Patti Standard - His Perfect Family

She’d just decided to take a break for a cup of coffee when the vibrating sound of something being applied to what sounded like an essential part of her house had her edging toward the kitchen. She peered around the pantry door to find all the shelves gone, revealing a larger than expected room, and her carpenter using what looked like a giant jigsaw to cut a hole in the floor.

The vinyl shook under her feet until he finally removed his finger from the trigger. It took another moment for the noise to finish echoing in the enclosed room. He pulled his hammer from a loop on his tool belt and gave one quick, sharp blow to the floor. A neat square fell into the crawl space below.

“Mr. Matchett, would you like some coffee?”

He looked up at her, and she knew with a sudden certainty that he wanted to say no. He didn’t like her. He didn’t want coffee. He wanted nothing to do with her. But then his face closed, his dark eyes became even more shuttered and he nodded his head. “Thanks, that would be nice. And the name’s Cutter.”

She busied herself pouring coffee while he crossed the floor and settled himself at the table. She pulled out a chair and sat across from him, noting how unnaturally still he sat, his wide-palmed hands unmoving on the table. Now she regretted her impulsive decision to ask him to join her and his inexplicable change of mind. What kind of small talk could they possibly make for the next ten minutes?

Cutter took the matter out of her hands when he asked, “Was your husband Harvey Rhodes by any chance — the accountant?”

“Why, yes. Yes, he was.”

“A friend of mine recommended him at tax time last year. I was sorry to hear about the accident.”

“Thank you.”

“Must be tough. Had a friend whose husband died. No insurance. She’s still trying to recover.” He paused. “You must be doing okay, though. Able to do a little remodeling with the insurance money?”

Adrianne felt her lips compress and she took a quick sip of coffee. Harvey had canceled his life-insurance policy without consulting her. She’d had no idea until after his death that she’d have to handle the mortgage, Lisa’s college, everything from now on with just her salary and what they had in savings. She’d returned Cutter’s contract in the mail last week with a lump in her throat at the number on the bottom line. It would put a major dent in her savings account.

“We’re fine,” she said, not about to discuss her financial situation with this man. Instead, she said with all the politeness she could muster, “It’s almost lunchtime. Can I fix you something? A sandwich?”

So she wasn’t going to get cozy over a cup of coffee, Cutter thought, not really surprised. There were many women who, given the opening he’d given her, would have cussed their husband up one side and down the other for leaving no insurance. Told him all about it, with crocodile tears in their eyes, hoping to get him to cut his bill a little in sympathy.

But not our Southern beauty here. He was still trying to get used to the little jolt he felt each time those amber eyes lifted to his. He reminded himself of Marcia’s baby-blues. They’d cooed that same innocence — while she’d hidden a bottle under her pillow and a lover under her bed. Adrianne Rhodes had a honeyed drawl, honey hair, honey eyes, but underneath all that gold could easily beat a larcenous little heart.

“No, thanks,” he said to her offer of lunch, remembering the key he still had in his pocket. “I’ll —”

The front door burst open, and a teenager in black came into the kitchen, followed by an older woman.

“I’m starved. Lunch ready?”

“In a minute,” Adrianne replied. “Lisa, I want you to meet Cutter. Cutter, this is my daughter, Lisa, and my mother, Blanche Munro.”

He stood up to shake hands with the girl, noting her strawberry blond hair, freckles and stocky build. She took after her father, he decided.

He turned to the woman behind her, taking her hand. Now, here was a dame who knew how to play the game. She was obviously fighting the clock every step of the way, and it looked as if she won more often than not. He placed her in her midfifties, but she hardly looked older than his own forty, thanks to a great highlighting job and a fairly recent tuck around the eyes.

“Pleased to meet you,” he said. “Munro Realty, by any chance?”

“Why, yes.” Her handshake was cool and firm.

“I’ve seen your signs here and there.”

The flirting smile Blanche had started to give him, woman to man, evaporated instantly. Her eyes were shrewd now, sizing up a potential client. “Are you in the market for a new home, Cutter?”

“Not right now.” Blanche’s accent was pure South, born and bred, he noted, while Lisa had the Arkansas twang of a native. A twang he’d spent the first six months in intelligence trying to lose.

“Do keep me in mind,” she said. “I’m sure I could find something you’d like.”

So, the grandma was sharp as nails under all that bleached hair, he thought. He filed away the information. It was too soon to know what was important and what wasn’t, so he treated every snippet, every impression, as if it were the key to the puzzle of the missing money.

“Darling, I see you’ve started your cleaning crusade already,” Blanche said, helping herself to the coffee. “How tiresome. I know I said I’d help, but I just had my nails done. Why you want to spend your vacation this way is beyond me.”

“I told you, you don’t have to help, Mother.”

“I’ll do my room myself, I promise,” Lisa chimed in. “Although this is not how my friends are spending their half-day off, trust me. Teacher’s workdays are supposed to be reserved for the mall.”

