“Grande Americano.” Minutes later, his hand around the steaming cup, he crossed the café to Janelle’s table for two. “Hi.”
“Needed something to chew on?”
He tilted his back against the chair without fully touching it. His mouth found the energy to curve. “Sure.”
“You ever wonder how much of that stuff you’ve consumed over a lifetime?”
“Some people start on it when they’re five.”
“You didn’t?”
“Nope.” He hadn’t needed it till about fifteen years after that.
Janelle eyed him with a birdlike head tilt. She gyrated her plastic cup till the ice cubes made a sluggish circle. “You had to know how terrified we were. No word from you at all. Nothing.”
He’d constructed a reasonable explanation on the way here, but the protective lies fizzled in his mouth. He washed them away with bitter, bracing espresso.
“I’m not being melodramatic when I say this. We waited for hours.” She shook her head. “If you think I was a basket case last week … All of us, Marcus. I think even Clay was shook up. We were sure we’d never see you again.”
Marcus raised his eyes from where Jack + Samantha had been carved into the tabletop, framed by a lopsided heart. “It wouldn’t have been safe. To call anybody.”
“You shouldn’t have needed to call. You should have been there.”
No. The lie he had to tell crept back up from the pit of his stomach. Janelle had to believe he didn’t want to go back.
“You need to tell me what’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong. I’m just not … I don’t …” Words. Stupid, evasive words. How did other people collect so many, pour them into each other like creamer into coffee, smooth and easy?
“What, you think you don’t fit in? You think you’re not needed? Haven’t we proved otherwise by now?”
Marcus let the silence hover. He needed the words that would make her stop fighting to keep him.
She twirled her straw. “You want to know what Phil said last night? Felice wants a ceremony when Abe marries them, a little celebration among us, and Phil said he was going to ask you to be his best man.”
Don’t feel it. But deep inside, a river rushed and roared. Janelle might see too much. Marcus glued his gaze to the table. Another heart, more symmetrical and pierced by an arrow, had been gouged below Jack and Samantha’s.
“Marcus.”
In the deliberate breath before he met her eyes, Marcus dammed the river. His mind’s eye saw Phil and Felice and Janelle hauled off in handcuffs, saw Abe and Clay and their families shoved into prison cells after the Constabulary finally identified and followed Marcus. And until he knew otherwise, he couldn’t help seeing all of them dead.
“Please listen to me,” Janelle said. “When—when I lost my little niece, everybody tried so hard to say the right thing, except you. Your hand on my shoulder meant as much to me as words from somebody else.”
Marcus looked up. Her face crinkled with care around her lips.
“I’m not coming back,” he said.
Now it was her turn to stare at the carved hearts.
Marcus sipped his Americano.
“You know God doesn’t want us to forsake ‘the assembling of ourselves together,’” Janelle said.
God didn’t want him to endanger his family, either. They might accept him no matter what, even if they knew the whole of him, the days of wringing thirst, the fact he’d failed every family he’d ever had. Jim and Karlyn. Frank. Mom.
“Jesus wants us to be His body. You know that. All different parts, all with a purpose, all connected. I’m betting I’m the mouth.” A smile drifted over her face but didn’t stay. “You’re a hand, or a foot.”
“Janelle,” he said. “I’m not coming back.”
She jabbed her straw into the bottom of her cup. “I hope you don’t mean it. But you’ve never said anything to me that you didn’t mean.”
“If you ever need anything, you know my number.”
“Ditto that. And listen, if you’ve decided to run the race alone for a while, whatever your reasons are …” The straw twirled again, and her voice fell to a whisper. “Do what you can to get hold of reading material.”
A Bible. At least he could reassure her in this. “I’ve got some.”
Understanding glistened in her eyes, brightened into awe. “You have?”
He nodded.
“Oh, Marcus. Then you’ve read it.”
“Not all of it.”
“Read it, read every word. Oh, Marcus.”
