Bookends

by Liz Curtis Higgs

  Remember why you’re doing this, man.

  Why was he doing this? Because she needed cheering up, right? Great, Fielding. Another project.

  Except that wasn’t fair. Emilie Getz was a woman, not a project. Truth was, he could use a day away from Carter’s Run. It wouldn’t kill him. Might even be fun watching Fraulein Doktor pretend to know doo-doo about birds.

  First, though, she’d need somewhere in the Explorer to sit.

  With a grunt, he gathered up an armload of notebooks, rumpled architectural drawings, four empty bank bags, and a year’s worth of Golf Digest, then made his way toward the back door. Nudging it open with his knee, he tossed the contents onto the kitchen floor in a jumbled heap, with good intentions of sorting out the whole mess later.

  Much later.

  Jonas locked the door behind him and grinned. “Rise and shine, Dr. Getz.”

  Her copper-bottomed teakettle whistled a cheery tune into the morning darkness as Emilie prepared to break her fast in the usual manner: crisp toast covered with a scant layer of imported orange marmalade, piping hot English Breakfast tea with lemon, and fresh sliced fruit. This morning, a luscious pear waited on her plate, carefully arranged in a creamy white circle.

  Almost too pretty to eat. She sighed, slipping a juicy slice of pear into her mouth, and regarded the kitchen clock. Five after four. He would be late, of course. Men always were. Since he seemed to be the outdoor type, at least he’d be dressed properly. Black clothes again, no doubt, and a hat of some sort or his pointy ears would freeze with that ridiculous haircut.

  Pouring the steaming water into a chubby porcelain pot, she dipped two slim tea bags inside, then dropped the lid in place, followed by a quilted cozy. She’d finish dressing while it steeped, since her clothes were already waiting for her, neatly draped across the foot of her single bed. After darting up the narrow, enclosed curved staircase to the second floor, Emilie donned her lined wool slacks and sturdy boots in no time, then topped them with a high-necked blouse and a heavy brown sweater.

  There. She might not know a catbird from a crow, but she intended to look the part of a seasoned birder. The brand-new field guide waiting in her coat pocket would give her away, though she’d bent the cover back and forth several times to make it appear well used. Face it, Em. Birds aren’t impressed with a Ph.D. Neither was Jonas Fielding, if she’d read him correctly. His two brothers, on the other hand, seemed duly interested in her credentials. They had their older brother’s looks, she concluded, without all the arrogance.

  What had possessed her to agree to this outing—to spend another day away from her research, sitting in a nature preserve counting birds with a virtual stranger—was beyond Emilie’s comprehension. She didn’t even know what the man did for a living! Serving on church committees and tallying up sparrows hardly constituted gainful employment.

  Obviously Jonas had caught her in a weak moment.

  It would not happen again.

  Minutes later, sipping her tea in comfy silence, she heard a sudden screech of tires out front, then the bleat of a car horn—not once but three times—shattering the predawn stillness with its rude, insistent blare.

  Well, of all the …!

  She tossed her cloth napkin on the table in disgust and reached for her blue hooded jacket. “If that’s his idea of a bird call, we’re in for a very long day.” She swallowed her last sip of tea with a jolt when the horn sounded again, catching her off guard. The hot liquid burned a path down her throat, even as she sensed a head of steam building between her ears.

  Throwing open the front door with uncharacteristic energy, Emilie lunged over the threshold just as Jonas reached the top step, inches away from a head-on collision. Regaining her balance, she stretched up to her full height, using the threshold to her advantage.

  “Mister Fielding!” Steaming hot or not, her breath filled the frosty air between them with an angry cloud of vapor. “Was it your plan to invite all of Main Street to join us?”

  He glanced at the vehicle parked at a crooked angle by the curb. “Nah. No room.” He offered her a cagey grin. “Just you, me, and Trix.”

  Trix? So. Another woman was joining them. Trix. Sounds like a nightclub dancer. Emilie sniffed. “Very well. I’m ready, of course.”

  “Of course.” He angled one thumb toward the car and pulled the door shut behind her.

  She swept past, then paused to give him an appraising glance, eyebrows arched. “Is black the only color in your wardrobe?”

