A Husband's Watch

After a moment, Darryl snagged that old jacket she’d ripped up to accommodate his cast off the pegboard by the back door, awkwardly shrugging into it. She couldn’t tell if the pain contorting his features was due more to his bruised body or their conversation. “I’m going down to the garage,” he said, turning toward the back door.

“What? Why? There’s hardly anything left!”

His eyes touched hers, his voice like steel. “Oh, I’m pretty sure underneath the wreckage, there’s more left than you might think. Sooner I can get it cleared away, sooner I can start rebuilding.”

Chapter 3

Somebody or other was cheerfully belting out “Jingle Bell Rock” as Faith pushed her cart alongside the meat bins in the Homeland, keeping an eye peeled for the Reduced for Quick Sale stickers. There was something almost anesthetizing about the upbeat music, the swags of silver and red tinsel draped between the aisles, the rows of tightly plastic-wrapped chicken parts and pork chops and steaks, the quiet purposefulness of the other Monday morning shoppers. With the three oldest in school, she only had Sierra and Nicky in the cart. Which was more than enough. To keep them quiet, she’d snatched a bag of animal crackers off the shelf and practically thrown it at them, not even caring—too much—that they’d ruin their lunch. Not even caring—too much—that she’d just bought herself a one-way ticket to Bad Mama Hell.

Soon as she got out of the one for Bad Wives, where basically she’d lived for the past three days. Cramming a small handful of the crackers down her own gullet (Lord, she felt like she had this gaping hole inside of her that just would not get filled up) she pounced on a chuck roast—one of the few things she could actually cook—marked down forty percent, wedging it into the cart someplace where hopefully Sierra wouldn’t grind her Barbie sneaker into it.

Now that the Truth had moved in—and theirs was far too small a house for something that big and ugly and stinky—every conversation between her and Darryl had become so guarded and polite Faith was ready to tear her hair out. Given a choice, habit and hormones wasn’t looking so bad. And heaven knew this was no time for her to be going off the deep end. Even if Darryl seemed hell-bent on driving her there himself.

Honestly! Why was all this stuff coming to the surface now?

Because, chickie, it was bound to eventually, wasn’t it?

She shoved more animal crackers into her mouth, thinking at this rate she was going to have to retrieve her maternity clothes from the church giveaway box just to have something she could get into.

A scream from the cart brought her back to attention. Nicky had twisted around and grabbed his sister’s hair, a move Sierra wasn’t taking too well.

“Nicky, sugar…” Faith leaned across the cart to untangle the baby’s sticky fingers from his sister’s fine hair, half of which remained in the chubby fist when Faith finally separated the two. By this time, Sierra was howling, not good for the nerves of someone who’d been on the breaking point for several days already.

“Nicky, no! It’s not funny!” Faith peeled a half-dozen silky blond hairs out of his clenched fist. “You hurt your sister! You can’t do that!”

At her stern tone, the baby’s sunshiny smile vanished, to be replaced by a quivering pout that rapidly gave way to a full-out wail.

Faith shut her eyes and prayed for patience. And that she wouldn’t break down into sobs along with her children, right here in front of God and everybody.

“Faith! Yoo-hoo, Faith!”

Not today, Lord, she thought, her eyes still closed. Please?

Too late.

Plastering a smile to her face, she turned in time to see Luralene Hastings huffing and puffing up the aisle, her white, crepe-soled slip-ons squeaking like mice against the beige-and-white-tiled floor. “What’s the big idea, missy, canceling your hair appointment!” said the skinny redhead, oblivious to the cacophonic bellowing coming from the cart. “I tried callin’ you, but I guess you were already gone. Darryl answered the phone. How’s he gettin’ on, anyway? ’Cause, frankly, between you and me? He didn’t sound so good. That was a real shame, the service station gettin’ hit by the twister like that. A real shame. Any idea how long it’s gonna take before it’s up and runnin’ again, ’cause Coop says he’s in no mood to go lookin’ for another mechanic this late in the game.”

