by Nora Roberts
“I’m not going to let anything hurt you.”
“Back at you, doubled. Now get out of my kitchen. I need to finish up the appetizers.”
He’d have offered to lend her a hand, but would have earned one of her pitying stares. Not that she didn’t allow kitchen help. His father was not only allowed to grill, but encouraged to. And any and all could and were called in as line chefs from time to time.
But when his mother was in full-out company-coming mode, she wanted the kitchen to herself.
He passed through the dining room where, naturally, the table was already set. She’d used festive plates, which meant she wasn’t going for elegant or drop-in casual. Tented linen napkins, tea lights in cobalt rounds, inside a centerpiece of winter berries.
Even during the worst time, even during the Seven, he could come here and there would be fresh flowers artfully arranged, furniture free of dust and gleaming with polish, and intriguing little soaps in the dish in the downstairs powder room.
Even hell didn’t cause Frannie Hawkins to break stride.
Maybe, Cal thought as he wandered into the living room, that was part of the reason—even the most important reason—he got through it himself. Because whatever else happened, his mother would be maintaining her own brand of order and sanity.
Just as his father would be. They’d given him that, Cal thought. That rock-solid foundation. Nothing, not even a demon from hell had ever shaken it.
He started to go upstairs, hunt down his father who, he suspected, would be in his home office. But saw Fox’s truck pull in when he glanced out the window.
He stood where he was, watched Quinn jump out first, cradling a bouquet wrapped in green florist paper. Layla slid out next, holding what looked to be a wine gift bag. His mother, Cal thought, would approve of the offerings. She herself had shelves and bins in her ruthlessly organized workroom that held carefully selected emergency hostess gifts, gift bags, colored tissue paper, and an assortment of bows and ribbons.
When Cal opened the door, Quinn strode straight in. “Hi. I love the house and the yard! Shows where you came by your eye for landscaping. What a great space. Layla, look at these walls. Like an Italian villa.”
“It’s their latest incarnation,” Cal commented.
“It looks like home, but with a kick of style. Like you could curl up on that fabulous sofa and take a snooze, but you’d probably read Southern Homes first.”
“Thank you.” Frannie stepped out. “That’s a lovely compliment. Cal, take everyone’s coats, will you? I’m Frannie Hawkins.”
“It’s so nice to meet you. I’m Quinn. Thanks so much for having us. I hope you like mixed bouquets. I have a hard time deciding on one type of mostly anything.”
“They’re wonderful, thank you.” Frannie accepted the flowers, smiled expectantly at Layla.
“I’m Layla Darnell, thank you for having us in your home. I hope the wine’s appropriate.”
“I’m sure it is.” Frannie took a peek inside the gift bag. “Jim’s favorite cabernet. Aren’t you clever girls? Cal, go up and tell your father we have company. Hello, Fox.”
“I brought you something, too.” He grabbed her, lowered her into a stylish dip, and kissed both her cheeks. “What’s cooking, sweetheart?”
As she had since he’d been a boy, Frannie ruffled his hair. “You won’t have long to wait to find out. Quinn and Layla, you make yourselves comfortable. Fox, you come with me. I want to put these flowers in water.”
“Is there anything we can do to help?”
“Not a thing.”
When Cal came down with his father, Fox was doing his version of snooty French waiter as he served appetizers. The women were laughing, candles were lit, and his mother carried in her grandmother’s best crystal vase with Quinn’s flowers a colorful filling.
Sometimes, Cal mused, all really was right with the world.
HALFWAY THROUGH THE MEAL, WHERE THE CONVERSATION stayed in what Cal considered safe territories, Quinn set down her fork, shook her head. “Mrs. Hawkins, this is the most amazing meal, and I have to ask. Did you study? Did you have a career as a gourmet chef at some point or did we just hit you on a really lucky day?”
“I took a few classes.”
