by Karen White
Lucinda turned around to look in the backseat, studying the children for the first time. Suzanne followed her gaze to the little boy in the car seat, one cowboy boot mysteriously absent and his pajama shirt now covered with red drool from a lollipop clutched in a grubby fist. Lucinda turned back around and faced Joe. “I can see you’re pulling from the bottom of the drawers. Did the washing machine get broke?”
Joe stared out the windshield, his shoulders hunched in a defensive posture. “Um, not exactly. We, uh, I ran out of detergent and I kept forgetting to stop by the store to get some.” Straightening, he faced Lucinda, his gaze deliberately overlooking Suzanne in the middle. “I’ve been a little busy. It’s hard working full-time and taking care of six kids.”
“Tell me about it,” muttered Lucinda. Then, her eyes widening as if in realization, “But I’ve been gone for two weeks! Please tell me you did laundry at least once while I was gone.”
A small voice piped up from somewhere in the back of the truck. “Daddy said if we turned our underwear inside out they’d be as good as clean.”
A dead silence descended inside the vehicle, and Suzanne did her best to hide a smile. Joe reached over and flipped on the radio, turning up the volume enough to discourage conversation.
Suzanne sat forward in her seat, trying to see more of Walton and wondering distractedly where she was going. There had been so many car trips with unknown destinations for her that it didn’t occur to her to care or worry where they were taking her. It didn’t really matter. She never stayed long enough to make it matter.
They had driven into a residential part of the town, and as they pulled up to a stop sign she noticed a poster tacked to a telephone pole. WARNER IS WALTON, it proclaimed in broad black letters. Underneath was a picture of the man sitting next to her, in the center of six smiling and well-groomed children—none of whom seemed to resemble any of the ragtag children sitting in the back of the truck now. Beneath the picture, in bigger letters, was the admonition REELECT MAYOR JOE WARNER.
As they pulled away, the thought that had been nagging at the back of her mind finally surfaced. There was no wife or mother in the picture on the poster. Where was she? Suzanne sent a look at the man next to her. The streetlight passed light and shadows over his face, like a moving picture. She studied him with the eye of somebody who spent her life seeing the world in quiet pictures—her subjects mute except for the stories they wore on their faces. She preferred it that way because it allowed her to slip in and out of people’s lives without causing a stir in the air they breathed or the lives they lived. It kept her safe.
But this beautiful man with haunted eyes had a story. She just wasn’t sure she wanted to hear it.
The truck turned sharply around a corner, shifting her against Joe’s side. She heard his intake of breath and looked into his face. His eyes were hidden in the darkness, but she could sense the tenseness of his muscles, almost hear the gritting of his teeth. Heat seemed to fill her chest, and she shifted away from him, swallowing quickly to get the taste of whatever that had been out of her mouth.
They passed a white, steepled church with a lit sign at the edge of the parking lot that read LIFE IS FRAGILE. HANDLE WITH PRAYER. She rolled her eyes at the sheer corniness of it and sank back against her seat. Whatever kind of place this Walton was, she’d only be here a short time. Surely she could stand it for that long.
Joe looked down at the woman sitting so uncomfortably close to him. Hopefully, she was serious when she mentioned she was only passing through. What was it about her that set him on edge? It wasn’t the fact that she was obviously hiding something from him, because it had less to do with who she was and more with how she made him feel. Unsettled. Not the sort of feeling a man with six kids, a job, and a mayoral campaign to deal with was used to. Back at the gas station he’d called Sam on his cell phone to okay putting this woman up in the Ladue house. The keys would be in the mailbox, and a guest room was already ready upstairs with fresh sheets on the bed. It was the closest thing to a hotel in Walton that Joe could think of. Sam was in the process of restoring the house and stayed there sometimes when his wife, Cassie, was in Atlanta on business. Joe silently thanked Sam for not questioning him further, knowing that the questions would be forthcoming in the morning when he met with his best friend for their ritual weekly breakfast at the Dixie Diner.