Faith suddenly realized both babies had gone stark still, staring wide-eyed at Luralene, who was clutching a plastic-wrapped deli sandwich to her heaving chest. Not that Faith blamed them—a tornado had nothing on the far-side-of-fifty owner of the Hair We Are when she was in full sail. Faith took advantage of the momentary lull to stick Nicky’s pacifier in his mouth, only it popped right back out. She fumbled for it, catching it a foot before it hit the floor and a split second before the wails once more reached eardrum-splitting level. She plugged him up again, trying to decide which question to answer first. Not that she was inclined to answer any of them, but sidestepping Luralene was like trying to pass an eighteen-wheeler on a two-line highway.

“We don’t know yet when Darryl’ll be back in business,” she finally said. “It depends on, well, a lot of things. And sorry about the hair appointment, but…I decided to let it grow out for a bit. It’s been ages since I’ve had it long.”

Luralene squinted at her, stopping just short of tangling up her false eyelashes. Her lids were all done up in a medley of purples and lavenders today, not one of which even came close to matching her violet smock. “And you know full well that any longer than shoulder length and your head looks like a tumbleweed. And that was your description, not mine, before you go getting your panties in a twist.” Then she laid one hand on Faith’s wrist, her frosted-rose acrylics shimmering in the glow from the freezer case. “Going through hard times is nothing to be ashamed of, honey,” she said in an uncharacteristically low voice. “There’s not a soul in this town who hasn’t, at one point or another. So come on over, let me give you a trim, on the house. Won’t take but twenty minutes—”

“No, I couldn’t, really. I mean, I’ve got the babies. And frozen food—”

“It’s thirty degrees outside, nothing’s gonna happen to the food. And the babies can play in the kiddy corner, I’ll put you in the chair right beside it so you can keep an eye on ’em. Beatrice Moody canceled her eleven o’clock, so I can fit you in, no problem. Honey,” she added when Faith started to protest again, “all this is is one woman lookin’ out for another. ’Cause nothin’ bolsters a woman’s ability to cope with a crisis better than knowin’ she looks good.”

Faith supposed there was more than a little truth in the older woman’s words. She’d always found life’s challenges much less formidable when armed with the right shade of lipstick and a good haircut, although she’d never quite been able to decide if this made her shallow or simply adaptable.

“And besides,” Luralene said, leaning so close Faith nearly choked on the Aqua Net, “I imagine it wouldn’t hurt to give Darryl a little pick-me-up as well, if you get my drift.”

Faith let out a sigh, surrendering as gracefully as she knew how.

Darryl slouched in one of the plastic chairs in Ryan Logan’s home office waiting room, tapping his heel against the dark, scuffed wooden floor. Except for the chairs, nothing much had changed since this’d been old Doc Patterson’s office, even down to the worn set of wooden blocks stacked in one corner. Magazines were a trifle newer, though that wasn’t saying a whole lot. But the same wooden blinds covered the mullioned windows, the walls were painted the same manila-folder color, the rug taking up most of the bowed floor was the same multicolored patterned number he remembered from when his mama used to bring him and his brothers here for his shots, except it was more faded now. And now, as then, he couldn’t sit in this office without a sense of trepidation, a suspicion he wasn’t going to feel better for having been here.

“Darryl! Didn’t know you were here already!” Ryan, who’d taken over for the old doc after his retirement, stood in his office doorway, looking more like a cowboy than a doctor in his jeans and denim shirt. Lines fanned out around bright blue eyes as the doctor’s dark-blond mustache curved up at the corners. Clearly, marriage and fatherhood—Ryan had married a young widow with three little kids a couple years back, then added one of their own to the brood—agreed with the former recluse. “Come on in, come on in!”

Darryl pushed himself to his feet. “I really appreciate you seeing me. I know I should’ve gone out to the clinic and not bothered you on your day off—”

“Forget it,” Ryan said, leading Darryl into his office. “Those your records from the hospital?”

Nodding, Darryl handed them over.

“Can you get up on the exam table on your own speed, or you need some help?”

“No, no, I’m good,” he said, although it was no mean feat getting his butt up on the paper-covered vinyl with only one hand to steady himself.

“So,” Ryan said, “all things considered, how’re you feeling?”

“So-so. The ribs still ache, but not as bad. And the stitches are itching like hell….”

