Damned if she didn’t have compassion in her eyes. “Not when we were twenty, no. But now, I think you’re exactly what she needs. Think about everything she’s survived. Everything she did to survive. You are doing her an injustice, Ben. I’ve known for a long time that Faith is stronger than I am.”
He nodded after a long moment. Faith was stronger than he’d ever given her credit for being, as well.
“I’m too old for her.”
She blinked, then smiled. “How old are you?”
“Thirty-eight. Almost thirty-nine.”
“Nine years isn’t too much.”
“She’s trying to get rid of me, Charlotte. There’s only so long a man should ignore the fact that a woman is saying no.”
“Faith may be strong, but she’s scared, too. Rory was, well, the only man who ever meant anything to her. That would make anyone doubt herself. And there’s the way people look at her these days, as if—” She stopped.
Ben hadn’t thought of that, but he could imagine. This was a quiet, conservative community. She’d shot a man down; people might think she’d done it coolly, deliberately. Especially those who had known Rory Hardesty as a likable kid and popular jock in high school. Some of the townsfolk never had been able to see Rory Hardesty as any real threat.
Of course, they knew Faith, too, but might still have trouble understanding and believing the darkness that could lurk behind any of their neighbors’ front doors.
His stomach knotted at the idea of her having to flinch from curious or judgmental stares at the grocery store or library or—worse yet—when she met with the parents of her students, or even fellow teachers.
“Damn,” he muttered.
“And then there’s you. Faith really liked you when you first came out to the farm. And later, after Rory threw that cherry bomb through the window and you held her on your lap as though—” She stopped again. Cleared her throat.
He was able to finish her sentence with no trouble. He’d held Faith as though she was the most precious thing in his world. And then he’d been all cop the next time he saw her.
“I was an idiot,” he admitted. “Is it hopeless?”
“No, I don’t think so. You have a miraculous effect on her, Ben. That day she disappeared all afternoon and then stayed for dinner at your house? She came home…different. I don’t know what you did…”
He knew what she was thinking and was unaccountably embarrassed. Damned if his cheeks didn’t feel hot. “Not that.”
“Then what?”
“We talked.” More reluctantly, he added, “I convinced her to take a nap.”
Both Gray and Charlotte stared at him.
“She’d been refusing to take sleeping pills. You know that.”
They nodded.
“She felt safe with me. I thought she might.”
There was a long, speculative silence. Finally Charlotte said, “But she’s been sleeping ever since, too, according to Daddy. Well, all I have to do is look at her to tell.”
“She discovered how restorative sleep is and decided to quit being stubborn. She started taking the pills.”
Charlotte frowned. “Is she still?”
“No. She said that she’d stopped.”
A timer went off in the kitchen, causing Charlotte to stir and put her feet to the floor, where she groped for her shoes. “Let me turn on the asparagus and then we’ll be ready to eat.”
Gray patted her butt when she rose as if he couldn’t resist.
When his wife had left them, he looked again at Ben. “I could feel you seething at the council meeting.”
“Is there a single city-council member under sixty?”
“Ah…” Gray gave it a moment’s thought. “No. I’m hoping that’ll change in the next election. I’d especially like to see the last of Luther Conrad. But I happen to know that Esther Rose is seventy-one years old, and she’s smart and willing to admit there might be such a thing as new ideas.”
Ben moved restlessly, crossing and uncrossing his outstretched legs at the ankles. “Yeah, Esther is okay. I guess I just didn’t realize when I took the job that I’d have a bunch of old farts looking over my shoulder. I’d gotten tired enough of the politics I had to deal with in L.A., I figured as police chief I’d be calling the shots.”
Gray laughed like that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. “Just like I do as mayor? The truth is, our jobs are more like leaning our shoulders into the bumper of a broken-down old boat of a Cadillac and trying to get it rolling down the road.”
Ben grunted in acknowledgement. “But is it rolling?”
“Your Caddy? What do you think?”
