Sunburst

by Jennifer Greene

  Kyle cleared his throat. “Erica. Last night…”

  “Let’s leave it,” she said swiftly. The put-away jobs were all done, and she seemed to have little choice but to sit across from him and pick up the sandwich.

  “I was angry,” he said quietly. “But not at you, Erica. I never meant to take it out on you-”

  “I met someone this morning,” she remarked. “A woman named Martha Calhoun. You used to know her, I understand? She asked us for dinner tonight.”

  “Erica-”

  “You don’t have to go; I can fix something for you and Morgan ahead of time. But I think I will. I liked her very much…”

  There was a short silence, while Kyle studied her averted face and nervous movements. The thing was, she was terribly afraid she was going to cry if he pressed the subject of last night’s argument. She didn’t want to hear again what he thought of her love or her loyalty. It was hard enough trying to assimilate that she was sitting across from Kyle and yet their marriage was disintegrating, that for some impossible reason the sandwich was even going down and she had actually laughed that morning, that nothing seemed to alter the physical awareness of him she had always had. When his hand reached over to cover hers, she could no more have pulled away from him than she could have stopped breathing.

  “We’ll go to dinner at Martha’s,” he said softly. “Maybe later you’ll feel like talking.”

  “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

  He ignored that. “Erica, I think we’ve both had more stress than we can handle lately. The roof’s going up tomorrow; that should take three days, more or less. After that, there’s electricity and all the trimmings, but we should be able to steal a few days… Erica, I want a few days alone with you.”

  He went on, his tone strangely soothing. She had the ridiculous sensation that he was trying to calm her, and she resented that, too. He had always known her too well, had always been the only person in her life who knew exactly how to gentle her out of her resentment. She listened vaguely. Perhaps they would go to the Door Peninsula, he was saying, drive along the shore of Lake Michigan…see some treasures, lost ships, the lighthouse at Vermilion, perhaps do some diving…

  Shortly after that he got up, bent over to place a kiss on the sun-streaked crown of her head and went back out to work.

  “A dairy farm?” Morgan said incredulously, and then laughed, hooking an arm around Erica’s shoulder as he walked her outside. Kyle was still upstairs, taking a quick shower. “Are you going to have to churn your own butter for dinner?” Morgan asked blandly.

  “I think they might be a wee bit more automated than that in this day and age,” Erica said dryly. “And before you even ask, no, I won’t be required to put on a big white apron and sit down with a pail to get milk for the meal.”

  Morgan’s eyebrows shot up. “I was never going to ask that.”

  “No?”

  “I was just going to remind you again that I’ve got chops and a grill and an unopened bottle of Chivas. Just because Kyle’s hung up on the country scene doesn’t mean you couldn’t stay here with me. Or is Kyle so possessive he doesn’t let you off the leash?”

  “Woof.”

  Morgan looked appropriately disgusted, and Erica whirled when she heard the screen door slam behind her. Kyle strode toward her, dressed as casually as she was; both had opted for off-white pants and dark brown tops. The blend of colors accented Kyle’s bronzed skin as much as it showed off her own red-blond coloring.

  “Trying to beat my time again, Shane?” Before she’d had a chance to say word one, Kyle had handed her into the car.

  “A losing battle,” Morgan complained.

  “But then, I’ve told you that before. Don’t drink all the Chivas.”

  Erica sat back in the seat as he started the car, feeling as vulnerable as violets, her emotions short-circuiting all rational thought as she brooded over their unresolved quarrel. An afternoon of work seemed to have solved nothing, and the hurt simply didn’t want to fade. She had never before in her life been so distraught as to strike anyone. And to do that to Kyle, whom she loved more than anyone…

  “I’m trading buckets of roses for frowns this evening,” he murmured next to her.

  “Pardon?”

  Those blue eyes seared into hers for just a few seconds as he put the car in gear. “I don’t want you to think I’m trying to coax you into a happier mood, sweet, but you look somewhere between delectable and delicious.”

  “I’m wearing tennis shoes,” she said flatly. “Martha’s suggested attire.”

