Travis by Mia Sheridan

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

 

Travis

 

The morning was bright and already warm at eight in the morning, dappled sunlight falling over the porch. The screen door swung shut behind me, as my gaze moved around the railing where several of Haven’s plants sat in pots, their leaves green and lush under her patient care. I smiled. Others would have given up on them. They’d once been barely living, but now, they thrived. I moved toward the swing, ready to sit and wait for Haven, who was still showering, when I spotted a lone figure walking along the dock.

Burt.

I frowned, descending the steps and walking toward the lake. “A blind man walking alone on a dock?” I said, when I’d made it there. “That seems highly inadvisable.”

Burt turned toward my voice. “Good morning, Chief Hale.”

I approached him, careful not to make the dock sway under my movement. “Morning.”

“And a beautiful one it is,” he said.

God, is it. I swore I was walking on air after a night with Haven that I could only describe as mind blowing. “Yes, sir,” I agreed.

“What are you up to this fine day?” he asked.

“I’m taking Haven to an antique fair a few towns over. She’s upstairs getting ready.”

“Ah. Show me to the edge. Let’s sit while you wait for her.”

I led him toward the edge of the dock and helped him navigate where to sit, lowering myself next to him, both of our legs hanging off the side. He sighed, taking in a big breath of air, smiling again.

“You seem happy this morning,” I said. Though in truth, Burt had radiated happiness since I’d met him. I was glad to have arrived at this part of his story. I was glad for him, that he’d arrived here too.

“I found that bird,” he said. “The one who sang just for me.”

Surprised, I turned my head toward him.

“It’s called a prairie warbler and he sang for me again.” His smile grew. “Turns out, he was right outside Betty’s window.” If a black man could blush, he did just that, though his smile didn’t dwindle. In fact, it was so wide, I wondered if his face might split.

“You old charmer,” I said, only mildly surprised. I’d noticed their friendship . . . watched them gravitate toward each other no matter where we all were.

He leaned in conspiratorially. “Tell me, is she beautiful? She feels beautiful.”

I thought about Betty, about her warm smile and her welcoming heart, about how she flitted around the B&B like a bird herself, attending to everyone, making sure each one of us felt important. “She is,” I said. “Honestly, Burt? It’s a good thing you’re blind because otherwise, you’d never have worked up the nerve to make a move.”

Impossibly, his smile widened. “I had the same thought. Damn lucky I went blind; my old self would have fallen over in shock to hear this version of myself say it.” He laughed. “Life sure can change quickly and in unexpected ways. Don’t you agree, Chief?”

“I do, Burt.”

For a few moments we sat in companionable silence, me staring out at the water, Burt staring inward at whatever sights were there.

“Betty used to be a writer,” he said.

“Did she? I didn’t know.”

“It was a long time ago. Stories are her passion.” His expression grew solemn and I cocked my head, curious about where this was going and why he’d brought it up. “But she had an accident and suffered a head injury that causes her to lose words.” He paused for a moment. “You’ve probably noticed it happen. It distresses her. Writing became frustrating and upsetting and so she gave it up, turned her family home into a B&B to support herself . . .” He trailed off, the weight of Betty’s pain obviously a burden he now carried too.

And I suddenly realized something. “She narrates for you,” I said, thinking of all the times I’d watched Betty describe something that was going on so that Burt might picture it, watched the focus and the wonder on his face as he obviously did just that.

“She does.” He smiled. “And she does it so beautifully, and with such detail, it’s almost like, for those moments, my sight has been returned.”

Wow. A fish jumped and the water rippled out around the spot where it’d returned to the water.

“As for me,” he went on, “I spent my life as a fisherman. There’s no place on a fishing boat for a man with no sight. It was part of the reason I felt my life was over when I went blind.”

“I’m sorry, Burt.” He’d lost everything that meant anything to him. That’s how it must have felt.

“Being a fisherman provides some amount of down time, often quite a bit depending on the weather and other factors. I filled that time with crosswords. I got pretty damn good at them too, moving from one level to the next. I even entered and won a few contests. Words. They’re all about words. Name six different words that mean congenial.”

I chuckled. “I don’t think I can. Not off the top of my head.”

“Affable, convivial, cordial, jovial, pleasant, sociable. If you know enough words, you can solve any puzzle out there.”

And it dawned on me.

Betty had lost her words, and Burt had spent years collecting them.

I’d watched her become upset when the one she’d meant to use suddenly became unavailable to her, tapping her head in distress, trying to bring back what had once been hers. Batty Betty. No wonder Burt always seemed to provide just the one she wanted. He knew so many words. Right off the top of his head.

