“I know. Oy. To lose your parents so young leaves a scar. You have always lived for the moment. But…” Irina stopped for a moment. “My poor Tatiana, so young… Well.” She slammed the knife down on the kernels.
“It’s complicated, Bushka.”
“Sometimes life is. Sometimes, not so much. That never changes.” Chop, chop, the rhythm of the knife against the cutting board invited Sophie to share.
Sophie rolled against the dough, making it as thin as she could without breaking it. “As for the man?” Thinking of Judah, an enigma definitely wrapped in a riddle as the old saying went, she laughed. “He’s temporary. There’s absolutely no future where he’s concerned, but—oh, shoot.” She laughed again, wryly. “Oh, Bushka, it’s so darned complicated!”
“So you keep saying, my darling. Like the Irish and their love of stories, complications are part of our Russian nature. We thrive on them.” Irina scooped up the nut pieces by the handful and tossed them into a cream-and-blue striped bowl. “But what you are telling me seems not so complicated. I don’t understand what is different about your situation with this temporary man. You have always preferred temporary, my Sophie.”
Sophie laid down the rolling pin. Scooting a three-legged stool over to the table, she sat on it, curling her feet under its rungs as she had during the years she’d lived with her grandmother after the death of her parents.
Eight years old, she’d come to live with Irina Romanov. Irina’s love for the lost child Sophie had been triumphed over their shared loss and swamping grief. Only as an adult had Sophie finally understood the effort Irina had made to put aside her own devastation in order to create laughter and joy for Sophie, to make a life filled with color instead of unending gray.
Irina had given her a gift more precious than the Fabergé egg that sat in the dining-room hutch in its place of honor.
Where Irina was, was safety and security. A permanence that had freed Sophie to sail on the updraft of whatever winds she chose.
And yet now, that safety and security were shadowed by these other wants, these other needs that came from miles to the south.
“Here’s the deal, Bushka.”
“Oh, a deal, is it?” Irina smiled and thumped cheerfully on the remaining walnuts, her slim arms flashing with her vigorous movements. “Deals are good. Give a little, get a little. Everybody wins. As the students say, works for me.”
Sophie grinned back at her. “Oh, stop it, you. It’s not that kind of deal. There’s no negotiation involved.”
Irina’s voice was serious. “Sophia, there is always negotiation. In everything. We don’t necessarily see the possibility, but it is there. Even with death, sometimes we can negotiate.” She bent her head to her task. “Sometimes.”
A sick tremor ran through Sophie. “Are you trying to tell me something, Bushka? You’re okay? Yes?”
Her grandmother lifted her head and stared at her. Short, still-dark spiky strands framed her Slavic cheekbones. The faint buzz of the refrigerator seemed to fill the room as Sophie waited for whatever was coming.
“I am fine, my Sophia. What I am trying to say to you is that I am not young anymore. I will not be here forever, you know, darling child.” Elegant Irina made seventy-three look like a perfect age for a woman who could live forever.
But she was reminding Sophie that she wouldn’t.
Sophie swallowed.
“It would make my heart happy to see you—”
“Settled, Bushka?” Sophie managed a smile.
“Ach. No. Heaven help me, I think I am not yet that clichéd, moye zoloto?”
My gold, my treasure. Irina had called Sophie that from the beginning. From much sadness, my Sophia, you are my treasure. God’s golden gift to me.
“No, not settled, Sophia. That is not quite what I meant. Not so lonely. That is all. Just…not lonely and alone.”
“I’m not lonely.”
Irina fixed her clear gaze on Sophie. “Yes. You are. And it will be worse when I’m no longer here. Many tomorrows from now, God willing.” Irina returned to her chopping, wielding the knife decisively.
“Maybe I’m lonely, Bushka, but in a strange way. I don’t have words to describe it. I’m happy, I’m busy, but it’s as though there’s this void inside me, this place, waiting to be filled with something.” Sophie dragged her index finger over the floury surface at the edge of the table. “Here’s the big, hairy deal, Bushka darling. What would you think about becoming a great-grandmother?”
