Black and Blue in the Lilac City (#8)

Chapter 1

The hammer landed on his thumb.

Dropping the tool to hold his injured hand, Carter Murphy yelped and jumped to his feet. He silently reminded himself not to curse. Instead, he ground his teeth together and forced his anger down. During their thirty-seven years of marriage, Miriam had fought against his swearing. Carter often delighted in using inappropriate language to rile her up. Now that she was gone, he rarely used the words she had disliked.

He inspected his thumb. There was no visible damage, but it throbbed like hell. He wrapped his right hand around the sore digit, closed his eyes, and emitted a low moan.

As the pain lessened, Carter reopened his eyes and looked around his neighborhood. The view from his roof provided a perspective he wasn’t used to seeing.

Two houses down, Joe Critchlow’s backyard was almost entirely dirt—no doubt a result of his two Great Danes. It was in stark contrast to Joe’s beautifully maintained front yard. Carter couldn’t understand how the man tolerated the miserable beasts, especially when they did that type of damage to his yard.

Phyllis Mitchell, now in her mid-eighties, lived next door. She stood near the flowers that ran along her rear fence line. Her husband died last year, a month before his ninetieth birthday. She was next to a sundial urn, where her husband’s ashes now resided. Carter watched Phyllis whisper to the sundial for a couple of moments before he turned away, ashamed of intruding on the private moment.

Directly behind his house, a woman sunbathed. Her body glistened either from lotion or sweat caused by the late August sun. Her figure appeared trim in the small white bikini. It was the first time Carter had seen the woman. The fence between their backyards was six feet in height, with barely a crack between the boards. Perhaps she had sunbathed in her yard before, and he wouldn’t have noticed it from ground level.

Carter’s gaze never left the woman as he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

The sunlight danced on the woman’s belly the way light bounces off diamonds. Even from this distance, he noticed the soft rise and fall in her stomach as she breathed. It was rhythmic, as if she were asleep. It was a beautiful day for lounging—

Suddenly, the woman sat upright and whipped off her sunglasses. With her other hand, she blocked the sun to get a better look at Carter.

This surprised him, and without hesitation or thought, he stepped backward. Forgetting he was on the roof and not a flat surface, Carter tilted severely. He took a quick step and swayed wildly for a moment. His arms flailed as he fought to recover his balance. Swinging his hand further hurt his thumb, and he pulled it into his chest.

Luckily, Carter recovered his footing. Before anything unfortunate happened, he mused.

He was not secured to the roof in a safe and approved manner that a government agency would require of a professional roofer. When he started this home improvement project, Carter considered the precautions too silly and protective, yet another overreach by the nanny state. Now, though, he thought perhaps he’d been too cavalier with that attitude.

Carter turned his attention back to the woman, who seemed to watch him with intense curiosity. He stood frozen with embarrassment. He checked his other neighbors to see if they had noticed his near fall.
None of them had.

The woman in the bikini now stood slowly to reveal herself. She extended her arms and slowly turned—a private pirouette. When she stopped spinning, she waved.

Not knowing how to handle the awkwardness of having been caught observing a nearly naked woman in her backyard, Carter did the only thing he could think of—he waved back.

The sudden hand motion renewed the pain in his thumb, and he protectively jerked it to his chest. Carter took another step backward on the slanted roof. His running shoe slipped on some shingles, and he fell.

Carter tumbled from the upper roof to land on a lower flat roof of a connected shed. This narrowly avoided a crash onto the concrete driveway below. Carter lay there with the wind knocked out of him, desperately sucking for air. Panic rushed through him as he struggled for breath.

Like a fish out of water, his mouth opened and closed helplessly. When no air arrived, he rolled quickly over to his hands and knees. The movement sent waves of pain to his brain. Tears welled in his eyes as he continued drawing for breath.

It seemed like seconds with no air until suddenly—thankfully—it was there.

Fresh air filled his lungs, and Carter breathed deeply, greedily. A smile formed on his face as the overwhelming fear slowly dissipated. He stayed on his hands and knees, enjoying the simple act of taking in and expelling air. When his breathing returned to normal, the pain in his back and neck announced its presence. Carter slowly turned over to sit on the narrow roof. He rolled his head from side to side.

He knew he was hurt. Not bad enough to go to the doctor, but bad enough to stop working. Bad enough to remain still for some time. Carter examined the scrapes on his forearms. They were large and pink, and droplets of blood formed in various places. He ran his fingers through his gray hair, wincing as he did so from the pain in his back.

He lay slowly on the flat roof and patted his shirt pocket before remembering he no longer smoked. Another vice that Miriam had long struggled with him to stop. He only succeeded after she was gone.

“You okay?”

Carter painfully pushed himself back into a sitting position and looked down at the bikini-clad woman in his driveway. She stood with her feet slightly apart and her hands on her hips. She didn’t seem embarrassed to be standing in their neighborhood dressed that way, let alone in front of a man she’d never met.

“I’m okay,” he muttered and struggled to stand. Carter carefully shuffled to the ladder that leaned against the shed and climbed down.

“When I saw you fall,” the woman said as he descended, “I freaked out.”

“Just scraped up. No worries.”

“What were you doing up there?”

He glanced at the nearby dumpster, which was full of worn shingles and an old roof underlayment.

The woman followed his gaze. “Stupid question. Sorry.”

“It’s all right. I need to get a new roof up before winter.”

“You should get those scrapes cleaned out.”

“Probably.” He examined his forearms again.

His world suddenly tilted, and he looked into the sky. He blinked several times, fighting back a wave of nausea.

“Are you all right?”

He felt woozy, so he lowered himself to a knee. He rested an elbow on the bent leg and closed his eyes. “Must have fallen harder than I thought.”

“Should I get your wife? Is she inside?”

Carter shook his head.

“Want me to call her?”

He took a deep breath and stood. “It’s okay. I’m good.”

“You sure?” The woman reached out and touched his shoulder.

The woman was in her late thirties, perhaps early forties, and the most attractive person he’d talked with since his wife had passed.

Full of embarrassment, Carter said, “I’ve got to go.”

He left the woman standing in his front yard.