by Teresa Hill
"So, who is this man who's treating you so shabbily?" Stephen asked.
"There is no man," she said quickly.
No one at all. The thought sobered her faster than anything could have. She was all alone, missing her mother, missing her sister and her father more than she had in years, and she still had to face the night alone in this house.
"So what brings you back?" Stephen asked. "The house?"
He'd poured her another cup of coffee when he'd gotten up to refill his own cup. Even lukewarm, it still tasted good. They'd pushed their plates to the side, and Stephen was leaning back in his chair now, watching her intently in a way she didn't think she'd ever feel comfortable being watched. And he would be gone soon. If she had questions, she had to get to them.
"My mother died recently," she said.
"I'm sorry." His hand slid across the table to hers in a simple, eloquent offer of comfort.
"Thank you," she said, unable to remember the last time a man held her hand. "I miss her. More than I had imagined I would." Particularly given the fact that she'd been angry at her mother for most of her life.
"It was just the two of you? Once you left here?"
"Yes."
"You must have been close..."
"I wouldn't say that." Allie sighed. "We just never quite got it right, you know? The mother /daughter thing. I always thought one day we would, but we didn't, and I let her rob me of all those years with my father."
"Rob you?"
"We both acted as if my father didn't even exist. She wouldn't talk about him, except to say that he didn't want us anymore," Allie explained. "Of course, I did what she wanted. I can't blame it all on my mother."
Janet Bennett painted herself as a frail, wounded woman her whole life, and Allie had always known her biggest responsibility was not to upset her mother. That included not starting any conversations about her father. Not asking any questions. Giving up on the letters, and never trying to see him.
"Your mother was all you had left, Allie. You were just a little girl. It's natural for you to want to please her."
"Maybe when I was nine. I'm twenty-four now."
"You grow up a certain way, expected to do certain things for your family, and it's hard to break those habits. It's hard to stop wanting to please them, hard to do what's right when you know it's going to hurt them."
"You do things like that for your family, too?"
"We all have our little eccentricities." He laughed humorlessly. "Eccentricities is a generous word for the things that go on in some families. Don't beat yourself up because you didn't handle your mother's problems as well as you think you should have. She was the one with the problem, Allie."
"No. It was my life. I let her do this to me."
"What did she do?"
"I think the current psychology term would be that she had control issues. She liked having me under her thumb. She was unhappy and the biggest hypochondriac I've ever known. Every time I managed to pull away just a little bit, she came up with these mysterious little problems, vague weaknesses and complaints. It was like she couldn't stand the idea that I might actually be happy. If she wasn't happy, nobody was going to be happy. I feel guilty that I didn't stand up to her more often—especially when it came to my father. Even felt guilty because I didn't want to give up my job and my apartment to care for her in the end. I kept thinking she was willing to do anything to stop me from having a life of my own—even get cancer."
"Oh, Allie—"
"I know. It's crazy to even think it. Even crazier to miss her so much now that she's gone."
"You took care of her? All by yourself? In the end?"
"For a while. I quit my job. As an accountant," she said with what she thought was only a tad of distaste.
"You don't like being an accountant?"
"No." She grimaced. "It's so dull."
Stephen laughed.
"I suppose it was a good thing—that I quit, I mean. I should have figured it out long ago. I just... I've always been good with numbers, and accounting is so logical, so predictable. There was a time when that appealed to me." One place in her life where everything made sense. No surprises. No disappointments, just sheer logic. "But I've hated it. All except the last few months, at least."
"What was different about the last few months?"
"There was an organization in town that was very helpful to my mother and me when she was sick. A church group, sort of an umbrella organization that provided all sorts of services in town. They had a home health nurse who came once a week and a support group for women battling cancer. They brought my mother hot meals, before I moved back home, that sort of thing.
"They lived constantly on the verge of financial ruin, lived on sheer faith alone at times." She admired them for their nerve, their renegade do-gooder tactics. "I ended up doing volunteer work for them when I had the time, juggling funds as best I could to keep everything going."
"And you enjoyed that?"
"I did. Clients, to me, had always been a bunch of numbers in long rows on a computer screen. These people had records scattered from one end of the county to the other, so I ended up visiting a lot of the different sites where they provided services. Seeing all those people they helped... It made it all real. It made the job important in a way it never had been before."
"Sounds like you've found a career," Stephen said.
Allie nodded. "I think I did. If the group had any money, they would have hired me. They still may, once I go back."
"And if that doesn't work out?"
"I don't know. I'll probably look for another organization like that. I've found that I need the connection to people," Allie said, then forced herself to tell him what had really gotten to her about the whole organization. "They had a shelter for teenage runaways, a wonderful place. I ended up spending a lot of time there."
"Thinking of your sister?" Stephen guessed.
"Yes." Looking at the girls. Lost, scared girls who hid it all behind a wall of bravado a foot thick. Streetwise, old-before-their-time girls. She'd stared into all their faces and wanted to see a bit of her sister, wanted for one of them to make her understand why Megan ran away. "I couldn't help but think... Why couldn't Megan have found someplace like that, where she would have been safe? Maybe come home?"
