Meeting at Midnight (8 page)

A flush climbed the crest of her cheekbones. She gave me
a teasing smile. “Does that mean it's working? You think I'm fascinating?”

I'd have enjoyed her flirting a lot more if I hadn't thought she was using it to duck the question. “Look, I don't know—what is it?”

She'd gone dead pale. She was staring over my shoulder. I turned.

Someone was staring back. An old woman, every inch as tall as Seely but skinnier, like a dried-out string bean, had stopped a few feet away. She had a real lost-in-the-fifties look going, right down to the low heels and pearls. Her coat was dark-blue wool. Her gray hair had been permed, teased and sprayed into submission.

And her expression was venomous. “You! What are you doing here?”

“Buying lumber.” Seely's voice was steady. Her face was blank and much too pale. “Why? What are you doing here?”

“Don't you smart off to me! You're not supposed to be here! You said you were leaving. You don't belong here. We don't want you here. Don't think you'll get a penny from me, whatever tricks you pull!”

“I don't want your money. I never did.” Seely started to turn away.

“Nasty baggage! You'll listen when I talk to you.” The woman started after her. “I won't have you confusing John, making him miserable again—”

“Mrs. Lake,” I said loudly. “Do you realize how worried your daughter has been?”

She jolted. I don't think she'd noticed me until that second, which says a lot about how focused she'd been on Seely. I'm not easy to overlook. Faded-blue eyes blinked behind her bifocals. “What? I'm not—”

“I know,” I said soothingly, and switched my walking stick to my right hand so I could take her arm. My shoulder twinged. “Not yourself these days, are you? But if you'd take your medication you'd feel better. You have to stop wandering off this way. Poor Melly is frantic.”

She stared up at me as if I were mad. “If you don't take your hand off me this instant I will have you arrested.”

I leaned closer and muttered, “You've drawn quite a crowd. Maybe you like scenes. If so, go right ahead and screech some more.”

She looked around. People were staring, all right. The clerk had stopped ringing up her customer.

Color flooded the old woman's scrawny neck.

Seely spoke from behind me. “I can handle this, Ben.”

“So? You don't have to.”

The old woman drew herself up. “You'll be sorry you interfered. I'll tell the judge, and he'll see to it. As for
you
…” She leaned around me, her eyes glittered with malice. “Devil child! You stay away from me and mine.”

She jerked her arm out of my grip and turned away with surprising dignity. I watched just long enough to make sure that she was really leaving, then looked at Seely.

Her lips were tight. There was a lost look about her eyes I didn't like. “I'm sorry. I didn't know…I didn't expect to see her at a place like this. I wouldn't have subjected you to that scene if I'd had any idea she might…” Her throat worked as she swallowed.

“Yeah, I'm all torn up about it.” I gripped her elbow and started for the doors. “Come on.”

“But—the wood! You can't…Ben?”

“Give her the ticket.” I nodded at the clerk as we passed the checkout. The others in the line glared at me. “McClain
Construction,” I told the clerk. “Charge it, save it, toss it, whatever. I'll call.”

We went through the automatic doors at a better pace than I'd managed since falling off the mountain. No doubt my knee would complain later. I didn't care. Seely needed to get out, away from all those curious eyes.

She didn't mention my knee or my shoulder, either out loud or with her eyebrows. Which just confirmed how upset she was. She did say something about me being high-handed.

“You need to scream, cry or throw things. You don't want to do that here, so we're going home.”

“I am not going to cry.”

“Yeah, I figured you were more a thrower than a crier. Here we are.” I released her arm and opened the passenger door.

“Wait a minute. I'm driving.”

“No, you aren't.” I headed around the front of the car. “Power steering, power brakes and my right leg and left arm work fine. I don't know why I let you talk me into the passenger seat in the first place.”

“I've got the keys. You are not driving, Ben.”

“You've got a set of keys.” I used the ones in my hand to open my door, tossed my walking stick in the back seat, and lowered myself carefully behind the wheel. Damn. I'd been right about my knee. “You coming?”

