Sunburst by Jennifer Greene Page B

years old and one time he took on a grown man who said Joel could have spent a penny’s more time on work and a penny less on Irish whisky. This was a smaller community then, and we all rather thought Joel was digging a hole for himself and dragging his son in with him, but for the most part we kept quiet. Maybe we were wrong. Everyone liked Joel; he just wasn’t a simple man… His wife died when Kyle was real young, and Joel was never the same after that. We all tried, but Kyle was the only one he cared for… And Kyle, he turned out fine once he stopped being a perfect little hellion. You’re trying to rub the finish off?” she questioned Erica curiously.
    Erica looked at her hands, white-knuckled from the thorough polishing she was giving the wood. Martha was talking about loyalty in the way Kyle had related to his father, and loyalty was a word Kyle had treated with contempt and disparagement the night before. Digging a hole and dragging his son in struck another painful spot; if Kyle was in a hole, it was Erica’s nature to dig in with him, as if she couldn’t help herself.
    She felt as if Martha had inadvertently provided the missing puzzle pieces with her casual comments. Troubled, she felt she finally had caught a glimpse of something that really mattered, that would really help her understand Kyle…but she could not put all the pieces together. She ached when she thought of Kyle as a child. Joel sounded irresponsible, Kyle as if he had far too much to handle for one little boy. Fiercely loyal…independent, needing no one… Those traits were all echoed in the mature Kyle. She thought fleetingly of an earlier conversation she’d had with him, when he’d seemed to feel guilty for not loving his father as he felt he should have…yet how could he? How much could anyone put on one little boy before he started feeling resentful? Before love changed to a sense of duty? But what did any of it have to do with their marriage?
    “…class president,” Martha continued irrepressibly. “But he did have a reputation with the girls. Hell on wheels, I believe, is the polite phrase. Always knew he would never settle for a small-town girl like the ones he took out, though. In fact, I would have guessed you for Kyle’s wife just by the look of you.”
    “What on earth do you mean by that?” Erica asked, surprised. The table was completely finished, shining under the midday sun. There were a half dozen bowls and various other items to put away, but…
    “Oh, I can picture pretty well how you’d look if you were all dressed up. High class right down to the toenails, an aristocratic nose, silks and emeralds…”
    Erica chuckled, with a pointed glance at her shorts and halter, well splashed by this time, her knees red from kneeling. “I see what you mean,” she said, deadpan.
    “Oh, it’s there,” Martha insisted. “Believe it or not, it’s there, even dressed as you are. Thank God the personality doesn’t fit. From the time I was a teenager, I had a picture in my mind of the sort of girl Kyle would marry. She certainly wasn’t the kind to let a mutt jump all over her or get down on her hands and knees the way you have all morning. I figured her for a real beauty but a sheltered type; he was always so protective. Anyway…” Martha pivoted around, her hand screening the sun from her eyes, searching for the dog. She turned with a smile for Erica, who had both arms full of supplies to take back to the house. “I’ll see you—say, about six tonight? Bring Kyle, of course, if you can tear him away from the work.” She chuckled, adding, “Watch this.”
    The hammering and sawing had stopped as the lunch hour approached. Lurch was lying on a pile of boards, surrounded by tools and half covered in sawdust, his head drooping in sleep. Martha called to him, but the dog didn’t even raise an eyelid. She marched to the truck, got in and started the engine, with another grin for Erica. Lurch sprang up instantly at