One step. I picked up my foot to take the next one.
I heard a soft, well-oiled click behind me. Something hard prodded the middle of my back. I froze. A husky female voice said calmly, “You have to ask yourself one question. ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?”
A woman. A woman . . . quoting Clint Eastwood in a Dirty Harry movie. I knew that throaty voice. Goosebumps scattered up my spine. It couldn’t be. Could it?
“Hello,” I said quietly. If we were quoting schlock lines from movies, I’d do my part. “People of Earth, I come in peace.”
“Go ahead,” she answered. “Make my day.”
“What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.”
“I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die. This is a gun against your spine.”
“I thought you were just happy to see me.”
“Turn around. Slowly.”
I pivoted inch by inch, my hands lightly spread by my sides. My heart raced, my head buzzed with a strange mixture of concern and exhilaration. Finally, in the shadowed hallway, I looked down at the oddest sight—a slender creature in a furry parka, her face and head hidden by a colorful ski mask, staring up at me with big, fearless green eyes, while pointing a shotgun at the center of my chest.
Cathy.
I knew how I must look to her, tall, bearded and shaggy, my face hooded by the fedora, a hulking figure in the heavy sheepskin coat. It would be entirely understandable if she pulled the shotgun’s trigger. Keep it light. Keep it casual. “Of all the gin joints in this town,” I said in a Bogart-ish tone, “why did you have to move into your grandmother’s house without telling me?”
Those amazing green eyes swept over me, studied me, narrowed, widened. She took a step back. The shotgun wavered, lowered. Her soft, full lips parted in an oh of amazement. “Thomas?”
Now it was my turn to stare in surprise. She’d seen no recent photos of me and had only heard my voice what, three times by phone? “How did you know?” I asked.
She tilted her head. Her eyes became solemn, reserved, but shimmered with tears. “Your voice is special,” she said. A pause. “You had me,” she quoted gruffly, “at hello.”
The emotional simplicity of that night, when Cathy and I met face-to-face, or rather, face-to-ski-mask, for the first time, defies easy description. In philosophical design terms a house isn’t just walls and a roof, it’s the spaces those walls and that roof enclose. There’s the miracle of basic physics, the magic of perfect joinery, but also the zen of defined air. Call it ‘flow’ or ‘feng shui’ or just good architectural instincts, but when a design is right it makes you take a deep breath, slowly and evenly, then exhale and relax. You don’t have to think. You’re part of the house, now. The house tells you what to do.
Our design was right, Cathy’s and mine. Our house made it easy.
“No need to explain anything tonight,” I said after she lowered the gun. “Mind if I lay down on the floor of the back bedroom before I faint? I’m not accustomed to being threatened with a shotgun.” Or falling deeper in love at first sight.
“You’re staying?” she asked, tilting her head.
I nodded. “Even you change your mind about shooting me, I’m not leaving you alone here tonight.”
She pondered me another second, those amazing eyes giving my motives an unfettered once-over, then she nodded. “You shouldn’t go back out in this snow. I’m surprised you made it here at all. Do you have four-wheel-drive and snow tires?”
“No, I have a nineteen-forty-five Chevy truck with a can-do attitude and nothing left to lose.”
She put the gun aside, brought me some blankets and a bulky backpack, and said, “That’s full of bagged granola. It’s all I have. I’m afraid it’ll make a crunchy pillow.”
“No problem. I have a crunchy head. Thanks. See you in the morning.”
I went into a back bedroom and lay down in the dark on the blankets, with the granola under my head, and stared at the ceiling in wonder. She’s really here. I heard her move around the living room, I heard her scuff the old wood floors as she climbed into her makeshift bed. A comfortable silence folded into the shadows, security radiated from the togetherness.
For the first time in twenty years, the first time since Mary Eve Nettie’s death, her house nurtured life inside it. Mine and Cathy’s. Together.
It was as simple as that, that night.
