The Edge of Recall (11 page)

She took the spoon and touched it to her tongue. “What am I tasting for?”

“Too peppery?”

She might have said too floury, but the pepper was all right. “It’s fine.” She set the spoon in the sink.

“Bair’s cooked a roast and some potatoes.”

Smith was making an attempt at surface civility. She could too. “Vegetables?”

“Carrots and peas. Frozen, I’m afraid.”

“That’s fine.” But not the proximity to Smith, the clean scent of his soap and hint of cologne mingling with the beef roasting in the small oven. It could have been homey and nice in the kitchen together if all the things she’d wanted to say, all the hurt she’d stuffed inside, hadn’t made a barrier in her larynx as effective as Bair’s. She glanced up to find him watching her, a pensive expression on his face.

“You really would rather be anywhere else, wouldn’t you.”

She swallowed. “I shouldn’t have said—”

“Yes, you should, Tess. I’m sorry I put you in this position. Bair’s problem is Bair’s problem. Sooner or later he’s going to have to date by himself.”

“You mean he hasn’t?”

He sucked in his cheeks, considering, then said, “Not sober.”

She shot him a puzzled look.

“He gets frustrated and feels awkward, and a drink or two takes that away. He’s quite glib, actually, with enough drinks in him. But enough leads to too much, and too much leads to trouble.”

“The brawls you mentioned?”

“That and other regrettable choices. Bair would tell you himself. He’s done the meetings. It’s just easier if he’s not tempted.”

“That’s what you meant by a controlled environment? No bar?”

“No bar, no pressure, no audience beyond his personal support team.” Smith spread his hands. “I know this isn’t much of a date.”

“This isn’t a date. We’re helping Bair.”

“Still, I shouldn’t have—”

“It’s okay, Smith. I can get through a meal with you.”

“Well, then.” He stiffened. “This should be fun.”

She hadn’t meant to insult him. “I learn from my mistakes— that’s all I meant.”

“I’m your mistake?”

She didn’t want to get into it. She was trying to be amicable. They ought to be able to manage amicability.

He braced his hands on his hips. “Suppose you tell me what precisely I did to hurt your feelings all those years ago.”

“You didn’t hurt my feelings. You didn’t consider them at all.”

He expelled his breath. “I can’t open my mouth without considering them. At every juncture there’s the risk I’ll run right over them.”

She folded her arms. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It’s like babysitting an egg, being with you. One wrong word, one mistaken assumption—”

“An
egg
?”

“A particularly thin-shelled one.”

Angry tears burned her eyes.

“No, don’t.” He gripped the back of his head, looking pained.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t cry.”

She’d give anything not to. He caught her elbow as she turned away.

“Come here.” He turned her around and locked her in his gaze.

“This is exactly what I didn’t want.”

And she had?

“If you could ever stop taking things so personally—”

“Babysitting an egg?”

“Well, that was over the top.” He frowned. “I know you’ve had a hard go, and I don’t try to make things worse. If there was any chance, I’d make them better.”

Any chance? He thought she’d never be happy, that she couldn’t be. That wasn’t true, not in the way he meant. “I don’t expect you to. It’s just that you made me want—”

“What?”

She lost the battle of the tears.

“Want what, Tess?”

No way. She was not— “You in my life,” she rasped.

Brow furrowed, he drew a ragged breath. “I’m sorry for that.”

She glared.

“No, I mean, that’s not what I meant to say. It’s just—everything I do is wrong!” He pulled her up by the elbows and kissed her.

An electric jolt coursed her nerves, fear and pleasure and jubilation and fury. She jerked back. “What was that?”

“Something incredibly stupid.” He let her go and pressed his hands to his face. “Please tell me this won’t jeopardize our working together.”

Their work? Right. The thing she was actually there for. Not making Bair’s life easier or Smith’s life worse. “It won’t. I’m a professional, and you might at least be able to fake it.”

He laughed. “That’s right. I’m the fraud here.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Are you suggesting my field is—”

“Oh, give it a rest!” He forked both hands into his hair. “I’m sick to death of that refrain. I respect you, all right? I admire your work. I called you in, didn’t I, instead of any number of landscape designers I could have used at less cost and irritation.”

