Even unshaven and with hair as long as hers, he was sort of handsome, especially when he wasn’t scowling or intimidating the heck out of her.
As if her opinion made a bit of difference to him.
Beside her the paper bag rattled again. This time he took out a dish of potato salad and a fork. Considering how thin he was, the calories in the rich, creamy salad would do him as much good as the harm they’d done her. She loved potato salad—and pasta salad, fruit salad, and even garden salad as long as it was buried under blue cheese dressing—and she’d eaten too much of it before packing up the rest to share. Too bad she couldn’t just give him the forty extra pounds she carried. Then they would both be perfect.
“What did you do in Boston?” She asked the question because she was curious, of course, but also because the silence had gone on too long. If she couldn’t think of anything to say, there was no reason for her to stay. After spending the past week with little human contact aside from Micahlyn, she really wanted to stay, just a little bit longer.
“Time.”
The muttered answer made her look sharply at him. He shrugged. “I made money, paid taxes, worked eighteen-hour-days six and seven days a week, and then . . .”
Nolie waited, filling in her own answers while waiting for his. And then I got tired of it. I realized that was no way to live. I lost my job, my health, my wife, my self.
But his answer was simpler and told her nothing. “I got out.”
“And came here.”
He shrugged again.
Too simple. A workaholic didn’t exile himself to a solitary life in a cabin in the woods without experiencing some kind of life-changing event. But who was she to push for that information? Neighbors or not, they were little more than strangers. Acquaintances of a sort, who’d spoken a few times. Just because she would like to be more didn’t mean that he wanted the same.
“Are you going back to Boston?”
“No.”
“You’re staying here?”
“No.” He polished off the potato salad, then started on the fruit salad. It was her favorite kind—mandarin oranges, nuts, coconut, and fruit cocktail, all stirred into a creamy dressing. Her mom had made it for every holiday meal, and after she’d died, Marlene had taken up the tradition. Nolie had eaten too much of it for dinner, too. But wasn’t that the story of her life?
Chase’s voice startled her from her thoughts. She’d thought no was all he’d intended to say on the subject, but she’d been wrong.
“First chance I had to get out of here, I did, and I’ll leave again the first chance I get.”
What constituted the first chance? Was it a matter of money or something else?
The sun had disappeared behind the trees to the west, turning the sky faint pinks and purples, and leaving them in the lingering, dim light of dusk. But it wouldn’t matter if it was high noon or the dead of the darkest night. His expression was so blank that looking at him told her absolutely nothing.
“If you feel that way, why did you come here?”
The blankness didn’t waver, but the plastic container that held the salad crinkled under the tightening of his grip. “It seemed a good idea at the time.”
From the log, Micahlyn chose that moment to peevishly wail, “Ma-maaa! I wanna go hom—back. It’s gettin’ dark and I don’t like it here.”
“All right, babe.” Standing up, she dusted her bottom, then faced Chase. She suddenly felt awkward again. “Well . . .”
“Thanks for dinner.”
“You’re welcome. I, uh . . . we’ll see you.”
He didn’t run screaming into the house and lock the door, which she took as a good sign. In fact, he didn’t say anything at all, which maybe wasn’t a good sign.
When she reached the log, Micahlyn was on her feet and practically dancing with her impatience to be gone. She tucked her hand into Nolie’s and hurried her along at a pace that was far beyond leisurely until they’d covered more than half the distance between cabins.
“Okay, Mama, we gived him some of our food. Now we don’t never have to see him again, do we?”
“Honey, he’s our neighbor.”
“So?”
“Remember our neighbors back at Grandma’s? Tiffany’s family and the Beckers across the road and Brother and Sister Thomas from church on the other side? Chase is no different from them.”
“Uh-huh. Tiffany’s dad is just a dad, and Mr. Becker always has candy for me, and Brother Thomas is somebody’s grandpa, like my grandpa. He’s scary.” To emphasize her point, Micahlyn looked over her shoulder, then picked up the pace again.
