Coming Home to Texas
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Kit Hawthorne
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HarlequinCHAPTER ONE
THE RED-CHECKED KITCHEN curtains hung askew, waterlogged and specked with dirt. Indoors and outdoors were all mixed together, with glass shards and china fragments scattered over what was left of the porch, and tree leaves covering the kitchen counters. The rafters didn’t look quite ready to fall down, but daylight shone through where the metal roof had peeled back like the lid off a sardine can. The little kitchen table where Dalia and Marcos used to jostle each other for space while doing homework was smashed to kindling beneath the porch swing, which had been driven straight through the window by hurricane-force winds—and the porch swing itself wasn’t looking too good. A calico barn cat perched on its remains, licking herself.
This was Dalia’s first good look by daylight. She’d arrived last night, three days after the storm, and she’d been hoping against hope that the damage would turn out to be not so bad after all, but no. Her mother’s kitchen, the emotional center of her childhood home, lay in ruins.
So did Dalia’s routine, for that matter. She longed for her own controlled, streamlined environment, where everything was where it belonged and she knew just what to expect. The loss of that felt like a physical ache, or caffeine withdrawal.
Her mom hobbled over on her crutches. “Can you believe this mess? I never in my life heard a wind like that one. It was like a freight train inside a tornado.”
She didn’t have to sound so gleeful about it, Dalia thought resentfully. She liked having such an exciting story to tell, and a captive audience to tell it to. Dalia had heard it all before, over the phone and in person.
“What are you even doing up, Mom? It’s not safe for you to be walking around here. This place is a disaster area.”
“I know! Isn’t it awful? The cleanup alone is going to take days. There’s so much to do, I don’t even know where to begin—and with the FFF just two weeks away.”
Ah, yes—the firefighter fundraiser. Dalia had been getting an earful about that, as well.
“Why not cancel the FFF this year?”
Her mom looked at her as if she’d said, Why not stop breathing oxygen this year?
“Or, you know, put it off,” Dalia added quickly.
“We can’t. There’s a reason we do it on that exact weekend in September. August is the Persimmon Festival, and everyone needs a few weeks to recover from that, and anyway, the FFF has to be in the fall for the pumpkin patch and corn maze to make any sense. But October is the county fair and Oktoberfest, and then Halloween, and the next thing you know it’s November and you’re right in the thick of the holidays. No, we can’t change the date.”
“Well, then let someone else host it for a change.”
“But we’ve hosted the firefighter fundraiser at La Escarpa for five years in a row! It’s never even been held anyplace else.”
“All the more reason for someone else to take a turn.”
Her mom shook her head. “We’re the ones who’re set up for it. It’s not like we can move the corn maze or the football field. We have the big cleared space for the tent, and most of the tables and things are stored in our tool barn.”
Dalia poked a lump of soggy insulation with the toe of her boot. “I understand that, Mom, but something’s got to give. If you can’t do it, you can’t do it—that’s all. It’s not your fault. It’s just how things are. You can’t help it that your house got wrecked by a storm.”
“Lots of people suffered storm damage. And the firefighters helped us all through it. They went right out into the teeth of it to rescue people—and now it’s our turn to support them. They need this fundraiser. They’re all volunteers, and their expenses aren’t covered by taxes. Most of their operating funds for the year come from what we raise at this one event.”
Dalia sighed. Her mom was right, of course. If the roles were reversed, Dalia would be making the same arguments. But her stomach sank as she saw the weeks of her visit to Texas unfurling longer and longer in her mind.
It wasn’t the work itself that was the problem. Dalia didn’t mind hard work. She’d gladly rebuild the kitchen herself if she had the carpentry skills... But she didn’t. All she could do in this case was facilitate things—run the household, take care of her mother, keep on top of the builders. The whole process was going to involve a lot of coffee and tea, a lot of poring over magazine pictures and catalog pages, debating the merits of various designs and materials and finishes in excruciating detail, then debating them all over again the next day. A lot of nodding, and shaking her head, and making sympathetic noises, and not tearing her hair out.