"I remember when she was a little girl, she always seemed to be disappearing to one place or another," Stephen said. "I remember listening to your mother standing on the back porch calling to Megan, sometimes to the two of you to come inside. Threatening all sorts of dire consequences if you didn't show your faces."
Allie thought about it. She did remember that. "Megan always liked to run away and hide."
The minute she said it, Allie felt the muscles in her stomach tighten, felt her throat go tight as well. An image came to mind that she'd sooner forget. A young Megan in the backyard, crouched behind a tree, begging Allie to be quiet so they could stay hidden a while longer. Why did Megan love to run and hide? Why did she have to do it so well?
When Allie looked up, Stephen was watching her. She could have sworn he knew just what she was thinking. Did he, too, wonder why Megan ran away?
"I think this conversation's gotten too grim," he said, standing and walking across the room.
"I'm sorry." Allie couldn't believe she'd told him so much about her mother. She hadn't talked about any of these things to anyone.
"Don't be. I asked. And I'm willing to listen to anything you want to tell me, Allie." Leaning against the cabinets, his long legs stretched out in front of him, he look relaxed and perfectly at ease once again. "I just thought there must be something we could talk about that might make you smile again."
She found herself unexpectedly touched. That he'd listened. That he claimed to understand and even thought she should try to forgive herself. And that, as he claimed, he simply cared about making her smile.
"Let's talk about you," she suggested.
After all, it would be no hardship to liste
n to that low, soothing voice of his. Southern to the core, the sound of it was like an old familiar song, one she hadn't known she missed until she heard it again. She decided she'd been gone for too long when nothing but the sound of a man's voice could charm her so.
"What do you do?"
"I have a law degree I've never put to good use, much to my father's dismay," he said easily. "For the most part, I build things."
"You?" Allie doubted it. He certainly looked strong enough for manual labor, but that wasn't what he did. Not in a suit like that. Not with those hands. They were not the hands of a man who earned his living through hard labor.
"I rebuild things, actually. Old things. My company buys old buildings, restores them. Sometimes we keep them and manage them. Sometimes we sell them and buy more." Stephen took another drink of his coffee. "I find old buildings interesting. They have character, charm, I hate to see them torn down and replaced with modern ones that all look the same. I'd hate to see this town look like a cookie-cutter version of any other small town anywhere in America. Take this house, for instance. It's beautiful."
"I've missed it," she said, finding that she had and was happy to share this thing with him—a love of things old and solid and enduring. Did he see that in it, she wondered? That it had endured. That it had a history. That it no doubt held so many memories, so many secrets. She wondered if old buildings spoke to him, as she wished this one could speak to her.
"I haven't been inside in years," he said. "But from what I can see, the house seems to have held up well."
"I hope so. I haven't had a chance to explore yet, but Mr. Webster, the man who's handling my father's estate..."
"I've known him for years. He's a good man. You can trust him."
"Good. He said the place is basically sound."
"What are you going to do with it?"
"I'm not sure." Allie sighed. "What would you do with it?"
"If I inherited this house? I'd keep it. Sink a small fortune into restoring it."
Allie didn't have the luxury of that kind of money or time. The house was mortgage-free, but it had also appreciated over the years until it was, unfortunately, worth a great deal of money. Her mother hadn't done anything that might have minimized inheritance taxes, and she'd left hefty medical bills. Allie's father hadn't died a pauper, but between her mother's medical bills and the inheritance taxes Allie faced, she was a classic example of someone house-rich and pocket-poor.
She could not afford to keep the house. But she was intrigued by Stephen's ideas, enough to ask, "And then what? Once you'd restored it?"
"Live in it."
"All by yourself?" Or at least, she assumed he lived alone. He wore no ring, and he hadn't needed to tell anyone he wouldn't be home for dinner.
"Until I found someone to share it with me," he said. "I've watched it sit empty for years and imagined what I'd do with it, if I had the chance."
"You have an amazing house next door," Allie said.
"No, my parents have an amazing house next door, and I'm in the embarrassing position of being thirty-five years old and still living in my parents' home."
He said it with such an easy grace, she couldn't help but smile. "Cushy deal, huh? A great house? A cook? Free maid service?"
He nodded. "I'd be a fool to leave."
"Somehow I can't quite see you as a freeloader."
"Actually, I have a town house in Lexington. The city's been booming in the last ten years, and most of the work my company's doing is there. But my parents are on an extended trip, and they didn't want to leave the house empty. It's not exactly a hardship to be back here. I've enjoyed the past few months more than I realized I would. And I've spent a lot of time staring at this house. It's the kind of place a man keeps. A place where he stays."
Again, he'd touched a nerve. Allie found her throat suddenly too tight for her to even think about replying. She would love a place where she could stay, a place where she belonged. But that sense of belonging came not so much from the physical structure as from the people with whom one shared it, and by that definition, she'd never truly belonged anywhere. Except here, so long ago.
