Page 20 of Below the Far Horizon
“No. I can talk to him, Mom. If he’s really struggling?”
“That’s what Donnie says. And Donnie is really worried about him. Did you know that Trevor was actually moving back and moving in with his dad?”
“I guess I did, but in the excitement of…other things…I forgot. Did he get divorced?” She didn’t even ask if he had been married. She just assumed that he had, but… That was kind of arrogant on her part. After all, the last she heard, he was in love with her and always would be. That was what he said just before she left.
“No. He never married. He had a good job too. He just didn’t like seeing his dad living by himself as he grew older, so he surprised his dad by quitting his job and saying that he was going to start his woodworking business. You know he was always giving you little gifts that he had made.”
“I remember that. And then I would put some little decoration on them, to make them more cutesy and feminine, and…” Her eyes drifted to the wall, where her mom still had one of those things hanging. It was a board that he cut a heart into, and she added a bow at the bottom, and a tie at the top, and it just looked rustic and cute and like something that someone online might pay twenty dollars for, and it had cost them nothing, since he had taken the boards from the shed when it was torn down.
“I always thought the two of you made a really good pair. You know how some people just seem to fit together? And complement each other. You aren’t opposites exactly, but you just…fit.”
Maybe that was what was wrong with her mom and Donnie. She didn’t see how they fit. Or maybe, she was so used to seeing her mom fit with her dad and then used to seeing her mom fit in their family, it was unsettling to see her mom fitting with someone else, being with someone else’s dad and someone else’s family.
Maybe her mom was right. She’d been through a lot of changes, and her mom was just throwing one more at her, which was one too many.
“I really liked him. More than anyone else. And honestly, Lonnie didn’t hold a candle to him, although I pretended for a really long time that he did.”
“Then why did you leave? I heard he was heartbroken for a long time. I don’t know if he ever did get over it.”
“I don’t know whether he got over it or not, but I do know that Claire always thought I stole him from her. She wouldn’t talk to me until I broke up with him, and then I couldn’t stay. For that, and other reasons.”
Her mom knew about the tragedy that had occurred. She knew how it had shaken all of them and how it made it hard to stay in Raspberry Ridge.
“Sometimes we just have to let the past be in the past. You know?”
Grace wanted to shut that off. After all, her mom hadn’t watched one of her friends die. To have her be there one second and completely gone the next, but then… She lost her husband, which had probably been worse. They’d made a family and a home together, had children and a life, plans and love between them. Then one day, it was gone. Just like that.
Ten
“Iremember when you were a kid. You loved doing stuff like that.” Don looked at the piece of wood Trevor had been working on for the last hour. He’d made it into a decorative birdhouse. Not one that an actual bird would use. At least he hadn’t been thinking along those lines, but he supposed it could. But one that could be decorated with little wisps of fabric, some twine or whatever it was called, and hung up either inside or outside of the house.
“I’ve always loved doing stuff like this. I can’t remember a time when ideas weren’t coming together in my head.” He got a business degree in college and a good job in the suburbs of Chicago. He hadn’t hated his work, but it didn’t fill his soul and give him total peace the way this kind of work did.
Trevor held the birdhouse up. “If I’m not careful, I’ll fill up your garage with all kinds of knickknacks and stuff I make.”
“Don’t let that happen. Give it away as fast as you make it.”
“People will see me coming down the street and start running in the other direction.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that. Who wouldn’t want to have something cute and decorative to hang in their house? Maybe notfifteen of them, but one would be welcome, I’m sure. Or they could give it away as a Christmas gift.”
That was true. Maybe people really would appreciate being given the stuff that he made. He enjoyed making it, but that was as far as it went for him. He couldn’t imagine what to do with it and didn’t have any desire to try to figure out where he could put it in his house, or since he was living with his dad, he wouldn’t even consider trying to find a place to hang it in here.
“You know, it’s Mrs. Donegan’s birthday tomorrow. She might really appreciate someone remembering. I bet it’s been years since she got a gift.”
Trevor stilled for a moment, his hands freezing. Mrs. Donegan was Claire’s grandmother. Claire, the girl who had accused Grace of stealing Trevor from her.
He and Claire had dated once or twice, but he’d never felt anything for her and hadn’t wanted to lead her on. She did ask him out, and he’d said a reluctant yes the first time and then tried to make up an excuse every time after that, but she was not easily dissuaded.
Maybe she fancied herself in love with him, or maybe she knew her friend liked him and was trying to stake a claim.
Trevor didn’t really know how the female mind worked, but he did know that he’d never been overly interested in Claire, so for her to say that Grace had stolen him was an absolute exaggeration.
“Are you upset about me seeing Gita?” his father said, lifting the mug of coffee that had been sitting on the workbench beside him, and had probably long grown cold, and taking a small sip. It looked perfunctory, since the coffee had to have been ice cold and gross.
So his dad was trying to be casual. Interesting.
Trevor continued to rub the fine-grained sandpaper along the edge of the birdhouse. He didn’t want to give an off-the-cuff remark. He actually did have some reservations, but they didn’t concern the fact that his dad was seeing a woman. It had more to do with the fact that it just didn’t feel quite right.
