The One Safe Place (8 page)

She had a sudden inspiration. He had been happy only ten minutes ago. He could be again. She just needed a distraction, something to keep the momentary terror from camping out in his psyche.

“Spencer,” she said. “Think you're old enough to handle a little knife?”

He looked at her, his brown eyes wide and bright.

“Well, I think you are. So wash your hands, kiddo, and get ready to peel some apples. We're going to make an apple pie.”

He paused, frowning. The doubt in his gaze was almost comical. He knew darn well that his Aunt
Faith was a terrible cook. Grace used to joke that Faith needed only ten minutes in the kitchen to turn a rump roast into roadkill.

“And you can wipe that look off your face, buster,” Faith said, rummaging through the small flowered box of recipes that stood beside the toaster.
Apple butter, apple cobbler, apple jam, apple jelly.
These Firefly Glen people could create a week's worth of gourmet dinners from nothing but apples.

But what on earth was
pectin?

She turned around. Spencer was still gnawing his lower lip.

“Come on,” she said. “If you're old enough to learn how to use a knife, I'm old enough to learn to cook.”

She saw the look Spencer gave Tigger, but she chose to ignore it. She opened the cabinet doors and scanned the shelves.

She could do this. She could.

Except…how on earth did a person
bleach
flour?

J
EREMY HAD
a million good suggestions for the stables, different angles, roof pitch, beam placement, but Reed could hardly concentrate on a word of it.

His mind kept drifting back to the kitchen. Had Spencer spoken to Faith? Had he at least spoken to Tigger where Faith could really hear him? Reed could imagine how Faith must ache for the sound of that lost voice.

Finally, thank goodness, Jeremy ran out of ideas. Reed saw him out to his truck, thanked him again for the apples and headed straight to the kitchen.

At least he thought it was the kitchen.

Though he'd lived in Autumn House all his life, he'd never seen the kitchen look quite like this. A big, wood-paneled room, it could absorb a lot of activity and still appear serene and efficient.

Not tonight, though. Reed looked around, incredulous. Apparently a bomb had gone off in here, a white bomb that weirdly coated the tabletop, as if it had snowed indoors.

A rickety Dr. Seuss tower of bowls and pans rose precariously from the sink, and a dozen containers of spices cluttered the counters, their lids half-off.

Spencer sat at the table, struggling to slice apples into tiny cubes with a dull knife. Half the pieces rained onto the floor around his chair, exciting Tigger, who obviously felt compelled to sniff every one.

Faith sat beside Spencer, studying one of Melissa's hand-written recipe cards with the same mystified intensity the first Egyptian explorers must have turned on a cave full of hieroglyphs.

“Reed?” She looked up with a sheepish smile. A fleck of dough dotted the edge of her lips like a birth-mark. “Oh, darn. I wanted to get this cleaned up before you came back.”

Spencer looked up, too, the butter knife frozen as he waited to see if Reed would be mad.

Faith tapped the recipe card. “I thought we'd make you an apple pie, but, sadly, the only thing I know how to make is a mess.”

An unfair, momentary discomfort flashed through his blood. He didn't care about the mess, not really—

But the cards belonged to Melissa. The whole kitchen, in fact, had been Melissa's special kingdom. Sometimes when he tried to picture her, it was difficult to think back, back before the last ravaging year of her illness. But he could always summon up one clear vision—Melissa standing right there, bending over the stove, graceful and competent and completely in control.

The picture was so vivid it felt almost real. Her hair the same honey-blond as the paneling. Her feet bare, her arms bare, her legs bare under her favorite
shorts. Humming sweetly while she stirred something that smelled like heaven.

He needed that picture. He didn't want to lose it. He didn't want to reach for it some cold, endless night, and find that it had blurred, tangled like a confusing double-exposure with this other picture of Faith and Spencer and Tigger, so strangely poignant, helpless amid the chaos.

But, hell, he should have thought of that before he invited them to live in his house. They were here now.

He moved into the room. “Creativity is always messy,” he lied. “That's why it's fun. Can I play, too? I'm actually pretty good at pie crusts.”

Faith leaned back with a sigh. “That would be wonderful. I think I goofed with the crust. It's a wreck.”

He glanced over at the pie pan, which was lined with something that looked like clumps of beige glue.
Oh, boy.

“I don't know what happened. Maybe I shouldn't have skipped step five—” she pointed at the card “—where you chill it in the refrigerator for an hour.”

“Maybe not,” he said with a smile. “Maybe before we put the top on you should cool down the dough for a few minutes, at least.”