Of all people to own her own Bible, Janelle would have been one of Marcus’s first guesses. “What happened to yours?”
“I was a coward.”
He took another sip. She leaned nearer, although nobody in the café could overhear her brittle whisper.
“When the ban passed, I … I got rid of it, told myself I’d always have the words in my heart. Every day since, I’ve asked God for another chance to hold His Word in my hands.”
She’d prayed for a Bible for six years.
“Read First Corinthians, Marcus. It’s toward the end, I think chapter twelve. Read about the body of Jesus, change your mind, and come back to us.”
His hand flattened on the table and covered the hearts. Against his palm, they pressed as meaningless scratches.
Janelle’s hand crept over the table, wrapped around his, and squeezed. “You’ll be back. I can feel it.”
The warm pressure on his hand nearly brought out the words he couldn’t make on his own. That the little group had taught him so much and given him so much, that they meant so much. That they were too precious to risk holding onto.
His hand withdrew. “No.”
26
Aubrey ladled out a second serving of soup when the lock rattled and Indy rushed toward it. Perfect timing. She listened for Marcus’s routine “Hi,” but only Indy’s ecstatic panting broke the silence from the mudroom. That, and a muted jingle of keys set onto the washing machine.
She took a deep breath and rehearsed. Hi, Marcus. How was your day? By the way, I want to apologize for the emotional outpouring last night. I promise to be levelheaded from now on.
“Soup’s on,” Aubrey called. “Looks even better than the spaghetti.”
“Thank you.”
A gasp jumped down her throat as her body jerked around to face the voice. The female voice.
“Aubrey Weston.” The black-haired woman stood at the kitchen doorway, erect but comfortable.
“Y-you must be Lee.”
The nod was as measured as the posture, as measured as the voice Aubrey recognized from yesterday’s forbidden phone call. “Marcus isn’t home?”
“Um, no.”
Indy nudged close to Lee’s leg but didn’t shove the way she did against Marcus. Lee didn’t pet her, but the dog’s tail didn’t miss a happy beat against the door molding.
Lee’s body flowed through the kitchen on liquid strides, the kind of body that could deliver triplets one day and slip into junior-sized jeans the next. She poured herself into a chair without touching the back and ran one thumb over Indy’s black ear.
“You’ve stayed here since the original news story?” Lee said.
“Um, yeah.” Okay, that was enough. Aubrey straightened her spine. Two could impersonate ramrods.
“I assume Marcus initiated this.”
“He did, yes.” Much better.
“And he intends to retrieve your child.”
She didn’t have to fake the stiffness now. “My son is not a Frisbee or a stick.”
Lee’s eyebrows arched. “I apologize if my choice of words was offensive.”
A vague shock rippled through Aubrey’s brain as the blurry picture finally focused itself. This was Marcus’s girlfriend, poise
d, articulate, and aloof. Somehow, she had expected a woman less … less fundamentally the opposite of Marcus. The apology held sincerity, though.
Might as well be on good terms with the woman. “I’m thinking he’ll be back anytime, so would you like to eat with us?”
As if Lee needed an invitation to stay for dinner with him, to eat food she’d prepared herself. Maybe Aubrey would do better if she stopped trying.
Lee walked into the kitchen—yes, as if she owned it. “I’m here to examine his wound.”
Again? “It’s that serious?”
“His job involves physical labor.”
“Oh, you mean he could tear it open? Wouldn’t he call you, if he did?”
Lee’s head barely turned to angle her gaze. “You’ve observed the answer to that.”
“But last night was … different.”
Silence claimed the room. Maybe Aubrey’s conversation annoyed Lee. But indifference, not irritation, encased each line of her posture. Eye contact alone distinguished her from a sculpture of herself, harder than stone, colder than bronze. Steel, maybe.
“I’m sorry,” Aubrey said.
“For?”
“Well, I ruined your chance for plausible deniability.”
