The Breath of Dawn

by Kristen Heitzmann

  Erin studied him. “How long has it been since you’ve eaten?” He’d hardly eaten a thing on the drive.

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  She laid down her fork. “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Enjoy your breakfast.”

  She rubbed the cloth napkin over her mouth. “Will you excuse me?” She had tried cheerful and positive. Now she headed out the arched French doors that revealed a pool lined in cobalt blue, a terra-cotta patio, and a guest house surrounded by a narrow strip of shrubs and some trees, but mainly an unobstructed view of the ocean.

  She walked through the drizzly rain to an opening in the low, white split-rail fence on the edge of the country. It caused a strange feeling in her stomach. Steep stairs built down the cliff wall plunged to a strip of beach with boulders heaped against the foot and erupting every so often from the sand. She started down.

  “Take this,” Morgan said, catching up with a poncho. “And watch your step. I doubt anyone’s been down that way for a while.”

  The poncho wasn’t the yellow plastic kind, but a Lycra-nylon blend, slate blue. A woman’s medium. Erin pulled it over her head and started down the steps, needing time and space and a plan. She did not intend to be a guest in his house.

  In Juniper Falls there would have been realistic needs for her to meet. Here that seemed impossible. At least—

  The stair collapsed under her foot, catching the toe of her shoe and wrenching her ankle as she pitched over and landed on her knees and wrist. Teeth clenched, she shut her eyes and focused on the sound of surf and gulls, the smell of salt and seaweed, willing the pain to stop. She silently groaned when Morgan clambered down the steps above her and reached for her foot.

  “Don’t!” She gripped her own calf and eased her foot out of the hole, scattering splinters of rotten wood. It felt as if an invisible spiny blowfish had invaded her ankle and was puffing and deflating it with throbbing pain.

  “How bad is it?”

  “It’s not broken.” She’d felt the difference when she fell from a ladder as a girl and broke three bones in her foot—a totally different pain.

  He looked over his shoulder to the top of the steps. “Can you make it up?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I help?”

  “No.”

  “Erin . . .”

  “I want to be alone right now.”

  He cocked his jaw. “You know that’s crazy, right? Broken ankle or not, you’re injured.”

  The throbbing didn’t let her forget.

  “All right, you’re angry. You can be stubborn and crawl back up, or let me help you. But I’m not just walking away.”

  She looked down at the gray expanse of water, white ridges tumbling. “I wanted to see the beach.”

  He frowned, then shifted his position and lifted her.

  “Not with . . . I meant alone.”

  As he didn’t let go, she held on around his neck while he tentatively tried one stair step after another. She could tell when he hit spongy ones, but none of them broke. He reached the sand and stood there, taking it in himself. The rain had stopped, and the fog seemed to be lifting as a light breeze pushed in from the water. The sea scent mingled with his, a combination both foreign and right.

  “How much of this ocean is yours?”

  He shook his head, taking the jibe. “The beach is private for these five houses.”

  “And guests?”

  “You’re not a guest.”

  As she watched, a large gray bird glided across the water, pointed its wings, and dove straight down, coming up a second later to bob on the surface. She couldn’t tell if its effort was wasted or rewarded.

  Morgan sat down on a flat, pitted boulder, holding her across his lap and staring out to sea. After a while, he said, “I hadn’t been back to the house since the funeral.”

  Her breath made a slow escape. “Are you all right?”

  As the sky lightened, the moisture that had pearled in his hair matched the silver strands at his temples. “I needed last night with Jill. I never really said good-bye.” His throat worked. “There wasn’t . . . Visitation wasn’t possible.”

  She had no experience with that kind of loss, and yet she felt a part of it.

  He said, “My, um, bad behavior on the drive was a resistance to facing this, after pretty well perfecting the avoidance.”

  “And a staunch resistance at that.”

  His mouth twitched. “I think it was the anger phase.”

  “My eardrums are still throbbing.”

