Murky Pond

by T. L. Haddix

  She rolled the windows up and got out, hand clenched tightly around the keys in an attempt to keep her focus away from her anger. By the time she got to the sunroom that separated her apartment from the main house, she felt like she had a decent grip on her emotions. She stepped inside her front door to drop off her purse, keys, and shoes, made a quick stop in the restroom, then headed for the main house.

  “There’s our girl!” Owen said when she entered the breakfast room, which was where her mother preferred to serve dinner to small groups. “Just in time for dessert. How was your evening, young lady?”

  She hugged him. “It was fun. I already had dessert, but I might get some real food. I’m still starving.”

  “What, Austin wouldn’t spring for a full meal?” Warren said, coming out of the kitchen behind her, cake platter in hand. He set the Italian cream cake in the center of the table and sent her a challenging glance. “Ben, we might have to raise his wages a little.”

  “Oh, we were much too busy to eat really,” Lily retorted before she could even think about what she was saying.

  “Busy doing what?” Warren asked, his voice nearly a growl.

  She meant that they’d been too busy talking, but from the thundercloud of outrage that crossed his face and the shock on everyone else’s, that wasn’t how it had sounded. Determined to let the words stand regardless of her embarrassment, she tightened her jaw and lifted her chin, then she went to the kitchen to fill a plate.

  “You know, date stuff,” she called over her shoulder. “Nothing unusual. Why? Is that a problem?” She got a plate down and turned to stare at him, one eyebrow lifted, daring him to say a word to the contrary.

  For long, tense moments, he didn’t speak, didn’t react other than to glare back, hands on his hips. When it looked like he wasn’t going to do anything else, she rolled her eyes and put food on her plate. She didn’t have the least bit of an appetite left, not with her heart hammering, but she’d choke it down if it killed her.

  He was still standing when she went back to the table a minute later. Her mother had started slicing the cake, but she was surveying Lily and Warren with a watchful eye.

  “Are you going to sit down and have cake or glower at everyone all evening?” Lily asked as she passed him, taking the chair beside her grandmother with a smile.

  In answer, he pulled out his chair and sat, his movements precise and deliberate as he cut into the cake. Good, Lily thought, ignoring how petty her satisfaction felt. You’re furious. You should be. I shouldn’t be the only one who’s miserable here.

  Ben cleared his throat. “We were just discussing Molly and her job. She called and talked to Mom and Dad earlier.”

  Lily paused, her fork touching her plate with a quiet clink as she studied her grandparents. “And?”

  Sarah touched her shoulder. “We’re relieved she finally made the decision. She’s not happy there.”

  “We’ve known for a while there was a storm brewing, but we didn’t want to interfere.” Owen shook his head slightly as he sipped his coffee. “John and Zanny are a bit disappointed, but they understand. They’re just afraid she’ll put too much pressure on herself to try to prove she’s not a failure after this.”

  Lily frowned and studied her potato salad. “I don’t think she will. We talked quite a bit while she was here, and I think she has a good grasp on what she wants to do for now. She’s looking for something simple and fun. She’s never really done that, you know?”

  “Every kid needs to do that,” Ben said. “Some of us get it a little backward. Looks like Molly’s one of those that has.”

  “You would know,” Ainsley said, teasing him with a smile as she touched his arm. “He didn’t take any time off for life until the summer we got married,” she told Warren.

  “I had demons that were chasing me,” Ben clarified, his eyes soft as he looked at Ainsley, capturing her hand. “I finally figured out I had to slow down and let them catch me in order to clear up the mistakes.” He placed a kiss on her hand, not letting go of her fingers even after he set her hand down.

  “Funny how that happens.” Owen sighed. “Ainsley, this cake… it’s a good thing Ben has a job that keeps him busy or he’d weigh three hundred pounds.”

