Modest progress, perhaps, but he welcomed it.
"I wouldn't call any of the dinosaurs exactly fwendly," Janey said.
"Oh, you know what I mean. What about that pet dinosaur on The Flintstones? Dino. What kind is he?"
Janey, wearing one of her mother's old paint-spattered T-shirts as a smock, regarded him with a mixture of pity and forbearance. "The cawtoon kind. He isn't weal," she explained patiently. "He's just a picture."
Dean bit his lip as he laid a new sheet of newspaper on the tarp and tore it top to bottom. "Yeah, I know that. I just meant he's a certain, you know … breed, or whatever."
"There was no bweed that lived at the same time people lived."
"I'm aware of that," Dean said, smiling to himself. "Believe it or not, I probably know almost as much about dinosaurs as you do."
Janey looked relieved. "I was worried you might think there were dinosaurs that lived past the Mesozoic Ewa into the Cenozoic."
Dean chuckled self-consciously, humbled by the realization that he probably didn't even know almost as much about dinosaurs as this precocious five-year-old. "I might not remember the names of the eras and whatnot, but I do know they all died off. An asteroid, right?"
"That's one theowy," Janey said as she arranged her newspaper strips, for some reason, into a tidy stack.
"In the case of old T-rex here, I can't say as it was any great loss."
She looked up at him, her forehead furrowed. "What does that mean, 'any gweat loss'?"
"I mean, he was a pretty nasty guy, our friend here. You told me yourself he was the most feared meat-eater of all the dinosaurs."
"Well, of all the dinosaurs in the Cwetaceous Pewiod. But that's just 'cause he was good at feeding himself. That doesn't mean he was nasty."
"Admit it," Dean teased. "He was a bad, bad boy. He didn't play nice. Just filled his belly and thundered on to the next kill." Dean knew his own kind when he saw it.
"That doesn't mean he desewved to die off," Janey said with seemingly genuine passion. "He couldn't help being the way he was."
"Couldn't he?"
"No! Plus which, he might not have weally died off, not the way you're thinking, anyway. He might have just changed."
Dean laughed. "You're saying a bad-ass like that—" He winced when he saw Janey squeal with laughter and cover her ears; he tried to keep his language clean around her, but sometimes he slipped. "Sorry. You're saying an antisocial fellow like Mr. Rex can turn over a new leaf and just decide one day that he doesn't want to rip other dinosaurs' heads off anymore?"
"It wasn't like that," she said with a giggle. "At the end of the Cwetaceous, some dinosaurs' bones started getting all hollow and stuff, and their hips kind of changed, and their mouths, and they started gwowing feathers – the fossils pwove it! – and wings!"
"Ah … you're saying this bad boy turned into a bird."
"It coulda happened. Mommy always says life is vast and mystewious." She cocked her head, smiling sagely. "Anything's possible."
Reaching around the chicken wire dinosaur, Dean ruffled Janey's hair. "You almost make me believe it." The front door opened and Laura stepped onto the porch, wearing her ubiquitous paint-crusted denim apron over jeans and a T-shirt, and carrying a big steel bowl. "Who ordered the flour paste?"
Janey's arm shot up. "Me!"
"Here you are, mademoiselle." Laura set the bowl on the tarp near her daughter. "Bon appétit."
"It looks more like flour soup than flour paste," Janey said, sticking a finger in the creamy liquid.
"That's just what it's called. Here's how it works."
Squatting next to Dean, Laura chose a shred of newspaper from his pile and dipped it in the bowl. "You coat the strips with this goop, skim off the excess and lay them over the framework, like so."
"Ooh, can I twy?" Janey asked.
"It's your project," Laura said. "We're just your assistants."
Wiping her hands on a rag, Laura sat back on her heels to watch her daughter apply strip after strip to the chicken wire form, occasionally offering a little cursory help or a bit of advice, but for the most part just observing. Dean couldn't stop stealing glances at her when he didn't think she would notice. She seemed to glow in the soft sunlight permeating the porch, her skin radiant, her hair like burnished gold. But it was the unabashed pride glittering in her eyes that made her look exceptionally beautiful today.
