The Light of Redemption

by Natalie Damschroder

  Just as she had last night.

  The florescent lights flared, the walls of the building leaning in, squeezing, ready to crush me. But Olive’s friendly smile hadn’t faltered. I was so blown. She knew who I was. Knew what I could do, and that it made me Eclipse. But her eyes didn’t have the shine of malice or challenge. Instead, she looked eager, hopeful. Like she wanted to be included in something.

  I bent to roll out the returns bin while I took a long, slow breath to equalize myself. Never assume. The mantra of law enforcement and superheroes everywhere. “I do remember you.” I stacked books and DVDs on the counter. “You were a year behind me, right?”

  She looked pleased. “Yes, that’s right.”

  “And you moved to California? At least, that’s what people said.”

  She shrugged. “California, Texas, Miami. My dad was a contractor, so he chased the construction boom wherever it was rumored to be.”

  “What brings you back to Pilton?” I hit a couple of keys on the computer keyboard and began scanning in the returns.

  “I missed it, that’s all. I went to a two-year college in Florida and stayed down there for a while, but I missed the seasons. Pilton seemed as good a place as any.”

  I nodded. “We’re a great town. How long have you been back?”

  “A few months. But it hasn’t been as easy to reintegrate with the community as I thought it would be. No kids, working from home . . . I pretty much know the cashiers at the grocery store and that’s it.”

  I chuckled with her, but felt bad. She sounded lonely. Except, didn’t she know all about Ruth and Fran? And she walked her dog several times a day. Surely she’d met at least some of her neighbors.

  “Well, the library’s a great place to start. We’ve got several programs for adults every week.” I gave her my standard spiel, minus the kid stuff that wasn’t relevant to her, but I could tell she wasn’t interested in any of it. When I hid my frown by turning away to stack books on the returns cart, she took advantage of the fact that I wasn’t looking at her to drop her bomb.

  “I saw you last night, Harmony. If you need someone to talk to about what happened . . .”

  I froze halfway to setting a copy of Alexander Hamilton on the hold cart. Olive’s offer—threat?—hovered behind me while I tried to assess the subtext.

  I decided to face it head on. I set everything deliberately in its place before I turned to her, dusting my hands on my skirt. No one was nearby. Steve was back, sitting nearby at one of the main tables, but he wore noise-canceling headphones this time, his head bobbing a little as he typed.

  “You saw me where last night?” I kept my tone light, non-accusatory. Because even if she was trying to threaten or blackmail me over my secret identity, I was still the one who’d screwed up. Somehow.

  Trillium, the teenager who was doing storytime today, walked up before Olive could answer me.

  “Harm, could you make an announcement? One of the kids started a game of tag in the children’s room, and I can’t get them to settle down.”

  “Sure.” I activated the PA system. “Attention, Pilton Public Library patrons,” I said in my ‘entice the kids’ voice. “Our weekly storytime is starting in the reading room right now. If you want to help pick which story Trill reads today, you have two minutes to gather quietly in a circle, with your hands folded and lips buttoned!” I heard giggles coming from the back of the building, where a corridor led to the children’s area. Trill shot me a thumbs-up and hurried after them.

  “Sorry about that,” I told Olive. “So—”

  But a woman approached with a stack of books to check out. Olive backed away and said she’d talk to me later, and I had no choice but to let her go. Saturday mornings were too busy for covert conversations at the checkout desk. But that meant I was going to have to stew about it for who knew how long. And what would she be doing in the meantime? Outing me to the media? To the grapevine, which was faster and almost as thorough?

  I had a steady stream of patrons asking for help with the computer, finding items in the catalog or on the shelves, and checking out. And then came the post-storytime flood. It was after noon by the time I had a moment to call the hospital, and I still wasn’t sure how I’d approach it. Should I call from my personal cell phone or the library phone? They probably logged all incoming calls somewhere. Or maybe I was being ridiculous. Maybe no one would think twice about a neighbor calling to check on their friends. That was probably the best approach. Anyone could use the library phone. We had a public line for a reason. I’d just use that.

