A Gift of Time (Tassamara) (13 page)

Colin chuckled, but his eyes were on the portrait. “Well, the whole pitiful orphan deal was good for a pass on most stuff.”

Natalya pressed her lips together. Colin might make light of it now, but his parents’ deaths had been devastating. He’d wound up spending almost as much time at her house as his after that. Not because he didn’t have relatives who wanted him—he did. But he’d bounced around from house to house, family to family, as situations changed.

His aunt got pregnant and he moved to a sister’s. The sister got a new job with a longer commute and he wound up with his brother. He failed chemistry and his grandmother decided his brother wasn’t responsible enough to be taking care of a teenager, so he moved to an uncle’s. The love and family support had been consistent, but still, her house was as much his own as any of the places he’d spent the night.

“That wasn’t it, though,” he continued. “She thought I did the right thing.”

“She—” Natalya snapped, her voice hot. And then she paused. Kenzi was looking at her now, face unsmiling. Natalya took a deep breath, released it, took another, and when she spoke again the heat was gone. “She was wrong.”

“You were unhappy. She saw that. She wanted what was best for you.”

“I was perfectly capable of making those decisions myself.” Natalya’s words were even, her tone calm.

“But you wouldn’t. You would have just waited it out.”

“Colin?” Natalya waited until he looked at her instead of at the portrait. “Cut it out or you’re going hungry.”

A corner of his mouth turned up and he looked back at the portrait. “I miss her still.”

Natalya opened her mouth and then closed it again, the words unsaid. Unfair, unfair, her brain protested. One short conversation and the solid wall of her resistance to him, the one that should have been made out of impenetrable steel, had melted into something more like flimsy wood.

Maybe she should forgive him. Not get back together with him. That was definitely out. But let go of being angry at him? Stop holding onto a grudge that didn’t do much except tie her stomach into knots?

“I’m going to finish dinner,” she said brusquely and headed into the kitchen.

Not much needed finishing. The chicken enchiladas had five more minutes on the timer and the salad was the rip-open-the-bag-and-toss-it-into-a-bowl kind. But she wanted the moment of solitude.

He’d shut her out of his life, she reminded herself as she lifted plates out of the cupboard and set them on the counter. He’d chosen to live without her, she thought as she pulled silverware out of the drawer and set it atop the plates. He hadn’t wanted her, as she found the salad tongs.

But she sighed as she tugged open the bag of lettuce. Knowing he would die, waiting for him to die, and never knowing when had been hell. Those months were the worst of her life. When she’d gone away to medical school, she’d buried herself in her work, but every minute she’d been away from Tassamara, she’d known she was safe. He was safe.

The best months were the winter months. The tree-lined road in her premonition could have been many times, many places, but not a northern winter. She’d hated the cold, though. Snow was fun the first time and thoroughly unpleasant on every subsequent experience. Why didn’t the romantic Christmas specials ever mention that snow burned when you touched it?

And she’d missed home. Living in the outside world meant always guarding what she said, always avoiding revealing her foreknowledge. Working in a hospital made that close to impossible, and she’d had to learn to accept the peculiar looks and whispers. In the end, tired of fighting fate, she’d come home.

She stared down at the salad bowl, not really seeing it. Thinking about the past wouldn’t get her anywhere. She needed to focus on the present. Kenzi. That’s who she should be thinking about. What could they discover about Kenzi without words? What did she already know about her that she hadn’t realized she knew?

She didn’t hear any conversation coming from the living room, so she crossed back to the archway leading to the other room. Colin still stood where she’d left him, his gaze on the girl. Kenzi ignored him, but she was holding her doll a little tighter.

“Kenzi?” Natalya wasn’t sure if this would work. Seven. What did parents expect from their seven-year-olds? When Kenzi looked her way, she said, “The sheriff’s going to be staying for dinner. Would you come set the table, please?”

Without hesitation, the girl hopped off the couch and joined her in the kitchen. Natalya watched as she looked around the room, spotting the plates and silverware on the counter. Trying not to look as if she were attending to Kenzi’s every move, Natalya turned to the oven, finding a mitt and taking the enchiladas out.

