The One Who Stays

by Blake, Toni

  “Is that a promise, darlin’?”

  She reached out to pick up an apple that rested between them near the basket—and he took the opportunity to reach out as well, to run the tip of one finger down the back of her hand.

  She drew it smoothly away, along with the apple, and said, “No. Just...something to keep in mind.”

  But he knew she’d felt that electricity between them the same as he had. Just from that tiny little touch.

  “So what do you say? Maybe after I finish painting today we make some lilac water?”

  When her eyes met his, they were still cautious, tentative—but she slowly said, “Sure. Let’s.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “OKAY, WE’RE GONNA need a brick, a stainless steel bowl, and some kind of big pot—with a concave lid. I think my grandma used a canning pot. You have anything like that?”

  It was nearly dusk by the time Seth had finished the second coat of paint and they’d let Miss Kitty out of hiding, then grilled burgers for a quick dinner.

  “A brick?” Meg asked, squinting slightly at him in the kitchen where they’d just put dirty dishes into the sink, wondering if she’d heard him correctly.

  “I know it sounds weird, but it’ll make sense soon—trust me.”

  Trust him. She supposed she did now—mostly. Charmers gonna charm, but she grew less wary of that by the hour. He’d made her no promises other than doing good work for a fair price. And she didn’t necessarily want any. They were making lilac water. And there was a mutual attraction between them that she’d probably never have the guts to act on—even if he did suddenly become some kind of open book. That was the extent of their relationship.

  As for the times she’d found him in odd places in the house—she still didn’t know what that was about, but maybe he’d truly just been exploring, like he’d said. Or checking out a noise as he’d claimed the first time.

  The truth was—it bothered her wondering; added to any remaining wariness she suffered. But she must trust him—or she wouldn’t have left him alone here last night. And obviously he hadn’t hurt anything, nor stolen anything—there wasn’t much to steal, and he’d shown up at work today like normal, even if she hadn’t been as prepared for him as usual. She suspected thieves didn’t generally return to the scene of the crime.

  “I have stainless steel mixing bowls,” she said, stooping to remove the nested bowls from a lower cabinet. “As for the pot... I think my grandma did some canning, and I even sort of remember a blue speckled canning pot, but it might require a trip to the attic.”

  “And the brick?” he asked.

  She pointed toward the back door. “In the toolshed. There’s been a pile of them there as long as I can remember—left over from when my grandpa laid the brick pathway that leads into the lilacs.”

  “Tell you what, darlin’. Why don’t you show me the way to the attic and I’ll go pot-huntin’ while you round us up a brick.”

  “This is getting involved,” she teased him.

  “But it’ll be worth it.” He winked.

  And she wondered just what kind of miracle lilac water they were going to create—or if it would actually just turn out the way hers always had in the past when she’d tried, not very potent nor worth the effort put into it. Or maybe the end product didn’t matter much—maybe this was one of those moments when life was about the journey, simply the doing of something, the sharing of something with another human being.

  She led him to the upstairs hallway where a square in the ceiling pulled down to reveal a foldable ladder. Then she made her way back down and out to the shed. After a little cobweb removal, she had an old red brick in hand and carried it back toward the house. And when she stepped onto the patio, she caught sight of... Hmm, another penny. Just lying there on one of the flat inlaid stones.

  This one was shinier, but faceup, same as the last. She stooped to pick it up. Read the year it had been minted: 2017. Nothing particularly noteworthy about that, though it had been when Aunt Julia died. She suddenly wished she’d noticed the year on the last one—although she wasn’t sure why. Nor was she certain what had become of it. Perhaps it was still in a pocket somewhere, or had gone through the wash. She couldn’t remember exactly what she’d even been wearing that day now to check.

