All Through The House

by Janice Kay Johnson

  "The view is unbeatable," she agreed, turning as she did every time she came here to admire the mountains, obscured though they were today by rain clouds.

  Walking back down to John's pickup truck, the two discussed the advertising campaign.

  "Eager as I am to get started," Abigail said, "the initial advertising should just whet people's curiosity. I can send flyers to other agencies, get signs out between 1-5 and here. We need people to see the custom quality of these houses before we can adequately promote them. Which reminds me, what do you plan in the way of entrance gates?"

  John shook his head. "That's Nate's department. Why don't you give him a call?"

  "He doesn't seem to return my calls," she said, hoping her voice didn't give her away.

  John frowned and they walked in silence for a minute. Then, abruptly, he said, "It's none of my business, but Nate's a good friend of mine. He's a little tough to deal with these days. He seems to think you didn't feel as much for him as he did for you."

  Had he intended to use the past tense to describe Nate's feelings, as though they no longer existed? Abigail’s eyes stung. "No. No, that's not true. I...I was divorced a few years ago, and.... Maybe I just wasn't quite ready to try again. I needed time to think, and...that hurt Nate."

  His partner shrugged awkwardly. "Well, like I said, it's none of my business, but I wanted you to know that he doesn't usually cut and run like this. Showing the broker around, answering questions, this kind of stuff is usually in his bailiwick. He's the one who thought you'd be more comfortable with me."

  "That was nice of him," she said in a strained voice. "But I'm capable of separating business from personal feelings. I don't see how we can help but talk on occasion. The designs are his. Especially when we're selling a house sight unseen...."

  "They'll want to meet Nate." John nodded. "I'll talk to him."

  *****

  Still Nate didn't call. The petals had long since fallen from the roses and the small pewter knight looked lonely with no dragon to slay or princess to rescue. Abigail often opened the book Nate had given her and studied the pictures of houses built over the span of three hundred and fifty years of American history. Colonial saltbox, Georgian solidity, fanciful Queen Anne, and simple farmhouse style. She saw echoes of all of them in the designs Nate had left in that folder he'd tossed on her table.

  And yet, his houses were different, subtly modern. The floor plans were open, with rooms that flowed into one another and included practical details like mud-room entrances and sizable eating nooks in the kitchens. Each house possessed a magnificent master suite, and a number of the plans had children's bedrooms that clustered around a play area. And windows—all of his houses had great sweeps of glass to take advantage of views. Whatever the style, the windows seemed to fit naturally, without being the soulless expanse that often made modern homes look like office buildings.

  The very precision of the black-and-white drawings gave her some insight into Nate's character. She should have known, of course, that he couldn't be a successful architect were he not careful and precise. Yet the only time she had seen him working was that day she'd showed the house to the two businessmen. Then she had been so conscious of the underlying tension and the way Nate looked right through her, she had scarcely noticed the clean black lines of his work.

  Now, with his designs spread before her on the table, Abigail could almost hear Nate's voice, rough and sexy, talking about form and function, about small details, about the man who had taught him to love the craft of building houses.

  She had seen Nate as obsessed about Josiah, but were his feelings so unnatural? Josiah's influence had made Nate the man he was; was it any wonder that he preferred to talk about the man he loved instead of the father he'd clearly hated?

  In the days that followed, as fast as the ground was broken and foundations poured, Abigail got her advertising campaign rolling. She chose distinctive graphics for the signs, painted in crisp blue, green, and white. A prominent one stood at the entrance, while smaller signs marked with arrows every turn from town and from the freeway. For the flyers, printed in the same colors and featuring sketches of some of Nate's designs, she wrote text that conveyed the atmosphere of this exclusive development where houses were still planned to suit families.

  After a few hints from Abigail, both the Pilchuck weekly and the county daily newspaper did articles about the projected development, including interviews with Nate. Reading them, Abigail drank up every detail they quoted from the "award-winning" architect, Nate Taggart.

