by Donna Alward
Too late, Nora wondered what she was letting them in for.
Particularly when Brendan said, “It would take a better man than me to turn down homemade lasagna. Especially the kind with lots of cheese.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
WHAT THE HELL was he doing? Brendan asked himself as he sat at Nora’s table for the second night in a row. Lasagna last night. Meat loaf tonight.
“You wanna stay and play Scrabble?” Luke asked, oh so casually, as if he didn’t care what Brendan’s answer was.
And out of the corner of his eye he watched Nora, as he always watched Nora, and saw her tensing, caught just as he was between wanting him to go and wanting him to stay.
“Scrabble?” he said. “I’m not staying to play Scrabble.”
Luke tried to hide how crestfallen he was. Nora got a pinched look about her mouth and eyes.
It should have confirmed he could not stay here to play Scrabble. Instead he heard himself saying, “Don’t you know how to play poker?”
And when they both shook their heads, he said, “I guess it’s about time you learned.”
An hour later Luke was rolling on the floor laughing. Brendan’s own stomach hurt from laughing so hard. The rock had been rolled away and light was penetrating into every corner of that cave.
He needed to stop. He needed to ponder hard questions. He needed to slow down, roll the rock back in place, regroup, retreat, rethink.
Why was he doing this? The truth? Something in him was watching that damned cat getting better and better. Something in him was surrendering, resisting his efforts to be logical, telling him that if that cat could be healed, maybe he could, too.
Healed from what? he asked himself. Until he had passed under that Nora’s Ark sign, hadn’t he been blissfully unaware of his afflictions?
No, that wasn’t true. There hadn’t been one blissful thing about his life. It had been cold and dark and dank and gray. Certainly there had been no moments of laughter like this.
He had managed to avoid his demons—guilt, dark despair, crippling loneliness—by filling the confines of the space he had chosen with ceaseless work, by never stopping.
He had thought if he stopped he would find his afflictions had run along with him, silent, waiting.
He thought if he ever stopped, those tears that had never been cried would begin to flow, and would flow and flow and flow until he was drowning in them and in his own weakness.
His hardened heart behind its wall, a life that yawned with emotional emptiness, that had protected him.
And now Nora’s laughter was lapping against it, like water against a refuge built of mud, lapping away, steadily eroding the defenses.
How could you defend against moments like these?
“You are,” he told her, “without a doubt the worst card player I have ever seen. Give that deck to Luke before you mark it so badly I’ll own your house.”
“What do you mean, mark it?”
Luke took the cards from her. “See this bend you made here? Now everyone knows that’s the ace of spades.”
“Oh,” she said, the only one who didn’t know.
And she simply didn’t have the face for poker! She frowned at bad hands. She chewed her lip if they were really bad. Her eyes did a glow-in-the-dark thing if it was a good hand.
“Your aunt is a wash-out at this game. You have some promise, though. You have to have some ability to lie to be a good poker player.”
Luke flinched as if he’d been struck. He ducked his head. He dealt them each a hand and glared at his. And then he set them down, face up. He cleared his throat and looked Brendan right in the eye.
“I did it,” he blurted out. “I opened the mail. I sent Deedee the letter. I took the money.”
Honestly, Brendan did not want to like this kid.
But coupled with the defense of his aunt with the coat rack, and how hard he worked out there in the barn every day, how good he was with that cat and all the animals, the confession meant there was some hope for the boy.
If Nora didn’t manage to kill him with kindness first.
Because his aunt put down her cards—a royal flush, not that she would recognize it—and glared at Luke, ready to fight for him, ready to believe in him. “Luke! No, you didn’t!”
* * *
“Let him do the right thing,” Brendan said quietly.
The words made Nora want to weep. It confirmed what she already guiltily believed. She was making the wrong choices for Luke over and over again.
Nora hated that Brendan was right. And she hated that he had come into her house and her life and had taken control as naturally as he breathed.
But most of all, she hated the sense of relief she felt that she didn’t have to figure out how to fix it. She hated what it said about her that she had been prepared to lie to protect her nephew. And she hated, too, that she felt the same way she had felt in Brendan’s arms. Not so alone. Carried.
“Why don’t you tell us what happened?” Brendan suggested.
Nora appreciated his tone. Mild but stern. Not about to take any nonsense.
Luke glanced at her, and she nodded, not missing the look of relief on his face. He’d been carrying the guilt for too long.
“I was opening the mail for Nora’s Ark and found Deedee’s letter. She didn’t say Charlie was dying. She just said he wasn’t feeling well. I decided to play along. So I wrote her and said sure I’d send some energy. But that she should make, er, a donation.”
“You told her to send money,” Brendan said flatly, not willing to allow Luke to sugarcoat it.
“Okay. I did.”
“But why? You have money,” Nora asked plaintively.
“I didn’t have enough.”
She felt herself pale. Enough for what? Why did a fifteen-year-old boy need fifty dollars that he couldn’t ask her for?
Cigarettes? Alcohol? Drugs?
