The Widow of Conard County Page 8

  But it was painful, nonetheless, to have some idea of what he had once been, and to see him struggle now to get himself back.

  “Clothes,” he said again. “I need clothes.”

  It was like watching a man remember where he was, even though he’d only briefly wandered away.

  He looked at her. “Okay. What clothes do I need?”

  She hesitated. “How about you decide that? I have a washer, so it’s not like you need a whole lot. Go for comfort.”

  He looked down at himself and said with humor, “Just stuff that isn’t covered in paint.” Then he asked her, “What are you going to be doing in town?”

  “Buying groceries. The larder is getting low, to put it mildly.”

  “You should let me help pay for them.”

  “Good heavens, why? You’re working your butt off to help me out.”

  “The question,” he said with amazing insight, “is who is helping who.”

  She managed not to correct his grammar. The thought was good enough. “Maybe a little of both, big guy. Let me grab my purse, and we’ll go.”

  * * *

  It actually felt good to be heading into town again. During the school year, she made enough trips on weekdays that she tried to avoid them on weekends. Last summer, she had practically holed up, though, and this summer had been headed the same direction prior to Liam’s arrival. She supposed she had a lot to be grateful to him for. He was slowly digging her out of her shell.

  Of course, emerging from a shell meant becoming vulnerable again, open to the bad that life brought as well as the good. Still, she enjoyed the fresh air blowing through her rolled-down window, the view of the mountains and the fields they passed, the sense of being out of her rut even if it was just to visit the grocery.

  Before heading on to the grocery, she pulled into a parking place in front of Freitag’s Mercantile. “This is it,” she said. “The only place in town to buy some clothes.”

  Liam didn’t climb out immediately, simply watched the street, the handful of people coming and going, as if he were getting his bearings. She almost offered to come in with him, then reminded herself this was a man who had navigated his way halfway across the country to bring her a letter. She waited patiently, allowing him whatever space he might need.

  Then he smiled at her. “I’ll be out front when you’re done.”

  “Good enough.”

  She watched him climb out and walk into the store, the only hesitation that faint hitch in his stride. God, he was a hunk. Simply watching him walk away was enough to get her all hot and bothered. She squirmed a little in her seat and fought to redirect her thoughts to a safer place.

  It struck her then that she might have seriously underestimated him. This was not a man who feared anything, except possibly the glitches inside his own head.

  He was more than ready to wrap his hands around life and deal with it. The TBI might have left him with some deficits, and made him uncertain about what he could do, but apart from anxiety and anger, both of which she had read were normal for TBI survivors, he most definitely wasn’t afraid to plunge in.

  If he feared anything at all, it was his own reactions.

  As she backed out and drove on to the market, she reviewed her own reactions and assessments.

  It struck her that she’d been guilty of diminishing him, too. For all she kept giving him chances to do things, part of her didn’t expect him to succeed. How had she fallen into that trap?

  Because, answered the utterly truthful part of her mind, it made her safe from the sexual attraction she’d been trying to bury since day one. And man, what an attraction, like a match she just couldn’t blow out. So she was trying to evade those feelings by concentrating on his lacks.

  Like just now, she could have offered to shop with him. She could have helped him pick out clothes. The impulse was there, but it was a mothering impulse, not the way you treated another adult. She kept having those urges and needed to stop them. Especially since they were purely defensive ones, and unfair to him.

  Working her way through the store, filling a cart with things she had already learned that Liam seemed to like, and plenty of fresh greens for herself, she found herself remembering how he looked standing on that ladder just yesterday when the afternoon’s temperature had started rising and he’d shed his shirt.

  Muscles, shiny with sweat, rippling with every movement. No wonder she wanted to put a safe barrier between them.

  Well, it might protect her, but it wouldn’t do him a darn bit of good. He needed to find his own way through this. All she could provide were some opportunities to explore, like reading and painting. Maybe some other work around the place.

  But the bottom line was, he wasn’t her charge, he wasn’t her student and he was a man in every sense of the word.

  Coming out of the grocery with what she hoped would be enough to keep them fed for a week—his appetite was growing the longer he painted—she felt a sense of relief, as if she had let go of something that had been weighing her down.

  She knew exactly what it was: she no longer had to see him as anything but the attractive man he was. And now she could give in to the sexual twinges he aroused in her without the sense of taking advantage.

  She almost laughed at herself as she loaded groceries into the back of the truck. He hadn’t done one damn thing to make her feel like he felt the same attraction for her. Not one.

  So it was a safe little fantasy, and she could stop throwing up mental roadblocks and just enjoy feeling like a woman again, instead of asexual. That was a trick she had learned while Chet was away. It sometimes amazed her how often men seemed to think a woman couldn’t get by for months on end while her husband was away. A few had even made passes at her a few months after the funeral.