  “Yup.” His infuriating grin grew more so. “I order two dozen Ts and jeans at a whack from L.L. Bean. No mix, no match, no hassle.”

  No taste, either.

  He followed her down the steps. “I’ve got you in the back. With Trix. Okay by you?”

  “Naturally, I.… oh …” Emilie was close enough to see movement behind the tinted glass. Even in the darkness, it was clear Trix was a very large, very active woman. “So … how … old is Trix?”

  “Four or five, give or take.”

  Jonas reached for the door handle while Emilie watched in horror as the backseat passenger smashed her wet black nose and long pink tongue against the rear window.

  “Aahh!” she shrieked. Emilie never shrieked. “Is that a … a … dog?”

  “Yup.” He yanked open the door, and Trix came bounding out onto the sidewalk, greeting Emilie with slobbery kisses smeared all over her pale white hands.

  “Oh …! Oh …!” Emilie was doing her best not to toss her breakfast pears all over the sidewalk as she hastily wiped her hands on the hem of her jacket. “I’m not … well, I’m simply not a dog person.”

  “No problem,” Jonas assured her. “Trix likes everybody, even people who don’t like her back. Shoulda called her Gracie.” He patted the large, yellow beast. “Trix, looks like you’re riding in the back all by yourself. Miss … uh, Dr. Getz here says she doesn’t like dogs.”

  “It’s not that I don’t like them,” Emilie corrected him, picking her way across the ice toward the passenger side. As far as it went, that was the honest truth. She didn’t dislike dogs. She loathed them.

  Sliding inside the front seat, she’d no sooner tucked her purse beside her feet, avoiding Trix’s lethal tongue, when a deafening blast of music from the car speakers instantly pinned her back against the headrest. Her second shriek of the morning filled the air. “Good heavens!”

  Jonas climbed in beside her seconds after the onslaught began. “Like it, huh?” He gunned the engine and shifted into drive, grinning at her as he inched the volume up a notch. “One of my favorite bluegrass CDs. Group of guys from Maryland.”

  She pressed back harder, trying to escape the noise. “Those aren’t … violins they’re torturing, are they?”

  “Nope.” The car careened down Main Street. “They’re fiddles.”

  Fiddlesticks. She knew an abused violin when she heard one.

  His elbow jammed into hers. “I thought you liked instrumental pieces.”

  She fought the urge to elbow him back, knowing it was neither ladylike nor appropriate, and shot him a pointed look instead. “Classical music—real music—is more to my taste. Might you have anything softer?”

  He touched a round button on the stereo and the disturbing racket disappeared as abruptly as it’d begun. The silence fell on her like a heavy quilt on a cold day—warm and welcome. Emilie tried not to sigh with relief as she mumbled her thanks. To think that she was spending the day with a man who considered that … that noise worth listening to!

  Minutes later, heading north on Broad Street, he reached under the seat, pulled out an ancient cassette recorder, and dropped it in her lap. “It’s not classical music, but I think you’ll find it fairly interesting.” When she reached for the start button, his hand rested on hers for the slightest of seconds. “Later, Emilie.”

  It was the first time he’d said her name that morning. She didn’t know which startled her more—those familiar three syllables rolling out on a smoky bass note
or the brush of his callused palm on her ungloved knuckles.

  His hands were large and rough, the hands of a carpenter, yet his touch was featherlight. What did he do to earn his keep? She was an experienced researcher; it was time to ask a few well-chosen questions.

  “Mr. Fielding, what precisely is your line of work?”

  He shrugged. “I play with dirt.”

  The look on her face made missing a day at Carter’s Run worth every second. Shock, confusion, disgust—who could tell? Not him, not in a lifetime. Eyebrows tipped up, lips curled down, chin jutted forward, tiny ears pinned back against her head, she looked like … like …

  Of course.

  An owl. Emilie Getz looked like an owl. A boreal owl, to be exact. No, she didn’t have a light-colored bill or a dark border around her face. But she did have the same puzzled expression and erect posture, with no ears worth mentioning.

  Except boreals resided in Canada, not Winston-Salem.

