by LoRee Peery
He took the knuckle he’d been gnawing out of his mouth. “The first home I remember was in a drafty old parsonage near the Kansas border. Pastor Gregg moved from town to town about every five or six years. At least I was in the same school from ninth to twelfth grade.”
“I know Pastor is single. How long has he been a widower? Oh, I apologize. That means you’ve been without a mother that long.”
He frowned in an attempt to follow. Gregg was right. He’d have horrid forehead wrinkles if he didn’t stop scowling. “Pastor’s never been married. His sister Teresa lived with him and took care of cooking and cleaning. She adopted me, raised me. I don’t talk about my past.”
“I apologize if I’ve stepped on your toes. I’m too curious for my own good. I get it because I don’t like to talk about what’s in my past either.” She smiled and held out the chain. “Pastor Gregg’s dogs are no doubt waiting for their romp.”
“For a few minutes there, I forgot about the dogs.” He stuffed the laptop in his bag, shrugged into his coat but didn’t close it. “You seem to enjoy this old stuff. Don’t know how the jewelry is connected, but if there’s a way to find out, I’m sure you’ll be able to. Now I need to make tracks so I don’t get back to a mess in the house.”
He jogged the two short blocks to the parsonage without noticing a thing around him, thanks to the lovely woman he’d just met. Why did she get to him?
She ran an old-lady kind of business in an aged, brick bank building. Did she live above the shop?
He hadn’t put his mind on the abandonment word for a long, long time. Instead, he poured out the hate, anger, his own sense of worthlessness, into his characters. Boys forever lost without knowing home. None of that helped. He’d still been tossed aside.
Summer’s barks resounded with his first step on the porch. He opened the door. “OK, OK. I’ll let you out back to do your thing.”
Winter did the growl sound that Gregg liked to put words to.
He swiped his feet on the mat, just a little snow, and then jogged through the lower level to let out the dogs.
In the spare room, his bag knocked over a tiny bust of Jesus that he’d molded and painted in sixth grade. It had gone unnoticed since his arrival the day before. Authors were supposed to notice details. Maybe he was as much a fake writer as he was a fake son. He straightened the statuette on the small table, and bit his knuckle. Ungrateful fool. Pastor Gregg thought enough of Kameron to keep the silly thing all these years.
Winter’s teeth on the doorknob and Summer’s yaps pulled his dark thoughts to the present task.
Keys in hand, he fingered the fob chain. Dare he snoop in Gregg’s cedar-scented room?
Kameron caught his breath at the top of the narrow iron stairs outside Auntie’s Antiquities and waited for Hayley to answer his knock. Her hair had slipped lower, but was still knotted on her nape. He’d like to see it undone. Focus. “Hope you don’t mind that I asked Mrs. Travis at the garage to give you a call.”
“Good thing they were still open. I told Bette Jean you weren’t bothering me.”
What would she say if he confessed she bothered him?
“I don’t get many visitors. Their daughter, and my best friend Blythe, spent her days with me when we were out of school. Bette Jean has always worked in the office when Ross has the garage open. So, come on in and tell me what’s on your mind.”
He waited for her to secure the door, and then let her precede him into her living space.
Even on a December night her apartment shone cheery bright. Fat candles, towels, dishes. A pretty plate with the added touch of turquoise on the windowsill. “You sure like orange.”
“My favorite color is on your mind?”
“Not really. Jewelry is. You don’t have much to do with Christmas here in your apartment.” He stood in her tiny kitchen area that smelled of chocolate and shrugged his shoulders. “I’m telling myself to be more observant.”
“I do like orange. As weird as this sounds, citrus is the only scent I’m able to smell due to an early-childhood sinus thing.”
Weird, all right. “Guess I expected a tree and other Christmas stuff.”
“There’s enough of that downstairs. Besides, I favor sunflowers from July to Thanksgiving. Want something to drink?”
