“You’ll understand someday, Connie,” his mother, Janie, said.
Right then and there he decided that if he didn’t find a good woman, one with whom he had mutual respect and happiness, he wasn’t going to do it. He did not ever come to understand, as his mother promised he would. His mother might not be gorgeous but she was certainly attractive, had a nice figure, a pretty smile and a sunny disposition. Both his father and stepfather were verbally abusive and while they did work steady, they did as little around the house as possible, yet their demands seemed constant. Conrad, you get that garage cleaned yet? Help your mother in the kitchen! I never saw anyone as lazy as you! That’s your yard, kid—every Saturday come hell or high water! Why the hell ain’t that driveway shoveled? You’re a fucking idiot. If I can put food on the table you can at least keep ahead of your chores!
To add to Connie’s misery growing up, he was small. Hard to believe, looking at him now. He was small and he had a girl’s name—everyone always called him Connie. Even if he corrected them and said, “It’s Conrad,” they’d still call him Connie. He felt like a boy named Sue; he had to defend himself a lot. There were guys in his class who had the shadow of a beard in sixth grade, but his growth didn’t kick in until he was fifteen. It was like that summer between ninth and tenth grade his feet grew from size seven to eleven. Testosterone descended on him and he shot up. Thank God.
His mother divorced his father when Connie was six and his stepfather when Connie was seventeen, not quite finished with high school. He had a half brother, Bernard, who they called Beaner, ten years younger than Connie, and with that second divorce, his mother got a job in Denver and took seven-year-old Beaner with her.
Connie stayed in Timberlake and moved in with his buddy Rafe’s family even though they had five kids. It was where he’d been hanging out whenever he could anyway. Rafe’s mother, Margarite Vadas, said she’d always kind of wanted six kids so it was perfect. And at the Vadas home, Connie found the kind of family life he admired and wished he could emulate. Carlos Vadas, a cook and outdoorsman, loved kids. It was a revelation to Connie that just the simple action of enjoying one’s family could make home life nearly perfect. It wasn’t flawless, it wasn’t without its tense or grumpy moments, it certainly wasn’t without arguments—just the fights over the bathroom alone could be staggering. But it just wasn’t challenging all the time. No one held a grudge and the single most important thing—no one seemed to walk on eggshells or brace themselves for the next blowup. He never once heard Carlos Vadas complain about the work of feeding his family or ridicule his children or call them names.
The Vadas kids, like all kids, could be lazy about their chores and Carlos would say things like, I think someone wants to go to homecoming and have a new dress, but she doesn’t like doing the dishes. I think that’s not the way it works, does it? Or, I hear someone wants to use his mama’s car on the weekend but he isn’t so interested in mowing and trimming, do I have that right? And of course everyone got in trouble sometimes. No phone, then. Maybe if you have no phone you have no opportunity to make plans that will only get you in trouble. Or, You don’t like that curfew of midnight? I think you will like eleven better, yes?
Connie realized he developed an idea of the kind of life he wanted from the neighbors, it was as simple as that. Carlos and Margarite were not as attractive as his mother and father had been yet were far more affectionate. They were always playing on the same team when it came to the kids. Connie wanted that—a wife he could love and depend on into old age.
He had wanted that until he thought he had it and had lost it in a most miserable and humiliating way. Now he was trying to figure out what kind of life he could have instead.
Connie had stayed on in Timberlake, taking a few college courses, joining the volunteer search team and training until there was an opening in the fire department and he tested right alongside his best friend, Rafe. They were both twenty-five when they were hired and it seemed they were junior firefighters forever. When he was twenty-seven he met Alyssa. She was cutting hair in Timberlake and she was hot. She was tall and leggy, big breasted with long, thick dark hair, dark eyes and ruby lips that were full and delicious. Connie was suddenly needing a lot of haircuts. They began to date and Connie fell in love—hard; he’d found the one. He’d bought some land just outside of town, a beautiful acre in the foothills, not even half-paid for. While he and Alyssa talked marriage and children, he began to build her a house. Well, he was having it built, but he took great pride in being involved and helping. It was a small house to start, but it was designed for future add-ons. Within two years they were living in it and planning a wedding.