Irina’s flying hands went still. She turned to Sophie and leaned against the counter. “Tell me.”
As always Sophie marveled at her grandmother’s ability to cut to the bottom line. No fussing about how in the world Sophie, who couldn’t have children, thought she was going to make Irina a great-grandmother, and what did a temporary man have to do with this hypothetical great-grandchild? Nope, Irina Romanov would never dither, never crowd. She allowed a person space.
While the snow swirled outside in the darkness and beat against the kitchen windows like tapping fingers, Sophie told her about the emptiness of her beach home, about her sense that Angel was hers in some inexplicable karmic balancing.
She told her, too, about Judah.
Explaining Judah was hard—because she and Judah made no sense.
Her brain knew that.
Her heart, poor, confused, aching thing, didn’t.
When Sophie finished her disjointed explanation, her grandmother enveloped her in a tight, wordless hug, rocking her back and forth on the stool as she murmured, “Ach, such pain.” Sophie wrapped her arms around her Bushka’s shoulders and clung to her, tears streaming down her face and puffs of flour rising from her hands against Irina’s red-and-gold blouse.
“And what do you want, moye zoloto?”
“I want both. The man and the baby. The baby needs me, Bushka. I don’t think the man does, not really.”
“But what do you need?”
“Both, I think, and I don’t see that happening.”
“Yes, my Sophia, what you want, what you hope for, is complicated, and your temporary man holds a part of your heart, permanently, I suspect. How much of your heart? Tsk. This business between you and him over his partner’s death makes whatever is going on with you two a tricky negotiation because this Judah does not sound like a man who has forgiveness in him. And that will turn a soul dark and bitter,” Irina said as she stepped back. “I am Russian. The river of history flows over me, and I have learned about forgiveness, if nothing else. Forgiveness. Redemption. Sometimes they are possible. Sometimes not. But we will figure out this problem. We always have. We can do anything, remember?” She tapped Sophie’s cross.
“You really think I can make some of this work?”
“If this baby is what you want—and need—Sophie, we will find a way. The man?” Irina waved a hand, and bits of nuts spattered onto the floor. “Men are a mystery. Always. This man in particular seems to me to be…complicated.” She sputtered with laughter, her short hair, sprinkled with shiny bits of nut meats and flour, moving with her laughter.
Whooping, Sophie blotted her eyes with the back of her hands. “Bushka, even if down the road I’m approved as a single woman to adopt this baby, I have to figure out how to work and still mother her. I want to mother this baby, to give back to her a little of what was ripped away from her, to love her, to—” Sophie stopped. I want to make her safe the way you did me.
Irina patted her cheek. “Yes,” she said, acknowledging the unspoken words, knowing as always what was in Sophie’s heart. “But it doesn’t all have to be figured out this minute. We have nut rolls to make tonight.”
They spread the walnut filling over the pastry and then rolled up the dough into one long roll before dividing it while the majestically soaring notes from the CD slid over Sophie’s turbulent spirit and eased the yearning for Judah and Angel. The need for them was so powerful in her that it was as if she could see them in the kitchen with her, could reach out and t
ouch them.
With the snow still coming down in lazy drifts and the apartment fragrant with the smells of baking, they were in Irina’s dining room having borscht and tea from the ancient samovar when the phone rang. They glanced at each other and then at the clock on the sideboard.
“So late. Tsk. But you are expecting a call, perhaps?”
Sophie shook her head. “No, but the hospital has my number. I don’t have any cases pending, though.”
“Well.” Irina went to the kitchen to answer the phone and to check the cookies they’d put in after the walnut rolls.
When Irina came back, mischief danced in her blue eyes. “It is for you, Sophia. But not your hospital. This man, he calls himself Judah, and he wants to speak with you. He apologizes very nicely for the lateness of his call.”
Sophie blinked. “Judah?”
“Yes. So he said.” Irina lifted her soup spoon and swirled the sour cream into the borscht. “Cold borscht is good in summer, not so good on a cold night. I will go ahead with my soup if you don’t mind?”