“No thanks. I thought about snooping for personal documents, pictures of old relatives, or something.” The way I did at twelve, looking for my real parents. “But I’ve never lived in Gregg’s house here, so I’m not comfortable with digging through his belongings. Did you find any markings on your necklace?”
“No. I had just put it back on when a carload of women came in to shop. One collected handmade gloves and went nuts over a crocheted pair. Another cleaned out half of my ruby glass crystal from sheer to opaque, and didn’t care if the glass was smooth or heavily grooved. She just wanted the color. A third bought a silver teapot and two matching hand-tooled tin trays.” Hayley rubbed a finger across the twin hearts at her throat. “I apologize. Guess I’m still on a seller’s high.”
If he was the smiling kind, he’d return her grin. The woman was too happy for his comfort. “Where do you go to find your inventory?”
“We went antique hunting on weekends. Not far. Went through ads for garage or estate sales.”
“Who’s we?”
“Just Mom and me.” She straightened her necklace. “Kameron, you didn’t come over here to ask where my connections came from. We just met. What is it you want?”
He slipped off his coat and laid it over the back of a comfy-looking chair upholstered in charcoal fabric, and turned to lean against the counter that divided her living space. “I had a thought when I was with the dogs on the trail. You said something about the crossbar on the chain being a bit shorter than the usual watch fob. Could you take off your necklace, please?”
She looked at him with open trust and curiosity. He was a stranger, yet she welcomed him. Without comment, she reached up.
He swallowed. He wanted to unhook her necklace.
It was warm from her body. He fumbled with the clasp. Two halves of a heart swung open for one half to link through the tiny circle.
He tipped up the points of the heart to examine the bottom where the double locket connected. Just as he thought, a small notch on the inside of each heart. Extracting the key fob from his pocket, he anchored the locket top on the counter. “Here goes nothing.”
Hayley stepped in close, bringing the scent of citrus.
He fitted one end of the T-bar into the heart notch on the right, then the left. The two hearts separated.
Hayley sucked in air, released an audible, decidedly feminine gasp. “A perfect fit.”
“Go ahead and do the honors.”
She nestled her thumbs on the points of the hearts and lifted. The double locket unhinged to expose aged black and white photos of a man and woman.
Late into the night, time ceased to exist for Hayley. She didn’t even consider going to bed. She paced the small apartment, her hand repeatedly ran over the necklace.
Where had the jewelry come from? Had they belonged to a couple in love? She’d searched in her book sources, but hadn’t found a thing that matched the unique style of the chains. Were the pieces purchased by one person or a young couple? Who were they, and where did Kameron get the key to a locket that once belonged to her mother?
She could always do what she did as a girl. Make up stories about missing jewelry as she had for reasons why her father was absent from her life. Based on a newspaper article she’d found, she came up with a tale for her missing father. He embezzled from a business. Why did her father steal? Maybe because, as a baby, Hayley had cancer and they needed the money for medical bills. But her daddy stole from the wrong people, big-time criminals that made it necessary for him to go away and her mother to create a new life.
Hayley had seriously considered Witness Protection because Mom didn’t have friends o
ther than the neighbors or frequent customers. She claimed she only needed her daughter for her life to be complete.
Time circled from past to present, and Kameron. Had he already woven a story because of their discovery of the linked jewelry? Were they destined to be linked together as friends, or more?
That connection was obviously too intense for Kameron to handle earlier. He’d given her no opportunity to respond. Within minutes of making the discovery he’d growled, “I need to go.”
She’d closed the locket hearts, too stunned to study the faces inside, and then with unsteady fingers removed the T-bar, or key. She held the chain so it dangled to prevent their fingers from touching.
Kameron yanked his coat off the chair with such force she’d rushed forward to set it on all four legs. Then he slammed out the door and tromped down the stairs.
An uncalled for reaction in her opinion. So far, he presented himself as a man of few words, but he must have an anger issue.
