I studied the photograph for another moment, taking in the obvious love and happiness captured there. Then I looked back at Withers with a slight smile. “She looks like the sort of woman who would have beaten your rear end for pulling the stunt you did tonight.”
I expected him to get defensive or angry again. Instead, Phineas surprised me by throwing back his head and laughing—really laughing, for what sounded like the first time in years.
“She would have, at that,” he said between chuckles. “Tilly never did put up with any of my nonsense. Used to tell me I was too old to act like a fool. And that was twenty years ago.”
Soon we were both laughing as we swapped stories. I realized that underneath all the anger and alcohol, Phineas Withers was just a lonely old man who missed his wife and didn’t know how to cope with the world without her.
Which was something I could understand, even if I’d never experienced that kind of loss myself.
I found myself settling back into the worn chair, genuinely curious about this woman who had clearly been the center of the man’s world.
“Tell me about her,” I said, gesturing toward the photograph. “What was Tilly like?”
His eyes took on a distant look, and for a moment I could see glimpses of the man he must have been before grief had hollowed him out. “She was trouble from the day I met her,” he said, but his voice was warm with affection. “Caught her trying to steal apples from my neighbor’s tree when she was sixteen. Littlething, couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds soaking wet, but she had more fight in her than a wildcat.”
I chuckled. “Did you turn her in?”
“Hell no. I helped her fill her basket.” He took another sip of his drink. “Turned out her family was going through a rough patch. Her father had been injured in a logging accident and couldn’t work. She was trying to help feed her younger brothers and sisters.”
“So you were her knight in shining armor?”
Phineas snorted. “More like her partner in crime. That woman got me into more mischief than I care to admit. We used to sneak into the old movie theater through the back door when we couldn’t afford tickets. Tilly would distract the usher while I held the door open.”
I found myself grinning at the mental image. “Sounds like you two made quite the team.”
“We did. For forty-three years.” His voice grew quieter. “She used to say I was the gasoline and she was the match. Separately we were harmless enough, but together?” He shook his head with a rueful smile. “Together we could set the whole world on fire.”
I studied his weathered face, seeing traces of the young man who had fallen in love with a girl stealing apples. “What’s the worst trouble she ever got you into?”
Phineas’s eyes lit up with mischief. “Oh, that would have to be the Christmas of seventy-eight. Tilly decided she wanted to give all the neighborhood kids a special Christmas surprise. Problem was, we didn’t have any money for presents.”
“Uh-oh.”
“So she comes up with this brilliant scheme. We’re going to ‘borrow’ Santa’s sleigh from the town square display and fill it with homemade cookies to deliver to all the houses with children.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You stole Santa’s sleigh?”
“Borrowed,” he corrected with mock indignation. “We fully intended to return it. The plan was foolproof. We were going to sneak out after midnight, make our deliveries, and have everything back before dawn.”
“I’m sensing this didn’t go according to plan.”
Phineas laughed, the sound rusty but genuine. “The sleigh was heavier than we thought. Took us two hours just to get it and we got caught.”
His mood soured almost immediately.
And just like that, I understood why he hated Christmas. Tilly had made it special and her absence was more painful around this time of year.
I quickly steered the conversation away from Christmas. It was pretty clear it was a sore subject.
He told me stories about Tilly, about the hardware store in its heyday, about what Northwood had been like when it was a thriving community instead of a place people were slowly abandoning.
By the time I told him I needed to go, I understood a lot more about the cantankerous old man.
CHAPTER 27
SYLVIE
Itried to keep myself busy mingling with the guests, but I kept catching myself glancing toward the front door every few minutes, hoping to see Kent return. It had been over an hour since he’d left with Phineas, and I was starting to worry. What if the old man had gotten belligerent? What if Kent was stranded at Phineas’s place with no way to extract himself from the situation? Phineas was a very demanding man.