  My hand shook a little when I dialed. The automated system told me to dial one for patient information, and the woman who answered that line sounded, somehow, both bored and harassed.

  “Hello. I’m wondering if you can tell me how Fran Inalbi is doing? Francis,” I added, thinking that was probably his full first name.

  “Spell the last name.”

  I did, and I could hear fingertips clacking on a keyboard. Then silence, followed by “He’s stable.”

  I waited. That was it? “Did he have to undergo surgery?”

  My voice shook a little, which was unintentional but seemed to tap into some bit of compassion in the woman. “No, he was treated conservatively and has rested comfortably overnight. They’re keeping him for observation at least until this evening.”

  “Okay, thank you.”

  “You have a lovely day.”

  I hung up and braced my palms on the countertop. I shouldn’t feel so relieved. He might not have had surgery because he didn’t need it, but maybe he was simply too fragile to endure it. Stable and resting comfortably didn’t necessarily mean he was out of the woods. But at least my mistake hadn’t led to catastrophe.

  But . . . what should I do now? Was this a signal that my methods had to change? Or even that I should put Eclipse into storage? Something inside me cracked and bled at the idea of never being Eclipse again. Of never using my power to help someone.

  “Help?”

  I jerked my head up, an automatic smile hitting my mouth. Then I had to clamp my teeth together to keep that mouth from falling open.

  It was him.

  Chapter 3

  Conn Parsons. Exactly as everyone had been describing him for weeks. I would definitely be squealing about his eyes later when I told Angie about this. Assuming I ever got away from them. They held my gaze like a tractor beam and were nearly as bright. A pale hazel that bordered on gold-green, they were framed by really dark lashes that created a delicious contrast. They also seemed very, very focused on what they were looking at, which was me at the moment.

  Shaggy hair . . . check. It looked like he needed a cut, but was thick and unruly in the kind of way that made you want to play with it rather than shear it off. His big hands rested on my counter, and they went along with a wide chest and flat stomach shown to perfection by the faint cling of a pale-olive T-shirt. I couldn’t see past his hips, but I knew the mutters about his ass would bear out, judging by the rest of him. And the earring? A simple gold hoop in his left ear, so much a part of him I understood why no one rolled their eyes.

  It was completely ridiculous, but it was almost as if I stood outside myself, observing us and thinking what a perfect match we made. My hair was the same blend of golds toward the darker end of the spectrum, and my eyes were also hazel, trending a little more to the green than his. I didn’t have the startling frame his eyelashes gave him, and definitely didn’t have the equivalent body, but our heights seemed the perfect complement. He wouldn’t have to bend much to kiss—

  OMFG, what was I doing?

  I tried to give him my librarian’s smile again. “Hello. How can I help you today?” Then I realized he’d said the word “help” already so now I sounded stupid to match how I looked. Could this day please be over?

&n
bsp; “Actually, I was wondering if I could help you. It looked like you got bad news or something.”

  So. Not. Fair. Why did his voice have to be deep and gentle but with a rasp that matched the outdoorsman body?

  I scrambled to catch up with the conversation. “Oh. No. Thank you. It was good news, actually. A relief.” I needed something to do with my hands. But that would make me look nervous. I forced myself to rest them on the counter and cocked my head. “So . . . I haven’t seen you here before. Do you need to apply for a library card?”

  He nodded. Thank God. Something normal. I hurried to get a blank form—yep, we still used printed forms—and spun it to face him. “Did you happen to bring proof of residence with you?”

  “Yep.” He reached into his back pocket and withdrew a business envelope that had been neatly opened with a letter opener or knife and handed it to me. It was an electric bill addressed to Connor Parsons, and the address was the Parsons house on Medici Street. Across the face of the envelope it said Welcome to the Neighborhood! in blue letters.

  “So you’re new in town.” I moved to the computer and accessed the new patron application page. I could start entering his information while he filled out the paperwork.

