Sunshine and the Shadowmaster

by Christine Rimmer

  Lightly, through the glass, Heather touched the image of her former husband. He had been a tender, gentle boy. And a good man. And she would always love him.

  But somehow, over the past couple of months, most of the pain of thinking about him had faded. There were only sweet memories of the happiness they’d shared. And sadness that his life had been so brief.

  Heather’s eyes filled as she stared musingly down at Jason Lee’s face. A single tear got away from her, trickling down her nose to fall on the glass, in the middle of the ruffles on Jason Lee’s rented tux.

  Lucas, standing in the arch that led to the dining room, was close enough to watch that tear fall. He waited, barely breathing, as Heather wiped it away with the hem of her shirt. Then he turned on silent feet and went back up the stairs he’d just come down.

  * * *

  That evening, Lucas didn’t emerge from his room until Heather called him to dinner. When the food had been cleared away, he and Mark got out Jason, Sr.’s old chess set and played, for two hours. Then Mark headed for the shower. As soon as the boy was in the bathroom, Heather suggested an evening walk, just Lucas and herself.

  “I really should try to get in a couple of more hours tonight,” Lucas said.

  But Heather persisted, mindful of her objective that they should spend time together.

  Finally Lucas relented. They told Mark where they were going and walked down to where Heather’s street met the long and meandering Rambling Lane. There they turned north, and strolled past her aunt Delilah’s old house, where Uncle Jack and Aunt Olivia lived now. They went on from there, almost to the point where they’d have come out on Highway 49.

  Lucas seemed withdrawn, so Heather filled the silence with chatter, reporting on the meeting with her aunts and the wedding dress that had belonged to her grandmother. She told him of how Lily had shouted at her and then hugged her and then extracted a promise that she’d work for two more days.

  “And in case you didn’t notice that the living room is almost bare, I started packing,” she announced proudly.

  “Oh?” he asked. “And what did you pack?”

  She shot him a look, thinking he sounded a little sarcastic and wondering what could be going through that brilliant, bewildering mind of his.

  She kept her tone carefully light. “Well, not a lot, but I did break the ice.” Lucas seemed to be walking faster all of a sudden. She quickened her own pace to keep up. “I took care of the books and knickknacks in the dining room and living room. And a bunch of pictures.”

  “Great.”

  “Lucas?” She pulled on his arm then, until he stopped on the side of the road beneath the drooping branches of a birch tree.

  He looked down at her questioningly through the growing shadows of approaching twilight. “What is it?”

  “Is...something wrong?”

  He took just a fraction too long before he answered, “No. Nothing.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Now, let’s get back. I really want to rough out a few more things before I knock off for the night.”

  Back at the house, Lucas disappeared immediately. Heather watched television with Mark for a while, then both of them called it a night.

  Heather climbed the stairs and found herself hovering in front of Lucas’s door as she had the night before. She waited, shuffling her feet shamelessly, hoping he would hear and come to the door without her having to knock.

  But then she realized she was being ridiculous. She tapped twice. “Lucas?”

  She waited and was almost going to knock again when the door opened and he was standing there, looking studious in his reading glasses. His hair was mussed, as if he’d dug his fingers through it while he was thinking.

  “What is it?”

  She forced a shaky smile. He made it so difficult sometimes. But she wouldn’t give up. “Just stopped by to say good-night.”

  He was frowning, but then he seemed to relax a little. He took off his glasses. “Well, all right. Good night, Heather.”

  He wasn’t helping her out one bit here. She sighed. “I forgot to ask. Did you get your stuff today?”

  “My office equipment?” He stepped back a little. “Take a look.”

  She peeked around him and scanned the room, which now contained two new lamps, a large bleached-oak desk, a swivel chair and a full-size computer, complete with printer. Norma Conley’s watercolors were gone from the walls and in their place were a large planning calendar and two big bulletin boards. There was also a bookcase with several reference books in it.

