Hearth Song

by Lois Greiman

  He stopped himself, remembering to be fair, or, if that was too gargantuan a feat, at least to be honest; he didn’t know if Lambert had been the whiny guy with Sherri at the bar. He didn’t know, but maybe he would stay close, just in case.

  Chapter 19

  “Man, you look great,” Dane said, and smiled as Vura entered the room. She felt funny in her curve-hugging sweater and blinged-out blue jeans, but it was the greasy feel of foundation on her skin that gave her the true out-of-body experience. Then there was the fact that she had stabbed herself in the eye with the mascara wand, making her blink like a blinded barn owl.

  But Dane had asked her to get dressed up, and maybe temporary myopia was a small price to pay for a solid marriage. “Thank you,” she said.

  “For the compliment or for the big-as-a-barn Panasonic?”

  “For both …” She glanced toward the living room, where he had set up the TV. Despite the fact that those particular walls had been papered with pictures of dairy cows and red barns, it was still the ugliest thing in the room, at least to her way of thinking. The fact that there was an even bigger box standing near the door made her feel a little queasy. “I guess.”

  “You guess.” He laughed. “Listen, I know you’re not crazy about electronics, but this little baby is 4K Ultra HD. You can catch a YouTube video while watching”—he shook his head—“Game of Thrones.”

  “Game of Thrones?”

  He chuckled. “Let’s just say it’s ultra-cool. You can surf the web without interrupting your viewing pleasure. So it’ll be good for business.”

  “Will it?” she asked, and scowled at the slightly curved screen. It was difficult to understand how a TV the size of her porch could be more helpful than a Sawzall. Or a new router. Or really dynamite rolled steel scaffolding.

  “Sure. You’ll be able to stay in tune with the latest remodeling ideas.” He stroked the black screen like another might fondle a puppy. “Or find out who’s offering the best prices on”—he shrugged again—“Sheetrock. You’ll love it.”

  Maybe it was her nonresponse that pulled him out of his lustful perusal of the television.

  “But not as much as I love you,” he said and, catching her arms, gazed into her eyes.

  “Do you?” she asked, and hated herself for the quiver in her voice.

  “Baby,” he said, and grinned. “Didn’t I just pay seventeen hundred dollars to prove it?”

  Quiet. Be quiet, she told herself. Her husband liked to spend money on her. Millions of women would love that … wouldn’t they? Maybe she should, too, but …

  “That’s what I’m talking about.” She said the words softly. “We don’t have seventeen hundred dollars, Dane. If you had been here for the past fourteen months, you’d have known that. I’ve been working like a slave just to make the mortgage payments.”

  His face tightened. “It wasn’t my idea to buy this place.”

  “I know. I know it wasn’t,” she said, and tugged her arms free. “But Lily …” Tonk’s opinion about her daughter’s needs rushed to her mind, but she wasn’t foolish enough to voice another man’s opinions. Not yet anyway. “Lily needs room to run. It helps her relax. That’s what the specialists say.”

  “We’re paying for specialists now?” His brows, so genially high just moments ago, lowered into a pouty ridge. “I thought we didn’t have any money.”

  “For TVs and designer jeans,” she said, and swept an aggravated hand toward his pants. “For muscle cars and …” She shook her head, running out of steam.

  “So what you’re saying is, we don’t have money for the things I want.”

  Frustration ripened toward anger. “We don’t have money for the things we don’t need.”

  “The things you don’t want. I can’t win with—” He stopped himself, exhaled, then, capturing her right hand, he ran his thumb over her palm. Calluses made little moguls down the center line. “Listen, I don’t want to fight. And this”—he nodded toward the Panasonic that loomed like a gargoyle against the lumbering dairy cows—“this is just a onetime deal, honey. Just a few homecoming gifts.” He pulled her back against him. “Surely you can forgive me for buying a couple of little gadgets for my girls.” He grinned that grin that used to make her stomach pitch. “I forgive you.”