Her grandmother’s words trailing behind her, Sophie raced into the kitchen, her heart beating so fast that she was breathless. “Judah?” she breathed into the receiver. “What’s wrong? What do you want?”
The silence lasted so long that had there not been the hum over the wires, the hissing static from the storm, she would have thought he’d hung up.
“How’s the weather in Chicago?”
“Snowy. You called to talk about the weather? Judah, it’s eleven o’clock in Poinciana, ten here. What’s going on? Is Angel all right? Is that why you’re calling?”
“Angel’s fine. But I have some news I thought you’d want to hear.”
Sophie pulled up the stool, leaned her elbows on the counter, and felt her bare toes curling around the rungs of the stool. Judah. His voice over the line curled into her ear and she felt her belly go soft with a hunger that borscht and tea couldn’t satisfy. “News?”
“Billy Ray Watley—”
“What?”
“Watley. Are we playing a version of the Three Stooges here, Sophie?” An almost-chuckle tickled her ear.
“What about Billy Ray? Why on earth would you call to talk about him? And the weather, for Pete’s sake? Judah, are you drunk?”
The almost-chuckle became a real one. “Not at the moment. But I might be, later.”
“How did you get my number?” she added as that thought struck her.
“Poinciana didn’t hire me for my looks, Sophie.”
“The hospital? It’s not supposed to release personal information.”
“The hospital didn’t. The lovely personnel administrator withstood all my charms.”
“Cammie, then.”
“Cammie,” he agreed.
Sophie stuck her finger through the coils of the phone cord. She’d accused him at Charlie’s about not knowing what it was to play, to have fun. She was learning that in his own way, though, Judah could play. “So, explain to me about Billy Ray.”
“He knew about Angel.”
“What?”
“There you go again.”
“Judah, stop it! You do sound six sheets to the wind. Tell me what’s going on.”
“I had a conversation with Mr. Watley after you left this afternoon. He was very helpful in our investigation.”
“You bullied him, didn’t you?” She pushed free of the stool and paced the kitchen, tethered to him at the other end of the wire. “Billy Ray’s easily frightened, and you can be damned intimidating, Judah. You know that.”
“Billy Ray and I came to an understanding. I didn’t hurt him.” Judah’s voice was like warm chocolate sliding over her skin.
She shivered. The man had a criminally sexy voice, even when he was talking about nothing. Underneath the sexiness, though, she heard a tone she would have described in anyone else as playful. “All right then, Judah. Clearly you’re bursting with news. Spill it.”
“Billy Ray spilled it, actually. He gave us the name of the informant who called in the location of Angel the night she was left in the manger at the church. Seems Billy Ray and the informant are neighbors.”
Sophie stopped midpace. She gripped the phone so tightly her knuckles were white. “You found the murderers?”
A sigh slipped over the wire. “Not yet.”
“Oh.” She sank against the counter. “But you know who they are?”
“No.”
“Then what good is it to know who notified the police with the information about Angel? I’m missing a transition, Judah. Help me.”
Again that staticky confirmation down the wires, a hiss of sound that linked them. “We’re close. Tyree and I know where this Tommy Joe Dorgan lives. He’s the informant. Tyree and I had another tip this afternoon after you left. We went out to The Palms, a trailer court. There was an incident. We encountered two men. They got away.”
“An incident?” She rubbed her eyes. “Who got hurt? You or Tyree? Tyree’s all right?”
“I’m touched by your concern.” Again there was that slightly playful note. “We’re both okay.”
“What about the guys who shot you?”
“Well, shoot, Doctor Sugar, unfortunately, they’re okay, too.”
“Was this Tommy Joe one of them?”
“Nope. Wrong age. He’s a kid. From what we found out, he’s in the wind now, running from some real bad dudes. And from us. From what we got from Billy Ray, Tyree and I believe Tommy Joe might have been one of the three boys at Le Duc Nhu’s. We’ll know what his role was when we find him. And we’ll find him. And then we’ll get the guys who killed Angel’s mother. I figured you’d want to know. Closure and all that.” There was an odd note in his voice as he said the last sentence.
