John MacLeish dropped down from the cab of his black Ford F-250 pickup onto the pot holed packed earth of the lane and examined the travel trailer in front of him. He looked at the directions again to reassure himself that he’d come to the right place.
Taking a look around the shaded clearing he spotted the front end of a faded red Hyundai Excel poking out from behind a copse of sumac.
“Older red Hyundai, just like Dr. Zelenko said,” he muttered to himself. “This must be the place.” He felt a wave of disgust expecting that Lucinda was one of his brother’s usual trailer trash women. Although, he reminded himself, Rob’s last girlfriend Elaine had been a pleasant surprise.
He heard a dog bark. A big dog if the deep tone meant anything. He squared his shoulders and began to walk around his truck. His foot reached the bottom step of the dilapidated roofed porch along the side of the trailer when the door creaked open and out stepped a tall fit brunette. She wore a bright yellow sundress with large print red and blue flowers that came to mid-thigh, exposing a long expanse of slender leg that ended in bare feet with bright pink toenails and a Celtic knotwork tattoo ringing her left ankle. He continued looking upward and noticed a brown tattoo on her right thigh that disappeared under her skirt. Continuing his upward examination he saw another tattoo of what seemed to be a ladybug peeking out of the very low neckline of her dress. Her medium length frizzy brown hair was caught up in a rainbow hair clip. Once he was able to get past the lip ring, nose stud, multiple earrings and eyebrow piercing he found a wounded and hostile expression waiting for him. He caught himself shaking his head as he wondered why such a beautiful woman would choose to deface that beauty with tattoos and piercings. Then he wondered why his brother would associate with a Jezebel like her.
Lucinda Wilkinson crossed her arms and asked, curtly, “Who are you?” Her blue eyes glittered with an ice cold glare at the self-righteous judgmental expression on his face.
John took off his MacLeish Construction ball cap and said, “John MacLeish. Are you Lucinda Wilkinson?”
“Why do you want to know?” There was the sound of muted scratching and a whimper. Without taking her eyes off John, Lucy reached back to open the door and a huge Great Dane-wolfhound cross emerged from the trailer. The dog sat down next to Lucy at her hand signal and eyed John suspiciously.
“Did you know Master Corporal Nicolas Osiecki?”
She paused with suspicion showing clearly on her face before grudgingly admitting, “Yes.”
John saw that the front of the sundress was pushed forward slightly as she shifted. He allowed himself a small amount of relief at her response.
John took a deep breath then asked, “Do you need any help with anything?”
Lucy felt her temper snap. In a sarcastic tone she replied, “Let’s see. The bastard who got me pregnant won’t acknowledge me, my mother disowned me, my thesis advisor stole my research, the university cancelled my scholarship, I ache all over because the only job I could find is waiting tables and the only place I can afford to live in is a ten year old trailer in the sticks that my late grandfather left me. Of course I don’t need any help, Mr.? What was your name again?”
“MacLeish.”
She felt a twinge in her back as she took a step forward. “Mr. MacLeish, the only person in this world who seems to care anything for me is four and a half months away from being born.”
John stepped back a pace and took a deep breath. He muttered, “A promise is a promise.”
“What was that, Mr. MacLeish?”
John was tempted to curse. “I said, ‘A promise is a promise.’”
“What do you mean?”
“I promised my brother I’d look after you.”
“Who? That bastard Nick?”
“No. My brother was Rob. Rob MacLeish. Nick’s sergeant.”
“Why would he make you promise to help me?” Lucy looked somewhat longingly at a chair on the porch as she massaged the small of her back again. The dog sat but was obviously on guard.
“Because Rob promised Nick he would help you.” John caught the confusion and fatigue that crossed her face. “Please sit, if you need to.”
Lucy turned and lowered herself carefully onto an ancient lawn chair with one of the nylon straps missing from the back. “So why would your brother make that kind of promise?”
“Because Nick asked him to look after you.”
“So you’ve come here to tell me that Nick had a change of heart.”
“Facing death does that to some people.”
“Well, when I finally found out that ‘Sickie’ was Nick Osiecki and wrote him care of his unit he wrote back and said he didn’t remember who I was. I wrote right back to tell him where and when we’d met but I never heard a word back.”
“Nick was shot by a Taliban sniper while on patrol. He hung on for a week or so but the doctors couldn’t save him from the lung infection and the internal damage.”
