“No, I did all right. But despite doing all right, I have a slight disability. One leg is a little shorter than the other and sometimes I limp even with a lift in my shoe. I can stiffen up, but not badly. It doesn’t hold me back. Even though I passed the written and physical tests, they didn’t hire me. I think they finally took me on just to get rid of me. I was like a bad penny. I just wouldn’t quit.”
“Is that a fact?” Troy said, earning a glare from Iris.
“Was it hard? The testing?” she asked.
“Very hard. I studied and trained. For four years. After getting my degree.”
“Did you always want to be a cop?”
“No,” he said. “I always wanted to be a football player. After that was no longer possible I got very interested in police work. But it took a lot to convince them I wouldn’t be a handicap. Hell, there are fat guys in the department that I could catch standing still.”
It was very hard to imagine that his father didn’t admire that. But right now she was looking at his lip, which had split open again. “Um,” she said, pointing. He dabbed. “I think we should at least call Scott Grant, ask him to have a look. Maybe put a butterfly bandage on it.”
“We?” he said.
“Well, since we’re all having dinner together...”
“He can take care of his own lip, Iris,” Troy said irritably.
“I’m an expert with butterflies. Besides, I want food,” Seth said.
“Well, I can recommend the crab cakes, but they’re a little spicy,” Troy said. “You might want to go with something bland. Maybe pureed foods.” He touched his lower lip for emphasis. “Clam chowder is pretty easy to eat.”
“Are you being nice to me because I got slugged?”
Troy shook his head. “I was just being thoughtful. I get that way when people bleed in front of me.”
Seth dabbed his lip again. “If you’d rather I just leave, I understand,” he said.
“Oh, by all means, eat. If that’s what you want to do,” Troy said.
Seth stubbornly ordered a bowl of clam chowder and crab cakes. But it wasn’t easy. The hot chowder made him wince and when he took a bite of bread, he left blood on it. “Fuck,” he said, looking at the red-stained piece of bread he put back on the plate.
“You’re bleeding on the bread, man,” Troy said, barely hiding the pleasure in his voice.
“Yeah, that must hurt,” Iris said. She got out her cell phone and dialed Scott.
“What are you doing?” Seth and Troy both asked.
“I’m going to help you, Seth. Because you can’t help yourself.” Then she spoke into the phone. “Scott? Can you hear me? Where are you?” There was a lot of crowd noise in the background.
“I’m in Bandon with the team,” he yelled into the phone.
“I didn’t know you went with them to away games,” she said.
“Is this better?” Scott asked. “I put my jacket over my head.”
“Much better. But I guess you’re unavailable.”
“Peyton’s in Thunder Point,” he said, speaking of his physician’s assistant. “She’s babysitting my kids, but that’s okay. They’re portable. What’s up?”
“Well, I’m out to dinner with Seth and he had to break up a fight at Cliff’s and got a split lip.”
“Can you keep your voice down? Please?” Seth asked.
“Oh, sure,” she said. “So, I think it might need a stitch or two. It won’t stop bleeding. Not exactly hemorrhaging, but it’s kind of a big cut. He’s...uh...bleeding on his dinner.”
“No problem. I’ll call Peyton and ask her to meet you at the clinic. When can you be there?”
“Fifteen minutes?”
“That’ll work. She’s good with stitches.”
“That’s great, Scott. Thanks. Oh—what’s the score?”
“Twenty-one—fourteen, us! And it’s their homecoming.”
She laughed. “Way to go, Thunder Point!” When she disconnected, it seemed that all eyes were on her. “Twenty-one—fourteen, Thunder Point,” she said to the dining room. A bunch of pleased sighs and soft laughter answered her. She smiled at Seth.
“I don’t want stitches.”
“Maybe she’ll say you don’t need any,” Troy said.
“No, she won’t. Doctors never do that. They love to cut and sew.”
“Just a couple, Seth,” Iris said.
“I hate needles.” His voice was quiet. And very grumpy.
“That figures,” Troy said.
“After all you’ve been through? After all those surgeries? You’re afraid of needles?” Iris asked.
“I’m not afraid! I said I hate them! And why do you suppose I do? Could it be the number of times I’ve been stuck?”
“Well, don’t worry. I’ll be with you. Peyton is very gentle and very nice. And if you start to feel weird, you can lie down and close your eyes.” She looked at Troy. “Troy will come, too. We’ll lend moral support.”
“As fun as that sounds, I think I’m done here,” Troy said. “I’m sure the two of you will be fine. I’m going to stay and finish my beer. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of dinner.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Seth said. He raised his hand to flag a waiter. “You know what, Iris? You’ve always been very bossy.”
“Oh, Seth, I don’t think that’s true.”
He asked the waiter for the check and the young man shook his head. “Cliff says there’s no check for this table tonight, Deputy. We appreciate the help.”
Troy sat back and sipped his beer. “So, there is an advantage to sharing my date with you.”
“Yeah, well let’s not make it a habit, okay?” Seth stood and dug into his pocket. He fished a twenty out of his wallet and handed it to the waiter. “Tell him thanks, and here’s a little something for the tip bucket.”