  “Dirt?”

  She even screeched like an owl.

  “I’m a land developer.” He watched her spine stiffen. “I buy land and turn it into something profitable.”

  “Then you, sir, represent everything I despise about the world today.” Her voice, no longer cool and brittle, burned instead with the heat of conviction. “In the pursuit of commerce, men like you have torn down landmarks, desecrated communities, and run roughshod over history and society and culture and—”

  “Emilie, wait. I—”

  There was no stopping the woman.

  Her shoulders pivoted in his direction, led by that jutting, ferocious chin of hers. “More antiquities have fallen under the blade of your coldhearted bulldozers than historians can count. Believe me, we’ve tried to stop you.” She huffed dramatically, then leaned back against her seat. “I cannot adequately express how disappointed I am to learn that you are counted among their ilk.”

  Concentrating on two important activities—staying on the road and not laughing out loud—Jonas simply nodded. “I realize that some of my colleagues have gotten carried away—”

  “They should be carried away!” she fumed, glaring out the window to punctuate her disgust. “Carted off in a paddy wagon! Thrown in jail for their blatant disregard for the history they’ve carelessly tossed aside under the guise of … progress.” She spat out the word like a bit of rotten fruit.

  He let the energy of her unexpected diatribe hang in the silent air, its static electricity palpable. Every short hair on his head stood at attention. Before he could stop himself, he said exactly what he was thinking: “Emilie, I didn’t know you had it in you.”

  Her head swiveled toward him. “Had what in me? That kind of anger?”

  “No. That kind of passion.”

  In seconds, she was pink again, forehead to chin, just like yesterday, only brighter. “I’m … I’m not …”

  He eased on the brake as they reached the red light at Newport Road. “You’re not what? Passionate?”

  “No!” She yanked on her gloves, refusing to meet his sideways glance. “I’m not at all sorry for what I said about developers.” Her voice was steel cold. “Your … well, your profession happens to be a sensitive subject with me, that’s all.”

  Sensitive? Best he could figure, she was touchy about every subject in the book.

  As they passed the intersection and climbed the hill that led north out of Lititz, he studied her angular profile. Even with every corner of her face softened by that porcelain skin of hers, it was clear she’d shut down again. Blast. If he expected to cheer up the gloomy professor, so far he wasn’t doing too well.

  Trix took her cue and laid her head on Emilie’s shoulder, offering her own brand of encouragement as she nuzzled Emilie’s tightly knotted hair. Emilie didn’t move a muscle, Jonas noticed, until Trix made a wild foray with her wet pink tongue and practically swallowed the woman’s delicate ear.

  “Eeek!” Emilie shuddered and ducked her head to escape the canine’s zeal, swatting the air behind her. “Go … go lick him, will you?”

  Trix would have none of it, Jonas could see that. The retriever had plenty of opportunities to lick him any old day or night, but a hysterical woman—well, that was too good to pass up. Lunging over the seat to get at her target, Trix ignored his every command. “Sit! Now, sit, girl!” Her obedience school days seemed a distant doggy memory.

  Without a traffic light in sight, and Emilie whimpering in a huddle under the dashboard, he had no choice but to pull over on the gravel shoulder and settle things. Throwing the gearshift into park, he turned around in his seat and grabbed Trix’s collar.

  “This isn’t playtime, Trix.” Goldens loved nothing more than pleasing their masters, so Jonas made sure she understood he was not at all pleased. Trix slumped down in the backseat with a canine sigh, repentant and humbled, while Emilie slowly rose to a sitting position in the front, easing back against the seat with noticeable caution, still balancing the tape recorder on her lap.

  “She’ll be fine now, Dr. Getz. Trix loves people, that’s all.” He steered the car back onto Route 501, checking the rearview mirror to be certain the retriever was still minding her manners. “Once we get out in the field at Middle Creek, you’ll see what a well-behaved girl she can be.”

  Beneath Emilie’s calm exterior, he sensed a slight bristle.

  “Is that how you like all your females? Well behaved?”

