A Place Called Home (17 page)

As kisses went, this one was brief. Cool. Dry. And packing about a thousand joules of electricity. Mitch rocked back on his heels, dropping his hands to his sides. For Thea, there was nowhere to go. They stared at each other. It was all Thea could do not to press her fingers to her mouth. Mitch wanted to lay one palm on the back of his neck and flatten the hairs that were standing on end.

“Well,” he said softly, “now we know.”

Thea said nothing.

“Do you want to borrow some change?” he asked. When she frowned, he added, “For the cussing jar. You look like you have a few choice words.”

She didn’t smile at his attempt at humor. “You don’t have enough money.”

Both of Mitch’s brows lifted slightly. “I see.” He took one step back, then another. He turned his right hand over and lifted it in a small sweep, ushering her out of the corner.

Thea went to the hallway and opened the closet. Removing her jacket, she put it on, and then retrieved her purse. She picked it up and slung it over her shoulder before she pushed her feet into her shoes without untying them.

Mitch came into the living room. He struck a casual pose while he watched her, arms crossed, one shoulder leaning against the wall. “Thea. Don’t leave angry. Do you want an apology?”

“Do you want to apologize?”

“No.”

She shrugged. Her hand twisted on the doorknob but the door didn’t budge. Frustrated, she yanked harder. She was going to have a tantrum, she thought. She was going to kick it and punch it and throw her shoulder into it if it—

“Flip the dead bolt,” Mitch said calmly from behind her. “Then twist the lock in the knob.”

Thea did both and the door opened as though she had whispered the magic words. She stepped onto the porch. The door caught when she tried to close it, and she realized belatedly that Mitch had followed her and was blocking her attempt with his foot. When she let go of the knob, he stepped onto the porch after her.

“Listen, Thea.” He saw her go rigid at the edge of the steps, her shoulders braced. Perhaps it wasn’t the best overture he’d ever made but at least she’d stopped. She
was
listening, or pretending to. “Don’t you want to yell at me or something? I wouldn’t like it much—I might even yell back—but it would be better than you leaving here mad at me.”

She didn’t turn, so he couldn’t see her face, but Mitch had no trouble making out her words. “What makes you think,” she said, each word resonating clearly, “that I’m mad at
you?
”

Thea was still calling herself five kinds of stupid when she got home. A soak in the tub was of marginal help. The call to Rosie twenty minutes later did a lot more, and by the time Thea got off the phone she was feeling better, or at least she was prepared to cope. She didn’t notice the light blinking on her phone until she was making tea. She decided she didn’t want to check messages. She was getting pretty good at ignoring them.

In the late afternoon, it started to snow. Thea already had a fire going and she opened the drapes at the picture window to enjoy the view from her living room sofa. She sat comfortably curled in one corner, wearing her chenille bathrobe and thickest socks, with the
Times
Sunday crossword on her lap. She played with the puzzle for a while, but when the answers didn’t come easily, Thea absently filled in the squares with doodles and diagonal lines.

It shouldn’t have been such a big deal, that kiss. It wasn’t as if he had never touched her before. In their long history of being best friends to mutual friends, it was inevitable that they would meet from time to time. Gabe and Kathy’s wedding was the first. On that occasion he had danced with her through all the obligatory wedding party numbers. There was some flirting, a little teasing, and even a kiss on the cheek, but nothing had jump-started her heart the way that kiss in his kitchen had.

“That’s because you wouldn’t let it.” Thea pushed the newspaper off her lap and tossed her pen on top. Great, she was talking to herself. She reframed this immediately in her own mind as thinking out loud. “Good for you,” she said under her breath. “Another helpful rationalization.”

Groaning softly, Thea let her head fall back on the sofa. She wondered how different things would be if she had taken Mitch up on his fire truck invitational during the wedding reception. He’d frightened her a little even then, which is what made it so easy to turn him down. Instead of disappearing into the garage where the fire trucks were parked, Thea had fastened herself to the side of her date for the rest of the evening, knowing with absolute certainty that she could control Timothy Martin’s frisky overtures in a way she could never have Mitchell Baker’s.

