by Rae Renzi
“Or, for instance, you could apologize for mauling me at the festival,” I replied conversationally as I huffed along the trail. He kept up without any visible sign of effort, adding to his generally annoying presence.
“That would be a little tricky.”
“Tricky, how? A simple ‘I’m sorry’ would work.”
The trail began to narrow, and the trees became dense. I had to focus to keep from tripping on tree roots.
“Tricky because saying ‘I’m sorry’ would be a lie. If there’s anything I’m not sorry about that night, it’s kissing you. I’m not saying it was good for my state of mind, but I did enjoy it. Would you care to try it again?”
I’m not prone to speechlessness, but Sam Kendall seemed to bring that out in me. I also found out that astonishment short-circuited the relationship between my feet and my voice. I stopped dead in the middle of the path, my mouth hanging open.
Sam halted beside me. “Is that a yes?” His dimple made an appearance.
The nerve of the man was amazing! I groped for the right combination of scathing words to rock him back on his well-formed backside, but he didn’t wait.
“I guess so.” He took my head in his hands and pressed his lips against mine.
“Are you crazy?” I spluttered as I pushed him away. Or rather, attempted to push him away. It was like pushing a boulder: it propelled me back a step and moved him not at all.
He gazed down at me, unrepentant. “I did mention I thought I was losing my mind.”
“You did it again! You forced yourself on me. I told you I have a boyfriend.”
“Yes, you did. You said you were catching up with him.” He looked around the empty path. “So where is he?”
“He… is very fast. He must be farther away.”
“What, he couldn’t wait for you to get a drink? I have to wonder what kind of boyfriend he is. The nonexistent kind?”
“Oh, he exists, all right.” Just not in mortal form.
“Fine. He exists. But he wasn’t with you at the Beaujolais Festival. He wasn’t with you at the hospital. He’s never been with you at Pie Sigh. You’ve never mentioned his name. You never bring him up at all, except as a defense mechanism.”
“Which I wouldn’t need if you didn’t pester me.”
“True. But someone has to show a little initiative. I don’t know how we’ll ever sort this out otherwise.”
This somewhat skewed logic made my head spin. I started to inform him that there was nothing to sort out, but that was a lie. Something had to change. As I stood staring into his eyes, now the color of fully charged clouds, hearing him breathe, seeing the easy flow of his muscles as he shifted from one foot to another, his suggestion began to make a tiny bit of sense.
Maybe if I kissed him I wouldn’t feel so defensive around him. Maybe it would quench my curiosity and I could get on with life. After all, the only time I had kissed him, I’d been under the influence of Beaujolais Nouveau. It was entirely conceivable the heart palpitations I felt every time I relived that episode were merely the imaginative remnants of an overly lubricated mind. A kiss in this earthy environment, completely sober and completely within my control, might put that fantasy to rest. Possibly, from his perspective, it would satisfy fate—he would see there was nothing special between us and he would leave me alone.
I found another reason to follow his suggestion. If I stepped in that direction, if I showed my willingness to engage in a potential relationship with an alive human man—which would, of course, fall flat—then maybe Craig would realize he and I were meant to be together, that the physical aspects of a relationship he claimed I was missing weren’t so important after all, and we could go back to our cozy life… or whatever.
Suddenly, kissing Sam Kendall seemed just the thing to do.
My decision had absolutely nothing to do with the complex look in those changeable eyes as he gazed at me, waiting, a taunting half-smile on his face. Nor was I swayed by the heaving of his well-muscled chest or the comfort and warmth that seemed to roll off him like steam off an engine. However, I have to admit that curiosity played a small role. I wondered—purely academically—if his lips on mine would have the same delicious, sensuous feel as when we were both inebriated.
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay?” He blinked at me in surprise.
Satisfaction surged through me. I had got his goat. Obviously, he’d been bluffing, but I didn’t let him off the hook. “Yes. It’s time to put your mouth where your money is, Kendall. I’ll kiss you, because you’re right: this whole thing needs to go away.”
