Chapter One
“No, I’m sorry, she doesn’t live here,” said Devan politely to the stranger.
“But, D—” said the child beside her, puzzled, and Devan silenced her with the nudge of her foot.
She stood lounging against the doorpost while she spoke through the screen door to him. He was a large, solid shadow in comparison with the sunny golden light spilling all over the scene beyond the covered porch, but what she could see of him was pleasing enough. He was well dressed, well groomed, his rather light brown hair blown to chaos from the wind, his sleeves rolled up in the heat of the day. She couldn’t really see much of his facial features because of the shadow, but the sun behind him lit his jaw to perfect illumination, showing it square and firm. The gleaming car behind him sported rent-a-car plates. She glanced at it, a bit wryly. A hundred-dollar-a-day fare for that one, if she’d have her guess.
Eight-year-old Janie had subsided and contented herself with sticking her finger up her nose, which Devan jerked down. The man was replying, blankly, “Doesn’t live here?” He swivelled on one foot to look behind him at the country road, the dilapidated letter box which showed no numbering, the empty expanse to either side of the house. “Isn’t this 1505 Elm Road?”
Janie pinched Devan in the leg, and Devan retaliated by laying a very heavy hand on the girl’s shoulder. She had caught a quick flash at his profile but it was enough. Authority, decision, and determination were stamped on those features, or she’d eat her socks. Whoever was he?
“This is Elm Road, all right,” she replied laconically, when he had whirled back to her in impatience. She turned to look up the patched, narrow road for a few drawn-out moments, contemplatively, drawing out her response as long as she could, with a wicked enjoyment. “But this isn’t 1505. This is 1509.”
Janie made a noise, and Devan tightened her hand. She watched the man raise his hand and thrust his fingers through the thick hair at his forehead. He looked hot, baffled, and furious. “Damnation, how did that happen?” he said disgustedly. “I passed 1503 some time ago, but there isn’t another house between that one and this.” He glanced at the two obscured by screening and, though his eyes were in shadow, she caught the glittering brightness of that look. He said softly, even gently, “Are you sure this isn’t where Devan Richardson lives?”
“We’re proof positive,” said Devan without a bat of an eye, inclining her head to him.
Janie’s carrot-red head swivelled to her, and the child asked suspiciously, “What’s that?”
She said out of the corner of her mouth, “I’ll explain later.” Then she let go of the girl’s shoulder, crossed her arms, and kicked one foot over the other and, with a remarkably charming smile, she said commiseratingly to the stranger, “They never use logic in planning street addresses.”
The stranger narrowed his eyes on her, running his gaze from head to bottom, consideringly. “Well,” he said finally, with a flashing white smile, “please forgive me for disturbing you.”
“No problem,” said she, not moving. He turned and ran down the four painstakingly swept porch steps and went to his car, a swift, athletic, definitely eye-catching figure, and then he slipped into his car and reversed down the gravel driveway. She shut and locked the door behind him, her lower lip thrust out in deep thought. Who could it have been? She didn’t remember having ever met the man before and, aside from her excellent memory for names and faces, she would never have forgotten a man like him. He was the type of person one watched out for, remembered, the type that was going somewhere and going fast, the type that moved mountains and restructured planes of thinking.
He was the type of person she had once been. “You told a fib,” said Janie accusingly, as Devan moved away from the door. “In fact, you told several. Aunt Devan, I’m gonna tell Mom.”
“What, so she can beat me?” retorted Devan, who stopped to turn around and face her niece anyway. She put on her stern expression as she faced her freckled accuser, and lectured, “Now, look, Janie, just because I told a fib doesn’t mean it’s right, or that you can start telling them!”
“Then what you did was wrong,” Janie stated positively, and Devan sighed.
“You know, it probably was, but I have to work that out myself,” she continued, and then stopped, wondering what to say next. She sighed again. “Look, it was the only thing I could think of to get him to go away. I don’t want to see him, and I don’t have to if I don’t want to. Remember that, kiddo. You don’t have to talk to strangers if you don’t want to.”
