“Mama?”
Taylor was awake, backing down off the couch, toddling over to Amy and unceremoniously plunking down on her stomach. As if it was the most natural thing in the world to find her mommy on the floor covered in popcorn, Taylor looked around, then grabbed some kernels and stuffed them in her mouth.
Quint pushed the bowl closer to the two of them, then leaned closer and brushed at Amy’s hair. She could feel kernels of popcorn trickle out of her hair. “Fifty. Not even close.”
“In time.”
“Yes, well, you’ve got twenty years and I’ve got a day, not even that.”
“Well, old or not, you’re the one cleaning up this mess,” she said, pushing up until Taylor was in her lap, and the popcorn was falling off her. “You did it. You clean it.” She grabbed a handful of popcorn off the floor by her and tossed it at Quint. Taylor squealed when Quint ducked the bulk of the kernels, then picked up a tiny handful and tossed it up in the air.
Quint scooped up a handful of popcorn, but stopped when the baby started crying. “Now see what you’ve done,” he said to Amy with a grin.
“What I’ve done?” she said. “He’s all yours.”
“Oh, no, lady, I think I’ll pick up popcorn. You do the walking and jiggling and pacifier retrieval.”
“Chicken,” she muttered as she twisted to one side to set Taylor on the floor before she stood to go to get Travis. But before she could get there, Quint passed her and scooped him up. With the ease of a pro, he had the baby on his tummy, over his forearm, nestled like a football under his arm. “No one calls me a chicken, lady,” he murmured. “Not even you.”
Without warning there was light, and Amy blinked at the brightness of the overhead fixture that bathed the room in a yellow glow. Taylor clapped, Travis was shocked into silence for a moment and Quint was right in front of Amy. The shadows had made things a bit easier, blurring the lines of his face, the look in his eyes. It had been easy to tease him then. Seeing that crooked grin on his face, the way his mustache twitched with humor, the crinkling of his eyes, shadows were definitely better.
“Great,” she murmured. “We can finally see what we’re doing.”
He glanced at the floor where Taylor sat in the middle of the popcorn mess. “Yes, everything,” he murmured as his gaze met hers. Then Travis started to cry again, and Quint shrugged. “I need to walk, so I’ll go and put out the candles.”
He walked off with Travis and the crying echoed after him. Taylor scrunched the popcorn and Amy sank down by her. “In the bowl,” she said, picking up a handful of popcorn and putting it in the bowl. Taylor looked at her, reached in the bowl and took out a handful of her own which she proceeded to let trickle out of her fingers back onto the floor.
“Okay, play with it for a while,” Amy said and got to her feet. She looked around, crossed to the bookshelves and flipped on the television. No matter what she did, she couldn’t get anything except a blue screen. Giving up, she turned it off, then saw the radio. She turned it on, fiddled with the tuner and finally found news.
She sat back on the couch, watching Taylor and listening to the updates on the storm. Rain and more rain. Wind. Flooding. Electrical outages. And it was forecast to keep up through New Year’s Day. She reached for the phone again, dialed the loft and got the same message, then hit End.
Quint came back into the room with a quiet Travis. “No luck?” he asked when he saw her with the phone in her hand.
“No, it doesn’t even try to connect.” He crossed with Travis on his arm, and looked down at Taylor and the mess around her. “She’s having fun with it,” Amy said.
“She wouldn’t let you pick it up, would she?”
She shook her head. “Bingo.”
“Well, it’s a cheap, safe toy.”
“And I’m assuming that you have a vacuum cleaner around here?”
“I’m sure we do.”
“Then it’s perfect.”
He was trying to ease Travis off his arm and onto his chest, but it didn’t work; the baby stirred, his face puckered and he started to cry again. It didn’t sound as if his heart was in it, but he wasn’t going to settle.
Quint stood as a song started on the radio, an old song about fate and love. “Music…maybe dancing would help?” Quint murmured.
