Charlotte's Homecoming

by Janice Kay Johnson

  This will make us safer. Sometimes the scary choice is the best one.

  She pulled the trigger, and lurched back as the gun kicked.

  But when, swallowing, she stared at the paper target, she saw the hole through the head.

  Now it was her stomach that lurched.

  “I don’t know if I can do this,” she said shakily.

  “That was a great start,” the gun-shop owner told her. “You get used to the kick. Were you aiming at the torso?”

  “That’s what you told me to do.” He had convinced her that she’d never be a good enough shot to go for the leg or try to wing someone. The torso was the biggest target, and the likeliest to drop the assailant, which was her goal.

  He stood behind her and steadied her hands as she fired, and fired again.

  Eventually he had her try several different guns. A couple of guys there to practice shoot became interested in her first lesson and began to give advice. She learned that they were Everett police officers. They showed her how to curl her thumb rather than wrap it over her other hand, got her to loosen her grip.

  “No tighter than a handshake,” one of them said.

  She shot until locking her wrists and elbows was becoming automatic, until she could replace the magazines without fumbling, until she was ripping the center out of the paper target.

  They were so nice that she began to relax. She had told them tensely why she was buying a gun, and they took her seriously.

  She finally chose the very first gun she’d fired, which earned her nods of approval all around. Hugely relieved to take off the earmuffs and hand back the Colt .38 she’d chosen, Faith discovered her knees were weak and that she felt so tremulous her teeth wanted to chatter. She clenched them together, offered her credit card and signed the slip at the bottom.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow,” she told all three men. “And every day, if I can manage it, until school starts.”

  “School?” the older cop asked.

  “I teach kindergarten.”

  None of them said a word. They didn’t have to. The dichotomy—she thought that was the right word—between who she was and her very presence here, at a gun range, was so vast, so absurd, there really wasn’t anything to say.

  It was Rory’s fault. Except…she still couldn’t absolve herself for all of it. The blindness that had let her love a man so insecure, so angry. The timidity, the need to be loved, that had kept her silent and meek when he hit her, over and over.

  No matter what other people said, including Gray and Ben Wheeler, she couldn’t shove all the blame onto Rory. If she’d insisted on counseling the first time he hit her… If she’d left him the second time… It might have been different. Maybe he’d have gotten help. Maybe his rage wouldn’t have built and built and built until he hated her for what he’d become.

  “Thank you,” she said to all three men. “Thank you so much.” She turned and fled to her car, where she could sit until she quit shaking. Where she could, in the quiet of her own mind, shore up her resolve.

  She stared, eyes dry and burning, at the blank cinder-block wall of the gun range.

  If I have to, I’ll shoot Rory. If he makes it impossible for me to do anything else.

  But the pain balled in her chest told her that if she killed him, the guilt she carried now for her part in the fiasco of her marriage would be nothing in comparison.

  Taking the life of the man she’d once loved would be so terrible, Faith couldn’t imagine ever putting it behind her.

  She gripped the steering wheel and prayed, as she’d never prayed before, that this time, Rory had shocked even himself by what he’d done. What he’d wanted to do. That he would leave the area, and let go of whatever horrible tie she had on him.

  She prayed she would never see him again, that the handgun she’d purchased today would never be fired outside the range and would eventually gather dust in a box in the closet.

  But as far as she could tell, none of her prayers where Rory was concerned had ever been heard.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “NO, WE’RE NOT HAVING DINNER in West Fork.” Gray buckled his seat belt and put the key in the ignition. “I can’t go anywhere in town without running into a city council member or having half a dozen worthy citizens stop by my table to tell me what I should be doing differently. I figure Everett is safe. Odds are good of going unrecognized.”

  Charlotte laughed at his pained tone, even though she was ridiculously nervous.

  So what if she was having dinner with him? It’s not as if she never dated.