She wondered if Stephen could possibly feel that, too. That tugging of loneliness deep inside, that need to belong, not so much to a place but to someone. She would have never expected to find that in someone like him. She would have thought he was a man who wanted for nothing.
She looked up to find him watching her thoughtfully and tried to summon up a smile. He really had the most amazing smile. She wondered if he was consciously flirting with her or if he treated all women this way, if his natural inclination was to be polite and utterly disarming; wondered, too, if perhaps it wasn't a way of bringing people close to him but of keeping them away. A false kind of intimacy he used like a shield.
Did anyone ever truly get close to him, she wondered, and found herself wishing that she could. It was unsettling—to be so taken with him already, having spent so little time with him, to be so caught up in what she suspected was a flirtatious bit of nothing to him.
She was simply out of practice with the way things were between men and women. She'd been alone too long. The last few years had been busy, working her way through school, trying to take care of her mother. There hadn't been time for casual flirtations. Maybe that was why it felt so oddly sweet to be with him, why she was reluctant to let the moment end.
"So," Stephen said. "You never told me. What are you going to do with the house?"
"I haven't decided. It's one of the reasons I came back."
"What else brought you back?"
"I miss my father, I suppose. And my sister," she said, then admitted, "I don't even know why Megan ran away."
"What did your mother tell you?"
"It's so odd," she said, searching her memory, as she'd done a million times before. "I don't remember. Not exactly. I knew something was wrong that day we found her gone, but I didn't know what happened at first. My mother woke me up early and sent me to a neighbor's house. I think she must have worried about frightening me, because she was so frightened herself. She always tried to protect me."
Which was another way of saying she never told Allie much of anything.
"Megan didn't say anything to you before she left?" Stephen asked. "She didn't seem upset or angry?"
"My sister was always quiet and a little shy." At least, that's what Allie recalled. She looked up at Stephen. "You must remember her so much better than I do. You were... what? Eighteen? The summer she disappeared?"
"Nineteen," he said, carefully setting his coffee mug on the counter. "You're right. Megan was quiet. Serious. A little shy. I'd watched her grow up, and it was hard for me to think of her as anything but a little girl, which is not something a sixteen-year-old girl wants to hear from a boy. I'm afraid I hurt her feelings that summer."
"So the two of you were never... involved?"
"No." He laughed a bit. "Nothing more than friends."
She couldn't help but ask, "Did you ever want to be more than friends?"
Stephen went to the window and looked out into the rain once again. "I wish," he said carefully, "that I'd been a better friend to her."
"Why?"
"She ran away, Allie, and she never made it back. Whatever was going on with her that summer, it must have been bad for her to just take off like that. She must have felt so alone, like she didn't have anyone to turn to. I wish she'd come to me. Or to anyone who could have helped her."
Which made perfect sense. She imagined there must be dozens of people in town who knew Megan and felt the same way. And surely there was someone who did know what went so wrong for her sister that summer, someone who could tell Allie. Someone who might know why someone was looking for information about Megan's accident after all this time.
"It was just a car accident, wasn't it?" Allie asked. "You never heard anything else, except that she was involved in a car accident?"
"No. Allie, what's going on?"
"I don't know. I—I've just always had all of these questions, and none of the answers."
He took her hand in his. "You've lost too many people."
Yes, she had. Allie had to turn her face away, because all of a sudden the urge to cry was nearly overwhelming. Stephen pulled her to her feet, his hands running up and down her arms. They stood facing each other, watching the rain through the flickering light of a half-dozen candles. Allie was feeling cold and lonely and frustrated. She wanted the man who made her laugh over dinner to come back, wanted him to chase away the shadows a little longer and help her remember some of the good times she had while living in this house. So she wouldn't have to think about the bad just yet, about all the people she'd lost.
"I know what it's like to feel alone, Allie," he said softly, then looked honestly as surprised by his own admission as she was.
"You?"
He nodded, that sense of unease covered in a flash with the barest hint of a smile.
"You've lived in this town your whole life," she said. "Your whole family's here—"
"They are," he conceded.
"But... What? You're not close?"
"We have our differences," he said, like a born diplomat.
"Still, your family's wealthy. I'm sure you're successful, that you love having your own company—"
"I do."
"And that it keeps you busy."
"It does."
"And you're... You're..." she stammered, then blushed.
"What?" he said, the teasing tone back, the near-blinding smile.
"You know what you are," she said, irritated now. He was going to make her say it.
"You tell me," he prompted. "What am I, Allie?"
"Gorgeous," she shot back. "Charming. Confident. What more does a man need?"
He threw back his head and laughed, beautifully, and she found she wasn't cold at all, not anymore. And he still had hold of her arms.
"You want to know what else a man needs?" he said seductively.
"No," she said, a hint of self-preservation surfacing too late to save her. He really was beautiful.