Some women were born to be mothers – to nurture, to protect, to guide. Laura Sweeney was one of those women.
"My awms are getting tired," Janey complained when the framework was about half covered with papier-mâché. Rubbing her stomach, she added, "And I'm hungwy."
"Want me to take over for a while?" Laura asked, handing Janey the hand-wiping rag. "I can finish just the first layer, and then you can decide what to do from there."
"Gweat!" Janey bolted to her feet. "Are there any Oweos left?"
"They're in the Humpty Dumpty cookie jar," Laura said, adding, "Wash your hands first!" as Janey bombed through the front door and raced down the hall toward the kitchen.
Pulling the bowl closer to her, Laura started coating strips with the flour mixture and smoothing them onto the chicken wire. From the direction of the Sound came the caw-caw-caw of seagulls. A breeze wafted through the porch, fluttering the little strands of hair that had sprung loose from her single braid. She reached up and tucked them behind her ears, gingerly because her hand was covered with flour paste, but she left behind a little streak of it anyway, right on the crest of her cheekbone. Dean was tempted to wipe it away, if for no other reason than that it would give him an excuse to touch her, but it looked so oddly pretty that he decided to let it stay.
Just gazing at her made him feel slightly disoriented, but in a good way, as if his very soul were being rocked by the ocean.
"Here," Dean said, positioning the bowl between them. "Let me help."
"You've been awfully quiet," she said without looking at him. "Bored?"
"No." He smiled as he dipped a strip in the bowl and skimmed off the excess flour paste, which felt cool to the touch and slick between his fingers. "Just content, I think."
She did look at him then, a quick, curious glance, before returning her attention to the project. Of course she would think it odd to hear a rolling stone like Dean describe himself as "content." And yet he was.
And had been pretty much since his arrival in Port Livingston.
They worked in silence for a while – not an awkward silence, but not quite "companionable" either, charged as it was with the burdens of the past, the ambiguities of the present…
Laura didn't seem to notice her body brushing up against his as she leaned over to smooth down the coated newspaper strips; or maybe she did, and it didn't bother her. Dean hoped that was the case.
"So, when are you gonna break down and take that nice new Blazer of yours out for a drive?" he asked.
"After you leave," she said. "I'm going to return it to the dealer, but not till you've gone home to Portsmouth, 'cause otherwise I figure you'll just bring it back again. Same with Raleigh Hale's boat."
"What – are you gonna rip out the new furnace, too, and bash holes in the roof and the porch?"
She smiled a little grudgingly. "I'm not quite that up in arms about your little Daddy Warbucks campaign – almost, but not quite."
"That's some comfort." He shook his head as he molded papier-mâché strips onto the dinosaur's tail. "I'll just have to figure out how to spend the rest of the million on you in ways you can't undo. There's a lot of money left in the account I'm gonna be a busy guy for the next month."
Laura reached for another newspaper strip; she wasn't smiling anymore. "You're really staying for a whole 'nother month?"
He nodded. "By then, it'll be toward the end of May, and time for me to get ready for my Bermuda trip. So you're stuck with me until then – unless you just let me give you the rest of the money, and then I'll be out of your hair."
She looked
pensive as she applied that strip and another to the T-rex's belly. Was she actually considering putting an end to this farce by taking the money? Was she that eager for Dean to be out of her life?
Don't take it, Dean found himself silently beseeching – ironic, considering how anxious he had been for her to accept the money when he'd first offered it to her. But things had changed in the past month. He'd gotten used to being here; he didn't want to leave, not yet. His psyche, attuned for so long to the solitary rhythms of the sea, had become accustomed to a different, more communal rhythm. He liked being with Laura – and with Janey, too. He felt good in their presence – whole, complete…
Content.
Don't let it end yet. Not yet.
She turned to him, a smile flirting with the corners of her mouth. "If I took the money, just like that, it would be making things too easy for you. Given that you're going to force it on me whether I like it or not, I figure you might as well be as inconvenienced as possible."
