Just For A Moment by Kate Carley
Chapter 3
Pick up paperwork from Beck.Check.
Cross the rail road tracks. Check.
Enter the city limits. Check.
With one last thing on today’s to-do list, Grace climbed from her car and gazed at the wide front porch. How many times had she sipped lemonade with her granddad right there? Walking up those steps and through that doorway was going to be filled with memories. Each one could bring her joy or sorrow. How would she spend the rest of this day? Remembering the fun, happy times? Or crying her eyes out for what was lost?
Grace straightened her shoulders and allowed the warm memories of happy times to crowd her mind, smiling as she remembered the love she’d always experienced here.
Beep beep.
She turned at the obnoxiously high-pitched horn. A petite hatchback parked along the curve, and a woman with a short blonde bob jumped from the driver’s side door.
“Madalyn Jane!” Grace rushed across the yard into her friend’s outstretched arms. “I didn’t expect to see you today. What are you doing here?”
Madalyn disengaged, grabbed Grace’s shoulders, and gave her a wide, slightly lopsided grin. “I couldn’t let you do this alone today, Gracie Jane.” Madalyn laughed as she called Grace by her nickname. Back in preschool, the two of them had bonded over the fact that they both had the middle name Jane. That friendship had held firm through the eighth grade and Grace’s family’s departure from town.
“Thank you, Madalyn. It really means a lot that you’d be here for this.” Grace tipped her head toward the massive house.
“What are friends for? And it’s time we got to know each other again. Not just on social media.” They’d reconnected nearly four years ago thanks to social media, always with the promise that they’d see each other, that they’d make plans. But life, or maybe procrastination, had kept them from making good on their promises.
“I’ve got to grab something.” Madalyn scurried back to her car and returned to Grace’s side with two paper grocery bags, one in each hand.
“Can I help you with those?”
“No. I’m equally balanced, right now.” With a bounce in her step, Madalyn chuckled. Just like when they were kids, she appeared to have an excessive amount of energy. “You ready?”
“I am.” Holding the envelope from Beck to her chest, Grace led the way onto the porch to the front door. Although her heart was pounding in her chest, there was something comforting about having a friend beside her. Grace wasn’t alone.
Trepidation mixed with anticipation beat through her veins as she slipped the key into the lock and opened the door. What would she find inside? “Welcome home, Grace,” she mumbled just above a whisper and stepped inside.
The simple motion of opening the door brought the dust motes to life. She flipped the light switch on the entryway wall, partially illuminating the chandelier above her. More than half the bulbs were burnt out. Her granddad had probably been just as perplexed as she was about how to get up there to change those bulbs.
“How am I ever going to do this place justice?” she asked, dropping her purse on the floor and setting the envelope from Beck and her keyring on the foyer table.
“It’s gonna be okay. You’ve got this, Grace.”
Grace nodded as she moved further into the house, heading straight to her favorite room—the library to the left of the entryway.
“Grace?”
“Hmm?”
“I’m going into the kitchen with these bags.”
“What did you bring?”
“Dinner.”
“Dinner? Is it dinnertime already?”
“Not yet. It’s shortly after four. And don’t get too excited. It’s nothing fancy. A salad. A variety of hard cheese. A loaf of French bread. Wine.”
“Sounds perfect. I’ll be there in a minute. Feel free to purge the refrigerator of anything nasty.”
When Madalyn disappeared down the short corridor toward the back of the house, Grace focused on the library. A booklover’s dream, its floor-to-ceiling bookshelves covered every inch of wall space. All the shelves were overflowing with books, many of them about World War II.
With a tug, she opened the heavy brocade draperies, allowing the rays of sunlight and the fresh billow of dust to play through the air. That was likely what she’d find in every room of the house. While it had only been six weeks since her granddad had closed the house and come for his visit to the city, she assumed cleaning this big old house and ridding it of dust hadn’t been his top priority in life. Probably not even his top one hundred. Edwin Ross had been a get-out-and-live kind of guy, and he’d enjoyed every moment.
Grace smiled at that memory, her eyes wandering the length of the room and searching the shelves for her favorite book. Its shiny green spine with gold leaf was easy to spot. Flora of North America, A Botanical Dictionary. This book had belonged to her grandmother, who had been quite the gardener according to her granddad.