Eliana should be here instead of me. She likes this stuff.
But Eliana couldn’t exactly drop out of college for a semester to come hold their mom’s hand for the rebuild. Marcos was away serving his country, so he had an even better excuse. And as Marcos had been quick to point out, Dalia hadn’t been home in literally years—since her dad’s funeral, in fact. She was due.
Well, one thing at a time. “When does the builder get here?”
Dalia’s mom shot her a quick look. “Um, about that—”
Then her mom’s phone rang, and she actually answered it—answered it instantly, without grumbling about how the person should have texted instead, or even checking if she knew the number. She just swiped to answer and said, “Hello!” in that same bright, cheerful voice.
“Oh, hi, Carol!...Yes, she got in last night...Flew in to Austin and drove out in a rental car...She’s here for as long as I need her. She’s going to telecommute to her work in Philadelphia.”
Her mom said this like telecommuting was some futuristic marvel and Dalia was a good daughter, caring for her mother with joy in her heart and a song on her lips and not being at all grumpy or impatient or longing for peace and quiet and her own space.
The conversation rolled along. There didn’t seem to be any point to the call; they were just...talking. It was weird. Dalia had exactly one friend she cared enough about to keep up with. They texted off and on and had scheduled Skype sessions. But she’d witnessed half a dozen of these shooting-the-breeze phone conversations between her mom and her mom’s friends since last night alone.
They were talking over the storm now. “I know it!” her mom was saying. “When that wind came through, it sounded just like a freight train inside a tornado!”
Gah! Dalia couldn’t listen to it one more time; she just couldn’t. She had to get away now before she lost her last marble.
She picked her way through the gap in the wall where the kitchen door had been, onto the porch and down the steps to the sandstone walkway.
The Texas sky was perfectly clear, acting all innocent, like it had never hurled a late-summer hailstorm at Dalia’s ancestral home. She breathed in the cool morning air and kept walking, out the gate and onto the caliche drive. The sound of her mom’s voice faded to the point where Dalia couldn’t make out the words anymore.
Then she heard the crunch of tires on gravel, and here came a truck around the bend. The driver’s door had a decal with some sort of graphic that looked like a house. The builder!
Finally. Now we can get down to business. Make some plans. Set some deadlines.
The truck was an old stepside with a tomatoey orange-red paint job that looked original. A good sign. Anyone who drove a truck like that had respect for the past. He wouldn’t try to push any tacky period-inappropriate stuff onto the house.
The truck pulled smoothly into the spot by the stand of cedar trees where visitors always parked. The driver got out. There was something familiar about his shape.
He shut the door, and Dalia saw the lettering on the decal: Reyes Boys Construction.
She barely had time to think, Wait, what? before the passenger door opened and out stepped another figure, even more familiar.
Her heart gave a painful throb before her mind fully understood what was happening.
Oh, no. No. It can’t be.
But it was.
Anyone would have thought an old has-been washed-up jock like Tony would have lost his looks in the years since he flunked out of college and broke Dalia’s heart. That would only have been fair.
But no. The clean V shape of his torso, his crisp jawline, his outrageously full head of glossy black hair—it was all the same. If anything, he looked better than ever, with the physical maturity of his midtwenties giving solidity and dignity to what had always been a spectacular shape. He’d been magnificent enough back in the day, but evidently he hadn’t peaked until now.
From their late teens on, Dalia was always surprised by how big he was—six foot four, broad and powerful. It just didn’t seem right for a man’s shoulders to go out that far. She could still remember the physical shock she’d felt the first time she’d put her arms around him. There was so much of him.
He stopped in his tracks and looked at her with his head to one side, like he kinda-sorta recognized her but couldn’t quite place her. Wow. Talk about adding insult to injury.
While he stood there puzzling her out, Alex came over with arms wide open. He always had been a hugger.
“Dalia! I didn’t know you were in town.”
He looked enough like Tony for it to be unnerving—an inch or two shorter, and less massive, but with the same basic proportions, the same jawline, the same smile.
“Hi, Alex! Yeah, I just flew in last night,” she heard herself saying.