  Still he didn't call.

  The first couple of times Kate asked about him, Abigail cheerily turned the subject, making offhand excuses. Finally her all-too-verbal, soon-to-be five-year-old confronted her.

  It started with discussion of a birthday party Kate had been invited to the next Saturday.

  "I'm sorry, sunshine," Abigail said, "but I have to work. I know you're disappointed, but—"

  "Maybe Nate could take me," her daughter interrupted.

  "He works most Saturdays, too."

  In her stubborn little voice, Kate said, "I'll bet he'd take time off for me."

  "Are you mad that I can't?" Abigail hoped she was getting to the main issue here, which couldn't possibly be the birthday party. The little girl having the party wasn't even a close friend of Kate's.

  But she ducked her head. "I don't want you to take me. I want Nate to."

  "Honey...." Abigail paused helplessly.

  Kate looked up with huge blue eyes that shimmered with tears. "Doesn't he want to see me anymore?"

  "Oh, honey, it's not you." Damn it, her eyes were filling with tears, too. Just what she needed, to weep all over her preschooler. So much for strong, dependable Mommy.

  "I thought he'd be a good daddy," Kate mumbled. "He said he wished he'd be a daddy. Why can't he be mine?"

  Oh, boy. Had Nate encouraged Kate on purpose? Or had Kate just blown a casual answer to one of her questions out of proportion? Either way, how was Abigail to explain what had gone wrong, when she spent every day desperately wondering whether she was a fool?

  She sat down on the couch and drew Kate onto her lap. It made her sad that her growing child didn't fit the way she once had. The process of separation had begun, and maybe it bothered her even more than most parents because she was so conscious of Kate's lack of a father.

  "Honey, Nate and I haven't been seeing each other lately," she said gently. "I needed time to think about what I wanted from him. I guess I'm a little scared to get married again. It hurts when you promise somebody forever and then it doesn't turn out that way. I have to be really sure before I'd promise not only him, but you, that we would have forever. Do you understand?"

  Kate searched her face. "Do you mean...do you mean, he wants to marry us?"

  Abigail opened her mouth, then closed it. She couldn't bring herself to lie to her daughter. She finally compromised. "All I'm trying to say is that it's an adult decision. I can't always explain, because you're just not quite old enough to understand. I'm sorry."

  Tears welled in Kate's blue eyes, and then she wrenched herself off her mother's lap and ran sobbing into the bathroom. Frazzled and on the edge of tears herself, Abigail sagged back and closed her eyes. Dear God, had she messed up Kate's life as well as her own?

  *****

  Not calling Abigail was the hardest thing Nate had ever done. But she'd asked for time, and by God he'd give it to her. A hundred times a day he wanted to pick up the phone or stop by her office. But every time he was too tempted, he remembered her reaction to the offer he'd thought was such a grand gesture.

  "Why?" she had asked. "Why now?"

  What was the answer? Had he once again tried to tie her to him in the one way she couldn't resist?

  He just plain didn't know, no matter how often he confronted the question. How could he separate his motives into bits and pieces? He loved her, he wanted her, he couldn't imagine a life without her. Was that a crime? She was probab
ly right that he had secretly wanted reassurance that he was more important to her than her career. Well, she'd shocked him into recognizing his chauvinism, if that was the right word for wanting to come first.

  But here he'd done his damndest to show her that he understood how important her job was to her, that he respected how good she was at it. And what had she done? Almost accused him of buying her. Buying her!

  Nate swore viciously and threw the newest copy of Architectural Digest across his office. It knocked a framed print askew and fell to the wood floor.

  John stuck his head around the doorjamb. "Should I duck?"

  "Depends what you want to talk about."

  "Not Abigail, if that's what worries you."

  "Come on in," Nate growled.

  "Just got a call from Linstead." Joseph Linstead was a member of the school board and deeply involved in the process of planning and siting the new elementary school. "He says they'll make an announcement Monday."