  So yeah, she’d learned to put that feminine, sexual part of herself on ice. Except now there was no reason not to thaw it out a bit. She had needs, too. Dreaming about them couldn’t be a crime.

  * * *

  Liam stood on the sidewalk in front of Freitag’s, watching the area. There were few people about as it was a weekday, but those few that passed him did so with a smile and nod. He was still getting used to not having to be on high alert in situations like this, but the adjustment was getting steadily more comfortable.

  He held two bags containing a few shirts, shorts and jeans, as well as some changes of underwear. It hadn’t been a big trip, nor a taxing one. He wasn’t especially worried about clothes, and choosing had been simple because he didn’t care as long as it fit. The clerk had been nice, troubling him very little as he selected things.

  In short, he was feeling pretty good. Other than stops on the road to grab something to eat from convenience stores, this was his first real shopping trip, and he’d managed it. Maybe Sharon was right. Maybe he could do more than he thought, and just needed a chance to find out.

  He was even feeling pretty pleased with having figured out a method to simplify the decision-making.

  He almost felt like grinning.

  In less than a week since he’d been here, he was already feeling a whole lot better than when he’d arrived. He had work he was enjoying, he felt useful again, he was making some progress with reading, however slowly, and he was reentering the world in minor ways.

  He’d even just applied one mental list to a different task: dressing to shopping.

  Sharon pulled up in front, and he tossed his bags into the back and climbed in the cab with her.

  “How’d it go?” she asked as she pulled away.

  “Just fine.” He looked at her and answered her smile with one of his own. “Just fine,” he repeated.

  “Great.” Her smile widened. “What did you get?”

  For a moment he drew a blank, but then it came back. “Clothes.” Then it struck him that an
swer was too abbreviated. “Do you really want to know all about it?”

  She glanced at him, arching a brow. “Of course I do.”

  “I suppose for most people it would be pretty boring.”

  “Not to me,” she said quietly. “Seems like you took a pretty big step.”

  He felt surprisingly touched by how aware she was, and how encouraging. He’d been on the road long enough to have run into folks who had names for him, many of them unflattering.

  “Well, I remembered what I went in there for. That doesn’t sound like a big deal but—”

  She interrupted. “That’s a real big deal. I remember you telling me how much difficulty you have following through on a task.”

  “Yeah. So I remembered that. When I told the lady I wanted clothes and could she show me where, she walked me over. Nice of her. I’m still not sure I can remember directions unless I write them down.”

  “We’ll work on that and find out,” she said firmly. “Maybe we’ll even practice.”

  “It might work,” he said. “Then I picked out clothes. But you know what was cool, Sharon?”

  “Yes?”

  “I remembered what I needed by walking myself mentally through getting dressed in the morning. I laid the stuff out on the sale table in that order so I wouldn’t forget anything.”

  “That was brilliant,” she said warmly.

  “You don’t have to patronize me,” he said, then caught himself. “Sorry. I get touchy sometimes.”

  “It’s okay. We all get touchy. But I meant that sincerely. Look, you memorized a series of actions and then you used them to do something else. There are plenty of people who can’t make that leap. I ought to know. I teach.”

  He saw she was smiling out the windshield and it made him feel good. “It was great to realize I’d done that. Now I’m wondering what else I can get to that way.”

  “And what else you may know how to do that you just don’t know yet. I mean, did I have to tell you how to paint? Any part of it? Heck, no.”

  That was true, he thought. He might not know what half the tools in the barn were for, at least not yet, and he might get overwhelmed by some things, but he had known how to get out a ladder and how to paint. He had even remembered how to clean the brushes and rollers.

  They had said he would probably continue to improve, but today he was feeling more hopeful of that than anytime since he’d walked out the door of rehab.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “For what? I should be thanking you.”

  He shook his head. “I’ve been out of rehab for a few weeks now. Wandering around, using a map on which I’d marked out my route, but with nothing else to do. No future, no plans beyond getting Chet’s letter to you. I had to stick to eating from convenience stores where I could see the food because I couldn’t read. Well, you saw that at the diner. Menus are beyond me right now. Too many things crammed together, and sometimes funky type.”

  She nodded, but remained silent, listening. He was glad she didn’t try to respond.

  “Sometimes,” he said, “I even forgot why I was on the road. So I had it written on the map—get to Chet’s wife. The only thing I didn’t ever forget was Chet’s letter.”

  A soft, sad sound escaped her, but she still didn’t interrupt.

  “Sometimes I’d get so frustrated I exploded. At least I didn’t get into any trouble. They got that part through to me in rehab. Walk away, explode in private. But damn, when I couldn’t read a sign, or figure out how much something cost, or what it really was inside a package, sometimes I’d just want to blow. Some people noticed I wasn’t that bright, too.”