He looked down the path, as if lost in thought. A smile curved his lips. “Ready when you are,” he said, but he didn’t move.
“Right.” A whole cloud of butterflies seemed to have taken up residence in my stomach, and my hands were damper than the short distance I had run could account for. I began to have an appreciation for the bravery of young men who attempted the first kiss on a date. It wasn’t as easy as it looked in the movies.
Sam could have been one of the trees, planted as he was on the side of the path, arms relaxed at his sides, his expression benign but not exactly eager. He took not one step toward me. He didn’t even lean down so I could reach him. His intention, obviously, was to make me work for it.
He underestimated me. I looked around and spotted a sawed-off tree trunk a few feet away in the woods. It was flat on top and about six inches tall. Perfect.
I took Sam’s hand. “Follow me.”
His eyebrows flicked upward, but he followed me into the woods. I wondered what exactly he thought I had in mind.
I led him to the stump and positioned him in front of it. I could see he was stifling laughter, but I didn’t care. He could laugh all he wanted after we finished kissing. I’d probably laugh, too—in relief. Then I’d find Marybob and Craig—and possibly Luke, because how else would they have managed to set all these encounters up?—and kill them all. Figuratively speaking.
I stepped onto the tree stump and put my hands on either side of Sam’s face. I had to get on my tiptoes to reach him even still, but I managed. I attached my lips to his—he was smiling—and suddenly his reserve seemed to break.
Or maybe he lost his balance. In any case, his arms slid around to pull me tight against his heated body, and he returned my kiss with warmth, verging on passion.
It wasn’t what I had hoped for. I had hoped for a cool, collected kiss. A more-or-less clinical evaluation of a kiss, more mechanistic than emotional. I had hoped this kiss, this carefully planned and executed kiss, would put paid to my confusion about Sam Kendall.
I should have known. I should have known that it wouldn’t be that easy—nothing about him was.
Having started kissing Sam, I found I couldn’t stop. Nor, apparently, could he. He let his lips drift over my face, a taste here, a nibble there, like a hummingbird in a garden.
“Joy,” he whispered, and how I loved hearing my name float on his lips like a song, or the promise of one. I simply lost my head. Our kisses deepened and expanded until we kissed with our entire bodies entwined like the trees around us. The world fell away and we were suspended in a shimmering, breathtaking moment until a shout in the distance brought me back to myself.
I pushed away from him. “That’s not… what I expected.”
“Me, either.” Sam pulled me back in for another heated kiss, one that warmed me down to my toes and made me light-headed.
“Sam. I need to…”
He traced my lips with his fingertips and his eyes roved over my face. “You’ve plagued me for two years—and now I give you another way to torment me? I must be nuts.” He leaned in to kiss me yet again as if driven by insatiable hunger.
“Wait. Wait.” I pushed him back. “What do you mean I’ve plagued you for two years?”
“Joy! I need you. Right now.”
The voice preceded the speaker, and snapped me out of the moment with the force of a slap.
Craig.
Chapter 32
I jumped away from Sam and stared at Craig, working my mouth, trying to form words.
“I can explain,” I stammered to Craig. I looked at him, an apology on my lips, but was halted by the impossibility of communicating more fully to Craig while not appearing to have a mental disorder to Sam.
My concern was wasted. Craig wasn’t the least interested in apologies or Sam, it seemed. Something more urgent moved him. “Tony’s wife is about to lose it. She has their baby. The baby’s in danger,” he said, his voice clipped.
“Tony?” I asked.
“You can explain Tony?” Sam asked. “Who’s Tony?”
A new Departed, a dark-haired man, appeared next to Craig, looking frantic. “Me. I’m afraid for my little baby girl. Please help—I beg you.”
All thought of appearing normal fled from my mind.
“Show me,” I demanded as I launched off the stump.
