by Laura Moore
“You are very kind to us, Ned. Thank you.” The grateful kiss she gave his weathered cheek left him blushing.
“I remember doing the same for you, Miss Jordan, when you were no bigger than little Kate here,” he said, his voice gruff. Then, as if afraid she might thank him again, he’d hustled them all down to the broodmares’ barn.
“Ned, what’s this mommy’s name again?” Kate asked, tugging on his sleeve as he walked the jet black mare and her foal out into the morning sunshine.
“This here’s Night Wing and her colt’s name is Night Watch,” he answered. “He’s a fine-looking one, don’t you think, Max?”
Max nodded enthusiastically. “I like the white on his nose.”
“That’s what we call a blaze. I’ve seen a picture of his sire, his daddy. He had the same one …” Endlessly patient, Ned talked to them about each mare and foal they led down to the pasture, explaining about the colors of the foals’ coats and how they’d change as the horses matured. By the time they’d made the final trip down to the pasture, Kate and Max were chattering like magpies about how Ventura’s colt, Turner, would turn into a gray whereas Night Wing’s colt, Night Watch, would end up the same shiny black as his mother. And Sava’s filly, Valentine, would remain chestnut.
While Olivia napped in the Snugli Jordan had strapped on, Jordan and the kids spent the morning watching the foals cavort, racing over the fields on their tiny hooves and long, matchstick legs, bucking and squealing while their dams grazed. Now and then one of the mares would wander over to the fence to have her head and neck scratched, prompting her curious foal to come over, too. Kate and Max held their breath in delight to see it poke its nose through the wooden rails and sniff at their tummies.
Though Jordan was careful to remind them of Ned’s instruction to remain quiet around the foals so as not to spook them, the warning was unnecessary. Even three-year-old Max had taken the lessons to heart.
Tearing the children away from their prime spot by the pasture was no easy feat. Only the reminder that they needed to eat a good lunch if they wanted another lesson aboard Doc Holliday could get them to loosen their hold of the fence’s bottom rail. Still, their feet remained rooted. Seeing their obvious reluctance to leave, Jordan didn’t hesitate to play her trump card. If they were extra well behaved and went back up to the house with Mommy and Olivia now, she’d ask Ned if they could help him bring the foals in from the pasture later in the afternoon. Like magic, their short legs began moving in the direction of the house.
Back inside, she nursed Olivia, changed her diaper, and then hustled the kids downstairs to help Ellie Banner, the housekeeper, prepare a lunch of sandwiches and soup, and a green salad for Margot, who was still modeling. Margot and Travis, and Jade, who had the day off from high school, would be coming in from working with the horses.
The kitchen was buzzing with activity when the others joined them. The children were putting napkins on the long kitchen table, Ellie was settling Olivia into her Kangarockaroo baby seat, and Jordan was at the kitchen’s granite island, chopping onions and celery to make a stuffing for the turkey she was roasting for that night’s dinner.
“Hey, guys,” Margot said, peeling off a sweater she’d been wearing and draping it over the back of her chair. “That soup smells delicious. And you smell pretty great, too,” she said to Olivia as she kneeled down to kiss her.
“Would you mind watching her, Margot? I just heard the timer go off. I need to go and put the wash in the dryer,” Ellie said.
“Of course. Here, let’s put Olivia up on the table so we can all enjoy her.”
“She is kind of cute when she gets those legs and arms going,” Jade said. “I’m starved. Wow, that is a major turkey,” she added as she eyed the bird resting on the kitchen island. “You going to eat all that, Max?”
He shook his head violently. “No, it’s for Daddy.”
“Daddy loves turkey,” Kate pronounced, saving the grown-ups from having to comment on Richard’s arrival. “And Mommy’s going to bake brownies and peanut butter cookies ’cause everybody likes them.”
“We sure do, don’t we, Travis?”
“Yeah, pretty much, though I really like Margot’s frozen yogurt and granola desserts, too.” He grinned at Jade’s instant exclamation of disgust.
“Thank you, Travis.” Smiling, Margot walked around to his chair to kiss him lightly. “Can I get you a cup of coffee with your sandwich and soup?”