  Ainsley laughed. “Thank you, but this one is all Lily’s concoction.” Her eyes twinkled with pride as she looked at Lily. “She’s as good in the kitchen as I ever was, maybe even as good as Byrdie.”

  Owen raised his coffee in a salute. “High praise, indeed. Good job, young lady.”

  Lily flushed with pleasure. “Thank you. I enjoy it.” She half expected Warren to say something about her needing to be able to cook if she was dating Austin, but he kept his mouth shut.

  “How is Byrdie?” Sarah asked.

  “She’s doing well. She and Flaco are out in the Four Corners region right now, having a blast. They’ll be back in a few weeks to spend some time with us, and then after Thanksgiving, they’ll head south to Jonah’s in Florida for the winter.” Ainsley hmmm’d, examining the frosting on her fork. “He’s thinking about moving down there permanently. He’s not been home since spring, and I… I think he’s finally found someone to be with.”

  Jonah Morissey was an honorary family member, someone Lily had grown up thinking of as an uncle.

  “Good,” Sarah said softly. “After all this time, he surely deserves to be happy.”

  “That he does,” Ainsley agreed. She leaned into Ben when he put his arm around her shoulders.

  “What about his house?” Owen asked.

  For more than thirty years, Jonah’s home had been the converted carriage house located on the farm. Ainsley’s first husband, Doug, had left the house and the land it was on to Jonah in his will.

  Ben shrugged. “He’s not sure if he wants to hold on to it or let it come back to us. He’s not decided yet, and we’re in no hurry to know either way.”

  “I hate to see it sit empty,” Lily said. “That’s very hard on a house.”

  “It is. He mentioned maybe renting it out for a nominal fee to Amelia and Logan’s boys, and to Graydon. They’re all up here in school or will be,” Ainsley said. Luke was enrolled at Georgetown while his brother, Sean, and Graydon, Emma’s oldest son, were both heading for the University of Kentucky in the fall.

  Warren laughed. “That’d be an interesting mix to have on the place. We could all keep an eye on them.”

  “Oh, they’d love that, I’m sure,” Ben said drolly. “We absolutely should do it in that case.”

  “It would give Graydon a safe place to run,” Owen said seriously. Murmurs of agreement followed his statement.

  Lily glanced at Warren, who was nodding. “Would you be okay with that, given your first encounter with him?”

  Warren huffed. “I just wasn’t expecting that sort of visit, that’s all.” He sat back, shaking his head as everyone laughed. “I still owe him for that one.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Sarah said with a smile. “I think you scared the life out of him too.”

  “I’d have paid to see that,” Ben said, his grin wicked. “No offense.”

  “None taken. I have to admit that in retrospect, it was pretty funny.”

  A few years back, Warren had gone to Owen and Sarah’s farm at Firefly Hollow for a camping trip. No one had mentioned to Archer and Emma’s sons that the trip was planned, and they’d come up for Sunday dinner, then decided to go for a run late in the evening after everyone had eaten. As they’d made this run not in their human forms but as the mountain lions they could shapeshift into, when they’d come across Warren, it had been quite a startling “hello” for everyone concerned.

  Fortunately, he was familiar with the family’s abilities, as some of the Wellses were shapeshifters too. But Graydon hadn’t known that, and Warren hadn’t been expecting him, so the first few moments when Warren spotted him had
been tense. Carter had hung back, more cautious than his older brother, not showing himself until Warren had calmed down enough to stop shouting. By then, Graydon had been halfway back to the house and the safety it provided.

  “He ran past me that day,” Sarah recalled, chuckling, “and straight into the house. He didn’t even realize he was still a cat until Archer chased him up the stairs and found him hiding under the bed, shaking.”

  “Aww, I can’t stand it. Just thinking about it makes me want to hug him,” Lily said, propping her chin on her hand. “How old was he? Twelve?”

