by Elaine Fox
He smiled to himself. He doubted it. The place was probably neat as a pin, but he wasn’t going to open that door and find out. He took a step back, exhaling. He was curious, but he couldn’t do it. He wouldn’t invade her privacy.
He turned and moved down the hall to Emily’s room, where he was to work. He glanced quickly at the doorframe and windows, the areas where he was to install the new trim, then stood for a minute looking at the crib where Emily slept. A blanket lay on the mattress as if pushed off a tiny body and forgotten. A black-and-white mobile hung over one end, and a music box was attached high on the outside of the rail.
He thought about Emily’s small but solid weight in his arms, the clinging hands, the bright clear eyes.
He’d never been one for babies. He’d only told Delaney he liked them last weekend because he’d caught her in what seemed to be a rare good humor, and he wanted to spend more time with her. But when he’d picked Emily up, and she’d smiled so quickly, so purely, even with cheeks still blotchy from crying, something inside of him had beamed.
Maybe she was just an exceptionally cute baby, he thought. Maybe he was intrigued because she looked like her mother. Maybe he was getting older and wanted to start a family himself.
At this he scoffed, then attempted to laugh. Yeah, right. Me, Jack Shepard, pining after a family. The idea is ludicrous.
But somehow not funny.
He could just imagine what Kevin’s reaction would be if he knew the idea of a family had even crossed Jack’s mind. Shock, most likely. Then cynicism. He’d never believe that Jack had actually enjoyed holding a baby. Though he would believe Jack had done it to ingratiate himself with the mother.
A pain settled itself low in Jack’s flank. He pressed a hand to it, wondering if it had anything to do with thinking about his brother’s perpetual disbelief in him.
Just for kicks, Jack allowed his mind to wander to the possibility that Delaney’s husband never came up, that she and he picked up where they’d left off last summer. What if things worked out so well they ended up getting married? He’d be Emily’s stepdad.
Kevin had always relished his role as the only stable male Shepard. What if Jack suddenly joined him?
The thought sent a sputter of apprehension through him.
Hell, it didn’t matter, Jack laughed to himself, turning to step purposefully down the hall to retrieve his tools. But instead, he paused, thinking. First of all, it would never happen. He and Delaney were a flash in the pan, a momentary event, a best-forgotten accident. She kept making that clear. Though there was a moment, after going to Aunt Linda’s the other night, when he could have sworn she…
He shook his head. No, best not to start thinking like that. Next thing he knew he’d be making a fool of himself for her.
Second of all, he persisted, the fact that he liked holding Emily Poole for five minutes while her mother looked on meant nothing. He was as ignorant about babies as a man could be. Just look at what he’d done that day: He’d blown in her face. He didn’t even know you weren’t supposed to blow in a baby’s face.
The bottom line was he just wasn’t father material. He knew it. And she knew it. So there was no point in thinking about it. Or her. Either of them.
But then there never had been any point in thinking about Delaney Poole, and that hadn’t stopped him for the last fifteen months.
Jack picked up the elephant rattle he’d given Emily that day, when a voice assaulted him from the stairs.
“Hey, Jack! You in here?”
Jack threw down the rattle and spun toward the door, even as his mind processed the voice as Kevin’s. Yanking the tape measure from the holster at his waist, he moved to the door needing trim.
“Yeah. Back bedroom,” he called back. His hands shook slightly as he pulled the tape along the top of the doorjamb. And he hadn’t even been snooping.
Kevin tromped up the stairs and turned at the top to head back down the hall, his eyes grazing Delaney’s pictures much as Jack’s had minutes before. Eventually his gaze made it to Jack.
“She fixed it up nice,” he said, looking past Jack into the baby’s room.
“Yeah.” Jack sent the measuring tape up one side of the doorway.
“Hey, I brought that cedar chest Dad wanted back in the house.”
Jack nodded. “Great.”
“I’ll need your help getting it out of the truck.”
