Traffic Control
By Cherime MacFarlane
Copyright 2016
Copyright Notice:
This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Author's Note: A lot of young people leave Alaska and a fair amount return after spending time outside.
License Notes:
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your retailer and buy a copy for yourself. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Artwork: The Graphics Shed, background photo Cherime MacFarlane
Dedicated to: Mike, good job man.
Acknowledgment: But for the grace of God.
Chapter 1
It was beyond crazy. Not only did this cost a bundle in gas, but it also took far too much time out of his day. He was an adult, not some idiot kid.
The line of vehicles grew behind him. Everything from eighteen-wheelers to expensive motor homes had to wait on the road construction crew.
Summer had come to Alaska, and it was time to sit and wait while someone worked on the road. As usual, the winter deep freeze had taken its toll. Now, the contractors hired by the state were working day and night to fix the damage.
The five-mile section of highway between his office and the Willow job would be getting a major upgrade because of the extensive damage. An earthquake in the winter had cracked the road. The quick fix then had meant removing the asphalt, and returning the five-mile section to gravel; a condition not popular with tourists.
As soon as the temperature rose above freezing during the day, the steamer came out to melt the ice in the culvert. He had seen the mobile steam truck while on his way to the lumber yard.
Then came the barriers; hay and permeable fences to catch the debris. One day after the eco-hazard measures went into place; the heavy equipment moved in. Flaggers were in position on day two.
Standing on the side of the road, sign in hand, as he passed going the other direction was...Adele. He almost put the truck in the ditch staring back at the woman. He would know her anywhere.
Twenty frickin years later, and she still caused his heart to flutter. Adele Jesse Maxin was in town. After picking up a case of deck screws for the job in Willow, he rushed back toward the construction zone.
When he had to come to a stop, six cars back, he was close enough to be sure. One look at her and Ace was a kid again, waking up in a motel room on Concrete Street in Anchorage, Alaska.
The note on the pillow beside his had said she was sorry, but she needed to get out of Alaska. It took him five years to get over being left after just one night with her.
Fifteen years of marriage and two kids later, one look at her was enough to derail his life. He had to talk to the woman. Why did she come home?
But, instead of talking to her, like a chicken shit dummy, he was making extra trips to the lumber yard so he could look at the woman. Every time he drove by, Ace tried to screw up enough courage to park the damn truck, and walk over there.
Interlaced with the need to talk with Adele was a mind numbing fear. What if she’s married? Ace asked himself. If she came back with another man, he might do something drastic. His mother would not be happy.
Chapter 2
Adele fidgeted as she held the pole in front of her commanding the vehicles to stop. The radio in her hand squawked, and the other flagger said it would be about twenty minutes before she could allow traffic to come through.
She knew who was in the bright red pickup, six cars back. The look of shock on his face, as he stared back at her, was telling. Ace hadn’t expected to see her. Adele, however, knew they might cross paths on this job.
A quick look at the Matsu Borough property records online told her Avery ‘Ace’ Cronin now owned the acreage around the back side of Big Lake. She had found the obituary for his father, Avery Senior. The old man had passed away five years before.
Why did she come back? Adele thought it would be the first question out of his mouth. The radio crackled again, and her counterpart on the north end of the site let her know the semi with the car hauler would be the last vehicle on their end to go through. Her bunch waiting impatiently could proceed when the big rig cleared the gravel.
The semi rumbled past, and Adele moved to the left side of the one lane section. After turning the pole so the sign now said ‘slow,’ she gave the nod to the minivan, and the cars started forward.
All accept the red pickup. Ace came up next to her, and the truck came to a dead stop. “We need to talk. When are you off?”
Horns went off in the vehicles behind him. Ace Cronin raised one hand in the stop gesture. “Tell me. No bullshit or I’ll sit here all day.”
“Six tonight.”
“Don’t friggin run. I’ll meet you at the restaurant across from the VFW.”
He gunned the truck, and gravel spun out from the back tires. A few of the drivers glared at her when they rolled past. Adele hoped the supervisor didn’t bring up the delay Ace had caused. An explanation would take too long, and she wasn’t ready to put it all into words.
The motel room and the things he said that night twenty years ago blanked everything else in her mind. The woman shook her dark head to remove all of Ace out. She was three hours into a twelve-hour stint. There was no time for reliving her relationship with the scowling man who held up traffic just to get her agreement to meet him.
Adele had wondered what Ace looked like now. The boy’s face had held promise, and the man’s delivered. The hand he held up was brown and calloused. His hair was still a thick chestnut. Squint lines edged the hazel eyes that could go from green to gold when he got aroused.
She had a lot of explaining to do tonight, and the first thing was a big apology for running out on him. Ace had made that plain with his earlier comment. She had no intention of repeating her first big mistake. Not again.
