WILLY

The nice thing about living over your mother’s garage was the ability to sneak into her kitchen when your first waking thought was, “Crap, I don’t have any damn coffee.”

As a rule, I preferred to have a couple cups of coffee before doing anything else, but I suspected once my mother got hold of me, she was going to want my company for a while. I showered and dressed, shoving my wallet and key ring in my pocket before going downstairs into the garage. The door to the kitchen had already been unlocked, so she was probably expecting me. Either that or she’d ignored me when I’d told her to start locking it before leaving for California the last time.

Not only was she expecting me, but she set a mug of coffee on the table in front of my usual chair just as I walked into the kitchen.

“Good morning, cariño”

“Morning, Ma.”

I sat and took a bracing gulp of hot coffee.

“And thank you.”

“If you’d called to tell me you were coming home, I would have made sure you had coffee upstairs. And other groceries, too.”

We’d already covered that, so I just nodded and kept drinking. I only put up a token protest when she pulled the big cast iron frying pan free of its hook.

That was the bacon and eggs pan.

“You don’t have to make me breakfast, Ma.”

“Nonsense. It’s so good to have you home, so you can humor your old mother today.”

“I don’t see an old mother in this kitchen. Just a beautiful one.”

She laughed at the line I’d been using on her for as long as I could remember, having been taught by my dad how to flatter her, and pulled bacon out of the fridge.

“What are you going to do today?”

I wrapped my hands around the mug and shrugged.

“I need to hit the grocery store, obviously. And I figure I’ll visit some old stomping grounds and see if I can scrounge up some work.”

“You just got home. Relax for a few days.”

“You know me, Ma. I’m not one for relaxing.”

“You got that from your father. The man couldn’t sit still for five minutes. Always had to be working on something.”

The pang of loss didn’t take me by surprise. It happened every time my dad was mentioned, but I was careful not to let it show. My mother’s mouth was curved in a bittersweet smile, and I knew talking about her husband helped her through the grief.

“So Ma, what’s Ruelle’s story?” I asked, now that we were alone.

“Do you remember when a guy named Armando Garcia was all over the news for misusing and losing millions of dollars of other peoples’ money?”

I shrugged.

“Vaguely. I don’t pay much attention to financial crap.”

“He’s Ruelle’s ex-husband. She grew up wealthy and then married into even more money. But she divorced him and the banks took literally everything. She fought as long as she could, but those kinds of lawyers are expensive.”

If they came from wealth, it explained their manners and the way the kid had set the table.

“Oof” I let out a breath, “That’s one hell of a fall.”

My mother nodded, dropping bacon onto the hot cast iron so it sizzled.

“But she brushed herself off and she’s starting over.”

“Ma, you’re not giving her money, are you?”

“That would be my business, Guillermo” she replied sharply.

Wow.

“But I know you’re asking because you’re a loving son, so I’ll tell you. No, Willy. I haven’t given her money and she’s never asked me for any. She’s not trying to fleece the doddering old widow.”

I chuckled.

“I’m not sure what doddering really means, Ma, but I’m fairly certain you’ve never doddered a day in your life.”

An hour later, fueled by my mother’s delicious breakfast, I was in my truck and ready to face going to town. Since I’d be stocking my fridge with perishables, I had to leave the grocery store for last.

First was letting it be known I was back in town and looking for work. I had enough money to get by, but I’d burned a lot of my savings with multiple flights to New Hampshire in the last year and I’d insisted on paying for my father’s headstone so that money could go into my mother’s savings. The last thing I wanted was for her to have to look for work.

I decided to start at what took second for the title of gossip central— being barely edged out by the coffee counter at the Crossroads Cafe— among the town’s male citizens, which was The Tool Garage. I’d gone to school with Daniel Pettigrew, who represented the fourth generation for the family-owned store.

“Hey, I heard you were back in town,” Daniel said as soon as I stepped into the store.