“Then why didn’t you just tell him to go away?” asked Janie, shifting from one bare foot to the other.
“Somehow,” said Devan drily, “I doubt he would have taken that as an answer.” She became suddenly brisk. “And he’s going to be back, just as soon as he’s found out that I lied, so we’re going to close the windows and curtains and lock the doors.”
Janie’s face grew mulish. “I wanted to go outside.”
“You can later.” The girl didn’t move. “Come on, Janie, please! He’s going to be back any minute now! We can watch for him upstairs, OK?”
The girl wavered, and then grinned, showing a toothy truce, and she said, “OK!”
Devan watched her run up the stairs, and then moved unhurriedly through the ground floor of the comfortable farmhouse, making sure the back door was locked and the windows latched. How could she possibly explain to an eight-year-old child that she had no intention of talking to that man, or anyone else for that matter who might possibly have known of her and her former profession?
Her former life. Devan stopped at the bottom of the staircase as she thought of that, stopping quite still, not even breathing, stopping with the utter immobility of one that feels a mortal wound and is stricken with the realisation, and the pain. Then, breathing slowly and evenly, she climbed the stairs to the first floor. There she went strolling along to her bedroom, which faced the front of the house. Sure enough, Janie was pressing her snub nose to the glass of her window, sprawled in the one chair in the room. Devan threw herself on to her wide double bed and listened to the springs creak, feeling the mattress sway.
“Ain’t here yet,” said Janie.
“Isn’t,” Devan corrected absently. She crossed her arms behind her head and stretched out her legs. “Let me know when you see him.” That man, he certainly wasn’t from the area. Oh no, not he; he was the New Yorker type. There was no way a man such as that would be content to live in small town, U.S.A. This part of Maine was the quiet life personified. Absolutely and unalterably no future here.
At least not for her. Paris trotted in through the open doorway and leapt on to the bed. She turned her head and smiled at the battered, scar-faced tomcat as, with motor already purring in high gear, he circled around neatly and then settled, closing his one good eye in bliss. Devan had named the stray tomcat Paris in a fit of gleeful irony after that lusty Trojan lover who had stolen Helen from her husband, the event which had been the blithe start to the epic Trojan war. Her sister Helen hadn’t thought much of the idea at the time, but treated the cat well in spite of it, and the name had stuck like glue. She scratched at the trojan’s ragged ear, making him bare his throbbing throat in ecstasy; that this particular lover had been in many wars, Devan hadn’t a doubt.
Through the closed window, Devan could already hear the unmistakable sounds of gravel crunching under heavy car tyres, and she turned her head to Janie. With a sigh, she crossed her ankles and said mildly, “I hope that’s not your mom, or we’re both in trouble.” Paris stopped purring, now fast asleep.
“No,” said Janie to the glass, with every sign of fascination, “it’s that man.”
Devan sat up sharply. “Then come away from the window.
”
“Oh, Aunt Devan, I wanna watch—” complained the girl.
“Janie!” She watched her niece snap out of the chair at the tone she used, so she softened her voice. “That’s better.” Janie sniffed. “Oh, come on. Now, if you’ll just be quiet a little longer, I’ll play Monopoly with you.”
That brightened the girl’s face immeasurably. “I’ll go and get it!” she cried, and bounced to the hallway.
“Wait!” said Devan. They both listened to the sounds of deliberate footsteps on the wooden porch, and then there was a sharp staccato knock at the front door.
“It’s in the hall cupboard,” said Janie. “He won’t see me.” She whisked out of the room while Devan closed her eyes and mildly hoped that the girl was right. Soon Janie was back, and they set up the board game on Devan’s bed. The knocking continued for a very long time, much longer than she’d have expected, even from someone with as determined a jaw as he’d had. Then it stopped, only to start again at the back door. Devan dealt out the money, and Janie picked out her favourite playing piece, the little dog, while Devan took the top hat. The knocking continued on and on, until she thought she might scream.
Even Janie got exasperated, and snapped as she scratched her bare ankle, “Why won’t he just go away?”