They’d met again at various functions that included both Gabe and Kathy. There was Emilie’s birth, her christening, a housewarming when Gabe and Kathy stopped renting and became home owners, the birth of the twins and their christening, and the occasional party, usually something at Halloween and the Fourth of July. It wasn’t that Mitch hit on her. Thea thought she might have handled that better. He was invariably polite, attentive, and almost always with another woman—someone, in Thea’s mind, who was her polar opposite. Which is why it confused her when he’d invariably call several days after seeing her again and ask her out. She could only imagine that Kathy or Gabe put him up to it. They denied matchmaking, but there were also these odd glances exchanged between the two of them that supported Thea’s suspicions.

Over the years, it became easier to avoid Mitch than it was to face the inevitable and awkward obligatory date request. She’d stopped attending parties, even ones for the kids, just because she knew he’d be there, and made her own arrangements to see them when he wouldn’t be around. “Coward,” she whispered to herself. “It wasn’t only about him asking you out. You can’t even admit that it was just easier to avoid him. Period.” So
there,
she thought, satisfied she’d tricked herself into saying it out loud. The thing she couldn’t give sound to was the fact that Mitch had always set her nerves humming, when what she had convinced herself she needed was comfort and control. Thea was left with the niggling and unsettling suspicion that she needed to rethink that conviction.

Leaning over the couch, she picked up the phone and called Joel. “Hi. I’m home.”

“Where have you been?”

Thea knew she should have expected both the question and the terse delivery, but she was unprepared for both. “Should I call back, Joel?” she asked quietly. “It would give you some time to find a good cop for your interrogation.”

“Do you think this is funny, Thea? I left two messages on your home phone, your cell’s still off, and it’s snowing now. I didn’t know what the hell happened to you.”

Thea drew in a slow breath, wondering why she didn’t feel more contrite. It was probably not a good sign of where this relationship was heading. The thought of what that might mean was like a fist closing over her heart. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I haven’t been home so very long.”

“How long?”

“A few hours.”

“And you’re just calling now.” Joel’s disappointment was palpable. “That speaks volumes.”

“I told you I just wanted to lie around today,” she said. “Alone.”

“Oh, I understood that part. What I don’t understand is where you’ve been.”

“I spent the night with the children.”

There was a long pause, and finally, “They live with Baker.”

“Yes, I stayed with them at Mitch’s.”

“He was there, then.”

“At some point,” she said. “I don’t know when he came in. I fell asleep with the children and didn’t stir again until this morning.”

“That still should have put you home before my second call.”

Thea covered the mouthpiece with her hand so her sigh couldn’t be overheard. “I slept in,” she told him.

“You never sleep in.”

“I did this morning.”

“Thea, I don’t—”

Guilt, as well as a desire to end the conversation, made Thea rush in. “Can you come out, Joel? The roads aren’t bad, are they?”

“It wouldn’t matter.”

The way he said it made the fist around Thea’s heart tighten. “How long?”

“About forty minutes.”

“I’ll start dinner.”

Thea woke alone Monday morning. Guilt might have prompted her invitation to Joel, but it also worked to keep him out of her bed. He didn’t press her overmuch though she knew he was dissatisfied as well as frustrated. For herself, there was initial relief, a restless night, and enough self-blame by morning that she compensated for by spending the first three hours in her office making personal calls to update her wedding arrangements.

She ended up working until almost eight, missed a meeting she didn’t have in her schedule, and forced herself to drive home in spite of the fact that it would have been easier once again to spend the night at the office.

Rosie Flaugherty was waiting for her in the driveway. She hopped out of her car when Thea opened the garage door from the street and was shaking off flakes of snow inside by the time Thea got out of her car. Rosie swept back her hood to reveal hair that was aggressively big and blond.

Thea gave a start. The last time she had seen Rosie, her big hair had been bottled auburn. “Time for a change?”

“Yeah. Whaddya think?”

“It’s bright.”

“That’s what Robby thinks. He likes it, though. Sez when I change my hair it’s like he’s sleepin’ around without the hassle of tradin’ zodiac signs at the bar.”

Laughing, Thea opened the door to the house and stepped inside. “It sounds like it’s been a while since Robby took that line out for a test drive.”