  He squeezed her ribs. “It wasn’t that loud.”

  “You were in back.”

  His attention slid from the water to her at last. “I apologize.”

  “It didn’t even sound like words.”

  “Some of it was German.”

  “I thought it was Orc.”

  His eyes crinkled, then sobered. “Can we try this again?”

  “This morning?”

  “This everything. I don’t want some sham marriage.”

  But it was. Or not a sham as much as . . .

  He slid his hand inside the poncho hood, his palm warm and firm on her cheek. “I want you.”

  No part of her doubted that, but she shook her head. “That’s not the same.”

  “It’s a start.”

  “It’s backwards.” The hood fell back.

  Sunlight came through the fog, returning the blue to his eyes. “Right now, it’s what I have.”

  A gull made a soulful cry as she absorbed the words and what she saw behind them. Sinking into the place he’d opened up, she pressed her fingers to his lips, then lowered them and kissed him.

  It felt like a gift. Instead of covering her mouth and pressing her into the sand as he wanted to, he let her kiss linger like the high note of an aria. He didn’t want to drown it out.

  With a slow hand he brushed the hair back from her face, reluctant to end this fragile reconciliation but pressed by a growing concern. “I need to check on Livie.” He’d have gone right back inside, if Erin hadn’t fallen.

  Her eyes widened. “Go. I can walk.”

  Shaking his head, he got his legs under and thrust up. They tipped, then righted as her arms tightened around his neck. Consuela would have paged him at the first sounds of Livie waking, but he wanted to be there when she opened her eyes. His little girl must be exhausted to still be sleeping, but they’d get back on track now that they were home.

  Home. He pressed his cheek to Erin’s hair as he climbed. Home.

  “What happened?” Consuela demanded when they stepped inside.

  “She sprained an ankle,” he said and carried Erin to the atrium, smiling when her mouth fell slack. “It’s all right to ogle.” He squeezed a little, then laid her on the chaise.

  She winced.

  “I will wrap.” Consuela hurried for the medicine closet while he went upstairs.

  Livie heard him enter. She pushed up and sat, blinking at the unfamiliar territory. “Where we are?”

  “This is Livie’s room. Do you like it?”

  That determination would take some time, it seemed. She rubbed her eyes and stood up.

  “Which will it be—bath or breakfast first?”

  She yawned and reached up. “Cheerios, Daddy.”

  “Cheerios might be hard to come by. Let’s see what there is.” He took her to the kitchen to sample the feast and discovered his hunger as well. The two of them had a silly time of it while Consuela doctored Erin. As dark as the night had been, looking at Livie, thinking of Erin, he felt a ray of hope. Juniper Falls and Markham Wilder seemed far away and irrelevant. His simple thank-you hardly felt like prayer, and yet it might be the most sincere communication of all.

  In more pain than she’d let on, Erin delighted in the waterfall wall, tiny songbirds, and green and flowering plants of Morgan’s atrium. Outside at the beach and in this indoor garden, winter had gone away. It would be easy to believe everything else had gone too. What if Mark
ham never found her?

  That possibility sank in and began to swell. This could be her future, and it was bright with possibility. As soon as she was on her feet, she’d find some way to be useful.

  Livie came running in and butted into the couch to halt her momentum. “Look.” She held out a rock. Erin received the item for inspection as Livie explained, “It round and smooth,” though her th came out v. Erin smiled, liking smoov as a description for something that had rolled and tumbled its rough edges off.

  “You’re right,” she said. “Do you know this color?”

  Livie lifted her chin and announced, “White and gray spots.”

  She’d only expected the main color, white, and wasn’t sure she’d even get that. Impressed, she touched Livie’s tiny nose. “You’re so smart.” She glanced over at Morgan standing quietly.

  His gaze encompassed them both. “Cooking and cleaning is nothing. Keeping my little girl happy when I can’t be here is the world to me.” He sat down on the edge of the chaise. “My mistake was offering you a job, when what I needed was a wife and a mother for Livie.”

