Page 24 of The Homewreckers
“Good boy,” Hattie murmured, scratching his ears. His tail thumped the vinyl upholstery. At least someone was enthusiastic about this mission.
She’d called Woodrow Bowers late in the evening, after an agonizing session of number crunching, when she’d realized even the funds from her pawned engagement ring would not be nearly enough to buy and rehab the Creedmore house.
He’d seemed happy, if surprised to hear from her, and readily invited her to the cabin for lunch the next day.
“You cook now?”
“Hell yeah, I cook. How do you think I’ve been eating all these years?”
“You never cooked before.…”
“Before I went to prison,” Woody finished the sentence for her. “It’s okay to say it, Hattie. Prison. When you get to the gate call me, and I’ll ride up on the golf cart and let you in.”
Hattie rehearsed her proposal on the thirty-minute ride from Thunderbolt to the camp. She hadn’t slept much the night before,already second-guessing her decision to turn to Woody for money. But she was out of options. Her father was her last resort.
She put the truck in park when she reached the cattle gate and reached for her phone. There were no-trespassing signs tacked to trees on either side of the gate, and a utility pole nearby bristled with security cameras.
“Hey, Dad. I’m here,” she said when he picked up.
“Be right down.”
She hadn’t been to her grandfather’s old fish camp in decades. She’d visited here often while the old man was alive. It was PawPaw who’d gifted her with her own set of tools, so that she could hammer and saw in the barn right alongside him as he tinkered with woodworking projects. Back then, Woody had been too busy to spend much time at his father’s camp, always impatient to get back to town for meetings, or fundraisers, or work.
PawPaw died when she was fourteen, and the visits to the fish camp abruptly ended. It wasn’t until Woody’s release from prison that he announced his plan to restore the camp and live there full-time.
She heard the golf cart’s near-silent approach on the road. Woody’s English cockers, Roux and Deuce, sat beside him on the front seat, and they began barking when they caught sight of her.
He parked the cart, gave her a nod in greeting, then unlocked the gate and swung it inward to allow her to pass. She drove through and he relocked the gate, testing to make sure the lock held.
Woody had gotten paranoid since his release from prison. He never elaborated on who or what he thought was threatening him, but he changed his cell phone number often, and had his mail sent to a post office box in town. Except for the times he ventured out to pick up mail, groceries, and supplies, as far as Hattie could tell, he rarely left the grounds of the fish camp.
She followed behind the golf cart as it wound through a half mile of heavy woods, then past a fenced pasture where a graying donkey and a chestnut-brown horse grazed, and finally, down the narrow dirt road to the camp.
He waved her to park next to the cabin, and when she got out of the truck, he gave her a brief, awkward half hug. Ribsy jumped down from the truck and the cockers circled him, sniffing the newcomer and wagging their stubby tails in approval.
“Cabin looks nice, Dad,” Hattie said. She’d remembered it as a primitive wood hut, with a sloping roof over a covered front porch where a stray cat or two always lounged. But now it was a snug cottage, with real windows with dark green–painted frames and shutters.
“I’ve been making improvements,” her father said. “Keeps me busy.” He leaned down and scratched Ribsy’s head. “You got a dog.”
“Yeah,” she said. “After Hank died, it got kind of lonely. Ribsy’s good company.”
“Dogs are the best company there is,” Woody said. “Come on inside. I got lunch ready.”
They ate in front of a window looking out at the river. The place was a bachelor’s paradise. There was no sign of a woman’s touch.
She wondered about that. She and her father had an unspoken pact. He never mentioned Amber—the other woman who’d been the recipient of all Woody’s ill-gotten gains—and Hattie never asked about her.
He’d made ham salad sandwiches on rye bread. There were bread-and-butter pickles, and potato chips, and iced tea.
Hattie took a bite of the sandwich, chewed, and pointed at the bread, which didn’t look store-bought. “Did you take up baking, too?”
He shrugged. “It’s not that hard. You just read the recipe and do what it says to do. The kneading is my favorite part. You get to pound the hell out of it, and it doesn’t talk back.” He tapped the jar of pickles on the table. “Made these, too.”
“Never thought you’d turn into a baker, gardener, and pickle-maker, Dad. After all those years working at the bank. Mom used to say you’d burn Kool-Aid.”
He cracked a smile. His face had gotten leathery, lined withwrinkles. His hair was streaked with silver and he wore it longer these days. Woodrow Bowers had always been a handsome man, but now, in his sixties, he looked like he could model hiking gear, or be a host for one of those outdoor shows where everyone wore plaid shirts and fly-fishing vests.
“How is your mom?”