“The hell you did. I got off the highway last night and drove straight home.”

“You know how it is” he reached over the counter to shake my hand. “Heard you drove instead of flying, and the bed of your truck wasn’t empty.”

I laughed. Many times I’d thought somebody—probably the lady who ran the library—had security cameras hidden all over town and sent out bulletins.

“I’m staying, Dani.”

“Glad to hear it. You know my Rosario would be looked after, but it’ll be good for her to have you back.”

I nodded. My mother’s friends had dropped hints that were about as subtle as sledgehammers at my dad’s funeral, but I hadn’t been ready to come home then. I’d still been too wrapped up in my own grief.

“Listen, Dani. Do you know anybody hiring?”

Daniel thought about it for a minute.

“Elton’s kid went off to college this year and his arthritis has been acting up. He might need somebody, especially with the cold setting in.”

The Windshield Vipers.

Both of us had worked part-time in Elton Floyd’s auto repair shop during high school, so it would be weird to circle back to him. But I’d been doing landscaping for a while and I preferred working on cars.

“I’ll stop by. Appreciate the heads up.”

“You ready to part with Big Red yet?”

I laughed. Daniel had been trying to get his hands on my 1983 Honda three-wheeler, which were all called Big Red, for years. They’d stopped making the machine in 1987 because they were considered dangerous, so they could be hard to come by.

Daniel was probably hoping the fact that I was looking for work might meant I needed money and, if I did, I might finally be willing to sell the machine that had been sitting under a tarp in the back corner of my parents’ garage for a lot of years.

“Not a chance, Dani Phantom.”

“I’ve only been asking for about twenty years, Guilli. I’ll wear you down.”

“Have you ever heard of eBay?”

Daniel snorted.

“I helped you rebuild and repair that machine more times than I can count. I want her and if I have to wait for twenty more years, bud, I’ll wait.”

Oh he’ll be waiting a good long time.

But Daniel already knew that. I shook his hand again and went on to the next thing. Elton was not only glad to see me, but happy to learn I was looking for work. The wage was pretty great. Even so, I didn’t have a lot of expenses and the hours were flexible. I already knew I liked working for Elton. We shook hands and I agreed to show up on Monday morning.

After hitting the grocery store, I drove back to the house and carried the groceries up to my apartment. I put away the refrigerated stuff, but left everything else for later. I’d bought my mother a half-gallon of her favorite ice cream and I wanted to sneak it into her freezer now, since her car hadn’t been in the garage.

After doing just that, I decided to leave her a note and went in search of pen and paper, but stopped short when I walked into the living room.

What the hell?

Ruelle was at my mother’s computer desk, drumming her fingers on the table as she read something on the screen. Her hair was loose today and she was twirling strands of it around her right index finger.

“Hi.”

She whirled around, clearly startled.

“Guillermo! I didn’t hear you come in.”

William. Willy.

“I know all the squeaky spots in the floor,” I said instead, with a small smile. “Years of practice during my teenage years.”

“Did you ever sneak out or back in without your mom knowing?”

I laughed.

“No. Hearing is definitely her superpower. Speaking of Mom, where did she run off to?”

“Her friend Inés down the street has her grandsons today. Andrés gets along well with them, so they all went to the park. Rosario asked me to tell you they won’t be too long.”

That answered the question of whether or not my mother knew Ruelle Espinosa was alone in her house. While I did occasionally think my mother was too easy to give her trust, I had to admit her neighbor didn’t really set off alarm bells in my gut.

At least not for that reason.

With her cheeks still a warm pink from being startled and her hair framing her face, I was struck again by how pretty she was. Then the laptop screen over her shoulder caught my eye and I frowned.

“Are you looking up smoke detectors?”

Ruelle sighed and turned back to the laptop.

“I have one beeping and it's driving me nuts”

“It needs a new battery.”

“Oh I’ve got that much. Now I’m trying to find the right model of smoke detector to get the right battery and learn how to take the cover thingy off.”