“Yeah, let’s just take a peek at that.” The doctor carefully removed the dressing, nodding in approval before tossing the bandage in a metal can. “That’s healing up real nice. You don’t need to keep it covered anymore if you don’t want to. We’ll yank those stitches out in a couple days, and that’ll be that. No headaches, I take it?”

“Not from the accident,” Darryl muttered, which drew a curious look from the doctor. “No,” Darryl said, more clearly. “No headaches.”

“You still taking the Vicodin?”

“Not since the first day. They made me…I don’t know. I didn’t feel like myself on ’em.”

“Your arm’s not paining you, then?”

“Actually…that’s why I’m here. I remember breaking my other arm when I was a kid, and it hurt like hell for a couple days, till the bone started to set. What I don’t remember, though, is losing the feeling in my fingers.”

The doctor’s brows crashed together. “Some of the feeling, or all of it?”

“It comes and goes. There’s times when it feels like my hand isn’t even there. Other times it tingles like it’s on fire.”

Ryan walked back to his desk and picked up Darryl’s folder. For several seconds, he read silently, flipping a couple of the pages back and forth, the seriousness of his expression making a cold, hard knot form in the pit of Darryl’s stomach.

“Doc? What is it?”

“The good news is it’s not as bad as you might think.”

“And…what’s the bad news?”

Ryan’s sympathetic blue gaze met his and Darryl came real close to blacking out.

Muttering under her breath, Faith hesitated before squeezing her car into one of the angled parking spaces in front of the Hair We Are between Dawn Logan’s Explorer and Maddie Logan’s ancient Impala. Running into her friends right now provoked some real mixed feelings, that was for sure. Especially Dawn, who’d been Faith’s best friend in high school. On the up side, even though Dawn had spent ten years in New York City becoming a lawyer, at heart she wasn’t any different after her return to Haven last year than she had been before. Actually, she and Faith had resurrected their old relationship with hardly a missed beat, and Faith knew she could always count on Dawn to be a true and honest friend. Still and all, not only was the woman extremely successful by Haven standards, a fact that had led to Faith’s praying to be delivered from envious thoughts on more than one occasion, but she was also technically a newlywed. All that unbridled bliss grew downright tedious after a while.

However, there was nothing to be done for it now, Faith thought as she hauled her children out of the car and herded them inside. It was face Dawn now, or Luralene later. No contest.

And yet the moment Faith set foot inside and five people greeted her as though her arrival had made their day, at least half her troubles sloughed off her shoulders. As usual, the shop smelled of freshly brewed coffee and hair spray and nail polish, the exuberant pastel decor a radical declaration of femininity, a sanctuary from all that was ugly and depressing outside its doors. Faith had had her first haircut here when she was ten and her mother finally gave up on her daughter’s unruly hair. And now, more than twenty years later, she realized being here settled her frazzled nerves far more than a drink in some bar could ever do.

She couldn’t say the same for her children, however. Although Nicky had conked out in his car seat on the way over, poor Sierra was not at all sure about the shrieking ladies swooping down on her. The child ducked behind Faith’s legs, burying her face in the folds of Faith’s jeans at the knees, which God knew was the only place clothing was likely to bag on her body these days.

“Back off, y’all,” Luralene barked to her staff—Stacey, who everybody still called the “new girl” even though she’d been there for two years already; Evelina, the manicurist; and Vyanna, whose beehives (both hers and her customers’) had more than once been compared to a perfect meringue. “Can’t you see you’re scarin’ the poor baby half to death? Hey, sugar,” she said, her knees cracking like gunshots when she squatted. “Your mama’s gonna have a seat in that big chair over there right beside that big old toy chest and get her hair cut. And I bet there’s some doll babies inside just waitin’ for you to love ’em, what do you think about that?”

Faith smiled down into Sierra’s questioning gray-green eyes, thinking she wouldn’t mind a little loving herself, a thought she immediately replaced with a stern Don’t go there.

“Come on, sweetie,” she said, Nicky’s baby seat banging against her leg as she led Sierra over to the play area. She lowered the seat to the floor where she could still see him, then knelt in front of the three-year-old, pointing to the empty chair. “See? I’m right here. So you go on ahead and play, okay?”

