Passing Through Midnight, page 8
"Close," he said, chuckling. "But not quite."
"What is it then? Confess. I can handle it."
He grew serious, studying her face in that way that always made her feel as if he were looking into her soul, revealing nothing of what he saw there or what he thought of it.
"I'm not any good at games," he said, his deep voice rumbling up her spine.
"You were cheating at pool?" Of course, he hadn't been, but he was so close and she was so nervous, her tongue seemed to be unhinged and rattling at will.
It reminded her of the Dorie of old, whose smart mouth would take over in times of stress and trepidation. The Dorie who cared. The Dorie who could fight back. The Dorie in control. The Dorie who could make light of a critical situation even as she faced it head-on.
"No, I wasn't cheating at pool," he said, thinking her smile was the prettiest he'd ever seen, enjoying the way her lips moved against her even white teeth, one just a little crooked, as if it were being crowded by the others. "I don't cheat at games. I just don't play them very well."
"What sort of games are you talking about?" she asked, her feminine intuition sensitized to the max. She was playing the games. She knew exactly what he was talking about and what he wanted.
And she knew he knew she knew.
"You know the games. We can play them like we're a couple of kids who don't know what they're getting into, or we can pretend we don't want to play them at all. It's your choice. I'm simply warning you that games don't always work well for me."
Oh gawd! Another decision! And not about which can of soup to open or if she wanted to take another nap or not. A big one. A real one.
"What do you want to do?" she asked, hoping for some guidance.
"I want to kiss you so bad, my lips are itching."
She giggled. Well, a kiss wasn't exactly sex. People kissed each other all the time. No commitment or blood test required. Come to think of it…
"Mine are too," she said, taking in a deep breath, holding it as if waiting to be hit by a train.
He half smiled, then looked as nervous and unsure as she felt. He tipped his head to one side and lowered his mouth to hers, tilting his head to the other side seconds before his lips touched hers.
It was a too-quick kiss, they both realized, looking at each other in confusion. A spark or two, but that could have been nerves. Could have been wishful thinking. Silently, they agreed to try it again, maybe for a little longer; maybe they should relax a little. After all, it was just a kiss.
Their lips touched once more, but it was hardly relaxing. It was like stepping on a live wire—in the rain. It was all Gil could do to keep his muscles from contracting in a convulsion that was sure to crush her in his embrace. His insides coiled like the springs on a ballistic missile.
For a second Dorie thought a bolt of electricity had passed clean through her from the ground, shooting out by way of her hair, leaving her new do standing straight on end. But then came wave upon wave of indisputable pleasure, lapping away at the anxiety, the nervousness, and uncertainly. Washing her mind clean of the fears and the doubts and any sort of rational thought she might have had.
Titillation engorged her breasts. Her head reeled. Her blood ran hot with fire, then flowed sweet like warm honey. His hair was as soft as it looked, his body as hard and sure as she had imagined.
Somewhat abruptly, her cheek was being pressed tight against his chest and she thought she heard him mutter, "Damn."
For a simple little kiss, it seemed a very complicated thing when she could finally open her eyes and begin to think again. For all its delight, it left a deep churning dissatisfaction within her.
She let her arms go limp at her sides and stepped away from him. She kept her head lowered, afraid that he hadn't felt what she had, afraid she'd be able to see the disappointment in his face.
The fingers of his left hand slipped tenderly through her hair, tangling in the fringe along the nape of her neck, as those of his right hand curled below her chin, gently lifting her face toward his. His thumb feathered across her lower lip. He was smiling at her.
"I think we should play the grown-up version of this game."
Go straight to bed. Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars.
"Me too," she said numbly.
"I think we should sleep on it tonight and make a clear adult decision about it in the morning."
Solid adult decisions weren't her forte these days. She'd been surviving on pure animal instinct—run, hide, protect yourself. At the moment her instincts were skipping blissfully up the stairs to her bedroom.