Taylor was on her feet before he got the last word out of his mouth. “Dance! Oh, spin! Mama?” she said, coming at Amy with her arms wide open to be picked up.
Amy stood and picked up Taylor. “Sure, sweetie, spin.”
Quint had the baby back in position, tummy-down on his arm. “What does she want?”
“She thinks you were serious about dancing. So she wants to spin. That’s how we dance.”
Amy let Taylor wrap her tiny legs around her waist, then hugged her with one hand, and held her hand with the other. Together, they twirled around the room to the music, with Taylor laughing with delight. She looked back and saw Quint dancing with Travis, but going slower, with large, lazy circles accompanied by some jiggling. The crying was gone, the music was all around and the storm outside was forgotten.
When the song finally ended, Amy all but fell back onto the couch, hugging Taylor to her, laughing. “This was like a New Year’s ball.” She tickled Taylor. “And you could be the princess of spinning.”
Quint crossed to the radio and turned it down when the news came on, then came over to sink down on the couch. Taylor started to bounce up and down on her lap. “More spin!”
“In a minute, sweetie,” she said, gasping from breathlessness and laughter.
She looked at Quint. “Spin? Peeze. Pop spin?”
Amy rested her head against the back of the couch, and shifted to look at Quint. He was grinning, easing a sound-asleep Travis onto his chest as he slid lower on the couch. “I do popcorn, not spinning,” he said on a chuckle. “Popcorn’s easier.”
“Dumping it on me is the easy part,” Amy murmured.
That brought a crinkling of his eyes. “Oh, lady, you’re so right.”
Taylor crawled off Amy and would have climbed into Quint’s lap, so Quint twisted toward Amy, slid Travis over to her and turned to pull Taylor onto his lap.
“Nice move,” Amy said.
“That’s high praise, coming from the master,” he said, tickling Taylor.
“The master?” She laid Travis on her chest and sank lower on the couch. “Not quite.”
“Spin!” Taylor crawled higher on Quint, putting her little hands on either side of his face. “Peeze. Pop, peeze.”
“Popcorn?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Spin.”
“How about you spin the bear?” he suggested.
She scrambled back and off his lap, and ran to grab the bear from where she’d left it. She had it by its leg, then turned and spotted the popcorn. She crossed to the mess, plopped down in the middle of it, and picking up a handful of popcorn, she pushed it against the bear’s sewn mouth.
“Nice move again,” Amy murmured. “Now if you could only get her to pick up that mess.”
“That’s a thought,” he murmured, then slipped down off the couch onto the floor. He reached for the empty popcorn bowl and picked up a handful. “Wow, look at this,” he said, and Taylor turned. He let the popcorn fall one kernel at a time out of his hand and down into the bowl. “Wow, is that great?”
Taylor watched him for a moment, then came closer, dropping the bear on the floor. She picked up a single kernel, looked at Quint, then dropped it in the bowl. “Way to go, girlie,” he said with a grin. “How about another one?”
Before long Quint moved back, using the couch as support while he watched the little girl plunk one kernel after the other into the bowl.
“Oh, that was a beautiful thing to behold,” Amy murmured.
“I wish I could claim it as my idea, but I think it started with Tom Sawyer painting that fence. Make a kid think you’re having fun, and they want to do it. Now, I can just sit back and watch.”
S
he chuckled. “If you keep this up, I’ll start thinking you’ve been lying.”
“I don’t lie,” he said softly.
“Okay, what do you call that thing with the suit? ‘It’s off the rack,’ you said. Sure.”
“Okay, I readjusted the facts.”
She chuckled at that. “The same way you did about kids. You readjusted to hide the fact that you’re terrific with kids and they think you’re terrific.”
“Let’s not get carried away,” he muttered and got to his feet to cross to the hearth and coax the fire to new life with more wood.