Then with his ice on his lip, he escorted Iris out of the restaurant.
“Are you going to be good and follow me to the clinic?” she asked.
“What if I just drive out of town?” he asked.
“I’ll call your mother,” she threatened.
“You know, Iris, I had hoped to use this lip tonight....”
“Well, get over it, Seth. You didn’t have a hope of using it on me, so drive to the clinic and I’ll be right behind you. Then you can go home, where I hope you have some ice cream.”
Seven
Peyton’s car sat in front of the clinic—she’d beat them. The lights were on and the door was unlocked when they arrived. “Oh, boy, I bet that hurt. Do you have any loose teeth?” were her words of greeting.
“No,” Seth said.
“Well, if they don’t get punched out, they’ll usually tighten back up. Come on back. Iris, will you lock that door, please? And we’ll leave the Closed sign as it is.”
Seth followed Peyton and Iris followed Seth. Peyton led them to a room, the largest patient room, where there was an exam table, a sink and a cupboard that reached from floor to ceiling stuffed with supplies. It also came with two little kids in their pajamas. The boy was sitting on the doctor’s stool and the little girl was on the only chair in the room.
“Will and Jenny, what are you two doing in here?” Peyton asked. “You’re supposed to be in the lunch room.”
“Can we watch?” Jenny asked.
“If we’re quiet?” Will added.
“I don’t know,” she said, looking at Seth.
He shrugged.
“Okay. Seth, sit on the table for me. This isn’t going to take much. Or long. You’ll be done in ten minutes.” She put on a pair of rubber gloves and touched the laceration. “Not too bad. But it definitely needs a few stitches. Maybe five or six...”
“Six?” he asked loudly.
> “Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to clean it—just a little Betadine, a surgical disinfectant. Then I’ll put a couple of stitches on the inside where your teeth cut it and then a couple outside on your lip and skin. That way the wound won’t heal on top first and leave scar tissue underneath that will give your lower lip a misshapen look. A lump. You don’t want to look like you’re pouting for the rest of your life.”
“I don’t care,” he said, clearly pouting.
Iris crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him. She was sending him a message not to be juvenile, but she had no confidence he was receiving it. Men were all alike in so many ways—he could take on a couple of big men who wouldn’t mind beating him to a pulp, but the idea of a few little stitches had him running scared.
Peyton put a drape around Seth and swabbed his lips with brownish-red liquid. Then she drew a syringe and Seth went completely pale. Iris wasn’t the only one who saw it. Everyone saw it.
“I’m just going to numb it,” Peyton said.
“Just a little stick,” Jenny said.
“Like a mosquito bite,” Will said.
“You know what?” Peyton said. “I’ll have a better angle if you lie down here. Go ahead, just lie down.” While she was talking, she was holding the syringe behind her back. She eased him back and suddenly snaked the syringe out. Holding his head down with one hand, she gave him a little stick with the other.
“Ouch!” he said.
She gave him two more sticks in a rapid movement, then pulled his lip out and gave him two more before he could complain. She put the syringe on a tray. “You’ll be out of here in a few minutes,” she said. Opening a sterile package containing her materials, she picked up a hemostat and touched Seth’s lip. “How is it? You feel that?”
“Feel what?”
“Never mind. If you’ll just be still for another minute...” She picked up a curved needle with the hemostat and stitched—one, two, three—on the inside of his lip. She knotted and cut. Then one, two, three on the outside, knotted and cut. A small bandage was applied, she snapped off her latex gloves, all her accoutrements were tossed on the tray and covered with the drape that had protected his shirt. “You can remove that bandage in the morning. Be careful shaving. Come in and get the stitches out in seven to ten days. You’re good,” she said. Almost as an afterthought, she touched the scar on his cheek. “Whoever did this did a beautiful job.”
Seth sat up. “Considering the EMT said he could see my molars through my cheek, not bad, huh?”
Will was standing in front of Seth, holding out a lollipop.
“A parting gift?” Seth asked.
“You get candy if you get through it,” Will said.
“Do you need help cleaning up?” Iris asked. “Or locking up?”
“No, I’m fine. It won’t take five minutes. Then the kids and I are going to go home, finish our movie and they’re going to bed,” Peyton said.
“Thanks for opening up,” Seth said.
“Aw, you’d do the same for me,” she replied.
Iris and Seth stood on the sidewalk outside the clinic. “You were very brave,” Iris said. Then she laughed.
Seth just unwrapped the lollipop and stuck it in his mouth. “I had higher hopes for this evening.”
“It couldn’t possibly have been more entertaining,” she said. “I’ll take you out for ice cream. Come on. If we go back to Cliff’s, we can probably have it for free.”
“I’m not going back there.” He looked at his watch. “McDonald’s is still open. Let’s go there. We can eat it in the car. You drive.”
“All right, that’s not too much to ask,” Iris said. “Then I’ll drop you here to pick up your truck. And, Deputy, be sure to mind your manners or we’ll be putting stitches in the other side of your mouth.”
“Do I look crazy? I don’t want to tangle with any more scary people tonight.”