Craig and Tony started off at a run. I followed.
“Show you what?” Sam asked.
“Gotta go,” I said to him over my shoulder as I ran after Craig. “Have to help someone.”
“Joy?” Sam called. “What… ?”
I didn’t stop. “Tell me what’s going on, Tony,” I huffed as we raced through the throngs of people thudding around the trail.
“She’s—my wife, Annette—is having a rough time since I died. She’s too tired. The baby’s crying and won’t stop. I’m afraid she’ll hurt her.”
Craig led us off the track and across a lawn toward the public swimming pool complex. The pool was drained and the chain-link gate padlocked. The square, black windows of the cinderblock building that housed the changing rooms stared out at us, dark and empty. Without the happy shouts and splashes of the multitudes of children that frequented it in the summer, the place was all hard edges and cold concrete.
I could hear the baby crying, a desperate wail that tore at my heart. A woman screaming sent adrenaline shooting through me.
I raced around the corner of the building and saw a young woman holding a baby at arm’s length. She screeched at the squalling bundle, “Shut up! Shut up! I can’t take it anymore.” Tears streamed down her face.
I slipped between her and the cinderblock wall of the building—a vision of the tiny head bashed against concrete sent bile into my throat. The mother might not have gone that far, but the way she held the child wasn’t reassuring. When her eyes landed on me, she stopped yelling, but her face was contorted in pain and grief, and every muscle in her body was tense. Her fingers were white where they gripped the child. No wonder it was screaming.
“Annette, why don’t you give me Baby…”
I glanced at Tony and lifted an eyebrow.
“Janey,” he said.
“… Baby Janey for a few minutes. You need some time.”
Annette’s face crumpled and the tension left her body like a flood receding, leaving wreckage behind.
I firmly took the crying baby out of her unresisting arms and heaved a huge sigh of relief. The thought of her shaking the little thing until its brain came loose, or worse, was unbearable. I pulled the unhappy child close to my chest and stroked her downy head.
Annette took one look at me holding her child and fell apart. “Oh my God!” She collapsed onto the sidewalk sobbing, her face in her hands.
My heart went out to her, but I knew the child’s crying was like a whip on her soul. She needed some time and some distance from the child’s distress. “I’ll be right over here, Annette.”
I turned to walk away but found Sam blocking my path. He had a peculiar expression on his face. No small wonder, I suppose. He might have demanded an explanation for my abrupt departure, but he just looked at me speculatively for a second.
“Don’t go far,” he said, as he walked past me to Annette.
He kneeled down beside her to put his arm around her protectively. He murmured something and helped her stand, then led her to a nearby park bench under a tree. He glanced up at me and gave me a little nod.
The baby’s crying had diminished from a frantic wail to a whimper. I held her tight and cooed at her, telling her that she was strong and beautiful and every other positive thing I could think to say. I needed it as much as she did—my knees were weak from the heartbreak and near tragedy I had witnessed.
Tony followed me to a picnic table and sat beside me, looking down at his little girl. “Thank you. Thank you. I think it’s not her time yet.” He looked like he wanted to stroke her or hold her, or, I guess, welcome her to his world, where horrible, painful things didn’t happen to children. But, as he said, it wasn’t the baby’s time yet—possibly because of my intervention.
I didn’t have it in me to be sorry. For sure, I wasn’t sorry to save the little child from certain disability if she’d been badly shaken. And I wasn’t sorry to save her from death, either.
“Tony, your wife is struggling. Is there anything you can do to help her?”
He looked at me quizzically. “Like what?”
“I don’t know. Something that could make her life easier now.”
Tony’s face brightened. “The TV remote—it got squished down between the pillows and the back of the blue sofa. She lost it a few days ago.”
“I was hoping for something a little more… generally helpful. Like someone, a friend or relative, who could help with babysitting once in a while or bring her some food. With you gone, everything must be hard.”
