He could not believe he’d once thought he could live the rest of his life without this. Then again, he hadn’t known anything quite like this before.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Show opened the door, and Shannon walked through. The air was hot and stale, the June sun serving only to make the house swelter without brightening it up. The dust was too thick on the windows for that. The dust was thick everywhere.
They stood in the front hall on a big, round braided rug in a faded red, white, and blue pattern. The last time Shannon had been in this house, she’d been too confused, and then too overwhelmed, to really pay attention to her surroundings. Now, though, as she waited for Show to do or say something, she looked around.
The house had a bizarrely schizophrenic quality, both half-empty and overfull. From the hall, she could see a dining room, a living room, a staircase, with a long, narrow hallway alongside and behind it. The only room she’d been in before was the living room. There were several important pieces of furniture missing—a couch, tables, things like that. It held only a loveseat and an old, commodious recliner in upholstered in dark blue fabric.
The dining room was empty but for four straight-back chairs in a Shaker style, each with a red gingham seat cushion tied to it. No table. Oh—there was a low sideboard in the far corner, too. Also Shaker.
What made the rooms feel most unsettlingly empty, though, were the walls. They were oppressively busy. The living room walls were painted a medium blue, and the dining room a rust red. A border of red gingham wallpaper ran along the dining room walls at about chair-rail height. The same border ran along the top of the living room walls. The hallway walls were fully papered in the gingham. There were things hanging all over every wall—dried flower wreaths and swags, cross-stitch samplers, inspirational quotes painted on boards in old-timey font and in rustic style, shadowboxes and curio cases with thimbles and little figurines. And one whole wall in the dining room was devoted to family photographs.
That was obvious, because there were photographs on the wall of Show. A young, beardless Show with short hair standing with a man and woman who must have been his parents, the man as tall as him and with the same strong, straight nose and heavy brow. A teenage Show in a football uniform, one knee down on a field. Show in a suit (!), with his arm around a short, busty blonde woman, several months pregnant, in a white dress. Show with a little girl on his shoulder. Show squatting between two pretty little girls with white-blonde hair, a baby girl on his knee.
The rest of the long wall, though, was bare. It hadn’t always been—it faced the windows at the front of the room, and the sun had clearly faded the paint over time. All over were the ghosts of frames that must have hung there for years. Shannon didn’t have to ask what had happened; she knew. The things that were missing must now adorn the walls of Show’s ex-wife’s home. There were other ghosts on other walls, but nowhere so haunting as on that one faded red expanse. Show’s missing family blazed out from those empty spaces so vividly that Shannon’s eyes filled with tears.
She blinked them away and turned to Show, who hadn’t moved or spoken. He was staring down the narrow hallway. There were three doors at its end—one on each side and one at the end, facing the front of the house, where they stood. From the style of the door—the kind that swung—Shannon surmised that the kitchen was back there. He’d told her about that room. It was why they were here. Or, rather, it was where they were starting. If he could.
Laying her hand on his back, rubbing over the patch on his kutte, she whispered, “Show?”
He stirred and looked down at her. “Yeah. Yeah. Okay.” He reached out and pulled her into his arms, hugging her tightly. “Thank you. I’m glad you’re here. Not sure I could do it alone.”
“You don’t have to do it at all, you know.”
“Yeah, I do. It’s been long enough. And this is the day. It’s the right day.”
Today would have been Daisy’s seventeenth birthday. Shannon didn’t understand it herself, but Show had decided that this day was the day he had to reclaim his house. They were here, ostensibly, to air it out and clean it up, get it livable again. He said he was ready to move back in.
He also wanted her to move in with him, but they hadn’t worked all that out yet. She’d deflected by saying that until he himself was comfortable in it, she didn’t know how he could expect her to be. And that was true. Standing in this entry, surrounded by so much Americana country kitsch the house itself could be one of the Main Street shops, Show’s ex-wife still so present Shannon felt literally unwelcome, she was having a very hard time imagining ever feeling comfortable here. But Show thought that having her here would help him reclaim the house.
She was conflicted. They basically lived together already; she couldn’t remember a night that he’d stayed at the clubhouse when he was in town. The only nights that they were apart were those when he was in Arkansas to see his girls, or off on a run, and those were few. But she really did love her little apartment. She loved that it was her space. Even with Show with her there so much, it felt like hers. How this house would feel like hers was beyond her. But he wouldn’t sell, and she understood. His daughter had never lived anywhere else. Of course he wouldn’t sell.
Standing in this entry with him, looking around as he summoned the strength to walk down that hallway, Shannon realized that there wasn’t much of Show in this house, either, even though he’d owned it before he married Holly. With the exception of those few remaining photos on the wall, and that ugly recliner in the living room, there was no trace of the man she loved in these rooms. The red plaid loveseat? The dried flower arrangements? The gingham, with its little bows? The curios? Cross stitch? Uh, no. Not Show.
With the realization that his memories were about the only things in this house that were his, Shannon thought that, perhaps, there was a way for them both to remake it into a home. She’d need to think that through—and not now, not when she was awash with love and sympathy for him, but when she could think more objectively.