“You sound like a therapist,” he said suspiciously.
Gray grinned. “Didn’t mean to. It just seems to me that sometimes you have to run a self-check. Did I make a difference today? This past week? The past month?”
Ben nodded.
“So what do you think? You have a bunch of young officers. Are they shaping up?”
“Sometimes I feel like I’m running a preschool.” He gave a snort of laughter. “I guess Faith and I have something in common after all. But…yeah. And did you hear about the shooting while you were gone?”
Gray sat up. “Shooting?”
“Routine traffic stop, Carl Stevens got out of his unit and walked forward. He was paying attention, the way he should have been, and when the driver suddenly leaned out his window Carl took a dive behind the car. Shot missed him. The car peeled out, Carl called it in and not two minutes later a county deputy joined Carl and another one of our officers in pulling the bastard over. They did a damn fine job.” He allowed himself a faint smile. “I didn’t tell them how surprised I was.”
Gray laughed. “Leadership in action.”
“So to answer your question, I think things are coming together. I’m pushing hard with training, trying to build more camaraderie.”
“From what I hear, it’s working,” Gray said straight out. “There’s a sense of pride that didn’t used to exist.” He paused. “Did you know that Ronnie Peschek put in an application to Seattle P.D. right about the time you started?”
“No.” Peschek was one of the few experienced, competent officers Ben had had to work with.
Gray lifted his wineglass in a kind of salute. “They offered him a job. He turned it down.”
“Well, damn.” Ben took a swallow of his own wine.
“I’m hearing good things about the officers you’ve put in the schools.”
“They’re young enough,” Ben said sardonically. “They ought to fit in.”
Sounding meditative, Gray said, “Our last police chief assigned Martin Galbreath to the high school.”
Martin had retired just six months ago. He’d worn his gray hair in a buzz cut and his belt low to support a hanging belly. He was one of those guys who liked the charge of wearing a uniform and a gun, and figured a nose or eyebrow ring was justifiable cause for pulling someone in for questioning. Ben had encouraged the retirement.
“Bet he was popular.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“I know you’re frustrated that the council doesn’t want to foot the bill to upgrade from revolvers to semi-automatics.”
Ben scowled. “Faith was better armed than my officers.”
Charlotte appeared and both men turned their heads. “Dinner’s ready.”
They stood. In a low voice, Gray said, “You’re wearing the council members down, Ben.”
He stopped, looking at his boss, a man whom he’d thought was becoming a friend, back before Charlotte had come back to town to protect her sister. “Uh-huh. What about you? It wasn’t so long ago you told me you were disappointed in my performance.” Ben waited tensely for the answer.
Gray winced. “You know that was fear talking.”
“I should have been able to find Hardesty. I still haven’t found out where he was those last weeks.”
“You’re trying?” Gray said in surprise.
“Fa
ith needs answers. I can’t figure out any other way to get them for her.”
All he was hitting were dead ends. Noah Berger had finally called back, but hadn’t been able to tell him anything more than Jimmy Reese already had. Rory’s aunt professed to know nothing, which might even be the truth, as she seemed to look on her nephew’s behavior with a considerably more jaundiced eye than his mother did.
“He didn’t have his cell phone with him, did he?” Gray asked.
“No. I’d like to find that phone. He might have even left a note somewhere, if he’d intended to die that night, too.”
Gray gave him a sharp look. “Do you think he did?”
Ben sighed. “No. If he’d carried a gun, I’d be more inclined to think so, but I don’t see him being willing to slit his own throat. If he’d planned to die, he wouldn’t have had any reason not to drive his own truck. No, I think he was planning to walk right back out of there feeling like he was justified in teaching her a final lesson.”
“That’s my guess, too,” Gray agreed.
By unspoken agreement they dropped the subject once they reached the table. It wasn’t as if any of this was news to Charlotte, but there was no need to stir up her anger and guilt any more, either.