Jack wrote the measurements down on a piece of paper, even though he’d already done that and cut the trim to fit, and shoved the tape measure back in its pocket.
“No problem,” Jack said, starting down the hallway.
But Kevin’s gaze drifted again into the baby’s room, and he soon followed it. Jack turned around and leaned against the doorway.
“Yeah, it looks good in here.” Kevin nodded, looking around the room. “You could’ve gotten more than three-fifty for this place. Does Dad know that’s what you rented it for?”
Jack nearly rolled his eyes at Kevin’s knee-jerk distrust of him but opted to laugh instead. “Yes, he knows. He told me what to rent it for.”
“Yeah, right,” Kevin said, almost under his breath.
Jack made an effort to ignore the jab. “C’mon, let’s go get that chest. I’ve got work to do.”
Kevin followed slowly behind as Jack moved back down the hall, but at the top of the steps he moved toward the master bedroom. Without compunction he opened the door and looked in.
Jack felt the violation as if it sucked all the air from the hall. His pulse pounded as if all the evils of the world might come pouring from the room, like Pandora’s box, but he couldn’t help looking past Kevin to the space beyond.
This was where most of Delaney’s own belongings had gone. Even though the house was furnished, she’d brought her own bed, drapes, dresser, and cheval mirror, he knew from the move. But now, seeing it all set up in the room that smelled of perfume and fresh sheets, he could see that her furnishings consisted of so much more.
Several long, trailing plants hung near the windows where soft, frilly drapes muted a bright summer sun. A dressing table covered with bottles gleamed like a liquor bar in the corner, and a stack of books and magazines sat on the table next to her bed. The closet door was mostly closed but in the gap he could see fabric and shoes, enough to know that the dresses and shirts, pants and jackets, into which Delaney Poole breathed life, hung waiting for her return.
The room was feminine and soft, so unlike the cool, reserved persona that greeted him when they ran into each other, but so quintessentially the woman he had met, and could not forget, that spring a year ago.
“Kevin, come on, we shouldn’t be in here.” Jack took several steps backward until he was standing at the top of the stairs.
“Why not?” Kevin turned to him, brows raised. “It’s our house. You stipulated in the lease you’re allowed to come in whenever you want, right?”
“Yeah, but only to work. And I don’t need to work in here. And she knows it.”
Kevin laughed at him. “I’m not going to do anything. She’ll never even know we were here. Come here a minute.” He walked toward the window.
Jack felt a familiar anger bud in his chest and another slice of pain shot through his abdomen. “No, Kevin, come on. Let’s go.”
“I just want you to look out the damn window a minute. Would you come here?”
Recognizing that the fight was not worth it, Jack sighed and stepped up to the other window. The bedroom looked out over the flagstone patio and across the lawn to the ocean.
“See that point of rocks out there, Jack?” Kevin’s voice was like a schoolteacher’s.
Jack’s eyes slid over to Kevin’s pious face. “Of course.”
“You know, don’t you, that those are the rocks where Great-uncle Josiah’s ship foundered off the coast. And that if that hadn’t happened, the Shepards wouldn’t have landed here, wouldn’t have bought up half the coast of Maine, and wouldn’t be living here to this very day.”<
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“Kevin—”
“And this room, Jack,” he continued, turning around to spread a hand toward the place where Delaney slept. “You know that this is the room where Great-grandfather Elias died.”
Jack folded his arms across his chest. “I’d rather you didn’t impart that to my tenant, if you don’t mind.”
“And that house you’re living in now, Jack, does it mean anything to you that seven generations of Shepards were born and lived there? Many of them dying there too?”
“I was born in Portland,” Jack offered. “And if they keep dying there, maybe it’s time to leave.”
“Jack, imagine someone coming along and turning this place into some kind of damn—what’s it called—breakfast hotel.”
“Bed-and-breakfast,” Jack corrected. “Good idea.”
“Or suppose they tear the whole place down and put up a subdivision?” He thrust his hand out toward the windows again, as if sweeping away the whole homestead.