"Me too," she said, trying very hard to sound mature.
He grinned. "I think I should leave now, before I let that look on your face ruin all my good intentions."
"Me too." She was lying.
He laughed. He knew she knew he knew she was lying.
"Good night, Dorothy Devries," he said, walking away from her. She watched him walk with his sure steps toward the pasture, swing his long legs over the fence as if it were two feet high, then meld his dark form into the night shadows.
"Good night, Gilliam Howlett."
SIX
"Hello."
"Hi, Mom."
No response.
"Mom? Mother?"
"Dorie?"
"Mother, are you all right?"
"I'm fine, dear. Are… are you all right?" There was a note of panic in her voice.
"Of course. Is something wrong?"
"No. Not here. Has something happened there?"
"No."
"Then why are you calling me?"
It wasn't that Dorie had to keep reminding herself that she loved her mother, but it was moments like this when she'd remember the fact most forcefully.
"Mother, I'd call you every day if you ever gave me a chance to dial the phone. But I never have to call you because you call every morning before my eyes are open."
"I like having coffee with you."
"I like having coffee with you too," she said, an honest answer for the most part. "But you don't have to have a heart attack if I happen to beat you to the buttons once in a while."
"Well, I was just so surprised." Dorie could almost see her placing a hand over her heart.
"I'm sorry I startled you. And I'm fine. I called to ask if you'd go to that little hobby shop you like so much and see if they have a cake pan shaped like a cow. Like the rose-shaped one you used for my birthday last year and the dinosaur one you made for the little boy next door?"
"Cow, did you say?"
"Yes. I want to make a cow cake."
"A cow cake?"
"A cake? Shaped like a cow?"
"Like a cow?"
"Yes, Mother, a cow. I'm going to make Baby Emily a birthday cake."
"Who's Baby Emily?"
"She's a cow. A calf, actually."
"You're making a birthday cake for a cow?"
"Well, it'll be a belated birthday cake, but if you can find a cow pan and send it to me overnight express mail, I'll have it by tomorrow, and that's not too late for a belated birthday, is it?" Silence. "Mother?"
"Darling, would you like me to come stay with you for a while? I know you said you wanted to be alone, but, truly, sweetheart, being all alone in the middle of nowhere can't be good for too long a time. Especially if you're used to having people around and considering what you've been through…"
"Mom? Mother? I love you, but please don't come. Just get dressed, run downtown, and see if you can find me a cow pan, and I'll explain everything to you later. Okay?"
"All right." She sounded resigned. "But if they don't have a cow would you like a cat or a dog? They have them shaped like fish, too, as I recall."
"A cow, Mom. Just a cow."
Before she'd called her mother that morning she'd stood at her bedroom window and watched the Howletts come and go. It was fast becoming her habit if she'd spent a sleepless night and was still awake when they arrived.
Gil had ruffled Baxter's hair and laughed at something he'd said, then he'd done a little shadowboxing with Fletcher. He probably didn't live his life for his children, but he also had no idea how empty and useless life could feel without them, she thought, not too surprised when he turned to look back at the house from the barn door as if he could feel her watching him.
She and Gil Howlett were like opposite sides of the moon, very much alike and very different. They were stuck in a common orbit, floating through time and space, alone and lonely, one in darkness, the other in light, creating an attraction and a mutual need.
Were loneliness and desire enough to risk upsetting the fine balance of their common orbit? They had respect and a fledgling friendship to consider. An impressionable teenager and a mother-seeking child to think about too. Was wanting enough? Or did the future need some sort of guaranty?
Selfishly, she'd reminded herself that the future had never given her any guaranties. Or Gil either, for that matter. Once upon a time, she'd made a lot of assumptions about the future. Like it would always be there and it would be good. She knew better than to make those kinds of predictions now. Tomorrow might not come and it might not be good.