  “Yeah. A couple of weeks ago.” He kept his head down, kept writing. I typed in his name and address, then his phone number after reading it upside down on the paper. The area code wasn’t local, so it was probably a cell phone ported from his original location. My mother had commented more than once about how much easier it used to be to remember where all the area codes were, but it was damned near impossible now. Still, 858 made me think Southern California.

  “Did you move here from San Diego?” I tried. I happened to look away from the computer screen at the right moment to see his shoulders twitch. His hand stilled, then his head came up slowly.

  “Where did you hear that?”

  Uh-oh. His tone wasn’t so friendly anymore. I tried not to shiver. “The area code for your phone.” I pointed at the paper. “Isn’t that a San Diego area code?”

  “Oh.” His arms dropped a little, tension going out of his torso. He tapped the end of the pen on the paper. “Yeah. I didn’t realize you were reading as I wrote.”

  “Sorry.” I smiled. “I’m kind of obsessed with efficiency. I don’t like to make people wait.”

  His lips curled upward, a soft look on him that surprised me. With those eyes that startled me every time I met them, I expected his smile to dazzle. But it evoked more “candlelit room” and less “star bright.”

  I almost hummed my appreciation.

  “Anyway, sorry, I didn’t mean to pry. Welcome to Pilton.”

  “No problem. It’s hardly the most invasive question I’ve had this week.” He quickly checked off the answers to some questions, scrawled his signature across the bottom, and handed me the paper.

  I laughed as I took it. “I bet. We don’t skimp on cliché here. Our gossip tree is robust and healthy.”

  He leaned on the counter and watched me input the rest of his information. “And what have you been hearing about me?”

  I shook my head, my throat clamping for a second, trapping a flutter in my pulse. Was he flirting with me? “I try not to feather the branches.”

  He chuckled. “Fair enough.”

  “What have you heard about me?” Oh, for the love of—had I really just asked him that?

  But he didn’t seem taken aback by it. “That you’re pretty much the only person in town beloved by everyone.”

  “I—” My hands froze in the act of scanning the bar code on his new card. “What?”

  He straightened, eyes twinkling. “Everywhere I go, people seem to think welcoming me means bringing me up to speed on my neighbors. Everyone has little warning tales about some person or another that I might run into, but whenever you come up, it’s all good stuff.”

  My face heated, and I found my hand going to my neck like some eighties historical romance heroine, all flustered by the attentions of a roguish rake.

  “Well, that’s . . . nice.” I didn’t know what else to say.

  “They also said you know about pretty much everyone in town.”

  Hadn’t I just told him I didn’t like to participate in gossip? But it was true, I did know a lot about a lot of people. Even if they didn’t use the library, they went to Millie’s or the coffee shop, and Angie and Sally shared what they knew. Carmichael, who ran Smart’s Salon, filled in a lot of the blanks. But it wasn’t malicious. Most of the time. Most of the time, it was about people caring about what was happening in the lives of those around them.

  “Not everyone,” I told him, thinking about the Inalbis and Olive. And there were people I felt like I knew well, but only by sight because I watched them as Eclipse. “It’s a small town, but we do still have a few thousand people. No one can know everybody.”

  He nodded but didn’t seem to care what I was saying. “I hear you guys have a superhero. Unusual outside big cities.”

  My heart jumped into a new gear, taking my breath for a second. I wanted to deny it, but how stupid was that? I might as well say, “Yeah, that’s me.”

  “I guess you could call her that.” I tried not to wince. False modesty was almost as stupid. “I mean, I haven’t seen her in action myself, but they say she can manipulate light.”

  He nodded again, pursing his lips. “That’s a pretty cool power.”

  I realized I’d been holding his card for a long time and lost track of what I was doing. I checked the screen to make sure it had scanned, then handed it to him. “When you log on to the county’s library system website, you’ll use the PIN you wrote down. You’ll need it here, too, if you use the self-serve kiosk.” I pointed to the computer on a stand a few feet away.