He appeared to be shaking. She’d never seen him rattled. Never. But if he thought—

“ Er . . .” The door banged closed behind Bair. “All right?”

“Fine,” they both said through clenched teeth.

Katy looked from one to the other. Bair’s face took on panicked hues that he might end up alone with her after all. Or maybe he’d prefer it, given the sudden climate change.

Tessa drew herself up. “You should check the roast, Bair. The gravy’s definitely done.”

CHAPTER

10

Smith spun and grabbed the whisk, pushing it through the mud that had simmered while he made a pass at her. Yes, she’d fantasized years ago in her naïveté, taking everything he said and did for so much more than it was. She had clarified that with Dr. Brenner. Smith had never come on to her, even when she’d have liked him to. Until now.

“Have a seat . . . Katy . . . and Tessa.” Bair jerked out both chairs at once.

Tessa pulled herself together and gave Katy a smile. “Strange having Bair wait on you?”

Katy nodded. “Grandma wouldn’t approve.”

“You might be surprised.” Tessa sat down. “My mom always said to never refuse a grand gesture.”

Katy shrugged. “I guess.”

Then again, grand gestures could be totally wasted.

Tessa adjusted her seat while Bair pushed Katy in like a Viking with a battering ram. What did he see in her that had him so mesmerized? Maybe it was her perceptions that were off. Smith had looked dumbfounded at the notion she might have thought them a couple once. It started to hurt. She’d known it would.

Bair set out a well-done roast, a bowl of potatoes, and another bowl of olive-toned peas and translucent carrots. Smith had none too successfully thinned the gravy and probably leached out what flavor it once had. The men took their seats.

Smith cleared his throat. “So I’ll just bless this, and then we can eat.”

Her swift glance showed Smith’s head bowed. When had he begun to pray?

“Bless, O Lord, this food to our use and us to thy service, and keep us ever mindful of the needs of others. In the name of Jesus. Amen.”

The sweetness of the old-fashioned prayer washed over her. Tension eased in her shoulders, and the hurt made only a small hollow in the pit of her stomach. While Bair cut the roast, the rest of them passed the starch and vegetable with stiff smiles and thank-yous.

Smith set the empty potato bowl behind him on the tiny counter and settled into his role. “How is Ellie? Her knee still aching?”

Katy shrugged. “Mostly when it rains.”

“Swelling any better?”

Katy nodded, then turned. “So you make labyrinths?”

Tessa raised her brows. Bair must have said so, and she felt a surge of satisfaction that he’d broken the taboo Smith was so certain he wouldn’t violate. “Yes.”

“Why? I mean what’s it for?”

“Architecturally or culturally?”

Katy shrugged.

“Well, some of the paths I build are simply decorative.” Tessa set her fork down. “Other people desire a prayer walk or meditation tool. The labyrinth can be used as a pilgrimage or a metaphor for life’s journey. A chance to search inside, to go deeper.”

Katy blinked. “All that from a maze?”

“A maze is a puzzle to be solved, with twists and turns and dead ends. It requires logical, analytical thinking and usually has a different way out than the way in. The maze could be a metaphor of struggling through life, going one way and then another until the exit takes you by surprise.”

“Or of learning from your mistakes and moving on.” Smith cast her a pointed look.

She ignored him. “I build labyrinths.”

“What’s the difference?” Katy gamely chewed a bite of beef.

“The maze signifies entrapment, while the labyrinth, with its unicursal path leading into the center and out again the same way, provides enlightenment.”

Bair frowned. “How is it enlightening to end up back where you began?”

“It’s the process, the journey into your deepest self, your soul, the part where God abides. It’s a passive path, a surrender even, to an order and design repeated throughout creation. A sacred geometry.”

“Sacred geometry,” Smith said. “The Fibonacci spiral and all that?”

“The fiba-what?” Katy frowned.

“Fibonacci spiral,” he said. “It’s a mathematical formula in which each interconnected area is the sum of the two preceding areas.” Smith dabbed his mouth. “When you graph them, they form the golden spiral.”

“There’s also the golden ratio,” Bair interjected, comfortable with the topic and talking more to Smith than Katy.

Poor Katy at a table of architects. Tessa almost felt sorry, but Katy had started it.

She wrinkled her nose. “Golden . . .”