“Yeah? How long you here for?”
“Um, I don’t know yet. I’ll be helping my mom while her ankle heals. Overseeing the work on the house and all.”
“You’re here for the duration, then.”
Tony joined them. Dalia’s heart pounded. Up close he looked better than ever. Had she actually thought Alex resembled him? Ha! Alex was a pale imitation—Tony Lite. Tony was the real thing.
He seemed taller, somehow. Was it possible he’d grown? He towered over Dalia, and she was not a short woman.
“Hey, Dalia. How you been? You look good.”
He could have taken the words out of a manual of things to say to an ex, and he said them exactly right, all soft and smooth. His charm, like the rest of him, hadn’t suffered with the passage of time.
“Hello,” she managed.
A very different hello, high and trilling, rang out behind her. And here came her mom, booking it across the rubble-strewn porch on her crutches, headed for the steps.
Dalia was too horrified to speak. The surgery was just two days ago. There were pins and things sticking out of the incisions.
“Whoa, hold on there, Mrs. Ramirez!” Tony called out. “Don’t come to us. We’ll come to you.”
But it was Alex who led the way, looking over his shoulder now and then to tell his brother, “Ground’s kinda rough,” and, “Watch out for these porch steps.” Alex always did have a fussy-old-woman streak.
They made it to the porch. Tony found a wooden porch chair in decent shape and brushed off the seat.
“Here you go, Mrs. Ramirez. Do you need to elevate your foot? How are you? Looks like you got busted up almost as bad as the house did! How did it happen?”
Dalia suppressed a scream as her mom started the story from the beginning.
“Well! I was unloading the dishwasher that morning, waiting for my coffee to brew, when all of a sudden the sky went black, and the wind rumbled over the roof, just like when a cold front comes in, you know. Then the alert went off on my phone. Severe storm! Thunder and lightning! Golf-ball-sized hail! I’d already let my chickens out to forage, and they were scattered all over the orchard. So I grabbed a chunk of watermelon out of the fridge and ran out the door calling, ‘Here, chick chick chick!’ I’ve got them trained pretty well, and they all came running up the ramp and into the coop. I tossed the watermelon inside, shut the door and started back to the house, but somehow I missed the steps. I fell off the coop porch and came down hard on my foot.”
Dalia shuddered, trying not to think how much worse the accident could have been. It was bad enough as it was.
Tony winced. “Oh, no! That coop’s up pretty high. That’s not a minor fall.”
“No, it’s not! The fracture I got is called a trimedial malleolus, and it’s a doozy. I had to have surgery all over my ankle. I’ve got screws and a metal plate in there, and a little cage to hold everything together.”
She sounded proud, but Dalia knew the pain must have been horrible. She’d done her own research into trimedial malleolus fractures after the accident. The injury involved breaks to three different parts of the ankle, as well as ligament damage. Not a minor thing at any time, and worse at her mother’s age.
“Wow!” Tony said. “How’d you ever make it back to the house?”
“I didn’t! I couldn’t even get up. I tried to crawl, but I hadn’t made it three feet before the hail started coming down. Ended up scooching under the chicken coop and waiting it out there, watching the hailstones bounce off the grass. But I didn’t lose a single chicken!”
“That’s the spirit! You’re one tough lady, Mrs. Ramirez.”
“Oh, well, I didn’t have much choice. Anyway, as it turned out, I’d have been a lot worse off if I had made it back to the kitchen. You boys are the heroes, going out into it all to help people. Did you know the chief made it over here in twelve minutes? He took care of me until the ambulance arrived. Good thing I had my phone on me to call.”
A lightbulb went off in Dalia’s head at the words you boys. Dang it. Tony was a volunteer firefighter. Of course he was. Which meant he would be here at La Escarpa for the FFF in two weeks. She was going to have a full day of Tony, from the early-morning exhibition football game to the bonfire at night.
Tony and Dalia’s mom went on talking in a casual, breezy way about the storm and what it had done to various people and places. There didn’t seem to be much point in rehashing all this now; it wasn’t like there was anything new to relate. But it did give Dalia an opportunity to get in a few good looks at Tony—the first she’d had in years.