As a kid, Grace had delighted in the abundance of glossy photographs and had pressed samples of flowers between its pages. She tugged the hefty tome from its place on the shelf and moved to the antique library table in the center of the room, resting the book in the palm of her left hand and fanning the pages with her right. Tiny, dried flowers from her childhood escaped onto the polished tabletop. Blue forget-me-nots. Yellow marigolds. Pansies in pink and deep purple.
Gently, she picked up one of the brittle flowers. Was she ready to discard them? Toss them into the trash can? Each one of those dry blooms was a story, a memory. And this question, to throw away or pass along to someone else or to keep, was going to be the exact question she asked herself a million times as she emptied this house.
“Hey, Grace! Come here and give me your opinion.” Madalyn’s call from the kitchen was just the excuse Grace needed not to decide.
“On my way.” She gently brushed the dried and crumbling flowers into a neat pile in the middle of the table and put the book back in place upon the shelf.
With a little spring in her step, she bypassed the grand staircase that led up to four bedrooms and a couple bathrooms and paused for a second to gaze at the dozen or so pictures that hung on the wall. Exactly how she remembered them. Of course, there were the old black and whites of past generations. A few from her grandparents’ wedding day. Of her mom as a young child and her graduation picture. But surprisingly, there were also pictures of her mom and dad’s wedding day. Even after their divorce, her granddad hadn’t taken down a single photo.
“This place… It’s weird to be back. I’m so glad you’re here, Madalyn,” Grace said as she stepped into the kitchen.
With the refrigerator door wide open, Madalyn cringed into its depths. “There are lots of leftovers and outdated food in here.” Madalyn lifted a plastic container that Grace’s granddad had called poor-man’s-Tupperware. “Do you want me to check dates?”
“Don’t open anything. Just throw it all out.” Grace shook her head as she dragged the trash can from under the kitchen sink over to the refrigerator. “I’m not surprised the refrigerator is filled. Everything happened so fast. I mean, he was only planning to be at my mom’s house for a couple nights.”
“You never told me exactly what happened with Win.” Madalyn tossed a container of sour cream into the can without peeking inside. A half-empty jug of what looked like orange juice went next.
“A few hours after he arrived at my mom’s house, he seemed to wilt. I think he’d been sick for quite a while but was ignoring his symptoms so he could be at her sixtieth birthday party that weekend. He insisted he was fine, that he just needed a nap. A couple hours later, the severity of his illness became apparent. By the time the ambulance arrived at the hospital, his organs had begun shutting down. He never opened his eyes after that, and two days later, he was gone.”
“How can that happen so fast like that? Did they figure out what was wrong?”
“He had strep throat. He ignored the fact that he was feeling unwell.”
Madalyn’s lips tipped into a small grin, and her brow lifted. “You come by your stubbornness honestly.”
“Hey, I’m not that stubborn.” Grace leaned around Madalyn to get a look inside the refrigerator. A glass baking dish with a glass lid sat on the top shelf. It appeared to be filled with grass. Or fungus. “Yuck.”
“I know.” Madalyn’s expression was laughable. “Should I throw it or do you want to try to clean it?”
Grace reached for a quart of milk and set it into the can. “Nope. It might seem wasteful, but I just can’t. Let’s get rid of everything.”
Together, they made quick work of cleaning out the refrigerator and small freezer and then went to explore the rest of the house. A couple hours later, after they’d hauled all the computer equipment and luggage from Grace’s car, they sat at the kitchen table to enjoy dinner together.
Grace took a sip of the cabernet. Her friend—thoughtful enough to bring a bottle for each of them—was working on a fruity pink wine. They might have shared a middle name, but their taste in wine was vastly different, a fact they’d learned over social media. “I was going to bring a pizza from Gino’s for dinner.”
“Gino’s is still here?” Grace asked setting down her glass.
“Of course. Where would it go?” Madalyn laughed, shifting her empty salad plate away and bringing her wine glass front and center.
Grace shrugged. “I don’t know. I figured it would’ve changed hands. Or changed somehow.”
“Never. Gino’s is an Oak Bend staple. It’s the best pizza in a thirty-mile radius. Let’s have dinner there tomorrow night.”
“Great. I’ll finally meet Cody, right?”