  Where was that girl who used to go loopy over his grin? That girl whose feet never touched the ground if he so much as glanced in her direction. That girl who was sure that wearing miniskirts and mascara was a small price to pay even if they chafed against the Bravura her father had raised. The Bravura who knew how to plaster a wall at age nine, could install …

  Her thoughts ground to a halt.

  “Forgive me?” She stiffened, though she told herself not to. “What are you talking about?”

  He raised his brows a little.

  Anger inched toward rage. “Forgive me for what?”

  He shook his head. “Listen, baby, let’s just—”

  “Forgive me for what?”

  “I’ve been gone a long time. I know that, honey.” He shrugged. “So you got lonely …”

  “What?” Confusion mixed with the anger, swirled with frustration, producing a heady potion.

  “And, hey”—he shrugged, disarming and understanding and so handsome Angie Dotson, head cheerleader, had once said he made her toes curl—“I did, too. But we can put that all behind us now that I’m home.”

  Her mind was whirling. “You don’t think …” She paused, barely able to force out the words. “You don’t think I was … unfaithful.”

  “No. Of course not,” he said, but was there a question in his tone. “It’s just …” He nodded toward the front door through which Tonk had disappeared not thirty minutes earlier. “Just a little flirtation maybe.”

  “A little flirtation. What does that mean?”

  “Forget it, baby. I have. Let’s just put it behind us.”

  “Put what behind us?”

  “The others. All that’s important is us now.”

  “What others?” she demanded and jerked back a pace.

  A muscle ticked in his cheek. He exhaled softly. “You tell me, Vey.”

  She stared at him, heart thumping murderously. “There haven’t been any others. Not for me, anyway. I thought I could say the same about you. But when you’re so casual about”—she made air quotes with four fingers—“a little flirtation, I wonder—”

  “So you’re not stringing him along? Really? Then the chief out there must be what? Your long-lost brother? Like that Hunter dude? Do you run around with your tits hanging out with him, too?”

  If he had struck her, she wouldn’t have been more surprised. Dane Lambert could be selfish. He could be childish and moody and undependable, but he was not cruel. Or if he was, he was, without exception, craftier about it. Unless he was drinking. He could get nasty when he’d been drinking. But it was a little too early for that. Wasn’t it? Then again, where had he been all morning? And why hadn’t she heard him leave? She shook her head as a dozen rampant questions stormed through her blistering mind. But at that second the front door slammed, and Lily pattered in from behind them.

  “Mama!” Her voice, filled with excitement and wonder and little-girl breathlessness, broke Vura from her trance.

  “Yes?” She tried to relax, tried to fix a smile on her face before allowing herself to turn. “What is it, honey?”

  “The eggs are hatching!”

  Vura exhaled, attempting to find that quiet haven she harbored for her daughter. “The goose eggs?” she asked, then turned and gasped.

  Blood was smeared like rhubarb jam across her daughter’s left cheek.

  “Lily!” She took one stumbling step forward and stopped. “What happened?”

  “So much!” She was jittering with excitement. “Three of ’em musta hatched before I got there, and the fourth one is cracked. That means there’s just six more left to—”

  “No. Honey, what happened to your face?”

  “Oh.�
� Lily raised one grubby hand, but Vura caught her wrist before she touched the wound, though it was hard to tell how much was injury and how much was blood. “I musta cut it on a wire while sitting with the babies.”

  Of course. Milly, with a goose’s diabolical planning, had positioned her nest directly beneath a barbed-wire fence. “Oh man,” Vura sighed and settling onto her haunches, gripped her daughter’s chin in uncertain fingers.

  “Good God!” Dane’s words were little more than a croak as he got a clear view of their daughter’s face for the first time. Vura set her jaw but did her best to ignore him.

  “Grab your giddy-up bag, Lily Belle. We’re going to town.”

  The downy brows drew abruptly together. “What for?”

  What for? Was she kidding? Vura wondered. But of course she wasn’t. When Lily was invested in something, she was totally immersed, all in. “We’re going to visit Dr. Shelby.”

  “But I gots to be here when the rest of the goslings hatch.”

