by Liz Flaherty
Lucy stopped folding, remembering washing the dishes by hand that first time and praying silent thanks that the temperamental van had died in front of Gert’s house. She’d only intended to spend the afternoon with Noah Crockett’s aunt, just long enough to receive advice about apartments and jobs in the Taft area. But it took a few days for Sims to get the van back into running condition, and by that time it was too late.
She was home.
Even though she hadn’t meant to be. She hadn’t intended to go into business with someone she liked and admired. She’d never expected to meet Gert’s other nephew, the one who made Father Crockett’s eyes light with laughter whenever he mentioned him. Once she’d met Boone, she’d absolutely never meant to fall in love with him.
When she’d asked him, back in Virginia, what he wanted to be doing in ten years, she’d known beyond all doubt what her answer was. She wanted to be running a restaurant of one kind or another. Children running through its kitchen. A house to go to when the workday was done. A red SUV with crayons and coloring books in the back seat and a CD player for playing Christmas songs from the first week in October until New Year’s. That was the biggest dream in her jar.
Except for the one she’d never written down. She wanted Boone. Oh, yes, she did.
But that was before another fire had burned a scalding inroad into her life and her dreams. Before the fire marshal and the insurance adjustor wore a solemn and angry face and said the word arson.
“Do you have any enemies, Miss Dolan?”
Not that she knew of. But did she? The fires were coming closer. Would the next one be in the house? Would it hurt one of these people she’d come to love?
She stared down at where she held the corners of a pumpkin-colored tablecloth. Her hands weren’t pretty, with their short fingers, nails bitten to the quick and pale burn scars mingling with the freckles on the backs. Johnny and Andy used to shake their heads at her because no matter how careful she tried to be, she always managed to burn herself.
Even in cooking, her favorite thing in the world to do, fire was her enemy.
“Luce?” Boone’s voice preceded him into the room. He carried his laptop and Kinsey trotted in beside him. The kitten’s second-favorite person was home, and she pranced with the delight of it. Boone smiled into her eyes, the expression warming her through and through. It the first time since this morning she hadn’t had to stop herself from shivering.
“What’s the black spot on the driveway? Jack burning leaves already?” He laid down his computer case and plucked the tablecloth from Lucy’s hands so he could take her into his arms. “I missed you.”
“I’m fine.” She raised her face for his kiss, putting her arms around his neck for just a minute. Just a minute and then she would let go. Really she would. “I missed you too. The black spot’s where the van used to be.”
He raised a questioning brow. “Sounds ominous. Did it finally kick up its tires?”
She drew away, reaching for the tablecloth he’d taken from her hands. “In a manner of speaking.” She folded it, having trouble getting the corners to match because her hands were shaking. She picked up another one, this one the color of paprika.
“Lucy?” He stood still. Kinsey wound around his ankles, then Lucy’s.
The cat’s long fur felt good on her cold skin. She folded, though her hands still shook. “There was an engine fire. It doesn’t take much to total out a twelve-year-old car, so I guess it did kick up its tires.”
Her voice sounded hollow in her ears, like it belonged to someone else. She wished it did, because she didn’t want to tell him about the fire. She didn’t want to talk about it at all.
But, as anyone else would, he said, “What happened?” He took the cloth out of her hands, finished folding it, and laid it neatly on the stack on top of the dryer. “Come on.” His arm went around her waist, and he pulled her into the kitchen. “Sit down and tell me.”
He got an opened bottle of rosé out of the wine cooler and sloshed healthy amounts into a pair of water goblets. He sat on the barstool around the corner from hers and set the drinks in front of them. “Lucy?”
She told him. It took the whole glass of wine, but she got it said. She kept her gaze on his and held her eyes open wide. They felt hot and dry and soulless, as though they were separate from the rest of her. But if she looked away, he would think she was lying. Wouldn’t he?
At the end, he put down his nearly full glass and reached for her hands. “No one—you, Kelly, Gert, Jack—none of you were hurt?”
