music. While Kate had spent her evening with Tiffer talking about eyeliner and cover sticks, Rob had stood within a circle of young women. They'd flattered and flirted with him, something Stanley wished Kate would do. Rob had eventually left with Rose.

Stanley slipped on his Minnetonka slippers that Melba had bought him for Christmas the same year she'd died. There was a lot of comfort in knowing a woman most of your life and of her knowing you. He'd loved Melba with all of his heart. He knew it sounded cliched. The sort of thing people just said without giving it a whole lot of thought, but he had. He'd loved her. He'd loved his wife, but she was gone. The day he'd put her in the ground, he'd thought he should just die too. He'd thought he should just hurry up and follow her into the grave because he hadn't wanted to live without her. He hadn't known how to live without her.

Lately, though, he'd been thinking that following her into the grave was maybe not the best plan. Apparently, he was too healthy, and it was taking too long.

He opened the closet he'd shared with his wife for nearly fifty years. Her housecoat was in the same place where she'd left it. Her slacks and blouses and her Tom Jones leather jacket were in there too. Stanley reached for their hangers and laid the clothing on his bed. He went back three more times, and when he was through, there was quite a pile.

Last time he'd asked Katie to pack up a few of Melba's things, but it was his job. She would have wanted it that way, and maybe he was ready. Melba lived in his heart, not in her clothes hanging in the closet and not in her collection of Tom Jones memorabilia. No matter what happened to him or how much longer he lived, he would never forget her. He would never stop loving her.

But maybe, just maybe, he didn't have to live the rest of his life alone, waiting to die. Maybe it was time to move forward. Time to live his life again. Maybe there was room in his old heart for two women.

Grace Sutter wasn't at all like Melba. Melba had loved to have fun, and she'd had a wicked sense of humor and a loud laugh. Grace was a bit more refined. She liked to write poetry and watch birds out her kitchen window. Both women were wonderful in different ways.

Stanley went to the garage and brought in some boxes he'd carted home from the store. The part of his heart that had loved his wife for fifty years broke all over again as he put her things into the boxes. He opened her drawers and emptied them into the cardboard cartons. He paused to touch the pink nightie she'd worn when she'd wanted some time alone with him in the bedroom.

He loved her. Still. He always would. He picked up the packing tape and closed the box flaps. His eyes watered, and a tear ran down his wrinkled cheek. "Good-bye, Melba. I'm giving your things away, but I will not forget you. You were my wife, my lover, and my friend. You were my life for a long time, but you're gone. When you left, I was so lonely, but not so much now. I have Katie and Grace." He moved to his dresser and took a handkerchief out of his drawer. He wiped his face and blew his nose, a loud honking sound that filled the room. "You always liked Grace. Now I do too." He more than liked Grace. He loved her. He stuffed the handkerchief in his pocket. "You don't have to worry about Ada Dover or Iona Osborn getting their hooks in me." Sometimes at night, when the two of them had lain awake in bed talking about what would happen if one of them died before the other, Melba had made him promise that out of all the women in town, he wouldn't let either Ada or Iona reel him in. It had been an easy promise to keep.

One by one, he carried the boxes outside and placed them in the back of his '85 Ford pickup truck. As long as Melba's clothes still hung in the closet, and her unfinished craft projects sat on the shelf, he didn't feel right pursuing another woman.

He filled up the back of his truck with boxes, and the next morning he left Katie in charge of the M &S and headed to Boise and the Salvation Army. He unloaded Melba's things, then headed toward home again. He knew there were closer charity drop boxes, but the thought of running across someone else wearing Melba's Tom Jones jacket would have been too difficult to bear.

When he returned to Gospel, he went to Grace's and watched the sun set over the pines in the backyard. She made him a sandwich, and he told her what he'd done that day. She gave him one of her soft smiles and placed her hand on his. "I will always miss Melba," she said. "You two were lucky to have found each other. My husband passed away twenty-five years ago. I have never thought of replacing him in my heart, but I've come to learn that there is room in the human heart for more than one love."

Then he kissed her. For the first time in more than fifty years, he kissed a woman who wasn't Melba. For a few seconds, it felt awkward. For both of them. Then it felt right, and damn if his heart didn't start beating like he was forty again. He broke the kiss and told her of his deep affection and love for her.

She looked him right in the eye and said, "It's about time. I've loved you for almost a year now."

He'd had no idea. None, and all he seemed capable of doing was standing there marveling that someone like Grace could love someone like him. He was almost ten years older than her, and every one of those years showed. She didn't look a day over fifty-five.