  “Wow, fancy.” He turned back to me, one side of his mouth lifting. “I think I prefer the personal touch.”

  I felt my face heat again, and he noticed because his grin had a hint of satisfaction.

  “I’m surprised such a small library has that kind of extra technology.” He glanced from the kiosk to the bank of computers against the back wall, next to the reference desk where Gladys was currently talking to someone on the phone about grub treatments.

  “Pilton is small, but we’re in one of the larger Ohio counties, and the library system is healthy. Columbus helps feed us tax revenue with commuters and families escaping the big city.”

  “That’s great.” He waggled his card, then reached for his wallet and stowed it. But he didn’t say goodbye, and he didn’t move away from the counter.

  “Is there something I can help you find today?” Most people didn’t come in to get a card without wanting to check something out. But Conn seemed to have more to say, which made me wonder why the heck he was here.

  “Uhhh, DVD section? Do you have Blu-Ray?” This time he did angle away, and I pointed toward the right shelves.

  “DVDs are first, then Blu-Ray. We only have movies on Blu-Ray. If you’re wanting to binge on any TV shows, those are just DVD.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  He walked away, and I finally got to confirm that his ass was, indeed, as worthy of comment as his eyes. It was always nice when guys wore jeans that actually fit.

  I whirled and stepped into the office, feeling as if I’d been holding my breath for fifteen minutes. But why? So he was a good-looking guy. I was hardly the type to swoon over that. Not even over Simon, and okay, Simon wasn’t built like Conn was, but he worked out and had very nice muscles. When my crush was active I got fluttery and breathless when he was around, but there wasn’t the heavy tension in the air that had surrounded me and Conn.

  That tension had nothing to do with attraction. I’d taken that off the table five years ago. No, the heaviness was probably just because I thought he could be Mr. Clothes
line.

  I froze halfway into my desk chair. Wow. I hadn’t thought of Mr. Clothesline once in the entire time we’d been talking. I’d completely forgotten that I suspected it, even when he asked about Eclipse. I leaned to peer between posters on the office windows. Conn was at the end of the Blu-Ray aisle, perusing a handful of disks. Yeah, he was about the right height and build to be the guy from the alley.

  If he actually existed. I was starting to question myself. No one else had talked about a shadowy figure with extraordinary strength. Maybe my mind had exaggerated everything that happened. Even if the guy in the leather jacket and cargo pants was Conn Parsons, he didn’t have to be a superhero. He could have just been a passerby helping me out.

  No, there were still too many questions. If he was just passing by, how did he know what was happening? How did he know Josh was a perpetrator and not a victim? And I had to stop doubting my memory. There was no way a guy with normal strength, even one who hauled stone all day, could have tossed Josh like that. Especially with the precise angle he’d used, which had kept the kid from being hurt. That was something I hadn’t paid much attention to at the time, but whenever I revisited the scene in my head, I knew it had to be intentional.

  I kept watching Conn between the posters as he pulled DVDs off the shelf, read the backs, and either put them back or added them to the stack in his hand. No new enlightenment was achieved. Same strong-looking legs, flexing beneath denim whenever he shifted his weight. Same hard torso hugged by the clingy cotton T-shirt. Same big hands . . . he handled the DVD cases carefully, as if someone aware of his strength and the need to control it. Okay, another tick in the superhero column, albeit not something that anyone would ever call evidence. Control like that wouldn’t be limited to handling delicate objects. Conn carried himself with complete comfort and confidence, but also a level of awareness most people didn’t have. Guys who were aware of their bodies tended to be awkward because of it. Conn was different. Maybe it was only because he did a lot of physical stuff, like landscaping and sports, but maybe it was because he was stronger than normal. And maybe that carried over into the bedroom, where control would have to be even more exquisite. He’d never lose it, even if driven mad with desire. He couldn’t, if losing it meant hurting someone. But there were ways to make it safe for him to let go. Ways—