Dream & Dare
Page 11
With her face nuzzled on Hoosier’s chest, Bibi muttered, “Maybe it’s just not meant to be.”
“Hush, Beebs. It hasn’t been that long. You didn’t catch with Connor right away, either. The doc said not to worry until it’s been a whole year, right?”
She nodded, her nose brushing through the soft hair over his pecs. “But I’m running out of time. I wanted a houseful.” She was getting older; they’d been married ten years, and it had taken her half those years to figure out what she wanted. Their future no longer seemed infinite.
His chuckle rumbled deep in his chest and ruffled her hair as he kissed her head. “I don’t think your AARP card is comin’ anytime soon, baby. You got lots of time left. In the meantime, we got our boy, and he might not be a houseful, but he’s damn sure a handful.”
At that, Bibi was able to laugh. Yes, their boy was a handful. And a half. It was like he was made out of pure energy. He simply could not be still. He was smart as a whip, too, and it got him into no end of trouble. He was always taking something apart, or just outright breaking it open to see what was inside it. He’d be sitting there, all sweet, watching television or maybe eating his lunch, and something would catch his eye. He’d get a look, and they knew if they didn’t figure out his target and get it out of his reach, they’d be replacing it by the end of the day.
And lord, that boy got bored fast. He couldn’t even manage to sit through a whole Disney video. Already, at four, he’d picked up and discarded a score of interests. There was only one thing that held his attention for any length of time, in the short or long term: helping his daddy work on cars and bikes. He loved the tools, and he loved watching, helping, learning. He hadn’t even started kindergarten yet, but he understood engines better than Bibi did.
Honestly, Bibi didn’t think it was the engines Connor was so enamored of. It was his father. If Hoosier had been a stockbroker, Connor would have been fascinated by the Dow. He thought his daddy hung the sun.
“He’s gonna be up soon,” Hoosier reminded her.
“I know. And you’re goin’ in this mornin’, right?”
“Yeah. Just in the garage today. Thought I’d take Connor in with me. Give you a day to yourself.”
She leaned back and looked up at him. “Yeah?” A day to herself—those were rare indeed. Every now and then, Margot would take Connor, but his perpetual motion was a lot to deal with, and Bibi felt guilty, so she didn’t ask, or accept an offer, often.
But the garage? It wouldn’t be the first time, but it never made Bibi happy. The garage was owned by the Blades. And except for Blue, she didn’t much like his brothers. Besides, the club was doing things she thought must be pretty bad. “You sure?”
“Sure. He loves it. And it’ll be quiet today. Promise.”
“Haven’t been many quiet days for you lately, huh?”
Hoosier didn’t answer. He just kissed her head again and squeezed her close. With his hand rubbing her lower back, where he knew she felt her cramps, he finally murmured, “Why don’t you get in a hot shower, and I’ll make his breakfast this morning. I’ll do waffles and fruit.”
She laughed and kissed his furry cheek. He hadn’t shaved for a couple of years, and oh stars, she loved his beard. “Eggos ain’t waffles, Hooj.”
“Sure they are. They got the little squares. And it says ‘waffles’ on the box. That makes it so.”
“I love you, Hooj.” She reached up and tugged at his beard.
“I love you better.”
~oOo~
In the shower, Bibi let the hot water spray over her lower back for a long time. She let the conditioner sit in her hair for a while, and soaped herself up twice. She shaved everything. It was nice. Usually, she barely took the time to get all her parts wet, so letting herself relax and enjoy the warm spray helped realign her outlook. Hoosier was right. It had taken four months to get pregnant with Connor. It wasn’t so much longer now. It would happen.
Having no interest in frozen waffles for breakfast, Bibi took her time with her after-shower routine, too. She used the jasmine-scented lotion that Hoosier liked, and she even dried her hair.
For most of her life, she’d kept her hair about shoulder-length or a little shorter, in a variety of styles—from the sweet Dorothy of her teen years to the violent spikes of her punk phase. She hadn’t had an actual hairstyle in four years, though, and now her hair was halfway down her back. Every couple of months, she’d trim her own ends, but that was it.
With Connor, it was just too much work to do anything at all with her hair. So she’d hose herself off and then yank the wet mass back in a hair elastic. She wore a ponytail every single day.
There was a time in her life when she would have been judgmental about a woman who took so little care with her personal grooming. Never would she again, however. These days, she saw a woman in the market with a skewed pony and stained sweats, and she nodded in sympathetic sisterhood.
Today, though. Today, she smelled good, and she wasn’t furry, and her hair was shiny and fluffy. She even took a minute to do her face up. Then she went into her closet and picked out an actual outfit. That matched.
She didn’t even think she was going to leave the house; the thought of having the place completely to herself, maybe sitting outside with a Mary Higgins Clark book and a glass of sweet tea and just reading the day away, was enough to make her well up with joy. But it felt good to be pretty, especially on a day that had started out like shit.