  But Gray…wow. She’d have chickened out if she could have reconciled it with her conscience. Since she couldn’t, here she was sitting in Gray’s Prius wearing a pale blue dress with spaghetti straps that she’d borrowed from Faith. And open-toed, strappy heels, also borrowed, because otherwise all she’d brought were flip-flops and a pair of athletic shoes. She’d bothered with earrings for the first time since she got here, and even some makeup.

  Gray had been about one thousand times nicer to her than she’d deserved while she was in the hospital, and the past four days, too. When he’d come tearing into the E.R. cubicle, she had been astonished to realize how desperately she had wanted him. Not Dad, not Faith. Gray. And there he was.

  Having him stay the night, hold her hand, massage her aching head and kiss her more tenderly than anyone had since she was a little girl, all of that meant she owed him. Big-time.

  And she hated that she felt so shy and so scared about where this date might go. This man could change her life.

  Maybe he already had.

  He made the turn out onto the highway, then glanced at her. “How do you feel about Creole food?”

  “Is there such a thing around here?”

  “Yeah, there’s a restaurant called Alligator Soul in Everett. Right on Broadway, so the view is of traffic, not the sun setting over the Sound, but I like the food. If you’d prefer, we could go to Anthony’s Homeport down on the marina, or…”

  “It so happens, I love eating in New Orleans. I could do nothing but eat when I’m there. Who cares about the view?”

  Another of his lightning quick assessments made her even more self-conscious. “You don’t look like you do all that much eating.”

  In other words, he thought she was skinny.

  Yes, but he’d been pursuing her single-mindedly since he set eyes on her, so he couldn’t mind skinny too much.

  Still, her voice was stiff when she said, “I have a good metabolism. Plus, I tend to forget to eat when I’m absorbed in a project.”

  He didn’t say anything for a minute. Conversation, it occurred to her, would be different, since there wasn’t anything new to say about Rory. Gray had stopped by the farm several times a day since the assault. Even if he weren’t also getting reports from his police chief, he’d have been up-to-date on the search. Which so far was a really embarrassed strikeout. Bases-loaded, bottom-of-the-ninth strikeout. Ben Wheeler was not a happy man. Gray, Charlotte suspected, was even less happy.

  He cleared his throat. “Where did you go to college?” He actually sounded interested, though, not as if he were scraping the bottom of the barrel for a conversational ploy.

  “University of Chicago. I wanted to try big-city life, preferably far, far from home.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Don’t most small-town kids dream of escape?”

  “Your sister went to the U. Forty-five minutes from home.”

  “Faith and I didn’t have much in common.” Still didn’t, except for a deep panic about Rory Hardesty as well as worry about Dad and what would happen to him if they had to sell the farm.

  “You’re twins.”

  “Identical. Gee, tell me about it.” The frost in her voice probably wasn’t justified, but he’d definitely hit a sore spot. “Which means we should want the same things?”

  “Of course not.” His fingers flexed on the wheel. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have said that.”


  Damn it, that was the trouble with Gray—he was invariably fair-minded, willing to apologize when it was called for, and damn it, he was the only person she ever remembered meeting her and Faith and being surprised they were identical twins.

  Uncomfortably, she said, “Faith always knew she wanted to stay in West Fork. She loves kids and wanted to be a teacher from the time she was ten or twelve years old. Me, I was always restless. I wanted to see other places. I knew I didn’t want to settle here.”

  He was quiet for a long time. They’d turned south on I-5. Somehow she wasn’t surprised that he drove in the middle lane and never went above the speed limit. She’d have liked to label him stodgy, but couldn’t quite make it stick. He was probably careful to be law-abiding because he’d gone into politics. Even a speeding ticket would give an opponent in the next election something to trumpet about. And also, Gray just struck her as a man too confident, too at ease with himself, to need to be aggressive on the road or anywhere else.

  Heaven help her, she liked that about him.

  She liked way too much about him.

  And didn’t let herself consider why like was such an obviously pallid word.