“Yes. That might help.” She picked up the remainder of the dough and moved toward the refrigerator. “I should have thought of that. Yes, maybe this will help.”

When her back was turned, Reed looked over at
Spencer with a small grin and shook his head slowly. The little boy grinned back, and then he subtly shook his head, too. It wasn't talking, exactly, but it was a clear, classic male communication. The two of them knew that this particular pie was beyond help.

Still, for the next hour they worked on it as a team, and Reed did what he could. He and Spencer formed a silent alliance. They traded the dull knife for a real paring knife, which Reed taught him how to use. They popped cubes of apple into their mouths when Faith wasn't looking. They grimaced behind her back when she added a tablespoon of salt instead of a teaspoon and then tried to scrape the excess off with a knife.

She caught them that time and broke out laughing when she saw their faces. “I know, I know,” she said, plopping down on one of the chairs beside them. “I'm hopeless. It's going to taste like poison.”

Reed controlled his own laughter. “No, it'll be fine. Really, it'll be great, won't it, Spencer?”

Spencer wrinkled his nose. He reached out and with one forefinger drew a squiggly line in the light coating of flour that covered the table. Then he put two dots above it. Reed tilted his head. It was a face. A cartoon rendering of a slightly queasy grimace.

He glanced over at Faith to see whether she'd caught on.

She had. She seemed to be holding her breath. Without speaking, she reached out and drew a face of her own. A bright, curving smile—the classic
happy face. Then, next to it, she wrote
XO.
Hugs and kisses.

Spencer put out a finger. The room was utterly silent.

XO,
he wrote.

Faith's eyes were glistening. Reed was afraid she'd cry, which would definitely spoil the mood and might even frighten the boy.

He could feel her eagerness for more—more communication, more assurances. But he could also feel Spencer's uncertainty, his fear that he might have ventured too far outside his safe cocoon of silence. He had already moved from his chair and gone over to the corner, where Tigger was sleeping.

“Okay, time to put the top on,” Reed said quickly. He stood up. “Come on, Julia Child, do your magic.”

As if in a daze, Faith obeyed. She rose, walked across the kitchen, pulled the ball of dough from the refrigerator and began to work on it.

The rolling pin wouldn't cooperate. Her hands were shaking as she tried to flatten out the ball. Dough kept sticking to the surface of the pin.

“I can't, I—” She turned to Reed, her brown eyes wide and deep. “Oh, Reed. Did you see?”

“Yes,” he said. “I saw.”

She glanced toward the corner, where Spencer was trying to interest Tigger in a piece of apple. “He's never done that before. Hasn't communicated so directly.”

“I know. It's another step. A big step.”

A tear clung to one corner of her eye, shining silver, like a sequin. Funny, he thought, how happy tears were brighter than tears of pain. Cleaner, somehow, and strangely beautiful, like an exotic nectar.

She started to dash it away, but her hand was sticky from the dough, and she paused.

“Hold still,” he said. He reached out and smoothed his thumb under her eye. She blinked, and he felt the soft glide of her lashes across his skin.

Something moved inside him. He tried to ignore it.

But she was so lovely, her pale face dusted almost white with flour, and her dark eyes wet with tears. And she was so vulnerable, her need for comfort and hope and joy so strong they were like magnets drawing him in.

This was a mistake.

But he couldn't resist. He bent his head, said her name once. And then he kissed her.

She smelled of vanilla and tasted of apples and sugar and cream. At first she was utterly still, as if she didn't understand. And then, as his lips moved, finding cinnamon and a sweet lick of nutmeg, she came quietly alive.

She made a sound that fell over him as softly as flour sifting through the air. Her lips grew warmer, fuller. They pressed and parted, asking for more.

More?
Oh, yes, he had more. So much more…

He went deeper, catching her apple-scented breath and the tiny, hard tip of her tongue between his teeth. She put the palms of her hands on his shirt, and they
were warm, sticky with melting dough. He didn't care. He wanted her hands on him.

But suddenly, without warning, she pulled away. Her dark eyes were textured with flecks of hazel, green and gold, like autumn leaves in a pool of storm-water. Her lips were as red as the apple peel that littered the kitchen floor. She breathed fast and shallow.

“Faith?”

“Spencer,” she whispered.

He looked, and he saw Spencer climbing to his feet, tired of trying to rouse his sleepy puppy. The little boy had his back to them, and Reed felt sure he hadn't seen anything.

Faith clearly wasn't as certain. She licked her lips, then glanced at Reed. He knew what she had found there—the taste of him mingled with the cinnamon.

