Burned by Love, page 13
“There you are,” her mom said in the doorway of the kitchen, dirt and dust and more than a few cobwebs strung across her.
Penny swallowed the bite – talking with her mouth full was not allowed in her mom’s house – and said, “Mom, you look like a homeless orphan off the street. What on earth were you doing up there?”
Her mom shrugged and headed for the fridge for a big glass of milk. “Just rearranging and cleaning. It was getting awfully dirty up there, you know.”
“It’s an attic. That’s what attics do,” Penny pointed out and then took a large bite of the sandwich. Food. It was heaven to her aching stomach.
“Yes, well, not my attic,” her mom sniffed as she poured out a glass of milk. “Want one?” She held the jug out towards Penny and she nodded. Her mom grabbed another glass from the cupboard and poured her some. “How was work today?”
“Mind numbing. My brain feels cooked.” She leaned against the counter as she sipped the delicious milk. It was the one thing she could never drink too much of. She’d give up alcohol, water, soda, and every other form of liquid before she gave up milk. “It’s budget season for both Franklin and Sawyer, and somehow, I’ve gotten the reputation that this is my schtick, so everyone happily dumps it in my lap. I’ve pointed out numerous times that I went to school for graphic arts, not accounting, but because I don’t faint dead away at the sight of a spreadsheet, everyone thinks I’m some sort of financial genius.”
“You’ve always been good at numbers, dear,” her mom said mildly as she washed up in the sink. At least she was now clean up to her elbows, although her hair and clothes were going to need a lot more help. “You got that from your father, of course. After he passed, having to do the household bank account…” She sighed and shook her head. “That was a disaster, waiting to happen.”
That was a disaster that had happened, but Penny said nothing. It was typical for her mom to ignore what was, and instead focus on what she wanted to believe, and Penny had long ago resigned herself to that truthitude.
As a kid, she’d just assumed that her mother knew what she was doing. What kid wouldn’t? It wasn’t until high school, when she started spotting LAST NOTICE in bright red ink across multiple bills in the mail that she started to ask questions. It’d taken her years to help her mom dig her way out of that mountain of debt. She’d come within a hair’s breadth of losing the house; she had lost her new car.
Yup, that’d been a verifiable, horrendous, overwhelming mess of a disaster all right. Penny wondered for a moment what it would be like to have a mother who was more like a mother and less like an unreliable 16-year-old friend, but then shrugged the thought away. Her mother was who she was, and no amount of wishing would change her. If wishing could change her mom, Wanda Roth would’ve had a personality transplant a long time ago.
“When are you going to bring that boy of yours over so I can meet him?” Mom asked, leaning against the opposite counter as she finished off the last of her glass of milk. “The talk around town is that he’s quite the looker.”
“You know he is,” Penny pointed out with a none-too-subtle roll of the eyes. “You’ve liked the pics I’ve posted of the two of us on Facebook. You’ve commented on those pics. You can’t pretend you didn’t see them.”
“But, that’s only his face,” her mom protested. “For all I know, he’s missing a leg and three fingers from a car bomb explosion.”
“Car bomb…?” Penny didn’t know whether to laugh or cry over that one. “He’s never been in the military, Mom. I promise you, he’s in possession of all of his body parts.”
“Well, I just won’t know that for sure until I meet him,” Mom said firmly. “Tomorrow afternoon? He can come over and we can watch the baseball game together. But,” she held up a warning finger, “if he’s a Yankees fan, well then, he can go back home and we can pretend like this never happened. You’ll just have to start all over again.”
“I’ll be sure to inform him of that,” Penny said dryly.
“Oh, don’t tell him!” her mom said seriously. “He might pretend to be a Dodgers fan just to make a good impression. You can’t let him know what’s riding on this.”