He rubbed his chin. “There’s that money I hid. That might help, I guess. I’d planned to take her and Janey on a vacation. I saved money every week for it. Never got to spend it, though. I kind of forgot about it.”
Honestly, the Departed can be immensely dense.
“I think money would help Annette a lot.” How on earth did he think she lived, now that he was gone? “Where’s the money? Can we tell her how to find it?”
“Oh, sure. It’s in my toolbox.”
By the time Sam brought Annette around to the picnic table, the baby was fussing again, although her cries were more whimpers than howls. I knew she wasn’t comfortable, but I didn’t know what to do for her. Was she hungry? Thirsty? She didn’t smell bad, so I didn’t think it was the diaper. I hoped Annette had recovered enough to figure it out.
From the look on her face, Annette would have run to the baby had Sam’s substantial arm not been around her shoulders holding her to a measured approach across the leaf-littered area. Just as well. I wasn’t about to let her have the child again until I was certain the baby would be safe. When my eyes met Sam’s, I could see we agreed for a change.
“With your permission, I’d like to examine Baby Janey to see if I can tell why she’s crying,” he said kindly to Annette. “As I told you, I’m a doctor. I might be able to help her.” I knew exactly what he was up to and cheered him on. He would look for signs of abuse. It was horrible to think that way, but the safety of the child was at stake. Was this a one-time meltdown or a frequent occurrence? We needed to know.
Annette looked grateful and relieved to have someone take charge. And who better? If I knew anything about Sam Kendall, it was that he was absolutely comfortable taking charge. At that particular moment, I was all for it.
He looked at the picnic table. It was clean enough but would be cold on the baby’s back. Sam, showing a bit of resourcefulness and a lot of skin, peeled off his sweatshirt and folded it in half. It wouldn’t be cushy, but it would do.
As he took the baby from me, he gave me a charged look. I wished I knew what it meant. Maybe it was a warning that if he found evidence for abuse I was to… do something. I’ll be darned if I knew what, though. Snatch the baby and run? Tackle Annette while Sam made a getaway? Unfortunately, both of those options were best carried out by Sam, or, truthfully, not at all.
It was frustrating.
He gently settled Janey on the table. I quickly peeled off my own hoodie and tucked it around her sides so she wouldn’t roll on the table.
“Now, what could cause such a little thing to make so much, noise, eh, Janey?” Sam kept up a running chat with the child, keeping his voice low and soothing. This, I realized, was as much for the benefit of the mother as the baby.
Bent over the baby, a furrow of concentration between his brows, he crooned, “Now, tell me, my girl, did you hurt your little self?” The sight of the strong, rugged man tenderly fussing over the tiny child tugged at my heart. Janey had stopped whimpering and was now fully engaged in entertaining Sam. It occurred to me that she missed her father, and Sam’s presence alone was comfort to her. I glanced at Tony, standing silently like a guardian angel near his daughter.
“A little rash, maybe, darling?” Sam ran his large hands gently over the tiny arms and legs, and then flipped the squirming little thing on her stomach. When he flipped her back, she put on quite a show for him, cooing and gurgling, churning her strong little legs. Sam’s dimple emerged when she gave him a wide toothless grin. “Yes, you little flirt, let’s have a look in here,” he said as he peered into the baby’s mouth. He gently ran his finger around her gums. Janey immediately clamped down on it and started gnawing energetically. “Ah. So that’s it.”
Whatever had bothered the baby earlier had vanished now. As he finished his examination, the tension drained out of Sam’s face. Once he re-diapered and dressed her, he picked up the baby and cradled her on his big shoulder, wrapping her in his shirt to keep her warm. “She looks fine, Annette. She’s teething a little, but that will pass quickly. Here, please sit down,” he said, as if she were in his consulting room.
Annette looked slightly abashed, but she sat on the bench, hands folded contritely in her lap. She acted as if she knew she was on trial, and Sam and I were the judge and jury.