She shifted toward the little boy. “Can you bring us the bowl of apple pieces, sweetie?”

Spencer obediently went to the table.

Reed took a breath and put out his hand. “Faith—”

“No.” She backed up. “It will confuse Spencer.”

She looked away quickly, but he had seen the hot flush on her cheek, beneath the sprinkling of flour, and he knew who was really confused.

They all were.

 

E
VER SINCE
Spencer was a baby, whenever Faith was around at bedtime she sang him a lullaby. Her voice was nothing special, but the song was sweet and full
of love, and even as he got older Spencer insisted on hearing it. Up here, in the cozy Autumn House gable room that had become Spencer's bedroom, the simple notes resonated beneath vaulted pine beams and sounded even more beautiful than ever.

Since Grace had died, Faith sometimes needed to sing it five or six times before Spencer could relax enough to drift off. But tonight, exhausted from hours of romping in the brisk mountain air, he conked out in the middle of the first verse. Faith sang the final words to Tigger, who kept his ears politely perked to show that someone, at least, was listening.

“Thanks, buddy,” she whispered, ruffling the puppy's ever-thickening mane. Shelties looked a little like lions, and this one was going to have a particularly majestic coat. Tigger stretched out close to Spencer, rested his muzzle on his paws and finally shut his eyes, too.

Faith sighed, tucking the soft blue quilt under Spencer's pointed chin. Now she had no more excuses. She was going to have to go downstairs and talk to Reed.

Awkward as it was, she owed him an explanation. She had overreacted to a fairly innocent kiss.

And she also needed to explain why, as innocent as it had been—and as pleasant as it had been—it must never be repeated.

Reed didn't seem to be in the main house, but his truck was parked out back, so she decided to check the clinic. A brick path lined with small landscaping
globes lit the few short yards to the neat structure. Sure enough, the clinic was still completely bright, though it should have closed hours ago.

She opened the door, and instantly she heard Reed's voice coming from behind the front wall. He must be in one of the examination rooms, probably with a patient, though she hadn't seen any other cars out front. Maybe a neighbor had walked over with a sick pet?

In the small, quiet clinic she could hear him clearly, though he was talking in a voice so gentle and sweet it made Faith smile. She paused, enjoying the sound. It was nice to remember there were such men in this world. Men who stood for all that Doug Lambert was not.

“Come on, sweetheart,” Reed said, his voice a blend of teasing and coaxing. It was, Faith realized suddenly, a very sexy voice. “Why don't you just relax, and I'll take that sweater off for you?”

A pause. A whispering rustle. “That's right. You don't need this, do you? There. Doesn't that feel better?”

Faith's eyes widened. Who on earth was he talking to? Now that she thought about it, no neighbors lived within walking distance of Autumn House. Who else would be here? Justine? Suddenly she remembered that Justine hadn't brought her beaten-up old car to work today. It had broken down yet again.

Was he back there with Justine? She frowned, rejecting the idea. Justine was only a teenager, for
heaven's sake. Reed was a fully grown man, far too much man for that unhappy little girl to handle….

“Hey—it's okay, little girl,” he said. Faith held her breath, hearing the unwitting echo of her own phrase. “I'm just going to slip this bow out of your hair. You don't need that, either. You're pretty enough just as you are.”

In Faith's horrified mind, she could see Justine's blue satin bow sliding across her shining blond hair. Faith began to back up. She had to get out of here.

She reached out behind her, feeling for the doorknob. She mustn't make a sound. Her fingers touched something, her feet stumbled, and she collided, back first, with someone who had just come in the door.

Justine yelped. “Faith! What are you doing here? Man, you scared the hell out of me!”

Faith turned, bewildered. If Justine had just walked into the clinic, then who was in there with—

Reed came around the corner, a small poodle in his hands. “Hey,” he said, frowning slightly. “Everything okay?”

Justine smoothed her hair, adjusting her blue satin bow irritably. She settled herself with a couple of calming smacks on her gum before answering. “Well, yeah, I guess so. Except that Faith just about gave me a heart attack.”

“I'm sorry,” Faith said. “I was just leaving, and we bumped into each other.”

“You were leaving?” Reed frowned. “I didn't even realize you'd come in. Did you want to see me?”

“No, you're busy, that's okay.” She glanced at the poodle, which, now that she focused, was the silliest dog she'd ever seen, with white cotton-ball tufts of fur around its chest and legs. It looked like a piece of topiary.

And it had one ridiculous pink bow tied on one ear. The other ear was bare.