  Nate swung his feet off his desk and sat up. "Would he tell you anything?"

  John dropped down into the upholstered chair on the other side of Nate's mahogany desk. "Nope. But would he have called at all if we weren't getting it? He said, and I quote, that we'd be 'very interested' in the announcement. You know what?" He grinned widely. "I think it's ours."

  "But let's not count on it."

  "Hey, I used to be the pessimist in this partnership."

  "We both know how much is riding on this."

  "Yeah, that mausoleum you call home," John said.

  Funny, Nate thought, that wasn't what had jumped into his mind. He'd spent more time these last couple of weeks here at the office and less at the house. He'd become...detached. Why, he wasn't sure. He loved the old house; why should that be affected by how Josiah had felt about him? All he had to do was remember the warm relationship he and the old man had had those last two years before Josiah's death. Maybe they hadn't been father and son, but they'd damned sure been friends. Josiah had known Ed wouldn't keep the house, even if he was family. He'd hoped Nate would buy and restore it. He could still do that.

  So why wasn't he sure he still wanted to? Was it Abigail? Did he need her to make any place home?

  He didn't know. All he was certain of was that the Irving House seemed very big and empty these days. Even the ghosts were quiet. Had he imagined them from the beginning, conjuring a connection with a family that he had so desperately wanted to be his?

  Maybe so. But he didn't miss them. He wasn't kidding when he'd told Abigail he would burn the place down if that would bring her back. No, the Irving House didn't feel like home anymore. Not without Abigail.

  *****

  After fielding the fifth question about the new development that afternoon, Abigail hung up with a feeling of satisfaction. She was garnering just the reaction she'd hoped for: excitement, curiosity, and interest from potentially serious buyers.

  Grabbing her purse, she headed out. "Meg," she called, "I'm gone. I want to stop by the development on my way home to see how the houses are coming along."

  Meg waved from her office. "Okay."

  It was after five, and Abigail found the site deserted. She drove up the newly paved street to the hilltop house, now framed in. A skeleton, she thought, without its flesh. Stepping carefully in her high-heeled sandals, she wandered through the house, trying to imagine the kitchen here, the library there. After a week of drizzly weather the summer haze had been washed away and the mountains were clear tonight. Standing in what would be the living room, Abigail gazed past the raw slope below to the forested, dark-green foothills and the jagged mountains rising above them.

  With a view so spectacular, how could she fail to sell this house and all the others? She felt good about her strategy and how it was paying off. Once houses started going up in any number, she'd be so busy here, she and Meg would need to take on another agent or two. It was about time, anyway. There was only so long they could work the hours they had.

  Nate's challenge was one of the best things that had ever happened to her, she thought with renewed satisfaction. She was showing herself what she was capable of accomplishing. And, by God, she would show him, too.

  Or, did he not need showing? The thought popped into her head, catching her by surprise. Abigail hooked one arm around a stud and leaned against it while she continued to gaze blindly at the sweeping view.

  Had Nate really challenged her? Or had he tried to show her, as explicitly as he knew how, that he respected her ability? Was Meg right? Had she been a fool, losing Nate's love because she was afraid to lose herself?

  She made herself follow the inevitable path. She had compared Nate with James, how fairly she didn't know. What she had never done was compare the woman she was now with the wide-eyed twenty-two-year-old who'd married James. Why hadn't she realized that she was a different person now from the young, shy, unconfident girl who had mistaken possession for love? She had seen echoes of James's behavior in Nate's because she was afraid. But would James have ever been attracted to the strong person she now was?

  Abigail knew the answer. Her very appeal to James was the innocence that allowed her to admire him, that made her too unsure to fight back. He had circumscribed her life not to be cruel, but because he feared to let her grow, knowing that she would clearly see the painful insecurity he struggled to mask.

  Oh, yes, she knew the answer. James would never have been attracted to a determined, independent woman. Never in a million years. Nate was.

  She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the rough stud. Although it hurt, she made herself go on.

