In the Heart's Shadow

by T. L. Haddix

  “I’m glad. I think the two of you would be a good fit. Listen,” he hurried to say as Stacy came back in the door on the other end of the cafe, “if you need anything, call. And good luck.”

  “Thanks. I believe I’m going to need it.”

  Stacy wasn’t sure what Gordon and Ethan had been discussing when she walked in, but she could tell the topic was serious. They tried to put on happy faces, but she hadn’t gotten where she was by overlooking subtleties and nuances. Her first thought was for Beth and the babies.

  “Is everything okay? Beth?”

  “I’m fine,” Beth said from behind her. “Why?”

  Stacy smiled as Ethan’s wife came to a stop beside her. “Because these two look like someone kicked their puppy. You do look like a fertile Myrtle,” she teased. “Are you sure you have another month to go?”

  “Oh, yes. I’m sure. And as much as I hate to cut this get-together short, I need to remind my husband that we have an appointment at the hospital at eleven. If we don’t leave, we’re going to be late. It’s childbirth class, and he’s been looking so forward to it,” she told Stacy.

  Ethan groaned. “Yeah. I can hardly wait to watch an hour-long film of some strange woman screaming her head off, shot from the perspective of her doctor.”

  “Sounds like a porn flick,” Stacy casually remarked. Ethan’s and Gordon’s expressions were priceless.

  “How do you—never mind,” Gordon said. “That’s not an appropriate discussion for this venue.”

  “No, but make sure you ask her that later. Much later. Like when you’re alone,” Beth suggested. “And it’s dark outside. And—”

  Ethan stood. “That’s enough, blondie. I think everyone gets the picture. What in the world am I going to do with you?”

  “Well, not what I’d like,” she quipped. “More’s the pity. Not for several months, damn it.”

  The frustrated remark was too much for Stacy. She couldn’t hold back her laughter any longer. When Ethan clapped his hand over Beth’s mouth, Stacy laughed even harder. People turned to look, but she didn’t care.

  “I can’t take you anywhere. We’re leaving now. And you,” he scolded Stacy, his lips quivering as he tried to keep a stern face. “You’re encouraging her. Gordon, we’ll have to keep the two of them separated. I don’t think the world will survive their combined irreverence.”

  Beth pulled down his hand. “Stacy, we’ll get together. Soon. Without the spoilsports here.”

  “I’ll look forward to it. You tell me when, and I’ll be there.”

  They left, and Stacy used a napkin to wipe her eyes. “Oh, good Lord. I wish I’d had a camera when she said that. Your faces…”

  Gordon stood and held out his hand. “Come on. We need to get out of here before they throw us out.”

  “Oh, I doubt there’s any danger of that,” she said. “Not with Kathryn around.”

  “Yeah, well, she’s in Kentucky this weekend. So Janet and Lauren are liable to bar us from the premises.” He waved at Janet Evans, another of the cafe’s owners, as they left.

  Still snickering, Stacy dug into her purse and handed him her car keys. “Here, you’d better drive. I can’t stop laughing long enough to clear my eyes.”

  They lucked out at the thrift store and found a set of French doors that Gordon thought would work well for the kitchen. Stacy made arrangements with one of the store’s workers to have it delivered, and they headed to the hardware store.

  “So tell me about these pranks that have been going on lately,” he suggested as she showed him the tile she was considering.

  Stacy frowned. “Where’d you hear about that?”

  Gordon raised an eyebrow, and her frown deepened. “Oh. Beth and Ethan. What do you want to know? They’re pranks. Wyatt warned everyone that they’d better stop, and I’m sure they will.”

  “You don’t think there’s some maliciousness behind them?”

  “No, I don’t. Poor judgment, yes. Ill intent? No. Whoever’s pulling the stunts is in the department or has access to it. I don’t understand why everyone is so determined to see shadows where there are none. Excuse me. I need to ask about this tile.”

  She gave him a tense smile and headed down the aisle to flag down an associate. Frustration tightening his jaw, Gordon watched her go. Stacy was being unusually obtuse, and he knew something else had to be going on. She was too good a detective to ignore the evidence in front of her.