“Yes, Mom,” Penny agreed dutifully, trying not to laugh. She loved her mom dearly, but there were days that her baseball obsession was a little out of control. She didn’t even know if Troy watched baseball. It wasn’t nearly as big in Idaho as, say, football was. It was a uniquely Wanda Roth obsession, as far as Penny could tell. “I’m going to head out, now that I’ve eaten all your food and drunk all your milk.” She went to press a kiss to her mom’s cheek but made it an air kiss instead when she spotted the cobweb clinging to her mom’s cheekbone. “I’ll talk to Troy about tomorrow, promise.”
“Tell him I make great tailgating food,” Mom said, trailing her as they walked to the door. “No need to go to a baseball stadium – the beer is cold and the snacks are awesome here.”
“I’ll tell him all about it,” Penny promised.
“But not which team to cheer for,” her mom reminded her.
“I would never dream of it,” Penny said solemnly, and closed the door behind her before she let the grin break out across her face. Her mom was something else. The important part was that she looked healthy. Other than the dusting of…well, dust across her face and hair, she had a healthy glow, a spring in her step, a sparkle in her eye. At least for today, she was still okay. Penny felt the weight ease off her chest.
Someday, she was going to stop worrying and hovering over her mom. Today wasn’t that day, and honestly, tomorrow wasn’t looking good, either.
She drove across town to the slums of Franklin – luckily, in a small town in Idaho, “slums” was a relative term and her neighborhood was certainly nothing like what a soul would find in the slums of Chicago or something – and pulled up in front of her rundown apartment complex. Before she even got out of the car, she pulled out her cell phone and texted Troy. She knew better than to call him; unless she was on fire, she knew Troy would only want to text.
I’m off work. Got any plans for tonight?
She stepped out of her car and swung her purse over her shoulder. First order of business – change into a shorter pair of heels. Her feet had had enough of the three inchers for the day.
Wanted to show you something. Wear comfy shoes; no skirt. Be there in 20.
She laughed a little at that. No skirt? she texted back. All right, but I’m going to scandalize the neighbors.
She unlocked her front door and began slipping out of her work clothes. There was a long pause with no answer from Troy, and then just an emoji showed up on her lock screen:
😈
She laughed out loud at that.
She quickly changed into jean shorts, tennies, and a t-shirt. The shoes were covered in silver and pink sequins but they didn’t have heels on ‘em, so she figured Troy would approve. This was as practical as Penny Roth got.
It was when she was tugging her hair back into a ponytail that she heard a light knock on the front door and then, “Hello?” as Troy pushed the door open. With one final wrap of the band, she came hurrying into the living room.
“Hey, baby!” she said as she laid one on him.
What was supposed to be a quick kiss quickly became a lot more involved and she’d already started angling him towards the couch when he pulled away. Her eyes drifted open slowly as her mind struggled to figure out what’d just happened – where did Troy go? – when he popped a kiss on the end of her nose.
“C’mon, let’s go,” he said as he began pulling her towards the front door. She was shocked that he was turning down a clear invitation for sex in favor of…whatever it was that he was hell bent on showing her. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about this for a while,” he said as he helped her into the passenger seat of his truck, then shut the door and hurried around to his side before continuing, “but I kept forgetting. I wanted to do it today before I forgot again.”
Now she was really curious. What could this possibly be? Her mind raced through the possibilities but she was coming up with a big, fat nothing. Troy just didn’t get excited about a lot of things. It was one of the reasons why their relationship worked so well. He helped counterbalance her when she got overly excited about the small stuff. He brought her back down to earth.
They were quiet for a minute as Penny idly watched the grazing cows pass, trying to solve the mystery as they drove. Between Franklin and Sawyer, the valley was almost as wide as it was long, and ranchers used the large open spaces to run beef cattle. The mountains that edged the valley were a ways off, hard to see through the light haze, but of course they were there. Long Valley may run short on entertainment and sophistication and clothing stores that sold something other than Wranglers, but it sure didn’t run short on mountains.
Which reminded her – she needed to follow up on the ski resort thing. See if anything was happening behind the scenes. The rumors had quieted down and Mr. Toewes had been pushing her to focus on budgets instead, and she’d let that story drop. She made a mental note to make some calls on Monday.