He laughed, relieved. "You've become quite a vindictive little thing."
"Who said you're the only one who could grow and change?" She laid another couple of strips over the T-rex's belly. "So, you set sail around the end of May, then?"
"Yeah," he said, working his way toward the tip of the tail. "Setting out from New England, you really don't want to leave any earlier than that – and believe me, it's still pretty cold and wet till you hit the Gulf Stream."
"Let's see … Bermuda's in the middle of the Atlantic about – what? – six, seven hundred miles from New England?"
"A little more."
"So it takes how long to get there?"
"Single-handing it like I do, it's about a week from Portsmouth to Saint George's Harbour. Less if there's not much wind and I end up falling back on the engine a lot, more if I have weather to deal with."
"I can't imagine enduring a trip like that all alone," she said.
He grinned. "I can't imagine enduring it with other people bumping into me every time I turned around. I prefer my autopilot for company." Although lately he'd been imagining what it would be like to take Laura along; it might not be so bad bumping into her every once in a while…
"You seriously don't get lonely, out there in the middle of the ocean with no one for company?" she asked, glancing at him as she smoothed down the patch of papier-mâché she'd just applied.
"Oh, there's company," he said. "Just not human company. You run across pods of dolphins from time to time, and they're pretty sociable guys. The Portuguese man-of-wars are a little more standoffish."
"Yeah, I can imagine," she chuckled.
"Then there's the occasional sea turtle that waddles on past – they're cool. Last year, on the inbound trip, I had a whale come up pretty close to the boat."
"Really? A whale? I would have loved to have seen that!" Laura went to dip a newspaper strip in the bowl of flour at the same time Dean did. She started when their hands touched.
He caught her wrist before she could draw away. "I would have loved for you to have been there."
Her cheeks pinkened as he took her hand, coated with flour paste, between both of his.
"I … thought you didn't like having other people aboard," she said.
"You're not 'other people.' You're … you've always been…" He rubbed her hand between his, savoring the warmth and softness of her skin through the slippery flour paste. "You appreciate things that not everyone appreciates. That's why your paintings are so … powerful, so arresting. You see beyond the surface. You see into things, right down to their essence, like that glassy green in the core of a wave as it rears up right before it crashes, or the feverish pink that kind of blooms up into Janey's cheeks while she's sleeping."
Laura tried to pull her hand away, but Dean held on tight.
"After you cross the Gulf Stream," he told her, "the water turns so blue, it's almost like you're looking into a swimming pool at night – you know, when it's lit up from underneath? You'd love that. You could bring your paints, and some canvases, and—"
"Than…"
"And you wouldn't believe how bright the stars are at night, with no lights around for hundreds of miles. I've lain on the deck of the Lorelei and watched the Milky Way sprawling all the way across the sky, like a hundred thousand diamonds. There's not another soul on earth I'd want lying there next to me except for you. Maybe I shouldn't be telling you these things, but—"
"No." She did pull her hand away then. "You shouldn't."
"Laura…" He closed a hand over her shoulder as she started to rise, getting flour paste on her T-shirt; she didn't seem to notice. "If I were to ask you to come with me…"
"I'd say no." She lifted his hand from her shoulder, but surprised him by holding on to it. "I'd have to say no."
"Because of Janey? Maybe we could take her along."
"You're kidding, right? On a trip like that?"
She had a point. "The two of you could fly out and meet me in Bermuda, then. I usually stay about two weeks. It's so beautiful there. You'd love—"
"I hate flying, remember? Plus, Janey will still be in preschool."
"Yeah, but…" He shrugged. "It's only preschool. But if you really didn't want her to miss the time, Kay could look after her while you're gone. I'm sure she'd be happy to."
"Yeah, but I've never been away from Janey for that long. And I still don't fly."
"At all?"
"Ever. I hate it."
"Maybe you should try to overcome that fear."
"Look, it's not about flying, Dean, and it's not about Janey. It's…" She looked away, shaking her head.