  “Looks great,” she told him.

  He said nothing.

  “Now you can really get some work done.”

  He shrugged.

  She wondered what she was doing standing at the end of the landing, casting about desperately for something—anything—to say to the man she was going to marry in six days’ time. She backed up a little. It was time to go.

  “Well. I suppose I ought to leave you alone so you can work.”

  He had another of those strange looks on his face. He had so many strange looks. He was a truly unfathomable man.

  “Well,” she said again, and thought that she said well much too much when she was around him. “Good night.”

  She started to turn. But his hand shot out and closed around her arm. He tugged her gently and the next thing she knew she was in his arms.

  “Oh!” She stared up at him, bewildered, trying not to notice how good and solid and warm he felt, trying not to think about how lovely he smelled, or the tenderly cruel shape of his mouth.

  He lowered that mouth and brushed it across hers. “Good night, Heather.”

  Without another word, he backed away and closed the door, leaving her standing there, touching her lips with hesitant fingers, sure of only one thing: she wished that the kiss had lasted longer than it had.

  * * *

  By the next morning, when Heather went to work at Lily’s, the news of her upcoming marriage to Lucas was all over town.

  “My dear, are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Nellie Anderson wanted to know when she and Linda Lou Beardsly dropped in for identical sandwiches and glasses of iceless ice tea.

  “About what, Mrs. Anderson?”

  “Oh, don’t play coy with us. You know what. Marrying Lucas Drury. Surely you know his history.”

  “Of course I know all about Lucas, Mrs. Anderson. And I know exactly what I’m doing.”

  “Well, we certainly hope so.” Nellie and Linda Lou exchanged extremely doubtful glances, but then Nellie relented marginally. “At least you look somewhat better today than you have recently.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Anderson.” Heather turned away to put their order in.

  Behind her, she heard them whispering. She left them to it, thinking that there were a few things about North Magdalene she wouldn’t miss one bit.

  A little before the end of Heather’s shift, Rocky Collins grew maudlin.

  “Aw, Sunshine. How c’n you leave us? We can’t live without you. You’re the heart of this damn place.”

  “Rocky, I’m not dying. I’m just moving to Monterey.”

  “Tha’s too far. Don’ do it.” He wove on his stool a little.

  “That does it. I’m making you some toast.” Heather turned and popped two pieces of bread into the toaster. “You need something in your stomach.”

  Rocky belched. “Skip the toas’. I got plenny in my stomach.”

  “Plenty of Cuervo Eighteen Hundred,” Tim Brown muttered.

  Rocky hooted with laughter. “Cuervo Eighteen Hundred. Don’t I wish. You know I can’t afford the best stuff. I ain’t no millionaire. And I mean it, Sunshine, skip the toas’.”

  “I’ll put grape jelly on it, just like you like it.”

  “Aw, c’mon. Yer makin’ me cry. Who’s gonna butter my toast for me? Who’s gonna put the jelly right out to the corners? Who’s gonna do that, huh, if you’re gone?”

  “Rocky, cut it out. I�
��m serious. Or I’m going to have to ask you to go on home.”

  Rocky wailed, then grabbed Heather’s hand. “Sunshine, I’m beggin’ you. Don’ do it.”

  “Aw, get wise, Rocky,” Roger McCleb advised just as Heather managed to pull her hand free of Rocky’s sweaty grip. “Sunshine’s a waitress and that guy is a gazzillionaire. She’d be a fool not to marry him. This is her big chance.”

  “Sunshine wouldn’t marry someone jus’ ‘cause he was rich,” Rocky whined. “Would ya, Sunshine?”

  Just then the toast popped up. Heather spread the butter and jelly on it and set it in front of him.

  “Well, would ya?” Rocky asked.

  Heather sighed and answered wearily, “No, Rocky, I would never marry a man just because he was rich.”