* * *
After going through the drive-through, Iris and Seth sat in the McDonald’s parking lot with their soft ice cream. He had vanilla. She had vanilla with chocolate, strawberry, sprinkles and whipped cream. Since the football game was out of town, the parking lot wasn’t crowded.
“Troy was hoping for an evening alone with you,” Seth said.
“Nah,” she said.
“He was. I screwed up his plans.”
“At great cost,” she said. “Why did you come back here?”
“Here?”
“Thunder Point,” she clarified.
“Besides the fact that it’s home? Well, there’s lots of unfinished business.”
“Me? Am I some of your unfinished business?”
“Definitely, but I had no idea how unfinished it was until the day I cut your grass. Another reason is my father. He’s seventy-two and he’s not mellowing. Just the opposite, I think. He’s still angry with me, too, but the reasons are entirely different. I really want my father to let go of that if he can, for my mother’s sake. It makes her so unhappy, having Norm resist me and act hostile toward me the way he does.”
“I don’t understand why he’s so angry.”
“Because he thinks I had the world by the balls and threw it away by getting in that wreck. Norm was really disappointed—he expected so much more from me. When I left Thunder Point for college, the whole town was proud of me. I had a great freshman year, short-listed for the Heisman, ending with a pro contract. I don’t think it ever occurred to my dad that just because I was a good football player in high school and my one year of college, there was no guarantee I’d perform in the NFL. Hell, I might’ve wrecked my knee or my head in my first season. It’s a risky game.”
“You also could’ve been hit by a bus in Seattle. Then would he be mad?”
“Probably. I’ve tried letting it be Norm’s problem, but I don’t think it’s good for him and I know it isn’t good for my mom. My brothers have had about enough, too. Norm doesn’t make family gatherings very soothing. I’ll do what I can with him. I realize there might be nothing I can do.”
“But you’re going to try.”
“I’m going to try,” Seth affirmed. “I love my father. I don’t enjoy his company very often, but he’s my father. And the pain in my ass.”
That made her laugh for a moment, but she grew serious. “What about Sassy? More unfinished business?”
“Seriously?” he asked, stunned. “Iris, I didn’t even know Sassy still lived here.”
“I think she left and came back more than once. She was done with this one-horse town.”
“I had no idea she’d married Robbie Delaney,” he said. “I just found that out since coming back!”
“Twice,” Iris said. “I’m not sure of any of the details. We’ve never been friends. But she married him for a short time when they were real young, got divorced, married him again, got divorced again. I think there was another husband in there somewhere, but I’m not sure. I did see you talking to her down on the field at the last football game....”
“She found me,” he said. “I tend to stand out these days. Especially in uniform.”
“You didn’t look particularly annoyed,” she pointed out.
“I’m the town cop,” he said, spooning ice cream past his stitches. “I’m going to do my best not to look annoyed no matter who talks to me, no matter how annoying they are. But I did tell her that I’m not going out with her for any reason, not to catch up, not for coffee, not for anything.”
“She did ask you out!”
“Iris, I haven’t given Sassy a second of thought since high school. We dated for a few months in high school, I remember it as mostly horrible.”
“So do I,” she said in a fairly quiet voice. She cleared her throat. “She’s not fat and she’s not missing a tooth in front.”
He grinned. “That put me in a bad spot,” he said. “The first time I ran into her was at Cliff’s, at the bar. I was meeting Mac and she was picking up some takeout. I couldn’t drive the image you’d painted of her out of my mind and I couldn’t stop laughing. She accused me of laughing at her and stomped off. It was embarrassing,” he said, laughing, rubbing his eyes. When he looked up, he found Iris smiling. “I mean, hell, she does have pink hair. And she dresses like she’s still in high school.”
“Sorry,” she said.
“No, you’re not. You always liked getting me into trouble.”
“Not that much. Why are you bringing me gifts, leaving them on my doorstep?”
He lifted his spoon of ice cream. “I’m warming you up. I made a lot of mistakes and I get it, but, Iris, you’re chilly. And so fucking unforgiving.”
“I forgive you,” she said. “Now stop.”
“I’ll stop when I’m convinced,” he said. “Besides, I didn’t do as much of that as Troy did. I’m going to show you I’m not that kid anymore. I’m going to get you back.”
“You can’t talk to me that way, Seth,” she said seriously. “You can’t. You have to stop it. You’re going to hurt me.”
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “You’re going to trust me again.”
“And when you have a change of heart? Walk away and can’t remember what happened or...or who I am? When you get another bout of amnesia?”
He was shaking his head. “You have no idea how much that loss of memory haunts me because I always wanted that to—” He stopped. “Listen...”
“Stop,” she said. She turned toward him, holding her ice cream. “I have a couple of things to say. Things that need saying.” She took a breath. “Seth, I was just a girl. I’ve since become an expert on girls and let me tell you, they don’t get over things like that easily. I didn’t get over it easily. I’m ready to accept your apology, ready to move on, ready to say it’s finally in the past and go forward. I’m all grown up now, but I’m no better at being used or treated like crap. Do you hear me, Seth? Because if you mess with my feelings again, there’s no guarantee I’ll let it go. No simple apology is going to make it go away. In fact, we could become sworn enemies.”