In the Midnight Rain (19 page)

"That's mean," Ellie said, but she laughed anyway, and when April eased over to lick the tomato and slurp it up herself, she laughed even more. "The only thing she won't eat is potatoes. Not even French fries." To make up for the icky vegetable, Ellie tossed Sasha a tidbit of bacon.

As if she'd heard the food in the other animals' mouths, Piwacket raced into the kitchen, howling expectantly. Ellie started to pinch a tiny bit of bacon from her sandwich, then remembered. "She can't have even a tiny bite?"

Pi hustled over to Ellie's feet and meowed, then lifted on her back paws.

Blue looked torn. "It's really bad for her."

Ellie gave him an exaggerated frown. "Oh, just a teeny, teeny bit? Look at her! She's starving for it."

"I know how to please her." He rubbed the bacon along a corner of bread and put the bread down. She rushed over, gulped it down, and looked up expectantly. He chuckled. "See? Doesn't hurt her a bit."

"Okay. I didn't mean to intrude." Replete, she leaned back. "That was excellent, Blue. Thank you." Remembering something else, she said, "And thank you for leading the conversation with Marcus."

"Did you learn anything?"

"Yes." For a moment, she wondered if it might be okay to just tell Blue about her search for her father. He'd probably be able to help her. "Or maybe. I don't know."

He looked at her, patiently. The veneer of polish he'd put on earlier had worn off in the heat of the club and the long hours, and although he wasn't one tiny bit less beautiful, Ellie realized that it was a face she liked and trusted. "It's a silly little quest, that's all."

"Who's the woman in the picture? That hippie?"

Ellie let go of a breath and confessed. "My mother. But I'd appreciate it if you didn't broadcast that around. I'm sort of embarrassed by my need to find out about her."

"I won't say a word." To her surprise, he reached across the table and took her hand in both of his. "I bet your hands hurt a lot, with all the computer stuff you do." He rubbed a strong brown thumb over her knuckles with strong, decisive movements, and it felt so good Ellie heard herself half groan.

"Keep that up and I'm your slave for life," she said.

"I aim to please." He lifted his head, that astonishing deep blue of his eyes glinting, though he didn't smile. A lock of hair fell on his forehead and he didn't brush it away, just kept up the narcotically wonderful hand massage, rubbing away tiny pockets of weariness in her wrists and the heel of her palm, and all of her fingers, one by one. "Tell me about your mama."

Ellie didn't want to talk. She wanted to close her eyes and melt against him, close where she could smell that exotic odor that clung to his hair, and close to his buttery voice, and close to his mouth. He reached for her other hand and she gladly let him have it. "She was troubled," Ellie said. "A runaway—not because of a fight or anything like that. She was just restless, I guess, and somehow or another, she ended up here the summer before I was born."

His hands stilled for a minute. "Do you know who your father is?"

Ellie shook her head.

He went back to it, rubbing her fingers, his eyes on the horizon. "So you think it might be somebody there that day. At the picnic."

"Right." A little anxiously, she put her free hand over his, over hers. "Blue, I'm really kind of embarrassed about this, and I don't want people feeling sorry for me, and I really want the option of not revealing myself if it'll cause problems for anybody. Okay?"

He was close, and Ellie didn't know how bad she wanted him to kiss her until he did it, simply bent that much closer and put his beautiful mouth on hers with a soft, low sound. She didn't close her eyes at first, and it was the curve of black lashes against the bone in his cheek that she saw, close up and blurry, before the taste and smell of him surrounded her like the first threads of a soft, bluesy guitar starting a song.

His mouth. Full and skilled and right, somehow, and not too aggressive, because he pulled back fairly quickly and looked at her, those vivid eyes very sober. "I won't tell, Ellie. I promise."

But just then, she didn't care. She put a hand on that lean jaw. And he kissed her again, as if sealing it, and she didn't just let him. She kissed him back, stroking his jaw, his ear, his thick hair, feeling the curve of his skull and the warmth of his skin. He smelled of whiskey and the faint sweat of a long night. His skin would be salty.

But mostly, she was alive only at her mouth. It went deep, that kiss, deeper even than Ellie had had the sense to expect. It was less a roar than a song that danced through her, igniting the nerves along the bridge of her nose and in her throat and the arches of her feet. She felt the exact second it ignited him, too. He tilted his head, and his fingers closed tightly around her head, and he made a soft, lost noise before he deepened it more, before he was kissing her with an almost savage edge. She wanted to bite him but settled for letting him pull her off the chair into the space he made between his legs. Distantly, she felt the slight sting of hitting the linoleum with her knee, but then there was only Blue's arms around her, and his chest and his legs and his mouth.

They kissed and kissed and kissed, their bodies pressed close, their mouths and tongues the only point of expression, kissed until Ellie thought she was going to faint from it, kissed until she felt even his body trembling.

When he slowed and pulled away, it took some time, as if they had to climb up from a deep canyon. When they reached level ground again, neither of them let go. Blue's hands slid down to link behind her neck, and he pressed his forehead against hers. He let go of his breath, and Ellie closed her eyes in her dizziness, holding on to his arms without thought, feeling the echoes of that kiss still rippling in her elbows and chest.

Even then, he didn't say anything, just raised his head and looked at her. Ellie felt his subtle trembling, felt her own faintness as she looked up at him.

"I guess you'd better go now," he said finally.

Ellie nodded. She hesitated, then touched the arch of cheekbone under his left eye with the very tips of her fingers. His skin was hot, a little flushed.

She pulled her hair off her face, and he helped her stand up. For a long, dangerous second, she wavered and felt him wavering, too.

Firmly, she stepped back. "Good night."

He swallowed. Put his hands in his pockets. Nodded. "Night."