  “I can’t help that.”

  “Kyle-”

  “We’re not going to argue now. We’ll talk when we get home. And in the meantime, whether you like hearing it or not, you look very special; you smell very special; and Martha’s a crazy enough lady that you just might even have a special time.” He held up a hand. “Truce?”

  She took his hand, touching fingertips to fingertips. His hand folded around hers, and she averted her eyes, staring out the window. She knew he hadn’t forgotten the quarrel, either; his light humor was tentative, as gentle as the touch of his hand, and just as grave as the hidden light behind his eyes.

  “What are you thinking of now?”

  Dammit. Did he have to catch every frown? “Morgan can be extremely exasperating on occasion,” she said lightly.

  His hand shifted to the steering wheel. “Such as?”

  “He doesn’t understand the difference between being protective and being possessive. He’s always teasing…” She shrugged lightly. “Sometimes it’s funny. Sometimes I think he deliberately misunderstands.”

  “What exactly, Erica?”

  She propped her feet against the dash and leaned back. “Nothing. Really. He just made this joke about your being possessive and my being on a leash. It didn’t strike me as funny. But then you’re not that way, thank God. You never have been. You’re protective, but you’ve never had a macho attitude of you can do this, you can’t do that. Possessive. Overpossessive. Chauvinistic. Domineering-”

  “I get your drift,” Kyle said dryly. His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Love doesn’t work on a leash. Unfortunately.”

  “Unfortunately?”

  “Trust, honey. It’s like a silken thread that sometimes has to be as strong as steel. Why,” he suggested lightly, “don’t you tell Morgan to go straight to hell?”

  She shook her head, grinning. “He needs saving too badly. I’ve got to turn his attitude around before he takes on another redhead.”

  “And breaks her heart.”

  “And breaks her heart,” Erica agreed.

  Kyle pulled into the Calhouns’ drive. “He’s damned good at that, Erica.” He wasn’t smiling.

  She puzzled over the look on his face for an instant, and then gave up trying to interpret it. Martha came flying from the house like a miniature bombshell, all bright colors and waving hands and huge smile.

  “Darn it! Do you believe I invited you at milking time? And I haven’t even started dinner! Unforgivable. Leonard told me I was a disgrace.”

  Kyle denied that. When they emerged from the car, Erica got a hug first, and then Kyle, who kept his hand affectionately on Martha’s shoulder, assuring her that she was not a disgrace but the same scatterbrained, appealing nitwit he’d always known. Erica started smiling in spite of herself and didn’t stop. Martha told him he was probably the same bullheaded, stubborn idiot he’d always been, but at least he had a minor claim to good looks. Kyle told her she didn’t have that problem, but she was undoubtedly as bossy as ever.

  The talk went on as they passed through the house to get Kyle a beer. The house was just like Martha, bright and cluttered and busy. Erica could hear the sound of drums coming from a nearby barn, to which their son had obviously defected. Leonard appeared, as soft-eyed and gentle a man as Erica had expected. He ignored Martha and Kyle and took Erica’s hand. Would she like to see the dairy equipment?

&nb
sp; She would. Having no concept at all of a contemporary dairy farm, she was curious as she followed him from place to place. The cows were kept in stalls so clean they gleamed like a Cadillac’s chrome. Nothing so unsterile as a human hand intervened in the process of getting milk from the cow to the consumer. From the animal, the milk was pumped through long, gleaming tubes to another room that held storage tanks. Trucks came three times a week to make pickups. The cows were huge, big-eyed and gentle. Waddling around their feet were ducklings, which had free run of the yard. There were also pecking chickens, a pair of dogs and a variety of cats, all colors.

  “You mean my milk is actually three weeks old by the time I get it from the grocery store?” Erica demanded unhappily.

  “At least. With almost all of the vitamins pumped out of it by that time. When you taste the milk at dinner…”

  Dinner was the problem, Kyle told her. Martha was willing to make an effort at it, but in the interim the Calhouns’ seven-year-old was discovered to be missing. The McCrerys were invited to solve the tougher of the two problems.