Chapter 3
His mother would have a fit. But, there was no way he would try to keep the news from her. His family had always been tight knit. After his father had died, he moved into the field, and she took over the office work.
Ace doubted she forgot the five years he spent recovering from Adele. It wasn’t that she disliked the woman. Ace understood his mom hated to see her only son in pain. Adele’s dropping him like a hot potato without giving him a chance to say goodbye inflicted a wound that never healed right.
The girl had made noises about moving on and seeing the world. What Alaskan kid didn’t? If she thought a clean break was the best, the woman had misjudged his feelings for her. The way she vanished that day almost castrated him.
It took several tickets, and a bunch of bail money, to get him through the first two years. The next three resulted in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings close to every night. At one of the sessions, he met the woman he married.
Two recovering drunks married to each other was a ticket to the divorce court. It had also resulted in his being a single dad with an ex-wife lost somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Once in a while his ex called the kids, but not often. He always monitored the calls to make sure Eva was sober when she spoke to their children.
The entire drive up to the build site in Willow and down again to the office, Ace thought about how to break the news to his mother. There was only one way: tell her. And he had to explain he wa
s meeting Adele tonight. None of it would be easy. But it was all necessary.
He parked the truck and went inside the office in the daylight basement under the main living structure. Off the waiting room, in the cluttered office, his mom was on the phone. It only took a few seconds of listening to the one-sided conversation to know it was the fire marshal on the other end of the call.
His mom was finalizing matters for a four-plex they would begin work on in two weeks, out on the Old Glenn Highway. Taking a seat in the chair in front of her, Avery waited.
Her gray hair was short and styled, his mom was still a good looking woman. But she didn’t date and made it clear to two men in particular that she wasn’t in the market for another man. His mom and dad had had a good marriage. She told him she was being a coward and didn’t intend to take a chance on lightening striking twice.
The phone went into the cradle, and when her eyes met his, Avery launched in. “Adele’s back in the state.”
“Shit!” Anxiety flashed through eyes the same color as his.
“There’s no reason to worry about me being a jerk again. I’ve got kids to look after, and I’m not falling off the wagon. She’s down there on the Parks Highway doing traffic control, flagging.”
“Are you going to see her?” He nodded his head and his mother picked up a pen from the edge of her desk calendar.
Without looking up, she doodled on the sides of the paper. “I guess I shouldn’t have bothered to ask.”
“Come on, Ma. I’ve got questions that need answers. The kids are both spending the night with friends. The timing is perfect.”
“Are you going to bring her home?”
He rose and went over to rub her back. “How the hell do I know the answer to that? For all I know, she’s married and has seven or eight kids. I’m not sure it’s in the cards for us to have any kind of a relationship.”
His mother looked up at him. A frown creased her forehead. “Be careful, son. I don’t think I can live through another blowout.”
Avery leaned down to kiss her cheek. “Neither can I. Don’t worry; I’m a big boy now.”
When he got into the truck, his hands were clammy. After wiping them on his pants, he drove out to the highway and turned right. He had business to attend to in Palmer.
Chapter 4
By the time her day ended Adele had a huge gash where the cuticle on her thumb had been. Seated in her car, the woman started it before sending the text message. What to say to her fifteen-year-old son was the question.
Lying was out. Les knew there had been a man in her life, before his father. She warned him of the possibility of running across the guy while out shopping or doing errands in the Matsu Valley.
Keeping it honest made life a lot easier over the long haul. The message was short and sweet. She was meeting the man she told him about for coffee, and would have the cell on if he needed her. Les was to stay in the house. No friends were allowed over until she got home. No change there.
At the restaurant, Adele took a booth where she could see the Parks Highway. It was fifteen minutes past the hour when the red pickup pulled to a stop on the two-lane blacktop in front of the parking lot. He had to wait for a break in traffic to cross the highway.
By the time Ace slipped into the other side of the booth across from her, another cuticle had succumbed to Adele’s attack of nerves. No matter what he accused her of, she was guilty.
But his first word was the one she dreaded the most: a simple “why.”
“Because I was stupid. Young and eager to see the world.”
He leaned forward and looked at the piece of napkin wrapped around her forefinger. Then, his eyes met hers. “I might have gone with you. I didn’t even get the chance to decide. You left me a freaking note.”
When she raised the finger on her left hand to her mouth, he pulled it down. “Stop chewing the things to pieces. You’re bloody already.”
“I’m sorry. That was about the cruelest thing I’ve ever done to anyone. I...”
The phone notified her a text was coming through. “Sorry, I have to take this. It’s my son.”
Adele read the message and told the cell phone to call Les. Ace sat back against the cushion. He called the waitress over and asked for coffee.
“If you’re hungry, make a sandwich. If you want a burger, I’ll bring one home. What’s the name of the movie? Which channel? Okay, you can order it. But eat at the counter and don’t take food into the living room. See you later.”