Rosie snorted. “I better be the last woman he asked, ‘So, what’s your sign, sweetcheeks?’ We’ve been married twenty-four years.” She took off her parka, gave it to Thea, and slipped off her boots. “You haven’t asked me why I’m here.”

“You don’t need a reason to drop by.”

“Right,” she said flatly. “Like you want me hangin’ out at the country club.”

“You’re confusing me with my parents.” Thea hung up their coats and then motioned Rosie to have a seat in the breakfast nook of the kitchen. “I’ll take you to lunch there some Sunday.”

“I bet your boyfriend would love that.”

Thea didn’t respond to that. “Have you eaten? I was going to make some
aglio e olio.
”

“What’s that?”

“Pasta with garlic and olive oil. It will take about twenty minutes.”

“Sure. Sounds good. Anything I can do?”

“Keep me company.”

“You got any pop?”

Thea opened the refrigerator and found Rosie a Pepsi. “Just for you,” she said, snapping back the tab. She poured it into a glass, added ice, and slid it to the far side of the table. “Talk to me.”

Rosie leaned back in her chair while Thea returned to the counter. “I just had a feelin’,” she said, “that maybe you could use a visitor.”

“Good call.” Thea filled a five-quart pasta pot with water and set it on the stove. She turned the flame on high and added a lid to bring it to a boil faster. “How did you know?”

“I was talking to Rachel. She didn’t see you at the meeting.”

“Were you checking up on me?”

“No, that’s what I’m doing now. Then, I was talking to Rachel. She mentioned it; I didn’t.” Rosie’s thick acrylic-tipped nails tapped her glass. She wore rings on every finger, including her thumbs, and the synthetic stones flashed just like the real ones. “So what happened?”

Thea shrugged. “I got caught up in something else and Mrs. Admundson didn’t remind me.”

Across the kitchen, Rosie’s eyes narrowed as she went into full bullshit alert mode. Thea didn’t have a knife in her drawer as steely or as sharp as what Rosie turned on her now. “Doesn’t sound like Mrs. A.,” she said, taking it slow, feeling her way. “Thought she was one of those anal types who never forgets where her car is parked—or yours.”

“I didn’t have it in my calendar.”

“So you haven’t told her.”

“No. It’s none of her business.” Thea pressed garlic into a sauté pan then added extra virgin olive oil. Her back was to Rosie but it didn’t stop her from feeling the strength of the other woman’s stare. “Say something.”

“We’ve talked about it before,” Rosie said casually. “You don’t have to take out a full-page ad or anything.”

“But you think Mrs. Admundson should know.”

“If you can’t remember on your own, I think you damn well need to get it into your calendar, Thea, so someone can remind you.”

Thea half turned away from the stove so she could see Rosie while she slowly pushed the garlic through the olive oil with a wooden spoon. She hadn’t been wrong about those blue eyes boring into her. “What about you? Can’t you call me?”

“I’m not a nursemaid. You have to take some responsibility for yourself.”

“And how is having my assistant remind me making me responsible?”

“Because you depend on her to remind you about lots of other things. I don’t see how this is any different. It’s part of your life now—or it’s supposed to be. Unless you’re changing your mind about that? Like maybe you’re thinkin’ you can do it all on your own.”

Thea smacked the side of the spoon against the pan. Droplets of warm oil splashed on the back of her hand but she gave them no notice. “I just missed a meeting, Rosie. One meeting.”

“Two. Unless you went yesterday.”

“Yesterday was Sunday. I didn’t know there were meetings on Sunday.”

“Honey, there’s always a meeting somewhere. That’s why it’s ninety days/ninety meetings. Or did you think that was just a slogan?” Torn between exasperation and sympathy when she saw the truth in Thea’s startled expression, Rosie simply shook her head. “Well, now you know.” Her eyes dropped to the stovetop. “You better lower that flame. Somethin’s startin’ to smoke.”

Chapter 6

“Rosie thinks I should tell Mrs. Admundson,” Thea said. She glanced over at Joel when he didn’t say anything. His strong jaw was set tightly and the line of his mouth could only be called disapproving. Thea turned her eyes back to the road, wishing she had not volunteered to drive him to the airport. Traffic was heavy, they were running late, and Joel had already pressed the phantom brake on his side of the car three times.