No response to that, either. Aubrey must have offended her, after all. Stupid, stumbling self, inviting the woman to dinner as if Aubrey owned something here.
Oh. Of course.
“Lee, I’m not … I would never try to … I know you and Marcus are …”
Aubrey was pinned by Lee’s gaze like a collected butterfly to a foam board. “Are what?”
“Um, are … with each other. Together.” She couldn’t sound more adolescent if she tried.
“Where is his father?” Lee said.
“I’m sorry?”
“Your child’s.”
The question wasn’t unfair, and the implication was impossible to miss. But Aubrey couldn’t lie to Lee, couldn’t reassure her that Brett waited on Aubrey’s horizon like a rescue ship.
“He’s living his life,” Aubrey said. “He was living his life before my face hit the news, and I was raising our son. It was mostly a mutual decision.”
Lee nodded.
“That’s irrelevant, Lee. Really.”
The steel eyes disagreed. Aubrey turned to the bowls on the counter, now barely steaming. Her stomach muttered with hunger despite the discomfiting silence. Marcus, please hurry home.
As the only sound in the room, the scrape of Aubrey’s spoon against her ceramic bowl nearly drove her to start humming. Instead, she finished the bowl almost without chewing, then poured the second bowl back into Lee’s glassware and deposited her dishes in the dishwasher, as all the while silence thickened. She found a niche for the glassware on the middle refrigerator shelf between cartons—one of coffee creamer, one of eggs. Even the seal of the refrigerator door was loud.
“I am not ‘with’ Marcus,” Lee said.
Wait, was she kidding? She didn’t sound like it. Aubrey turned to face her. Lee’s expression remained flat. The back doorknob rattled.
The bull in the china shop had nothing on Marcus. He charged into the kitchen. His eyes found Lee in seconds, and the glare that tried to char her where she sat met only an incomprehensible lift of her eyebrows.
“I told you to go home,” he said.
“I did.”
“I didn’t mean come back later.”
“Your paranoia is no longer justified.”
Indy butted her head against Marcus’s hand, unresponsive at his side. Aubrey did not exist right now either. There were only Marcus and Lee, irresistible force and immovable object, fire and ice.
“No,” Marcus said. His body propelled itself across the kitchen on strides that needed more room, then reached the far wall and whirled and paced back. Lee’s eyes followed him.
“Marcus, they can’t identify you.”
He halted, but his glare didn’t cool one degree.
“Resist your impulse to shut me out, and listen.” Lee waited, and finally Marcus jerked a nod at her. “They’ve had nearly twenty-four hours. Had they composed a sketch, they would be using it. We’ve seen nothing. What do they gain from feigned ignorance?”
His left hand contracted into a fist, then loosened. The knuckles dug into his neck.
“They’re reporting only vague details because vagueness is all they have.”
Behind Marcus’s eyes, the flames flickered down. His hand dropped to his side. He gave her one more short nod, then stood still.
Lee flowed to her feet. “Sit. I need to examine the wound.”
“It’s okay.”
“Marcus, please.”
A sigh seeped from him. He tugged a chair away from the table and dropped into it sideways. He started to pull his shirt over his head but froze with his right arm only halfway there. “Lee, just … lift it.”
“Your arm?”
“No,” he said quickly. “The shirt.”
Lee rolled the shirt up his back. The black fabric crept up in front as well, baring half of Marcus’s torso.
He could advertise for a gym. The thought had barely formed when Aubrey’s eyes met Lee’s, over his head. The woman didn’t have to glare. She simply held eye contact with flat frankness that brought heat to Aubrey’s face for no reason whatsoever.
Aubrey ducked her head and turned her back to both of them. She should clean something. How about this nice, shiny counter?
“You won’t consider canceling tomorrow’s clients,” Lee said.
“I’m okay. It’s just a cut.”
“A strained laceration. Have you taken anything?”
The sudden quiet nearly infused Aubrey with the nerve to turn around, but before she could, Lee spoke again.
