by Nora Roberts
“’Scuse me. Did you use to live here?”
“That’s right.” He wanted to tuck her hair into her cap but stopped himself.
“My mother said you did. Today in school, the teacher said you went away and got famous.”
He couldn’t stop the grin. “Well, I went away.”
“And you won a prize. Like Marcie’s brother won a trophy for bowling.”
He thought of his Pulitzer and managed, barely, not to laugh. “Something like that.”
To Clara he looked like a regular person, not someone who bounded around the world on adventures. Her eyes narrowed. “Did you really go to all those places like they said?”
“That depends on what they said.” In tacit agreement they began to walk together. “I’ve been to some places.”
“Like Tokyo? That’s the capital of Japan, we learned that in school.”
“Like Tokyo.”
“Did you eat raw fish?”
“Now and again.”
“That’s really disgusting.” But she seemed pleased all the same. She bent and scooped up snow without breaking rhythm. “Do they squish grapes with their feet in France?”
“I can’t say I ever saw it for myself, but I’ve heard tell.”
“I sure wouldn’t drink it after that. Did you ever ride a camel?”
He watched her bullet the snowball into the base of a tree. “As a matter of fact, I did.”
“What was it like?”
“Uncomfortable.”
It was a description she readily accepted because she’d already figured it out for herself. “The teacher read one of your stories today. The one about this tomb they found in China. Did you see the statues?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Was it like Raiders?”
“Like what?”
“You know, the movie with Indiana Jones.”
It took him a minute, then he laughed. Without thinking, he tipped her cap over her eyes. “I guess it was, a little.”
“You write good.”
“Thank you.”
They were standing on the sidewalk in front of her house. Jason glanced up, surprised. He hadn’t realized they’d come so far and found himself regretting he hadn’t slowed his pace a bit. “We have to do this report on Africa.” Clara wrinkled her nose. “It has to be five whole pages long. Miss Jenkins wants it in right after Christmas vacation.”
“How long have you had the assignment?” It hadn’t been that long since his school days.
Clara drew a circle in the snow at the edge of her lawn. “Couple of weeks.”
No, he realized with some pleasure, it hadn’t been so very long. “I guess you’ve started on it.”
“Well, sort of.” Then she turned that quick, beautiful smile on him. “You’ve been to Africa, haven’t you?”
“A couple of times.”
“I guess you know all kinds of things about climate and culture and stuff like that.”
He grinned down at her. “Enough.”
“Maybe you should stay for dinner tonight.” Without giving him a chance to answer, she took his hand and led him around to the shop.
When they walked in, Faith was boxing a doll. Her hair was pinned up in the back and she wore a baggy sweatshirt over jeans. She was laughing at something her customer had said. “Lorna, you know you wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“Bah, humbug.” The woman put a hand on her enormous stomach and sighed. “I really wanted this baby to make an appearance before Christmas.”
“You still have four days.”
“Hi, Mom!”
Faith turned to smile at her daughter. As she spotted Jason, the spool of ribbon in her hand spun in a red stream to the floor. “Clara, you didn’t wipe your feet,” she managed to say, but kept her eyes on Jason.
“Jason! Jason Law.” The woman rushed over and grabbed him by both arms. “It’s Lorna—Lorna McBee.”
He looked down into the pretty round face of his longtime neighbor. “Hello, Lorna.” His gaze drifted down, then back up. “Congratulations.”
With a hand on her stomach, she laughed. “Thanks, but it’s my third.”
He thought of the scrawny, bad-tempered girl next door. “Three? You work fast.”
“So does Bill. You remember Bill Easterday, don’t you?”
“You married Bill?” He remembered a boy who had hung out in the town square looking for trouble. A few times, Jason had helped him find it.
“I reformed him.” When she smiled, he believed it. “He runs the bank.” His expression had her giggling. “I’m serious, stop in sometime. Well, I’ve got to be moving along. This box has to go into a locked closet before my oldest girl sees it. Thanks, Faith, it’s just lovely.”
“I hope she likes it.”
To keep her hands busy, Faith began to rewind the spool of ribbon. A puff of cold air came in, then was cut off as Lorna breezed out.
“Was that the bride doll?” Clara wanted to know.
“Yes, it was.”
“Too fussy. Can I go over to Marcie’s?”
“What about homework?”
“I don’t have any except that dumb Africa report. He’s going to help me.” Jason met her smile with a lifted brow. “Aren’t you?”
Jason would have dared any man within a hundred miles to resist that look. “Yes, I am.”
“Clara, you can’t—”
“It’s okay ’cause I asked him to dinner.” She beamed, almost sure her mother would be trapped by the good manners she was always talking about. “There’s no school now for ten whole days, so I can do the report after dinner, can’t I?”
Jason decided it wouldn’t hurt to apply a little pressure from his side. “I spent six weeks in Africa once. Clara might just get an A.”
“She could use it,” Faith muttered. They stood together, looking at her. Her heart already belonged to both of them. “I guess I’d better start dinner.”