  “I can’t help thinking I limited your choices.”

  He tipped his head. “I only needed one.”

  She nudged him with her good foot. “There isn’t a woman on the planet—”

  “Hypotheticals are useless.”

  Livie tipped her face up. “Hear the birdies, Daddy?”

  He looked up too. “I hear them.” Then back down to her. “My business takes me away for chunks of time. That’s why I haven’t worked in that capacity for two years. Please don’t worry about what else you should be doing. Livie’s what matters.”

  “Okay.” How would she have reacted at the ranch if he’d come in and said, “I’d like you to be Livie’s mother.” Her chest made a small collapse.

  “What?” His brow creased.

  “It’s just . . . How can you know I’ll be good for her?”

  “Part of what I do, maybe the biggest part, more than any numbers my analysts run or strategies I devise, is reading the people I’m dealing with. I’m not even sure it’s conscious.”

  “You’ve read me?”

  “I’ve watched, listened, internalized.”

  She swallowed. “What do you see?”

  “Someone I trust with Livie.” The words might have been disappointing, but not from Morgan, not when the first thing she’d seen in him was his intense love for his child.

  “Thank you,” she breathed.

  “I’ll be downstairs working if you need me. You have your phone?”

  She touched it in her pocket. “Sort of.”

  “I’ll get the new one ordered. It’ll be a second phone on my plan, no name attached.”

  She nodded, her situation closing in again.

  “Need anything else?”

  She looked at Livie. “Will she want toys or . . .”

  “With the rocks, plants, and water feature, I doubt it.” He spread his hands. “I’ll have Consuela bring you some books for when she’s environmentally saturated, but I don’t expect that to be soon.”

  After a time Consuela lured Livie to lunch with a cinnamon twist she called a churro that looked and smelled much better than the commercially available version.

  She said, “I will bring you a tray, Señora, when the little one is settled.”

  “I can come—”

  “Señor Morgan’s orders.”

  Erin settled back in the couch, considering the fact he’d ordered Consuela, not her. Smarter than your average bear. She lowered her foot to the floor, tried the ankle, and flinched. Not a bad plan, keeping it raised. She winced again putting it back where it had been.

  “Are you in pain, Señora?” Consuela breezed in with a plate of roasted chicken on a bed of savory rice with crisp lightly charred sliced vegetables.

  “I’m all right. Is Livie . . .”

  “Señor Morgan is with her. Can I bring you something else?”

  “There’s an envelope in my room with papers in it.” Packing up, she’d stuffed it in her carryon. Last night she’d dreamed of Vera’s cellar—probably a combination of talking to RaeAnne and feeling alienated herself. If Morgan had Livie, she could take this time to read the history from the professor and try to understand her unnerving encounter.

  “I will get it,” Consuela said, as though it was her joy.

  “Thank you.” RaeAnne’s mother had lived there twelve years. How had she not been creeped out of her mind? Or had she . . .

  Hoarding everything, hiding her treasures in bizarre places. If Vera had been quirky to start with, might something else have twisted her tendencies? The house had felt fortified. But what if the evil lay within, feeding her fear and insecurity until she all but hid among her things?

  Nibbling her chicken, Erin removed the file from the envelope and found, as the professor said, a Hauntings section. She slipped her finger in at that divider and stopped, the chicken going dry in her throat. She went instead to Famous Patients.

  She didn’t recognize the names of the celebrities who had received clandestine alcohol rehabilitation, though people of the time would probably have known them. But halfway down the list, her jaw fell slack. She stared at the name on the page. Raymond Hartley. A side note said: stage actor.

  Erin laid the file across her knees and stared. RaeAnne’s dad had been treated in the Juniper Falls asylum for insomnia, rage, and suicidal depression. She closed her eyes and groaned. How would she tell RaeAnne?

  She opened her eyes when Morgan entered with a plate of food. “Livie?”