Dark brown eyes. Black crescent eyebrows. Squarish face with a full jaw and a chin like a superhero. Every feature in his face was ridiculously strong, but his expression was open and friendly.
He had the thickest, glossiest, springiest hair she’d ever seen on a human being—longish at the top, velvety short at the back and sides. The artistic sideburns were new. So was the sculpted Van Dyke beard, perfectly formed in graceful curves and points.
He laughed at something her mom said. He always laughed like that, head thrown back, eyes shut, mouth wide open to show all his strong white beautiful teeth. Dalia knew all Tony’s expressions. The tilted-head, furrowed-brow combo. The unbelievably tender smile. The going-in-for-a-kiss stare.
Whatever reservations her mother might have had about Tony when he and Dalia first got together in high school, she sure was charmed by him now. It was freaking Dalia out—but at the same time it was kind of inevitable. Tony charmed everyone. Everyone loved him. How could they not? Look at that smile, those eyes, that rapt attentive expression. It looked so real. Almost real enough to fool Dalia.
Tony took a long look at the wreckage, then pulled up a stool and took a seat. “Well, Mrs. Ramirez, looks like we’re going to be doing a ground-up rebuild.”
“Oh, I know it. I ought to be more broken up about it than I am, but to be honest I’m kind of glad for the excuse. I’ve never really liked the layout of this kitchen, and it’s too small. Now I can start fresh.”
“I’m happy to hear you say that! I’ve got some ideas for a new floor plan for the southeast wing of the house. I realize we’re limited by the footprint of the original, like we can’t go knocking down stone walls, but there’s a lot we can do within those limits.”
Alex spoke up. “The main structure was built when? Eighteen-fifties?”
“That’s right,” Dalia’s mom said. “Before that, the family lived in the old cabin, which later got incorporated into the bunkhouse. The good news is, the stone portion of the house is still in great shape.”
“I don’t doubt it,” said Tony. “Those German stonemasons really knew their stuff.”
“Yes, they did. The old kitchen used to be in a detached building off the south corner. It got incorporated into the house around the turn of the century, along with a new dining room. Then in the seventies my in-laws added the new kitchen addition and converted the old kitchen into a master suite. That’s why that side of the house has such a cobbled-together look. And obviously the new construction wasn’t as sturdy as the original structure.”
Tony stroked his new beard thoughtfully. “I don’t know what your budget is, but have you considered doing the rebuild in stone?”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. I’d rather go with wood siding again than have new stonework that doesn’t match the old.”
“No, I don’t blame you. But the stonemason we work with is very good, and very experienced at matching old stonework. I can send you some pictures of his work. Just something to think about.”
Dalia’s suspicion levels rose. Why was Tony trying to upsell her mother?
“How much damage did the storm do to the master suite?” Tony asked.
“Not much. The kitchen bore the brunt. There’s some water damage on the closet wall, but nothing structural.”
Tony gazed into the kitchen. “What if... What if we added a walk-in pantry along the back wall of the dining room, with access from the kitchen, and then a built-in dining room hutch in front of that? You’d have to sacrifice some square footage in the dining room, but we could gain some of it back with a bay window. That would add some visual interest to the facade, as well as helping with the transition between the old stonework and the new, if you decide to go that route. Plus with the pantry and hutch there, you’d get to recess your entry to the master bedroom with a little hallway, instead of having it open directly onto the dining room, which I’ve always thought was a little awkward, no offense.”
“Oh, none taken!” Dalia’s mom said. “I’ve always thought the same thing.”
“Then from the bay window, we extend that front exterior wall even with the rest of the facade. Same thing with the side wall—just bring it back in line with the master suite. That’ll add significant square footage to the kitchen. Then we’ll extend the porch around that end so it wraps around on three sides. What do you think?”
Dalia seethed. The nerve of him! Who did he think he was, with his bay windows and his recessed entries? How could he be so disrespectful of the old floor plan? So what if the master bedroom opened directly onto the dining room? It had been that way for forty years. If it was good enough for her grandparents, it was good enough to keep.
