“I don’t believe it,” she said, staring at the dashboard.
Mark’s face appeared at the passenger window, looking just as stunned as she felt. “It’s working,” he said.
“Yeah.” And not only was it working, it was working better than it ever had before. No hitching, no coughing, no misfiring. The car that only moments ago she was resigned to having to pay to have towed away was now running as smoothly as a Rolls-Royce.
She looked at Mark. “What did he do?”
Mark wore the scowl of one who did not like mysteries and had never before encountered one he couldn’t solve. “Nothing,” he replied.
Quinn closed the hood of the car and came around to her window. “It seems to be working fine now.”
“Yes. Yes, it certainly does! Mr. Quinn—”
“Just Quinn,” he corrected.
“Oh.” His eyes, she noticed, were really more green than hazel. She found herself far too intrigued by the tiny lines that were etched into his flesh near the temples. She made herself concentrate on the situation at hand. “Well, um, Quinn, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this. I mean, let me pay you—”
He shook his head, making a small dismissive sound in his throat. “Not necessary.”
“Well, at least let me give you a ride.” And she smiled. “I guess I know how it feels to be stranded.”
Again he shook his head. “Thanks. But I don’t really know where I’m going yet.”
“Do you mean you don’t even have a place to stay?”
“Not yet.”
Houston hesitated. She couldn’t believe she was about to invite a perfect stranger into her car, much less her home. But that face… It was impossible not to like that face.
She said, “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you let me repay you for your help with a home-cooked meal. You can make motel reservations from my house and call a cab or see about renting a car or whatever it is you want to do.”
She could see he was tempted.
“Home-cooked?”
“Well, more or less.”
“Mom makes good mashed potatoes,” Mark volunteered, which surprised her. A moment ago she could have sworn he didn’t like Quinn.
Quinn looked across the car at Mark. “Well, for mashed potatoes, maybe I’ll accept.”
And then he looked at Houston and smiled. Houston smiled back.
“All right, gentlemen,” she said, feeling absurdly cheerful, “get in the car.”
THE HOUSE Houston had been awarded in the divorce settlement had two mortgages, rusty plumbing and a forty-year-old furnace. It also had all the charm and eccentricity of any turn-of-the-century farmhouse, and Houston loved it absolutely. Buying that house was the only good thing—aside from giving her Mark, of course—that Mike had ever done for her.
It sat in the middle of what once was a huge cornfield, back in the days when farmers planted crops right up to their doorsteps. The cornfield was now a lawn that took an entire day to mow in the summertime, bordered by a former cow meadow on the right and a tangle of rocks and stubble on the left where, apparently, the former farmers had dumped the detritus of the fields they cleared as they went along. On the other side of that rocky, viny hedge were her neighbors the Barrys, who owned Arthur the sheepdog. There were five acres altogether, the perfect place for a boy to grow up.
The house was vaguely Victorian, with a wonderful rocking-chair porch and a turret-type window on the first floor where Houston placed her kitchen table. It had gabled attic windows and sunny bedrooms and a rock fireplace. So the ceilings were a little low, the doors a little drafty and the staircase narrow. The house had character, and that was what Houston loved.
And it was hard not to like a person who agreed with her on that subject.
“This house is incredible,” said Quinn, running his hand over the door frame as they entered. “Are these plank walls?”
“Hmm-hmm. Someday I’d like to strip them down to their natural finish, but there must be thirty coats of paint on them. Back when the house was built it was considered tacky to leave walls unpainted.”
He looked around the living room, the admiration in his eyes unmistakable. “All this wood,” he murmured. “Can you imagine the trees it took to build this house?”
“Quite a few, I imagine. On the other hand, it’s lasted almost a hundred years, and the trees that were cut down to build it would have probably been dead from disease or fire by now.”
He moved around the room, taking in the paintings on the walls, the braided rugs on the floor, the wood chest she used as a coffee table, the lace curtains at the windows. Mark and Houston stood together, watching him, while Houston tried not to wonder whether he was casing the joint. It was the small-town mentality, she supposed; anyone else in the world would have known better than to pick up a stranger on the side of the road and bring him home, but try as she might she simply couldn’t imagine that this stranger meant them harm.
He completed his circuit of the room and said, “Fascinating. Just fascinating. The best of everything this century has to offer, from beginning to end. Do you realize how lucky you are?”
Houston had to smile. “Well, yes, I guess I do. But I never thought about it quite like that before.”
Heloise the cat sauntered in, plumed tail held high, and his eyes widened as he saw her. “Do you live with a cat?”
“Yes.” Houston moved nearer to the cat. “Sorry. Are you allergic?”
“Why are you apologizing?” Quinn turned to the animal, bent down to approximately her level and said politely, “How do you do?”
To Houston’s astonishment, Heloise sat up on her back legs, stretching up as though to get a better look at the stranger. She made a pleasant little mewing sound in her throat and, apparently satisfied with what she saw, dropped to all fours again and walked away.
Quinn straightened up and looked at Houston. “You really are lucky,” he said.
Houston cleared her throat, still trying to rationalize the odd behavior of the cat, and said, “Come into the kitchen, will you? We’ll have some cookies and milk and then I’ll start dinner.”