“So if he gave you candy like Mr. Becker, you wouldn’t be afraid?”
“He pro’bly don’t even like candy, and he pro’bly don’t like little girls, neither.”
Since Nolie wasn’t sure about that last part herself, she didn’t try to argue the point with Micahlyn.
By the time they reached the cabin porch, darkness was settling around them. Nolie locked the dead bolt behind them, then followed Micahlyn upstairs. She filled the tub with bubbles that smelled of bubble gum, washed her own feet first, then sat on the floor to supervise Micahlyn’s bath.
Now that they were safely locked away from their neighbor, her daughter was chatty and in the first good mood in too long. Nolie said a quick prayer that she would see more cheeriness and less brattiness in her daughter from then on out, then felt guilty for even asking. She’d uprooted her little girl from the only life, family, and home she’d ever known, and it was going to take time for Micahlyn to get over that. Rather than hoping her daughter would behave better, she should be asking that Micahlyn’s adjustment go smoother.
Which would give the same result.
They went through their evening routine—bedtime story, making a wish on a star that had just started to twinkle in the night sky, tucking in, a bedtime prayer, and trading kisses. Nolie sat on the edge of the bed, gazing down at Micahlyn, and felt a lump form in her throat. “I love you, babe.”
“I love you, too. And I love Grandma and Grandpa and home and Whiskey Creek.”
Oh, well. It was good while it lasted.
She gave Micahlyn one last kiss, then shut off the lamp and went to her own bedroom down the hall. She wasn’t sure what drew her to the window, or so she insisted until she stood there, curtains pushed back with one hand, and gazed up the road to the other cabin. Without lights, it was nothing more than a shadow, until the clouds shifted and the moonlight filtered through.
Chase still sat on the porch, the paper bag beside him, but he wasn’t eating or relaxing or, apparently, even enjoying the cool evening. His feet were planted a few steps below where he sat, and he leaned forward, shoulders hunched, head bowed. He looked so lost. So alone.
She watched him even though she felt as if she was intruding on his private sorrow, watched until the moon disappeared behind the clouds again, until it reappeared a few long moments later.
When it did, he was gone.
FOR EIGHT YEARS, LEANNE WILSON’S CHILDREN’S boutique, Small Wonders, had occupied the same space, the first floor of a hundred-year-old two-story building that faced the back of the Bethlehem courthouse. In all that time, until the past month, she’d ventured onto the second floor only once—before she’d signed the lease. She’d looked at the apartment up there, decided she couldn’t possibly want to live above where she worked, and had more or less forgotten about it.
Funny how things changed.
On a cloudy Tuesday morning, she stood under the gaily-striped awning that fronted the building, key in hand, and with some trepidation unlocked the door that led upstairs. Last night a half-dozen friends had finished moving her into the apartment, and this morning she’d finally told her parents. If it was already a done deal, her mother couldn’t complain too much, right?
She stifled the contemptuous snort trying to escape. If Phyllis Wilson someday found herself in heaven with the good Lord himself, she would find fault with somethi
ng.
“Hurry up, please. It’s going to start raining any moment now, and I’d rather not get wet. I came here from the salon, you know.”
Leanne glanced over her shoulder at her mother, who looked as if she’d been sucking on a lemon. Behind Phyllis, her father appeared put out, as if spending a few minutes looking at her new apartment was such a burden.
In truth, Leanne knew, the burden for Earl was spending time with Phyllis. She had a few vague memories of them in happier times, when she was a kid, but for most of her life, they’d been at each other’s throats. She couldn’t understand why one of them hadn’t divorced the other years ago. They’d had separate bedrooms for ages. Why not separate lives? Why settle for such misery when life was so short?
With a mental shrug, she opened the door and started up the stairs. “Come on. I want to show you what I’ve done.”