Suzanne stared ahead out the windshield, never once questioning where they were going. For a woman in a town full of strangers, it was odd. Not nearly as odd as the way she clutched her small bag on her lap, as if everything she owned in this life were in it. She was a mystery, all right. And not one he had any interest in trying to solve.
The headlights of his truck lit the facade of the white clapboard house, making shadows from the picket fence dance across the wraparound porch. Suzanne sat staring at the house as if dazed. He parked the truck in the driveway and got out, then waited for her to follow.
Suzanne continued looking at the house for a long moment before Lucinda pulled gently on her arm. “Come on, sugar. Let’s go on in.”
Lucinda called to Maddie to watch the children, then shut her door while Joe stood holding his open. He watched as she hoisted her backpack onto her shoulder and clutched her bag close to her. Ignoring his outstretched hand, she slid across Lucinda’s side, opened the door, and climbed out. Her eyes remained fixed on the small white house.
“Is this where I’m staying?” she asked, her matter-of-fact tone not completely erasing a smattering of what sounded like hope.
Joe shut his door, leaving the headlights on so he could find the key and put it in the lock. “Yep—for the duration. It’s in the process of being renovated.”
“Are you sure it’s all right, then, that I stay here?”
He almost smiled at the look on her face. It reminded him of Maddie when he’d bought her that fancy camera she’d been mooning over for Christmas. She couldn’t quite bring herself to believe that it belonged to her.
“Yeah, I’m sure. I’m good friends with the owner, and he said it’s okay. We don’t have any hotels in town, and I told him it would only be for a little while.”
Her shoulders dropped a bit as she faced him. “I can pay. Don’t think I won’t.”
He looked at her closely. “The thought never crossed my mind. But you’ll need to speak with Sam about rent. He’ll stop by in the morning.”
Lucinda walked up onto the porch, and they followed. The scent of fresh paint and cut wood drifted by them on the summer air as a bullfrog, hidden behind the boxwoods, decided to serenade. The rich bubble of sound erupted in the quiet, making Suzanne jump.
“It’s only a bullfrog,” Joe said. “Reckon you’ve never heard one before, where you’re from.”
She turned, and her soft gray eyes met his while he waited for an answer. She said simply, “No, I haven’t.” She stepped closer to Lucinda while Joe fished for the key in the mailbox, then slid it into the lock.
After turning on the porch light and the foyer light, Joe looked around him. Tools and sawdust littered most of the uninhabitable downstairs, but a quick peek into the kitchen told him that there was plumbing, electricity, and a clean surface on which to eat and wash dishes. Lucinda flipped on the upstairs hall light, then climbed the stairs to fully investigate the second level.
Joe watched Suzanne as she held tightly to her possessions and slowly spun in a circle in the foyer, taking in the small rooms with high ceilings. He studied her long, straight hair, noticing the darker auburn color at the roots that the red dye hadn’t quite covered. Her wary gaze came to rest on him.
“Why are you doing this? You could have left me on the highway.”
He shrugged, not really believing that a person had to ask that. “I was just raised that way. I couldn’t let you alone on the highway any more than I could not feed a stray cat that came to my yard.”
Half of her mouth twisted up. “Gee, how flattering.” They were silent a moment, taking each other’s meas
ure. Then she said, “You didn’t have to. I could have made it on my own.”
He looked at her tall, slender form and the way she threw her shoulders back, and knew she was probably right. Still, there was a vulnerability about her that he’d first noticed in the store, that guaranteed he wouldn’t leave her struggling alone on the side of the highway. Not that he’d tell her so. He had a strong feeling that she kept that one weakness hidden carefully away, and it made him shy away from her. There was something soft and tender at her core; he knew it; he could feel it. But he didn’t want to get close enough to see it.
He stared back at her blankly. “Yeah, I figured as much.”
As if unused to the words, she stumbled over them. “Thank you.”
Lucinda’s heels interrupted as they clicked down the wooden stairs. “There’s a nice little bedroom and bath up there that should do just fine. Let me go check the refrigerator before we leave, in case we have to make a trip to the grocery store tonight.”