Smith said, “The sum of two unequal quantities plus the larger of the two is the same as the ratio between the larger and the smaller. Architects proportion their works using the golden rectangle, in which the ratio of the space is divided roughly one to one-point-six- one-eight, etc.”

“Clear as mud,” Katy said, and spooned in peas and carrots.

Tessa bit back a laugh. Smith had always spewed math as though it were a second language, then looked baffled that others didn’t speak it. She said, “Labyrinths imitate designs found in nature, in even the human form, that are too perfect to be accidental. So it points to a creator. You walk toward the center, toward the source of that order, releasing the chaos of daily life, seeking wisdom and wholeness. On the outward journey you return to the world— metaphorically—with the insights gained within.”

Bair swabbed his mouth. “Sounds a little New Age mumbo jumbo.”

Her eyes narrowed infinitesimally. “Hardly new, considering most cultures on the earth have had some form of labyrinth represented in their art and mythology.”

“Not new, maybe, but all . . . Nirvana and one-with-the-universe stuff.”

“Just because the tool has been used in alternative ways doesn’t invalidate its concept. Satan quoted Scripture, but Jesus didn’t toss it out.” She cut into a stiff piece of roast beef. “And there are mysteries in the world, Bair, whether people want to see them or not.” She hadn’t meant to sound so defensive.

Smith warned Bair off with a look, and she could just imagine their conversation after she’d left.
Don’t question Tessa’s thing for
labyrinths. She’s irrational. Unstable.
The anger and hurt returned. She understood that people didn’t get it. But why did they have to criticize someone who did? Katy hadn’t understood Smith’s mathematics, but she didn’t call it mumbo jumbo or suggest it wasn’t valid.

“So how come you can’t talk about what you’re building?” Katy washed a bite down her throat.

“The owner requested privacy.” Smith’s tone indicated end of subject.

“I bet I could guess.”

The muscle in Smith’s jaw quivered. “You could, but we wouldn’t say. So what fun is that? Bair, can you pass the gravy?”

Tessa hadn’t taken any, but now she wasn’t sure she could swallow her meat without it. At least she knew she wasn’t missing anything eating alone in her room.

“It’s like a park or something with that maze.”

Smith turned a stony face on Katy. Bair looked mortified.

Tessa forced the meat down her esophagus. “How long have you worked at Ellie’s, Katy?”

“Too long.” She jammed her fork into a chunk of beef. “I’ve done everything in this stupid county too long.”

“Why don’t you go somewhere else?” Tessa noted Smith’s relief at her successful detour.

“How? Where? Opportunities aren’t exactly growing in these woods.”

Katy looked fierce, as though Tessa were personally responsible for her plight, then turned to Bair as though he could be her salvation. Tessa hoped that wasn’t the whole story. “Have you gone to college?”

“No.” Katy preferred the previous subject and plied Bair once more. “Are you building a theme park, outlet mall? Something to get me out of Grandma’s teahouse?”

Bair cleared his throat. “We can’t . . . say.”

She pouted. “I won’t tell.”

Smith’s face got stonier. Tessa knew that look. This time, she didn’t come to his rescue. He’d roped them all into this—let him figure it out. To his credit, he didn’t look to her for an escape. He’d avoided looking her way at all. The hurt grew.

She wished she were alone in her room to process the whole thing. Maybe call Dr. Brenner. It mattered that Smith had changed the equation. She hadn’t foreseen this variable. Dr. Brenner would say he’d warned her.

“All right, Tess?”

She jumped. When had Smith turned to her? “Actually, I don’t feel good.” She pushed back from the table and stood up. “I need to go.” Bair could deal with Katy. He wasn’t helpless. She took her jacket and her keys and all but flew out the door.

“Tessa, wait.” Smith followed.

She didn’t want to wait, didn’t want to argue, didn’t want to cry.

He caught up at the car. “Please.”

“I need to go, Smith.” She suddenly found it hard to breathe.
No.
She would not let the panic into her consciousness. She backed against the car.

“What is it? What happened?” Furrows dug into his brow.

“Nothing.”

He braced her between his outstretched arms. “If it’s about before, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry doesn’t change anything.” Her terror rose. The woods were closing in. She had to run, but she couldn’t move. Dr. Brenner had feared an overlap. Here it was.

“Tess.” Smith gripped her left elbow.