Madalyn shook her head as she slowly drew a circle along the top of her wine glass. She took a large sip as if she needed to strengthen herself. “He’s out of town for work. It’s happening more and more lately. But that’s the downside of living in a small town. And there’s so much to do with the wedding coming up.”
“I can only imagine all the work. Say the word if you need help.”
“Thanks. I might just do that.” Madalyn’s grin was back. “You’ll be at the wedding, right? I mean, you have it on your calendar, and now that you’re in town, you have no excuse, right?”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“I can’t wait. Cody and I are going to start trying to get pregnant. My clock is ticking so loud I can hardly think.”
“You’ve always wanted to be a mom.”
“I want a houseful of kids. And I’m thirty. How many kids can I have before my ovaries give up?” Madalyn’s expression said it was a serious question.
“Plenty. I’m sure you’ll have some cute little kiddos running around soon enough.”
“What about you?”
Grace shook her head. “My breakup with Jeremy—”
“That was almost two years ago.”
She grunted a laugh. “Not even a year yet. You got to love social media, huh?” She lifted her glass to her lips but didn’t sip. “I haven’t been serious about anyone since.”
Madalyn tucked her feet under her on the chair and dabbed at her lips with the paper napkin. “Don’t need a guy to have a baby.”
“Yeah, maybe for some, but I’m not going down that road alone. Life is hard enough.”
“True.” Madalyn poured more of the sweet wine into her glass. “How long are you planning to stay?”
“Permanently. At least that’s the plan at this point.”
“It’s got to be pretty cool to be able to work anywhere in the world,” Madalyn said in a dreamy voice that made Grace laugh.
“Anywhere I want, and yet, here I am in Oak Bend, Michigan. In the middle of nowhere. Not exactly the world’s most treasured vacation destination.”
A slightly tipsy giggle escaped Madalyn’s lips. “Maybe. But we have eligible bachelors here.”
Grace blinked at her friend. “Like who? Beck?”
“You met Beck?” Madalyn wore an expression of pure adoration at the guy’s name.
Letting her frustration with the encounter shine, she said, “Yeah. Not impressed.”
“Are you kidding? Aaron Beckett is sex on a stick. I saw him at the beach once with his kid—OMG, Grace—the guy has the best physique I’ve ever seen. I mean, I love Cody to death, but Beck’s bod? I’m not lying. It’s a thing of beauty. If I wasn’t faithfully engaged to Cody, I’d take him for a hard ride.” Madalyn closed her eyes and sighed.
“Yeah, I get it. It’s been a while for me, but I still need more than a rockin’ bod and a hard cock.”
Madalyn snorted. “I can’t believe you just said that.”
Grace pursed her lips and firmly shook her head. “I don’t know what you see in him. He was a jerk.”
“No way! Not Beck. He’s really sweet.”
“He and I are never going to be friends.”
“Once you get to know him, you’ll love him.”
Grace snorted a laugh. “I doubt it. And I have no reason to get to know him.”
But even after Madalyn left for the evening with plans for dinner the following evening at her place rather than Gino’s, Grace couldn’t stop thinking about her friend’s opinions about Beck.
Yes, he was good looking. But he hadn’t been anywhere near as kind as Madalyn made him out to be.
“I don’t think you’re right, Madalyn Jane,” Grace said to herself as she took off her jeans in preparation for bed.
She tugged her shirt off over her head and quickly unhooked her bra. The bedroom mirror gave her a clear view of her naked body. Her nipples were tightly aroused from all those damn thoughts about Beck. She cupped her breasts and ran a finger across the pearled tips.
When he’d touched her hand, she’d noticed his fingers had felt scratchy rough against her skin. How would they feel on her delicate areas? She pinched her nipples, biting her lower lip to keep from moaning at the sharp sting. His grip had been gentle, even though his strength was visible by the way the veins strained slightly, snaking a path along the tops of his hands and up his forearms.
A tingle raced along her spine when she remembered her body’s response to him. Warmth spread straight to her core. Right now, Grace was wound so damn tight, she couldn’t resist trailing her fingers down to that spot between her legs to find the patch of nerves there. The firm little nub was pulsing with need, and she stroked it exactly as she liked, imagining an exciting roughness that Beck might bring to her bedroom, imagining him moving inside her.
With one hand on her breast and the other on her clit, she raced to climax, shouting Beck’s name as she came.