She wrapped her arms around his neck. "Stay the night," she whispered.

"Grace, I respect you and-"

"Stop," she interrupted. "Of course you respect me. That's one of the things I love about you, Stanley Caldwell. You're a good and decent man, but even good and decent men have needs that can only be met in bed. Good and decent women do, too."

God almighty. His insides started shaking so hard that he felt like he was going to shake himself apart. He wanted to have sex with Grace. He was pretty sure his equipment was still capable, but there was a part of him that was terrified. "Things are different today. A person has to have that safe sex."

"I don't think we have to worry about that. I haven't had sex since I voted for the first George Bush and you were married to the same woman for almost five decades." She looked at him, and the crow's-feet at the corners of her eyes deepened. "In case you're worried, I can't get pregnant."

"God almighty."

At half past midnight, Kate picked up the telephone and punched seven numbers. Worry knotted her stomach, and she feared she might get sick. She half hoped he wouldn't pick up. The night he'd run out of the M &S had humiliated her, and she really didn't want to speak to him ever again. That night, he'd made her feel so good, and then he'd turned around and made her feel so bad.

The phone rang five times before it was answered. "This had better be good." His voice was sleepy, sexy as hell, and very cranky.

"Rob, it's Kate. I hate to wake you, but have you seen my grandfather today?"

"Kate?" He cleared his throat, and she could almost see him sit up in bed. "No, I haven't seen Stanley. He's not at home, I take it."

The knot in her stomach tightened. "No, he left for Boise this morning and I haven't seen or heard from him since. Have you talked to your mother today?"

"Yeah. I saw her around noon. Why?"

"I called her house two hours ago to ask her if she'd seen Stanley, and no one answered. I called back fifteen minutes later, and still no answer."

"No one picked up at my mom's?" The sound of dresser drawers opening and slamming filled the background. "Did you dial the right number?" She repeated the number she'd called. "Shit."

"I don't know what to do. I'm afraid my grandfather is in a ditch somewhere. I guess I'll call the sheriff."

"Hold off on calling just yet." Kate heard a soft thump and muffled curses, then a clearer, "Sorry, I dropped the phone while I buttoned my fly. I'll pick you up on the way to my mother's."

"Do you think they're together?"

"Since both of them are missing, yeah, I do."

Kate hung up the phone and reached for her coat. She wished there'd been someone she could have called besides Rob. Before she could stop it, a memory of the other night flashed across her brain, and a mortifying moan escaped her lips. She couldn't believe she'd done that particular sexual position. It was hard for a girl to keep her dignity with her bum in the air, but for some reason keeping her dignity hadn't entered her head that night. Then while she'd been basking in afterglow, he'd been in the bathroom plotting his escape. The second the condom had come off, he'd been out the door as fast as his boots could carry him.

At the grange party, he'd apologized. Maybe he was sorry, but Kate figured he was mostly sorry that she wasn't going to have sex with him again. Yeah, she knew that sounded cynical. So sue her. She wasn't going to ever let him hurt her again.

She watched for Rob out the window. A crescent moon provided little light over the wilderness area, and her thoughts turned from the other night to the crisis at hand. If her grandfather was stranded somewhere, he wouldn't be able to see more than a foot in front of him.

Within fifteen minutes Rob pulled his HUMMER into the driveway. Kate shoved her arms into the sleeves of her coat and was at the passenger door before he could put the vehicle into park.

"After I hung up from talking to you, I phoned my mother," he said as she jumped inside and shut the door. "No one answered." He looked behind him as he backed out. The blue lights of the dash shone on the side of his face and filtered through his hair, unkempt, unruly, and unbelievably hot.

That she even noticed in this time of crisis was incredibly annoying. And especially since she thought he was a big old jerk. "Does your mother ever unplug her phone?" she asked.

The HUMMER stopped in the middle of the street. He looked across at her as he shoved the vehicle into drive. "No. At least she never has before." He gave her a reassuring smile that did little to reassure her. "They probably decided to go off and write poems in the moonlight somewhere and lost track of the time."

"Do you honestly believe that?"

He turned his attention to the road as he stepped on the gas. "Honestly? No, but I figured you might believe it and not worry so much."

She was absolutely not going to let him charm her. "Aren't you worried?"

"If I wasn't concerned, I wouldn't be driving around at," he paused and read the digital clock within the navigation system, "at twelve fifty-two. I'd only been asleep about half an hour when you called."