"This is about … that night, isn't it?" he asked, broaching the subject openly. "About what we … what I did that night six years ago, when I came here to—"
"What we did," she said tightly, staring into her lap. "I was just as responsible as you were."
"Well…" He cradled her hand in his. "I would argue that point, but the bottom line is you feel like you betrayed Will that night. And since I was the instrument of that betrayal, you don't want to have anything to do with me – or my money, even though it could make a big difference in your life. And Janey's."
Sliding her hand out from between his, she said, "Please don't keep bringing Janey up. This situation … it's not as simple as you think. It's not about betrayal, not really. I mean, it's true, I felt guilty about … what happened that night, but I also felt…" She met his gaze with a kind of serene resignation. "I felt as if it had to happen, that it was destined to happen. Like nothing could have stopped it."
What was it she'd told him in Portsmouth? I wouldn't undo it even if I could.
"Yes." Gripping her shoulders, he drew her closer. "There's always been this … this thing between us, this connection. I tried to walk away from it – from you. But the inevitable can't be denied. Fate can't be resisted."
"Yes, it can," she whispered unsteadily. "Sometimes it should."
"Why do you keep pushing me away?" he demanded a little too stridently, clutching her with a little too much force. "Why won't you take the damned money? Why won't you let me near you? It's been six years, Laura. Will is gone. I'm here."
"For how long?"
That caught him up short; he hesitated, grappling with a response.
"Connection or no connection, you and I were never meant to be," she said, her resignation flavored this time with sadness. "Not because of Will. I told you, it's not about Will. Like I said, it's complicated."
Dean pulled her closer, drilled his gaze into hers. "Explain it to me."
"I can't." She tried vainly to squirm out of his clutches. "I know you don't understand…"
"That's what you said to me in Portsmouth." This was exasperating, maddening. "If it's true, why the hell don't you just explain it to me?"
"I told you – I can't." She shook her head, her eyes shining wetly. "I can't!"
"Why not? What are you keeping from me, Laura?"
"Please, Dean…" She wrested her head t
o the side.
He took her by the chin and turned her to face him. Her cheeks were damp with tears. "Oh, honey…"
"Please…I can't." Her shoulders shook as he gathered her up and held her tight. "I can't explain it."
"Shh, it's all right," he soothed, cradling her head against his chest. "It's all right. I pushed too hard."
"Don't ask me to explain it," she begged, clutching his T-shirt as she soaked it with her tears.
"I won't," he murmured, kissing the top of her head. "I'll let it go. I promise. I'll let it go."
He held her, rocking her and stroking her hair, until her weeping subsided. When she was calm again, she said, "I'm sorry, Dean. I'm really, really sorry."
"Shh…" He kissed the top of her head, tightened his arms around her. "You have nothing to be sorry about."
After a long pause, she whispered something that sounded like, "I wish that were true."
* * *
Chapter 11
«^»
"Hello!" Laura called out as she opened Kay's front door and strode into the foyer. Checking her watch, which revealed that it was 9:20 p.m., she winced. She'd lost track of time, having gotten way too wrapped up in her painting, as usual. Poor Kay had been baby-sitting Janey since early this afternoon, on top of having to pack for the vacation she took with her mother every year at the end of May – a bit of postwinter rejuvenation before Memorial Day weekend, when the tourists swarmed into Port Liv, filling the Blue Mist to capacity throughout the summer.
"You're late." Kay's breathless voice came from the top of the stairs. "And for the last Chick Flick Night of the season. Shame on you." She came into view, hauling a gigantic and obviously heavy tapestry-printed duffel bag down the stairs.
"Need any help with that?" Laura shucked off her cardigan and hung it on the coat tree, then kicked off her sneakers, leaving herself barefoot.
"Nah, we'd just end up tripping over each other." Having wrestled the duffel downstairs, Kay shoved it with a foot into a corner of the foyer.
"Is Janey in bed yet?"
"I got her into her jammies, but I haven't had the chance to tuck her in yet. She's in the kitchen with Dean. She asked if he'd play barbershop with her."
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