Sierra peered around her at Luralene, then whispered, “The lady’s scary.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Faith said, giving her a kiss on the forehead, then climbing into the chair. After a couple of very skeptical seconds, Sierra began to systematically haul each toy out of the open wooden box by the wall, inspect it, then toss it over her shoulder, rejected.

“Tough customer,” Dawn shouted over the roar of a hair dryer from the next chair.

“Don’t I know it,” Faith said, the incongruity of her friend’s being here finally hitting her. As long as she’d known her, the brunette had always worn her hair natural and nearly to her waist. “Oh my God—you got your hair cut!”

“Don’t she look great?” Stacey said from behind Dawn’s chair, grinning underneath two inches of spiked black hair. “Like some actress or something, huh?”

“Oh, Lordy, Lordy,” Luralene said. “Where’s my camera?” She abandoned Faith to scurry back to the reception table, banging drawers open and shut for several seconds until she finally unearthed an old thirty-five millimeter. “Here it is, here it is….” She scurried back, the camera already up to her eye. “We have got to put this up in the front window! Stacey, you have outdone yourself this time, gal…for pity’s sake, Dawn—smile! Think of Cal or something!”

“Yeah, that’d sure do it,” Evelina said from over at her table, where she was doing Hazel Dinwiddy’s nails, and more than one woman there squelched a sigh at the thought of those smoky green eyes and that smile a woman only had to see once to remember the rest of her life.

Anyway. Like everybody else, Faith joined in the oohing and ahhing over Dawn’s hair, which was still past her shoulders, but now a mass of wavy layers with wispy, sexy bangs that made her brown eyes look positively enormous.

“You know,” Maddie Logan rasped from three chairs over, “you already had an unfair advantage over the rest of us, having the best boobs in town. This is just plain out-and-out overkill.”

“No, I think Faith’s got me beat in that department,” Dawn said, glancing over. “Pardon me for saying this, but that is one impressive rack, lady.”

“Five kids’ll do that to you.”

“Yeah, right,” Maddie said, fluffing her fingers through her just-trimmed, golden-brown shag. “It took me four to work up to a full A. At that rate I’d have to have twenty-two to get anywhere near you guys.”

“Honey,” Luralene said, “the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Long as Ryan isn’t complaining, you’ve got nothing to worry about.” She turned Faith’s chair around so she could tilt her back to wash her hair in the sink. “He’s not, is he? Complaining?”

A comb flying across the salon was the last thing Faith saw before she closed her eyes, savoring the warm water streaming over her head. “So why’d you do it?” she asked Dawn. “I thought you loved your hair long.”

“I did. Until I went to check my makeup in the mirror yesterday and my mother looked back out at me.”

Faith chuckled—with her eccentric clothes and long gray hair, Ivy Gardner, Dawn’s mom and the midwife who’d delivered two of Faith’s babies, was a definite holdover from the hippie era. That she was going to be the new mayor come January was a testament to Haven’s being on the cutting edge of something, Faith supposed.

“How’s she doing, by the way?” she asked, eyes closed.

“Still bummed about losing her refrigerator,” Dawn said, referring to Ivy’s own close encounter with Mother Nature the week before. In Ivy’s case, the wind had uprooted a fifty-foot mulberry from her backyard and smashed it into her roof, right on top of her kitchen. Fortunately, Ivy hadn’t been in the house at the time; unfortunately, the house was currently uninhabitable, which meant Ivy was staying with Dawn and Cal at his horse farm outside town, which Faith guessed had something to do with Dawn’s precipitous decision to change her hairstyle.

The old rotary phone on the front desk jangled as if it’d been goosed. Luralene went to answer it, then shouted over, “Faith, honey? I need to pop over to Coop’s for a sec, I’ll be back in two shakes, okay?”

Faith heard the redhead scoot through the door to her husband’s barbershop next door, startling the little silver bell over it into a tingling tizzy. She opened her eyes to find herself the object of a pair of worried gazes.

“So how are you and Darryl doing?” Dawn whispered, dark eyes huge underneath her newly cut bangs.

Faith smiled brightly. “Oh, you know us, we’ll muddle through.”