Carefully, Kenzi set her doll on the seat she’d been using at previous meals, then crossed to the counter and reached up for the dishes. Back at the table, she left the dishes stacked as she climbed up on a chair and took table mats from the pile in the center of the table, then distributed the mats, plates, and silver. That answered that, thought Natalya, grabbing a serving spoon out of the container set by the stove.

“Interesting,” Colin said quietly from the doorway.

“She makes her bed every morning,” Natalya answered, equally quietly. “It’s what made me think of it.”

“Huh.” Colin cocked his head to one side. “We might have to consult an expert or two, but I think that could be considered unusual.”

“Little pitchers,” Natalya cautioned, but she knew exactly what Colin meant. How old had she been before she made her bed every day without maternal prompting? Twenty-five? Twenty-six?

As they ate, Colin chatted as easily as if his companions were responding, but Natalya was as silent as Kenzi as she turned over her interactions with the girl in her mind. Kenzi definitely wasn’t autistic, she decided firmly. The psychologist had seen her lack of eye contact, her refusal or inability to speak, her social withdrawal—all of which were potentially symptoms of autism. But she hadn’t seen the fuller picture.

“Nat?” Colin’s voice interrupted her reverie. “Earth to Nat.”

She blinked at him, brought back to her surroundings. “Lost in thought. Sorry.”

“Great enchiladas.”

“Thanks.” Her eyes narrowed. Was he going to start reminiscing about their past? That she’d had enchiladas in the oven was pure chance, but they’d shared a fondness for Mexican food during their UCF years. The first few times she’d made them at home, he’d been her appreciative and tolerant test audience.

“I like the kick.” His words were polite, but the minuscule tilt of his head in Kenzi’s direction was loaded with meaning. Natalya followed his gaze.

Kenzi’s shoulders were slumped as she eyed the food on her plate with all the misery of a prisoner contemplating the firing squad. As Natalya watched, she took a bite. The wince and shudder as she swallowed were subtle, but unmistakable.

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry. You should have…” She stopped herself before letting the words slip out. Kenzi could have told her, but she should have paid more attention. Or at least been more thoughtful. “You don’t have to eat that.”

Kenzi stared at Natalya. Her gaze darted to Colin’s face and back again, but she didn’t push her plate away in relief or even put down her fork. If anything, she clutched her fork tighter.

Natalya pursed her lips before exchanging glances with Colin. With a raised eyebrow, she silently asked him what he thought. He lifted a shoulder, then reached across the table and took Kenzi’s plate. “I love enchiladas,” he said cheerfully, scraping her tortillas onto his plate. “But maybe Nat can find you something less spicy.”

“Toasted cheese?” Natalya asked Kenzi. The little girl’s eyes were bright as she nodded.

After the cheese sandwich was made and duly consumed, Natalya suggested to Kenzi that she show Colin her drawings. As Natalya cleared the table, she could hear Colin admiring Kenzi’s work in the front bedroom. A reluctant smile curled her lips at the sound of his voice saying, “Interesting use of color. You must have worked hard on that one.” It sounded as if he hadn’t forgotten her lectures on what an artist wanted to hear.

She separated the leftovers into multiple plastic containers. Usually she got a week’s worth of lunches out of a pan of enchiladas, but not this week. But as she looked for space in the crowded fridge, she sighed. She wanted to stir up the embers of her anger against Colin and it got harder by the minute. But he’d made the choice to push her away, to shut her out, and there was no going back from that.

“So…”

She jumped at the sound of his voice right behind her, sending the last container skidding onto the floor. “Damn it.”

His eyes glinted with amusement. “If her first words are damn it, we’ll know who to blame.”

She scowled at him. He bent down to pick up the container as he grinned back at her. “I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.” He handed her the dish. In his other hand, he held a few pieces of papers—selected drawings, she assumed, from the pile Kenzi had created in the past days. “Have you seen these?”

She finished storing the leftovers, craning her neck to see which drawings he held. “Yeah. Or at least the top one.”

He took them to the table and spread them out. “What did you think?”

She joined him, standing by his side. “I assume you’re not asking for my opinion as an art critic?”