Cathy
Thomas won me when I stared at him over the barrel of a shotgun and he looked back without anger, fear, or any other discernible emotion except an intense need to make certain I was safe. I knew how ridiculous I looked in the ski mask, but he didn’t laugh.
He won me with his determination to save me from myself, he won me with his haunted hazel eyes and with his penchant for saying the right wise-ass thing at the right moment. He smelled of fragrant woodsmoke that made me want to burrow under his beard and listen to his heartbeat, and he had the perfect touch of insanity. After I almost shot him, he said in perfect accord with the horror of near-death, “Mind if I lay down on the floor of the back bedroom before I faint?” and when I gave him several wool blankets and a brand-new backpack full of bagged granola for a pillow, he nodded adieu and left me alone as if nearly being shot were no big deal.
I loved him. I didn’t know him well enough to believe any different. I loved his deep, gentle voice. I loved his compassion. I loved his wicked sense of humor. I loved him for suffering for his wife and son. I loved him for saving me from swallowing a bottle full of pills, I loved him for braving a snowstorm to check on my house, I loved him for admitting he wanted the house, not me. Honesty is a powerful aphrodisiac.
Was there chemistry, was there sex underneath the surface? Absolutely, at least on my side of the equation. But my sexual circuits had been scrambled for months, and I didn’t trust them. Every time I touched myself with my scarred right hand I lost interest. I thought of scars, not orgasms. When I thought of a man, any man, touching me, I winced. So, for me, Thomas was the distant thunder of a storm I wanted to avoid.
Chapter 14
Cathy The Next Morning
Still fully dressed and wearing my ski mask, I crawled out of my sleeping bag, tiptoed to the hall doorway, tilted my head, listened to the sound of Thomas snoring—I love to hear men snore—and then I walked to the corner of my living room where the portable commode sat out in unsheltered glory, and I looked down through the seat into a bucket of pristine, bright-blue chemical water, and I thought about the noise it would make, and I said to myself, “Maybe I’ll just pee in the yard,” so I walked outside.
The moment I stepped off the veranda’s stone stairs, I halted in wonder. I was on the set of an old-fashioned Technicolor movie. The sky was so blue, the snow was so white, my breath made perfect silver clouds in the air. The expanse of white pasture and the snowy alley of forest led my eyes straight to the frosted backbone of Hog Back Mountain. I turned slowly, taking in the huge oaks of the yard, the weathered barn with its snowy tin roof, and finally, the house. Roofed in a perfect layer of snow, it looked as if someone had made it out of dark gingerbread with white icing.
There were no ghosts, no, that morning there were spirits, comforting spirits everywhere, welcoming me to the cold, clean vista of my new life.
Be real. The only comforting spirit around here is alive and asleep in your back room. Once planted, that thorny thought refused to evaporate. I hiked to a cluster of wild rhododendrons, uncovered my necessary parts, squatted grimly, melted some snow, re-dressed and kicked fresh snow over the spot the way dogs fling dirt with their hind feet. I marked my territory.
Thomas walked out onto the veranda as I reached the bottom steps. No coat, no hat, just a vision of faded flannel and worn jeans and heavy boots, long legs, great shoulders, glossy brown beard, a foot-long brown ponytail, and those haunted, warm eyes. He nodded solemnly. “Morning.”
“Good morning.” I pointed over one shoulder. “Those rhododendrons are mine.”
&
nbsp; “I claim the Rose of Sharons.”
I nodded back. We passed each other politely, like commuters headed in opposite directions on the subway stairs. I went inside, he went to see a man about some shrubs.
I felt immediately and eminently comfortable with him, and yet excruciatingly aware that he had not yet seen one single, scarred part of me. Or even an unscarred part. Even my hands. I was wearing gloves.
I intended to keep it that way.
“I made breakfast,” I said when he walked back into the living room. I held out a protein bar. “Low carb.”
He tucked it in his shirt pocket. “Hmmm. Reminds me of the processed meal bars mom used to make. Let’s go down to the café and share the recipe with Delta.”