  He decided to get Ethan alone and grill him as soon as he had a chance. As unconcerned as Stacy seemed, Gordon was that much more worried. He didn’t know how he was going to do it, but he had to somehow protect her without her knowing that was what he was doing, at least until he could get her to open her eyes.

  Stacy wasn’t as oblivious as Gordon thought. She was just afraid the enemy he was worried about was closer than he imagined. Some of the pranks from the last few weeks were simply that—pranks. Even though she couldn’t get any of her coworkers to admit to having pulled them, she wasn’t worried. Time would reveal the culprit, and she would enjoy retaliating.

  She didn’t think the things like the missing candy bars, running out of gas, and the missing toilet paper were pranks. She was terrified that she was losing her mind.

  There had been other, more subtle things, as well. She was feeling that the physical world around her wasn’t right and that things had been moved a hair from where they should have been. She didn’t remember doing any of it, but she didn’t have any other explanation. If it had only been her belongings at work, she would blame the prankster, but she was missing items at home, too.

  She put the worry aside as the associate she’d asked about the tile came back. “That tile is on clearance, yes, but the boxes that are out here are all we have. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” Stacy said. “Thanks.” She hadn’t seen the vibrant green and blue mosaic glass tile on her previous visits to the store and figured they’d pulled it out of the back for the clearance table. She wouldn’t have enough to create a full backsplash, but the tile was too pretty to pass up. Decision made, she headed back to Gordon.

  “This is all they have of it, but I want it.” She moved the buggy so that she could load the tile. When she put her hands on the first box, Gordon stepped in and gently covered her hands with his. Startled, Stacy looked up at him.

  “I believe I’m supposed to be doing the heavy lifting?”

  “Oh. Yeah, I guess you are.” She stepped back without protesting and let him load the tile into the cart. Her hands tingled where he’d touched her, and when he turned away to pick up the last box, she surreptitiously studied the skin on the back of her hands.

  Gordon had touched her before, but never so intimately. She was surprised by her reaction. Her skin hadn’t crawled, and she hadn’t had the desire to pull away like she normally did when someone touched her. The way he’d let his hands brush across her skin had been almost a caress. The same thing had happened the night before when he’d looked at her wounds. That he’d casually touched her had startled her to the point that she didn’t quite know what to think.

  “You have your paint chips?” He dusted off his hands. “There’s a green you had picked out that would look good with this tile.”

  “It would, wouldn’t it? I know exactly what you’re talking about.” She rummaged around in her purse, cursing when she couldn’t find the paint chip. “I hate carrying a purse. They’re way more trouble than they’re worth.”

  Gordon laughed. “Then why do you?”

  “Because I have a ton of stuff I have to haul around for this project, and I need a handy catch-all for it. It’s not enough for a briefcase, so…” She hefted the purse. “Plus it makes life easier since I broke my wrist. I don’t have the sample. I’ll have to compare it when we get back to the house.”

  They went through the store and picked up the rest of the materials they needed. When they got back out to the car, Gordon loaded the tile into the hatchback. Stacy felt guilty
just standing there, but she knew she didn’t have a choice.

  “Good thing you have a hatchback,” he remarked.

  “Yeah. You wouldn’t believe what all I can haul in this thing,” she told him over her shoulder as she took the cart back to a buggy corral.

  He was still waiting outside the car when she got back. “Do you want to drive, or you want me to?”

  “You can. I don’t mind.”

  “Then your chariot awaits, madam. I do have one request, though. Do you mind if we stop and check on Murphy?”

  “Of course not. I’m curious to meet him after all I’ve heard. He has something of a legendary status in the Hudson family, you know.”

  Gordon’s grin was wide. “Yeah, and it’s a well-deserved status, too. If he weren’t so danged cute, Chase would have booted him out a long time ago.” When she sent him a shocked look, he laughed. “I’m kidding.”

  The drive to Chase and Annie’s house didn’t take long. At the house, he motioned Stacy into the kitchen. A plaintive meowing sounded from beyond the room, and Gordon cursed.