  “Wrapping another helpless human around her finger.” He sat on the low wrought-iron table beside her, though there were two perfectly good chairs on the other side of that. “Consuela says you’re in pain.”

  “I told her I’m fine.”

  “She doesn’t believe you.”

  She slanted him a glance. “I’ve taken care of myself for quite a while now.”

  “Welcome to my world,” he said ruefully.

  “Well, you can’t take care of yourself.”

  He fake punched her shoulder but didn’t argue.

  “Good to be back at work?”

  His face softened. “Good to be back.”

  Unsure of the subtle clarification, she studied him.

  With a bite poised, he said, “Not all who wander are lost, but I was.”

  She squeezed his hand. “Welcome back.”

  He lowered his fork, his eyes stroking her, but then he leaned away. “If we start something now, I won’t be getting back to work. And there’s a lot to do before I leave.”

  “Leave?”

  “The consultation. My team went on standby when I took off for Paris. They need a quarterback.”

  “When do you go?”

  “As soon as things are settled here.”

  She set down her fork. “So . . .”

  “Depends on you and Livie.”

  “How long will you be gone?”

  “Five days max. I’ll have covered everything I can beforehand.”

  “You think Livie will be okay with me?”

  “Erin, she led the way. If I hadn’t seen her gravitate, it would never have entered my mind to marry you.”

  “You didn’t think of it until I told you about Markham.”

  “I didn’t ask until then.”

  She canted her head.

  “It’s true. From the instant you made her animals talk.”

  Her laugh burst out.

  “That was a defining moment.” He ate the strip of zucchini.

  Every time he spoke, she fell deeper and deeper.

  She set her plate down. “Morgan, I need to tell you something. You can help me figure out what to do.”

  “My raison—”

  “Yes, I know.” She nudged him again.

  He caught her hand and held it, setting his plate aside as well. “Shoot.”

  She told him what was in Vera’s journal, since RaeAnne had a
lready shared—at length—about the locket. He raised a brow at the age difference, though by his expression he found it entertaining. “But here’s the strange part. He was treated at the asylum in Juniper Falls.”

  Morgan cocked his head. “Really.”

  She showed him the account. “He’s still in town somewhere. RaeAnne wants to meet him, and . . . she wants me to go with her.”

  He frowned. “In Juniper Falls. Didn’t we just make a dramatic escape from there?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your question is?”

  “I know. I do. But I feel bad for RaeAnne, and I thought maybe you’d see a way it could work.”

  “The only way it works, Erin, is by knowing Markham’s out of there.”

  She sighed. “That’s the same answer I got.”

  CHAPTER

  22

  Morgan worked solidly for the next hours with a peace of mind that felt like an altered state. With Livie safe and content, and Erin no longer considering him an emissary of the dark lord Sauron, in spite of his playlist, he felt a terrifying contentment. It was completed by the excellence of Consuela’s yellowfin tuna caught fresh that day and baked with lime and cilantro, and followed by homemade flan that could grace heaven’s table. He’d been forgiven for coming home without warning, for staying away so long.

  The only minor concern was that the ankle pain or something else had Erin pecking at her plate. She didn’t seem distressed, exactly, but he didn’t want her hiding it if something was wrong. After an hour of hide-and-seek with Livie, he let his child unwind with a few scenes of Finding Nemo and helped Erin up the stairs.

  “Consuela suggested I soak the sprain in salts.”

  “Consuela’s a wise woman.” Steeling himself, he led her past the room she’d used and into the master suite. Shadows parted as he touched a switch and the lamp came on.

  Erin faltered. “You want me in here?”

  “It’s a pretty nice tub.” One end had a continuous inflow of heated water, while the other drained over an edge and recycled. He helped her sit on the tile platform, then lit Consuela’s version of aromatherapy candles, all blessed at the mission. “I’ll get Livie to bed and see you in a while.”

  She definitely worked at her response. Worried about tonight? He should have kissed her on the beach. Then at least she wouldn’t be wondering.