She turned and looked out her passenger window as they passed the Texaco and the courthouse. She wondered what had kept Rob up so late. The unwanted memory of him leaving the grange with Rose forced its way into her head. Yesterday, she'd seen him outside his store chatting it up with Dixie Howe. The woman had given him a hug before she'd left, and Kate wondered if he'd been up till midnight with one or the other. Given his past, probably both.

"I went to church with my mother Sunday, and afterward she did finally mention that she had feelings for Stanley. I'm sure that wherever they are, they're okay."

Kate wasn't convinced. She turned her head and looked at him. "You went to church?"

"Sure." He glanced at her. "It was Easter Sunday."

"And lightning didn't strike?"

"Ha-ha. You're a regular laugh riot." He returned his attention to the road. "I noticed you weren't there."

She tried not to put any significance in his last sentence. So, he'd noticed she hadn't been in church. Of course he'd noticed. It was a small congregation. "I'd done a little too much sinning the night before with Tiffer Cladis?"

"Couldn't have been the good kind of sinning, since he's gay."

No, she'd reserved that kind of sinning for the man across the HUMMER, and look how that had turned out. Which should probably tell her that she should give up sin altogether. "I ended up at his mother's, tossing back hairy sluts all night and listening to Tiffer's Stephen Sondheim collection. Regina had to take me home around three."

"What's in a hairy slut?"

"Rum, Triple Sec, pineapple juice. It's Tiffer's favorite drink."

"I could have guessed that." Rob pulled the vehicle into Grace's driveway. There were no lights on and no sign of Stanley's truck. Old oak trees and pine all but blocked the weak light of the moon.

"He's not here," she said.

Rob turned off the HUMMER, and the two of them walked toward the side of the garage. "I can't see a thing," Kate complained. Rob stopped, and she ran into his back. "Sorry." He took her hand and shoved the tips of her fingers down the back of his jeans.

"What are you doing?" she yelped and pulled her hand free. "You pervert."

"I'm giving you something to hang on to."

"Your butt?"

"No. My belt." He took her hand again and held it instead of shoving her fingers down the back of his pants again. "Get your mind out of the gutter, Kate. I'm not perverted enough to stick your hand down my pants." He pulled her along a few steps before he added, "Not while your grandfather's missing, and not unless you ask real nice."

The press of his warm palm against hers heated up more than her hand. She felt it in her chest and stomach. "Don't worry. I'm not going to ask."

"You might."

"You wanna bet? No. Forget I asked that."

His soft laughter was drowned out by the squeak of the garage door as he opened it. He flipped on the light and looked inside. "His truck's parked next to her Blazer," he said and turned to face Kate. The garage light lit him up from behind, kind of like a saint.

She pulled her hand free and stuck it in her coat pocket. Rob Sutter was no saint. He was too good at sinning. "Do you think they're in the house?"

"Yes."

"What can they be doing? The lights are out."

He rocked back on his heels, and the light from the garage poured over the shoulders of his dark blue coat and lit up the side of his face. He raised a brow.

It took her several seconds to understand the significance of his cocked eyebrow. "Gross! He's seventy. He'll have a heart attack."

"My mom's a nurse, she'll thump him back to life."

Kate sucked in a breath. "Aren't you even a little freaked out about them doing"-she pointed to the backdoor-"that, in there?"

"First of all, my mind isn't going to go down that path. And second, I'm glad my mother's found someone."

"Well, I'm glad too. That my grandfather has found someone, I mean." But was she? "Do you have a key, or should we knock?"

"Neither."

"What? Neither?"

Rob turned off the light and shut the garage door. "I'm not going to bust in on my mother." He took Kate's hand and headed back to the HUMMER. "I doubt you would have appreciated Stanley busting in on us the other night while we were doing the wild thing in the condom aisle."

"I don't want to talk about that. It was a mistake. It shouldn't have happened." Especially since she was fairly certain he was seeing other women now.

"I'm getting really tired of what we can and can't talk about. We can't talk about the night we met. We can't talk about the first night I kissed you. We can't talk about the night we had sex. That's bullshit, Kate." They stopped by the passenger side of the HUMMER, and Kate reached for the door handle. "Some mistakes were made the other night. I'll give you that." He planted his hand on the window and kept the door closed. "Maybe it shouldn't have happened the way it did, but it was going to happen. And you know what? I'm really not sorry about the way it happened. I had a hell of a good time. Sooner or later, we were going to have sex. It was inevitable."

"I don't know if it was inevitable, but what I do know is that each time you make me feel good, you turn around and make me feel like shit."