  Right then, Rocky’s face turned an unhealthier color than usual. Sweat broke out on his forehead. He fell all over himself agreeing with her. “Aw, naw, Sunshine. Now, I know that. You got a heart of pure gold, and that’s the God’s truth.” He looked down at his toast and let out a strangled sound that Heather assumed was meant to indicate delight. “And look at this toas’. Just the way I like it. Yessiree.” He glanced up again, but only long enough to cast a frantic, furtive look beyond Heather’s shoulder. Then he bent his head over his plate and started shoving the toast into his mouth as if he was starved.

  Heather looked over her shoulder in the direction of Rocky’s glance, toward the door to the street. Lucas was standing there.

  She also noticed that everyone in the place seemed to have stopped breathing. Even Nellie Anderson had nothing to say.

  Heather looked at the clock. Almost quitting time. As soon as she was done for the day, she and Lucas were going over to the clinic for their blood tests.

  She cast a quick prayer toward heaven that Lucas hadn’t heard her last remark to Rocky. The idea was for him to get to like it in North Magdalene. That was unlikely to happen if he learned that most folks in town considered him a dangerous character with nothing going for him but his bank account.

  She beamed him a thousand-watt smile. “Be ready in a sec.”

  “What was that all about?” Lucas demanded when they were settled into the plush leather seats of his car for the drive to the medical clinic a few miles outside of town.

  “Um, what?” she asked, feeling both idiotic and dishonest at the same time.

  “That crack you made about not marrying a man for his money.”

  “Oh,” she said, “it wasn’t anything, really. Just a remark.”

  “I know it was a remark, Heather. But what made you say it?”

  “Well, I...” She resigned herself to being honest. “It’s not a big deal. I’m just getting a little flack, that’s all.”

  “For what?”

  “For, um, marrying you.”

  He took a moment to digest that news, then asked, “Flack from who?”

  “My customers.”

  He let out a patient breath of air. “Which customers are we talking about here, specifically?”

  Most of them, she thought. But she said, “Well, all that happened was that Roger McCleb said that I’m marrying you for your money. And Rocky said I wouldn’t do a thing like that, but then he looked at me and asked, ‘Would you?’ And I said no, I wouldn’t. And that was when you came in.”

  Lucas looked at her some more, as if awaiting a punch line. Then he asked, “That was all?”

  “I said it wasn’t a big deal.”

  “Rocky. That’s Rocky Collins, right?”

  “Right.”

  “As I remember, he was always a big drinker.”

  “He still is.”

  “His face turned green when he saw me.”

  “It was already green. Like you said, he drinks too much.”

  “You’re missing the point, Heather. I’m saying he looked scared to death of me.”

  Heather opened her purse for no reason, looked in it and shut it again, wishing with all her heart that this conversation would just die a natural death.

  “Heather, I said he looked scared of me.”

  “Yes, I suppose. Maybe he was. Just a little.”

  “Why would he be scared of me?”

  She tried to think of a gentle way to say it. “Well, because nobody knows what you might do.”

  “I see. Because I’ve done such awful things in my life, is that it?”

  “Well, yes. They don’t know the real you.”

  “The real me?”

  “Right. All they know about you is, um...” She realized she was getting into deeper trouble with every word she said and so she let the sentence fade away unfinished.

  Lucas revived it. “...that I stabbed my father when I was seven, never got along with anyone while I was growing up and then, in my twenties, almost went to prison for assault and battery?”

  What could she say? “Well, yes. More or less, that’s about it.”

  “More or less? Which one?”

  She slanted him a pained glance. “Well, you left out the books you write.”

  “They don’t approve of my books?”

  “Well, some of them don’t. But I told you that. Remember how I said Linda Lou Beardsly—”

  “—hates herself, but won’t stop reading them.”

  “Right.”

  There was silence. Heather hoped Lucas wasn’t offended. She really did want him to discover the goodness at the heart of most people in North Magdalene—and she didn’t want him going after Roger or Rocky.

  She decided she ought to point this out, “But not Roger or Rocky.”