She’d picked out white jeans. It was a day to stick her middle finger up at her body and its cycle.
By the time she was selecting jewelry to go with her outfit, she knew that breakfast was over. She could hear Connor banging away at the old upright piano in the living room. He must have been sitting with Hoosier; under the percussive din, she could hear a few keys being struck tunefully.
When they’d bought this house, the piano had come with it, because no one could get it out of the room. The previous owners had taken what had been one large space that was both living and dining rooms and made it into two, building a wall to separate them. The piano had already been in the room, and they’d closed off the only way to move it out without tearing it apart.
It was a big, heavy, beautiful upright, and it turned out that both Bibi and Hoosier had played as children, something they hadn’t known about each other until they’d found themselves the owners of a piano. They’d spent many nights plinking around on it together.
Connor was fascinated by the old thing. Bibi had an idea that she’d like him to learn, and she’d spent a few afternoons trying to teach him some basics. But no. Not yet, anyway. Not unless she duct-taped him to the seat. Learning to play an instrument took focus and patience, and their boy had neither.
She went out to the living room and found Connor sitting on his daddy’s lap, banging away. For a minute, she leaned on the door jamb and watched. God, she loved those boys. The emotion slammed into her, leaving her breathless.
“Try this, Con. Here, put your finger here.”
“Play the song, Daddy!”
“I’m trying to show you how to play.”
“No! You play! You play good!”
Hoosier laughed and played the first notes of ‘Thunder Road.’ He was a big Springsteen buff, and that song was a particular favorite. “See how pretty? You try.”
Connor banged his open hands on the keys. “Music!”
“Your mama’d say so. She likes noisy music. I like music where the notes go together. Here, sit next to me and listen.” He shifted Connor to his side on the bench and started to play the song again from the beginning. Connor sat and watched for several whole seconds, but he was on the floor at his father’s feet, playing with the pedals, trying to see where they connected inside the piano, before Hoosier had finished singing the first verse.
Then Connor saw his mother. He scrambled to his feet and ran to her. “Mama! Daddy’s makin’ music but when it’s over we’re gonna go work on engines!”
“Yeah, I’m a helper!” He gave her a huge grin, his grey eyes—her father’s eyes—sparkling at her.
“That’s my good boy. Since you’re bein’ so helpful, maybe I’ll bake a cake today and we can have it for dessert after supper.”
“RAINBOW CUPCAKES!” Connor shrieked and clapped his hands.
Both Hoosier and Bibi laughed.
“Inside voice, honey,” Bibi said. “And rainbow cupcakes it is.”
“YAY! YAY! YAY!” Connor didn’t have an inside voice. He squirmed in Bibi’s arms, and she set him down and turned him loose.
He scampered off, and Hoosier came to her and hooked an arm around her waist. “You look good, Cheeks. Got a hot date?”
“I do. I’m havin’ supper with a couple dark and dangerous men.” She brushed her fingers through his beard. “You?”
“Nah. Just a quiet night in with my family.” He bent down and kissed her. “Best night I can think of.”
~oOo~
Not long after Hoosier and Connor had left in their little pickup, with Connor strapped in his booster in the jump seat, Margot called and asked if Bibi and Connor wanted to go to the garden center. Margot and Bibi were both avid gardeners. It was one of the few things Connor let Bibi have the time to do well. He loved to dig in the dirt and bury treasure, and they could be in the yard for hours.
But she was looking forward to a day at home, enjoying some quiet. And baking rainbow cupcakes later. “Not today, Margie. Hooj took Connor to the garage, and I’m just gonna stay home and be quiet.”
Margot and Blue had just started trying, but they didn’t have kids yet, and Margot wasn’t working. She had quiet time to spare, and got manic about filling it. “Really? And do what?”
“I don’t know. Read. Relax. Bake Connor some cupcakes. Just be quiet.”
“Um, okay. You sure?”
“Yep.”
“Then…would it be okay if I borrowed your van? Blue can drop me off on his way in, but he needs the truck today, and I—”
Bibi cut her off with a laugh. That had been an invitation with an agenda; Margot needed her wheels more than her company. “It’s fine, darlin’. Sure, swing by and pick it up. I don’t need it today.”
“Thanks, Beebs. I’ll be over in half an hour?”
“Sounds good.”
“You’re the best. I love you!”
“I love you, too.”
~oOo~
After Margot left with the van, Bibi made herself a fresh batch of sweet tea. When it was ready, she poured herself a glass and took a couple Midol. Then she pulled down her secret stash of Lorna Doone cookies, and took her treats and the latest MHC book, Loves Music, Loves to Dance, out to the patio. She made herself comfy on the padded chaise lounge and got down to enjoying her unexpected day to herself.
She’d been reading, engrossed, for a couple of hours when she set the book down and came inside to use the bathroom and refill her tea.
