Secrets (44 page)
That wasn’t his mode. His family smothered grief with words, hugs, and tears, kept it right there where you could taste it. And maybe that was what Rese needed. At least he could try. He went up and met her coming out of the shed.
“Your bed is done.” She held two pieces upright. “You can help me carry it.”
She must have been on her way over, and he realized he had timed his exit perfectly. The Lord’s answer to his prayer? He had not been down there long, but he might have been. He should not risk going down when she might want to find him. Of course, with Rese that was twenty-four hours a day. They hauled the bed pieces from the shed to his room.
Star watched from her easel as they passed with the headboard between them. “Ah, the nuptial couch.”
Rese made no sign she’d heard, but he did. He’d been trying hard not to go there in his thoughts, then with a single salient phrase, Star stripped away his illusions. Sybil’s forceful offer had not tempted him, but Rese did without trying. Well, thoughts were one thing; he was not about to break what fragile trust they had by acting on them.
He stood the headboard against the wall and eyed the carved decoration. “This is really nice, Rese.” He stroked the scallop, unsurprised at its softness, the smooth perfection of the shape, every curve precise. She’d made the bed for him. He didn’t give it the significance Star had, but it still sank in and warmed him. With her hands she had created something for him.
She said, “Let’s put it together.”
Her stony manner contradicted his thoughts. Maybe it didn’t mean anything at all to her. Maybe it had been a chore, and he’d misread her diligence and meticulous effort. They bolted the side-frame pieces to the headboard and then to the footboard, then settled in the box spring and mattress. He straightened. “My neck thanks you.”
“I have sheets, but no comforter.” Rese looked around the room.
He’d hung the other painting from her stash, a vineyard oil dominated by greens and purples, on the side wall. Since there was no window to offer a view, that picture and the skylight kept it from feeling like a cave. She jutted her chin at the picture. “I could work with that. Do a wine country theme.”
“Sure.” Though his room décor was hardly the relevant subject. Why was she shutting him out?
“I’ll see what I can find and order it. Can you use the blanket until then?”
“What do you think?”
“I think after the hammock anything would do.”
“Anything but the love seat.”
She stiffened … annoyed by the reminder of last night? She’d been vulnerable then, but now she meant to tough it out alone. Brad had said she shut down the other time and didn’t speak for weeks. She was talking now, but hardly communicating.
“I’ll get going on the wardrobe.”
“No.” He took her hands. She obviously didn’t expect an argument. But even formidable as she was, he would not let her cement the wall around her. It wasn’t so much that he’d be left out as that she’d be trapped inside.
“Come on.” He led her out, Baxter licking their joined hands as he tugged her to his bike and held out her helmet.
“Where are we going?” It was more demand than query, but she hadn’t refused.
“Nowhere.” He scooped her onto the bike and climbed in front. “Hold on.” He took the road north toward the commercial vineyards, some large and glamorous, others family operations. As they passed the various gated and decorated entrances and the rows and rows of grapevines between, Rese’s stiffness eased. A few more miles and she moved with him, finding the rhythm, unresisting.
He rested his arm over her thigh, and her hands were on his waist. There were ways to communicate without words. The road had always called and soothed and made him forget. A person could count on that. Space. Distance. Motion.
He picked up speed, and the nubby rows of vines fanned by on either side, bright flashes of flower beds ornamenting their edges. He had no destination in mind, just the rise and sway of the road, but he sensed Rese unwinding, and that was definitely his purpose. The haze had cleared and halcyon sky crowned the fertile hills. He drank it in, the hum and vibration of the bike enhancing the experience.
After a while, Rese’s arms came around his waist as they cruised, leaning together, joined in the motion. He could go on forever that way, but if she had softened enough to hold him, she might be able to talk. He looked for a place to stop. They had left the cultivated fields and entered untended landscape, rustic in its natural beauty. He pulled the bike off the road into a narrow dirt track that wove down and away, scented by the pale grasses on each side and culminating at a narrow creek with its own verdant aromas.
He pulled to a stop, secured the bike and stood. As Rese removed her helmet, he captured her gaze. “Talk to me, Rese. Tell me what’s wrong.”