Pacing through her place accomplished nothing. She snagged her hooded coat off the hall tree and bounded out of her apartment. A block away, she could tell the parsonage was lit rather than dark. On the other side of Edgewood Community Church’s parking lot, the light through the large picture window revealed Kameron at his laptop.
Her knock roused the dogs. Kameron took his time coming to the door.
“Hi, Winter. Good girl, Summer.” She turned to greet the man. Kameron’s hair stood up in spikes as though he’d run his hands through it time and again. The perplexed look he wore cleared as they made eye contact.
“You must get deep in your writing zone.”
“Sorry. Yeah. One of my kids is hiding from the dorm patrol. It takes a while for my head to come out of my computer-generated forest world and my story people.” He yawned and scratched the back of his head. “It’s late.”
“I couldn’t sleep.” She lowered the hood of her coat, unzipped it. “I apologize for interrupting you. I’ve been deep in my own reflections. A gazillion questions keep rolling through my head. My curiosity kicked in. How about your thoughts on what we’ve discovered? Do you think our ancestors knew each other? I’d like to know where your chain, the key to my locket, came from. Your father’s, or your mother’s side of the family?”
“How would I know? I was abandoned and left at the door of a church.”
3
Hayley always had something to say. Not in this case.
Abandoned at birth? How did he deal with that?
Ignore it and pay attention. She’d sought him out. She’d been thrilled when the T-bar on his keychain had unlocked her necklace. His lack of enthusiasm disturbed her so greatly that she slogged through the brisk December night to see if he’d discuss the mystery.
A mistake.
Hurt clouded Kameron’s brown eyes and cried out to the little girl in her psyche. He carried a little boy’s anguish to match a place she secreted in her heart, where she mourned over a father she couldn’t remember.
This jewelry thing had resurrected pain in him. And she’d had a hand in it.
The dogs returned to their beds in the corner. Their temporary master now sat slumped in an over-stuffed chair, elbows on knees, and fingers buried in his hair. She resisted the urge to massage his rigid shoulders. Had he ever been able to express his torment with an emotion besides anger?
Summer barked.
Hayley jumped.
Kameron raised his head.
The impulse to reach out pulled her next to his chair. She slid her coat off her shoulders and tossed it on a chair as she knelt. “I know we just met. For all I know, instead of writing to children, you create horror stories for twisted minds. But I believe God is so involved in the lives of His children that strangers can be drawn together as soon as they meet.”
He straightened and slid her a sideways glance. Light from the kitchen reflected in his eyes. A pulse throbbed in his temple. His jaw clenched so hard she heard his teeth grind.
“Kam—”
“Who are you to come here and talk to me about God? I grew up hearing about Him until there were times I ran outside, jumped on my bike, and took to the trails to scream at the trees.” His calm tone scared her as much as if he screamed now. “God abandoned me the same way as the unknown female who birthed me and left me at Pastor Gregg’s church doorstep. Yes, I grew up without parents. How on this earth would I know anything about, let alone care, what history a couple pieces of antique jewelry have in common?”
She reared back. Shock kept tears from forming.
Kameron jumped to his feet. “It takes a lot of nerve to search me out in the middle of the night so you could snoop into my past. What do you expect, to go on a sweet mystery hunt like a couple innocent kids out of a storybook from fifty years ago?”
Hayley blinked away hot moisture. She remained where she was, kneeling between the chair and coffee table.
“If I was writing, I’d know what to do. Make the boys run through the woods or start a fight. Anything to move things along.” He paced, slowed, and stepped close to set a hand on her shoulder.
She looked up and felt her swimming eyes spill over.
“I never aced social skills. I’ve never known how to react to a female’s tears.” He extended a hand that shook. “I’m sorry. Sometimes I feel more beast than human. I’m a jerk for imputing my garbage on your pretty soul.”
She smiled despite her ragged breaths. “Impute is a good word. Pretty isn’t too bad, either.”