“You’ve said before that I don’t talk a lot, so you felt like you were dating a st-st-stranger,” Troy said formally, almost like it was an announcement he’d been working on for a while, jerking Penny back from her wandering thoughts. She realized then that Troy had been using the whole truck ride thus far to think of how to broach this topic. Whatever he was about to show her meant a whole hell of a lot to him.
Don’t screw this up, Penny.
“Yeah, I said that when we were on that hike up in the Goldforks,” Penny said slowly. “But I haven’t felt that way since then. At least, not as much, anyway.”
“I want to show you something that is me. So that I’m not a st-st-stranger.”
She reached out and squeezed his hand. “I can’t wait,” she said, and meant it. Whatever it was, it was a damn big deal in Troy’s world, which just made the anticipation even stronger. She’d never liked being on the receiving end of surprises, and it took a real act of self-control not to reach out and shake his shoulders while yelling, Just tell me what it is!
“How was work today?” he asked, and, welcoming a distraction since moving Sawyer closer to Franklin wasn’t an option and since shaking an answer out of Troy also wasn’t an option, she launched into a rundown of how she’d become the financial guru at the newspaper.
“My dad was a CPA for years – it’s why they named me Penny. My dad wanted to name me Hundred Dollar Bill because he wanted me to be rich, but my mother put her foot down over that one.” She laughed. “My mom isn’t always the most practical person on planet Earth and my dad was a good counterbalance to that, but there were times when she had to talk sense into him. Anyway, so numbers and spreadsheets and stuff just make sense to me, since I got that aptitude from my father, but I’m no financial wizard. But somehow, since I don’t go running, screaming from the room in a panic because there are numbers printed on a piece of paper, I’ve become the lucky duck who gets to translate these budgets into stories that can be run in the newspaper. When I finally give my notice at the paper, I think they’re going to try to chain me to my desk. Heaven forbid someone else learn how to read a spreadsheet.”
She held her breath, waiting for him to respond to the idea of her leaving – not sure what she wanted to hear, honestly, but wanting to hear it anyway – but Troy simply pulled to a stop and cut the engine. “We’re here,” he said, and swung out to help her out of the truck. She peered up through the windshield as he was skirting the truck, and realized they were at the old Horvath Mill on Main Street in Sawyer.
He wants to show me a pile of blackened bricks? She nibbled on her bottom lip. There had to be more to it than that.
He helped her down and, holding her hand, he pulled her towards a side door. He reluctantly let go of her hand long enough to unlock the padlock and then grabbed it again to pull her inside. It took her a minute for her eyes to adjust to the gloom – there weren’t any lights on, of course, so the only light in the building was filtering through the dirt-encrusted windows.
They walked quietly through, each lost in their own thoughts as they looked around. Perhaps it was because of the poor lighting, but the age of the building and the blackened bricks combined together with the dust in the air gave everything a washed-out look, like she was in a black-and-white movie. Wandering around, she felt a desire bubble up in her to bring the old girl back to life – to bring color back to it.
“Can you clean bricks?” she asked, breaking the silence between them. “Or are you stuck with the black from the fire?”
He grinned at her, clearly pleased that her mind had been working along the same lines as his. “I’ve done research-ch-ch, and you can clean them. It’s hard work, but it can be done.”
“So you’re thinking of restoring this building…” Penny said, and waited for him to nod. “And then once you do, what are you thinking you can do with the space? You guys don’t need a second mill, and anyway, it would just have all of the same problems that it did before – traffic, being too close to the high school, blah blah. This is a hell of a lot of room – what would you put in here?”
“Come here,” he said, grabbing her hand and pulling her back outside. He opened the cover on the bed of his truck to reveal the most elaborate saddle she’d ever seen.