And Betty, his storyteller, drew such vibrant pictures in his mind, that in essence, she’d given him back his sight.

I swallowed down a sudden lump.

“It’s meant to work that way, isn’t it?” Burt asked. “All the things that have brought us pain, carve a distinct hole in our heart, and there’s someone else out there with the perfect something that will fill the void. And in turn, we get to do the same for them. And suddenly, it all makes sense. It all fits. Because we haven’t been forsaken. We’ve been prepared.”

Haven’s words from the night before came back to me. Maybe the terrible truth about love is that when it’s gone, it leaves a hole in your heart so big it feels like nothing will ever fill it.

Something expanded inside me, something nameless that made my ribs ache. I moved my eyes and my mind back to the man sitting next to me. “Burt . . . that head injury Betty suffered . . . did it have anything to do with her deceased husband?”

Burt paused. “Well now . . . perhaps. But that part of the story is Betty’s to tell.”

I nodded, his meaning clear, a sharp pang joining the internal ache. Batty Betty. The screen door opening on a squeak broke the moment and a breath whooshed from me, relieving some of the building pressure. I turned, looking behind me to where I could see Haven exiting the house.

“That’d be your cue,” Burt said, smiling and bumping his shoulder to mine.

I cleared my throat. “Yes, it is.” The dock swayed slightly as I pulled myself to my feet and tapped his shoulder so he knew I was offering a hand.

But he shook his head. “I’m going to sit out here a while longer. I promise not to fall in.”

I hesitated. “You sure?”

“Very much so.” He nodded in Haven’s direction. “Go on now and enjoy this beautiful day with that lovely girl.”

 

**********

 

We drove to the antique fair with the windows down and the radio on, talking about the area, and laughing and fighting over which songs should be turned off immediately, and which ones were classics.

She had terrible taste in music.

But I was willing to look past that, considering she had the smile of an angel and the hair of a goddess. And other things I didn’t want to think too intently about at that moment and make it tempting to pull my truck over and do lewd things to her on the side of the road.

“I can’t believe you talked me into going to an antique fair,” I muttered.

She laughed. “Me? You forced me to go! You said we might as well make our lie the truth. That someone who knows Gage might be there and mention it to him. What in the world am I going to do with an antique anything?”

Hearing Gage’s name caused my mood to sour momentarily, but she was right. I’d used that lame argument, half-jokingly, to convince her to spend the day with me.

She’d seemed to need a justification, even after we’d spent the night together. Naked. Very, very naked. And entwined. I’d never had to convince a woman to spend time with me after sex before. If anything, I’d had to devise ways to shake them loose.

I probably deserved this. To know what it felt like to beg.

It sucked. And now I understood just how much.

The antique fair was already packed with cars, and after finding a spot, we made our way to the gate, entering with the others filing into the large, open area packed with side-by-side booths, and hundreds of rows to wander down.

“Wow,” Haven said, her head swiveling. “This place is huge. Have you been here before?”

“A few times when I was younger, with my mom.” Whatever she’d heard in my voice made her eyes linger on me for a moment before she looked away, back to the miles of vendors, people chatting and laughing as they moved from booth to booth.

We began strolling, stopping here and there, Haven leaning closely toward this or that, moving past one thing and lingering at another. I stood back, fascinated as I watched her, realizing that it was possible to get to know someone better just by watching the things they were drawn to at an antique fair.

My mother had always headed straight for the Tiffany lamp or the Chippendale desk. Phoebe had never expressed any interest in antique fairs at all, preferring more modern décor over anything used. Preferring to spend money rather than save it.

Haven apparently, liked old photos.

I trailed behind her, observing her move from one table of photos to another, bypassing the knickknacks, the furniture, and even the jewelry.

“There are whole lives here,” she murmured, leaning forward. “Just left behind.” She turned to me suddenly. “Can you imagine that no one at all is left to care for”—she turned, picking up a photo of young girl—“her?”

“Care for?” I asked. It was a photograph.

She shrugged, turning away and putting the picture down. “Appreciate. Remember. Tell stories about.”

She turned back toward me as quickly as she’d turned away, holding up a different photo. “I’m going to buy this,” she declared. “What do you think?”

My gaze moved to the picture in her hand, an old black and white of an ancient-looking woman with dark hair and pale eyes. “I think it’s the thing horror movies are made of.”

She laughed. It was sweet. She was sweet. Her laugh dwindled. “And no one wants her,” she said softly.

“Because she might snatch their soul in the middle of the night.”

She laughed again. “Stop.” She held the photo up again, her eyes softening as she gazed at the old woman. “Left behind,” she murmured.

“Until now.”

“Until now,” she confirmed.

