Once in a Lifetime. Gwynne Forster
lovemaking as they had, they had solid ties whether they liked it or not. Besides, he hadn’t cleared that agenda with Alexis. She was right when she said he should have told her. He didn’t want to think of his reaction if she’d had a man in her room when he knocked on her door.
He sat in the darkened den with his feet on the coffee table and his hands locked behind his head. If he got Alexis out of his system, what would he do about Tara?
The next morning, Alexis opened the liquor cabinet, her heart in her throat. She needn’t have worried. Her whole being awakened, rejuvenated like new life in early spring, when her gaze took in the six bottles of dry white vermouth on the bottom shelf facing the door where Telford couldn’t have missed them. He had deliberately refused to give Evangeline the martini she asked for. When the woman mistreated Tara with her rudeness, she lost points with Telford, and he took steps immediately to shorten his time in her company.
Several afternoons later, Alexis walked with Tara along the road leading to what would soon become the new Harrington warehouse. They paused at the quaint bridge—logs grayed from the wind and rain and flat from having borne the weight of humans and animals for a century or longer—that straddled the small brook marking what was the end of Harrington land until the brothers bought the adjacent acreage for the warehouse. Tara picked up a few pebbles and tossed them into the moving stream. Lilies of different colors had sprouted up in the patches of briarberries and blueberries that grew on either side, and she wondered about lizards and snakes. A color picture of either one could give her nightmares.
Holding Tara’s hand securely, she walked on. With so much free time on her hands and none of the social obligations she’d had as Jack’s wife, she longed to take up once more the hobby she loved. She planned to begin by sculpting wood and hoped to find some hardwood on the premises. She stopped short when Tara said, “I’m going to ask that man over there if he has any little children for me to play with.”
“Honey, you can’t just…”
But Tara dropped her hand and ran to a tall man who was speaking with a much shorter one and told him what she wanted.
Obviously impressed, the man introduced himself to Alexis. “I’m Allen, and I work for the Harringtons. You have a charming little girl. It’s too bad they’re so fragile.” His eyes mirrored a sadness, and she knew at once that his hurt was deep-seated and raw. “I’m afraid I don’t have any little girls, and my boys are teenagers.”
She didn’t know why, but her heart ached for the man. “I’m so sorry we bothered you. Tara thinks the world is filled with people who love her, and she doesn’t hesitate to ask them for proof of it. She doesn’t meet many strangers.”
He looked past her into the distance. “Wouldn’t it be great if we were all like Tara?”
“Can’t I play with teenagers, Mummy?”
“No, dear,” she said, and explained why. She thanked the man and walked on. They’d walked almost to the construction site when she realized where they were.
“Let’s go back, Tara. Come on.”
Too late. A red Buick station wagon that bore the imprint of a lion’s head encircled by the words HARRINGTON, INC. ARCHITECTS, ENGINEERS AND BUILDERS stopped beside them. She knew its driver before she saw him and could have kicked herself for going there.
“Howdy, ma’am. I was wondering when you’d find your way back.” He reached over and opened the front passenger door. “Hop in.”
She squashed the urge to smash his ego. “Sorry. We aren’t going your way.”
He smiled in a way she supposed some people considered captivating—so sure of himself—but he only made her flesh crawl. “You don’t know which way I’m going, babe.”
She took Tara’s hand and prepared to walk on. “No matter where you’re going, it’s opposite from where I’m headed. Come on, Tara.”
When it came to walking and looking backward, Tara was an expert. She stopped and turned Tara to face her. “I need your cooperation. So come on.”
“I’m cop-ter-ating, Mummy, but I don’t like the man.”
That squared it; if Tara didn’t like a man, he bore watching. Later, she mentioned it to Henry.
“You mean Biff? That fellow goes through women like water through a sieve. Tara got sense. As a foreman, he’s first-class, but as a man, he ain’t worth poop.”
“I’ll be happy never to see him again.”
“I hope your happiness don’t depend on that. He’s like a weed. Always shows up where you don’t want to see it.”
Tara barged in, ending that conversation. “Mr. Henry, do you have any little children for me to play with?”
“Nope, not a one. Sorry to say.”
Tara needed playmates. “Maybe I’d better get her into summer camp, or…” She couldn’t think of an alternative.
He sorted the potatoes according to size, selected five and began scrubbing them. “Ain’t no summer camp around here. This ain’t Philadelphia, you know.”
She dragged a stool over to the counter and began stringing beans. “There aren’t any children around here. What do you suggest I do?”
“The church school is open all summer. Telford teaches music over there a couple of mornings a week. Maybe he can tell you something.”
“Of course she can go with me,” Telford told Alexis at supper that night. “You want to learn the violin, Tara?”
“I wanna learn the keyboard. The piano.”
“I’ll teach you.”
Alexis imagined that she gaped at him. “I knew you played the violin, but the piano?”
“I studied that first, starting when I was about Tara’s age. I didn’t start the violin till I was thirteen, but it’s my real love.”
“You ain’t bad on the guitar, neither,” Henry said. “You gonna take Tara to church school with you, ain’t you?”
“Sure, if it’s all right with Alexis. In the fall, she’ll take the bus to school.”
She listened to them, weaving her more tightly into their lives. Closing the hatch. If she wanted to get away from them, she wasn’t sure she could. They gave her what she’d never had, a world free of ugliness and selfishness. Warmth. Peace. Chills streaked through her when she remembered that she was deceiving Telford, and he’d warned her that he demanded honesty.
“Mummy, what’s a unrest?”
“It means…well, it means someone is unhappy.”
“Mr. Allen told that man some was coming.”
Telford put his fork down and spoke in a voice that was unnaturally quiet. “Which Allen are you talking about?”
Alexis completed the story for him. His demeanor, tense and apprehensive, aroused her concern and compassion, for she had never seen him when he didn’t appear to be solidly in control.
“Excuse me,” he said. “I have to make a call. I’ll be back in a minute.”
Telford dashed up the stairs to his bedroom. He wanted absolute privacy for that call. “Allen, this is Telford.” He repeated the essence of Tara’s story. “What’s this all about?”
“Sparkman Manufacturing won’t negotiate with the union, and old man Sparkman’s got most of the other builders in the surrounding counties to side with him. If the union strikes on Sparkman and his cronies, it’ll force the rest of us into a sympathy strike.”
“I hadn’t heard anything about this. You know I’d be the last man to join Fentress Sparkman in anything.”
“Yeah,