by James Lavene
Her face felt hot. She laughed nervously as she released her grasp and stepped away from him.
Her foot hit a wet patch, probably left behind by a snowy boot, on the slick tile floor. It was her weak leg and she would have fallen as it twisted beneath her. Nick reached forward quickly and helped her regain her balance.
"Thanks." She wished she was anywhere but there.
"Are you all right?" He watched her face flame bright red, felt the trembling in her hand.
"I'm fine." She moved away from him, careful of the wet spot on the floor. "We'll-uh-work this out with Adam. I'll be in touch."
Nick watched her stalk back down the hall towards her classroom, wondering what it was about her that made him want to run after her and tell her that it was all right.
She was rich. She had a nice house, expensive cars. She was beautiful. She might even be married, for all he knew. Maybe she didn't take her husband's name so that she'd stay in her position of power. She was Emilie Ferrier, after all. She certainly didn't need his comfort.
He tried to whip up some resentment against her to quell his feelings for her. It didn’t work.
"We'll be in touch." Mr. Howard echoed Emilie's words with his sanguine smile.
"Thanks," Nick retorted. Thanks for nothing, he wanted to add, but refrained.
In the year since Renee had died, Emilie was the only person who'd thought to ask what she could do for Adam. Everyone else had been more concerned with the rules and the fact that the boy didn't fit in with their plans.
Maybe she was right and he'd been wrong not to share the information about Adam’s home life. He hadn't met a teacher or principal before that day that he felt like he could trust with the knowledge.
In other words, he chided himself, she’s the only one who managed to get past your guard. Somehow, she'd made him feel as though he could say anything to her. He knew that he could trust her, even though she was still really a stranger.
He didn't want to speculate on the newly found knowledge. It was enough that she might be able to get Adam back on the right track. Watching her handle the principal, he knew she had the other man on track as well. He didn't tell her what to do. Emilie ran her own show.
Nick looked down the hall again. She'd disappeared into the shelter of her classroom. Her perfume lingered.
"Let's go, Adam," he said to his nephew, putting a hand on the boy's shoulder. "We've got a few things to talk about."
#
Emilie slammed a few things around her classroom after she'd closed the door behind her. Did she always have to make a spectacle of herself?
Last year at the teacher's conference, she'd managed to dump a whole vase of yellow gladiolas into the school superintendent's lap when she'd tripped on her way to speak at the podium.
She'd smiled, apologized profusely to the woman, and limped back to her table, embarrassed beyond words.
Being a Ferrier wasn't of any particular importance at those moments.
You can dance. You do whatever you want to do. Stand tall. Hold your shoulders back and your head high. Stare them all down and dare them to talk about the fact that you limp. Show them that they can't laugh at you.
Emilie groaned, recalling her mother’s words of wisdom. She wound her scarf around her neck and shrugged on her coat, muttering darkly about expectations.
She had no doubt that her mother could have been crippled, almost fallen, and managed to turn that to her benefit. She would have been all charming witlessness and helpless delight and Nick would have probably taken her into his arms and—
Whoa! Back up there.
She picked up her briefcase and notebooks. Where did that come from?
Do you want Nick to take you in his arms . . . and anything?
He was her mechanic. She was his nephew's teacher. What had caused her to think anything else?
A brief, shadowy memory of the night before when she was waking up, her head on Nick's shoulder, teased at her senses. What had he said to her? Hadn't their faces been very, very close?
She shook her head and slammed out of her classroom, trudging down the hallway, not hearing another teacher call out for her to have a good evening and a safe drive home.
There was a message from Alain on the answering machine when she got home. He'd called to say that so far, Jon Stewart hadn't been able to get his client to meet with her. Knowing she would be a single parent made any idea of a meeting a waste of time in the guardian's eyes.
In the meantime, they would be meeting with several other adoptive parents who were more fortunate than Emilie. They had two parents in the family and were eager to adopt the little girl. No doubt they would find a suitable family quickly. The adoption market was fierce.
She’d called him back, even though she knew there wasn’t anything else he could say.
"You could marry me, Emilie," Alain joked when he'd finished repeating the bad news. "I'd make a good husband and father.”
"That's not what your other wives thought," she replied honestly then relented, knowing her words were sharpened by keen disappointment. "I'm sorry, Alain. I appreciate your offer. I might have to take you up on it."
"If there's no other way?" he teased her gently.
"You know you don't love me. You know I don't love you. We've been friends for a long time. It doesn't go beyond that."
"Emilie, we've never even dated! Spend the day with me Saturday. We can do whatever you like. You might find there's something more to me than the lawyer you've always known, but never loved."
Emilie smiled as she thought about his words. What if he was right? Even if he wanted her money, so what? If she could adopt a child with him, it might be worth it.
"All right," she conceded. "Pick me up at eight. We'll have a full day together."
"I'll be there," he murmured sweetly. "Fuel up the Lear jet, sweetie. You can afford to do something extravagant!"
Emilie hung up the phone, smiling despite herself. Alain was honest, at least. He made no bones about loving her for her money.