“So your brother asked you to look me up?” She gave him a skeptical look.
“He said that he and Nick closed down a bar in St. Albert two nights before they left for Kandahar. They had to wait for you to get off work. He said he’d been seeing a girl named Elaine and everyone was going back to Elaine’s to party.” An evident expression of disgust appeared on his face.
Lucy got a distant look then asked, “Is your brother also called ‘Dog’?”
Another look of distaste crossed John’s face. “He was. A couple of guys here called him Dog, but mostly it was his army buddies who called him that.”
She gave a reluctant nod. “Dog was a good guy. He helped me find my car. Too bad his buddy Sickie Nickie wasn’t.”
“Rob asked me to look you up when Nick died. It took me almost a month to track you down.”
“Nick could have given him my return address from the letter. Zara would have let him know where I was.”
“Maybe he did.”
“You don’t know?”
“Miss Wilkinson, all I had to go on was the name of the bar you worked at, the name you used on your name tag which was Cindi and that you were Elaine’s friend. There was nothing useful in either Nick’s or Rob’s personal effects. Nick’s parents let me look through his stuff when I flew out to Kelowna, but they didn’t want to believe that Nick would leave a girl alone and pregnant. Eventually I got one of the other waitresses to give me your full name and she got your old roommate to put me in touch with Elaine who had your Ottawa address. And I got this address from Dr. Zelenko after convincing her that I wasn’t a stalker. But I am glad you moved back to the Valley because it’s close enough for me to actually help you and keep my promise to Rob.”
‘Personal effects’ registered through her anger. She calmed down enough to really look at the big man standing at the bottom of the steps for the first time. He was bigger and wider than either Nick or Dog, at least six foot two and solidly built. He had a strong resemblance to Dog, at least the cell phone pictures she’d had Elaine email her during that ill-considered party.
He was dressed in a tradesman’s uniform: industrial strength ugly green trousers, steel toed boots, long sleeved heavy-duty ugly green shirt with ‘John’ embroidered above the pocket, the collar of a white undershirt showing despite the summer heat, and a ball cap in his hand. There were no rings on either hand, but that wasn’t unusual for men who worked with their hands. The tanned face showed little emotion but his blue eyes were perusing her with a mixture of fascination and disgust but mostly disgust. The same looks she’d gotten from her mother when she’d gotten her lip pierced. The same looks that had led to her decision to move back here from Edmonton.
If he dropped the scowl he’d be handsome, she thought. She realized that an awkward pause was building. “Personal effects?” she finally asked.
John’s face briefly showed the depth of his grief before shuttering. “Rob was killed by a roadside bomb while on patrol. You may have heard about the woman reporter who was killed last month in Afghanistan?”
She nodded. “The CBC was all over that story.”
“Rob was her driver.”
“Oh.”
The awkward pause returned. John tried once more. “Do you need any help?”
Lucy stood. “Thank you for offering but no thanks.”
John looked confused. “Why not?”
She looked fiercely in his direction. “Because I refuse to be anyone’s obligation ever again, Mr. MacLeish. I’ve had enough of that from my mother. Now, get off my property.”
John dug into his shirt pocket and left a card on the railing. “If you change your mind…”
“I won’t,” she interrupted. She turned her attention to the dog, “Bruno!’ She made a hand signal and the dog stood at alert then moved to the top of the stairs and bared his fangs.
“All right. I’m going.” He walked back to his truck and climbed into the cab.
He paused for a moment to watch as she went into the trailer without a backward glance with Bruno following devotedly at her heels. He started the truck and began the hour long drive back to his restored stone farmhouse near Kemptville. “Well, Rob, she made it clear that she doesn’t want my help. I tried.” But he felt a twinge of guilt because he knew he hadn’t tried hard enough.
Lucy made herself a cup of tea and replayed the conversation. Maybe Nick did have a change of heart but she was not going to accept help from someone who begrudged it. That was a bitter fruit indeed. She reached down to pat Bruno’s bony head and thought about going into Smiths Falls to get a paper. She was going to need day care before too long and to afford that she’d need a better paying job than waiting tables at the diner.
She hung her head and let the tears flow. She was so tired of being lonely. So tired. Then she saw her rumpled bed beckon invitingly and her back and feet overruled her plan to go out.