She stood a long minute, staring at him with eyes of glass, then she said in a flat tone, “My mother tried to kill me.”
He absorbed her words, stunned, but not surprised. Not with everything else.
“She disabled the furnace.”
No accidental malfunction. “I’m sorry.”
She glanced away. “It wasn’t really Mom. It was Walter.”
“How does that work?” He had no experience to draw from and didn’t want to argue from a point of ignorance. Something he’d learned from Tony.
“Try having the facts before you open your mouth, Lance. That way you don’t look stupid.”
Rese expelled a breath. “I don’t know. I guess the file they gave me will explain it.” She headed for a wide flat rock on the creek’s bank, her posture still demanding “no trespassing” but no longer “trespassers will be shot.”
She removed her shoes, tucked her socks inside them, and rolled the legs of her pants. Then she dipped her feet in up to the pointy protrusions of her ankle bones. He joined her there, reminded of the silly lyrics he and Rico had put together by the fountain at Lincoln Center.
Ratta-patta dip-a-dip doe. Ina watta tip, tip, toe. Splashy, flashy ina da eye. Outta da watta drip, drip dry
. He could see Rico’s quick, narrow hands drumming the beat on the concrete edge. He had found a rhythm in everything and drawn more than one glare from the sisters at Saint Martin’s for employing his desktop during class.
The water pushed up and over her seemingly disjointed extremities, speckling her ankles and calves in its insistence. “I used to do this with Mom. We’d pretend we were mermaids dipping our tails.” Eyes closed, her face softened with the memory as she held her feet against the current. She couldn’t stop the hurt any more than her feet stayed the flow of the creek, but she was trying so hard not to let it show.
He circled her with his arm and prayed silently: strength, comfort, grace.
After a moment, she sighed. “You always know what to do.”
“Not even close.” How could he anticipate the creek providing a good memory to counter the hurt? That might be the Holy Spirit, but he didn’t take credit there. “Hitting the road usually helps.” He sensed the barrier coming down. She had trusted him with the facts if not the emotions. He squeezed her shoulder. “Thank you for telling me.”
She stared into the water. “You’d have forced it out eventually.”
“Is that how it feels?”
She slackened against him. “I don’t know.”
“You just can’t handle everything alone.”
She pulled her knees up, planting her soggy heels on the rock. “I wish you’d stop that.”
“What?”
“Looking inside me like … X-ray vision or something.”
Her feet had gathered a film around the edge he wanted to wipe off, but the thought of touching them was too intimate.
She said, “I didn’t expect it. What they told me.”
“How could you?”
She shrugged. “It seems like you should know things, big things like your dad’s going to die, or your mother wanted you to. It shouldn’t be a surprise.”
“Would you really want that?” He gave her a moment to think about it. “How would you go on if you knew in advance what you’d have to go through?”
“I’d rather see it coming.” Her face hardened. “You can’t block a blow from behind.”
He picked a grass stem and tossed it into the creek. “Some blows you can’t block at all.”
“That isn’t fair. Everyone should have a fighting chance.”
He thought of Tony and all the others as tons of steel and concrete turned to ash around them. The image had haunted less frequently, but hit now with dizzying force, the whole world a shifting torrent of hatred. His chest squeezed; his throat constricted.
“Lance?”
He drew out of it painfully. He was supposed to be helping her. Giving her the answers. There had to be one somewhere. God’s will and free will, the warp and weft of life.
“Are you okay?”
He slid his arm from her shoulders and took her hand. “This isn’t about me.”
She looked into his face. “It helps.”
“What helps?”
“Knowing I’m not alone, that everyone has junk.”
He swallowed. “That could be a bumper sticker.”
A flicker of a smile found her lips. “I didn’t think when I said that. I mean about Tony, about having a chance.”
“Yeah.” His throat tightened again. “Sometimes it doesn’t make sense.”
“Then what?”
“Then you get through and try to be better for it.”
“Better how?”
He shrugged. “Life peels us like onions and each layer is softer and sweeter.”
She snorted. “You’re hoping.”
He hadn’t meant it as a personal critique. He raised her chin. “I like you just the way you are.”