“You can go first, we don’t have to roll for it,” murmured Devan distractedly. Her patience was fast ebbing away, and she gritted her jaw while her eyes grew a bit wild. The next instant, she was thrusting off her bed with a bounce that sent playing cards scattering, and she marched to the upstairs bathroom with grim intent. “That does it!”
Janie, and then Paris, trailed behind. “What’re you gonna do, Aunt Devan?”
“Something wicked.” She whirled around and grabbed Janie’s shoulders and at first shook her niece, and then hugged her tight. Then she said sternly, “Don’t do as I do, you do as I say!”
With that rather cryptic remark, Janie, not in the least put out by her eccentric aunt’s behaviour, just smiled and settled back to observe events. Devan whisked out a plastic bucket, used for washing the hardwood floors, from the hall cupboard, and ran to the bathroom to turn the bath taps on full blast. The bucket was filled within a few seconds, and she marched through the upstairs hall with her two shadows. Picking Helen’s bedroom, which was over the kitchen, she found a window that overlooked the back door. She threw it open. The persistent knocking was much louder with the window open. She took the bucket and held it just outside, and then neatly flipped it over. The water cascaded out. The knocking abruptly stopped. Devan stuck out her furious face and saw that the strange man was quite drenched, so the water must have hit dead on target. He was staring quite calmly up.
“Go away!” Devan shouted at him, upset by his calm demeanour and her own impulsiveness. He opened his mouth to say something, but she popped her head back in and slammed the window shut so that the glass vibrated dangerously. Then she turned and stared, terrified at herself and her giggling niece. She snapped, “Do you want to play Monopoly or not?” And she stalked back to her bedroom.
Later, after Helen had come back from the visit to the dentist with her youngest child, Gary, they were all sitting down to dinner. Gary was two years younger than Janie, who was convinced he was the bane of her existence, which, as Devan thought back to her own childhood and how she had treated her older sister, seemed to her fair enough.
Helen, much too young and pretty to be a widowed mother of two, and much too wise to show her children that she knew it, asked placidly, “So what did you two do while Gary and I were at Dr. Long’s?”
Janie immediately choked on her glass of milk and looked as guilty as sin, at which Gary hooted, and Devan laid her head down on the table. “Janie,” she said, resigned now that her sister’s suspicions were fully aroused, “you have about as much finesse as an elephant.”
“What’s finesse?” Janie asked, her brow wrinkled. Then she said frustratedly, “You never call me anything I can understand!”
Devan looked stricken at this foul play on her part. Helen said mildly, “Gary, eat your peas. They’re getting cold.”
The tow-headed boy looked at his plate in some surprise as though he’d expected the peas to start sprouting. Then he whistled through the gap in his front teeth, a recent addition as of that very afternoon. Devan said to Janie, “I’m sorry. Finesse means—means delicacy. No, that’s not quite it, but it’s close enough.”
“How can an elephant be delicate?” asked Janie, and Devan gave it up thankfully. Gary then took his spoon and smashed it into the offending peas. Everyone stopped dead, and three pairs of wide eyes turned to Helen to see how she would mete out justice for such a flagrant sign of defiance.
Helen raised her auburn, sleek eyebrows slowly as she considered her fast-wilting son, and Devan quickly hid her face in her coffee cup. Then her sister said calmly, “You still have to eat your peas, whether they’re mashed, or not.” Gary ducked his head, and everyone started to breathe again. But if Devan and Janie thought that they were off the hook by Gary’s timely diversion, they were sadly mistaken, for then Helen turned to her daughter and repeated, “What did you two do this afternoon, anyway?”
Janie looked to her aunt in desperation, who rubbed at her eyes and then told her, “There are times, Janie, when you should never lie, and this is one of them.” Devan turned to a very interested Helen, and told the whole story reluctantly, and afterwards there was a little silence, filled, on Gary’s part, with something close to awe for his aunt.
Helen searched Devan’s eloquent eyes thoughtfully, with some concern. Finally she turned to her daughter and said emphatically, “You should never do as your aunt does, you do as she says.”
