Page 70 of Second Start: Family
Vicky softened in a way Kenzie had never seen her. It started with her eyes, then spread across her face, eased her shoulders, opened her hands.
Yet Kenzie almost wanted to cry out a warning, because she knew something was coming, something that would tear into Vicky all the more because of this softening.
“We had it all planned. He had a little place by the beach — a tiny house from before they became a thing — and we would stay there summers, here the rest of the year. He’s a mechanical whiz and he’d pick up work around here to supplement his pension, but mostly because he couldn’t not be busy. While I’d be a beach bum in the summers, reading all day as often as I wanted.”
Watching Vicky’s face, Kenzie saw that plan disappear.
But the older woman’s voice remained even as she continued. “There was an explosion on his ship. He was badly hurt. He lost both of his hands.”
“Oh, Vicky.”
“I got there as fast as I could, but he’d already built up his walls to shut me out.”
But don’t give up this chance … Don’t close the door. Don’t.
Kenzie could see Hall gripping Vicky’s arm after her words. He knew about this. He knew his friend’s pain.
“He’s healed well — physically. But he won’t let me back in. He doesn’t want me there. He won’t come here. It’s been more than a year and he … won’t.
“If I knew, absolutely knew that he was shutting me out because he thought it was better for me, I’d batter down all those damned walls no matter what I had to do. But … what if he didn’t build those walls to protect me? What if he built them to protect himself and by battering them down, I hurt him even more? I couldn’t bear that. I haven’t seen him since he told me never to come back.”
Kenzie put her arms around Vicky’s shoulders and drew her — uncooperative, but unresisting — into a hug. Her fellow teacher didn’t cry, but eventually, she relaxed.
Until, in a low voice, she said, “Don’t miss your time, Kenzie. And don’t waste any of it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Kenzie had called to the last two stragglers to get on the bus Monday afternoon when Hall’s familiar truck grumbled into the yard in front of the school.
Vicky might have heard it, too, because she came out of the building, even though Kenzie had bus duty this afternoon.
“Hall?”
He jerked his head sideways in a single negative, but she wasn’t going to ask him what was wrong — though clearly something was. No sense alerting his kids.
“Read this — both of you,” he added as Vicky joined them. “While I get the kids in the truck.”
Kenzie was peripherally aware of him calling his kids off the bus, telling them to get in his truck, making up something about being on his way to the feed store, so he stopped to pick them up.
But most of her attention was for reading and re-reading the papers he’d given her, with Vicky reading over her shoulder.
He rejoined them as the bus pulled out.
“No,” Kenzie said.
It was an all-encompassing this-is-not-right syllable.
“This is your sister-in-law? Annie’s sister? I don’t recall ever meeting her before the funeral,” Vicky said.
“Not surprising. Annie didn’t keep contact much. Said Naomi was all about appearances.”
“Did you know this was coming?” Vicky asked him.
“Hell, no. Dan never said a word.”
“You think he—?” Kenzie bit off the question.
“He might not know,” Vicky added.