  It was crazy. The entire evening was crazy. All Erica could think of was the thousand dinner parties remembered from a childhood when it was considered a mortal sin to pick up the wrong fork.

  In contrast, tonight Kyle spent ten minutes arguing about the international implications of a drop in the Dow Jones average as he and Leonard drank beer. Erica fed a baby rabbit with a bottle. Martha chattered as she strewed out feed to the chickens, then fixed fresh water bottles for the rest of the animals, all of which made an incredible racket at feeding time. The Calhoun boy kept playing his drums. At first he seemed to favor contemporary rock, then went back to the Beatles, then to old-time jazz.

  Martha whisked the rabbit out of Erica’s hands, then ordered her to go with Kyle and stop worrying about helping with dinner. No one thought her capable of organizing anything, Martha complained, when in fact she was quite brilliant at it. Leonard begged to differ. She’d broken her arm tripping over even ground. Martha could remember a time he’d thrown out his back picking up a nickel off the floor.

  Erica felt a large palm nudging at the small of her back, and she walked with Kyle back outside, past the barns. “Are they always like that?” she asked with a grin.

  “I haven’t any idea. Leonard was probably sane before he married her.” His smile matched her own. “This was originally Martha’s family’s farm. When I was a kid, I thought it was the richest place on earth.”

  “It is,” she agreed. In love and laughter. She was only beginning to understand that Kyle had been short-changed on these things as a child. The way Martha had whipped her arms around him and hugged… Erica had the unaccountable impression that Martha was still seeing a lonely, sensitive, stubborn little boy with too much pride, totally overwhelmed by the effusive O’Flaherty clan. Erica saw, too, that Martha loved to bully him with love, that she was delighted Kyle had turned out strong and handsome, and not quite so difficult to bully. The thought made her smile, even as she felt a lingering sadness, thinking of Kyle as a child, then of their quarrel the night before.

  “Where exactly are we going?” she asked idly. They had crossed out of the farmyard and were striding along a farmer’s path bordering a field of wheat.

  “There’s only one place that kid could be, if she loves climbing trees as much as Martha says she does.” The trail forked; they left the wheat field in favor of a wooded path. The sloping woods had the pungent, rich smell of black earth, the special stillness that was part of woods on an early evening. Kyle found his way unerringly to a huge old oak standing massive and proud, its thick limbs reaching toward the sky, “Joanie?” he called.

  The voice that answered was so high up that Erica gasped in surprise. “Is it dinnertime? I haven’t missed it, have I? Mom’ll kill me.” The little voice hesitated. “You Mr. McCrery? How’d you find me?”

  “This was my favorite tree as a kid. I figured if you were a climber, you wouldn’t settle for less than the best.”

  A few branches parted long enough to disclose a bright pair of blue eyes looking down at them, interested. “You sound nice.”

  “We are nice,” Kyle assured her wryly. “Mind some company?”

  “Heck, no!”

  Erica blinked. One minute she was definitely on solid ground and the next Kyle’s hands had hooked around her waist from behind her. “Kyle!”

  “Get that first handhold, beauty.”

  “But I’ve never climbed a tree. And this one-”

  “You’ve never climbed a tree?” Kyle said incredulously. “What did you do the whole time you were a kid?”

  “Shopped for clothes…” Erica’s hands fumbled for a hold on the branch. Kyle’s hand cupped her buttocks for one last heave upward that struck her as distinctly intimate. She turned around to glare at him. The little one was giggling. “Played with dolls. Played school. Kyle-”

  “Deprived childhood, it sounds like to me.” He was right behind her, motioning which branches to take, shielding her body with his own so that the only place she could fall was against him.

  “Exactly how high did you have in mind?” she wondered aloud.

  “Heaven.”

  Joanie Calhoun burst into chuckles. Breathless, Erica kept climbing into the leafy haven, until she came on a level with the little girl. Joanie was a blonde with big blue yes. She was wearing jeans that could have used a wash, and she had lined up a trio of apple cores on a limb next to her. Where a single branch swayed slightly in the breeze, Erica could see the arched roofs of the barns and a long, undulating field of wheat. She’d been lower in a plane.