He handed her a box of tissues. “Would you like some water or anything else to drink?”
“What are my choices?” She blew her nose with gusto.
He opened the door under the sink and waited until she’d tossed the used tissue.
“Is there hot chocolate?”
“One of my weaknesses. Gregg bought a variety of flavors just for my indulgence, he claimed.” Kameron brought water to a boil on the stove, busied himself with mugs and measuring. “No microwave in this house. Gregg has a pacemaker so never wanted to take a chance on whatever could cause harm.”
“Ah. Is there a hidden meaning there? Maybe you think you’re taking a chance on me. I promise I’m not here to threaten your privacy or cause you harm.”
“Not threatened exactly. You’ve guessed by now I don’t interact with people much. I don’t like to talk about my past. I don’t think I’m a bad guy at heart.”
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think you were a good guy. Bad guys can’t write books for youth.”
He ignored her comment. “This is the first time I’ve seen your hair down. I would have never guessed it falls halfway down your back.”
“Not bad for talking to a woman. Water’s boiling.” Hayley sashayed to his side and picked up a spoon to stir the first cup. “Whenever you want to talk, though you say it isn’t your thing, I’m as curious about you as I am about the jewelry.”
The next morning Bette Jean and Ross Travis entered Auntie’s Antiquities together.
Hayley instructed over her shoulder, “Shut the door quick. Don’t let out all this nice, warm air.” She welcomed her friends with a smile half the size she usually had for them. It took energy to move facial muscles, or much of anything else, after praying for Kameron into the wee hours. “Coffee’s not quite ready. What brings you both in today?”
Bette Jean elbowed her husband aside. “I can pay for my own fudge, but he scampered after me today, excited as a puppy.”
“There was a time I chased after her.” Ross waggled his brows. “Now I just follow along.”
Bette Jean puckered her lips and smacked her husband’s cheek with a gloved hand. “I slowed down so you could catch me, didn’t I?”
If that didn’t draw a smile from Hayley, nothing would.
He settled his arm around Bette Jean’s ample waist and grinned like only a happy man can. “I’m going to slip into the vault and pick out some licorice. You go ahead and wrap Bette’s fudge.”
<
br /> Hayley did as instructed. “What’s all the excitement about?”
“Blythe is coming home for Christmas instead of going off to some island as originally planned. She’ll be here in one week.”
“I can hardly wait. No wonder your hubby has a bounce in his step. She hasn’t been home for at least a year, right?”
“Almost. Spring break. But that news isn’t what brought me in. I want a closer look at the young man caring for Pastor Gregg’s place. Pastor didn’t say much other than he had someone trustworthy to watch after Winter and Summer.”
Hayley handed the small sack to Bette Jean. “He’s a troubled man. Quiet, an author of those other-worldly, dystopian stories that young readers eat up. Not bad looking, but I have yet to see him smile.”
Ross approached with his choices, three varied selections of licorice. “Gotta get back to the garage. A car just pulled up.”
Bette Jean didn’t follow her husband out the door. “The writer guy must attract you. You’ve fidgeted with your necklace since we got in here. What’s his name, and how has he managed to get under your skin so fast?”
“His name is Kameron Kohl. He is on my mind, especially his attitude toward God. I’ve got quite the story to tell you, but not until I know he’d be comfortable with the telling.” To leave her necklace alone, she rearranged a display of brooches. Her mother had adored collecting antique pins consisting of everything from pearls and colored glass, simple to gaudy filigree.
“He’s here.” Bette Jean’s announcement made Hayley’s heart thump. She didn’t get a chance to introduce them. Bette held out her hand and waited until Kameron slid off his shoulder bag. “I’m Ross’s better half from across the street. Welcome to our little town.”
Kameron squeezed her hand and pulled his back. One brow lifted and a glint of what could be humor showed in his eyes. “I’d never call your berg, population 549, a town. Hard to sleep the last couple nights, it’s so quiet.”