She came. She slammed the door, but she came.

S
eely didn't say a thing for several blocks, just sat there hugging her elbows tight to her body, as if they might get away from her otherwise.

Making her mad hadn't worked, except as a temporary fix. She'd fallen right back into whatever unhappy thoughts held her prisoner. I was hunting for another strategy when she broke the silence. “What was that bit about Melly?”

“I made that up. Got the old biddy's attention.”

“It did do that,” she said dryly.

“So who is she? Looked like someone freeze-dried June Cleaver's mother.”

Her laugh broke out. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her arms loosen. “Don't surprise me like that! I nearly choked. Her name is Helen Burns. Mrs. Randall Burns, to be precise.”

“Who's the judge she threatened me with?”

“Her husband. Who hasn't sat on the bench in twenty years, but she isn't about to let anyone forget that he used to.”

“Hmm.” I'd heard of the judge, of course. Didn't think I'd ever met the man.

I turned onto Oak. My street was one of the oldest in town, more level than recent construction, which has to crowd its way up the slopes that cradle Highpoint. The houses here have a settled look; some are large, some smaller, but all have good-size yards. For a short stretch, trees from both sides of the road clasped hands over the street.

We emerged from the tree tunnel onto my block. Smoke puffed from the Berringtons' chimney. Jack Robert's truck was in the driveway. Looked like he still hadn't found another position after being laid off two months ago. The Frasers were out front, old Walt cleaning out a gutter while Shirley steadied the ladder.

I knew the houses along here, the changes that had been made in and around them over the years, the names, stories and people who belonged to those houses. Some people don't like seeing the same faces and places all the time. Take my brother Charlie. He drove a truck for years because he liked staying on the move, always seeing something new. And I'm not sure Annie's husband, Jack, will ever settle permanently in one place.

That's hard for a rooted man like me to understand. Did the world's wanderers have any idea what they were missing? Or were they so busy chasing the horizon they never realized what they'd given up?

I pulled into my driveway, cut the engine and glanced at the woman beside me…one of the wanderers. I shook my head. “If you're keeping quiet in the hope that I'll be too tactful to ask why Mrs. Randall Burns hates your guts, you're out of luck.”

She snorted. “I'm not such a blind optimist. Anyway,
you're due an explanation.” She looked down, plucking at a snag near the hem of her sweater. “Helen Burns hates me for being born. Bad blood, you see. She's my grandmother.”

I closed my mouth before any more stupid comments could escape. “Inside. We'll talk about it inside.”

She didn't quite slam the door when she got out. “There's nothing to talk about.”

That remark was obviously the product of wishful thinking. “I take it she's your father's mother. The father you don't know anything about.”

“When I told you that I was trying to preserve a little privacy. Not a concept you have a lot of respect for…oh, do slow down, Ben. You're obviously hurting.”

“I'm okay. So does he live here, too? Here in Highpoint?”

“Yes.” She didn't wait for me to obey—or not—but moved up beside me and slid her arm around my waist, forcing me to move slower. “And yes, that's why I came to Highpoint—sheer, bloody-minded curiosity.”

A quick jolt of heat distracted me…and a quieter warmth seeped inside, unknotting muscles I hadn't realized were clenched. The pain in my shoulder eased to a dull ache.

I frowned at the top of her head. She was looking down, as if the stairs to the porch required a lot of attention. “You wanted to meet him?”

“No. There may be a touch of masochist in me, but I don't let it take over. I wanted to see him, find out about him, that's all.”

We'd reached the door. I let her use her key while I tried to sort out the difference between one kind of heat and another. “Wanting to know your father isn't masochistic.”

“No? And yet you've met his mother.” She swung the door open.

I limped inside. “How did she recognize you, if you haven't had any contact all these years?”

“My mother sent my father school pictures and little notes every year. I suppose he might have shown them to Granny Dearest. Or maybe she recognized me from the last time we met, twenty-four years ago.” She slapped her purse down on the hall table. “Does it matter?”