“Yes, please,” he said, looping an arm about her waist and snagging another, longer kiss before letting her move off to the counter.
It was great to see Margot and Travis’s love for each other. Maybe the day would come when she and Richard would be that close again, Jordan thought, as she turned around to the sink to wash her hands. The memory of the warm, teasing light in Richard’s eyes when he’d held her hand during their session at Abby Walsh’s office filled her with optimism. Maybe she and Richard had turned a corner. And while a part of her might never understand how Richard could have cheated, she loved him. Lord knows she was tired of being angry at him. She was ready to forgive him and put the past ten months behind them.
It was spring, the season of rebirth. Maybe being here in the beautiful house that had been in her family for generations would serve as the spark to rekindle their relationship.
“So where are you planning on going with Richard tomorrow night?” Margot asked as she filled the coffee cups and carried them to the table. “No, you stay with Olivia, Jade. I’ll bring your food over,” she said when Jade made to rise.
“I was thinking of the Coach House.”
“Mmm, good choice. Travis took me there a couple of weeks ago. It was delicious. And the dining room is lovely.” Margot ladled soup into three mugs and then carried them over to the table. After setting down a plate of sandwiches for Jade and Travis, she went to the fridge and retrieved a salad to eat with her soup.
Having finished chopping the chestnuts and vegetables, Jordan mixed them into a bowlful of breadcrumbs and added a small amount of boiling water and melted butter. Setting the stuffing aside, she lifted the turkey onto the cutting board and patted it dry. “So you’re sure you don’t mind watching the kids tomorrow night?”
“Of course we don’t. And you don’t have to bribe Travis and Jade with brownies, either.”
“Yeah, you do,” Jade said, her cheeks bulging with her ham and cheese sandwich. “You’ve got Ellie trained never to make brownies, which is grossly unfair. Besides, Jordan’s are the best in the world. Aren’t they, kids?”
From her workstation at the granite island, Jordan listened to her children enthusiastically second and third the excellence of her brownies and cookies. After this hellish year, which began with the deaths of their father, RJ, and Jade’s mother, Nicole, it was wonderful to see her sisters and her children gathered around the table. While Margot and Travis simultaneously confirmed Max and Kate’s judgment that yes, their mom could bake yummy treats like nobody else, Jade, who was munching on her second ham and cheese sandwich with one hand, rocked Olivia in the Kangarockeroo with the other. Olivia liked it, kicking and squirming with the contented serenity of a third child.
This was good. And somehow she just knew the entire weekend would be good, too. Smiling, she looked down at the large turkey before her. Richard would be tired and hungry when he arrived that evening. She really had to get this sucker in the oven or it wouldn’t be ready in time.
She pulled the bowl of stuffing closer to the turkey and gave it one last toss to make sure the chestnuts were evenly distributed.
Carrying two refilled mugs of coffee back to the table, Margot resumed their conversation. “You should think of what you and Richard might like to do in addition to dinner over the weekend. We’re completely free—” She was interrupted by the ring of the telephone. “Hey, Travis, can you answer—”
“It’s okay. I’ve got it.” Jordan turned and crossed over to the other counter where the telephone sat in the c
orner. “Hello?”
“Hey, babe, it’s me. You weren’t picking up on your cell.”
“Richard, hi! Sorry, I must have left my phone upstairs when I was changing Olivia. It’s Daddy,” she said to the kids, then held out the receiver so he could hear their happy cries of “Hi, Daddy!”
Putting the phone back to her ear, she said, “Kate and Max had a terrific morning. I’ll pass the phone so they can tell you all about it. I’m stuffing a turkey for tonight’s dinner to celebrate our first weekend away since Olivia’s birth. When do you think you’ll get here?”
“Oh, babe. You’re roasting a turkey for me?”
She smiled. “Well, not just for you, but mainly—”
“Thing is, I can’t make it to Rosewood for dinner tonight.”
“Oh, Richard!” She couldn’t hide her disappointment.