  “You can go see them again as soon as we get back.” She was already herding her daughter toward the door, searching for her wallet, gathering her keys.

  “But she didn’t mean to hurt me,” Lily wailed. “It’s her job to protect her babies. You said so.”

  “Good God!” Dane said again.

  Vura gritted her teeth and refrained from telling him to shut up. Grabbing Lily, she pulled the child to her chest.

  “I don’t wanna go!” She was screaming now, arms thrashing, legs kicking. “I don’t wanna go. I gotta be here with the babies.”

  “Lily, be quiet!” Dane ordered.

  She ignored him as only a five-year-old could. “What about the coyotes? What if the coyotes come while we’re gone?” Her little face looked stricken. Tears popped from the corners of her eyes like raindrops.

  Vura shot her desperate gaze to her husband. He shook his head, then glanced hopefully at the giant box beside the door.

  “Hey, Lil …” Hurrying over, he hunched down beside it. “I got something for you.”

  She blinked as he opened the carton. Inside, a scaled-down, adrenaline-red roadster was parked.

  “It’s a Dodge Viper. Just like Daddy’s. Except for the color,” he said. “As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to get it for my Lily Belle.”

  A tear had made its way to her chin, charting a brave course through the blood and the dirt.

  “Look,” he said, and honked its tinny horn. “It’s an authentic replica.”

  She pursed her lips and perfected her scowl. “Can I use that?”

  “Sure, baby,” Dane said, and flitted a proud glance at Vura. “Sure you can. But I’ll have to get the batteries installed first. If you’re really good, when you get back, you can—”

  “The box,” she said, and zipped her hopeful gaze from him to Vura. “We could put Milly and the babies inside. They’d for sure be okay if we took them with us.”

  Vura felt her knees buckle. Yeah, she was tough. But that didn’t mean she didn’t want to faint dead away when her baby’s face was covered in blood. Holy cats, didn’t she have a right to faint? “That’s a good idea, Lily, honey,” she said. “But this is their home. Milly would be scared if we put her in there.” Scared and hissy and probably mad enough to tear their faces right off their heads. Vura made her way toward the door. “I’m afraid they’ll have to stay here. Listen, though …” she added before the kicking commenced again. “Papa will look after them while we’re gone.” She glanced hopefully at Dane.

  But Lily shook her head with violent intensity. “Milly doesn’t know him. She only knows me. I gotta stay! We have to put them inside now that they’re hatched. You said so,” she insisted and bucked wildly.

  “Lily!” Dane snapped and grabbed her arm with rough impatience. “Quit acting like a child!”

  The world went quiet. She blinked, eyes as wide as moons. “But I am a child.”

  He glowered at her. She glowered back. “Then you can’t have the Viper,” he said. “They’re just for big kids who know how to behave.”

  She set her tiny jaw and scowled. “Can I still have the box?” she asked, and Vura, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, headed for her truck.

  Chapter 20

  “I can’t believe she didn’t even wake up when I carried her in.” Vura’s father sat across the kitchen table he had crafted from a wind-felled oak. His plaid flannel sleeves were folded back from thick-veined wrists. He looked homey and wise and as comforting as homemade stew.

  “A barbed-wire attack followed by forced tetanus boosters is probably exhausting. Not to mention the unholy fit she threw over leaving the goslings.”

  He shook his head and glared into his coffee mug. The pristine porcelain contrasted sharply with his sun-darkened fingers. “It wasn’t anything serious, though, right?” he asked, and when he glanced up again, his eyes looked suspiciously bright; for reasons Vura would never fully understand, those tears seemed to set everything right.

  “Even if it was, I wouldn’t tell you.” She took a sip of coffee, hiding her grin against the rim of the cup. “Cuz I’m fresh out of Kleenex and I can’t stand to see a grown man cry.”

  “I don’t know when you became such a smart a …” he began, then glanced toward the room where Lily slept. The day she was born, he had quit swearing. Cold turkey. Since then he’d been converting every conventional swear word into creative, if rather anticlimactic expletives. “… asterisk,” he finished poorly.