“That’s why my ears are pierced, and I’ve worn a skirt for the first—”
“That’s just trappings. It doesn’t change the real you. And the more I see, the more I—” He’d almost said love. There it was, his Achilles’ heel.
“The more you what? Want to peel the onion?”
Sybil would do something with that line for sure. “The more I like. Inside that hands-off façade is a special woman.”
“You wouldn’t understand
hands-off
if it was plastered on my forehead and wrapped with barbed wire.”
A masterful deflection. She might have received more compliments if she didn’t fend them off with a bat. His gaze sank to her lips.
“You have that look again.”
“What look?”
“Like I’m a nice fat chicken.”
He huffed a laugh. “Chicken?”
“Soften her up with a little marinade, season her just right, then into the frying pan she goes.”
“Rese.”
“Admit it.”
“I have never thought of you as a chicken.”
She raised her chin. “Tough and stringy maybe, but you have a cure for that. You have a cure for everything. ‘Let me make you a steamer.’ ‘Cry on my shoulder.’ ‘Don’t handle anything without me.’ ”
“Now, Rese.”
“You are smooth, Lance. So smooth I didn’t see it coming.”
“See what?”
“That I would feel—” She expelled her breath. “No man I’ve known has let me see him struggle.”
“You’d have taken their heads off with a sledgehammer.”
“What about you?”
“I have no self-protection mechanism. Rico destroyed it.”
“Rico?”
“My buddy. He was the littlest kid, but he picked the biggest fights.”
“That you fought for him?”
“Usually with. He wouldn’t be left out.”
She searched his face. “Is that what you’re doing now, fighting my fight?”
“I’d rather fight with you than against you.”
“Why?”
“Your irresistible charm.”
She snorted. “Right.”
He spread his hands. “You can’t argue with results, Rese. You’ve hooked me in somehow.”
“Me?” She huffed. “I said business.”
“It’s just that, what comes out here—”he touched her mouth—“isn’t what’s in here.” He pressed his palm to her heart, felt its rhythm.
She drew a ragged breath. “Lance…”
He took his hand away. “The thing is, I’m falling in love with you.”
She expelled a breath as though he’d punched her. He hadn’t meant to. Maybe he shouldn’t have said it aloud, but his feelings for her were superceding his cause. He wasn’t sure what to do about that, but at the moment he didn’t care.
“I don’t expect anything.”
Her face pinched. “You’ve expected something from the moment you walked in.”
She had it more right than she knew. But it wasn’t what she thought.
Tell her the truth
. “Rese, I did not intend to feel this way. I came here…” The words stuck in his throat. “You’ve taken me by surprise.”
Her hands clenched and unclenched. “It’s a little shocking on my end too. Like grabbing a frayed power cord.”
“Yowser.” He caught her hand and kissed it.
She laughed. “You really are impossible.”
He drew her close. “So I’m told.”
Face hanging like a sack.
Tongue a lump of wool.
Too many things to say. Too many things unsaid.
Words trapped in flesh.
Wah, wah—worthless sounds. Worthless thoughts.
Wah, wah, wah.
A
s the Harley came to a stop in the driveway, Rese took off the snug helmet and wished she could remove everything else that easily. The hurt still pressed in on her, but she couldn’t show it. Lance had gained too much ground already. If they were playing capture the flag, she might as well hand the flag over, but they were playing with her heart, and right now it felt a little battered.
She’d been downright philosophical with her one previous crush. Of course, that had been on Brad, and she would rather have died than let him see it. Thankfully she’d grown out of that before they’d vied for the second crew. But if she’d hidden it once…
Who was she fooling? Lance was not Brad. He saw inside her, knew her thoughts and feelings before she did. He knew things she’d told no one else. It was as though he’d climbed inside her mind and taken over, his thoughts replacing hers. Her life flipped before him like the pages of a book blown open in the wind. Everything he wanted to know and more.
She’d never felt so transparent, mainly because no one had ever wanted to see. They’d believed the front she put on, taken her at face value, but not Lance. He demanded honesty, even if it meant baring her deepest hurts. And she didn’t seem to have any resistance, because when he took her in his arms…