Karen, I have failed. Colossally. Why did you leave me with this?
Given the road she was going down, at first she thought Luke’s answer was a relief.
“The police were hassling me about the bike. The guy I borrowed it from, Gerald Jack-in-the-Box—”
“Jackinox,” she corrected automatically, thinking, It’s about the bike. Not drugs.
“Whatever. He said he’d make it go away if I gave him fifty bucks.”
Her sense of relief evaporated. “That’s blackmail! Tell me you didn’t ask Mrs. Ashton for fifty dollars to give to him! Oh, Luke, why didn’t you come to me?”
He at least had the grace to look a little shamefaced. “I asked her for fifty bucks. Cash. In the mail. When the money actually came, I was shocked. And I felt guilty. So I sat down and thought I’d send her stupid cat—I didn’t know him then—some energy.”
“What do you mean by that?” Brendan asked, his voice stern.
“Well, just the way my aunt does it.”
“And what way is that? That your aunt does it?”
“That’s not important!” Nora said. Her way with animals had always made her a bit of a novelty—and not always in a good way—to those who knew about it. Brendan Grant already knew way too much about her. He’d guessed she’d been betrayed. He knew she had a secret crush on Johnny Jose. He’d read Ask Rover and knew she wrote it. Enough was enough!
But annoyingly, Brendan trumped her with Luke. By a country mile.
“She puts her hands on the animal and then closes her eyes and goes all quiet. So that’s what I did. Only I had to pretend the cat was there. I sort of imagined light going around him. It was dumb, because I didn’t have a clue what the cat looked like. I didn’t picture him being so ugly. I mean, not that he’s ugly once you get to know him.”
“That’s the same with all things, and p
eople, too, Luke,” Nora said, not wanting to miss an opportunity to help him see things in a way that would make him a better person.
Luke and Brendan both rolled their eyes.
“Right,” Luke muttered. “Anyway, it freaked me out because I got all warm, like the sun came out, and it was pouring rain that day. It freaked me out even more when Mrs. Ashton wrote that it worked, so I just threw out her letter. And erased her messages. Geez, she called about a dozen times a day. I was a wreck trying to get to the answering machine before my aunt.”
Nora cast Brendan a glance. He didn’t look at all sympathetic to Luke feeling like a wreck trying to keep his treachery hidden.
“Why,” Brendan asked carefully, “did it freak you out when you thought it worked? You could have been into some real cash.”
“I didn’t like the way it felt.”
Nora’s sweet sensation of relief was tempered somewhat when Luke shrugged and sent her a look. “Who wants to be like her?”
Even though she was used to his barbs, it hurt. And even though it was the story of her life. She was careful not to let how badly it hurt show.
Over the years, some people saw what she did as a gift, but most saw it as just plain weird. She was cautious about showing people that side of herself. Even in the column, she didn’t reveal she wrote it, didn’t always say exactly what she wanted to say, tempering it with what people wanted to hear.
Nora glanced at Brendan. He was watching her. She had the uneasy feeling he saw everything, even the things she least wanted to reveal.
Again she had that aggravating feeling. Instead of feeling exposed, she felt in some way not alone.
She tore her eyes away from him, forced herself to focus on her nephew. “Luke, do you understand how terrible this is? You gave false hope to a poor little old lady—”
“No one would resent being called old more than Deedee,” Brendan said mildly, “and we won’t even go into the poor part.”
“The point is she was afraid to lose her cat, and Luke played on her fear and took her money.”
“I needed the fifty bucks!”
“You allowed that boy to blackmail you! I have to call his parents.”
“That’s why I didn’t tell you! Dammit, Auntie, I didn’t really have permission to borrow his bike. Do you have to be so gullible?”
Brendan’s tone remained mild enough, but there was steel running through it. “You don’t use language like that in front of women. And your aunt is not the guilty party here. You are. What really happened with the bike?”
Nora was aware she should have said that, not him. She felt it again, though. The tempting weakness of liking the fact she was not handling this alone.
“I took it,” Luke said, jutting out his chin defiantly. “I stole Gerald’s bike because he was mean to me. He made fun of my hair in front of the whole class. You think it’s not hard enough being new? And everybody knowing your aunt does voodoo?”
“Voodoo,” Brendan said, with just a trace of approval.
“What do you mean, everybody knows I do voodoo?” Nora asked, horrified. “I don’t! I run a shelter for abused and abandoned animals. That’s all!”
“No, it isn’t,” Luke said wearily.
And suddenly she wondered if it had been about Luke’s hair at all. Or if it had been about her.
“Anyway,” Luke continued, “Gerald said he’d back my story that I borrowed the bike if I gave him fifty dollars.”
“You’ve made everything worse,” Nora said, but not too strongly. It was bad enough Luke was being teased about his hair. He was being teased about her, too! She was an adult and she could barely handle the mockery. That was why she wrote her column in secret.
“I think the question now is how are you going to fix all this?” Brendan asked.
“Naturally, we’ll give your grandmother back her money,” Nora said, hearing the resignation in her voice.