  Owen nodded. “He’d just figured out how to change, and that was one of the boys’ first runs together without Archer. Carter’s been able to shift since he was tiny, you know, so he was well aware of the need to be more careful. Gray was just plain scared to death.” He studied Warren. “He got lucky it was you in the woods that day, and that nobody at the house wasn’t aware of the situation.”

  “I’m glad it turned out the way it did.” Warren sighed. “I hate to leave good food and good company, but tomorrow’s a work day. I’d best be off.”

  Lily scowled as he stood. “I thought you weren’t working.”

  He eyed her, looking as irritated as she felt. “Well, I am. Is that a problem?”

  “Of course not.” She ignored the looks she was getting from around the table, turning her attention to her plate.

  After a brief hesitation, Warren finished his good-byes.

  “I’ll walk you out,” Ben said. “Dad and I will probably take a tour of the grounds tomorrow, and I want to run a couple of things by you first.”

  “Sure.”

  Lily barely drew in a whisper of breath until after the door closed behind them, then she sank against her chair with a sigh that left her feeling, quite literally, deflated. “That was loads of fun.”

  Ainsley was watching her closely. “Is there a problem between you two that we should know about?”

  “No, ma’am. We’re just having some growing pains, I guess you could say. Sorry for the confrontation. And I didn’t mean what I said earlier to come out the way it did. Austin and I were just talking, that’s all.” She looked at her grandparents, feeling her cheeks heat. “We were too busy conversing to think about food, and then it was time to leave.”

  Sarah patted her hand. “It sounds like you had a good time, then.”

  Lily nodded. “It was nice. He’s a nice guy.” She stood. “If you’ll excuse me, I think I’m going to go get into a swimsuit. I need to work off all this food. We’ve been feasting this week and I’m going to end up so round I can’t be rolled out the door if I don’t start exercising.”

  Their quiet murmurs followed her out the door, and she knew she’d probably left her mother and grandparents with a good degree of speculation. She just couldn’t gather the energy to worry too much about it. She also couldn’t sit still another moment, her frustration was growing so quickly. If she didn’t get up and move, she was going to find herself chasing after Warren to have it out with him, and that really, truly wouldn’t help anyone.

  Given how topsy-turvy her week had been thus far, she didn’t know if she was up, down, or sideways. Getting in the pool for a while and burning off some of her tension would help. She hoped. If she couldn’t get her anger and hurt and yes, her jealousy settled down, things could get ugly fast.

  “He didn’t have to act like he took my going out with Austin personally,” she grumbled as she pinned her hair back so she could remove her makeup.

  Her conscience whispered that maybe he had a right to act affronted, given their encounter in the office. But she thought about how close he’d been standing to the vet, how the woman had touched him on the arm, letting her hand linger, and Lily told herself she was being foolish to think Warren felt anything more than general annoyance.

  “It’s time I faced facts. What we did was a stupid mistake, and it’s only still lingering because we didn’t end it the way we should have eight months ago. It didn’t die a natural death, and we just need closure. That’s all.”

  But she couldn’t meet her eyes in the mirror, couldn’t face herself for being the liar she knew that statement made her to be, any more than she could face Warren and have it out with him once and for all.

  “So much for being an adult, huh?” Face grim, she went to her dresser and pulled out her favorite swimsuit, clutching the soft fabric with a sigh. “I’ll talk to him soon. I have to. We need to just ‘break up’ and get it over with. There’s no point in dragging this thing out any longer than we have to. Too many people can get hurt by this thing if we don’t clear the air.”

  She sat on the large cedar chest at the foot of her bed, a soft sob escaping. As much as she’d known there couldn’t be anything permanent between her and Warren, at least not romantically, she hadn’t ever thought she’d have to let him go completely. But sitting in her quiet room, replaying over and over in her head what had happened since she came home, she didn’t see any other way to resolve the problem of them. That awful knowledge absolutely shattered her heart.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Just what the hell do we know about this kid Austin anyways?” Warren’s angry question interrupted Ben’s description of the tour he and Owen were planning.