“A lot of money in that.”
“They could turn this place into a resort, or—Jesus—or a mall, for God’s sake.” Kevin’s color was high and his voice had gotten louder.
Jack glanced out the window. “Who’d build a mall next to a view like that? Most likely it’d be something like a Sheraton. Maybe one of those Marriott residence places.”
“Listen to me, Jack. What will our descendents have if you sell this place?” Kevin nearly shouted. “Will you bring your kids to a shopping center to point out where your grandfather was born? Will you book a room at the Harp Cove Sheraton to tell your grandchildren about Great-uncle Josiah’s ship?”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Kevin, but the kid thing isn’t looking good for me. I’m already thirty-four—”
“Dammit, Jack, can’t you stop thinking about yourself for even a second?”
“Well, stop bringing me up.” Jack straightened, gritting his teeth against harsher words that wanted to emerge. After a moment he added, “I suppose you want me to start thinking about you for a change.”
“I want you to think about your goddamn heritage. About the people—the Shepards—that will be coming after us.”
“You know,” Jack said mildly, “I’m not the one selling the place. It’s Dad’s, as I keep pointing out.”
“But you’re the only one who can save it.”
Jack laughed at the dramatic words and the reverent tone Kevin used to utter them.
“Have you tried this tirade on Dad?” Jack asked. “Because it may work on him. But Kevin, you don’t seem to understand that it’s not just my choice not to buy this place. I couldn’t afford it if I wanted to.”
“Yes you could.”
Jack laughed incredulously. “How do you keep figuring that?”
Kevin hesitated a second, fixing him with a serious eye. “Like I said before, you could sell The Silver Surfer. Did you even look at those numbers I gave you?”
Jack stared at him a long moment, then shifted his feet and adopted a flippant expression. He had looked at the numbers. They’d scared him. “And you could sell the Hornet’s Nest.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. That’s my livelihood. But the boat…” Kevin shrugged elaborately, his palms turned upward. “That’s just a luxury.”
“I’ll tell you what’s ridiculous,” Jack said, striding toward the door. “This whole conversation. Besides,” he added, turning once he’d reached the threshold, “I might be taking a job at Briarly College.”
Kevin stopped in his tracks. “Briarly College? What job?”
“Remember Hugh Peterson? He’s head coach there and offered me an assistant coaching job. I’m thinking about it.”
To Jack’s surprise, Kevin’s face broke into a wide smile. “But that’s fantastic. It’s better money, right?”
Jack frowned. Was this his brother, actually being happy for him? “Sure.”
Kevin laughed incredulously. “Then you could definitely afford this place!”
Of course. It furthered Kevin’s own ends. Irked with himself for thinking otherwise, he turned and started for the stairs. “Forget it.”
“You know you’re being unreasonable.” Kevin started to follow and brushed against a stack of magazines on the bedside table. Several slid off the top to the floor.
Jack turned and looked back. “Great,” he said, seething back into the room to pick them up. He gathered them one by one, trying in vain to unbend the pages that had wrinkled on the way down, and set them back on the pile. It looked as if she’d been cutting things out of one, several bits of cut paper fluttered from the pages onto the ground.
“Just get out of here, Kevin. You’re going to break something, and then she’ll know we were in here.”
“What are you getting so uptight about?” But Kevin moved toward the door, eyeing him oddly. “You have every right to be in here. I have every right to be in here.”
“Not when it’s rented you don’t.” Jack put the final magazine back and herded him from the room, closing the door firmly behind him. “And I’ll tell you this for the last time: I’m well aware of the history involved here, but I’m not buying the damn place. And you can tell me to sell the boat as many times as you want, but I’m not going to do it.”
With that, he shouldered past his brother and strode down the steps.
Kevin’s footsteps followed him down the stairs and out the front door. Jack was halfway across the front yard when he turned abruptly back, and called, “And close the goddamn door.”
They moved the cedar chest into the main house in silence, Jack boiling over Kevin’s presumption. Not that they hadn’t had nearly this exact conversation before, but for some reason it had gotten to him this time.