Twenty-four years ago… “When you were eight? That was the last time you saw your father, you said. That was when you last saw your grandmother, too?”

“Daisy hit a hard patch financially that summer. Things were always tight, but then she had her purse snatched and there went the rent money. My father…” Her voice faltered. “He'd been gone three years by then, but hadn't yet dropped out of my life completely. She called him, asked for help.”

“Did you go stay with him?”

“Not exactly. He was working toward his master's and didn't have a penny to spare. So he said, anyway. I wound up being shipped up here to stay with the judge and my grandmother. My father drove up on weekends, or sometimes we drove into Denver to see him.”

“You didn't get along with your grandparents.”

“That's putting it mildly.” She shrugged out of her jacket and opened the hall closet. “Can we drop the subject now?”

“In a minute. Your grandmother knew you were in town. She claimed you'd told her you were leaving.”

“She and the judge ate at the lodge one night. I waited on their table.” She grimaced. “Not a happy encounter for any of us.”

“Why didn't you—”

“Ben! Stop interrogating me. You need to sit down, get off your knee.”

I didn't want to sit. I couldn't pace very well, dammit, but
I sure didn't want to sit. “If I don't ask questions, you won't tell me anything.”

“Why should I?”

“Why shouldn't you? Lord, I never knew a woman so good at turning away questions! If I ask a single personal question, I end up talking about my own father. Or the best color for the hall bath, or how to repair damaged plaster.”

Anger waved flags in her cheeks. “You're exaggerating.” She spun and headed for the living room.

“Am I?” I hobbled after her. “You led me to think you didn't know anything about your father's side of the family. If we hadn't run into your old witch of a grandmother—”

Her laugh was short, sharp and ugly. “Oh, but she's not the witch. That's the problem. My other grandmother is. Literally.”

God help me. I leaned my stick carefully against the wall. “Your mother's mother is, uh…”

“A witch.” Mockery gleamed in her eyes.

“Okay.” I nodded slowly. “I got that part. You mean like Wicca and all that?”

“That's what people call it nowadays. Granny doesn't, and really, I'm not sure how much a New Age witch would have in common with Granny's brand of the Craft.”

She believed this. She honestly thought her grandmother was a witch. “And do you think…uh, are you one, too?”

“The word is witch, Ben. And no, I'm not. But I'm the granddaughter of one, which makes me Satan's get in the eyes of Mrs. Randall Burns. Didn't you hear the part about me being a devil child?”

“Somehow that didn't immediately bring witchcraft to mind.” Muddy floors, yes. Witchcraft, no.

“I suppose not. Will you get off that damned knee?”

“I don't think I've heard you curse before,” I observed.

“You could make a saint curse!”

“I'll sit down if you'll tell me about your grandmother. Your
other
grandmother, not the one I just met.”

She muttered something unflattering about my antecedents, then flung up her hands. “Okay. Her name is Alma Jones. She's eighty-four and the top of her head barely reaches my shoulder. She lives…
sit,
Ben!”

“I'm sitting.” I lowered myself onto the couch.

“She lives in a tiny cottage in the Appalachians and makes the world's best chicken and dumplings. Fresh chicken, mind, from her henhouse. She also makes simples, little charms and cures to sell to her neighbors, and she has the Sight.”

“Ah…the Sight. That's a Celtic thing, isn't it? Irish or Scottish?”

“Her maiden name was Sullivan.” The laid-back woman I'd known for a week fairly bristled with feeling. Even her hair seemed agitated. She began pacing. “She's a darling. She's helped people all her life. She didn't ask to have the Sight. Who would? But it runs in our family. Like the curse.”

The curse?

Seely reached the end of the room and spun around, making her hair fly out like a curly cape. “Do you know what that self-righteous old prune called her? A bride of Satan. My granny! She taught Sunday school for thirty-two years!”

A Christian witch. Well, if you could believe in witchcraft in the first place, why not? “What curse?”

She grimaced. “I didn't mean to mention that.”

“Too late now. What curse?”