He released her from his hold and said, “Okay.” Then he strode down the hallway, not stopping until he’d pushed open the swinging door at the end and crossed into the kitchen. Shannon followed, and stopped right behind him, where he stood just inside the doorway, his hand holding the door open.
“Shit,” he whispered. “Shit. Oh, shit.”
She put her hand on his back again, and this time she could feel the tremor of tension in his muscles.
At her touch he took another step, and she came into the room. It was a bright country kitchen, decorated with an aggressive good cheer, like the rest of the house. The walls were covered with wallpaper with an apple pattern, and the greens and reds in the paper, not to mention the apples, carried over everywhere. The wall décor here was inspirational sayings about cooking, family, and the heart of the home. Holly must have been a singularly unhappy woman to have had to surround herself in every room with so many reminders about why she should be happy. It was interesting that she apparently had not wanted (or needed) all these reminders when she’d moved away.
Shannon could not see any signs that anything had gone wrong in this room. Show had told her that Daisy had been hurt here, and how she had been hurt. A horrible hurt that had killed her. But it just looked like a kitchen. There was a plain, well-used but attractive, heavy wood table, maybe maple, surrounded by six sturdy chairs. The cupboards and countertop ran along the length of the longest wall. The countertops were old-fashioned Formica, white with gold flecks. The cabinetry was wood and, again, well-used but in good shape. Aside from the dust, everything was clean.
Show was staring at an empty space on the beige linoleum floor, just in front of the kitchen sink. He walked over and squatted down, laying his hands on the floor. He bowed his head, and Shannon stayed where she was, just inside the door. His hands spread wide over the floor. She waited.
“There used to be a rug here. One of the braided things that Holly made. I guess—”
“Show…” She just didn’t know what to say or do.
“Holly sews and does all kinds of crap. You can see it everywhere if you look around. There’s a little shed outside I built her so she could do all that. She also cooks and bakes and, well, all of it. Anything that she thought made her a good mother and wife—she’s good at it all. Daisy hated all that, but Holly tried to make her do it. She had this pretty idea of her and the girls doing all that stuff together, made ‘em matching aprons and everything. When Holly gets an idea, well, you’re done for. One thing Daze liked, though, was bread. She loved to punch the dough. Holly used to yell at her for making the dough tough—I guess messing with it too much does that.”
He stopped, still staring at the floor, his hands flat on it. Shannon waited. The house was roasting hot, and sweat was running in streams down her back and sides, but she would wait as long as he needed.
“Fuck, Daze. I’m sorry, girlie.” He said it so low, Shannon barely heard it. But she did. Her heart ached for him. She took a step toward him but stopped, unsure whether she would be intruding.
Then he whispered, “Happy birthday,” and she couldn’t take it anymore. She went to him, dropping to her knees. She laid a hand on one of his.
He looked up at her. For a few moments, they simply looked into each other’s eyes. Finally, he smiled sadly. “Okay. Okay.” He turned his hand and wrapped it around hers, and then he stood, pulling her up with him. “Let’s get to work.”
~oOo~
They worked all day. First they opened all the windows, and Show put box fans on strategic sills, blowing fresh air through. But it was a hot, muggy day, and the house had been closed up a long time. The heat was entrenched.
Once Show had the air conditioner on, and once the dust had blown through the ducts, the air in the house became bearable, almost pleasant. Show cleaned windows, and Shannon dusted furniture. She pulled down curtains and stripped linens, and he pulled rugs out and beat them on the clothesline. Show worked with a grim determination that Shannon tried to steer clear of. She let him work through the things he needed to work through.
Late in the afternoon, while she was pulling everything off the walls, packing up the samplers and sayings, the curios and knickknacks, Show went upstairs and didn’t come back down. She didn’t think much of it, assuming he was cleaning one of the rooms up there—though the beds were stripped and the curtains down, and two of the rooms were basically empty, anyway.
When she had the walls on the first floor bare, the few photos Show had left stacked neatly on the sideboard in the dining room, Shannon worked her way up, taking Norman Rockwell prints off the wall going up the stairs. When she got to the top, she looked down the hallway and saw Show, in the room at the end of the hall—the biggest bedroom. The master bedroom. He was sitting on the floor at the side of one of the beds in that room. Earlier, she’d been surprised and saddened to see that there were two beds, not one. Even though he’d told her he and Holly hadn’t slept in the same bed, it was sad to see that it was true.
He was looking down at something in his hands, and Shannon stood there and watched, feeling a little stuck, not sure if she should go in there or go away, say something or be quiet. Finally, she put down the box she was using to collect the things she’d been taking off the walls, and she walked down the hall to Show.
He was reading. There was a big grey metal box, like an old lockbox, open on the bed, and he was reading. As she got nearer, she saw that he was reading a journal, the writing round and girly, written in purple ink. There were other journals in the lockbox, and a few on the floor at his side.
He looked up as she came close. His eyes shone. “Hey.”
“Hey. You okay?”