"Do we have any carrots?" Joda asked, surprising Emilie into dropping a can of soup on the floor.
"I wish you'd learn to make some noise when you walk," she requested, annoyed.
"Still no good news about the child, I take it?" Joda mocked her. She grabbed an orange from the counter. "Don't worry! I sense something different about you, Emilie. There's a strange glow about you!"
"That's embarrassment and annoyance, Aunt Joda."
The older woman perched on a stool at the end of the counter, not listening to her reply. "You aren't pregnant, are you?"
Emilie dropped the head of lettuce on the floor. The question was like a punch in the stomach. She never knew what would come out of her aunt’s mouth.
"Pregnant?” She picked up the lettuce. “That's why I'm adopting or trying to adopt, remember? Because I can't have children."
"Oh." Joda shrugged and walked away, forgetting the entire incident. "I won't need dinner tonight, child. I'm meeting in the greenhouse with some of my sisters."
"Fine." Emilie felt more than usually put out by her aunt's indifference to her presence. "I'll heat up a frozen dinner and eat in my room. There's probably something on television."
She looked around. The kitchen was empty. She'd been left standing there talking to herself again.
Emilie did as she said. She warmed a ravioli dinner in the microwave, but she fell asleep before she'd eaten it or graded her papers for school.
She woke up after midnight when the television station she’d been watching changed to big band music and startled her out of a particularly good dream. She'd had the dream before. It was always so delicious and outrageous that it sometimes made her cry.
She was in the solarium, wearing a beautiful silver ball gown. She was dancing with a tall, dark man. There was moonlight coming in from the huge skylight as they moved effortlessly, fluidly, across the shiny tile floor. She felt as light and free as any moonbeam, unfettered by
the awkwardness of her leg.
It was only a dream, she reminded herself. A dream of wanting and yearning that would never be fulfilled.
Emilie got out of bed and changed out of her rumpled clothes, slipping into a flannel nightgown that had been her mother's. Forgetting her slippers, she went down the long stairway, across the cold floors, and stood in the ballroom doorway.
How many times had she stood in that doorway during a party that her parents were giving and wistfully watched the couples swaying in time to the music? Their clothes were beautiful, like gorgeous birds flitting across the room as they danced and talked; laughed and drank champagne from crystal goblets with the de Ferrier crest etched in gold leaf.
The moonlight was there that night, but the room was silent and empty except for the ghosts that still danced there across the dusty floor in Emilie’s mind.
The ballroom was too large for anything except parties. Neither she nor Joda were inclined toward anything that exciting. It seemed sensible to close off the room, as it had been for the past ten years.
Sensible and sad.
Emilie closed the French doors to the ballroom and left the ghosts to their own devices. It wouldn't have surprised her to see her parents dancing the night away in that room. It had been their favorite place. Truly, she would have been glad of their ghostly company.
She walked slowly back up the stairs, feeling the ache in her leg from the cold floor. The pink marble staircase was elegant even though no amount of heat could keep it warm.
Feeling a little like a ghost herself, she wandered back into her bedroom and shut off the television. The food in the frozen dinner tray on her bedside table was gone. Joda had left a white flower, the size of a dinner plate, in its place.
Emilie recognized it as a moonflower. It only bloomed in the light of the full moon.
She walked to her bedroom window that overlooked the shadowed grounds. The moon was bright on the snow-covered landscape. In the far distance, protected by a rocky gorge, was the waterfall she'd played in as a child. It would be frozen in the dead of winter, only a trickle of water coming from the mountaintop.
She saw movement in the greenhouse, the only part of the estate that the two women kept up with, and that only because Joda loved the warmth and the plants.
It meant that her aunt’s 'sisters' were probably meeting there again. It was a good place to practice their earth rituals, as they called them. Mainly, they danced around the flowers and hoped for good but impossible things to happen for them and their loved ones.
It was harmless, as far as she could tell. It gave Joda something to do besides pine away for the man she'd loved or the family she'd lost.
Emilie sighed as she turned away from their dancing to climb back into bed. Sometimes she wished that she could join them. She knew she’d certainly be an outsider there too.
She stayed up after that for a few hours, grading her essays and thinking about Adam Markland and his uncle.
It was hard to imagine Nick raising two children alone. Still, if they had no other family, she could understand why his sister's dying wish had been for him to care for them.
Nick was a more complex personality than she'd first considered. She'd thought that he was walking around with a chip on his shoulder because of some rich man-poor man grudge. Understanding his grief had made him more human, easier to empathize with as a man who had suffered a terrible loss and was trying to cope with his new life after leaving the military.
He'd said that he bought the garage a year before, she hypothesized. He might have moved the children from their own home to Ferrier's Mountain as a way of trying to escape.
She corrected two more essays and chewed at her nails. There was something about him that bothered her. She'd thought it was his attitude. Then she'd thought it was the way he treated her.
It was something more than either of those things. Something about him made her restless and uncomfortable. She was normally clumsy and far too aware of her own handicap, but she could usually manage to put two words together without giggling or repeating herself.
