How else to say it except the calm before the storm?
One minute Jameson was sitting with June having lemonade and sharing a string of confessions, and the next the world was coming to a halt.
The roofers pulled up in two separate sedans, both with loose mufflers. Behind them came a rusty flatbed truck full of shingles. The lumberyard truck was fourth in line, with the plywood, as if they’d all coordinated their arrival before heading up the hill.
Jameson stood as a third truck pulled out around the rest and went straight into the driveway to park behind Jameson’s truck. Jameson shielded his eyes. He knew that truck. He knew the man getting out.
Van Hicks slammed the door and coughed.
“Quite a parade,” June said.
Jameson pursed his lips. “I was hoping to be gone before he arrived.”
Hicks stopped with hands on hips, looking around as if surveying the place. He walked up the driveway toward the bungalow’s front porch, then he looked across and halted his step. It was clear he was looking at Jameson.
“I’m going to guess,” June said. “Van Hicks?”
“The one and only.”
Jameson excused himself and walked toward him just as Hicks was headed in his direction. Jameson held up his hand as a gesture for him not to take another step.
Hicks stopped.
When Jameson stood within a few feet of him, Hicks lifted his right hand forward, so slightly it could have been missed. Jameson stuck both hands in the front pockets of his jeans. No way in hell were they going to shake. “You enjoying this, Hicks?” he said. “Getting me back out here like this?”
“I know you didn’t want to see me,” Hicks said, “but I figured you to be gone from here already.”
Jameson gripped his hips. Said nothing. Felt the small weight of the notebooks still in his back pocket.
“I was trying to help everybody out,” Hicks said. “That’s all.”
“Everybody.”
“Well, yes. You, Sarah Anne, this woman here.” Jameson turned to see June walking toward them. “She’s got no one at all, as I understand. I knew her grandparents. They were very fine folks.”
Jameson’s neck and face grew hot. “Why are you making our lives your business?” It sounded stupid, blustery, even to him. He couldn’t help himself. The man’s son had looked an awful lot like him. And that was just the start.
“She called me and I gave her your name. Nothing underhanded about it. You’re hunting down the wrong path here, Winters.”
June suddenly appeared. “What’s going on?”
“I was asked to do a job,” Hicks said.
Jameson took a step back, drew a large breath, and held the corner of his bottom lip between his teeth. So help me God, he thought.
June looked at Jameson as if she didn’t recognize him. “Is there a problem?”
Jameson looked away, burning with rage.
“I had nothing to do with nothing,” Hicks said.
“Double negative,” June said, and Jameson wiped the smile from his face.
Then the sound of yet another car, the hum of an engine he recognized.
Sarah Anne was behind the wheel, craning her neck, searching for him through the windshield, ducking her head to see between the vehicles and the roofers walking up the drive with handfuls of tools.
Then a moment of recognition as their eyes met, a softening of their bodies as if a long-held discomfort could now be let go.
His wife got out of the car and opened the rear door, and as she lifted Ernest to her shoulder, Jameson turned to June.
“There you are, then,” June said to him. “A good start is half the work, as Granddad used to say.”
Before he could reply, June turned briskly for the backyard of the bungalow, motioning for Hicks. “Have a wonderful few days,” June said, though she kept her back to Jameson, even as he thanked her and said he would see her soon.