Since her back was to me, I didn’t bother hiding my grin.

“It’ll take a 9 volt, and you should do them all at the same time. Actually you should have done it with the time change, that way you know you have fresh batteries twice a year.”

“Oh thank you for the tip, Guiller— I mean Willy.”

I smiled.

“And the covers pop right off. I can run over and do it for you if you'd like.”

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I winced. I needed to make sure Ruelle didn’t get it in her head I was interested in her and being alone with her in her house wasn’t a good idea. But I wouldn’t retract the offer. She didn’t need to be struggling on a stepladder doing something I could do easily.

I’d be in and out in less than ten minutes.

***

RUE

Knowing Rosario the way I did, I wasn’t surprised Willy offered to change the batteries in my smoke detectors.

They were just good people.

But I’d promised myself when I got on my feet again, I would never depend on a man ever again. I was going to learn how to take care of myself.

“Thanks,” I said, “But I should learn how to do it so I can do it in the future.”

“Okay, how about I do a few to show you how, which will be a lot easier than watching a how-to video and then running across the street before you forget what they did, and then you can do the rest.”

What he said made sense. Maybe part of standing on my own two feet was knowing when I needed help.

“If you’re sure you don’t mind, I would appreciate it. I remember seeing a bunch of 9 volt batteries in the cabinet over the fridge.”

“Probably there for the smoke detectors. You want to do it now?”

Five minutes later, Guillermo Arriaga was standing on a stepladder in my living room and I was trying not to stare at his eye-level ass in worn jeans. It was a tempting view and I was having trouble paying attention to his demonstration.

“You just lift up on the cover a bit and give it a counterclockwise twist and it’ll come free,” he said, and showed me how easy it was. “Here, I’ll trade you for a battery.”

I took the plastic cover and handed him a fresh battery, then watched as he pulled the old one out and replaced it. Then I handed him the cover and he popped it back on. It looked pretty easy and I'd felt a little silly for not trying to figure it out before looking it up on the internet.

“My mom told me a little bit about you,” he said as he did the next one. “But not why, of all the places in New England or even the country, you ended up in this town.”

“A friend of mine has a summer home on Lake Winnipesaukee and when Andrés and I were out of options, she let us stay there. But then they wanted to have some friends—mutual friends of ours, actually—up for a Labor Day cookout and she was sure I’d understand how awkward it would be for everybody if I was there” I sighed, “Plus, this is the town the hand picked when Andrés spun our travel wheel.”

Willy arched a brow.

“Don't ask” I chuckled. “Luckily I was able to get a job here, so... home sweet home.”

“No offense, but you have some really shitty friends.”

As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t deny that. And as shocking and disappointing as Armando’s betrayal had been, being dropped by the circle of women I’d thought of as my best friends had been almost as painful.

“Most of them tried for a while,” I said. “But it wasn’t just a matter of me being disgraced. Armando actually stole money from them. If I’d stayed in Upper East side Manhattan or The Hamptons, some of them may have kept in touch with me, but I couldn’t. The kids were so horrible to Andrés at school.”

He carried the ladder up the stairs to do the hallway smoke detector, which was the one beeping.

“How’s he doing here?”

“Really good. He likes most of his classmates and his best friend’s name is Alma... something. Contreras?”

Willy laughed, and the sound of it made me shiver. It wasn’t the soft polite laugh I was used to. It was deep and genuine.

“Alma Contreras’ old man beat the crap out of me in second grade. I returned the favor in fourth grade and by sixth grade, we were inseparable. They’re a good family, so I’m sure Alma’s a decent kid.”

“That’s good to know. It’s kind of a fresh start for Drés and we had some rocky days when they asked why he didn’t have a dad and he was probably more honest than he needed to be, but kids get past things pretty quickly and none of them seem to care anymore.”

“It’s a fresh start for both of you.”

“Yes, it is, and I’m thankful we’re doing okay.”