  Ben blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “Really, what do we know about him? We only ever see him here. He could have a wife, a girlfriend out there somewhere. Kids. A police record. What gives him the right to think he can take her out?”

  A mix of concern and deep, deep amusement settled on Ben’s face, and he shoved his hands in his pockets as he answered. “Well, first, the kid is only a couple of years younger than you, best I recall. He’s been working with his dad for years, probably since he was about sixteen or so. Ainsley’s in a book club with his mother, and one of his brothers is a construction foreman for one of the groups I contract with fairly often. So I think we’d know if he was a bad seed. Second, he apparently has Lily’s approval.”

  “So he has your permission too, is that what you’re saying?” Warren glared at the man who’d been his boss, his mentor, his friend for more than seven years, and then he turned and stalked to the edge of the patio. “Of course he does. She finally comes home, and bam! There’s a charming little prince ready to sweep her off her feet. I knew it. I knew this would happen.”

  “Mind telling me why you’re so upset?” Ben’s voice was quiet as he came to stand beside Warren. “I thought you two were friends. Shouldn’t you be happy to see her starting to have a social life? Or is there something you aren’t telling me?”

  A thread of uncertainty penetrated Warren’s anger and hurt, and he pulled in a calming breath before looking at Ben. “I just wasn’t expecting to get here and have her out on a date.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Ben didn’t believe him for an instant, Warren could tell. He closed his eyes briefly. “What else could there possibly be? I’m just surprised, that’s all.”

  “Maybe you’re jealous.”

  Warren froze, then stared at Ben with shock, certain he’d lost his hearing. “What?”

  “You’re jealous. She went out with someone else. Not you. Do you think we’re really that stupid, Warren?” Ben asked the question kindly, his tone full of sympathy. “You’re not just friends anymore, are you?”

  His throat closed up as he tried to find words, and he had to swallow hard more than once to clear it. “I don’t know what the hell we are, and that’s the God’s honest truth.”

  Ben sighed and sat on the low concrete balustrade in front of them. “I was afraid of that. What a mess.”

  Warren joined him, resting his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. “Yeah. I’m sorry.”

  “Why?”

  That was a question Warren wasn’t expecting. He frowned. “I’d have thought that was obvious. I crossed a boundary with
your daughter.”

  “Against her will?” Ben’s voice was stony. “If you tell me yes, you’re a dead man.”

  Though glaring at an irate father wasn’t probably the best move he could have made, that was what Warren found himself doing. “What the hell kind of question is that? Of course it wasn’t against her will! Geez oh Pete, for fuck’s sake. You think I’d do that?”

  Ben shook his head. “No, I didn’t mean to imply you would. It’s the only thing I can think of that you would owe me an apology for.” He groaned and rubbed his face. “God, I’m not any good at this. I have so much sympathy for my dad right now. He went through this with three girls and survived.”

  “Maybe I should be talking to him.”

  With a laughing snort, Ben agreed. “You absolutely should. Let me go get him.” He made a move as if to stand, but when Warren sent him an appalled look, he sank back down. “Just how involved are you with Lily?”

  How in the world to answer? “Everything changed last fall, after Ainsley got hurt. Lily was worried, and I guess she leaned on me a lot during that. After we knew everything was going to be okay… I don’t know. I guess we’d gotten used to each other’s company more than before, and things happened. Then she left. I didn’t take that very well.” He glanced at Ben. “I didn’t want this. Really, I didn’t. But here it is, and I’ll be damned if I know what to do. I don’t not want it either—a relationship. And I sure as hell didn’t ever expect that to happen again.”

  The older man scratched his jaw. “You had to know she’d be coming home at some point. For someone who didn’t want a relationship, you stuck around like you might. You could have left, you know.”

  “I could have. I’ve had offers. There’s one right now that I’ve been considering.”

  “Well, hell. Where?”

  Warren blew out a breath. “Arizona.”