“I know and I’m really sorry. But we’re drafting this proposal for a new client—a huge account, babe—and the company just called and said they want to move our meeting up to Monday, so the you-know-what’s really hit the fan. I’m pretty sure if I work late, I can get this thing in decent shape. Then I’ll grab a few hours of sleep and set out for Rosewood tomorrow bright and early. That’ll still give us time together and I won’t be preoccupied by office work hanging over me. I’ll be able to focus on you, Jordan. On us.”
She drew a deep breath. She wasn’t going to make him feel worse by complaining. She knew how important his work was. “Of course, I understand. But make sure you get some sleep before you drive.”
“I will. Maybe you and I can take a nap once I reach Rosewood.”
She felt her cheeks warm. Richard and she used to steal away for “naps” in the beginning of their marriage. Very little sleeping had been involved. “I talked to Margot. They’re fine with watching the kids by the way. I thought we might go to dinner at the Coach House.”
“Great idea. We haven’t been there in years. Listen, babe, I gotta get back to this leviathan.”
“Oh, sure. You want to say hi to the kids?”
“Definitely.”
She passed the phone first to Kate and then Max, listening as they told him about the baby horses they’d seen. After they’d said, “Bye, Daddy,” she took the receiver back. “As you can see, they’re having a great time. But we all miss you.”
“Same goes for me. I’ll see you tomorrow. Bright and early, I promise.”
“Okay. Bye, Richard.”
Placing the receiver back in its cradle, she turned back to the turkey. Oh well, she thought with a small sigh, Richard liked cold turkey, too, and she could always reheat the stuffing. She grabbed a drumstick to hold the turkey steady, scooped up a generous handful of stuffing and inserted her hand into the turkey’s cavity. At her elbow the phone rang again.
Damn it! “Hey, could one of you get that?” she asked, unwilling to pick up the receiver with raw turkey on her hands.
But her request went unheeded as chaos erupted around the kitchen table: Max knocked over his cup of milk; Olivia, deciding the baby seat was hell on earth, started wailing in outrage; and Kate suddenly realized she needed to go peepee. The refrain of “Mommy, Mommy!” echoed around the kitchen.
The heck with it, she decided. The kitchen phone had an answering machine they routinely used to screen calls.
Hurrying to the sink to wash her hands she called out, “Just coming, sweeties,” but stopped as Richard’s amplified voice came over the answering machine’s speaker device. Why was he calling again? Had he forgotten to tell her something? “Shh, guys, be quiet for just a sec. It’s Daddy. I need to hear what he’s saying.” She walked over to pick up the phone.
“There. It looks like you and I have another night together, Cyn.”
She froze, her hand mere inches away from the receiver. What was going on? Richard wasn’t talking to her. Had he pressed the redial button on his phone by mistake?
“So she believed the story about your needing to work late?” The voice was a woman’s. Cyn … Cynthia.
“Yeah. I only wish I could fix it so I could have an excuse to spend the entire weekend with you. Damn, I can’t wait to make partner. I am literally counting the days when I can tell her it’s over for good. Until then I’m just going to have to make Jordan believe I’m shooting for Hudson and White’s MVP award.”
Richard’s laugh, joined by a second, higher one, filled the kitchen. Then came his husky command of “Come here, Cyn baby. That wraparound dress has me hungry for lunch. Yeah, that’s it. Sit yourself right down. Oh God, baby, you have the finest tits.” A muffled, suckling sound followed.
A new noise crowded out the ones coming over the answering machine. Jordan couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. Everything was so strange all of a sudden, so difficult to process.
She saw the shock stamped on Margot, Travis, and Jade’s faces but it only vaguely registered. And she couldn’t comprehend why they were suddenly springing into action, why Travis was scooping Max out of his booster chair and racing out of the kitchen with the toddler, or why Margot was bending over the baby seat, fighting with the straps to free Olivia. Cradling the baby, she grabbed hold of Kate’s hand and rushed out, too, shouting something to Jade as she went that Jordan couldn’t make out. That awful noise, like an agonized keening had grown intolerably loud. It ricocheted off the walls.
Then Jade was running over and wrapping her arms about her, holding her tight, which was just as well, as the bones in Jordan’s legs seemed to have liquefied. Together they crumpled to the kitchen floor.
The kitchen was empty save for her and Jade. She wanted to leave, too. The noise was unbearable. The high, rending wail rocked the walls, pummeled her brain.