“Hey,” Maddie said, poking her. “This is us you’re talking to.”

“That’s right.” Dawn waited until Olive passed, then took Faith’s hand in hers. “I know things weren’t exactly copacetic between you two before—”

Faith’s gaze shot to Dawn’s. “What are you talking about? I never said—”

“It’s not what you said, it’s what you didn’t. And I doubt losing the garage is making things any easier between you two.”

And the sympathy in Dawn’s eyes was nothing compared with the empathy in Maddie’s. Having landed in Haven two years before with no money, two small children and another on the way, Maddie more than understood the concept of “financially embarrassed.” Faith tamped down a sigh that was equal parts annoyance at their nosiness and gratitude for their friendship. One of the ironies of life in a small town.

Sierra brought Faith a dolly, begging to get in her lap; Faith gestured to Maddie to hand her a towel, which she wrapped around her dripping hair. With her munchkin ensconced, singing softly to her new “baby,” she checked to be sure no one else was eavesdropping, although people around here tended to have highly developed listening skills.

“Frankly, I’m not sure what’s going to happen,” she admitted, explaining about how long it would take to get back on their feet, as well as Darryl’s refusal to accept help from her parents. “And Christmas is coming, and Heather wants to take dance lessons, and…” She shrugged. “I know how it looks, that we didn’t have a contingency plan in case something like this happened, but when you’re barely getting by as it is…”

“Shoot, honey,” Maddie said, “you don’t have to explain that to me.”

“Me, either,” Dawn said, then frowned. “Maybe you could get a job, at least for the time being.”

Faith’s eyebrows flew up, even as a tingle of possibility sparked over her skin. “A job? With five kids still needing me at home?”

Dawn frowned. “It’s not inconceivable that Darryl could hold the fort while you’re gone, at least with the older kids. It’s amazing how much a person can do with only one arm,” she said over Faith’s protest. “Besides, you’ve already got Nicky and Sierra in day care a couple mornings a week, right?”

“Well, that’s true. But what on earth would I do?”

That got a chuckle from the brunette. “Oh, come on…after twelve years of marriage and motherhood, you must have some marketable skills.”

Faith snorted. “None I could exactly exploit, if you get my drift.”

Dawn said something about that being a shame as Maddie tentatively said, “Well, I s’pose you could come help me make pies. I’ve got three restaurants in Tulsa that’s takin’ ’em now. I could use the extra help.”

Faith burst out laughing. “This is the woman who burns fish sticks, remember? Thanks, honey, but you’ve worked long and hard for your success. The last thing you need is me in your kitchen.”

The younger woman looked extremely relieved. Then Dawn remembered her secretary was going out of town for a couple weeks, but they all decided by the time Faith learned the computer program for the billing and such, Marybeth would be back.

“Working at the day-care center with your mother?” Maddie said, but Faith shook her head.

“No openings. And the church can’t afford to hire me out of pity.”

“Cleaning houses?” Dawn gently suggested.

“Around here?” she said, and both ladies agreed she had a point. Then Maddie hit herself on the side of the head.

“I am slow today, boy,” she said, her eyes bright. “There’s going to be an opening at the Homeland, starting next week. Melva Rice told me she’s quittin’, that she just can’t take standin’ on her feet all day anymore. It’s not a bad job, and there’s benefits once you’ve been there for a while. Melva said she was giving notice yesterday, so you’d better go get your application in, like now.”

“Now, wait a minute, I never said—”

“She’s not goin’ anywhere until I get that hair under control,” Luralene announced over the tinkling bell as she returned, marching across the floor like an army sergeant.

“Geez, Luralene,” Maddie said, “you got this place bugged or what?”

The older woman shooed the others out of her way, smiled for Sierra—who flinched—then set the girl on the floor with instructions to go play for a little longer, Mama needed to get all prettied up now. Then she spun Faith around, shoving her back toward the sink so hard she bounced. “She’s already missed one appointment, she’s mine now. However, to save time…” She took the hose to Faith’s hair again, working shampoo into her scalp hard enough to deep-clean her brain. “Why don’t one of you gals go over to the Homeland and pick up an application for her?”

There was no point in arguing.