All anyone really had was today. Today was the midnight you survived to get from yesterday to tomorrow. Today was the final hour during which you tested your personal strengths; expending your energies, fortifying your weaknesses, finding the courage to pass from a dark yesterday into a brighter tomorrow.
Hopefully.
And hope seemed to be the answer to all of it.
Without hope no risks are taken; no battles are fought; no babies are made. For the first time in months, Dorie felt the warmth of hope in her soul. It was like finding a tiny ember, still hot and glowing beneath the ashes of her dreams and of what she believed in and the perception she'd had of who she was.
She'd watched Gil and his sons cross the yard, and while she no longer wished for a marriage and children of her own, she fanned the small hope of loving again, feeling and caring. Reaching out to human beings and holding them close to her heart once more.
She couldn't give Gil or the boys a guaranty that she'd be there always, but couldn't she be a part of their life today? She was an infertile woman with a scarred and broken body, a cynical heart, and a tendency toward being pushy and shrewd to get her own way, but did that mean she was unlovable? Was that all there was to her?
Maybe it was time to find out.
Taking Baxter at his word, along with a little medical knowledge of her own, she waited and watched for the school bus to kick up a great dust on the road as it brought the children home from school that afternoon. Moments later, she was va-rooming up the Howletts' road to visit Baby Emily.
Okay. So it was a lousy excuse. She figured it was the effort that counted. Reaching out to touch someone wasn't always as easy as picking up a telephone.
"Hi, Bax! How was school today?" she asked, grinning as she swung her legs out of the Porsche, delighted to see Baxter leaping out the back door to greet her.
"Hi! School was okay. Guess what?"
"What?"
"Corianne Smithers lost a tooth today. In her hot dog. At lunch. She just bit into it and out came her tooth."
"Wow. Those must be some hot dogs."
"They're good. Her tooth was really loose. She let me feel it once." He seemed rather proud of this, almost macho, as if it were some sort of kindergarten courting ritual. "Mine are gonna fall out too."
"Then you'll get big teeth, right?"
"Uh-huh. Like Dad's and Uncle Matt's. And Fletch's. Did you come to see Baby Emily? Are you better?"
"Yes and yes," she said, appreciating his perceptive-ness. She knew if she used the I-came-to-see-the-cow excuse out loud it would sound as thin as onion skin. "How is she today?"
"Real cute. Come see," he said, taking her hand and pulling her toward the barn as he had the night before.
"Whoa there," Matthew hollered from the back door. "Where are you two going in such a hurry?"
"Dorie's better. She wants to see the calf," Baxter said without slowing down.
"Hello, Matthew," she called, waving her free hand.
"Stay for supper?"
"Oh, no," she called over her shoulder. "I just came to see the calf."
Lord. It sounded thinner than onion skin.
"We got plenty. No trouble to set another place."
"No, really…"
"Sittin' down with a pretty woman is a treat in this house. You'd be doing us a favor."
"In that case, I'd love to," she said with a laugh, as she was yanked into the barn.
"See. See. She's cute, huh?"
"She sure is."
Dorie was allowed into the stall to pet Emily, then Baby Emily. The calf had been licked clean and furry, and the hay was sweet and fresh. Nothing of the night before remained, and when Emily mooed with concern at having two humans so close to her baby, the sound was natural and unfettered by pain and fear.
"Here," Baxter said, holding out his index finger. "Stick your finger in her mouth like this, and she'll think it's a tit and suck on it."
"Do I have to?" she asked, with an involuntary shudder at hearing the word tit come out of a five-year-old's mouth. But he was a farm boy. What else was he supposed to call them? She had a lot to learn.
He laughed. "It doesn't hurt."
Sighing, and unable to keep the grimace from her face, she held her index finger out and slowly stuck it in Baby Emily's mouth. The calf wrapped its big pink tongue around it and stepped a little closer to suckle so hard, there was a popping sound when Dorie pulled her finger out, half afraid of losing it.