I raised my chin at the booth’s vendor who came over and accepted my dollar bill for the singular photo.

“Thank you,” Haven breathed, bringing the photo to her chest, grinning up at me, and officially making that dollar the best dollar I’d ever spent in my entire life, even surpassing the one I’d spent on Blueberry the dog.

We started strolling again, down the row of booths. “I’m going to put her up on my dresser and ask her advice,” she said, tilting her head as she studied the old woman.

“This gets creepier by the minute,” I said.

She laughed. “She’d give great advice though, don’t you think?”

“What would she tell you? About me, for instance?”

Haven glanced at me, her expression thoughtful. I realized I was holding my breath and let it out in a slow, quiet exhale. “She says you’re much more than adequate,” she said softly, her cheeks flushing lightly.

“I’ll take it,” I said, giving one nod to the picture. “Thank you, Grandma.” My brows rose in unison. “You do realize, you have me talking to plants and pictures of make-believe grandmas.”

“Promise me you’ll always do it, even when I’m gone. It will be my legacy.”

Even when I’m gone. Even when I’m gone. It echoed. I didn’t like it.

She walked over to a table of odds and ends, perusing them with some amount of disinterest. This booth didn’t offer old photos.

I watched her again, thinking about the night of the Buchanans’ fundraiser. I’d hemmed and hawed about getting her flowers for our “date,” ultimately deciding that cut flowers would wound her somehow. The thought had felt melodramatic at the time, but in that moment, I realized it was not. I’d been right to read her that way. Roots were very, very important to Haven Torres, coveted even. Because she didn’t have any of her own, and whether she realized it or not, she longed for them.

No wonder she loved planting things so much.

Needed it maybe.

Do you fear you’ll be nothing but a forgotten photo someday that everyone left behind? My chest ached, a need rising up to dispel that fear, to take it from her even if it meant suffering myself.

The noise faded, blood whooshing in my ears. She said something to the vendor and he laughed, pointing at various objects.

The world tilted and I reached my hand out blindly, grasping at nothing.

Time slowed, everything fading except for her. She turned her head very slightly and in my mind’s eye a dock that overlooked the water appeared beneath her feet, a house with a porch shining in the sunlight, rising above the trees behind her. I swallowed. It was so clear.

The vision crashed over me like a dizzying wave. It was my dock, my house, the picture I’d tried so hard to insert Phoebe into and come up short.

But the image of Haven standing in the spot that was mine, the blue ripples of Pelion Lake fanning out around her was luminous and blindingly bright. I couldn’t blink it away. And it was wonderful and it was awful, because she didn’t want that with me.

We were friends. With benefits, but still just friends.

She was leaving, just passing through town.

And somehow, none of those things dimmed the picture in my mind.

I wanted to laugh and fall to my knees. It was hilarious. And completely tragic.

She turned toward me, flashing her dazzling smile, those wild curls bouncing around her face. My heart squeezed and then dipped, then soared, and seemed to bounce off the inside walls of my chest. My brain felt funny too, both cloudy and clanging. Maybe I didn’t picture a future with Haven so much as I was suffering from a cerebral hemorrhage. Perhaps apoplexy was imminent.

I waited to keel over.

No such luck.

She smiled again and my heart did the same dip and soar, the same vision blossoming, brighter than before, dispelling the mist that had begun to creep around the edges of my mind. Oh God. No.

I stared, feeling almost . . . baffled. How did this happen? I didn’t ask for this.

She tilted her head, concern filling her face, and the world rushed back in an onslaught of sound and light. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yes.” I let out a long, slow breath, picking up a trinket from the table and pretending to study it intently.

“You seem very interested in that.”

“Hmm,” I hummed, attempting to get my heart rate under control. I felt sweaty and mildly ill. “Yes. I . . . collect them,” I said, bringing it closer. I couldn’t look at her. Not right then. Not yet.

“It’s a thimble,” she said. “With the picture of a . . . donkey on it. It’s a donkey thimble.”

The thing came into focus. I didn’t even know what a thimble was but it appeared to be a miniature upside-down cup. And yes, with the picture of a donkey on it.

It wasn’t even a very attractive donkey.

Frankly, it was downright ugly.

Haven took it gently from my fingers. “I’ll take this,” she said to the booth vendor, handing him the fifty cents he quoted her and holding the thimble out to me again. “My gift to you.”

I swallowed, taking the thimble and putting it in my pocket. “Thank you,” I said, finally meeting her eyes. She gave me a searching look. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Well, I’d live. Apparently. I nodded. Yes. No. I don’t know.

What I did know—suddenly and unmistakably—was that she was capable of shattering my heart. And if she was going to, all I could do was let her.