Chapter 6

"So, is everything okay, boss?"

Marc nodded to his foreman, "As far as I know, Matt. Why do you ask?"

The foreman shrugged, "It's just unusual to see you at the site three days in a row. I figure you must be checking up on something."

Marc liked his foreman. Matt was good with everybody, spoke his mind, and brooked no nonsense on the site. Marc had come to trust him implicitly, "Am I becoming a distraction?"

"Some." Matt shook his head, "The men are wondering why you're here. There must be plenty for you to do back at the office."

"More and more every day," admitted Marc. "I just wanted to come out and see what we're actually building. It's easy to forget that there's a point to all this otherwise."

Matt shrugged. Marc could tell that the sentence made no sense to his foreman, "They going to let us keep building?"

"You'll have plenty to keep you busy," promised Marc. "We may have a fight on our hands over the annex, but I'm dealing with it."

"You're dealing with it ... back at the office?" Matt raised an eyebrow meaningfully.

Marc just laughed, "All right. I get the point. I'll stay out of your hair for a while."

Matt shook his head, "Nah. Stop by any time. It's your site."

Marc was still chuckling to himself when he got in his car. He had been hanging around the site, hoping that a change of scenery would break him out of his rut. He'd found that it was just a different rut. Still, the thought of going back to the office and dealing with the latest batch of obstructions that had been thrown up in front of him had been too depressing for words.

He drove without direction, something he hadn't done in years. He remembered doing it all the time when he'd first gotten his license. He and his friends would pile into one of their cars or another and just cruise around town or the woods around town. It was a way to get away from parents, unfriendly classmates and Sheriff Beaufort.

Some things never changed. He barely spoke to his parents anymore. They hadn't liked Kim for him based on some imagined perception of her family as poorer than their own that Marc had never understood. Now that she was gone, his mother made regular attempts to get a hold of him, but they'd done little to make him feel closer to them.

Sheriff Beaufort was, of course, a bigger problem than ever. But a lot of Marc's other problems were still with classmates. Nearly everybody he dealt with on a daily basis outside of his own office was an alumnus of Samuel Huntington High. The shrill woman who showed up at every planning meeting screaming about environmental impact statements and endangered species had been a freshman the year he was a senior. The ADA and candidate for sheriff, John Coleman had been a senior when Marc had been a freshman. Tamara's parents had been in Marc's class. Even the Sheriff had graduated from Huntington back in the late sixties or early seventies. Plenty of people moved out of town. Very few moved in. Most of the ones who left came back. In a way, it could be kind of depressing.

Marc had been driving a while without really thinking about where he was going when he realized he'd driven to a familiar diner. Since the main alternative was going back to the office and it was after lunch time, Marc decided to extend his hooky a little more and pulled in.

He hadn't actually been thinking of Barbara when he drove up. For a moment after he spotted her, he considered leaving. But, she smiled and waved him to a table.

"I haven't seen much of you lately." She poured him a cup of coffee.

Marc considered a polite lie, but it felt like too much work, "I ... didn't know if you would want to see me. I thought it would be awkward to come back."

Barbara waved the answer away as if it were weightless, "Why? Because we argued on our first date? That didn't mean anything. You want a menu or you know what you want?"

Marc accepted a menu and stared at it without really looking. He already knew what he was going to order. He just wanted time to think about Barbara without talking.

She was a Huntington alumnus, of course. She'd started the year after Marc graduated and left at seventeen for reasons she hadn't divulged on their date. She'd recently gotten her GED and hadn't decided what to do with it yet. She didn't want to be a waitress her whole life, but she wasn't sure what she wanted to do. It seemed like an all-too-familiar story around here. Still, she'd been funny and insightful on the first part of their date, right up until she'd ripped into him on the subject of the development he was building.

He thought back to the conversation they'd had early in the date. When she brought him his lunch, he asked, "How did things turn out with your father's horse, by the way?"

Barbara laughed and pushed her hair back behind her ear, "As it turns out, he's pregnant?"

Marc furrowed his brow, "Excuse me?"

Barbara smirked, "Yeah. It turns out that my father, the great Connecticut rancher, can't tell the difference between male and female horses."

Mark laughed, "Really?"

"Really. He had the vet out and she told him the good news."

"Aren't there ... obvious differences between male and female horses?" Marc couldn't help asking.

"You would think. Wouldn't you?" Barbara shook her head, "But the man gets an idea in his head and can't let go of it. He almost sent for a second vet before my mother talked him out of it." She glanced away, "How's your work going?"

"It's..." All of a sudden, things were awkward again. Marc cleared his throat, "It's going well. We're..."

Barbara interrupted him, "You know, I really wanted to apologize for cutting into you about that. It was ... really nice of you to hire my cousin. I know he's not the brightest bulb in the marquee, but he has a good heart."

Marc thought that description could apply to a lot of his employees, "I'm sorry. I don't know which employee is your cousin."

Barbara frowned, "Big Dave." She gestured with one hand high over her head, indicating great height.

Marc was sure he must not be understanding, "Big Dave ... Coleman?"

Barbara nodded, "Yeah. I know he's a little slow, but he says you've been very patient with him."

That was, Marc decided, probably true. He'd given Dave a busy-work job and left him to it. You couldn't get more patient than never expecting results.

"He's doing ... good work."

Barbara nodded, "I knew that, as long as he found a job where he didn't have to deal with people, he'd do fine. His condition is really only bad around strangers."

"His ... condition?"

Another nod, "His crippling shyness."

"I ... scarcely noticed it." Marc mentally scanned his payroll, wondering if he'd hired two extremely tall Dave Colemans recently.

Barbara smiled and covered the back of his hand with her own, "You're probably a good influence on him, then. He tends to overcompensate by emulating whoever he's around. Sometimes, he gets it disastrously wrong."

Marc managed a wan smile. He was saved from further conversation by another table full of customers coming in the front door. What Barbara was staying about her cousin didn't jive at all with his impression of the young man, but his own conversation with Dave had been limited. Still, it was hard to imagine that he could have been so wrong.

"So, I hear you and Dana Williamson have been going out a lot lately." Barbara said as she slipped the check under the edge of his plate.

Marc looked up, startled. He'd been lost in thought and hadn't noticed her approaching.

Barbara had said it in a matter-of-fact way with no obvious rancor, but an implied question. Marc took the check and considered it as if it was extremely important, "Yeah. We do seem to be."

"How's her mother doing?"

Marc didn't want to explain that Dana had very firmly requested he not ask about her mother, that her time with him was for herself and she wanted to get away from the subject for a few hours. Instead, he answered, "She's hanging in there."