He looked surprised. “Do you have a cow?”
It took her a moment to understand what he meant, and then Houston laughed. “No, I have a grocery store. We only look bucolic out here. Everything we eat has been processed within an inch of its life.”
And because he looked disappointed, she added, “Well, I do have a vegetable garden in the summer. It’s too early to harvest anything yet, though.”
He nodded and followed her into the kitchen. “You’re obviously not a country boy,” she observed. “Where are you from?”
And then she remembered he had told her that this morning, and it hadn’t sounded like a big city. She took three glasses from the cabinet, then turned to look at him curiously. “Some place in Michigan?”
“Minnesota,” he corrected absently. His eyes were busy taking in everything about her kitchen—refrigerator, stove, countertop appliances—as though he was memorizing every detail. “Clarion.”
Houston set the glasses on the table. “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of it.”
“You wouldn’t have,” he answered. And then he looked at her, his examination of her kitchen complete. “It was good of you to invite me into your home. Not many people would have done that, and I do appreciate it.”
Just when she was beginning to work up a healthy suspicion of him again, he would say something like that, so unexpectedly sincere that as hard as she tried, Houston couldn’t find a way to distrust him.
She poured the milk. “What do you do, Mr.—I mean, Quinn?”
“Do?”
“For a living.”
“He’s a field historian, Mom. He told us that,” Mark put in. “Don’t you remember?” He looked at Quinn. “What is that, exactly?”
As a matter of fact, Quinn did not remember having said that, and he couldn’t believe he’d been so careless. On the other hand, when creating a cover id
entity it was best to tell as few lies as possible—especially to children, who had an uncanny knack for ferreting out an untruth no matter how well it was disguised.
“Actually,” he said, “that’s just a fancy way of saying I observe things about the times and record them for posterity.”
Houston brought a cookie jar shaped like a fat orange cat to the table and removed the lid, gesturing to him to be seated. Her expression was interested. “What kind of things?”
“Everything. Things that future generations will want to know.”
Houston sank into her own chair, tilting the cookie jar toward him. “Have one.”
He did.
“So—what?” She still looked puzzled. “You’re a writer?”
“Among other things.” He bit into the cookie, whose taste was as rich and exotic to him as anything that could have been concocted in the finest of restaurants. The appreciation he felt was unfeigned, but he would, if pressed, confess to relying on it as a distraction tactic. “This is wonderful! What kind is it?”
“Oatmeal.”
“I’ve never tasted anything like it. Did you make them?”
She looked a little skeptical, and he wondered if he’d overdone the flattery. “Only to the extent that I opened the package and poured the contents into the jar. What have you written? Anything I might know?”
“A Social History of the 1950s: Cause and Effect,” he replied without hesitation, reaching for another cookie. “Are you familiar with it?”
Houston shook her head. “Sorry.”
Her skepticism seemed to have vanished—as well it should have. He had told her nothing but the truth. “It’s not widely available.” Also the truth. Although three hundred years from now, it would win awards and be considered required reading in every institute of higher learning on the planet.
“So,” Houston said, relaxing in her chair. “You’re like a sociologist.”
He thought about that for a moment. “Like that,” he agreed. “Yes.”
“And you’re wandering around the countryside as some kind of project for your next book, right? Society in microcosm or something like that? And this morning—the apple tree, the costume…” She grew excited as she came closer to explaining the mystery to herself. “It was all some kind of experiment, wasn’t it? To get our reactions to the bizarre and unexpected when it happens right in our front yard!”
He stared at her. She had single-handedly and with no prompting from him at all invented a cover story superior even to the one he had intended to tell her.
“Amazing,” he murmured. And then he added quickly, “I didn’t think you’d figure it out so soon.”
Houston looked pleased with herself, but Mark asked, “What kind of tools were those you fixed the car with?”
Adults could convince themselves of almost anything, if they wanted to believe it badly enough. Children were a much tougher audience.
Quinn began carefully, “It’s not easy to explain in simple sentences.”
Mark held his gaze. “I’m pretty smart.” The challenge in his tone was unmistakable.
Quinn couldn’t help smiling, at his own gullibility if nothing else. “I can see that.”
Houston looked stern. “Not too smart for your own good, I hope. Finish your milk and get started on your homework.”
Mark obediently did so, and then took on the look of innocence that only a ten-year-old can perfect. “Maybe Mr. Quinn would like to help me.”
Houston looked embarrassed. “Mark, really. I’m sure Mr. Quinn has better things to do, and it’s rude of you to ask.”
Mark ignored the last part of her statement and replied, “Like what? Watching you cook? That’s boring. I can show him my computer.”
Before Houston could interrupt, Quinn said, “I’d like to see it, Mark. And please, it’s just Quinn. What kind of system do you have?”
Mark got up from the table. “AT, forty meg running at twenty megahertz, but I’m building a new board that’ll take it up to 120.”
Quinn followed him. “What kind of processor are you using?”
Mark looked impressed by the question, and he seemed to warm to Quinn in spite of himself. “A386. But I’m hoping with my birthday money I’ll be able to upgrade.”