“No. Not physically. But you need to call Kelly. Make sure.”
“Where’s Aunt Gert?”
“With Sims. They were going to drive till they were hungry, stop and eat, then drive till they were tired and stop and stay. I think they just wanted to be alone together.” And not with me. She was glad she’d stopped herself from saying it, but she couldn’t seem to stop thinking it. “I’m—” She hesitated, pulling her hands from his, though her fingers felt icy as soon as he wasn’t touching them anymore. “I’m not very good company tonight, Boone. Why don’t you go over and see Kelly instead of just calling her, make sure she’s all right? I’ll be okay here.”
Indecision flared in his eyes, and Lucy could read his thoughts. Should he go to the sister he’d been looking after her whole life, who he loved unconditionally, or should he stay here, where God only knew what Lucy would do next?
“I’m tired and you are, too,” he said quietly. “Let’s both stay here. Why don’t you order pizza while I call Kelly?”
Because arguing would have required more energy than she had, Lucy nodded acquiescence. She got up, snagging the phone from its cradle and going into the sunroom with Kinsey at her heels.
After ordering the pizza, she stayed in the sunroom, sitting at the table and thumbing through the cookbook she’d left there earlier. Through the French doors, she saw Boone get up from the island with his cell phone at his ear. He walked the perimeter of the kitchen, stopping to sip his wine occasionally as he listened.
She closed her eyes and catalogued in her memory his chocolate eyes and chiseled features, the sun-streaked brown hair that was never quite neat. She thought of how his laughter sang along her nerve endings and remembered thinking his voice was the stuff her dreams were made of. It still was, whether it was soft and sexy in the darkness of the night or loud and intense when he was making a point.
Years back, when she’d been engaged to Scott Knight, this was how she’d wanted to feel. She’d wanted to love his touch, his laughter, had wanted to feel a little explosion of joy whenever he entered the room. But she hadn’t. Not even once.
As she watched, Boone disconnected his phone and plugged it into one of the trio of battery chargers that lay on the counter beside her pickle jar. He stood still for a minute, and Lucy wondered what he was thinking. What had Kelly said?
The front doorbell rang, and Boone went to answer it. Lucy went into the kitchen. She got out plates and forks for the pizza, setting them on the island, and poured glasses of iced tea. Going through all the motions of ordinariness.
But the truth was that for Lucy, normalcy was as unrealistic as the dreams in the big glass jar. Like the spot in the driveway, there was nothing left but ashes.
*
The pizza was good, although Boone hadn’t been hungry after his conversation with Kelly. Lucy’s face told him she wasn’t, either, but they polished off the twelve-inch combination pizza and the small order of breadsticks.
She asked about the conference and he answered her. He asked about the shower that afternoon and she answered him. They discussed the weather. The emptiness of the conversation was pervasive.
Finally, she threw out the gauntlet. “What day are you leaving for Chicago?”
“A week from tomorrow. I have meetings on Monday and I want to spend Sunday settling back into the apartment.” He needed to make it home again. It hadn’t been, not a single day since Maggie died. No amount of sound,
not even music or laughter, had been able to fill the echoing silence.
“Why don’t you come up with me for a few days?” He asked the question even though he knew she wouldn’t come. The fire in the driveway had destroyed more than Lucy’s van. It had burned away whatever self-confidence seven months at Tea on Twilight had given her. He waited, dreading what she would say next.
“I don’t think so.” She picked up a piece of crust from her plate and began breaking it into little pieces. “It’s time for me to move on, Boone, before someone gets hurt.” She smiled, although her eyes were dark with pain. “Too bad I don’t know how to ride a horse—I could just go off into the sunset with Roy Rogers singing ‘Happy Trails’ after me like he did in all those old TV shows.”
“Like people won’t be hurt if you move on?” He got up, feeling hemmed in by the house and the happenings of the day. “Let’s go for a walk.”