  She sucked a breath. “Did they say things?”

  “Of course. I guess they thought I was too stupid or too mental to understand. Or maybe they didn’t care.”

  “Did you get angry?”

  “At them?” He shrugged. “Hell, if anyone knows I got problems, it’s me. Sometimes I said things back, though. I told you, I think, that sometimes I just say whatever comes to mind.”

  “I haven’t seen too much of that.”

  “Being around you is easy. Things are simple, undemanding. I don’t know if you’re being careful of me or what, but you make it uncomplicated. And sometimes I still don’t know if I’m making sense. Things come out and then I’m not sure what I said. Were the words right? Did I say it wrong? If you ever wonder, just ask, okay? I’d like that better than you thinking I said something I didn’t mean.”

  “Okay.” Then, “I’m sorry people said things. Sometimes we’re so heartless.”

  “It’s just people. I’ll probably say a lot of things I shouldn’t before I’m done. Probably more than most. I remember one guy, though. I was picking up a couple of sandwiches at this gas station, and I was talking myself through it. Maybe more than usual because I was getting tired. I got two turkey sandwiches.”

  Then he fell silent. What had he been saying? The last words he heard in his mind were “turkey sandwiches.” Where had he been going before that? “Damn!”

  “Liam?”

  “I forgot what I was saying.” Damn, a moment ago he’d been feeling so good and now the frustration was eating into him like acid. He tried to recover the feelings before his brain had slipped a stupid cog, but the frustration was too much.

  “You know,” he said in a burst, “if I had to be left with strong feelings, it would have been nice if they’d been good ones!”

  “What exactly are you feeling?”

  “Frustration. I want to smash something.”

  “Because you can’t remember what you were saying or because of something else?”

  The question drew him up short, his frustration easing just a bit. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “Is it the glitch in my head or is it really that I forgot what I was saying? How the hell am I supposed to know the difference?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He pounded his fist on his knee, then caught himself. “Sorry,” he said dully. “I’m not supposed to do that.”

  He turned his head, looking out at the passing countryside without seeing it. He could no longer remember why he’d gotten so frustrated. He just was. More words burst out of him, directed at the window.

  “It’s like being in a bag I can’t even see. I don’t know how the hell to get out, or even where it is.”

  All of sudden, a small, warm hand covered the fist that still rested on his knee. She didn’t say anything. He wasn’t sure he would even have heard her if she had. But the touch helped. In some amazing way, it helped.

  He didn’t say another word until they got home.

  Chapter Six

  Over the next week, Liam worked like a demon. Sharon was beginning to get concerned because he wouldn’t slow down. Maybe he was working on some private exorcism, but that barn was getting covered with primer faster than she would have believed possible for one man. He started right after breakfast, took ten minutes to eat some lunch outside, then was back at it until the light started to fail.

  She started tutoring Andy in math, but that only took a small amount of time. Once again, days stretched before her endlessly as they had before Liam’s arrival. Except that she had his company after dinner, which was pleasant enough.

  But something had changed, and she wished she knew what. She canceled the weekend card game with her friends, feeling that might be uncomfortable for him, so she didn’t even have that to look forward to.

  Not good, she thought as she stood on her back porch and watched Liam painting the last of the barn. Not good. Before his arrival, she’d been wrestling with the fact that she needed to make some changes, then he’d shown up and everything had changed. She had a purpose again.

  Now she was back to square one. Her own fault, she supposed, for filling the
emptiness with trying to help one man. She needed to be looking further afield and further down the road than that. Her life had changed irrevocably with the loss of Chet, and like it or not, she had some serious rebuilding to do. Apparently, Liam was just another postponement.

  Except she didn’t want to think that way, or look at him that way. That created an internal conflict for her because it was making her view herself in an uncomfortable light.

  Had she pinned too much on one man? Had she somehow lost all her internal resources with Chet? Could she get them back?

  Even knowing all Liam’s problems, or at least the most significant ones, she didn’t see him as diminished in any way. He was a good man, a kind man, struggling with problems she could understand technically, but never really know from the inside.

  And watching him work out there in the afternoon sun reminded her that he was very much a man. The attraction she felt kept growing, and nothing that happened diminished it in the least.

  But for some reason, he seemed to have pulled back within a shell. Working constantly, spending time on the reading lessons, polite in every way, but withdrawn. He had definitely pulled away for some reason, and inevitably she wondered what she might have done wrong.

  She couldn’t think of anything. One minute he’d been happy about a successful shopping trip, and then the frustration had settled in like a dark storm and he’d gone away to some place within himself. It was almost as if he’d packed up and left.

  Why?

  As she watched those gleaming muscles ripple even at this distance, she felt undeniable twinges of longing and desire. He was a magnificent man. What’s more, out here with physical labor, his problems largely vanished.