  “Mom said you were the guy who lived in a tree as a kid,” the little girl said interestedly.

  “I came close, I’ll have to admit that. Best place to escape from your troubles that I ever found.”

  Joanie concurred. The two appeared to agree on a great many things. Erica was captivated by the way Kyle handled the child, as he maneuvered up and behind her, then motioned. Erica shook her head emphatically. Kyle bent down, with feet braced against two forked limbs, and hauled her up against him, still talking to the little girl. In a moment, she was wedged in the cradle of his thighs and chest, his arms loosely supportive under her breasts. For some insane reason, she was comfortable.

  “I wasn’t going to like you,” Joanie told him. “Mom said you made stuff out of wood. I kept thinking you’d be the kind to cut down a tree like this, just to make some dumb stuff. I think you should leave a tree a tree…”

  “I would cut off a toe before I’d touch this oak,” he promised her, “but I hear you, Joanie. A tree’s a special thing. Every culture that’s ever existed has had a concept of the Tree of Life, and all people-no matter how different they are-have a special feeling for the trees of their land. But when I make something out of wood, I don’t think of it as destroying but as creating.”

  “I don’t get you,” the little girl said flatly.

  “The tree would die someday in the cycle of nature. But when something is made of its wood, that thing can last-much longer than that tree might have lived, much longer than it would take one of that tree’s acorns to grow to full size. We’ll skip the boring stuff we need from wood, like floors and furniture-but what about music, little one? Guitars and violins are made from wood; those instruments last and in turn create something that lasts-music. So that tree keeps living on, just in a different way-you understand?”

  They both understood, the man and child, with their mutual affinity for trees. Erica leaned back against her husband and felt his arm tighten under her breast, as aware of her as she was of him. With his free hand, he brushed a wisp of hair from her cheek and then let the hand linger in the curve of her shoulder.

  Her two companions refused to tire of their subject, Kyle willingly expanding into folklore. The oak had always symbolized strength and protection. Rowan was used as a charm against witchcraft. A witch, on the other hand, could turn herself into an elder in a pinch
; if you cut an elder branch it was said to bleed. People used to believe that ash cured rickets; the willow symbolized lost love; yews represented everlasting life. “Now the hawthorn tree’s a very special one,” Kyle added. “If you bring its blossoms into the house, you’re risking a death in the family. But if you sit under a hawthorn in the middle of summer…you might just fall under a fairy’s spell.”

  “You don’t believe that,” said the little girl, who had clearly believed every word. “Mom would say that was ’stitious.”

  “Superstitious?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Hmm.” Kyle shook his head, gently smiling. “I guess I must be ’stitious then, because whenever I make something out of oak, I get this good feeling. Like the house it’s going to will have just a little more protection against storms, against trouble…”

  “Really?”

  Erica leaned her head back to look at him. He was entertaining the child, but she could feel the depth of commitment in him, a commitment based not on superstition, but on his love of the craft he’d taken on. She thought of the sunburst, of the love that went into that work, of the skill that came from the heart. And she thought of the days he’d once spent poring over dry profit and loss sheets, something he’d been very good at but that had never really involved the core of the man she was coming to know. “Why did you leave all this?” she whispered to him.

  His arm tightened around her. “Because I was eighteen and running. Because I was ashamed of all the wrong things.” His eyes hovered intensely on hers, dark blue as the sky above took on evening shadows through their leafy ceiling. He hesitated, and she knew he meant to explain that…but they were interrupted by a bubble of laughter from below.

  “Kyle McCrery, you get down from there! I’ll be darned if I finally do get dinner on and there isn’t a soul to serve it to but Leonard. I should have known better than to send you out after Joanie! You haven’t changed a whit since you were a kid; the very first tree you see… Poor Erica’s probably scared out of her mind, and as for you, miss…” She scolded the three of them like children as they followed her back to the house.