They put on hooded sweatshirts in deference to the coolness of the evening and left the house. Boone lifted his gaze to the trees that canopied the street. Their leaves were beginning to change color, with yellows and oranges peeping through the green. “I’ll miss Taft. I always do when I leave it. And I miss Chicago when I come here.”
He steered her around a tree root that had split the sidewalk. The next question was obvious, but he didn’t want to ask it. If he didn’t—if he kept walking without addressing the issue, maybe she’d stay put here on Twilight Park Avenue. Maybe she’d… Oh, for God’s sake, like that was going to work. “If you leave,” he said, his voice firm, “where will you go?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t gotten my mind completely around having to go.” The unhappiness in her voice was so deep it was painful to listen to.
“Then don’t. No one thinks you started the fires. You weren’t even there when they started.”
“No one? Kelly does. I think Jack does. Tom Simcox is beginning to wonder. I’m beginning to wonder. I’m afraid to light candles in the house, even more than I usually am. On nights I don’t have dreams, I still get up to make sure the oven’s turned off. Gert’s already said she wants to have fires in the parlor fireplaces this winter while the tearoom’s open—it’ll drive me crazy.”
“So you’re just giving up.”
He felt her rage, knew she wanted to scream at him that of course she wasn’t giving up, she just wanted everyone to be safe. But he also knew the woman who referred to herself as Lucy the Pleaser. He felt her words before they left her mouth and lodged themselves between them.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I am.”
*
“Stay through the end of the year. We have enough party bookings that we might have to consider remodeling the garage,” Gert said firmly, zipping the bank bag that held Tuesday’s receipts. “If, after that, you’re still determined to go, we’ll close the tearoom and cut our losses.”
“You don’t need to close it,” Lucy protested. “It’s viable. It’s gone like gangbusters ever since we opened. The backup crew is as good as we are. I’ll bet Nancy Walker would buy me out in a heartbeat. Jack will help more, both outside and in the house. You know he’s always wanting to earn more money.”
Gert put the bag into her purse for the trip to the bank the next morning and got up to refill their coffee cups. “I know I could count on Jack, and Nancy probably would buy you out if we suggested it. She’d be an excellent partner, but the truth is that Nancy and I have both retired once. She was a teacher for thirty-five years and I was a financial planner for thirty. Neither of us wants to be a career woman anymore. I like cooking sometimes and having you do most of the work. Nancy wouldn’t do that and Jack won’t wear aprons, especially the cute ones like yours.”
Lucy burst into laughter, thinking even as she did that it had been too many days since she’d laughed without tears pushing the sound out. “You and Nancy both can work me under the table and you know it. And Jack would do anything you asked of him.”
“Lucy, dear.” Gert’s voice was gentle. “Please.”
Without answering, Lucy left the room. She went into the den, with its three intimate tables for two that were often pushed together to make a long table for eight, then through the two parlors and the dining room—four tables for four per room. There was room for more, at least in the parlors, but they hadn’t wanted the rooms to be crowded.
“I want to be able to wait tables without saying ‘excuse me’ every time I walk through,” Lucy’d said, and Gert had agreed.
The rooms were decorated for autumn, with pumpkins and cornucopias on the mantels and garlands of artificial leaves around every window and doorway. A basket of shiny apples sat on small side tables in each room.
Lucy loved every square inch of Tea on Twilight.
She went back to the kitchen, and stood inside its doorway, watching as Gert emptied the dishwasher, stacking the plates on the open shelves. They still washed the glassware and flatware by hand, drying them on soft old towels so that they maintained their shine.
Gert was probably seventy or so—no one really knew—but was as lean and energetic as a woman half her age. She had a bigger personality than anyone Lucy knew. And love. Regardless of all she’d lost, her capacity for loving had only grown with those losses.
Lucy loved her too, had wondered in moments of whimsy if not only Crockett but the spirit of Siobhan Dolan had sent her to the house on Twilight Park Avenue. I can’t be there for you, Lucy Goosy, she could almost hear her mother say, but Gert can. You be the daughter she lost, and she’ll be your mother.