  And this penny gave her a little more pause. One had seemed random; a second felt like...well, okay, probably nothing. Sure, only Seth and she were here, but he could have dropped it, same as she’d speculated about the last—and Zack had actually been here, too. And for all she knew, the penny had been lying here unnoticed for weeks. Even if that seemed unlikely given that she and Seth both passed by this area pretty frequently lately. But still, it could happen.

  Brick and penny in hand, she entered the house, lowering the coin into a small dish by the door next to an old key for the shed, which she usually locked up once summer came, just to keep curious kids from wandering in when playing in the yard. The brick she laid gently on the counter near the stove.

  When Seth hadn’t returned after a few minutes, she headed back up the wide polished wooden steps, past the books that still rested there, and called up into the attic from the bottom of the ladder, “Any luck?”

  “Not yet, darlin’. Still lookin’.”

  Deciding she might as well go up and help him, she quietly climbed the ladder, and when she poked her head up into the attic, saw him rifling through a box of her old college books. Odd—since there obviously wasn’t a canning pot inside.

  And yet...it hardly seemed like the act of a criminal.

  “I’m pretty sure you won’t find it in there,” she said, attempting to sound light.

  His glance darted from the box to her. “Probably not,” he said with his usual grin. “Just got distracted. These yours?” He held up a philosophy textbook.

  “Yes. From college.” She shook her head, then took the last few steps up into the attic. “Not sure why I kept them—I like books, so I guess I’m a bit of a pack rat in that way.”

  “I kinda like that—people who save stuff.” He lowered the book back into the box, closed it up. “I haven’t managed to hold on to anything from when I was young myself. Moved around too much, I guess.”

  And as he put the lid back on the banker’s box, she realized that the word “Books” was even written on the side and top—clearly. It was no place to look for a pot. Which made his actions all the more confusing—and yet still harmless. Maybe he was just drawn to her way of life since his own sounded so transient.

  That was when her eyes fell on the same large blue speckled pot from her memory, sitting on a shelf—in plain view. She pointed. “Found the pot.”

  He laughed. “If it had been a spider, it woulda bit me.”

  It was hard to understand how he hadn’t seen it. But then, she supposed that happened to everyone now and then.

  Don’t be completely naive. He had to have seen it. But he’d gone digging into a box of books anyway. What the hell does that mean? And are you sure you want to keep trusting him?

  “It has exactly the right kinda lid,” Seth declared about the pot.

  “The lid matters?” she asked, drawn back to the task at hand.

  “Yes ma’am—it’s key to the process,” he said with a grin, and she couldn’t help thinking he liked the mystery he’d created around this recipe of his.

  After they returned downstairs to the kitchen together, Seth set the pot on a stove burner and said, “Next, let’s go gather up some lilacs.”

  Together, they walked out to the garden. Seth carried the largest stainless steel bowl and Meg toted a pair of garden clippers from the shed. “The only bad part of this,” he said, “is you have to cut down some of your blooms. But it’s a trade-off. And pick the ones you like the smell of the best.”

  Meg chose the French lilacs—they had the sweetest, most common and most
potent scent, and she relished it even as she chose which blossoms to cut. She tried to draw from large clumps where a few blooms wouldn’t be missed as much, and Seth held the bowl as she took cutters to the stems. They stood close to each other, maybe closer than necessary. So close that if the air hadn’t been perfumed with lilacs, she would have smelled him—his skin, his sweat.

  She’d seldom been as aware of a man’s presence as she was of Seth’s—always. Of course, maybe it would have felt the same with Zack in the beginning if their courtship had been slower, more drawn out.

  Darkness fell around them, the sky fading from lavender to a deeper purple, stars and a half-moon beginning to appear up above. Sometimes their arms brushed together, sometimes their hands as she placed the lilac sprigs gently in the bowl.

  Returning inside, full bowl in her grasp, it was necessary to turn on a light in the kitchen. Seth took the brick Meg had left on the counter and lowered it into the big pot, then reached for one of the smaller stainless steel bowls, which he placed, empty, on top of the brick.