Her hands had done and felt many unusual things, from minor surgery to reaching inside a thoracic cavity and massaging a human heart. But Baxter was giggling and having such a wonderful time with her reaction to the calf's mouth, she decided to play it up a bit.
"Uh, yuck!" she squealed, shaking her hand in the air.
He laughed harder, and she couldn't help but laugh with him. She took in his curly red hair and freckles, his tiny-toothed grin and the sparkle in his eyes, and a huge soft spot in her heart opened up to him. Had she really said she envied Gil his children? She'd wished for things before, but what she felt was more than a wish or a hope or envy. It was more like an intense joy emerging from the very core of her. It didn't matter whose child he was, it was enough that he was there, that he could laugh like an angel and be a little devil, and think and feel and… well, and be Baxter. He was a miracle.
"You were right, Dad. Girls don't like that stuff," Baxter chortled, looking over Dorie's shoulder at his father.
"I said, some girls don't." His gaze was on Dorie's face as she turned in the hay to look up at him. "Some don't mind it."
"How can you tell which do?"
"Hell if I know. You got homework?" The boy was in kindergarten and never had homework, but he enjoyed being asked the same grown-up questions Fletcher got asked.
"Nope."
"Chores?" His gaze left Dorie's face long enough to give his son a significant look.
"I was gonna show Dorie Emily Pig," he said, then to Dorie he added, "She's gonna have babies, too, but not for a while. You don't have to see that. You can come after."
"Thank you. I'll look forward to it." And to asking her mother to hunt down a pig pan for the birthday party.
"You can show her the pig later. Chores first, remember?"
"Yes, sir." He shuffled his feet through the hay on his way out of the stall, then remembered, "Dorie's staying for dinner."
"So I heard," he said, his gaze returning to her face.
He'd seen the way she was looking at Baxter when he'd come upon them, sitting in the hay, laughing. Before she got sick, Beth had looked at Fletcher that way. He never saw that look on his second wife's face and had begun to think it was simply another wonderfully peculiar thing that had belonged to Beth alone. But here it was again on Dorie's face. Such a profound expression of infinite tenderness and pleasure.
"Hi," she said, getting to her feet as the barn door slammed closed behind Baxter.
"Hi."
She'd expected a smile or some sign of pleasure at seeing her, but when he continued to stare at her, his gaze skimming down her body then returning to her face to study and probe some more, she felt compelled to say it again. "I came to see the calf."
Ugh! Thin as air.
He nodded, and a slow grin curled his lips as an age-old light danced in his eyes. He knew why she'd come.
"And then Matthew asked me to dinner again," she said self-consciously. "He's very hard to say no to, you know."
Again he nodded, the grin growing broader.
"He reminds me a little of my mother."
Another cheeky nod, and he slipped his hand into hers saying, "Come keep me company. I still have work to do."
She had prickling goose bumps waddling all over her body from the expression on his face. If it were up to him, he would have taken her there in the hay in front of the cow and the calf, but clearly—and perhaps thankfully—Chores First was engraved in stone someplace with all the other Laws of the Land.
He held the small barn door open for her, leading her away from the house and the fenced-in yard. They crossed a dirt road to a huge outbuilding, not as tall as the barn but half again its width. A big, sliding metal door was partially open, and he finally released her hand once he'd ushered her inside.
"What's this?" she asked, her eyes adjusting slowly to the darkness.
"A tractor."
"Not that. I can see it's a tractor. What's this place?" she asked, squinting to make out large heavy-looking objects.
"A machine shed. Harrows. Plows. Tires. Cultivator. Planter. Spare parts." He looked around. "Junk. Combines don't fit, but most everything else does."
That appeared to be true. The place was crammed full of machinery. Most appeared to hook onto something else to be useful; they didn't all have motors. Tools, ladders, cans, barrels—why, there was even a kitchen sink in a corner, half full of dirt and dust.