Her mother practically squealed in delight. “It’s perfect! I love it!”
Dalia suppressed a groan. Way to negotiate, Mom.
Tony didn’t stop there. Why should he? He proposed other improvements—a reconfiguration of the master bath and closet, a new laundry room, even an outdoor grill and entertainment area in the space between the back wings of the house. And all the while her mom kept nodding rapidly and saying, “Mmm-hmm. Mmm-hmm. Mmm-hmm. I can see that.”
And Dalia didn’t know how to stop it.
There would have been no problem if she’d been on her own. She’d have shut down Tony’s sales spiel fast enough to rattle his teeth. But she wasn’t the one in charge of the interview. She didn’t know how to break in without making her mother look like a silly, gullible woman who couldn’t be trusted to handle her own affairs.
Tony was on a roll. He was talking with great enthusiasm about exposing the old stone in the dining room wall when Alex came back and nearly got clobbered by one of his brother’s sweeping arm movements. Alex ducked just in time.
“Oops, sorry,” Tony said.
Alex just said, “No problem, my bad. I’ve got all the measurements I need to draw some preliminary plans.”
His bad? How was it his bad? How was it his responsibility to avoid being clobbered, and not Tony’s responsibility to watch where he swung his gigantic arms?
Why did people like Tony always get away with hurting others?
Because someone is always there to enable him, that’s why.
Well, he wouldn’t get away with it this time. Dalia would see to that. Not today, not in front of her mother, but somehow she would catch him in his own tangled web and put him in his place.
She got up and walked over to the side porch. Out in the orchard, the chickens foraged contentedly in the shade of their completely undamaged-by-the-storm coop.
A hollow clomping of boots sounded along the porch floorboards behind her—slow, deliberate, long-legged steps. Her heart raced, and her stomach flipped. What was the matter with her? How could he still make her react this way after all these years, when she knew better?
But it wasn’t Tony. It was Alex, and only Alex, who joined her at the porch rail. She found that she had been holding her breath and let it out slowly. From relief, or disappointment?
“Have you been out to check that old bunkhouse since the storm?” Alex asked. “I saw it as we drove up. Looks like it took a beating, too. Windows are broken, and the front door got ripped clean off the hinges.”
“Oh, that’s the least of our concerns right now,” said Dalia. She couldn’t handle another project being added to the rebuild.
“Do you want us to take a look? The damage might not be that bad. A little work now might save further expense and trouble down the line.”
“No. Bunkhouse repairs are not in the budget.”
She had no authority to say such a thing, but she didn’t care. She was not going to let Tony tack any more jobs onto what already promised to be a monstrous bid. She’d see the bunkhouse turned into a tack barn first.
Alex looked longingly in the direction of the bunkhouse. “Too bad. Such a nice old building. Be a shame for it to fall into ruin.”
“Yeah, well, a lot of things are a shame, but they happen, anyway.”
Alex smiled and shrugged in an embarrassed sort of way, like he was apologizing for something. Dalia walked away. She didn’t want to hear him make excuses for his brother, and she sure didn’t want his pity.
She’d almost reached what had been the front wall of the kitchen when Tony came around the corner, and suddenly they were facing each other across the remains of the old porch swing.
They both froze. Tony’s smile stiffened, then faded away.
How many hours had the two of them logged in that swing? Talking, making out, rocking quietly together. Her head on his chest, or his in her lap. Was he remembering, too? How could he not be?
He crouched down and started randomly moving bits of wreckage around. He had his head bowed now, but she could see a dark flush rising up his neck. Huh. So he did have some vestige of a sense of shame.
In his nervous and pointless shuffling of debris, he lifted a piece of black roofing paper from a section of siding. Underneath lay a board with letters carved into it by a childish hand.
Tony loves Dalia.
The sight of it gave her actual physical pain. It was like something had reached inside her chest cavity and squeezed.
Tony didn’t look up or say anything. He laid the roofing paper gently back over the board, like he was covering something dead.