  Was there one more difference between the two men? James would never have given her the time and space to think, to come to terms with her feelings. With his silence, had Nate done that.

  Or had she dealt one too many wounds? What was it he'd said? I don't know if I want to marry a woman who has to think about it. He had given her another chance, the day he offered her the "plum." After her response, could she blame him if he'd given up? Or, worse yet, if she had killed his love?

  Well, she couldn't expect him to come to her again. It was her turn now. Did she have the nerve to call him? To strip herself bare and say, I was wrong, I love you?

  Would he care?

  She had to try. Abigail hurried to the narrow plank that took the place of stairs and edged down it. She’d call him now.

  Behind the wheel, Abigail groped through her purse and came up empty. Oh, lord. She had a memory of setting her phone down on the console in her office – where she’d apparently left it. She drove faster than she should down the hill and barely paused at the gate, where the entry posts were half finished, the dirt below them still bare. She and John had talked about landscaping, maybe tulips and daffodils for spring, but now Abigail suddenly thought, roses. Old roses. Big sprawling shrubs with magnificent, fragrant blooms. And lavender and hollyhocks. Some boxwood topiary? That's what they needed, the elegant garden of a country estate to match the houses. Nate would like that.

  She was trying to distract herself so that she couldn't think about what she was going to do. She was so afraid that his voice would be cool, indifferent, that he would say, "I'm sorry, Abigail, but it's too late." That he would no longer love her.

  The only thing she managed to distract herself from was her driving. She realized that, too late, when she began the turn onto Two Twenty-eighth and saw the speeding car bearing down on her.

  The next second, the world splintered and turned black.

  *****

  Abigail couldn't get out of her car. She hurt, but distantly, as though it were happening to someone else. She tried to lift her left arm and couldn't. Her right hand shook, but with it she managed to wipe sweat— no, it was bright red, blood—from her forehead. Oh, God, she thought, I didn’t put on my seatbelt. She saw the other driver get out of the car. He came over and peered anxiously in at her, and she thought she heard a voice say something about calling an ambulance.

  T
he ambulance came an eternity later and bore her on a backboard to the hospital. By now she knew it was her head that hurt, her arm. They X-rayed her and eventually gave her a shot for pain.

  "Concussion," the doctor murmured. "And a broken arm. You were lucky, Mrs. McLeod."

  She suddenly tried to struggle up. "What time is it?" she asked in alarm.

  The doctor glanced at his watch. "6:45. Children?"

  "Yes, a four-year-old in day care. I'm supposed to be there by six," Abigail said desperately.

  "Is there someone you can call to pick your son or daughter up?"

  She was momentarily flummoxed. Her stomach was revolting and her head hurt and her vision swam. It was hard to think.

  Her mother was gone for the weekend. For a minute, she couldn't remember where, and struggled against her brain, which seemed to be moving as slowly as molasses. Reno. That was it. A senior citizens' group had gone to make their fortune on slot machines.

  Meg? Hadn't she said something about going out? It wasn't Meg whom Abigail wanted to call anyway.

  "Is there a phone?" she asked.

  "Can we call for you?" the nurse asked.

  "No, I'd better."

  In the end they brought her a phone. She threw up, rinsed her mouth with water, and called Nate.

  Thank God he was home. Her voice was wavery when she said, "You in the business of helping maidens in distress?"

  "Abigail?"

  "Yes, it's me," she said, vaguely aware how silly she sounded. "Nate, I was in a car accident. I'm at the hospital—"

  He interrupted. "How badly are you hurt?"

  "I guess I have a concussion and a broken arm. I'll survive. I'm not the problem. It's Kate..."

  His voice changed. "She was with you?"

  "No, thank goodness. The thing is, she's still at the baby-sitter's. I was supposed to pick her up at least a half an hour ago. Can you possibly go get her? If you could just stay with her until I can get in touch with Meg…."

  "Give me the address and I'm on the way. Can you call the baby-sitter to let her know I'm coming?"