“I think—” Lucy had to clear her throat, “—Christmas trees in the front parlor and the dining room, and a small one in the den. In the second parlor, we could—I don’t know. What do you think?”
“We could make it a gift room.” Gert’s voice sounded a little ragged too. “The crafters and stitchers in town have mentioned it before. They could bring in their Christmas things and we could sell them on consignment. They’d get their eighty or ninety percent, whatever the going rate is, and we could donate our percentage. We could offer gift-wrapping for a further donation.”
“Oh, I like that.”
“So you’ll stay?”
“Till the first of the year.” Lucy let the decision slip into a place of semi-comfort in her heart. “After that, we’ll see.”
Chapter Fifteen
“Just keep the Jeep. I can fly back to Chicago or you can drive me back.” Boone scowled at Lucy, the expression so alien on his face that she couldn’t help laughing at him. “The van had hardly any insured value and you can’t be going into fall and winter without a vehicle. I, on the other hand, live in the city where I can walk, take a taxi, ride the train, or get delivery. I could even buy another car. Elmer and Myrtle have taken good financial care of me over the years.”
It would be their last hike around the River Walk before Boone’s return to Chicago the next day. They ambled along in the golden sunlight of early fall.
She wanted the afternoon to never end.
“I’ll get a car, a used one, probably next week,” she promised, “and I can afford payments. There just hasn’t been time this week to go shopping for one. That newspaper ad of Gert’s has kept us hopping.”
“Have Sims check it out before you buy anything,” he advised. “He’s the best mechanic around.”
“I will.”
He stopped walking, pulling her into the warm arc of his arm. “You know I care for you, don’t you?”
“I do.” She met his gaze, memorizing the planes of his face so she’d be able to close her eyes and see him even after he’d gone. “I care for you too.” I love you, is what it is, and I always will, but I’m not what you need. You don’t need a pleaser who gets followed around by fires and keeps her dreams and her savings in a pickle jar.
“Are you sure you won’t come with me for a few days? We can walk up and down Michigan Avenue and pretend Lake Michigan is really an ocean.”
“No.” It will be even harder the
n. To say goodbye. To start over.
“I’ll be back down in a month. It’s not as though you’re getting rid of me.”
“I know. The weekend of the soup supper at church. And you’re going to help, right?”
“Well, I thought I’d stay outside and tell people where to park. You know, wear one of those nifty orange vests with the duct tape stripes.”
“And talk about football and flirt with girls.”
Boone nodded somberly. “Yeah, it’s a big responsibility. I think Crockett’s coming up. He can help with the parking too.”
Lucy laughed, the sound ringing in the clear air. Oh, she would miss him when he was being funny. And when he wasn’t.
His laughter joined hers and he swung her into his arms, dancing her down the cobblestone path and around the park benches and lamp posts that were interspersed along it. When they stopped, they were both breathless and at the end of the Walk, where the cobblestones segued into a concrete sidewalk that led to the street.
“Promise me.”
She met his gaze, startled by the starkness of his words after the laughing dance. “What?”
“That if you ever need me, you will call.”
I need you all the time. “Boone, I have to stand on my own.”
“Promise me.”
“I can’t—”
“Listen to me, Lucy. I know you don’t even trust yourself right now. You think you might have some kind of weird alter ego who runs around starting fires. My sister the idiot—she’s a lawyer, remember, and if her own brother can’t make snide lawyer remarks, no one can—is half-inclined to agree with you. And you’re both so full of it, I swear. I know—did you hear when I said listen to me?—I know who you are, that you won’t even light a match unless there’s a bucket of water at your elbow, that you’d jump into the fire yourself before you let someone else get burned.”
“If you know that,” she said, unable to get her voice above a whisper, “why are you leaving me?” She hated sounding like a woeful, unloved child, but devastation drained her, leaving pride somewhere deep where she couldn’t find it.