Clara was already racing across the yard next door before Faith pulled the door of the Doll House shut and turned the sign around to read Closed.
“I’m sorry if she was a nuisance, Jason. She has a habit of badgering people with questions.”
“I like her,” he said simply, and watched Faith fumble with the latch.
“That’s nice of you, but you don’t have to feel obliged to help her with this report.”
“I said I would. I keep my word, Faith.” He touched a pin in her hair. “Sooner or later.”
She had to look at him then. It was impossible not to. “You’re welcome to dinner, of course.” Her fingers worried the buttons of her coat as she spoke. “I was just going to fry chicken.”
“I’ll give you a hand.”
“No, that’s not—”
He cut her off when he closed his fingers over hers. “I never used to make you nervous.”
With an effort, she steadied herself. “No, you didn’t.” He’d be gone again in a few days, she reminded herself. Out of her life. Maybe she should take whatever time she was given. “All right then, you can help.”
He took her arm as they crossed the lawn. Though he felt her initial resistance, he ignored it. “I went to see Widow Marchant. I had cookies right from the oven.”
Faith relaxed as she pushed open the door of her own kitchen. “She has every word you’ve ever written.”
The kitchen was twice the size of the one he’d just left, and there were signs of a child in the pictures hanging on the front of the refrigerator and a pair of fuzzy slippers kicked into a corner. Moving with habit, Faith switched on the burner under the kettle before she slipped out of her coat. She hung it on a peg by the door, then turned to take his. His hands closed over hers.
“You
didn’t tell me Tom left you.”
She’d known it wouldn’t take him long to hear it, or long to question. “It’s not something I think about on a daily basis. Coffee?”
She draped his coat over a hook and turned to find him blocking her way. “What happened, Faith?”
“We made a mistake.” She said it calmly, even coolly. It was a tone he’d never heard from her before.
“But there was Clara.”
“Don’t.” Fury came into her eyes quickly and simmered there. “Leave it alone, Jason. I mean it. Clara’s my business. My marriage and divorce are my business. You can’t expect to come back now and have all the answers.”
They stood a moment, facing each other in silence. When the kettle let out a whistle, she seemed to breathe again. “If you want to help, you can peel some potatoes. They’re in the pantry over there.”
She worked systematically, he thought, angrily, as she poured oil to heat in a skillet and coated chicken. Her temper was nothing new to him. He’d felt the brunt of it before, sometimes deflecting it, sometimes meeting it head-on. He also knew how to soothe it. He began talking, almost to himself at first, about some of the places he’d been. When he told her about waking with a snake curled next to his head while he’d been camping in South America, she laughed.
“I didn’t find it too funny at the time. I was out of the tent in five seconds flat, buck naked. My photographer got a very interesting roll of pictures. I had to pay him fifty to get the negatives.”
“I’m sure they were worth more. You didn’t mention the snake in your series on San Salvador.”
“No.” Interested, he put down his paring knife. “You read it?”
She arranged chicken in the hot oil. “Of course. I’ve read all your stories.”
He took the potatoes to the sink to wash them. “All of them?”
She smiled at the tone but kept her back to him. “Don’t let your ego loose, Jason. It was always your biggest problem. I’d estimate that ninety percent of the people in Quiet Valley have read all your stories. You might say we all feel we have a stake in you.” She adjusted the flame. “After all, no one else around here’s had dinner at the White House.”
“The soup was thin.”
Chuckling, she put a pan of water on the stove and dumped in the potatoes. “I guess you just have to take the good with the bad—so to speak. I saw a picture of you a couple of years ago.” She adjusted a pin in her hair and her voice was bland. “I think it was taken in New York, at some glitzy charity function. You had a half-naked woman on your arm.”
He rocked back on his heels. “Did I?”
“Well, she wasn’t actually half-naked,” Faith temporized. “I suppose it just seemed that way because she had so much more hair than dress. Blond—very blond, if my memory serves me. And let’s say—top-heavy.”
He ran his tongue around his teeth. “You meet a lot of interesting people in my business.”
“Obviously.” With the efficiency born of habit, she turned chicken. Oil hissed. “I’m sure you find it very stimulating.”
“Not as stimulating as this conversation.”
“If you can’t stand the heat,” she murmured.
“Yeah. It’s getting dark. Shouldn’t Clara be home?”
“She’s right next door. She knows to be home by five thirty.”
He went to the window anyway and glanced at the house next door. Faith studied his profile. It was stronger now, tougher. She supposed he was too, he had to be. How much was left of the boy she’d loved so desperately? Maybe it was something neither of them could be sure of.
“I thought of you a lot, Faith.” Though his back was to her, she could almost feel the words brush over her skin. “But especially at this time of year. I could usually block you out when I had work to do, deadlines to meet, but at Christmas you wouldn’t let go. I remember every one we spent together, the way you’d drag me through the shops. Those few years with you made up for all the times as a kid I woke up to nothing.”