Taylor lost interest in the popcorn and came over to the couch, climbing up by Amy and putting her head on her lap. Amy smoothed her hair softly, but watched Quint crouching in front of the hearth, holding his hands out to the warmth. If she closed her eyes, she could almost believe this was a real family. Her, Taylor, the baby. She closed her eyes for real, blocking out the sight of Quint. But he was in the picture. Part of it. A huge part of it.
That confusion was coming back, blotting out the soft comfort that had begun to grow in the room. She glanced down at Taylor and saw she was fast asleep. Travis was lying on her stomach sucking on his pacifier. Then she looked at Quint. The ease and peace she felt with the children dissolved, and she felt her whole being tense. She saw the way his shoulders tested the cotton of his shirt, the way he put the poker on the hearth, then raked his fingers through his hair before he stood and turned to her.
The man could tip her world with a word or a look. And that look was there now, making her tense. He studied her intently for what seemed forever before he said, “What are you thinking about?”
She shrugged, looking away from him and down at the babies. She wasn’t going to share her thoughts with him. That level of intimacy didn’t belong here, not with him. That was treacherous territory, so she generalized enough to keep her real thoughts out of it. “Just how strange life can be. About the new year. Life. What about you?”
He shook his head and raked his fingers through his hair. “No quid pro quo on this,” he muttered.
“That’s not fair,” she said.
“Life isn’t fair.”
She wouldn’t argue with that.
He asked, “What now?”
That same question echoed in her. What now? But her thoughts had nothing to do with the next hour or even the next day. Or why she wanted to have him sit by her again and just be there. Suddenly, the life she thought she had a vision of wasn’t there either. That life with her and Taylor, just the two of them, had blurred and twisted, leaving a gaping hole in it. And she knew that hole wasn’t the one left by Rob’s death.
She didn’t understand, and she swallowed hard, trying to ease a tightness that was creeping into her throat. “I…I don’t know,” she said with complete honesty. She didn’t have a clue what her life would be like when she walked away from here, when Travis went wherever he’d go, or when Quint was just an acquaintance at work again.
He came closer, towering over her. “Can we put the kids down now, or is it too early?”
The kids? Of course. He wasn’t thinking about life and why it suddenly didn’t make any sense. “No, it’s not too early.” She glanced at the clock on the mantel, shocked to see that it was almost ten o’clock.
“Okay,” he said as he gently picked up a sleeping Taylor. “Can you get Travis?”
“Sure, I just hope he doesn’t start crying again.” She eased up, maneuvering the boy into her arms, and even though he started making loud sucking sounds on his pacifier, he didn’t waken. She eased to her feet, then followed Quint through the house and back to her room. The light was on in there, and it was only a few minutes before Quint had Taylor settled on the bed. She placed Travis on the bed, as well, surrounded by pillows.
She tugged a receiving blanket over the baby and realized how tiny and vulnerable he looked, and how much she’d grown to care about him in the short time he’d been with her. She leaned down, brushed a kiss on his cheek, then stood back. She couldn’t keep him, she knew that, but it didn’t stop her from aching at the prospect of handing him over to someone else. She took an unsteady breath, startled when Quint touched her on the shoulder.
“Don’t do this to yourself,” he whispered near her ear.
“Do what?” she asked, not taking her eyes off the baby.
“Get so attached to him.” Quint reached to touch the baby’s cheek, and she trembled, feeling a sense of impending loss so oppressive she wondered how she could breathe. She turned away from the bed and walked out of the room without a clue where she was going to go.
Chapter Thirteen
Quint had decided to leave Amy alone. He’d looked at her across the room when he’d been fixing the fire, and known that he had to leave her alone. Every atom in his being responded to her. And every atom in his being knew that it was wrong.
He followed her out of the bedroom and almost bumped into her. She’d stopped in the middle of the hallway, just standing there, hugging her arms around herself and he could see her trembling. Everything in him wanted to touch her and hold her, but he kept his distance.
“You know Travis has to go…either to the police or back to his mother.”
“Of course,” she said, rubbing the flats of her hands on her arms as if trying to find some warmth in the world. “I don’t need you to remind me of that.”