"Maybe you're looking for something to get pissed off about."

Was she? No.

He opened the door. "I said I was sorry for kissing you on the head and saying thanks. Don't you think it's time to get over it?"

Over it? She crawled into the car and looked at his inky black outline. "It's only been a week."

"A week's a long time to walk around mad," he said and shut the door.

On the drive home, neither spoke. Kate stared out her window and wondered if Rob was right. Did she look for reasons to be angry? No, she didn't think so.

Rob pulled the HUMMER into Stanley's driveway and walked her to the door. "Thanks for coming over here and helping me look for my grandfather," she said as she stood on the top step and turned to face him.

"Any time." The light on the house shone down on him, and she saw his face clearly for the first time that evening. A lock of brown hair fell across his forehead and touched his brow. She looked into his green eyes looking back at her. Then his gaze lowered to her mouth. "Good night, Kate."

"Goodnight."

He brushed his fingers across her jaw, and she thought he might kiss her. Instead he turned and walked down the sidewalk. As she watched him move away from the light of the house, she felt an irritating little tug of disappointment.

He walked in front of the HUMMER and looked back at her. He raised his hand in an abbreviated wave, and she got that feeling again. The dangerous one that said maybe he wasn't such a bad guy. He'd apologized twice now for running out on her the other night with nothing more than a hasty thanks. He'd gotten out of bed in the middle of the night to help her search for Stanley.

Kate watched him pull out of the driveway before she walked into the house. Even if he wasn't such a bad guy, he wasn't the guy for her. She was tired of relationships that ended in a broken heart. And Rob Sutter was a smooth-talking heartbreak, just waiting to happen.

She hung her coat by the back door and had just finished putting on her pink-and-white-striped flannel pajamas and brushing her teeth when she heard her grandfather's truck. She moved to the dark doorway of the kitchen and waited. Her grandfather entered as quietly as possible, then he turned and slowly closed the back door.

Kate flipped on the light, and her grandfather spun around on the heels of his wingtips. He froze like a kid sneaking home after curfew.

"I didn't think you'd still be up," he said as color rose up his neck to his cheeks.

She folded her arms beneath her breasts. "I was worried you'd been wrecked in a ditch."

"I was with Grace."

She didn't bother mentioning that she already knew where he'd been. "You could have called. The last time I talked to you was this morning when you left for Boise."

"I'm sorry you were worried, Katie." He took off his coat and hung it by the back door. "I've asked Grace to marry me."

Kate dropped her hands to her sides. "What?"

"I've asked Grace to marry me. She said yes."

"But…" Kate stared at him, sure she'd misunderstood. Married? People didn't get married after one night in the sack. That was afterglow. Not lasting love. "But Granddad… just because you have sex with someone doesn't mean you have to get married. It's the twenty-first century, for God's sake. Don't be so old-fashioned."

He slowly turned and looked at her. "I may be old-fashioned to you, but I am an honorable man. I would never disrespect a woman. I would hope that a woman I cared about would expect me to be honorable. That's what's wrong with your generation, Katherine. You reduce sex to fornication."

Katherine? She moved toward him. "I'm sorry. It just seems sudden."

"My feelings for Grace started the night I heard her poetry at the grange and have gotten deeper ever since."

"Don't you think you should date for a while first?" She'd never had a marriage proposal, and she'd dated men for as long as three years.

"Katie, I'm in my seventies. I don't exactly have a lot of time to mess around with dating." He patted her on the shoulder as he moved past. "When two people are in love, why wait?"

Kate could think of a lot of reasons. She kept them to herself. If Grace made her grandfather happy, then what kind of granddaughter would she be if she rained on his parade? She just hoped he knew what he was doing. "And you are positive this is what you want? And you're not just feeling-you know-afterglow?"

"This is what I want. I want a woman who is worth more to me than"-he paused and his cheeks turned pink again-"afterglow." He shook his head. "You are worth more than that too, Katie. You are worth everything a man can give you."

Now it was her turn to get red-faced. "I know." But knowing it in her head and not getting "afterglow" until she got a marriage proposal were, two different things. That pony was already before the cart. Or was it that the pony was already out of the gate? Or was it that the pony was giving the milk for free? She wasn't sure.

There were a few things she did know for sure, though. There was no way the pony was going back in the gate. Not when the pony was thirty-four and really liked pulling the milk cart. But her grandfather was right. She deserved more than relationships that went nowhere. Which left her in the same quandary she'd been in the day she'd arrived in Gospel.