  “No, not all of ’em. Just my dogs.” Good grief, is she always this cranky in the morning? “We’ll be on Kleinfeltersville Road before you know it. Meantime, help yourself to a cup of coffee. There’s a thermos around here somewhere.”

  She found it jammed between their seats. Opening it with great care, she poured herself little more than a swallow of the steaming liquid. Even then, she wrinkled her nose.

  “Lemme guess.” He grimaced. “Tea drinker.”

  She nodded between sips.

  “Figures. You didn’t seem too enamored of the stuff they handed out on Christmas Eve.”

  “No, but I drank it,” she reminded him. “The lovefeast is liturgy, not sustenance. When Count Zinzendorf unintentionally served the first lovefeast in 1727, it was meant to be a time of fellowship and worship.”

  “Funny—” he wrinkled his forehead, struggling to recall a vague reference he’d read in The Moravian—“I thought it was lunch.”

  “Well, yes.” She waved her hand dismissively. “It might have started out that way, but even then he could see the spiritual significance of it all.”

  Jonas couldn’t help himself. “You were there, of course.”

  “Very amusing.” She sipped her coffee, then grimaced. “All our research indicates that the lovefeast began August 13, the day the Renewed Unitas Fratrum was born.”

  “If you say so, Doc.” Maybe he didn’t have all the details down, but he remembered the important stuff. About how the day was compared to Pentecost. About the impassioned, twenty-something Zinzendorf offering a fervent prayer that so moved the assembly that the Holy Spirit filled the place and no one wanted to go home for the noonday meal.

  Instead the Count ordered simple foods to be brought and shared.

  The first lovefeast.

  “Yeah, that was quite a day, Doc.” They drove along in a neutral silence for another fifteen minutes, until he turned left along a winding country road, the nature preserve almost in sight. “So. Ready to go owling?”

  She peered through the glass into the morning darkness. “Owling? That’s a word?”

  He turned left at the Middle Creek entrance, heading uphill toward the Visitor Center. “It is to a birder. You have all the bait we need in your lap.” He pointed to the tape recorder, then pulled into the parking lot, already filling up with assorted vehicles. “Bring that along, will you? C’mon, Trix, the fun has already begun.”

  Released from her backseat prison, Trix let out a bark of enthusiasm and leaped through the open door, wagging and wiggling as Jonas snapped a leash on her collar. Wi
th other dogs around, it was a necessity. He led the way as Emilie—tape recorder in one hand, Helen’s binoculars in the other—picked her way across the stiff grass toward the group of people congregated around a large map. Most of the crew had elaborate spotting scopes on tripods, and for a heartbeat, Jonas regretted leaving his at home. Truth was, though, between a frisky golden and a feisty female, his hands were already plenty full.

  An amicable guy wearing jeans and a bulky army jacket was pointing in various directions, dispatching the faithful to their assigned positions with maps that showed the boundaries of their count areas. Jonas listened and nodded, then turned to find an owl-like Emilie standing behind him—eyes wide open, lips pursed shut in a fair imitation of a beak.

  He swallowed his second guffaw of the morning. “Ready to find a great horned? That’s what you’ve got on your tape there.” He steered her toward the stretch along Willow Point Trail that would be their stakeout.

  “I beg your pardon?” She followed along behind him, trying to keep up with his long strides yet maintain a safe distance from the jubilant Trix. “Did you say there’s a great horn on this tape?” She closed the gap, firing questions at him as she did. “What kind of horn? A trombone? A trumpet? Why would an owl respond to a brass instrument?”

  He stopped long enough to get her complete attention. “A great horned owl, Emilie. A bird, not a trumpet. You’ll hear your share of birdsong today, but none of them will be working from the Moravian hymnal. Got that?”

  “Well!” She shoved the tape recorder under her left arm and marched ahead of him. “First of all, I didn’t hear you properly. And second of all, my specialty is history not ornithology. A person has to learn these things.”

  “Yes, a person does.” He caught up with her in three strides and nabbed her coat at the elbow, careful to grip only fabric and not flesh. “You do have a lot to learn, and I’m just the man for the job. You’ll see. By day’s end, you’ll be more proficient than a mockingbird when it comes to mimicking bird calls.”