“The one another witch put on my great-grandmother for stealing her man about a hundred years ago.” She flung up her hands. “Why am I telling you all this? You don't believe a word of it.”

“I believe several parts,” I said cautiously. Her granny probably was a good, loving woman who'd taught Sunday school and made up little herbal remedies for her neighbors. And thought of herself as a witch.

Seely's expression softened as the corners of her lips turned up. “Poor Ben. You're trying so hard not to tell me that I'm nuts. If it's any consolation, I don't believe in the curse, either.”

“Okay. The curse doesn't count. But you said it was passed down in your family like, uh, the Sight.”

“I've heard about it all my life. I don't really believe in it, but…” She shrugged, which gave her breasts a gentle lift.

I wanted to tell her how much I liked that sweater. I didn't even let my gaze linger, an act of willpower for which I deserved a lot more credit than I was likely to get. “I know how family stories stick with you. We learn things when we're kids that cling like burrs long after we've figured out they aren't really true.”

“Yes!” Her laugh was shaky. “That's it exactly. I don't really believe in the curse, yet I can't completely forget it, either. Daisy believes it.” Her feet started her moving again. “She thinks my father left us because a witch cursed the women in my family to unhappiness in love.”

“Hmm.”

She paused by the window, shrugged. “I guess it's easier to believe in a curse than to think that he didn't really love her. Or that he's a noodle.”

“Cooked, I take it.”

She nodded and ran her fingers along the edge of the drapes, as if she found it easier to talk to them right now, instead of me. “I made it sound like I don't remember anything about him. That isn't quite true. He read me bedtime stories. He used to take me out in this little sidecar attached to his bi
cycle. I remember the way the fields smelled, the tug of the wind in my hair.” She swallowed. “The sound of his laugh.”

“Sounds like a noodle, all right.” I came up behind her and rested my hand on her shoulder. “He loved you. For some reason he wasn't man enough to be responsible for you, but he loved you.”

“You aren't on the couch.”

“Nope.” I folded my good arm around her and eased her up against me.

She didn't exactly resist, but she didn't relax, either. “Ben…”

I had a hunch she'd like it better if I made a pass. She'd know what to do when a man crossed that kind of boundary. Comfort was harder for her.

Tough. I stroked a hand down her hair. “So what's the noodle's name? Burns for the last half, I guess. Zebediah? Ezekiel?”

My hand was resting against the side of her face, so I felt her smile even though I couldn't see it. “Well, it is biblical.”

“Mathew? Mark?” She'd relaxed against me, slightly sideways because of the sling. Her hip nestled into my groin. I wondered how long my brain could survive without oxygen, seeing that all of my blood was tied up in one part of my body. “Do I need to run through the rest of the Gospels?”

Her low chuckle delighted me. “Old Testament. Think lions.”

“Lion's den. Daniel.”

“Bingo.” The top of her head was even with my eyes. Her hair was so soft…. I didn't nuzzle it. Surely some celestial scorekeeper was pasting all kinds of gold stars next to my name. “I'm glad Duncan turned me down. Better to hear all this from you.”

She went stiff. “What do you mean, he turned you down?”

Uh-oh. Too much distraction. “Let's pretend I didn't say that.”

“Oh, no.” She turned, pulling out of my arms, a dangerous glint in her eyes. “I want to know what you meant.”

“You weren't telling me things. Important things. So I…hell.” I ran my hand over my own head this time.

“So you had me checked out? You had your brother check me out?”

“No, I told you—he turned me down.”

“Oh, that's different, then! You
wanted
the cops to investigate me, but your brother wouldn't do it, so everything's fine!”

“I needed to know about you, okay? I didn't want to know. I
needed
to. And if that doesn't make sense, well, tough. Tough on both of us,” I said, my voice getting louder, “because I'm
used
to making sense, only here you are, and I keep doing
stupid
things and I don't know why! I don't make sense at all anymore!”

For a second after my outburst, there was silence. I scowled at her. She was smiling, dammit. “And you like that.”