Grace stood, panting and fighting a flush of embarrassment at the way she’d called out his name, but she’d obviously needed a good orgasm. Hopefully, it would get the mechanic out of her system so she could think straight.
Madalyn had been right about one thing—the man was definitely sex on a stick.
She grunted at the thought and climbed into the bed in the guest room, turning on the small reading lamp beside the bed. “No more thoughts about sex. Or Beck,” she said to herself as she propped several pillows behind her. Knees bent, she pulled the covers over herself and reached for the manilla envelope she had yet to open. “He and I are never going to be on good terms.”
Yes, it was true that Beck had cared for her granddad. She had seen it in his eyes. Oddly, that thought softened her heart—a little. Granted, Win had built a friendship with the aircraft mechanic, so she needed to have an open mind about him too.
But that didn’t mean she had to be friends with him. She tugged a document from the envelope, and immediately her throat felt tight. She swallowed hard to force the lump down, but the emotions that had threatened earlier in the day were back, clogging her throat and causing her eyes to water. She blinked to focus on the letter in her granddad’s distinctive script.
Dear Gracie Jane,
If you’re reading this, it means I’ve passed on to the next life. Don’t be sad.
“How can I not be sad? You’re not with me,” Grace whispered the words into the empty room, wishing he were there to answer her. But she was met with silence, so she kept reading.
Don’t be sad. I’m with the love of my life now. I’ve missed her. Be happy when you think of me, and be happy when you think of her and I together.
As for the house, it’s yours.
While it’s been in our family for generations, I mean for it to be an asset to you, not a burden. Remember that. If you want to live in Oak Bend, you’ve now got a place to call your own. If not, sell it and use the money to find a house that fits your needs. Enjoy life. I certainly did.
As for all my collections, I will include a list of all my favorite charities that accept various donations. I’ll also include several small-town museums that have history sections or specialize in WWII. One of them may want some of the pieces I’ve collected over the years. Perhaps some private collector would enjoy them. This house is not to be a shrine. It is not to store my stuff after my passing. It is for you.
Please discard my clutter and fill this place with your own.
As for the hangar and the planes—
“What?” This time Grace’s voice reverberated through the room. “What hangar? What plane? You never mentioned a plane.”
Her granddad had never once talked about a plane at the hangar. Maybe that was her fault. She’d never asked, ‘Hey, Granddad, have you bought an old plane recently?’
Grace let the odd feeling of frustration fade as she realized she hadn’t talked to Win about his collections in a while. They’d spoken every two or three days, and he’d usually driven into the city every other weekend. He’d always stayed at her mom’s place, and Grace had always made sure to go and spend time with both of them during his visits.
Some would say she and her mom were selfish—that the road went both ways between Oak Bend and Grand Rapids. But more than anyone, her granddad had understood her family’s hesitance to return to Oak Bend, and he had never—not once in sixteen years—asked them to come to visit him here.
She reread the last sentence again.
As for the hangar and planes, Beck will help you get that all taken care of. Hopefully, if I’ve done my part and finished the project, this won’t be much trouble for you.
Beck? Grace blew out a breath. That was probably why Beck had seemed so annoyed with her. She’d thought he wanted to play tour guide, and he’d only been prepared to show her something that her granddad should’ve told her about long before this point. He’d talked about Beck every time he came to visit. How had he failed to mention that he and Beck were friends because of airplanes and some mutual project they’d been working on?
Guilt pierced her heart. “I’m sorry, Granddad.” Of course, she should’ve come out here to visit. Then Granddad would’ve shown her the project. Probably introduced her to Beck. And then this wouldn’t all be a surprise. She let out a sigh.
Remember not to be overburdened by the clutter or the house. Just do as you see fit and enjoy your life.
Love always,
Granddad
Grace brushed at the dampness on her checks. If only she could change the past. If she could redo the last year or two or ten? Then she’d come to visit rather than let tragedies of life stand in the way.
Before she fell asleep, she promised herself she’d go see Beck the next day. She needed to apologize and somehow explain to him that she hadn’t understood his offer for a tour. Hopefully, the whole thing with the hangar and the plane and Beck wouldn’t be a huge deal. With any luck, she could sell off the planes and use the proceeds to pay off any outstanding bills owed to Aaron’s Aeronautics.
Then, she could permanently steer clear of Aaron Beckett.