“I don’t know about these stairs, Leanne,” Phyllis groused. “You know, you’re not so young anymore. And what about Danny? It’s so dark and gloomy in here. He could fall and break something.”
Earl’s voice boomed in the stairwell. “For God’s sake, Phyllis, the girl’s twenty-eight years old. She can handle stairs, and so can Danny. And any fool can see there are lightbulbs up there that she just didn’t bother turning on since it’s the middle of the morning.”
At the top of the stairs, Leanne turned to wait. “Thank you for shaving a few years off my age, Dad, but I’m thirty-two.”
Much of the hostility left his voice. “How can you be thirty-two when I’m not much past that myself?”
Phyllis harrumphed disdainfully, then stepped into the apartment’s entry. It was tiny, opening into the kitchen and living room on the right, and with a coat closet on the left. Leanne preferred the antique coat rack in the corner, though. She’d picked it up for a few bucks at a yard sale, cleaned it, and polished the brass hooks until they gleamed. It looked perfect there.
Of course, her mother didn’t share her opinion. “What are you doing with that old thing? And you are going to put rugs in here, aren’t you?”
“A few. I like the wood floors.”
“You won’t like taking care of them, trust me. That’s why I carpeted over the ones in our house. They were nothing but work.” Followed by Earl, Phyllis walked around the counter into the kitchen, silently taking in the blue walls and white cabinets, the intricately patterned tile backsplash Leanne had knocked herself out with, the vinyl floor, and her nose wrinkled just a bit. When she moved on to the living room, painted a deeper blue and sporting a wicker dinette and sofa, along with vivid tropical-print fabrics, the wrinkle turned into severe disapproval. “Why on earth did you buy wicker? You know how it creaks with every move.”
“Not the good stuff.”
Phyllis sniffed. “These walls are too dark for this room. You should have painted them a nice neutral, like our living room. You’ll be tired of this in no time.”
Leanne shoved her hands behind her back before knotting them into fists, gritted her teeth, and said nothing in her defense. Instead, she looked to her father for his opinion. Years of experience told her it would be 180 degrees opposite her mother’s.
He proved her right with a shrug. “I like the blue. And the wicker. It looks vacationy.”
Phyllis’s jaw tightened as she turned, hands on her hips. “Well, where are the bedrooms? There are bedrooms, aren’t there?”
“Of course.” As if she would rent an apartment for herself and her four-year-old son that didn’t have a place to sleep? Leanne led the way back through the kitchen to the small alcove at the end of the hallway. The door on the right led into the bathroom, the one in the center into Danny’s room, and the one on the left into her own room.
Phyllis inspected her room and the bathroom without comment. When she saw Danny’s room, though, her tongue loosened. “For God’s sake, Leanne, red walls? What were you thinking—or were you even thinking? This is awful. Danny will have nightmares for sure in this—this dreadful place. Red!”
Not just red, but fire-engine red, bright, cheery. Leanne smiled as she recalled Danny’s delight with the finished product. “It’s what he wanted.”
“You don’t let a four-year-old decide what color to paint his walls.”
“Why not?” Earl countered. “It’s his room.”
“Oh, please. As if you have any taste whatsoever.” Phyllis turned to stare out the window that looked out on the courthouse and, to the west, the town square. “This is a ridiculous idea, Leanne, living downtown above your shop. If you’re tired of your old apartment, fine. Move in with us. We’ll fix up the garage apartment for you. Then you can find someone to fix the mess you’ve made here, and maybe your landlord can rent it to someone else.”
Leanne flinched at the idea of moving back into the house where she’d grown up. Even the apartment over the garage out back was way closer to her parents than she wanted to be—or wanted her son to be.
Earl slid his arm around her shoulders. “I think it’s a great idea. That Knight boy’s wife has an office in their house. And that lawyer—what’s her name?—lives above her office. And they’re both just across the square.”
“Jillian Freeman,” Leanne supplied.
“Yeah. And just look what a short commute you’ll have to work.” He grinned and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I think you made a wise choice.”