He sighed. “Yeah. These are hers—Daisy’s. The first one—that pink one with the daisy on the cover—is from when she was eight. This one is from when she was thirteen.” He looked down at the book in his hands. “I missed a lot. God. I missed so much. She had this whole life going on in her head. Some of the things she wrote are stories. In this one, probably half of it is stories she made up. I didn’t even know she liked to write. How did I miss something like that about my own kid?”
Shannon picked up the journals on the floor, and she sat next to him, holding the brightly colored books on her lap. “Maybe she didn’t want you to know. Maybe that was her thing to keep for herself. That’s why it’s in her journal.”
“I guess.” He began to read again, slowly flipping through the pages. Shannon watched him. She was curious about the journals, but they weren’t hers to read, so she didn’t look down at the pages he was reading, and she didn’t open the books in her hands. But she read Show’s face. He looked both pained and captivated, delving into the young mind of his dead daughter.
When he was about halfway through, he suddenly closed the book and put it behind him, up on the bed.
“Shit. I gotta stop.” He raked his hands through his hair—earlier, when the heat had been intense, he’d taken off his beanie. “She had plans. She wanted so much. She was…restless.”
Shannon set the journals down and put her hands around his arm. She rested her forehead on his shoulder. “I wish I knew what to say.”
He laid his cheek on her head. “Nothing to say. Just shit I gotta make room for.”
“Do you think you can live here?”
“Do you?”
The question made Shannon’s heart pound. She wanted to think about it rationally. Objectively. She’d spent the day in this house with him, removing Show’s old life—or, no, removing his ex-wife’s old life—from it. She wanted to be with him. She understood why he wouldn’t sell the house and buy something else, and she understood why he didn’t want to live in her little apartment. He filled that space uncomfortably. The only solution, then, was this house. The house in which he’d raised a family with another woman. The house in which his daughter had been so horribly hurt. But if he could live here, then why couldn’t she?
“Can we redecorate?”
She could feel his pleasure in the way his body relaxed against hers. “We can do whatever you want.”
She sat up straight and looked him in the eye. “No—what we want. I want you to be here, too.”
“I don’t care, hon. Paint, pictures, curtains—doesn’t much matter. Do what you want.”
She thought of all the froufrou that she’d been taking down all day. So much country cutesy. Nothing that said a man like Showdown Ryan had ever lived here. “I’ll only live here if you participate, make it ours.”
He grinned. “But you’ll live here?”
“What’s your favorite color, Show?”
“What?”
“Your favorite color.” She hoped he wouldn’t say black. In Shannon’s opinion, no one should ever say that black was their favorite color. Black wasn’t a color. Black was absence. Color should be presence. Attitude.
“I don’t know. Never thought much about it.”
“Everybody has a favorite color. What color makes you feel good when you see it? What color makes things better?”
He put his hands around her face and regarded her steadily, deeply. His thumbs traced the tops of her cheekbones. “Blue. Blue is my favorite color.”
“Like sky blue, or navy blue, or—”
“Like your eyes.”
Show wasn’t a sweet talker or a romantic. He was just…true. Real. Direct. And it made the times he said amazingly sweet, romantic things like that a billion times more amazing, because he simply meant what he said.
Her heart was thumping, but she covered with a smile and said, “Okay, so—blue.”
“What’s your favorite color? He leaned in and ki
ssed her before she could answer. He kissed her long and sweetly, nibbling lightly at her lips and tongue. She felt every graze of his teeth like a strum between her legs. When he left her lips and trailed his tongue over her jaw and down her throat, she gasped, “Green. I like green.”
He chuckled. “You look great in green.” He picked her up and set her on his lap, her back to his chest, then pulled the neck of her t-shirt aside and nipped at her shoulder. She could feel his erection under her ass. She lay back and let him touch and taste her as he wished; when he opened her shorts and slid his hand under the lace of her thong, she spread her legs wide and reached her arms over her head, threading her fingers into his hair.
Before she closed her eyes and gave herself over to him completely, she imagined this room being theirs. One bed.
~oOo~
Shannon stood behind the front desk, staring at the closed dining room doors. Thunder crashed outside, and rain pelted the windows. The Barton-Kovacs wedding had been moved indoors due to the storm, and she was shifting nervously back on forth on her pumps, waiting for the ceremony to be over. Then she and her event staff had an intricate dance to undertake, distracting the guests in the parlor while the dining room was flipped for the reception. It was the first time that weather had not cooperated for a wedding. They’d been ridiculously lucky, but they were paying for that early good fortune with a squall that had turned the gravel lot to soup.
The front porch had canvas screens that could be dropped to protect the space from weather, so the guests had used the dry porch to collect themselves after their mad dash from the lot. Shannon had had people with big golf umbrellas ushering guests in, so there had been minimal spoilage of fancy clothes. Megan, the bride, had been disappointed to lose her garden wedding, but Shannon had been prepared for the storm, and the dining room had looked like a place for a wedding, not a meal. Shortly, though, it would need to look like a place for a meal again.
Into the Storm Page 26