Maybe he was just tired of it. Or maybe Kevin had struck a nerve, talking about children and grandchildren. Coming off his recent experience with Emily and his uncharacteristically open-minded thoughts about parenthood, the remarks had just caught him at a vulnerable moment, that was all.
Kevin was just being Kevin, wanting Jack to mortgage the rest of his life so that Kevin’s children could have this heritage that mattered so much to Kevin. He shouldn’t take it so seriously, Jack thought.
By the time the heavy chest was in place in the front hall, Jack had talked himself into cooling off. Kevin could harp all he wanted, it wasn’t going to talk anyone into giving Jack a mortgage.
As they walked out the front door, Jack stopped on the porch and glanced over to the carriage house. Delaney’s car was not there, of course, she was gone for the weekend. But it had become a reflexive habit of Jack’s to look for her car when he got up, or when he arrived home. Or came out of the house. Or looked out a window.
He supposed it would be the same for any tenant. After all, they did live very close to one another. It would be natural for him to look to see if the tenant was in the yard, or home and likely to be seeing him…
“Thanks for helping with the chest,” Kevin said, pulling a set of keys from his pocket and stepping off the porch.
“No problem.” Jack turned his gaze in the direction opposite that of the carriage house. Nothing there but trees, however. Another probable reason he always found himself looking at her house.
“Oh and by the way,” Kevin added from the walk. “Carol met the new doctor the other day. Said she recognized her.”
Jack’s breathing slowed to a dangerously low level. “Oh?”
“Yeah, said she’d met her before. She’s that girl you met last year, isn’t she?” Kevin raised one brow, inquiring. “At the Hornet’s Nest? What was her name? Delores?”
“Delaney.” It was odd saying her name without her there.
Kevin smiled, remembering. “Yeah. Didn’t you guys, uh…” He chuckled and gave him a sly look. “You know, have a good time that weekend? Or am I thinking of somebody else?”
Jack frowned, then shook his head slowly. “Must be somebody else.”
Kevin studied him a moment. “Really? Carol was pret
ty sure she’d met her with you at the bar. Said you all looked pretty cozy, then you disappeared.”
Jack gazed off in the direction of the trees again. “Yeah, we were at the bar. I remember introducing her to Carol. But we just had a few drinks.”
“Uh-huh.” He paused. “Nothing else happened?”
Jack looked back at him, looked him dead in the eye, and said without blinking, “No.”
Kevin nodded. “And you didn’t know it was her, renting the house?”
Jack forced a laugh and glanced skyward. “Nope. Shocked the hell out of me when I saw her. Guess I never got her last name the first time. But then we only spoke a couple of times. I barely know her.”
“Huh.” Kevin looked thoughtfully at the ground. “Well, you’ll get to know her now, huh?”
Jack narrowed his eyes, said nothing.
Kevin turned toward the car and started walking. “All right, see you later.” He waved a hand backwards over his head.
“Yeah.” Jack said. “See ya.”
He watched his brother drive off, then turned and went back into the house. He needed aspirin for the damn pain in his gut Kevin caused. He headed toward the kitchen and reflected that, unfortunately, most of what he’d told his brother about Delaney was true. They’d only met briefly, they’d only spoken a couple of times, they’d just had a couple of drinks, and he never got her last name…
He barely knew her. That was the most unfortunate part.
Delaney made it home with just the barest amount of energy to get through the door. Fortunately, Emily was still asleep from the drive, and she could put her directly into her crib, though Delaney was under no illusions that that would last long.
It had been a tough weekend for both of them, which is why she’d come back from Boston early on Sunday. Exhausted and out of sorts, she decided not to waste any more time on a trip designed solely, it seemed, to torture herself.
The whole thing had been a disaster. Not a failure. But definitely a disaster.
The phone rang the moment she sat in the big comfy chair in the living room. Afraid it would wake Emily, she jumped up and ran to the kitchen.