Janie looked utterly disgusted. “That’s what she said!”
After the evening meal, the children scampered off for their nightly hour of television. The dishes were still on the table, for it was Devan’s job to wash up. She lounged broodingly in her chair, waiting for Helen to say something more about the afternoon’s episode, but her older sister just stared into space and sipped at her coffee.
Helen said softly, “I wish you’d eat more.” Devan looked at her untouched meal expressionlessly. “I’m worried about you.”
Then it was Devan who said, with her eyes on the table, “I should never have acted that way in front of Janie. I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.”
That caused a slow smile to cross Helen’s face. “That I doubt, as long as you have a temper to misplace. I—guess I hadn’t realised how adamant you really are about not seeing anyone from New York.”
That brought Devan’s head up with a snap, and her eyes narrowed. “You didn’t have anything to do with that stranger coming here, did you?” she queried, and her soft voice was dangerous.
But her older sister looked immensely surprised. “Good heavens, no! I respect your desires more than that; you should know that!”
Devan looked and felt ashamed. “I know. I just can’t figure out who he would be, and it doesn’t make sense that he was someone from the area. It’s probably nothing.”
“You were abominably rude,” said Helen matter-of-factly, by which she was putting the subject behind her. “God only knows, he can’t possibly want to come back for more! Just forget about it, Devan.” That last was said gently, though Devan’s face never changed; her sister knew her that well. “Don’t let it haunt you any more than you can.”
Then her sister was rising to supervise bath time for the two children, and Devan was left staring at nothing, nothing at all. She had known what Helen had meant by that last statement, and it hadn’t anything to do with that afternoon. She heard the three clatter upstairs. Then she pushed away from the table and forced herself to stack the dishes and begin washing up.
The silence and hot water were both making her sleepy. She was always affected this way by the country air. It was lulling; no city noises to spur one on, no late night honking and beeping, no light-pushing neon signs. She sighed—i
t seemed as if she was always sighing—and she hung her head like a dead weight on her neck as she scrubbed listlessly at the last pot with her heat-reddened hands.
The sun had gone down a long time ago, and blackness reigned outside. She started another full pot of coffee. She went through a ritual every time the sun went down, going through the two downstairs rooms that she had converted into a library on her arrival. She would pick masters off the shelf. Wordsworth, Longfellow, even Hemingway she would read, draining endless cups of coffee, listening to the orchestrated chirrup of hidden rasping insects, sometimes with Paris on her knee, sometimes without him. Then, on other days, she would take from the shelves George Macdonald’s Lilith and Phantastes, those battered, dog-eared pages, yellowing, coffee-stained, thumb printed, and she would read the words she knew by heart. Some days she would choose the sensuality of D. H. Lawrence, or the mastery of Shakespeare, whispering the powerful, stark prose or verse with pain and enjoyment. They were her friends, those books.
Exquisite tormentors, those books.
Finished, she turned at random and walked over to sink into one of the kitchen chairs, her hands limp. Helen never understood her. But then, at the same time, her sister didn’t question or nag, and Devan was immensely thankful for it. Helen just surrounded her with the same steady compassion and affection that she gave to her two erratic offspring, and Devan’s days were now filled with serene, soul-healing peace, except that her soul never seemed to heal.
The nights were the worst. Sometimes she would rage, prowling through the downstairs rooms like a caged beast, the taut bitterness making her neck muscles ache as though ripped. At other times she just—existed. For it was gone; it had left her desolate and wondering why, and she could not find it anywhere: her words, her writing, her lovely children of the night, those past and flame-filled evenings when she would blaze far into the darkness with the heat and brilliance of her intensity, her conviction, her magnificent, marvelous myths.
Ah! She thrust herself off the chair with carefully controlled yet violent movements. No use thinking of it, no use any of it, no use thinking. How could Helen understand a passion she had never experienced before? She simply couldn’t, and Devan was ragged from the haunting she could not seem to ease.
Rose-Coloured Love Page 1