She glanced out at the snow dancing along the window ledge. “I am glad you called. You were right. I like talking to you, Judah.” But I wish you were here.
“Me, too.” The sound of footsteps more than a thousand miles away. Silence again. “What are you and your grandmother up to?”
“Cooking. Drinking tea. Eating borscht.”
“Ouch. You have my deepest sympathy.”
“Borsht is soul food. Especially with sour cream.”
“So’s fried chicken. And it’s not beets.” More pacing, a pause as he stopped. “We’re very different, Sophie.”
“We are.” Tucking the receiver between her chin and shoulder, she went to the oven and removed the last sheet of lemon cookies while the silence stretched between them. Oddly, though, it felt comfortable. Companionable, even with the elephant-in-the-living-room presence of his partner, a presence they’d been careful to avoid these last days. Still, this easy teasing was cozy, restful.
Then Judah’s voice came sliding into her ear, lower now, and his voice wasn’t restful at all. And definitely not cozy. Raspy, with an edge of need, just the sound of it made her nipples tighten. “What are you doing, right this moment, Sophie? Give me a picture. Please tell me you’re wearing another version of that lacy stuff you had on earlier?”
“Like they say, in your dreams.”
“Yeah, there, too.”
She slid the cookies off the sheet onto cooling racks. “Sorry. I have flour all over my face, the kitchen floor, and I’m wearing my Northwestern sweatshirt. Big and baggy.”
“Nothing but the sweatshirt?” An inhalation whispered down the line. “That has possibilities. I can almost see you with all that flour spilled everywhere and you with nothing on under that shirt so easy—”
Her hand shook. A cookie slid off the spatula onto the floor, shattered.
“Judah—”
“I want to touch you, Sophie. I had no idea how much. And I can’t.”
Her mouth went dust-dry.
“I need— I want—” He stopped. She heard ice clatter into a glass. “You, Sophie. You.” There was the sound of liquid pouring, then nothing more for a full minute, only the sound of his breath, hers, joining through the miles before he add
ed, “Sophie, come home. Please. Soon.”
Home.
Chapter 15
After four days of endless snow, a pretty snow that had furred the trees and made driving to the old Russian section of their cemetery treacherous, Sophie walked out of the Sarasota/Bradenton airport into the soothing embrace of a warm December afternoon in Poinciana.
She couldn’t help smiling.
Vacation over, sun-broiled tourists with bags of oranges and plastic alligators were huddled glumly in the waiting area as she’d passed. It felt mean to feel so giddy that she was strolling toward blue water and sun while they were headed back to gray skies and sheets of snow.
She set her suitcase beside her and gathered up her hair into a twisted clump on top, securing it with a pen from her purse. Looking up, stretching her arms, she saw the white contrails of airplanes vanish into blue brilliance. She could never have guessed that all this sandy dirt and humid summers would feel like home.
But here she was. Home.
And downright giddily silly about it.
As she picked up her suitcase, she turned straight into Judah’s arms. Her smile stretched so big it hurt her cheeks.
“Hey, you. Where did you come from?”
“I was in the neighborhood.” He scooped up her carry-on and suitcase. “You happened to mention what flight you’d be on. I’m real positive that was a slip of the tongue.” He patted her in a brotherly fashion on her back. “Thought I’d drop in.”
“Of course you did.” Nothing brotherly in the way his hand slipped to the curve of her hip. “Certainly any mention of arrival times was purely accidental.” She let her hip sort of wiggle into the shape of his palm. Touching him, even her body felt at home. “So, tough guy, what’s going down in this neighborhood? And, after several days away, you notice how well I’ve retained my Southern and cop lingo, I hope?”
“You’re a whiz, Yankee Girl. And, to answer your question, not much.” His lips twitched as he glanced down at her. “Except—we finally picked up the informant Billy Ray gave us.”
Sophie stopped so quickly that Judah bumped into her. “That’s wonderful! When?”
Dead Calm Page 21