Suzanne turned to watch the older woman as she disappeared into the kitchen, her eyebrows drawn into a V. Unable to stop himself, Joe said quietly, “This is where she comes out with a large butcher knife and we have you for dinner.”
She looked at him with cool gray eyes, not batting a lash and not saying anything, either.
He felt ashamed that he’d said that, considering her situation. He took a step closer to her, his hands held out to her, palms up. “Look, I’m sorry. That wasn’t funny.”
She brushed her hair off her shoulders, swinging it behind her. Coolly she said, “Actually, it was. I was just bracing myself to run if I heard dueling banjos.”
He laughed, surprising himself. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed out loud like that. She turned toward the kitchen, and as she did, he noticed the lollipop stuck in the back of her hair, and his laughter died in this throat. It looked suspiciously like the one Harry had been sucking on in the truck.
“Wait,” he called after her, stopping himself in time before he touched her. He pointed to the offending object. “You’ve got a lollipop stuck in your hair.”
She put her hand on the spot and sighed. “Oh.” She frowned. “Thanks for telling me.”
Joe drew back and put his hands in his pockets. “I guess if I kept them on leashes, that wouldn’t have happened.”
Her gray eyes widened. “Look, I said I was sorry. . . .”
Before she could say more, Lucinda came from the kitchen. “There’s enough beer in there for a football team, but there’s also bread, cheese, and peanut butter. I’ll stop by tomorrow and take you to the Piggly Wiggly to pick up a few things. Then we can chat and get to know each other better.”
Joe saw an almost imperceptible shifting of Suzanne’s shoulders, as if she were drawing up her lines of defense and preparing for battle. He glanced at Lucinda and noticed she saw it, too.
But all Suzanne said was “Thanks.” She stood clutching her bag as Joe let Lucinda out the door, called good night, then closed it behind them.
Joe fell asleep immediately but awakened only an hour later, not sure what it was that had brought his eyes wide open. He listened to the quiet house for a moment, hearing it settling as if exhaling a deep sigh at the end of the day. He thought of his six children asleep in the rooms around him, the sound of their soft breathing his one redemption in yet another bleak and lonely night. He closed his eyes.
For a moment, Joe could almost believe that Harriet was beside him again, her warmth pressing against him in sleep, her breath touching his cheek. He even reached over to feel for her, but instead his fingers brushed the cold cotton of her pillow, his nail catching on the frayed lace on the hem. Out of habit, he pressed his nose into it, hoping to smell the scent of her one last time. But the pillow and its case had been laundered too many times since Harriet’s death, and no part of her lingered in his bed anymore.
The clutch of grief squeezed his heart again, the feeling of being suddenly plunged underwater and held down, where all he could do was gasp for breath and struggle for the surface. It surprised him with its suddenness and intensity, the grief as black and all-consuming as the day he’d buried his wife and the mother of his children. These attacks had lessened in recent months, but he doubted that they’d ever go away completely. He wasn’t even sure he wanted them to.
With a small groan, he climbed from the large bed, larger now that he slept alone in it, and went to the chair with the ottoman by the window. It was an old friend, and they’d spent many nights together following Harriet’s death. In those first days he couldn’t stand to be in the bed without her, and it had only been in the past year that he’d found his way back to it.
Until tonight. Something was bothering him that he couldn’t quite put a finger on. An image of Suzanne Paris kept pushing into his thoughts—an image of the way she hunched her shoulders and folded her arms in front of her as if it was just her against the world. And one look in her eyes told him that the world was winning, despite the show of confidence she wore on her shoulders like a neon sign. She bothered him, all right, and he wasn’t sure why or how. And there was certainly no room in his life to care.
He sat down in the chair and propped up his long legs, trying to find a comfortable position. He stared out into the moonless night as he tried to drift off to sleep, avoiding the ghosts in his bed and trying not to think of a lost woman with wary eyes and ghosts of her own.