He didn’t know what to say. “Of course you don’t.”
She took a breath. “Did…did you turn on the intercom?”
“It’s on.”
“I need to get the phone. I left it in the den.”
“I’ll get it for—”
She cut him off with a vague wave of her hand as she headed back toward the kitchen. “I’ll do it,” she said without looking back at him.
He was going to do the smart thing and go to his room, close the door and get through the night. But he didn’t. He couldn’t get that sight of her trembling out of his mind, and he went after her. By the time he caught up to her, she was by the couch picking up the phone.
“Anyone you want to call is either washed out or treading water,” he said.
He knew he’d startled her when the phone almost slipped out of her hand. But she caught it and pulled it to her chest, as if protecting it. “I wasn’t going to call anyone,” she said in a low voice. “But it needs to be charged. The battery’s low. You can charge it, can’t you? If she calls, she has to be able to get through.”
He didn’t have to ask who “she” was. “You said the lines are full, so she probably can’t get through right now anyway. Meanwhile, I’ve got a charger for it in my room. No problem.”
“Good,” she said, brushing past him to go through the kitchen.
He felt as if he was playing catch-up with her, turning and heading off again, catching up to her in the hallway to the room where the kids were sleeping. She paused long enough to glance inside at the children, then continued down to his room, one more door down and on the opposite side of the hallway.
She was inside before he got there, and as he went in the door, he saw her standing in the middle of the dark room, the room he’d had since he was a boy, waiting for him. He flipped on the light, then crossed to the long, low dresser that sat under the shuttered windows on the back wall. He turned and held out his hand to Amy for the phone. She dropped it in his hand, and he put it in the desk charger.
“Safe and sound and charging just…” His voice trailed off as he turned and found her looking around the room. Her gaze skimmed over the bed his dad had made out of trees from the property, with peeled-trunk posters at all four corners, the mussed linen of sheets and the patchwork quilt his mother had made. The shelves held everything from yearbooks to model planes to comics. Not exactly a mature room, but a room that was comfortable for him when he returned home.
“I told you, my mother tends to keep rooms the way they were back in the dark ages,” he said.
She glanced at him. “I’d love it
if Taylor someday could go back home and find the room she grew up in.”
She was twisting her wedding ring nervously and it hit him just how much she’d lost when her husband died, little things and big things. Gone. And he grieved for it for her. From the first, he’d been fighting his attraction to Amy, knowing how wrong it was, how out of time it was. He could manage dating. He could manage that just fine. But what was going on now was beyond anything that mundane and shallow. Grief for her. Needing to ease her pain, needing to believe that someday she’d have what she wanted.
She looked past him at the phone lying on the dresser. “If it’s charging can you still get calls?”
“Sure.” She never stopped twisting the ring. “No problem. And I’ve got voice mail. We’re covered.”
“Good…good.”
There was a faint whimper over the intercom and Amy turned immediately toward the speaker by the door. There was another soft sound, and she headed out of the room.
When she left, he felt a huge amount of tension leave with her. The room’s air became more breathable, and it seemed to expand. There was another sound on the intercom, Amy’s voice, a whisper that was barely audible.
“It’s okay, love, it’s okay,” soft and gentle, and whatever relief he’d felt at her going shattered at the sounds on the intercom. “I’m here. You’re okay.” Words he wanted to say to her. “Shhhh, you’re fine.”
He stared at the intercom and could almost see Amy bending over the children, soothing and comforting them when she needed it so much herself. The lights flickered, settled into a steady glow again, then flickered and went out completely. There was total silence all around, then he turned to go to Amy. He went out the door, took two steps and ran right into softness and heat and the scent of roses. Amy.
He reached out, and his hands found her, her arms, holding her, keeping her steady, and she was holding him. Safe. And for that moment in the dark, he truly thought that he could make the world right for her. That he could take away her pain. That he could be there for her.
In some way she was doing that for him. She was settling his world, taking away a void that seemed to surround him, and she was there.
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