The old sympathy welled up. “Your father couldn’t face the holidays, Jason. He just couldn’t handle it without your mother.”
“I understand that better now. After losing you.” He turned back. She wasn’t looking at him now, but bent industriously over the stove. “You’ve been spending Christmas alone, too.”
“No, I have Clara.”
She tensed as he walked to her. “No one to fill the stockings with you, or share secrets about what’s under the tree.”
“I manage. You have to alter life to suit yourself.”
“Yeah.” He took her chin in his hand. “I’m beginning to believe it.”
The door slammed open. Wet and beaming, Clara stood dripping on the mat. “We made angels in the snow.”
Faith raised a brow. “So I see. Well, you’ve got fifteen minutes to get out of those wet things and set the table.”
She struggled out of her coat. “Can I turn on the tree?”
“Go ahead.”
“Come on.” Clara held out a hand for Jason. “It’s the best one on the block.”
Emotions humming, Faith watched them walk out together.
Chapter 5
They were still humming when the meal was over. She knew her daughter was a friendly, sometimes outrageously open child, but Clara had taken to Jason like a long-lost friend. She chattered away at him as though she’d known him for years.
It’s so obvious, Faith thought as she watched Clara stack dishes. Neither of them noticed. What would she do if they did? She didn’t believe in lies, yet she’d been forced to live one.
The other two paid little attention to her as they settled down with Clara’s books. In the easy, flowing style he’d been born with, Jason began to tell her stories about Africa—the desert, the mountains, the thick green jungle that teemed with its own life and its own dangers.
As their heads bent together over a picture in Clara’s book, Faith felt a flood of panic. “I’m going to go next door,” she said on impulse. “I have a lot of work backed up.”
“Mm-hmm.” With that, Jason dismissed her. A laugh bubbled in her throat until it ached. Grabbing her coat, Faith escaped.
They were more than toys to her. They were certainly more than a business. To Faith the dolls who filled her shop were the symbol of youth, of innocence, of believing in miracles. She’d wanted to open the shop soon after Clara had been born, but Tom had been adamantly set against it. Because she’d felt indebted, she’d let it pass, as she’d let so many other things pass. Then, when she’d found herself alone, with a child to support, it had seemed the natural thing.
She worked long hours there, to ease the void that even the love for her daughter couldn’t fill.
In her workroom behind the store were shelves filled with pieces and parts of dolls. There were china heads, plastic legs and torsos. In another section lay the ones she called the sick and injured. Dolls with broken arms or battered bodies were brought to her for repair. Though she enjoyed selling and found a great creative thrill in making her own dolls, nothing satisfied her quite so much as taking a broken toy that was loved and making it whole again. She turned on the light and her radio and set to work.
It soothed her. As time passed, her nerves drained away. With crochet hook and rubber bands, with glue and painstaking care, she replaced broken limbs. With a bit of paint and patience, she brought smiles back to faceless dolls. Some were given new clothes or a fresh hairstyle, while others only needed a needle and thread plied by clever fingers.
By the time she picked up a battered rag doll, she was humming.
“Are you going to fix that?”
Startled, she nearly stabbed herself with the needle. Jason stood in the doorway, hands in pockets, watching her. “Yes, that’s what I do. Where’s Clara?”
She started to rise. “Oh, well I—”
“She’s asleep, Faith, with some green ball of hair she called Bernardo.”
Determined to relax, Faith sat down again. “Yes, that’s her favorite. Clara isn’t much on ordinary dolls.”
“Not like her mother?” Interested, he began to prowl the workroom. “I always thought when a toy broke or wore out, it got tossed away.”
“Too often. I’ve always thought that showed a tremendous lack of appreciation for something that’s given you pleasure.”
He picked up a soft plastic head, bald and smooth, that grinned at him. “Maybe you’re right, but I don’t see what can be done about that pile of rags in your hand.”
“Quite a lot.”
“Still believe in magic, Faith?”
She glanced up, and for the first time her smile was completely open, her eyes warm. “Yes, of course I do. Especially at Christmastime.”
Unable to help himself, he reached down to run a hand over her cheek. “I said before that I’d missed you. I don’t think I realized how much.”
She felt the need shimmer and the longing plead inside her. Denying both, she concentrated on the doll. “I appreciate you helping Clara, Jason. I don’t want to keep you.”
“Does it bother you to have someone watch you work?”
“No.” She began to replace stuffing. “Sometimes a concerned mother will stay here while I doctor a patient.”
He leaned a hip against the counter. “I imagined a lot of things when I was coming back. I never imagined this.”
“What?”
“That I’d be standing here watching you stuff life back into a rag. You may not have noticed, but it doesn’t even have a face.”
“It will. How did the report go?”
“She needs to do the final draft.”
Faith glanced up from her work. Her eyes were wide with the joke. “Clara?”
“She had the same reaction.” Then he smiled as he leaned back. The room smelled of her. He wondered if she knew. “She’s a bright kid, Faith.”