  “Next, the lilacs,” he said.

  “What do we do with them?”

  “Come here and I’ll show you.”

  She approached, bowl of blooms in one arm, as he said, “We’re just gonna place ’em in the pan here, around the brick, in a circle. Help me.”

  And again, they stood close to one another. Reaching into the same bowl. Their hands touched, their fingers. She still smelled the lilacs, but now she did smell him, too. Just a faint, musky odor. A man who’d been working. A man who smelled like a man should.

  Their arms brushed, and when he said, “Yeah, darlin’, like that,” it came out lower, a little raspy. She felt the words, their sound, in her breasts, and even in her panties. Occasionally, he raised his gaze, his eyes sparkling on her.

  She was almost sorry when all the lilacs had been placed in the pan around the brick.

  “Now we add some water,” he said. “Got a pitcher?” But his voice still came out sounding sexy somehow. He might as well have been saying: Now we take off our clothes.

  “Yeah.” It left her in a whisper and required more effort than it should have to draw back from his nearness and get the pitcher from a cabinet a few steps away.

  “Fill it up,” he told her softly, and she did. The silent tension in the room made her hear the noise of the running water more than usual—made it seem loud, somehow more intense to her ears.

  When she stepped back up to the stove, and to Seth, he said, “Pour it in—enough to mostly cover the blooms. But stop at the top of the brick.”

  She did so, and Seth used his fingers to press a few of the bulkier blossoms down into the water. After which he turned the burner on high. Then tossed her a sideways glance. “You ready to find out the secret, darlin’?”

  It felt like a big question. The secret. She suspected he had many, even though she knew he was only talking about the lilac water. “Yes,” she said.

  He answered by taking the blue speckled lid and placing it upside down on the pot.

  She just looked at him. “That’s your secret? An upside-down lid?”

  He chuckled softly. “Yep. Secret is...most people just boil blooms and bottle the water when they’re done. What’s gonna happen here is, the water’s gonna absorb the scent but then start evaporating—and it’s gonna make condensation on this lid.” He pointed. “And then those little drops are gonna run down to the center of this lid and drip into our bowl. We’re actually distilling the water, not just boiling it. Then we’ll take our bowl of distilled lilac water and bottle it up, easy as that.”

  Meg stared at the pot, a little in awe. There was a secret. Distilling the water. “Amazing,” she said.

  It didn’t take long for the water to boil—they could hear it—and Seth used potholders to gently lift the lid once, straight up, to show her the process in action, and indeed, the distilled water dripped from the concave top of the lid into the bowl below. “You get a lot less this way, but it’s good stuff.” He raised his eyebrows in her direction, then lowered the lid back into place.

  The whole time, Meg suffered that magnetic pull between them. This would be simpler if I didn’t. We’d just be...platonic friends. As it was, she didn’t know what they were, how to define their relationship. She told herself over and over that he was only a guy doing some work for her. But that was a lie and she knew it. He was more.

  She seemed to have an easier time accepting that when under the influence of alcohol. Yet she wasn’t drinking now. And here she was, acknowledging it anyway, not running from it. Well, not completely, at least. She still wasn’t sure what she wanted to do about it, but it was hard not to like the way he made her feel.

  Standing there, literally watching a pot together, listening to the boil inside it, filled the air with anticipation. But it somehow felt more like waiting for...seduction—or something—than just for the water to finish distilling into the bowl.

  When the boil died down, Seth turned off the burner. And once again picked up potholders to lift off the lid, this time giving it a little shake to drain any remaining drips of condensation into the fragrant lilac water below. Indeed the potent scent filled the room when he looked over to say with his usual grin, “I hope you’ve got an empty little spray bottle handy for us to put this in. I shoulda thought about that sooner.”

  “No worries,” she said, and soon returned with one from her bathroom. “I use this for shampoo when I go to visit my parents at Christmastime, but it’s empty right now.”