She’d made lasagna and served it with garlic bread and the asparagus. It seemed that growing up both the Russell girls had learned to cook, and to cook well. Conversation stayed on local news during dinner: plans to break ground for a Haggen store, the going-out-of-business sign that had appeared on the front window of the fabric shop, rumors that a longtime, beloved dentist was getting senile. Charlotte had the historic perspective on everyone they discussed and offered some amusing anecdotes.
Ben had the thought again that in L.A. he wouldn’t have known every business owner the way he did now; he wouldn’t have been tapped into every organization in town from the Soroptomists to the high-school booster club. He wouldn’t have been able to worry about small but potentially lethal problems like traffic outside the high school, or cared about the upcoming school bond issue. Sometimes he felt like an alien observing a peculiar society from a sociological perspective, but talking with Charlotte and Gray tonight left him with an unfamiliar, warm feeling under his breastbone. He realized that he’d somehow become a strand of the web that made up this community in a way he’d never expected to be.
Maybe he’d become important here.
Food for thought.
At the door, Charlotte kissed his cheek again and said softly, “Don’t lose patience with her.”
Ben said with perfect seriousness, “I don’t want to turn into another stalker in her mind.”
Startled, she drew back and thought about it. “If I ever get the feeling that’s how she looks at you, I promise to tell you. Okay?”
“Thanks.” He hugged her, shook Gray’s hand and drove home. What he’d have liked to do when he got home was call Faith, just to hear her voice. Which meant the smart thing to do was strip some woodwork.
CHARLOTTE AND GRAY HAD Thanksgiving at their house and invited Ben and Moira as well as Faith and Dad. Faith managed to avoid being alone with Ben, although she felt his gaze resting on her whenever he wasn’t directly talking to someone else. As soon as she could politely do so, she made her excuses and left, unable to bear being the object of such close attention.
Faith had been telling herself she was glad the farm had sold so quickly. How miserable it would be if the whole thing had dragged out forever! A fellow teacher and her husband had had their house on the market for fifteen months before it sold. Waiting like that, it occurred to Faith, would have left her and her dad in limbo. Yes, this was definitely best. They’d made the decision. Now the break would be quick and clean.
She’d regretted taking even the one day off. This was one year when she didn’t feel like giving thanks. She knew that was wrong; she’d survived Rory, she had Char and Dad and Gray, and that quick sale really was a blessing.
Except for Thanksgiving Day itself, she’d been working harder than ever, tirelessly sorting and pricing for the estate sale, finding ways to make a little profit on the last of the antiques in the barn and the nursery plants that had filled a quarter of an acre. As shelves emptied in the barn, she filled them again with the items she’d priced for the estate sale. The aging Tupperware wouldn’t bring in much, but the vintage clothes and eighty-year-old costume jewelry might. She and Daddy had agreed to sell certain pieces of furniture, too; once November rolled into December he began looking for a small house, and she already had furniture in storage. Char and Gray hauled the antique spool bed from Faith’s bedroom out to the barn and the mattress and springs to the dump. Faith never wanted to see the bed again.
She loved the dresser, though, and decided she could forgive it for being in the room. The tall beveled mirror, too, that stood on a mahogany stand. The dresser in Char’s old bedroom, the one Faith was currently using, would be sold.
The seemingly never-ending decisions all felt important to her. She knew on one level that her involvement in every mundane detail was like a life jacket for her, keeping her afloat. She suspected no one but her actually cared what pieces of furniture the family kept or sold, just as it seemed no one but her had cared whether they lost the farm or not.
Of course, they weren’t actually losing it, Faith had to keep reminding herself. They were selling it for an impressive amount of money. It turned out the land was even more valuable for being inside the city limits; the residents of whatever development sprang up here would be able to take advantage of city water, and fire and police services.