“Whoa,” she breathed, stroking her fingers over the leatherwork. The swirls in the leather, the glint of the silver… “Whoa,” she said again. “Where did you buy this? I didn’t know you rode.” No wonder he was so excited to show this to her. To spend this kind of money on a saddle, he must be one hell of a horse lover. How was it that she didn’t know that about him? He really did hide—
“I made this,” he said quietly.
The air stopped. The world stopped. She just stared at him, mouth gaping open. She’d been able to – somewhat – accept the idea of him being a horse enthusiast without her knowing about it, but to make the saddle…that took so much more skill than just sitting in one.
And to make this saddle…
“No…way…” she breathed. “Are you being serious right now? Tell me you’re just pulling my leg.”
He laughed a little at that. “I wouldn’t kid about something like this. While in high school, a local ranch-ch-cher and friend of the family showed me the basics of leatherworking. I was fascinated by it, and in my free time, I began messing around with it. This will be the grand prize at the Sawyer St-St-Stampede this year – they’ve been using some guy out of Nevada to make the saddles before, but I pitch-ched them on using me inst-stead, and…” He shrugged. “They went for it.”
“They went for it,” she echoed, disbelievingly. “I’d say they did. Troy, this is absolutely gorgeous. I cannot believe you made this. You made this.” She pressed a quick, hard kiss to his lips. “You are full of more surprises…” she murmured, but her mind was already skipping ahead, connecting the dots. “So you want to restore the mill and use it as your leatherworking shop?”
“I’ve been thinking about it. My uncle…he has to do something with it. The city is breathing down his neck to bulldoze it or clean it up or something. So I thought why not do my leatherworking here? I have a small shop behind my house but it’s more like a glorified tool shed than an actual shop.”
“I’m staying focused, I promise,” she said with a small laugh, “but I just have to say that I can’t believe how much you’ve changed since we’ve started dating. You’re practically giving speeches over there.”
He wrinkled his nose with a small laugh of his own. “I hadn’t thought about it, but you’re right. I’m not as worried about st-st-stuttering.” He rolled his eyes at that. “A st-st-stutterer who can’t say st-st-stutter. Hell, at least-st I can say my own name.”
“You can say Troy?” She was totally confused by that topic change.
“You wouldn’t believe how many st-st-stutterers can’t say their own name. If I had a problem with T’s, then of course ‘Troy’ would be very difficult for me.”
“Oh.” That made her head hurt a little. Having a stutter made life difficult enough; she couldn’t imagine how much that would be magnified by not being able to say your own damn name. “Okay, so, back to your idea. Let’s go inside and look around, now that I know what you’re going for.”
They walked back into the cool of the building and Penny began looking around – really looking. What she saw wasn’t encouraging. Some of the huge, arched windows facing Main Street had broken panes, with graffitied boards covering them over. There was dust and dirt and cobwebs everywhere, along with copious amounts of bird poop, not to mention the blackened bricks along three walls. Luckily all four walls hadn’t been affected in the fire, but because the structure was so tall, it was probably two or three stories worth of blackened bricks to clean.
That was mostly superficial, though. Lots of elbow grease, cleaning products, and disposable gloves, and it’d look a hundred times better. She should get her mom in here – give her something to clean that actually needed cleaning. As for the windows, she had no idea if it was possible to replace just a couple of panes of glass in a window instead of the entire thing, but if so, that’d help preserve the character of the building, not to mention would hopefully be cheaper than replacing these giant – and totally gorgeous – windows.
But it wasn’t the superficial that worried her. “When was the mill built?” she asked, running her fingers along a dirty windowsill.
“1927, right before the Great Depression hit.”
“Hmmm...I’m going to guess that wiring standards have changed since then?” she asked pointedly. “Did you guys update the wiring at any point?”
“Probably…” he said uncertainly. “I’d have to ask Uncle Horvath.”
“My other worry is heating and cooling such a huge space. Unless there’s something I don’t know about leatherworking – which would honestly not be difficult – it doesn’t seem like a space intensive hobby. This seems like a hell of a lot more space than you really need to do the work. Is there something I’m missing?”