“We need to talk about that. I want your word that you won’t tell Delta or anyone else I’m here. I’ll make my debut when I’m ready.”
“All right. You have my word. But give me an estimated time of arrival.”
“When my protein bars and crunchy granola runs out.”
“That could take years.”
“Thomas, I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. But I need to be alone up here. This is probably the only place in the world where no one can find me and where I can find out if I’m more than a pretty face. Do you understand? It’s nothing personal, but I don’t want your help again. Or Delta’s.”
I expected an argument, a defense, a call to lean on his broad shoulders. Instead he blew out a long breath. “Good. If I leave now I can get down to the café for breakfast. I mean, in addition to eating your delicious protein bar. Just let me grab my coat and hat.” He walked down the hall while I pivoted to gaze after him, open-mouthed. He whistled as he went.
Be careful what you ask for.
I frowned and began opening boxes. Protein bars, lots of them. Bottled water. Instant coffee. Why, that would be tasty with cold water. He walked back into the living room, his coat in place, his hat in his hands.
“There are boxes full of your grandmother’s housewares in the attic,” he said. “Your father hired someone to clean out the house when she died, but Delta and a few other friends rescued most of the little things, and stored them. The basement is in good shape. It doesn’t leak, there are no critters living in it, and there’s plenty of shelving for storage. You’ll find cases of your grandmother’s canning jars down there, and an empty coal bin, but not much else. The barn is empty. You can park your Hummer in it if you want to. You’ll find some bags of corn in the feed crib, and an old bucket. I throw out corn for the wildlife whenever I’m here. If you do it regularly, you’ll get deer and turkeys in the front yard every morning and every evening.”
“Does the raccoon always hang out in the veranda rafters?”
“Most nights. His name is Fred, but he’ll answer to Louise, BarFace, Fuzz and ‘Hey, Thing.’ He likes leftovers. You can leave them on the edge of the steps and he’ll thank you for it.”
“I’ll set out my best china for him.”
“Now, about heat.”
“Heat?”
“The fireplace is safe. I pried that plywood off it during the summer, cleaned the chimney, even built a few small fires in it as a test. It’s well-designed. Pulls a strong draft. There’s an old stack of firewood in the barn. Oh, and the Franklin stove your grandmother had in the kitchen for heat? Delta rescued it when your father sold off the household goods, and it’s in the corner of the enclosed porch room at the café. She fires it up every night in the winter. Uses hickory chips. Customers love it. I can find Delta a replica and you can have the original back.”
I had gone very still during the heat discussion. Cold needles scratched my forehead. When I didn’t say anything, Thomas drew a deep breath. “Sorry. I should have thought before I suggested—”
“I don’t . . . build . . . fires. Ever.”
“I’m sorry. But Cathy, you have to try. You’ll freeze up here.”
“Not as long as I have GorTex and wool.”
“How about a propane space heater?”
“Nothing with a flame. Discussion closed. Okay?”
Maybe it was the strain in my voice or the twitch beside my left eye. He let the subject drop. “If you have an emergency,” he said gently, “Call Delta. If you don’t show up at the café within a couple of weeks, I’ll drive up here and see if I can find your body.”
Oh, he was good. Nonchalant, business-like, with just a fine, spicy edge of sardonic wit. He restored me. I clucked my tongue at him. “Don’t sound so hopeful.”
“As one loner to another, I understand the consequences. You gotta do what you gotta do, even if it’s self-destructive.”
“If you discover my gnawed corpse in a wolf’s den, please don’t naturally assume I threw myself into its jaws in a fit of suicidal despair. Don’t burn this house down out of spite. I recently changed my will to leave it to you.”
He went very still. His eyes pulled me apart, looked inside my loyalties, assessed the enormity of what I’d just said. “You’re not kidding.” His voice was stunned.
“Not kidding. No.”
“Cathy, that’s not what I—”
“Spare me your slavish gratitude. My point is, you won’t burn this house down if it belongs to you, will you?”