“This…” He tapped the first drawing. The picture showed a house and several figures against a background of pine trees. In some ways, it seemed like a typical child’s drawing. The house was a square box with a triangle roof and the trees were angled lines drawn away from a central stem. The figures were only slightly more elaborate than stick people. But the house was colored completely black, with none of the doors or windows of a traditional house. And the figures were all different sizes, all different places. “This has to be meaningful, right? Not too many black houses around here.” Colin sounded optimistic, as if he were ready to start searching for a house of that description immediately.

Natalya wrinkled her nose as she shook her head. “Think metaphor,” she suggested. She glanced over her shoulder, wondering if Kenzi was close enough to overhear them.

“She’s drawing me a picture to take home with me,” Colin said. “I closed the door to the bedroom.”

She could still be listening, so Natalya kept her words cautious. “If this represents a real location, I think it’s safe to say it’s not a good place. But I don’t think you can assume the actual house looks anything like this.”

Colin grimaced. “And the people?”

“I’m sure she doesn’t know anyone who’s as big as a house,” Natalya replied, touching the largest figure. “Or as small as this one,” she added, tapping a tiny figure at the edge of the paper, shorter than the bottom branches of the pine tree it stood under.

“What do you think is going on here?” Colin asked, pointing to a central grouping of figures.

“That’s… troubling,” Natalya said cautiously. One of the shapes appeared to be lying down. Kenzi might have meant the red scribble across its chest as writing on a t-shirt. Or spilled juice, perhaps? But blood seemed painfully likely.

“Could she have witnessed a crime?” Colin asked.

Natalya shrugged. “Maybe. But I don’t think we can make any assumptions.”

“Yeah, it’s not a lot to go on.” Colin agreed. He shuffled the first picture to the side and pulled the next one closer to him. “What about this one?”

“Huh.” Natalya hadn’t seen this one before. Three figures stood side-by-side. One had long dark hair and wore carefully filled-in blue pants and a blue shirt, much like the blue jeans and sweater Natalya was wearing. The next, much smaller, had brown hair in wild curls, with pink pants and a blue-and-white shirt. The third had blonde hair, a wide smile, and a pink dress.

“That’s got to be you, right?”

“This must be what she was drawing when I was painting this afternoon.” Natalya eyed the image thoughtfully. “Why did you pick this one out?”

When she’d brought Kenzi back to her house after the disastrous meeting at the sheriff’s office, she’d had no idea what she was going to do with the girl. With the company closed for the holiday week, she didn’t need to go into work. But she hadn’t spent extended time with a child in years. When her college friends were getting married and having babies, she’d been immersed in medical school and residency. What did seven-year-olds like to do exactly?

But Kenzi was easy. Natalya didn’t have crayons, but she had oil pastels and colored chalk. That and a pile of scrap paper had kept Kenzi busy for hours. With the television, her doll, a few old board games Nat had stashed in a closet, an occasional trip into town or friendly visitor, and a daily walk by the water, they’d managed to spend their time together quite contentedly. Natalya suspected most children wouldn’t be so complaisant, but she wasn’t complaining.

“The girl in the pink dress,” Colin answered.

“Grace, you think?” Grace had dropped by every day. She seemed to have set a personal goal of making Kenzi laugh. She hadn’t succeeded yet, but she’d gotten Kenzi’s cheeks to dimple with restrained amusement.

“No, I don’t think so.” Colin pulled the next image over. This one was again of a girl in a pink dress but this time she was outlined in yellow.

“Hmm, interesting.” Natalya picked up the drawing. The yellow was more than a simple traced line. Kenzi had carefully shaded the color around the body, setting the figure against a background of light. “It’s almost like she’s glowing.”

Colin’s voice was taut with tension. “I think it’s the girl from my dream.”

“Oh! Rose, of course!” Natalya wished Kenzi had advanced beyond basic figures. She would have liked to know what the ghost girl looked like. “So she must be able to see her, too. I wonder if Akira knows that. I wonder if Rose knows that.”

“What?” Colin stared at her as if she’d sprouted another head.

She raised an eyebrow. “Rose? The girl from the other night? The ghost you saw when you were, well, dead?”

“What ghost?” Colin sounded completely confused. “What are you talking about?”

“Akira didn’t tell you?”