It wasn’t until she was in the kitchen, setting her glass on the counter, that she realized something was wrong. At first, she didn’t know what had her neck prickling, but she followed her instinct and froze, listening hard.
She heard a creak. And a shuffle.
Someone was in the house. Not Hoosier; he would have looked for her right off, before he’d done anything else. Besides, Connor was impossible to miss. If he were home, she’d know it.
Margot wouldn’t have come in uninvited. She’d have come around the back if Bibi hadn’t answered the door. Besides, the front door was locked.
Wasn’t it? Had she locked it again when Margot left with the keys to the van?
Then it really hit her—oh God! A stranger was in the house!
Another creak, and a sound she couldn’t make out—coming from another direction. More than one person was in this house with her.
Bibi’s heart rate quadrupled, and her knees buckled. But she grabbed the counter and kept her feet. She had no choice but to deal with this on her own. She looked at the phone on the wall, but what good would that do? Hoosier was ten minutes away if he flew like a crow. And if the intruders didn’t already know she was here, they would when she called 911. There were at least two of them. Her best bet was to retrace her steps and go out the back door, then run like hell. She could go next door and ask Mrs. Johnson for help.
But the back door was in the dining room, and that felt far away now. Miles away.
Still, it was the best plan. The only plan.
There were guns and ammo seeded all over the house, out of Connor’s reach. But not here in the kitchen. So she pulled the cleaver off the magnetic strip on the wall behind the range and turned.
Another creak. Was that closer? Were they coming?
Trying to be as quiet as she possibly could, feeling sure that her frantic heartbeat could be heard all through the house, Bibi held the cleaver up in two shaking hands and eased through the kitchen, toward the doorway to the dining room. A little hall separated the rooms, and she paused, trying to recall the creak she’d just heard. Had it been out here?
She inched around the doorway and turned to check the hall.
There was a man standing right there, at the doorway, his back against the hallway wall. He’d known she was there.
Without thinking, Bibi struck out with the cleaver. It glanced off the man’s face and then sank into his arm. He roared and pulled his arm back, letting the cleaver slice through it and clear away. Then he swung at her, hitting her hard in the face. So hard. She’d never been hit like that before. The world went off-center, and then, for a fraction of a second, she didn’t know why she was falling or why her face hurt, as if the blow had knocked her knowledge of its source right out of her head.
The man dropped on top of her and kept hitting her. She could feel warm splashes and drips, but she didn’t understand what they were. All she could understand was that she needed it to stop. She tried to curl up, away from the hurt, but then she was being dragged by her hair down the hallway, and she finally found her voice to scream.
Pain exploded in her head, and—
~oOo~
Bibi woke up in a sweat, her heart pounding so hard that she was legitimately worried that she was having a heart attack. Oh God! Oh God! Not again!
Sitting up, she made herself focus and think. She was in bed—not her bed, not the bed she’d shared with her husband, but a bed, not a splintery floor. The room was pretty, and on the table at her side was one of Faith’s small sculptures.
She was safe, in Faith and Demon’s guestroom. It had been a dream. And a memory. Both.
A memory she hadn’t relived in years.
She lay back, relieved and depleted, and Blanca, one of the myriad cats that prowled this home, inside and out, jumped up on the bed and sat looking at her. She held out her hand, and the pretty little white miss bumped her head into Bibi’s palm, purring.
There would be no more sleep tonight. There never had been with those memories alive in her head. She snapped on the bedside lamp and picked up her book and her reading glasses, and Blanca curled up at her side.
At least the cat could sleep.
~oOo~
Bibi wasn’t in the mood the next day to keep up her chatter and storytelling for Hoosier. She was too old to pull all-nighters, and those memories always did a number on her, and the result of that equation was that she was enervated and depressed.
After a long stretch of quiet, Hoosier squeezed and pulled on her hand, a habit of his that she’d been interpreting as him asking her if she was okay.
She found a smile and stuck it on. “I’m okay, baby. Just had a rough night last night.”
He pulled and squeezed again, looking hard into her eyes.
“I’m fine, Hooj. Just gettin’ old, I guess. I need my sleep, and I didn�
��t get much last night. All this rememberin’ we’ve been doin’s got stuff dredged up is all.”
She must have been truly exhausted, because she didn’t realize that she’d said something provocative until Hoosier had her hand so tight in his grasp that her knuckles cracked.
“Ow, Hooj, what—oh.” His face was racked with anguish, and his understanding of exactly what she’d meant was vivid in his eyes. “Oh, honey, no. I didn’t—don’t go there, okay? There’s nothin’ good there. I’m fine, and memories like that don’t have teeth. We’re past it all. We need to get past this now. I need you to get better. I’m so goddamn lonely. I need you to talk to me, Hooj. Please. You’re here, I see you here, but I’m still so lonely. I miss your voice.”