If the farm had been a few hundred yards west, it would have been sheriff’s deputies that had come when Rory threw the cherry bomb through the window, when he broke in and attacked Char, when Faith killed him. Gray might never have met Char. Ben wouldn’t have held Faith on his lap and warmed her with his big, solid body. Even though she still didn’t know what to make of him, she shuddered at the idea of some impersonal deputy questioning her and perhaps at best offering rough sympathy.
Char wouldn’t have stayed in West Fork if not for Gray. I wouldn’t have survived, Faith admitted to herself, if not for Ben.
So why couldn’t she bring herself to trust him, to believe what he had said, his voice gruff as if he were moved?
I want you. No, more than that.
There were plenty of reasons she shied from believing in a future with him, most real, some probably imagined. How could any woman who’d been abused—had allowed herself to be abused—ever fully trust again? A man or herself? That was only number one on her list. Number two was the wounds to her self-esteem her relationship with Char had dealt. Number three, her uncertainty about why Ben wanted her now when he hadn’t before.
In one way, she was putting her life back together, gaining a pound or two a week on a body that had become gaunt, sleeping at least a few hours a night if not well, holding up her head when she felt people staring or heard whispers. Some of the worry had faded from Dad’s and Char’s eyes when they looked at her.
Inside…inside, she knew she wasn’t doing nearly that well. Denial was her watchword. Don’t think about it, her mantra. She kept busy, tried not to think, not to remember. Her classroom was the only place she felt whole. The kids gave her that, and always had. Otherwise, she knew she was still in danger of completely falling apart. If she ever convinced herself that Rory hadn’t meant to kill her, she knew she would.
But each day that passed was a victory, and if enough of them added up Faith had to believe that she would heal. Time was supposed to heal all wounds, wasn’t it?
But she could not take one more blow. The knowledge was bone-deep. Ben could destroy her, and she didn’t dare give him that chance.
The depths of her longing for him told her how dangerous he was to her. So, she was not only a coward, but weak, because she couldn’t make herself send him away altogether. When he kissed her, she forgot about being afraid; when he smiled, or his dark eyes lit with
humor, she ached with joy.
Eventually he’d give up, she reasoned. Or his sense of guilt and responsibility would fade, if that was what he really felt. And that would hurt, but not as much as if she gave herself to him, heart and soul.
And so she didn’t.
CHAPTER TWELVE
DAD STOPPED the pickup truck beside the curb and turned off the engine. After a moment, he said, “What do you think?”
Back to driving for some weeks, he’d stopped in front of a small house in the old part of town, an odd little place, but charming. The pitch of the roof was unusually shallow, not quite flat but close, and the walls were stucco, unusual in the Northwest. Dwarfed by the larger homes on each side, the house was painted white and the trim bright blue. The previous owner had liked to garden; the narrow front yard was all flowerbeds and no lawn. Small as it was, the yard boasted a gnarled old lilac, bare of leaves, and a couple of rosebushes holding on to red-and-orange hips. Low boxwood hedges marched along each side of the concrete walkway to the front door.
A for-sale sign stood out front.
“I’ve always liked this house,” Faith said truthfully, although it made her nervous to realize they were less then two blocks away from Ben’s house. “I’ve never been inside, though. I don’t remember who lived here.”
“Lillian Ewing. She just passed away. I’m told she was eighty-eight.” He was eyeing the house thoughtfully, his forearms draped over the steering wheel. “She and your grandmother were of an age. Your Grandma Peters and Miss Ewing were in a quilting group together. Never married, and she became something of a recluse these past ten years or so.”
Faith managed a smile. “Shall we go in?” Ignoring her father’s searching gaze, she got out and waited for him to join her.
The real-estate agent had lent her father the key, since the house was empty. Faith was glad she could wander through it without having to make conversation with a stranger.
Dad had been househunting, but he hadn’t suggested she join him until today. It was nothing she’d expected him to choose, a gingerbread house without the gingerbread, a whimsical cottage that seemed to suit an eccentric old lady, not her practical, stoical father. But she could feel his eagerness; he wanted her to like this place.
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