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I didn’t have much time to ponder as nausea seized my stomach and I desperately made my way down the hall to find a bathroom under the stairs. When I finally stood back up, I swayed on my feet. The wallpaper was disorienting, and everything was outdated. I cleaned my mouth and washed my face before staggering to his huge white couch, which seemed out of place. I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling. I’d just take a nap until the rain let up.
An hour later or so, I startled awake from a noise at the front door. I saw a shadow through the curtain, but it didn’t look like Edison. Intuitively, I knew I should be scared, but I wasn’t. An older man, balding with glasses, opened the front door and tiptoed into the house. He placed what looked like a phone on the radiator cover that doubled as a foyer table. I watched him wordlessly, not daring to speak. He turned, stepped to the door, and let himself out. I lay there and allowed myself to breathe as I listened to him drive away. Once I was sure he was gone, I ran over and grabbed it.
The phone was Edison’s. I’d recognize the sleek platinum case anywhere. Why an old man had it and creeped into the house like a thief didn’t make any sense to me. The phone was locked anyway, so it wasn’t like I could snoop. Since I felt so much better off my feet, I made my way back to the couch.
Only twenty minutes or so passed and the rain was tapering off when another man walked up the front steps and let himself in the front door. This time I screamed when the man appeared and clearly wasn’t Edison. He was similar in build but entirely different in the way he carried himself. This man puts his hand on his heart and yelped when I screamed.
“Shit! Sorry. Ed never brings girls home,” he said. He put his hands out as if to pacify me or keep me from jumping up. “What the hell?” he muttered as he leaned toward the floor.
I was beyond mortified as I watched him pick up my pregnancy test from the floor. I realized he likely knew what the two pink lines meant.
“Are you the mechanic?” he asked me, pregnancy test still in his hand.
“That’s me,” I said, defeated.
He walked across the white carpet in his shoes without taking his boots off and handed me the test, which I stored in my front pocket. He stuck out his hand, and I took it.
“Ethan, Ed’s brother. Ethel, he calls me.”
“Laney Mills.” I would have told him Eddie calls me Cherry, but that seemed out of line. Ethan looks like Edison—same sleek hair, only lighter, same blue eyes, tall and muscular with a side of to-die-for. Handsome. A real lady-killer.
“God, I’m fucking starving, and this rain had me in a funk. I was going to order a pizza. You want some?”
“Okay.” I shrugged.
“Does Ed know you’re here? Should we call him?”
I pointed to Eddie’s phone, which is lighting up because his brother had already dialed him.
“What the hell is that doing here?”
“An old man snuck it in while I was taking a nap.”
“No shit. Where could he be?”
“No idea,” I said. Lying back on the couch, I propped my back up with the cushions. I wasn’t really in a state for driving back to Springfield tonight, so I curled up into a fetal position. I’d sleep on Edison’s couch. I felt better that his brother was here. At least I was no longer breaking and entering. I hoped Edison was okay.
I fell asleep in my coveralls, gently snoring to the sound of the retreating rain.
17
Edison
Both men at the garage seemed dumbstruck with my appearance there. There were chocolate-covered cherry foil wrappers strewn across the cement floor, which didn’t bode well for my gesture of love. Both of them looked guilty.
“What do you mean she left after getting sick?”
“She just got in her car and drove off.”
“Was she angry? Did she say where she was going? Was she alone?”
The big guy looked at me blankly and shook his head.
She wasn’t at her house. I’d gone there first. The damn goat was out of food. I’d given him the rest of my sandwich, which he’d seemed to enjoy. The cat had been in the picture window, pacing on the sill. I’d had a mind to just open the door, but it had seemed ill-advised. I was a big man, and entering a small blue cottage, where a woman lived alone, seemed like a bad idea. But these knuckleheads were no help. Granted, they both did gorgeous work. Talented, these guys she’d found, there’s no doubting that. I stood in her space and took in the homey feeling of The Lace Garage. It was more inviting than Roads.