“How old is he?” The question took her by surprise. Adele expected the ass chewing to go on a little longer.
“Fifteen going on forty. The boy thinks he’s the head of the family.”
“Yep. They can get that way. I gather you’re no longer with his dad?”
“Correct.”
They both waited to speak again until the hostess moved past with the coffee pot in hand.
“I’m a single parent these days. Mom got drafted back into the child raising business again.”
Adele had no intention of telling him she knew he had been married and divorced. The amount of information available on the internet was amazing. What she hadn’t been able to find out was if he had remarried.
“Do you want to go out for a drink sometime?” she asked, knowing his answer would maybe put some of the missing pieces in place.
“Can’t.” He leaned forward and took a sip of the coffee.
Her stomach clenched when he rejected her.
“Recovering alcoholics don’t go to bars.”
Afraid to get the answer, she asked anyhow. “How long have you been recovering?”
The man looked away from her. The cars going by on the road seemed to hold his attention for a long time.
He glanced back in her direction. “Fifteen years. The kids’ mom is still drinking. They only have one parent, and I take that responsibility seriously. This dad will not put them or my mother, at risk.”
If she said what she was thinking, the man would get up and leave. Adele would never have another chance. Ace’s statement confirmed her suspicion. The old court records told her a lot when Adele looked them up. Ace hit the booze heavy after she left. She was guilty as sin of hurting him, far more than she realized.
But, Adele knew this man. He hadn’t wanted to tell her when he began drinking because it would reveal the depth of the hurt. In the end, the need for honesty overcame his pride. Could they work this out?
“We all do dumb things. I thought a man would marry me when he knocked me up. He didn’t. After a while, I decided I didn’t want him to. At least I had the good sense to realize how stupid that was.”
“Where are you living?”
“Back on the old place. When Dad died, I sold off part of the acreage and put the money in savings. I had a decent job in the Lower 48, so I used the money to keep the taxes paid up on the rest. As long as Les was in elementary school, I tried to keep him in the same place. But, I couldn’t stay away any longer. I needed to come home.”
“Smart move. That property of yours is about double in value these days.” His hand found the cup, and Ace took another sip.
“I see you’re still building houses.”
“Yep. But, how were you able to get a traffic control job? Did you keep up your union dues?”
Adele wished those blunt fingers sliding up and down the sides of the cup were on her. More than anything, she wanted Ace back in her life. She wouldn’t trade her son for anything. But Adele wanted this man.
“I did. Seemed like a good idea. The union isn’t as strong Outside as it is up here, but it kept me working.”
His smile did the same thing to her it had in the past, turned her insides to mush. “Good thinking. Ma’s doing the office stuff, and I’m in the field. Dad passed a few years back.”
“Sorry to hear that. I bet she misses your dad like crazy. They spent every minute together, as I recall.”
“She does. But, my two keep her busy.??
?
“Two kids? How old?” Adele finished her coffee and moved the cup to the back of the table. That was enough for now.
He grinned at her. “Girl, fourteen, and a boy, thirteen. Real good kids. I love them to pieces.”
“Would you want to get together again? We could have dinner?”
Chapter 5
Adele was a beautiful woman. When she left him in the damn motel room, she was a lovely girl. But some things hadn’t changed. She still chewed her fingers up when she was nervous.
The bloody strip of napkin around her forefinger gave away her state of mind. Her face when he told her he was an alcoholic let him know she added up the years. Adele had a brain; her conclusion was correct.
Pity from Adele was the last thing he wanted. Not sure what he expected, Ace asked himself how smart a move this had been. She ran from him and went Outside to live with some joker who didn’t even want to marry her. That had been stupid.
It was not possible to erase all the years. Maybe they could start a new chapter. The only thing holding him back from taking her up on the dinner invitation was the five years of hell he went through.
Could she be trusted with his heart this time around? If it was only his heart and not that of his entire family, he might say what the hell. The kids would always need at least one parent they could count on. His mother needed him to take care of her. God knew she upheld her responsibilities to him.
One thing he had learned over the years, honesty was best. It might hurt, but an open wound was better than one weeping infection.
“What do you want from me? It took me five years to learn how to cope after you ran off to God knows where. I made the mistake of marrying another alkie. She left me to raise two kids alone. I’ve got a widowed mother to look after now, and a business to run. I’m not the same kid you left.”
Her face went pale. That left forefinger found its way to her mouth. “I’m sorry. I got tired of being broke and cold in the winter. All I could think about was a beach somewhere warm. I bought a one-way ticket to Seattle with my babysitting money.”
“And didn’t say a goddamn word. I wanted to marry you. The man that didn’t was an idiot. But, that was then, and this is now. You didn’t give me a chance. Did you care about me at all?”