CHAPTER 3
Suzanne was living in a dream. She was in a white house with a porch and picket fence, and any minute a dog would bark and lope across the immaculate green of the front lawn. She sat up and rubbed her eyes. Like all dreams, this one was destined to end. No use wasting any time wallowing in it.
She stood and straightened the white chenille bedspread, not having been able to bring herself to actually pull it back and slip inside the crisp sheets the night before. Something about that otherwise innocent gesture seemed too permanent, and she had simply lain down on top of the bed and gone to sleep.
A dog barked outside, and Suzanne started, a grin forming on her lips. Looking out the front window, she saw a sandy-haired man pull up in a pickup truck, a large mutt standing in the back. As she watched, the dog barked again, then leaped out of the truck and raced across the lawn in an apparent chase of nothing more than exuberance for life.
Slipping on her shoes and straightening her skirt, she finger-combed her long hair and braided it as she headed for the stairs and a meeting with her landlord. She swung open the door, surprising the man on the other side, who kept a hand raised in midknock. She stared at him for a long moment, taking in the bright blue eyes, jeans, and cowboy boots, and telling herself that whatever shortcomings Walton might have, it certainly knew how to raise good-looking men. If they all were like this man and Joe, she might find it difficult to leave when the time came.
The man smiled. “I’m Sam Parker. Joe told me you’re Suzanne Paris.” He lowered his hand, and she allowed her own to be gripped tightly and pumped up and down in a handshake. She stepped back, and he followed her into the small foyer. “Joe said you were looking for a place to stay for a while.”
“Um, yeah. If you’re looking for a short-term tenant, I promise you won’t even know I’m here.”
She frowned when she saw that his eyes were focused on a place in the middle of her chest. She folded her arms, making him shift his gaze to her face. He wasn’t smiling. “Where’d you get that necklace?”
Feeling almost relieved to know it had been the charm that had caught his interest, she relaxed a fraction. “My mother gave it to me when I was fourteen.” She tucked it back inside her T-shirt to end that topic of conversation. “So, I was wondering what rent would be for this house. I only want a month-to-month. And I can give you a month’s deposit—in cash.”
He was looking at her oddly. As if he hadn’t heard her, he said, “Was your mother from around here? You don’t look familiar to me.” His voice had the same slow drawl that Joe’s h
ad, the words spread slowly like hot tar. She remembered how the sound of Joe’s voice had affected her the night before as she sat on the bus, and she shifted her feet trying to erase the memory.
“My mother was definitely not from here. Now, about the rent . . . ?”
He shoved his hands in his back pants pockets, in an identical gesture she’d seen Joe make, and looked at her closely. His eyes were sharp and intelligent, as if he could read all her secrets, and she forced herself to keep quiet and not blabber any more information. The less these people knew about her, the better. Then he gave her a ridiculously low rent quote. Without a word, she went up to the bedroom, pulled out the hem from another skirt in her bag, and retrieved the amount he’d quoted plus twenty dollars more in crisp green bills.
He raised an eyebrow when she handed them to him.
“I don’t need charity, and this place is worth at least this to me. Even with sawdust covering half the house, it’s still a sweet deal.”
Slowly he took out his wallet and placed the bills neatly inside. “You’ve probably noticed that I’m still in the middle of renovations here, but I promise I won’t be here all the time. I’ll come up with some sort of schedule we can both live with, all right?”
She held out her hand, and he looked at it for a moment before shaking it, his white teeth showing. “I can tell you’re not from around here. Otherwise, you would have offered me a pie to seal the deal.”
Crossing her arms across her chest, she said, “In other parts of the country, you would have asked for references.”
He gazed steadily at her, and she held her breath, realizing she had just left herself wide open to exposure. After a long pause, he said, “Your handshake is all I need. That’s as good as a contract around here. If I’d kissed your hand, we would be as good as married.”
Relieved, Suzanne couldn’t help laughing as she walked with him to the door. As he opened it, the large dog that had been in the back of the truck leaped past him and placed his front paws on Suzanne’s chest. With a scream of surprise, she clenched her eyes shut and pressed herself against the wall, crossing her arms over her face in a defensive gesture.
