I soon found out how Mark Michaels, a handsome guy who looked more like the Marlboro Man than a businessman, knew about the fire. Just after lunchtime, while Valentine and Terry drilled holes and added shiny brass dead bolts to one-hundred-year-old doors, I stood watching on the porch against the Main Street side of the house. Three cars pulled into the driveway. The lead car was Karol’s. The second a red Chevy Trailblazer. The third was a familiar black Porsche 911 Carrera S, its driver a man I’d shared my life with for twenty-five years.
I leaned my shoulder against a nearby column and whispered, “Evan.”
Valentine turned from the door and looked from the driveway to me and back to the driveway. “You know them folks?”
“The man in the black car is my husband. I suspect the other man is the one responsible for the changes Cottonwood is about to undergo. And you know Karol Paisley, I’m sure.”
Valentine nodded. “Sure do.” He crossed over to me then as though a protective grandfather, pulled a cigarette pack out of his pocket, and said, “You mind?”
I shifted to press my back against the column. “If I smoked, I’d probably have one with you.” I turned my head to look at the threesome approaching from the driveway side of the house. “I should have figured this would happen.”
“What’s that?”
“My husband’s company . . .” I shook my head. “Never mind.” I patted the old gentleman on his shoulder. “Excuse me,” I said then ambled down the length of the porch.
When I got close enough to Karol, who led the pack, she mouthed, “I didn’t know.”
I smiled faintly toward her, then cast my gaze on Evan. “What are you doing here?”
But it was Mark Michaels who answered. “Mrs. Hunter?” He extended his hand. “I’m Mark Michaels.”
Couples have a way of communicating by looking into the other’s eyes. Nothing has to be said. Neither a word nor a syllable. Just a look. It lingers longer than a casual glance but not as long as if, say, the couple were carrying on a verbal conversation. Evan and I gave each other such a look.
His told me he was bent on being here.
Mine reflected my displeasure. I’d wanted to do this on my own. Without him or his input. “I should have known,” my eyes flashed, “that your company would bid for this job and win.”
I could barely contain my anger. “Anger,” Evan had said to me during one of our frequent arguments of late, “is not a basic emotion. Anger comes from something else. A driving force. What I’m saying to you, Jo-Lynn, is that you have to know why you’re angry and not simply react in anger as you tend to do.”
As I led the threesome to the back of the house to view the fire damage, I tried to come up with an honest answer as to why it was, exactly, I was so angry.
“It’s not as bad as it could have been,” Valentine said from the door between the kitchen and the dining room.
The four of us, standing near the protective sheet-covered doorway between the kitchen and the pantry, turned to look at him.
“We can have that repaired in no time. Lucky thing here is”—he pulled his sweat-stained Jed Clampett hat from his head, readjusted it just so, then set it back in place—“Miss Jo-Lynn had the good sense to have doused herself with water before she tried to fight the flames.”
“And the good sense to buy a fire extinguisher,” I said, trying to lighten the moment. It didn’t much work.
Evan slipped closer to me, picked up my left arm, and looked at the bandaging. “How bad are your burns?”
“I’ll be fine, Evan. I have to put a cream on periodically. Change the bandaging. Take something for pain if needed.”
He eased my arm down until my hand slipped into his. He squeezed lightly. “You could have been killed.” His voice was just barely over a whisper. For a moment I was so keenly aware that—in spite of our current difficulties—my husband loved me. Loved me very much.
And I struggled with the emotions that revelation stirred in me.