“Frannie’s taken a lot of ‘a few classes,’” Jim said. “In all kinds of things. But she’s just got a natural talent for cooking and gardening and decorating. What you see around here, it’s all her doing. Painted the walls, made the curtains—sorry, window treatments,” he corrected with a twinkle at his wife.
“Get out. You did all the faux and fancy paintwork? Yourself?”
“I enjoy it.”
“Found that sideboard there years back at some flea market, had me haul it home.” Jim gestured toward the gleaming mahogany sideboard. “A few weeks later, she has me haul it in here. Thought she was pulling a fast one, had snuck out and bought something from an antique store.”
“Martha Stewart eats your dust,” Quinn decided. “I mean that as a compliment.”
“I’ll take it.”
“I’m useless at all of that. I can barely paint my own nails. How about you?” Quinn asked Layla.
“I can’t sew, but I like to paint. Walls. I’ve done some ragging that turned out pretty well.”
“The only ragging I’ve done successfully was on my ex-fiancé.”
“You were engaged?” Frannie asked.
“I thought I was. But our definition of same differed widely.”
“It can be difficult to blend careers and personal lives.”
“Oh, I don’t know. People do it all the time—with varying degrees of success, sure, but they do. I think it just has to be the right people. The trick, or the first of probably many tricks, is recognizing the right person. Wasn’t it like that for you? Didn’t you have to recognize each other?”
“I knew the first time I saw Frannie. There she is.” Jim beamed down the table at his wife. “Frannie now, she was a little more shortsighted.”
“A little more practical,” Frannie corrected, “seeing as we were eight and ten at the time. Plus I enjoyed having you moon over and chase after me. Yes, you’re right.” Frannie looked back at Quinn. “You have to see each other, and see in each other something that makes you want to take the chance, that makes you believe you can dig down for the long haul.”
“And sometimes you think you see something,” Quinn commented, “but it was just a—let’s say—trompe l’oeil.”
ONE THING QUINN KNEW HOW TO DO WAS FINAGLE. Frannie Hawkins wasn’t an easy mark, but Quinn managed to charm her way into the kitchen to help put together dessert and coffee.
“I love kitchens. I’m kind of a pathetic cook, but I love all the gadgets and tools, all the shiny surfaces.”
“I imagine with your work, you eat out a lot.”
“Actually, I eat in most of the time or call for takeout. I implemented a lifestyle change—nutrition-wise—a couple of years ago. Determined to eat healthier, depend less on fast or nuke-it-out-of-a-box food. I make a really good salad these days. That’s a start. Oh God, oh God, that’s apple pie. Homemade apple pie. I’m going to have to do double duty in the gym as penance for the huge piece I’m going to ask for.”
Her enjoyment obvious, Frannie shot her a wicked smile. “À la mode, with vanilla bean ice cream?”
“Yes, but only to show my impeccable manners.” Quinn hesitated a moment, then jumped in. “I’m going to ask you, and if you want this off-limits while I’m enjoying your hospitality, just tell me to back off. Is it hard for you to nurture this normal life, to hold your family, yourself, your home together when you know all of it will be threatened?”
“It’s very hard.” Frannie turned to her pies while the coffee brewed. “Just as it’s very necessary. I wanted Cal to go, and if he had I would have convinced Jim to leave. I could do that, I could turn my back on it all. But Cal couldn’t. And I’m so proud of him for staying, for not giving up.”
“Will you tell
me what happened when he came home that morning, the morning of his tenth birthday?”
“I was in the yard.” Frannie walked over to the window that faced the back. She could see it all, every detail. How green the grass was, how blue the sky. Her hydrangeas were headed up and beginning to pop, her delphiniums towering spears of exotic blue.
Deadheading her roses, and some of the coreopsis that had bloomed off. She could even hear the busy snip, snip of her shears, and the hum of the neighbor’s—it had been the Petersons, Jack and Lois, then—lawn mower. She remembered, too, she’d been thinking about Cal, and his birthday party. She’d had his cake in the oven.