10

N
aturally, Blue couldn't sleep. After a half hour of trying, he got up, and instead of heading down to the porch, he carried a telescope up the stairs to the widow's walk.

The telescope was a good one, a present from his father, who had shown with that single gesture that he understood his son's questing need for knowledge. Over the years, Blue had sometimes considered getting a better one, but it wasn't like he was an expert on astronomy. It was just a hobby, and this scope was plenty for his needs.

From the roof, he could see over the treetops. The cottage crouched at the edge of the woods, and he thought of Ellie inside, asleep. He wondered what she slept in, and although he wanted to imagine her in some filmy negligee, he'd bet an oversized T-shirt was a lot more likely. Or some sensible cotton thing. Yeah. One of those sleeveless things with some little styling gewgaw on the straps, little cotton roses or something.

He stared at the little house, and imagined her lying on her back, a single strap falling down her arm, her black curls scattered around her sleeping face. He imagined himself coming into that darkness and settling on the bed beside her, and kissing the line of her neck, down to her shoulder. Imagined himself taking that covering off and putting his hand around her breast.

He took a breath, blew it out, rubbed his shoulders a little, trying to dislodge the vision.

Man. What a kiss.

Sasha padded up the steps to join him, and Blue told himself to stop thinking about Ellie. He bent over the telescope, focusing on what looked like a smear of stars to the naked eye. Through the lens, they were sharp and crisp, a diamond cluster of seven. Unimaginably distant. He stared at them and felt the strain of daily life ease away as he imagined planets lit by a trio of suns. He wondered what it would be like to live on a planet with seven suns.

Straightening, he looked again at the dark sky. So far away. The universe was so huge it made him think that nothing was very important. He wondered if there was some baby being born right now that might one day be on a ship to those far-flung worlds. He wondered if they'd have time to send reports of what they'd found before he died.

Probably not. Maybe not even before his great-grandchildren died, though before he got to the great grandkids, he needed to get to plain old children. It had been a great disappointment to him that he and Annie had had so much trouble conceiving. In the end, he'd given it up because it caused her so much pain. They'd only hesitantly begun to discuss adoption when she was killed.

Stealing back into his mind came the feel of Ellie, fitting just right into his arms. Kissing her had been almost like looking at the stars, a sense of quiet that settled him.

He looked back at the cottage. What would it hurt to just wander on down there, and knock on her door and let her open her arms and her bed? What would it hurt to lie next to her in the dark and breathe with her and sleep?

But he knew the answer. It might hurt her. It probably would. And he did have some standards. No, much as he wanted her, he'd have to just let it stand as it was.

With a shudder, he suddenly heard the course of his thoughts, from Ellie to the stars to children and back to Ellie.

Ellie. He looked down to the cottage and rubbed his chest.

Damn.

* * *

Marcus Williams was an early riser. He had been brought up on a farm in the farthest stretches of the county, and had learned to awaken before the cock crowed in time to do his chores before the school bus came and took him to the newly integrated Washington High School. His job had been to feed and water the chickens and get the eggs for breakfast.

As a young man, his habits had garnered him plenty of ribbing from a more sophisticated high school crowd, but he'd managed basic training better than almost anyone had. Now, as he approached fifty, he found it a liability once again.

This soft early summer morning, he came awake to the sound of blackbirds in the trees beyond his window, their song melancholy in the faint gray before dawn. On a neighboring property, a cock crowed, and the sound penetrated the dreams of his wife, sleeping beside him. She stirred faintly, her ankle drifting over his calf as she stirred, breathed out heavily, and settled again into her deep nest of pillows.

Her skin was warm and soft against his, and he shifted to brush her long back with the tips of his fingers. She might wake up, or at least turn sleepily toward him, and they would make love in the slow and comfortable way of the happily married. Afterward, Marcus could get up and shower and make his breakfast, leaving the house long before she or the children stirred.

But this morning, she did not move, even when he brushed her nape and slid his open palm over the sleek dip of her spine. The children had been a handful the past few weeks, with colds and coughs and the crankiness that went with them. Marcus smoothed a handful of tiny braids back from her face, smiling over the sweetness of her sleep-slack mouth, and gave her temple a whispering kiss.

He got up and fixed his breakfast, turning the television in the corner to the morning news, listening to stories of hurricanes and strikes and faraway wars as he scrambled his eggs. A sober brunette delivered the news of a car bomb in Israel, and the storm expert came on to warn gleefully of the proper conditions for a series of tornadoes across the Midwest.

Through it all, through touching the warm skin of his wife, and while he smelled the savory ham Alisha nagged him not to eat, and while he shook his head over the bombing, was James.

It sometimes bewildered him, the way James came into his heart, into his mind this way, even after thirty years. The way his face would be as plain, the grief as sudden and piercing and fresh, as if it had all happened yesterday. This morning, he knew it was because they'd talked about him at the club last night and talked about the waste of the war.

Settling in with his plate and a cup of hot, fresh coffee, Marcus gave his attention to the news and thought about James in that nostalgic, happy way that sometimes came on him so early. Even so many years after, he could see the nappy head bristling with grass after a wrestling match. Hear the low softness of a chuckle as he acknowledged defeat or told a bad joke, as if he just naturally expected listeners to laugh along with him. Which they did.

After breakfast, Marcus walked, as was his habit, down the country roads to the center of town, where the new raw shape of the memorial was emerging. He'd fought long and hard for it, collecting details, comparing the service of Stonewall County vets to the rest of the country, appealing to patriotic hearts on the city council, focusing most of his efforts on a WWII airman and Binkle with his guilt. It worked, finally, and Binkle had cast the deciding vote. Marcus guessed that had earned the man a little respect.