Page 34 of Something Old

¡Ay, caramba! Grant thought, channeling a certain yellow-spikey-haired cartoon character. I’ve gotta get out of here!

But this latest bizarre Kelsey moment was already fading from his mind, even as she trilled goodbye. He had a lot to do today.

Back at his place, Grant constructed a makeshift shop using an easy-up tent as the shelter and a couple of sawhorses and a sheet of plywood as a workbench. The end result made him shake his head in wry amusement. After all the half-assed structures he’d had to pull down at his dad’s, you’d think he’d know better than to start creating his own eyesores.

He started hauling the tools he hadn’t sold off out of the tiny shed that matched his tiny home and set them up. Then he rummaged in the same shed for a power bar and a couple of heavy-duty extension cords. As he did, he fell into old thought patterns—familiar bitterness sharp at the back of his throat—remembering his real shop and how much he’d lost in the divorce settlement money-wise, but also creative spark-wise. But then he shook himself out of it. Once upon a time, he hadn’t had the luxury of a fancy shop. It hadn’t kept him from making things then. It wouldn’t stop him now, either.

Humming, he got out a measuring tape, a pad of paper, and a pencil and started to sketch.

When his phone rang a few hours later, he was in such a good mood, he didn’t even think to check the call display. The project was coming together cute as a bug’s eye.

“Ye’llo!” he said cheerily, a combo of “Yes? Hello?” that made Madeline laugh whenever he said it.

There was a moment of dead air on the line, and he was about to end the call, sure it was one of those automated robocalls or something, but then he heard a soft inhale of breath.

“Grant, baby?” The voice was soft and silken in his ear, and he would’ve known it anywhere. Holly.

The warm feeling of contentment that had buoyed him all afternoon as he worked was like a kid’s helium balloon—and this phone call was a sharp, jabbing fork. His good mood, his pleasure in the thing he was building, and the confidence about who he even was these days, which had been slowly growing back, instantly deflated.

“Grant?” Holly repeated, leaving off the mind-crippling endearment this time, thank God.

“Uh-huh?” he finally mumbled, sounding as airless and wheezy as that damned punctured balloon from his imagination.

Holly didn’t seem to notice his discomfort. Sounding effortlessly breezy and airy, she explained she was coming to Greenridge for a visit, and—for the first time since she’d started talking, she sounded less than confident—she’d like to see him.

It took several minutes of sitting and staring at his phone—and clicking the call history multiple times—for Grant to believe that what he thought had happened really had happened. Holly had called him after all this time. And she wanted to see him. He . . . couldn’t make sense of it. He shoved his phone into his pocket, then punched his hand into his palm over and over and over again.

Murphy’s Law was a bitch. Here he was, feeling better about life in general than he had in ages—or, to be more honest, than ever since Holly left—and who should call him? Holly.

At least she’d done him one pitiful kindness. She wasn’t coming until September. She’d given him plenty of warning—but that was no consolation and no help at all. He sank onto the grass beside his joke of a “shop” and the ridiculous project he was trifling with. Hadn’t she done enough? What could she possibly want from him now?

Chapter 18

The place was definitely looking better, Madeline thought as she cruised the long driveway into Grant’s dad’s place. Although she missed helping Grant and seeing him every night, there was one upside to only coming to his dad’s every two or three days: the progress was so noticeable. It was also true, of course, that a person could get used to anything, and part of her didn’t take in the whole mess in detail anymore. Just as she made that observation, the sight of a heavily burdened flat-deck trailer made her laugh out loud. Good grief! How many old washers and dryers could one man get his hands on? There had to be thirty on the trailer, at least. That would clear up a chunk of yard space, for sure. Grant had been busy.

And think of the devil, there he was by the shop, his back to her, a pair of big headphones on, explaining why he hadn’t heard her drive up.

Madeline parked and climbed out of her van, smiling.

Sneaking up behind him, she tapped his shoulder—and was rewarded to see him jump almost out of his skin.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said as he turned around.

“Of course! Who else would it be?”

Grant shook his head. “No one—but I wasn’t expecting you either. I thought you couldn’t come until tomorrow.”

“It’s my day off.”

“Well, I know that.” A trace of Grant’s old testiness reared. She hadn’t heard it for so long that she’d almost forgotten about his bite-your-head-off tendency. “I meant, I thought you had shop stuff you needed to do today.”

“I do,” Madeline admitted, but then she motioned wildly around herself, smiling broadly. “What do you see?”

Grant slowly followed her gaze, then grumpily scrubbed at his face. “A total dump and fool’s mission?”

“Wow, someone’s in a mood today.”

He didn’t deny it, but his grouchiness only reminded her of the little gift she’d brought for him, and mirth, not annoyance, buzzed through her.