A double-chocolate sour cream cake, she remembered. She’d intended to do a white frosting to simulate the ice planet from one of the Star Wars movies. Cal had loved Star Wars for years and years. She’d had the little action figures to arrange on it, the ten candles all ready in the kitchen.
Had she heard him or sensed him—probably some of both—but she’d looked around as he’d come barreling up on his bike, pale, filthy, sweaty. Her first thought had been accident, there’d been an accident. And she’d been on her feet and rushing to him before she’d noticed he wasn’t wearing his glasses.
“The part of me that registered that was ready to give him a good tongue-lashing. But the rest of me was still running when he climbed off his bike, and ran to me. He ran to me and he grabbed on so tight. He was shaking—my little boy—shaking like a leaf. I went down on my knees, pulling him back so I could check for blood or broken bones.”
What is it, what happened, are you hurt? All of that, Frannie remembered had flooded out of her, so fast it was like one word. In the woods, he’d said. Mom. Mom. In the woods.
“There was that part of me again, the part that thought what were you doing in the woods, Caleb Hawkins? It all came pouring out of him, how he and Fox and Gage planned this adventure, what they’d done, where they’d gone. And that same part was coldly devising the punishment to fit the crime, even while the rest of me was terrified, and relieved, so pitifully relieved I was holding my dirty, sweaty boy. Then he told me the rest.”
“You believed him?”
“I didn’t want to. I wanted to believe he’d had a nightmare, which he richly deserved, that he’d stuffed himself on sweets and junk food and had a nightmare. Even, that someone had gone after them in the woods. But I couldn’t look at his face and believe that. I couldn’t believe the easy that, the fixable that. And then, of course, there were his eyes. He could see a bee hovering over the delphiniums across the yard. And under the dirt and sweat, there wasn’t a bruise on him. The nine-year-old I’d sent off the day before had scraped knees and bruised shins. The one who came back to me hadn’t a mark on him, but for the thin white scar across his wrist he hadn’t had when he left.”
“Even with that, a lot of adults, even mothers, wouldn’t have believed a kid who came home with a story like that.”
“I won’t say Cal never lied to me, because obviously he did. He had. But I knew he wasn’t lying. I knew he was telling me the truth, all the truth he knew.”
“What did you do?”
“I took him inside, told him to clean up, change his clothes. I called his father, and got his sisters home. I burned his birthday cake—completely forgot about it, never heard the timer. Might’ve burned the house down if Cal himself hadn’t smelled the burning. So he never got his ice planet or his ten candles. I hate remembering that. I burned his cake and he never got to blow out his birthday candles. Isn’t that silly?”
“No, ma’am. No,” Quinn said with feeling when Frannie looked at her, “it’s not.”
“He was never really, not wholly, a little boy again.” Frannie sighed. “We went straight over to the O’Dells, because Fox and Gage were already there. We had what I guess you could call our first summit meeting.”
“What did—”
“We need to take in the dessert and coffee. Can you handle that tray?”
Understanding the subject was closed for now, Quinn stepped over. “Sure. It looks terrific, Mrs. Hawkins.”
In between moans and tears of joy over the pie, Quinn aimed her charm at Jim Hawkins. Cal, she was sure, had been dodging and weaving, avoiding and evading her since their hike to the Pagan Stone.
“Mr. Hawkins, you’ve lived in the Hollow all your life.”
“Born and raised. Hawkinses have been here since the town was a couple of stone cabins.”
“I met your grandmother, and she seems to know town history.”
“Nobody knows more.”
“People say you’re the one who knows real estate, business, local politics.”
“I guess I do.”
“Then you may be able to point me in the right direction.” She slid a look at Cal, then beamed back at his father. “I’m looking to rent a house, something in town or close to it. Nothing fancy, but I’d like room. I have a friend coming in soon, and I’ve nearly talked Layla into staying longer. I think we’d be more comfortable, and it would be more efficient, for the three of us to have a house instead of using the hotel.”
“How long are you looking for?”