Slowly, he exhaled. His jaunty expression returned. “I’m sorry, but you and I made a deal. You die, the house burns.”
“That’s not how your original threat went.”
“I just amended it.”
“You’re serious. You’re really serious.”
“You bet. If you kill yourself deliberately, or even if you’re just careless—say, you stub your toe and fall off the back steps with fatal consequences, or a rabid squirrel bites you, or you’re hit by a meteor—whatever. This place is toast.”
“I came here to protect it from you.”
“Good. Go ahead and do that. Stay alive.”
“You don’t think I can live here, do you? You don’t think I have the ovaries to thrive and survive.”
“The what?”
“Men have balls, women have ovaries.”
“On the contrary, I know how tough you are. That’s why I respect your decisions and won’t insult you with patronizing advice.”
“Oh, really? Even if you secretly don’t think I can actually survive in your beloved mountains? But I am my grandmother’s granddaughter.”
“Good. Live up to her legend. She made it through some rough winters on this ridge, alone. She chopped firewood and shoveled coal, she hunted deer and turkey for food, she grew her own vegetables, she raised chickens and goats. By all accounts she was a strong woman who survived a lot of hard knocks and never gave up her faith in what was beautiful.”
“She was a farmer/artist,” I countered. “She panned for rubies and made jewelry.”
“All of the above and then some. She appreciated the simple act of survival.”
“Exactly how seriously do you rough it in Zen-like purity over at your cabin, Mr. Mitternich?”
“Me? I’ve got no electricity, no indoor plumbing, and I use a fireplace for heat. Under a lean-to on the back side, there are three cords of firewood I chopped myself. My fireplace puts out approximately a five-foot radius of heat on a cold night. In this weather I sleep under five blankets, and I’m wearing thermal longjohns. Do you think you could live like that?”
I shifted guiltily inside my GorTex, wool, and chem-pak foot warmers. “I think you’d be surprised.”
“You can always go down to the Cove and stay with Delta. She has a big house, a nice guest room, you’d have lots of privacy and all the comforts of home. Plus biscuits.”
“So much for respecting my decisions and not patronizing me.”
“I’m giving you information. What you do with it is up to you.”
“You refuse to picture me living in my grandmother’s house and being happy here.”
“It’s a quiet place. Some day, when you’re ready, you’ll want to be part of the world a
gain. You’ll leave.”
“What about you, Thomas? How long are you planning to hide in these mountains?”
“Four years ago I bought an old motorcycle and left New York with no aim other than to end up dead somewhere. Instead, I ended up here. The jury’s still out on my future.”
“If you owned this house, what would you do with it?”
“Restore it. Clean it, refinish a lot of the wood, but otherwise leave it as-is. Fill the house with Craftsman-era furniture.”
“And live here?”
“I don’t think of it in terms of living in it. I just want to make certain it’s protected.”
“So what would you do with it?”
“Get it listed on the historical homes registry. Turn it over to a conservation group who’d preserve the land and use the house in some dignified way.”
“Doesn’t the house deserve to be a home, again? Not just restored, but modernized for comfortable living? That would be the best of both worlds, it seems to me.”
“Modern living is overrated. And I’m not looking for a home.”
“I see. You wouldn’t put in electricity or plumbing?”
“No.”
“Not even a nice flush toilet?”
“I’m a purist.”
“I guess this quells any thoughts I had about hiring you to design my renovation.”
It was hard to see his expression through a beard, a mustache, and the low brim of a fedora, but I was pretty certain he lost a little color. “Renovation?”
“Delicately and discreetly done. I promise you.”
“I’ll supervise. For free.”
“I’ll think about it and get back to you.”
My heart sank at the concern in his eyes. I’d never competed with a house for a man’s attention before. I sagged a little. “Thomas, I’m not going to do anything without your input. If it weren’t for you, this house might be in ruins now. Thank you for taking care of it. Let’s talk more about how to restore it after I settle in.”