“No. You won’t,” Brendan said.
“Excuse me?”
“Luke did it. He needs to figure out how to make amends to her.”
“What’s amends?” Luke asked suspiciously.
“Just what it sounds like. You broke something, you mend it.”
He pondered that. “I don’t know how.”
“I’ll give you a chance to figure it out.”
Luke seemed to be back to his old self, arms folded over his narrow chest, bristling with barely contained hostility.
Take charge, Nora ordered herself, so she added, “Figure it out. With no computer. And no cell phone.”
“That sucks,” the boy said, and got up from the table and marched away.
“You’re bossy,” Nora said to Brendan, feeling somehow she had to hide the fact that she was so grateful someone was helping her through this.
“You’ve already said that.”
“Sorry to bore you by repeating myself.” She needed time to gather herself. Needed to show leadership, and wasn’t. She was letting Brendan take charge.
Only because it had been a strange week. She’d been injured. She’d let down her guard around Brendan. Invited him into her life.
Still, it was a new blow that Luke was being teased at school because of her.
“Tell me what you’ve heard about me,” she said to Brendan.
“Deedee heard you were a healer. She was making biblical references, about the laying on of hands. She’s expecting a miracle.”
Nora groaned softly. “I’m sorry. Do you think that’s what Luke’s classmates are hearing about me, too?”
“I assume some version of that. You bring a dead dog to life, and you’re the talk of the town.”
“I didn’t bring a dead dog to life!”
“You’re not used to small towns, are you?”
“No.”
“It’s like that game you played in junior high school. The teacher whispers, ‘The green tree on Main Street is dying,’ to the first kid in the line, and they whisper it to the next. But twenty kids later it has become ‘Mrs. Green killed her husband on Main Street with a tree branch.’”
“We never played a game like that in school.”
“A shame. The power of distortion would not be such a surprise to you. What really happened with the dog?”
“He’d been hit by a car. He was knocked out. Not dead.”
“Technicalities. So, you have no gift with animals?”
“I didn’t say that. I’ve always liked animals, sometimes a whole lot more than people. There is an energy element to animals that is very strong, and I seem to be able to connect with that. But I’m not a vet, and I don’t try to take the place of one.”
“Ah.”
She had said enough. But despite her vow to herself to keep the barriers up between her and Brendan, it felt strangely and nicely intimate to be sharing her kitchen with him, telling him things she didn’t always feel free to say.
“What I have no gift with, I’m afraid, is adolescent boys,” she added, since she seemed bent on confessing private things about herself.
“I see cookies in a jar and good food on the table every night. There are drawings on the fridge and homework being done. Where are his folks?”
She could not quite keep the shaking from her voice. “My sister died.”
“And his dad?”
“He went before Karen. Luke’s never said anything to you? You guys have been doing chores together for days.”
“Yeah, well, you know guys.”
But she didn’t. She didn’t know guys at all. That was probably part of the problem with Luke.
Brendan sighed. “We don’t talk about deep things. Discussion runs to who is the best hockey player in the world. Last night’s baseball scores. Who can clean a cat cage the fastest and w
ith the least gagging.”
Nora really didn’t want to confide one more thing to this man. But she heard herself saying, “I’m not sure that Karen would have trusted me by myself with this. She saw my fiancé, Vance, as the stable one, a vet with a well-established practice. I’m afraid I’ve always been seen as the family black sheep.”
“It seems to me your sister would think you were doing well at making a home for your nephew.”
“So, now you know! I’m an orphan,” Luke exclaimed from the doorway. “Doesn’t that just suck? Who even knew there was such a thing anymore?”
Nora hadn’t seen him reappear, but there he was, bristling defensively.
“And you think that isn’t bad enough?” Luke continued, jerking his head toward her. “She was going to get married. And then Vance wouldn’t marry her. Because of me.”
CHAPTER NINE
NORA’S MOUTH FELL open. Her eyes clouded with tears. She’d had no idea Luke knew about that awful conversation between her and Vance.
“Just because I glued his stupid golf clubs to his golf bag.”
“Why’d you do that?” Brendan asked mildly.
“He didn’t want Auntie Nora to get me a skateboard, because I’d been suspended from school. So she didn’t. So I glued his golf clubs to his bag. Super Duper Gobby Glue works just the way it says in the commercial.”
“I’ll remember that,” Brendan promised.
“‘It’s him or it’s me,’” Luke quoted. His mimicry of Vance might have been hilariously accurate, if it wasn’t for the context. “She picked me. Dumb, huh?”
And then Brendan said, his voice steady as a rock, “I don’t think it’s so dumb.”
Despite the fact Nora could have done without her whole life story being exposed, she could have kissed Brendan, she felt so grateful.
Unfortunately, that made her look at his lips.
The thought of kissing Brendan Grant made her dizzier than the bump on her head.
“You don’t think it was dumb that she picked me?” Luke said, and the hopeful look in his eyes tugged at her heartstrings. He quickly covered it. “Sure. I just took money from your grandmother.”