  Vura laughed out loud. Peace settled cautiously into her jittery belly. She managed a shrug. “Might have been the same time you became such a pansy.”

  “You watch your mouth, young lady,” he said, and she laughed again, loving him wildly. He rose to his feet. Retrieving a shallow plastic container from the cupboard, he set it between them before settling in again. “She didn’t need any more stitches?”

  She shook her head and scowled at the Tupperware. “I guess it was just a scratch. But to look at her …” She exhaled carefully. “You would have thought she’d been in a fight with a lion. Or maybe I overreacted.” She sighed. “Who’s your cookie connection this time?”

  “Well, who could blame you if you did? It’s been a heck of a year,” he said.

  She nodded but wasn’t ready to abandon her line of questioning. “The cookies,” she said, and took a sugary confection from among its perfectly formed compadres. “Who are they from?”

  “Maybe I made them myself,” he said, still holding a grudge for the pansy comment.

  “And maybe the sky is made of blue icing,” she countered and took her first bite.

  Quinton snorted and leaned back in his chair. “You’re lucky you have that little girl in there or I might kick you out on your …” He gritted his teeth and glanced toward the bedroom again.

  “Asterisk?” she guessed and grinned. But the cookie was drawing her attention. She narrowed her gaze and considered. “A little too sweet for Mrs. Vanderman,” she said, and tried another sample. Somebody had to do it. “Too much molasses for Linda Harmson.” She tasted carefully, like a connoisseur sampling a new cabernet. This had been a little game of theirs for as long as she could remember. Trying to catalog the women who trotted through Quinton Murrell’s life had been a constantly entertaining, if rather fattening job. “I’m going with”—she polished off the first treat—“what’s her name?”

  He merely stared. If the truth be known, he might never have enjoyed the game as much as she did.

  “You know …” Impatience had edged into her tone a little. “The giggler.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, come on.” Picking up her second sample, she giggled manically, then hiccupped a burp onto the end.

  He shook his head in obvious disgust.

  “You’re right. That wasn’t quite it. Maybe it was more like …” She tried again, but somehow a chunk of cookie got lodged in her throat, making her cough spasmodically.

  Rising, her father
banged her on the back with enough force to dislodge the obstruction and illustrate his disgust.

  She fought for breath, and he grinned a little.

  “Serves you right,” he said, and settled back into his chair. “For mocking your elders.”

  “Elders!” The single word came out a little raspy. Maybe she shouldn’t be surprised that one of his lady friends was trying to kill her. She hadn’t always been as genteelly understanding as she was now. “I was on track and field with her sister.” She would have liked to mock him more, but it was still a little hard to breathe. She cleared her throat.

  Quinton tapped a thumb against his cup, face thoughtful.

  “Come on. You remember her,” Vura urged. “She always wore those low-cut blouses that showed—”

  “Roxanne.”

  “That’s right.” She crowed the words. “Roxanne … what was her last name?”

  A muscle jumped in his jaw. “You didn’t have to get married.”

  “What?” His somber tone stopped the cookie halfway to her mouth.

  He exhaled softly, shifted uncomfortably in the chair he had crafted from the same tree as the table. Though it might look flawless to the average mortal, Quinton Murrell had a knack for finding flaws in his creations. Strange, she thought now, that he hadn’t expected the same kind of perfection where she was concerned. Strange and never appreciated so much as right now.

  “I worry sometimes”—he tilted his head a little, tightened his lips—“that you thought you had to get married for my sake.”

  Her gut tightened again. So many feral emotions storming through her.

  “Maybe …” He took a deep breath. “Maybe I didn’t react as well as I should have when I found out you were pregnant.”

  She put the cookie down, remembering the shame, the guilt, the gut-eating worry.

  “No. You did everything right. It was me who was …” She glanced out the window. He had a pretty setting here. She had always liked it … their two little acres just on the edge of town. “I’m sorry if I was—” She winced.

  “Sorry?” He glanced toward the room where Lily slept, pushed to his feet, and chuckled a little. “You think I cry like a baby for things I’m not crazy about?”