Cutter looked around the kitchen, bursting to the brim with chattering females. He suddenly longed for the days of smoky bars, coded greetings and silent black limos easing out of the mist. He sighed and unbuckled his tool belt, thinking dark thoughts about Jonathon Round and his insurance cases. Might as well go to lunch—in peace and quiet It was obvious he wasn’t going to get his hands in any more pantie drawers today.

Chapter Two

Cutter ladled gravy into the crater he’d made in a mountain of mashed potatoes. “So if I bring that three-quarter-inch copper across for the tub, I’ve got to drill through the joists.” He reached across to his father’s plate and poured a spoonful onto his similar mound, then carefully set the gravy boat with its delicate rose pattern on the tablecloth next to the peas.

“Sometimes that’s just the way it is with a remodel,” Peter Matchett told his son, waiting patiently while his wife cut his roast into bite-size pieces and buttered him a roll. “Reinforce it with plywood and it should be all right.”

“Who is it you’re doing this bathroom for, dear?” Mary Matchett asked as she bent over her husband’s plate.

“Her name’s Adrianne Rhodes, and she works at that bank over by the mall. Her husband was killed in a car crash last fall.”

“Well, now, that’s too bad.” His mother looked up, all innocence behind her gold wire glasses. “Is she nice?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“And how old is she?”

“Younger than me.”

“Do you like the daughter? Does she — ?”

“Mary!”

“Mother.”

Both men interrupted her at once. Cutter didn’t want his mother thinking along those lines at all. As if he could stop her. And as if his own thoughts hadn’t returned several times that evening to Adrianne Rhodes. It was hard not to remember her wide eyes when the gravy was the same rich, golden brown shade, and the butter melting in a pool on his roll looked as soft and yielding as her hair, and...

Ah, forget it, he was just hungry, he told himself with a mental shake as he attacked the potatoes. His head had been turned by a pretty girl before, and he had two very short, very crummy marriages to show for it. He wasn’t interested.

“I’m glad you’re keeping busy, that’s all,” his mother said, sliding into her own chair. “I was just telling your brother the other day... You know they made him produce manager over at the supermarket?”

“Yeah, you told me.”

“Tom’s been with them seven years, it’s about time they gave him his own department. Especially with Lucy expecting again. I swear, I always say it’s a good thing he works at a grocery store with all those mouths to feed.” She picked up her husband’s fork and helped him wrap his twisted fingers around the handle. “Anyway, I was telling him with business so good, it looked like you would probably stay around awhile —”

“Mom, I keep telling you, I’m not going anywhere.” Cutter kept his voice gentle. They’d been through this before. “I’ve been back two years now.”

“Goodness, has it been that long? Two years. My, my.” She shook out a napkin and draped it across her lap, protecting a dress sprinkled with a rose design almost identical to the gravy boat’s. “When’s the last time you stayed in one spot for two years? That city in Germany, wasn’t it, the one with the wall?”

“Berlin, Mary, for pete’s sake,” his father said gruffly.

“Well, of course I know it was Berlin. The name just slipped my mind, that’s all.”

Cutter smiled, savoring his mother’s pot roast and his father’s advice in equal measure. He’d missed both during those years in Berlin and Prague, Warsaw and Moscow. His mother was grayer now, and plumper, but she still cooked like an angel, dressed like June Cleaver and lived for her grandchildren, now that he and his brother were grown.

His father looked the same as ever, whip thin with a full head of coal black hair, wearing the matching khaki pants and shirt that had been his uniform for as long as Cutter could remember. His eyes were different, though. Years of pain had etched deep lines around them, drawing them back into his skull as if they could hide from it that way. And, then, of course, there were his hands.

Many a mission, as Cutter had raced against the clock to hot-wire a jeep or set the delicate timing device on an explosive, he’d remember his father’s capable hands. Hands that turned a screwdriver with swift, deft strokes to repair a toaster, hands that fixed a bike’s slipped chain or banged in just the right spot to get the old furnace wheezing again. Big, strong hands that patiently teased slivers from grimy small-boy fingers. Caring, loving hands that had fixed Cutter’s world.

And all the time, as Cutter slunk through the alleys of those ancient capitals, he’d thought he was fixing something, too. He’d thought he was saving the world for democracy, making it a better place. The meat in his mouth turned dry, as tough and hard as he felt inside. His eyes flicked to his father’s gnarled fingers, the joints swollen and twisted, so tortured by arthritis they couldn’t even pick up a screwdriver, let alone use it. As useless in the end as Cutter and all those dark alleys.

“I’m just glad Cutter’s home where he belongs,” his mother said. “You know, sweetheart, your father and I aren’t getting any younger.”

“Speak for yourself, old woman. I’ve still got some kick in me yet” His father wagged his thick eyebrows at her. “In fact, I’ve got my eye on one of those exercise contraptions that’ll give you abs of steel in only six weeks. Oprah had a whole show on ’em. Abs of steel, that’s what it said.”

His mother sniffed. “That’s just what you need, all right.” She laid down her fork and steepled her fingers in that way she had. “But I wanted to talk to Cutter about...” She hesitated.