  “How did you end up in West Fork?” she asked. “Since you didn’t grow up here.”

  “I chose it. Out of college, I worked at a big firm in Portland. When I decided to strike out on my own, I looked for the right kind of small town. One close enough to a major metropolitan area to make it possible for an architectural firm to succeed, and prosperous enough there’d be at least some business for us right there in town. I wanted someplace I could see myself raising a family.”

  “You have a traditional view of raising a family?” she asked, knowing she sounded snide but unable to help it. “Kids shouldn’t grow up in a city or a busy suburb?”

  He shrugged. “Sure they can. That’s just not what I want for mine.”

  There was something more here she didn’t get. From what she’d heard, he was not only smart, but also talented. He was sexy, handsome, charming. And he’d chosen a life in a backwater town five miles off the freeway, nestled in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. Not just chosen—he’d entwined himself in West Fork as if determined to be the warp to its weft, or whatever the weaving terms were.

  It’s true that West Fork had grown a whole lot in the past ten years; several developments had sprung up on the outskirts. But her impression was that most of the newcomers commuted to the city for jobs. They worked at Boeing in Everett, Microsoft in Redmond, or they endured the daily commute into downtown Seattle. They lived in West Fork because they could afford more house here for less money, or because they might be able to own acreage, which they wouldn’t be able to do in Seattle or its environs. Yes, their kids went to school here; they might even grocery shop here or use the library. But most of them probably didn’t take the local weekly newspaper, pay attention to local politics or care enough to get involved in civic activities. Until Gray, the mayor of West Fork had always been an old-timer. Someone whose roots were here.

  What she wanted to know was why Gray Van Dusen had chosen to transplant his roots to this small town.

  They arrived at the restaurant, so she shelved her curiosity for now.

  When they walked in, everyone who saw her looked at her face, then averted their eyes. She saw some of those glances sneak back, somewhat narrowed, to study Gray.

  Once they were seated, he ordered crawfish beignets to start, and seafood jambalaya, while she went for pepper shrimp as an appetizer and the pecan crusted snapper as a main, and had her eye on the sweet-potato pecan pie for dessert. Assuming she hadn’t filled up by then, which she thought unlikely.

  She grinned at him as the waiter walked away and said, “You know everyone here thinks you’re responsible for this face.”

  He grimaced. “I suppose they do. Nice thought.”

  “I told you I shouldn’t be displayed in public for a while yet.” She touched her cheek, which felt better but had become increasingly colorful. Thank goodness, she could open her eye now, but the raccoon black surrounding it was a nice effect coupled with the purple and yellow hues on her temple and cheek.

  “I didn’t want you to have time to shore up your original resolve to have nothing to do with me.”

  “I wouldn’t have done that.” Though if she were absolutely honest with herself, Charlotte wasn’t positive that, given a few more days, she might not have figured out a graceful way to say, I think I’m in love with you but I’m scared of what that means, so let’s just not do this, okay?

  “Good,” he said softly. “I also figure I have a limited window of opportunity, and I didn’t want to lose any days.”

  She set down her water glass with an audible clunk. “A limited window of opportunity for what?”

  “To get to know you.” He paused, his gaze on her face. “To seduce you.” He seemed about to say something else, but thought better of it.

  Pure heat flooded her, pooling low in her abdomen. Shocked by her response, Charlotte could only swallow and stare helplessly back at him. This was why going out with him, spending time alone with him, was so dangerous.

  It took her an embarrassing length of time to produce any kind of respectable comeback. “Well, you’re not very confident then, are you?”

  His eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “How many weeks do you figure it’ll take before I succumb?” She might have been having fun, if only she weren’t so aroused just because he’d said to seduce you.

  “I don’t know, Charlotte. Why don’t you tell me?”

  The waiter showed up with their appetizers and drinks. Charlotte smiled and thanked him. Gray didn’t even acknowledge the guy’s existence, he was staring so hard at her.