And then things went south. Alyssa grew moody and distant. He knew something was wrong but she denied it. Yet there were red flags all over the place. She wasn’t in the mood for sex, there was whispering into the phone, he caught her crying a couple of times—she blamed everything on her hormones. He decided to do something really nice for her so he took her car and washed it and detailed it to surprise her...but he found a pair of her sexiest panties under the seat. He put them on the kitchen table and asked her just what the hell was going on.
“Where’d those come from?” she’d asked.
“Under the front seat of your car. Care to explain?”
She had claimed they’d been pinching her so she’d slid them off and stuffed them under the seat, out of sight and forgot about them. Then she’d laid into him for taking her car without telling her, and she was furious.
Connie was getting desperate. He was close to asking Carlos for advice when it became unnecessary. He took some personal time from work one afternoon and went home with some flowers for Alyssa and a hope they might straighten some things out, but there in his drive was the car of a fellow firefighter, Christian Derringer. He was a little older than Connie, married with a couple of little kids, and he was a whore. He was a screw-around and didn’t have any conscience about it.
Connie found them in the bedroom. He grabbed Chris by the ankles, dragged him through the house and out the front door, hefted him up and tossed his naked ass into the snow. All the way Alyssa was screaming, clutching a sheet to her naked body, raging at Connie.
And right at that moment all of Connie’s ideals and preconceived notions collapsed.
“I’m going back to work,” he told her. “I’m filing a complaint with the captain and while I’m there, you move out. Be gone when I get home.”
“This is my house, too,” she yelled. “You can’t throw me out!”
“Oh yes, I can,” he said. “We’re not married. Thank God.”
“I’m keeping this house!” she screamed. “At least half of it.”
“Sue me,” he said.
His captain had talked him out of filing a formal complaint but he did move Chris out of Connie’s unit. For a couple of years it was kind of hard to tell whether Connie would pull Chris out of a burning building. They were never going to be able to work together again, but they were still from the same small town. Connie gave him a real wide berth. He sincerely hoped Chris would never be trapped on a ledge somewhere when Connie was on duty.
The drama divided the firehouse. There were those who sided with Connie and thought he’d gone easy on the bastard. “I might’ve killed them both,” Rafe said. Rafe was the gentlest man in Timberlake. And then there was the other team—they were kind of a mishmash. Some thought Connie should’ve taken out his wrath on Alyssa and not Chris; some thought Chris was just screwing around and it shouldn’t be such a melodrama. “Get over it already! You dodged a bullet!” they’d say to Connie, like Alyssa was the only one at fault. And some thought all was fair in love and war.
Chris had invaded Connie’s territory and Connie hated him for it. But he took the high road. He gave himself a reasonable period of time, maybe about six months, then decided Alyssa and Chris were in his past, they were dead to him. His secret was he might never be over it, not as long as he could remember what it was like loving her while she was loving him. But as far as others could tell, he had moved on.
Of course Chris stayed married, kept running around on his wife, and Alyssa was still cutting hair in Timberlake. They couldn’t help but run into each other and after a year or so Connie told her he wasn’t angry anymore.
“Connie, it’s the biggest mistake of my life,” she’d said with tears in her eyes. “Can’t we try again? We weren’t married, after all.”
And he had said, “No. I can forgive you for what you did but we won’t be trying again.”
Connie dated quite a bit. Hardly ever the same girl for three dates, always a beautiful girl. He had no trouble getting girls and no interest in being tied down. He half wanted half feared getting that feeling again—that lurch in the heart, that dazed brain, the fuzzy vision and lightness in the head. Rationally, he didn’t want to believe his one and only chance was Alyssa who would be so coolly and easily unfaithful. Emotionally, he had no interest in going through that again. Was it even imaginable that he would trust again?
Not likely.
* * *
Sierra had to keep reminding Molly to stay with her; she had to keep reminding Beau, for that matter. Beau was a trailblazer—he liked to get out ahead of them and nose around. She wasn’t sure what she’d do if Beau cornered an elk buck or a bear. She had the small canister of mace in her vest pocket but she didn’t think it would do much good on an angry bear. She had dog treats in the other pocket and her water in her backpack.
She kept telling Molly how good she was, how well she was doing, stopping every so often to work on voice commands. They were starting to experiment with “Down!” She had to add a little incentive, a gentle push on the head until Molly was in the down position. And she couldn’t help but fantasize her dog becoming the best trained dog in the universe. Of course Sully only said, “Let her get to be about four years old and you might really have something. Those goldens are the best-natured dogs.”