  “Murphy? Where are you?” He hurried through the door with Stacy on his heels. “What have you gotten into, you stinker?”

  The cat meowed again.

  “It came from the living room, I think,” Stacy said.

  As soon as they were in the room, the plaintive meowing became more hopeful. The cries were coming from the top of the curtains, where a small pale orange cat was perched. Scratches marked the side of the long panel of curtains on one end of the window, showing where Murphy had gone up.

  “How did you—Annie’s going to kill us both,” Gordon told him. He stood under the window, hands on his hips. A long bench filled the space beneath the tall windows, and Murphy was at least eight feet off the ground, beyond Gordon’s reach.

  “Poor baby’s probably scared.” Stacy looked around for something to stand on, and she spied a wooden ladder chair in the corner. “You can use that to reach him.”

  When Gordon got the chair and stood on it, Murphy, tail raised, inched down the curtain rod in the opposite direction.

  “You little son of a — Murphy, come here.”

  Stacy coughed to cover her laughter. “Do you know if he has a favorite toy? Maybe a laser pointer?”

  “He has his own basket under the window seat.”

  Pulling out the large basket, Stacy rummaged through the toys. “I’ve seen human children who don’t have this many toys.”

  “Chase and Annie think of Murphy as their fur-kid.”

  When she moved an oversized tennis ball, it jingled. Murphy reacted with a quiet “mewp” from atop the curtains, and Stacy nudged the ball again. To her amazement as well as Gordon’s, the cat scurried across the curtain rod to the side panel and gracelessly clambered down the fabric. He jumped the last four feet to the floor, ran over to Stacy, and looked up at her with a hopeful expression.

  “You like the ball?” She picked it up.

  Murphy stood up on his back legs and reached up for the toy. Giving it one last shake, Stacy tossed it across the room. Murphy chased it, sliding to a stop as the ball bounced off the wall and back toward Stacy. Stunned, she turned to look at Gordon.

  “Day one. Learn that the cat climbs curtains, and well. I can hardly wait to find out what other tricks he has up his sleeve.”

  “Quite a few, if I had to guess. How’d he react when they left?”

  “He cried. Saddest thing I’ve seen in a while. Poor guy sat on the bottom step and just cried.”

  Murphy batted the ball back to Gordon’s feet and chattered up at him.

  “What, you want to play? Okay.” He tossed the ball down the hall, and Murphy tore off after it.

  They stayed for a little while longer to play with the cat. Once Murphy was tired, they headed back to Stacy’s house. It was lunchtime when they got there, and they heated up the leftovers from the night before.

  “How are you going to keep Chloe out of the kitchen while we’re working?”

  “I’ll close her in the bedroom and lock the door. She hasn’t figured out how to unlock them. Yet.”

  With lunch finished and cat safely sequestered, they started removing the cabinets.

  “I’m going to put them back up in the garage if I can save enough of them,” Stacy told him. “There’s a room upstairs that I want to turn into a storage area.”

  By six o’clock, Stacy was tired, and it was almost dark. Gordon helped her make sure they’d put away anything that could hurt Chloe, and she let out the cat. Predictably, she went straight to the kitchen to explore.

  “So I’ll see you tomorrow morning, then?” he asked.

  “Sure. We should be able to finish stripping the cabinets out tomorrow and maybe get a good start on getting this popcorn ceiling down, even,” she said. “When do you want to have the first study session?”

  “How does Monday evening sound?”

  “Good. But—and I forgot to mention this, I’m sorry—I have some errands that are going to take up pretty much all day Monday. So we won’t be able to work on the house. I’ll be free by that evening, but the day is going to be a bust.”

  “Hey, you’re the boss. That’s fine with me. I’ll be here whenever you need me.”

  The arrangements set, she showed him out. He lingered on the front porch, stretching so that his fingertips reached the ceiling. Stacy stepped out onto the porch and brushed away some leaves that had fallen onto the swing over the winter.

  “Did you find the toilet paper?”