Phyllis turned a scathing look on both of them. “You would. Since I have better things to do than waste my breath on someone who obviously cares nothing for my opinion, I’m leaving. Don’t bother to see me out.”
When the door at the bottom of the stairs closed with a thud, Earl broke the silence. “Doesn’t it feel nicer in here already?” Releasing Leanne, he wandered back into her bedroom. With its pale peach walls and antique oak furniture, Phyllis had found it the least offensive room and given it little more than a glance before moving on.
“What do you think, Dad?” Leanne leaned against the doorjamb and watched him walk around the room, touching things here and there, looking at knickknacks and photos.
“I told you.”
“You and I both know that was for Mom’s benefit. What do you really think?”
He stopped in front of a window, gazing at the photographs she’d arranged on the sill, picking up one, then replacing it for another. “I think you did a great job. I admit, I don’t think I’d want a blue living room or a red bedroom, but I’m not living here. If you and Danny like it—” He’d been reaching for the last frame when he froze, his hand motionless in midair. After a moment, he drew back and turned to face her, his jaw tight, his eyes shadowy. “If you and Danny like what you’ve done, more power to you. I’ve got to go, princess. I’ve got an appointment in fifteen minutes. Give my grandson a kiss for me, and tell him we’ll go fishing Saturday.”
Leanne murmured a response and accepted his kiss, but didn’t move until the distant closing of the door signaled he was gone, too. Then, with a heavy sigh, she crossed to the window and picked up the picture that had caused such a change in him.
It was about twenty-five years old, the colors faded. Her mother truly looked happy, and so did her father. Leanne was grinning bigger than usual to show off the two front teeth she’d lost when she’d tripped over the sandbox at the park, and her brother, who’d made her trip, was smiling, too, in spite of the punishment he’d gotten.
Had they really been that happy then, or was it just an illusion—a moment of let’s-pretend captured for eternity by the camera? She couldn’t remember. There was certainly no illusion about their family now. Her parents lived to make each other miserable, her brother had broken off contact with all of them right after high school, and she . . . she felt like an orphan half the time and wished she was the other half.
Movement outside drew her attention from the past and across the street. The real estate sign was gone from the yard of old Mrs. Miller’s house, and a silver Lexus was pulled into the driveway. She wondered who’d bough
t the place. Certainly no one local, or she would have already heard. Bethlehem’s grapevine was extraordinarily efficient.
As she watched, a man came out of the house and stood at the top of the porch steps, gazing about. He was tall, blond, tanned, and wore khaki trousers and a white dress shirt. His sleeves were rolled up, his tie loosened. It was impossible to tell at this distance if he wore a wedding band—as if that mattered to most men—but surely he had a wife and kids somewhere. Surely he hadn’t bought the Miller mansion just for himself.
His gaze scanned the block, slowing, then coming back to her window. Abruptly she took a step back, then glanced at the bedside clock. It was 9:32, two minutes past opening time for Small Wonders. Tossing the old family photo on the bed, she spun around and hurried toward the stairs, and to work.
MAMA. I GOTTA GO TO THE BATHROOM.” Her shoulders and back aching, Nolie looked down at Micahlyn from her perch on the ladder, six feet above the concrete floor of Hiram’s Feed Store. She swiped the back of one hand across her forehead, where she felt a headache trying to start, then wiped the paint she’d just smeared on her sleeve. “So go, babe. You know where it is.”
“I’m scared to go alone.”
“You’ve gone alone a half-dozen times today.”
“But that was today. This is tonight, and I’m scared.”
Resting her roller in the paint pan, Nolie bent to glance out the small bit of window glass that wasn’t taped over with newspaper. She wasn’t a careless painter by intent. Splatters just seemed to happen every time she picked up a brush. “It’s not night yet.” Truthfully, though, it was coming close. There was still a good amount of light to the west, but dusk was approaching rapidly from the east.
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