  “Not Roger or Rocky what?”

  “They don’t have problems with your books. Roger and Rocky couldn’t care less about your books. I don’t think either of them has read a book on purpose since they got out of high school.”

  Lucas started up the car at last. But then, instead of driving away, he draped an arm over the steering wheel and turned to face her again. “Look. Do you want me to have a little talk with those two or something?”

  Heather stifled a groan. “No. Please. Just let it be. They mean well, they really do.”

  “Right.” Lucas shook his head, then muttered under his breath, “I can’t wait to get out of this place.” He pulled the car away from the curb.

  Heather sank deeper into the luxurious seat and tried to pretend she hadn’t heard his last remark. But then, as she pondered the conversation, Heather couldn’t help wondering if maybe what she’d said in the restaurant had hit a nerve with him. Lucas was a wealthy man. And he was marrying her because of the baby, not because he loved her or longed to share his life with her. Maybe he resented the idea that she’d now have a wife’s claim on all he owned.

  When they’d pulled into the small lot of the clinic and Lucas had parked the car, she turned to him. “Lucas, I really wouldn’t marry a man because he was rich, you know?”

  “I know that,” he said without hesitation.

  Those words warmed her. She ventured more. “In fact, if you want, we can put together a prenuptial agreement. That would be fine with me.”

  “Oh, really?” He looked distant and impossible to reach again. “And what would this agreement say?”

  “That everything you have stays yours, that’s all.”

  “And what about you? What about what you have?”

  She hadn’t thought about that.

  “Well?” Lucas prompted.

  Heather was confused. “I don’t know. I wasn’t really thinking about what I have.”

  “Maybe you should.”

  “Well, all right.” He just looked at her, so she assumed he was waiting for her to continue. Gamely she did. “I’m nowhere near being rich, but I have several thousand in savings, mostly the profits from the sale of the house Jason Lee and I were buying before Norma died and left us her house. And then there’s the insurance. Jason Lee was a big believer in insurance.” She smiled a little, thinking of him. “So I get money every month from that. And there’s a l
ittle from the county and then the Conley house itself.” She smiled wider. “Well, I guess I’ve got more than I realized, now that I think about it.”

  “Good. So you’re not marrying me for my money. You know it and I know it. Let’s cut the prenuptial agreement talk and do what we came here to do.” He leaned on his door and pushed it open.

  Heather grabbed his arm. “Lucas. Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t just...walk out on a person like that.”

  “We’re here to get blood tests, aren’t we?”

  “Well, of course we are. But—”

  “But what?”

  “But we were talking.”

  “About how you don’t need my money. I know. And I thought it was settled. You don’t need my money and I don’t need yours. And neither of us really wants any prenuptial agreement.”

  “Yes, that’s right. That’s how I feel.”

  “Good. Then was there something more you wanted to say?”

  “Well, no. I just, um...”

  “What?”

  “Are you...mad at me for some reason?”

  “No.”

  “But you act like you are.”

  “Well, I’m not. Now let’s go.”

  She stared at him for a moment more, wondering if she would ever come to understand him, and beginning to fear his heart and mind would forever be closed to her. Then she shrugged and let go of his arm. “All right. Let’s go.”

  He left the car. She got out, too, and followed him into the building.

  Chapter Fifteen

  That night was the same as the previous one. Lucas spent some time with Mark, but seemed preoccupied and distant whenever Heather tried to start a conversation with him. He was shut up in his room when she went to bed. And she was feeling just discouraged and irritated enough with him that she didn’t go to his door again. She could get by just fine, she decided sourly, without her nightly pat on the head.

  But she woke the next morning ready to try again. She was, after all, born a Jones. And a Jones never gave up.

  When she arrived home that afternoon, Lucas was upstairs. She left him alone and did some more packing. But then, after dinner, when Mark went to Marnie’s to watch a rented video, Heather insisted Lucas spend the evening with her.