“Acetaminophen is not an anticoagulant.”
“I know,” he said, as if he’d heard those words from her a thousand times.
“Marcus, there is nothing … unsafe in Tylenol.” Like his, Lee’s words plodded a worn path, but in her hesitation, Aubrey’s neck prickled.
Had that been a glance her way? Gosh, Lee, sorry I’m in the room. Not like there was anything intimate about treating a knife wound. Oh, and obviously, you’re not with Marcus. Not at all. Aubrey tossed the sponge into the sink.
The chair scraped the wood floor. “I don’t need Tylenol.”
“No,” Lee said. “You don’t.”
Aubrey turned to face them. The tightness around Marcus’s mouth eased, as if Lee had handed him some kind of gift. He nodded, but with more than agreement. His eyes glimmered, and Aubrey stood on the other side of the counter, noticeable as a molecule of air. Just when she thought these two did nothing but clash.
Both of them took a step toward the back door, then kept going. Neither followed, neither led. They could have been two legs on one body, headed in the same direction without conscious thought. They could have been two bodies with one mind. Now they would say good-bye.
But no. The door opened, closed. They’d gone outside together.
Within Aubrey, something broke free and let itself ache. Had she and Brett ever looked that way to observers, as if their thoughts raced along one circuit, as if spoken words were superfluous to communication? Had anyone ever seen the appreciation in Brett’s eyes that shone out of Marcus for Lee, simply because she stopped arguing with him over Tylenol?
Aubrey had promised to live her life with Brett, dragged him away from his studies when his eyes burned, kissed his tears when he lost his beloved granddaddy, tunneled with him under the covers of his bed without regard for what God said was wrong, exposed and offered her body and her soul, carried and cherished his baby. She had done all these things and never basked in a beam from his eyes that saw nothing in this moment of life but her.
And Lee stood in a light like
that without realizing it.
27
Halfway across the closed garage toward Lee’s car outside, she stopped walking. The frosted slate of her eyes studied Marcus, not as a nurse’s patient, but as a reader’s book.
“Why is she still here?”
“She’s got nowhere else to go.”
Lee crossed her arms. “Family, friends, acquaintances? A hotel?”
“She’s got eleven dollars.”
Did Lee just roll her eyes?
Couldn’t have. “And yeah, I could give her money, but it’s safer—”
“I was not suggesting you give her money.”
“I can’t take her to Ohio. Not without her baby.”
“She doesn’t belong in this house.”
Where was this coming from? The chill of the garage seeped into him, and he crossed his arms. Now they both stood the same way, as if shielding against each other instead of the cold. “It’s my house. And I’m not putting her out in the street, if that’s what you want.”
“I’m merely pointing out the absurdity of an adult woman, a mother, so unable to deal with her problems that she’s willing to impose on a stranger.”
“She’s tried to leave twice. And offered to leave again last night.”
Lee flinched at the end of his sentence. The silence enveloped them until Marcus had no idea how to break it. Well, he had nothing to say, anyway. Lee was being ridiculous.
“You’re determined to do this,” Lee said. “Protect fellow Christians, even those you don’t know.”
He’d done hardly anything so far, but he nodded. No stopping now.
Her arms lowered to her sides. “All right. I can assist you.”
“No.” The word punched through his clenched teeth.
“Indirectly. I know someone with information. I’ll give you the means to contact him.”
“No.”
“Sam Stiles.”
“I said no.”
“He’s worked for the Constabulary nearly two years.”
“What are you doing?”
“He isn’t a field agent, Marcus.” Conviction edged into her voice. “He works in data management.”
The significance left a flashbulb impression in the flurry of Marcus’s thoughts. Every day, this man could get to information that Marcus could secure only when Jason Mayweather was too drunk to shut up. Not that it mattered. Lee wasn’t allowed to help him, even if she could shove a truth serum into Jason.
Seek and Hide: A Novel (Haven Seekers) Page 16