She was sure that he'd been about to kiss her when she woke up in the truck with her head on his shoulder.
That was ridiculous, she corrected herself as she corrected two more papers. He didn't know her. Obviously didn't particularly like her. Of course, he hadn't been about to kiss her.
Had he?
What would she have done if he had kissed her? She could hardly complain since she'd fallen asleep and pushed herself up against him, resting her hand in his lap right up next to his—privates.
"Never mind," she said aloud to the empty room, putting the rest of her papers away and turning off the light. She snuggled down into her heavy white comforter and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath and getting ready to go to sleep.
What would it be like?
Once the idea came into her head, her eyes popped open and wouldn’t close again. She stared into the darkness, tracing the outline of her lace-covered canopy against the moon-drenched ceiling.
Probably like every other kiss. The practical side of her dismissed the idea that it could be special. Lips meeting. A little wet. Probably a little too impatient.
Was he the type of man who would’ve tried to slip his tongue into her mouth on the first kiss?
She turned over, fluffed her pillow, and refused to even consider the question.
The next few days followed the bright, sunny, and cold pattern left behind by the storm. There was no real change in Adam's attitude at school. If anything, he became more withdrawn and less cooperative.
She started him seeing Wendy on Thursday. They couldn't afford a full-time counselor on staff at the tiny public school so Wendy traveled through the county, visiting different schools on different days.
Emilie explained the problem to her before Wendy had interviewed Adam. Unfortunately, the counselor agreed with her prediction that the boy was going to be difficult to help. He was old enough to understand what had happened to his parents, but not old enough to understand the need to grieve.
Wendy and Adam’s interview was brief. Adam wasn't rude or difficult to get along with during the session. He simply sat in his chair and stared mutinously out the window, refusing to speak.
Emilie had spoken with the school band instructor. He’d refused to even consider making an exception for the troubled boy.
"If he's so troubled," Mr. Foster told her bluntly, "I don't want him. It takes discipline to play an instrument. He could cause my whole class to lose focus."
Annoyed, Emilie went to Mr. Howard and threatened to go to the superintendent to get Adam into the band. Knowing that the school review was coming out in a few months was in Emilie's favor. Raises in salary for principals and teachers were tied to the school's performance. Turning around a child like Adam could mean a feather in both their caps.
"I'll talk to Mr. Foster," he agreed. "But we're only talking a trial here. If the boy doesn't show improvement, there’s nothing else I can do."
Emilie nodded. "I know. Thank you, Mr. Howard."
"By the way," he stopped her as she would have walked out the door, "what instrument does the boy play?"
She chased back in her mind to her conversation with Nick that day. "I don't know. I'll find out and get back with you."
Her heart leapt when she saw that there was a message from Nick on her cell phone when she left the school that afternoon. He was bringing her car back that evening.
She told herself that she was only excited about his visit because she needed to talk to him about Adam. She left him a message on his phone, asking him to come to the house before he left. He didn’t reply. What if he didn’t see the message in time?
She waited, like a child, at the front window to watch for the headlights coming up the drive. She’d already cautioned Joda that he was coming. Her jaunts in the moonlight were frequently accomplished naked, even in the middle of winter.
Emilie knew Nick had seen the
older woman when he'd dropped her off at the house and didn't want a repeat performance. Not that she could do really anything to restrain her aunt. She could try to be sure that they were alone on the estate before she shed her clothing and ran outside.
Joda was Joda, she sighed. She'd never learned to drive. Never used a telephone. She'd outright refused to use the microwave.
Her aunt didn’t mind allowing herself to be driven places. Emilie smirked, looking out the dark, cold windowpane. She didn’t mind asking Emilie to use the phone for her either.
Headlight beams lit the end of the driveway and Emilie pulled on her jacket and hurried out into the night. She didn’t want to miss Nick. She was careful on the stone walkway between the kitchen door and the garage. She didn't want him to have to pick her up off the ground.
Nick opened the side door to the garage as Emilie reached the building. The light from the interior shone full on her face like a spotlight.
"Hello!" She moved out of the path of the door.
"Hi." He looked away from her bright eyes to get his bearings.
"So you brought the car back," she said, "repaired."
Was that a sentence? She wanted to hit herself in the head. Was something wrong with her?
"Yeah," he agreed. "It's ready to go."
"Thanks," she answered, trying to be brief but coherent. She dug her freezing hands into the pockets of her coat. “Did you get my message about Adam?”
“No.” He frowned. “Is something wrong?”
She explained that his nephew had seen the counselor with no real interest and that she was almost certain Adam would be able to join the band.
“What instrument does he play?”
Nick thought about it. He hated to admit it, but he didn’t know. “I’ll have to ask him, I guess. Sorry.”
“That’s fine. Just let me know.”
Silence dropped between them like a curtain for a few minutes.
Finally, Nick said, "Could I use your phone?"
"Sure. You’ll have to come in. I left my cell phone inside." It was a lie. It was right there in her pocket. She wanted him to come inside for a few minutes. She looked beyond him into the garage. Only her Mercedes was there. “Do you need a ride back to the shop?"