“Six months.” She saw it register on his face, just as she noticed the frown form on Cal’s. “I’m going to stay through July, Mr. Hawkins, and I’m hoping to find a house that would accommodate three women—potentially three—” she said with a glance at Layla.
“I guess you’ve thought that over.”
“I have. I’m going to write this book, and part of the angle I’m after is the fact that the town remains, the people—a lot of them—stay. They stay and they make apple pie and have people over to Sunday dinner. They bowl, and they shop. They fight and they make love. They live. If I’m going to do this right, I want to be here, before, during, and after. So I’d like to rent a house.”
Jim scooped up some pie, chased it with coffee. “It happens I know a place on High Street, just a block off Main. It’s old, main part went up before the Civil War. It’s got four bedrooms, three baths. Nice porches, front and back. Had a new roof on her two years ago. Kitchen’s eat-in size, though there’s a little dining room off it. Appliances aren’t fancy, but they’ve only got five years on them. Just been painted. Tenants moved out just a month ago.”
“It sounds perfect. You seem to know it well.”
“Should. We own it. Cal, you should take Quinn by. Maybe run her and Layla over there on the way home. You know where the keys are.”
“Yeah,” he said when Quinn gave him a big, bright smile. “I know where the keys are.”
AS IT MADE THE MOST SENSE, QUINN HITCHED A ride with Cal, and left Fox and Layla to follow. She stretched out her legs, let out a sigh.
“Let me start off by saying your parents are terrific, and you’re lucky to have grown up in such a warm, inviting home.”
“I agree.”
“Your dad’s got that Ward Cleaver meets Jimmy Stewart thing going. I could’ve eaten him up like your mother’s—Martha Stewart meets Grace Kelly by way of Julia Child—apple pie.”
His lips twitched. “They’d both like those descriptions.”
“You knew about the High Street house.”
“Yeah, I did.”
“You knew about the High Street house, and avoided telling me about it.”
“That’s right. You found out about it, too, before dinner, which is why you did the end-run around me to my father.”
“Correct.” She tapped her finger on his shoulder. “I figured he’d point me there. He likes me. Did you avoid telling me because you’re not comfortable with what I might write about Hawkins Hollow?”
“Some of that. More, I was hoping you’d change your mind and leave. Because I like you, too.”
“You like me, so you want me gone?”
“I like you, Quinn, so I want you safe.” He looked at her again, longer. “But some of the things you said about the Hollow over apple pie echoed pretty closely some of the things my mother said t
o me today. It all but eliminates any discomfort with what you may decide to write. But it makes me like you more, and that’s a problem.”
“You had to know, after what happened to us in the woods, I wouldn’t be leaving.”
“I guess I did.” He pulled off into a short, steep driveway.
“Is this the house? It is perfect! Look at the stonework, and the big porch, the windows have shutters.”
They were painted a deep blue that stood out well against the gray stone. The little front yard was bisected by a trio of concrete steps and the narrow walkway. A trim tree Quinn thought might be a dogwood highlighted the left square of front yard.
As Fox’s truck pulled in behind, Quinn popped out to stand, hands on hips. “Pretty damned adorable. Don’t you think, Layla?”
“Yes, but—”
“No buts, not yet. Let’s take a look inside.” She cocked her head at Cal. “Okay, landlord?”
As they trooped up to the porch, Cal took out the keys he’d grabbed off their hook from his father’s home office. The ring was clearly labeled with the High Street address.
The fact that the door opened without a creak told Quinn the landlords were vigilant in the maintenance department.
The door opened straight into the living area that stood twice as long as it was wide, with the steps to the second floor a couple of strides in on the left. The wood floors showed wear, but were spotlessly clean. The air was chilly and carried the light sting of fresh paint.
The small brick fireplace delighted her.
“Could use your mother’s eye in the paint department,” Quinn commented.
“Rental properties get eggshell, through and through. It’s the Hawkins’s way. Tenants want to play around with that, it’s their deal.”
“Reasonable. I want to start at the top, work down. Layla, do you want to go up and fight over who gets which bedroom?”