“What kind of software are you running?”
Houston watched them go, amazed by the change in Mark as he broke into an elaborate description of the databases he had collected. At the door Quinn turned back, smiled and gave her an almost imperceptible wink.
It was settled. She definitely liked him.
Chapter Three
Houston changed into jeans and a long-sleeved white shirt, an outfit that some might mistake for casual working-around-the-house clothes—except that the shirt was carefully tucked in and the cuffs carefully rolled up and Houston never wore white to cook in. It wasn’t that she was trying to impress anyone; it was simply that they were having company for dinner. And one should try to look nice for company.
In addition to the mashed potatoes Mark had promised, she made a meat loaf and a vegetable casserole, and actually caught herself talking out Grandma Perkins’s linen tablecloth before she regained some perspective. She did, however, replace the plastic placemats with chintz ones and put fresh flowers—wildflowers, but flowers nonetheless—on the table.
Her efforts were not wasted on Quinn. The expression on his face was very near to awe as he and Mark entered the kitchen, and Quinn stopped. “I hope you didn’t go to all this trouble on my behalf.”
Houston was ridiculously pleased, which she of course tried to shrug off. “It’s just meat loaf.”
“Meat?” He looked at the dish on the table. “Do you mean—real meat?”
“I haven’t learned how to make any other kind.” And then her expression fell. “Oh. You’re a vegetarian.”
“No.” He was still looking at the meat loaf as though he had never seen anything remotely resembling it before. “It’s just that I don’t get it very often. It’s a real treat for me.” And then he smiled at her. “Everything smells so good. How did you make it?”
Houston tried to hide the little skip in her heart with a laugh. What was it about that smile?
“What, meat loaf?” she said. “I’ll give you the recipe.”
He replied, with every appearance of seriousness, “Thank you. That would make a fascinating addition to my collection.”
Before Houston could decide how to react to that, Mark spoke up excitedly. “Quinn knows how to design computers, Mom. He wrote a program that can automate every electrical system in the house—lights, stereo, TV—”
Houston lifted an eyebrow. “From fixing cars to collecting recipes to designing computer software,” she said. “A man of many talents.”
Quinn acknowledged her compliment with a modest bow of his head and a twinkle in his eye. “I didn’t really write it,” he explained, “just made a few modifications. But I do collect recipes, especially the good ones.”
“Well, let’s sit down and see if this one qualifies. Mark, did you wash your hands?”
Houston hoped she wasn’t making a mistake. Since Mike had left she’d been almost fanatically careful about whom she allowed into their lives. Losing a father—even a low-down worthless scoundrel of a father like Mike—was devastating for a little boy, and Houston had no intention of bringing that kind of pain into his life again.
She had dated once or twice after the divorce, but it had been disastrous: she was awkward and the men were trying too hard and no one had any fun. Dating was far more trouble than it was worth, so she’d abandoned the effort. She had a few male friends from school, but Mark didn’t like any of them. Sometimes she worried about the lack of a strong male role model in his life, but her standards for that position were high and she made no compromises.
Not, of course, that this man Quinn qualified either as a date or a friend—she had literally picked him up on the street, after all—and certainly not as a father figure for her so
n. But he was a stranger, and Mark was beginning to like him, and whatever else he might be, Quinn was only here for dinner.
As she served his plate, Houston asked, “How long are you planning to stay in our area?”
“I’ll stay as long as it takes.”
“Your project,” she pressed. “It’s fully funded?”
“Of course.” He regarded his plate with a pleasured anticipation Houston couldn’t help but find flattering.
Houston served Mark’s plate. “By a university?”
He glanced at her as though he didn’t, for a moment, understand what she meant. Then he said, “Oh—no, not exactly. It’s more privately funded.”
Houston didn’t feel as though she could be any more specific without seeming inexcusably nosy about his financial affairs. She said, “Because I was thinking, if you’re going to be doing your research in this area, it might make more sense for you to look for a small house or an apartment to rent in town than to try to work out of a motel room.”
“That’s a good idea,” Quinn said.
But he really looked more interested in the meal on his plate than in accommodations for the future. Houston picked up her fork. Mark dug in, but Quinn hesitated, glancing around as though looking for something.
Houston took a bite of potatoes, swallowed and touched her lips with her napkin. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” he said, and picked up his fork. “Nothing. I was just wondering—where’s the cat?”
Houston lifted an eyebrow. “She generally makes her own dinner arrangements.”
“Oh.” Apparently satisfied, he picked up his fork.
“What about the garage?” Mark asked suddenly.
“What about it, sweetheart?”
Houston was still watching Quinn, and she couldn’t help being gratified by the obvious pleasure he took in his meal. It was only meat loaf, but he savored each bit as though it was a completely original dining experience, as though he had never experienced anything remotely resembling the taste and wanted to commit each flavor to memory forever.
“Why can’t he live there?”
The former owners of the house had built a small apartment over the garage. For a short time after the divorce, Houston had supplemented her income by renting it out to students from the junior college until she come home one afternoon and detected the fragrant aroma of pot in the air. The apartment had remained empty since then.
Quinn's Way Page 3