  “Maybe I can’t be seduced,” she suggested, reaching for a shrimp.

  He reached over the table and gripped her wrist, where her pulse was racing. “And maybe you can.”

  “Hard to say yet,” she said, smiling at him. “I’ll give some thought to it.”

  “You do that.” His voice had an unfamiliar note: rough, even jagged, as if he were angry or… She didn’t know. He wasn’t flirting any more, that was for sure. He hadn’t taken that byplay anywhere near as lightly as she would have liked.

  She pretended to savor the shrimp, although she didn’t taste it at all. Only after a sip of wine did she ask, “Where did you grow up, Gray?”

  “Silverton, south of Portland.” He began to eat, too. “Until I was eleven, when my parents split up. I bounced between them after that. Mom was in Portland, Dad in Boise.”

  So the explanation was that simple. In West Fork, he was trying to recapture something he’d lost when his family fractured.

  “I have good memories,” he added after a minute. “And I haven’t regretted my decision to move to West Fork.”

  Charlotte only nodded. Weirdly enough, she had a lump in her throat from that small glimpse he’d given her of the hurt boy he’d been after his parents’ divorce.

  “Were you, um, engaged or something when you settled here?” Oh, Lord. He might even have been married, she realized, not liking how bothered she was by that idea. “Since you were thinking about where you wanted to raise a family.”

  “No, I just wanted to find the place. I figured marriage and kids would come along eventually.”

  “But they haven’t.” She almost whispered it, as if she were intruding somehow.

  “No,” he said again. The gray of his eyes seemed darker now, and he never looked away from her. “It had to be the right woman.”

  She felt raw inside, as if she’d just discovered some internal injuries. The idea of him waiting… The memory of how arrested his expression had been that first day, in the barn… Of the way he’d kissed her in the hospital, his shaken voice when he’d murmured, “Ah, Charlotte. I was so scared last night.” Was she the right woman, in his eyes? How could that be? she wondered in panic. Love at first sight didn’t exist.
She’d swear it didn’t! But, oh, she’d felt something, too, that had grown despite her best efforts to suppress it. She felt a burning under her rib cage at the very idea of him being in love with her.

  She took a reckless gulp of wine and made herself look around the restaurant, study the band that was setting up in back as if she was the slightest bit interested.

  She was being foolish. He hadn’t said anything to suggest he wanted more from her than sex.

  Then again, there was the terror she’d seen in his eyes when he tore into the emergency room, not to mention his tender care when he insisted on staying at her side.

  But this could all be explained by his oversize sense of responsibility for his town and its citizens.

  “I’d give a whole lot more than a penny for your thoughts right now,” he commented.

  Charlotte said the first thing that came into her head. “Just…um, looking at all the couples here and wondering if any of them are like Faith and Rory. If what happens at home is a deep, dark secret.”

  He gave a half laugh. “Another heartwarming thought.”

  “I’m sorry. Apparently I stink at casual conversation.”

  “No, you don’t. We just haven’t tried it yet.”

  And so they did. Movies, books, music and theater took them through dinner and dessert, national politics through coffee they savored until only a few diners were left in the restaurant. They argued, they laughed and they agreed more often than Charlotte would have anticipated.

  After Gray had paid, he took her hand in his as they walked out to the car. It was funny how intimate that felt, more so in a way than having his arm around her. They were palm-to-palm, fingers slotted together. As he released her hand at the car, his thumb traced a leisurely line over her palm. A shiver traveled up her spine.

  “Cold?” he asked, voice low and husky.

  “No. Just, um…” She couldn’t think of any excuse. Not one.

  He smiled and went around to his side of the car.

  On the drive home he told her about his house, which he’d designed himself. “I served as contractor, too. Gave me a chance to get to know some local tradesmen. The guy who did the woodwork and cabinets is amazing. Likes working by himself, concentrating on one job at a time. The bigger builders need mass-produced material, of course, but I’ve recommended him for a number of houses I designed.”