  The question came from out of the blue, taking Stacy aback somewhat. “Um, no. I didn’t.”

  His face was serious when he turned to look at her. “Any idea what happened to it?”

  “Not really. I guess I could have been sleepwalking and did something with it. Why?”

  “Just wondering. You don’t think that the missing TP is related to these pranks, do you?”

  Stacy tucked a loose strand of hair back behind her ear, then crossed her arms. “No. Gordon, I’m fine. No one is trying to… Whatever it is you’re suggesting. Stop worrying.”

  He didn’t seem pleased with her answer, but Stacy wasn’t budging. To his credit, he picked up on that and nodded.

  “Okay. Make sure all the doors and windows are locked, and if you need to call me, promise you will? No matter what time it is? I’ll be here in ten minutes.”

  “I’m perfectly capable of protecting myself, thank you. And I appreciate the concern. Please don’t think that I don’t.” To her surprise, he closed the distance between them and looked down at her. In the evening twilight, the atmosphere became intimate, and Stacy’s heart pounded.

  “I know you can take care of yourself. But you aren’t superhuman, and you aren’t immortal. For my own peace of mind, promise me you’ll call if you see anything, hear anything? Or if you get scared.”

  Stacy relented with a sigh, unable to ignore the genuine concern on his face. “I promise. Are you satisfied?”

  “No. I wish you’d listen to me about this prank thing. But your promise will do for now.”

  She thought he was going to kiss her, and she swayed toward him, but at the last minute, he let out a tense breath and stepped back.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow. Call me,” he reiterated as he went down the steps. “And lock the doors.”

  “I will. Drive safely, and hug the orange guy for me.”

  She waited until he had pulled out of the driveway to go in. The promise to lock the doors and windows was easy; she followed that routine every night. Stacy knew a lot of the residents of Olman County felt safe enough to leave their homes unlocked day and night, but she’d never shared that feeling.

  Chloe followed her, watching as Stacy locked the house down for the night. “So today was interesting,” she told the cat as they made their rounds. “What do you think? He’s even more attractive than I thought he was now that I’ve spent some time with him. And he worries about me. How am I supposed to resist that,
Chloe?”

  The cat answered by rubbing her face against the frame of Stacy’s bedroom door, then flopping down on the floor and exposing her white belly. Stacy stooped down and gave her the rubbing she was asking for.

  “Is that your way of telling me I shouldn’t resist? I might not get the chance to make a choice. He might not be interested. I could be totally misreading the situation.” She groaned. “Why is this so hard?”

  Chloe didn’t have an answer, and Stacy straightened. “Let’s go find some dinner and see what’s on TV. It’s been a long day, and I want to curl up with my baby girl.”

  She’d spoken with Maria earlier, and they’d cancelled the girls’ night since Maria was a little more fatigued than she’d expected to be. Stacy had been disappointed, but also relieved because she was tired herself.

  After she and Chloe had eaten, Stacy grabbed her secret stash of cigarettes and a lighter from their hiding place and stepped out on the back porch. She’d smoked when she was a teenager and had stopped once she got to college. But after the wreck with Robbie, she’d picked up the nasty habit again. She was careful to smoke in only the evenings and at home, and she allowed herself two cigarettes, max. The hit was enough to barely satisfy the craving. She wouldn’t allow herself any more than that.

  No one knew she was smoking. Stacy could imagine the lectures she would get if word got out. It helped her deal with the stress, though, and for now, she wasn’t ready to tackle quitting again. As she let herself back into the house, she heard a sound from the yard. The noise had been just a faint rustling of leaves, a whisper of movement, but after Gordon’s gloom and doom lecture, Stacy was wary. She stopped, listening intently.

  “It’s probably an animal,” she whispered to herself. “You’re letting him get to you.”

  The half-moon came out from behind a cloud and illuminated the backyard. Nothing was there. The house was situated at the corner of two roads, surrounded by flat, sweeping fields on all sides except one, where a copse of trees stood about a hundred yards away. If anyone had been in the yard, Stacy would have seen them.