Make it stop. Jordan rocked, clutching her ears to block out the sound. But it kept coming, on and on and on.
And even after her throat was raw, her vocal chords lacerated, the cry continued mercilessly inside her.
Eleven months later …
JORDAN RECHECKED HER MAKEUP. Thanks to Kristin, a stylist friend of Margot’s, she had become an expert in the uses of concealer. She’d learned not only how to erase the violet smudges beneath her eyes, but also how to use blush and the right hues of lipstick to emphasize her cheekbones and mouth. By employing a subtle mix of tones around her eyes, she’d discovered that she could fool people into thinking that the shadows lurking in them were exotic, mysterious, rather than a darkness that threatened her soul.
She raised her ringless hands to smooth her hair, which she’d decided to wear loose today. Better to look feminine than professional: in Nonie Harrison’s world not too many women actually worked.
Rising from the small bench in front of her vanity table, she checked the floral print crepe de chine skirt and ivory sleeveless silk knit top in the mirror and wondered what was missing. Jewelry, of course. She bent down and opened a square leather case and found a pair of antique gold earrings that had belonged to her mother and a delicate diamond pendant that Margot and Travis had given her for Christmas.
There, she looked understatedly elegant, exactly how Nonie would expect Jordan Radcliffe to appear. Meet people’s expectations and they rarely bothered to look deeper.
No need to take a sweater or a light jacket, she thought, as she picked up her purse off the white bedspread. It was a glorious spring day … wasn’t that funny, how the days had slipped by? The Virginia air was mild, sweetened with the perfume of sunshine-kissed flowers. This year’s crop of foals was frolicking in the pastures with their dams. The breeding season was upon them. Nocturne, the stallion they had standing at stud, was eager to meet his mares in the breeding shed. All around her Rosewood was bursting with life. How sadly out of step with the farm she was, so blighted and dead inside. But that, too, Jordan had learned to conceal from the world.
She left her room on the third floor and went into the adjacent attic bedroom shared by Kate and Olivia, a smile lighting her face. Olivia and Miriam Banner, their housekeeper Ellie’s niece,
were sprawled on the pale blue and pink hooked rug building a tower with Olivia’s cardboard nesting blocks. As soon as Miriam placed the last block atop the slender pyramid, Olivia lurched to her feet and kicked the tower with a happy cry.
“Hi, there, Olivia,” she said.
At the sound of her voice, Olivia’s face lit up and she tottered over on stubby legs, her short arms held out—a blond, mini-Frankenstein with a cherub’s smile.
Jordan scooped her up and kissed the sweet hollow of her neck. “Let’s get you changed so you’ll be nice and clean when you and Miriam go and pick up Kate and Max at school, okeydokey?”
Miriam rose to her feet. “I can do that—”
“That’s okay. I’ve got her,” she replied, already setting down her purse. She laid Olivia upon the changing table, pulled down the elastic waistband of her blue-and-cream-striped leggings, and undid the tabs on the diaper. Moving with the precision of a pit stop mechanic at the Indy 500, Jordan shucked the diaper, dropped it into the garbage pail by her feet, cleaned Olivia with a baby wipe, sprinkled her bottom and thighs with baby powder and, for good measure, her rounded tummy, too, and then fastened a fresh diaper. Up went the leggings, down went the dancing dog printed T-shirt, and Olivia was good to go.
“All done,” she announced, hefting her powder-fresh baby in her arms. “Now, Miriam, are you sure you’re okay with picking up Kate and Max?”
“Absolutely.”
“Okay. I left the minivan’s keys on the tray in the front hall. For lunch there’s mac and cheese. It’s in the fridge, wrapped in foil. For dessert you can—” she stopped in mid-sentence at Miriam’s grin.
“It’s cool, Jordan, I’ve got the routine down. We’ll be fine. Remember, you’re only going out to lunch. It’s not like you’ll be away for a week.”
The thought of being separated from her children for an entire week made her slightly faint. “I’ll be back by three. If you could get Max to nap when Olivia goes down, that would be great. Tell him if he does, he’ll have a better riding lesson with Jade. And I have my cell in case you need me.”