  “Perfect,” he said. It was the kind that came from the travel section of the drugstore.

  “And...” she added, opening a cabinet door to reach under the sink, “I also have a funnel.”

  Seth let out a soft laugh and said, “That was my next question.”

  Working together, back to standing enjoyably close again, they poured the cooling lilac water into the bottle, after which Seth screwed on the cap. “Now you see it didn’t make much, darlin’, so use it wisely.” He added a smile. He added a smile to most things, making everything he said seem...a little special.

  “Next,” he said, “the finishing touch. I’m gonna need some paper, scissors, a pen or marker, and some tape. For the label.”

  She blinked, then added a coy smile herself this time. “I can remember what it is without a label.”

  But Seth would have none of it. “No ma’am—this is nonnegotiable. It’s not so much to help you remember as it’s just part of how this is done.” It came with his signature wink, and she realized that he was taking more fulfillment from this than she’d understood up to now—reliving something from his childhood, making this for her the same way he’d made it for his mother. Apparently there were certain sacred steps to be followed.

  So she gathered the items he’d requested and watched him work at the counter, carefully writing and cutting and taping with the quiet intensity of an artist creating a masterpiece, until he handed the bottle back to her with an intricate little label affixed.

  The words Eau De Lilac, written in a neat print with the purple Sharpie she’d handed him, were embellished with a little flower over the i and a decorative flourish underneath. A tool line rimmed the four edges of the label he’d cut from a white sheet of notepaper, as well.

  “That’s how it’s done, ya see,” he told her, his tone punctuated with a certain boyish humor she couldn’t help finding appealing. “How we always did it. The lilac water wasn’t finished until I’d drawn the special label and put it on the bottle.”

  She smiled. Because it wasn’t much, but it was something—some little window of insight into his soul, his past, his memories. And perhaps a hint that there would be more if she was patient. And she wanted that, now not only to dispel mysteries about the stranger she’d let into her life but because she simply yearned to know him better.

  “I bet your mo
m loved it,” Meg said with a heartfelt smile. She found herself trying to imagine Seth as a little boy, wondered if he’d been as much of a charmer even then—if it was a natural trait or a learned one.

  “I do believe she did, darlin’,” he replied with a nod that struck her as wistful. Uncharacteristic for him. And this time he’d gone so far as to acknowledge his mom’s reaction instead of claiming he didn’t remember. Another little window cracking open.

  “Do you ever...make it for her now?” A fishing expedition.

  The answer came with a quick shake of his head as he looked away. “No.” The word came out short, barely there, and he turned his attention to the sink, beginning to rinse out the little stainless steel bowl.

  “Why not?” She knew from Zack that fishing sometimes took persistence.

  “Aw, times change, Meg darlin’—you know that.” A quick grin, not as sincere as most, and a glance her way that returned to the bowl in his hands almost quicker than she could catch it. “It’s getting late, so we best get all this cleaned up.”

  “I can do it,” she assured him, “if you want to get going.”

  “Naw, no rush—I’m happy to help.” He seemed more relaxed now, his usual mode, since she’d let the subject change.

  And despite herself, she was glad he wasn’t leaving just yet. Though she didn’t love feeling that way. When getting just a few more minutes with a man became a thing you wanted, it risked being a little depleting, meant you weren’t quite as in control of your emotions as seemed wise to her. This was how she felt about Zack; she didn’t need to feel it for another guy, too.

  Though Suzanne would say it was okay. Miss Do-As-I-Say-Not-As-I-Do would tell her it was about flirtation and letting herself go with the flow—no biggie. She’d probably even call it healthy. So Meg tried not to overthink it. Tried to just relax into the gladness that the night wasn’t yet ending.

  Together they tidied up the kitchen. Meg loaded the dishwasher with dinner plates and glasses while Seth emptied boiled lilacs into the trash and washed the big blue canning pot in the sink, along with the steel bowls.