fell off the truck?”
“I’ll make tea,” Winnie said, holding open the door, taking care to keep her tootsies well out of range of the four-inch stilettos.
“And where the hell have you been?” Aidan hurled at his housekeeper when she “sneaked” back in through the kitchen door. “As if I couldn’t guess.”
Shucking off her gold leather jacket and hanging it on the hook by the door, Florita slid her eyes to his. She’d pounced on him like a cat on a lizard the moment he’d returned from his earlier visit to Winnie, although he hadn’t been able to fill her in properly until after supper, when Robson had gone up to his room to do homework. She’d listened, said little—which should have set off alarms—then vanished the minute Aidan’s back was turned. Now she shrugged. “My name’s not Cinderella, big shot, I don’ have to explain my comings an’ goings to you. I jus’ decided to check this chick out for myself.”
Then, because she was Flo, she grabbed a sponge and started to wipe down already sanitized counters. “And?” Aidan said with exaggerated patience.
“She’s got cojones,” she said at last, bony shoulders bumping. “It took guts, her coming here like this.”
“And…?” he said again.
Crimson lips pursed. “I think she knows nothing’s gonna change, no matter what. But I also think she felt she had to do this, you know? Like she heard a voice, maybe.”
The Irish with their superstitions have nothing on the Latinos, Aidan thought, muttering, “Doesn’t mean we’re hearing the same voices.” When Flo didn’t reply, he said, “Jaysus, Flo, the woman’s already changed her mind twice about what she wants, once when Robson was still a baby, the second time barely two hours ago. Winnie Porter’s as unstable as a three-legged table. If not downright crazy, coming here without even knowing if we were around or not.”
“Just because she did something crazy doesn’t mean she is crazy,” Flo said, but she didn’t look any too sure of that.
“Surely y’don’t think I should let her see him?”
“I don’t know, boss. An’ anyway, it’s not up to me.”
Aidan released a breath. “Winnie swore up one side and down t’other she wouldn’t tell Robbie who she was, but what’s to prevent her from having another change of heart? All it takes is one slip, and the damage is done.”
Rinsing out her sponge at the stainless steel sink, Flo tossed him a wordless glance over her shoulder.
“He never even asks about his birth mother, Flo—”
“An’ you don’ exactly encourage him, do you?”
“Why would I do that when everything’s fine the way it is?”
Slamming the sponge down by the faucet, the housekeeper spun around, grabbing a dish towel to dry her hands. “Fine?” She barked out a laugh. “After a year, Robbie still mopes aroun’, keeping to himself…that sure don’ sound like fine to me. Dios mío—when was the las’ time there was any real laughter in this house? I’ll tell you when,” she said, tears pooling in her dark eyes. “Not since Miss June was alive. If you call that fine, I call you loco.”
Aidan’s mouth pulled tight. True, Robson and he rarely talked anymore. Even tonight, Aidan’s awkward attempts to draw his son into some sort of conversation had been a bust, like always, his offer to help the lad with his homework rejected out of hand. No, things were far from fine. But…
“She had her chance, Flo. We were more than willing to keep her in the loop, and she backed out of the deal. And whose side are you on, anyway?”
Flo crossed her arms over a bosom so flat it was nearly concave. “Robbie’s my baby, too, I don’ want to see him hurt any more than you do. An’ I’m not saying I totally trust this girl—”
“You think she’d try to make contact behind my back?” Aidan said over the jolt to his heart.
“At this point,” Flo said, frowning, “no. I don’ think so. She knows forcing the issue’s not gonna get her what she wants. No, it’s Robbie I’m worried about.”
“Robbie?”
“When you get back from Garcia’s, he comes in here, starts asking me if I knew there was some lady staying in the Old House, how come nobody ever stayed there before now.” When she paused, Aidan caught the ambivalence in her eyes, that she was just as conflicted as he was. “If I knew who she was. I tell him no, but I can see the wheels turning,” she said, pointing to her head, then crossing her arms. “An’ once those wheels get started…” Her sentence ended in a shrug. “You know what they say—el gato satisfecho no le preocupa ratón.”
Aidan was by no means fluent in Spanish, but after ten years of living in a town where the population was seventyfive percent Hispanic, even he got that one: The satisfied cat ignores the mouse.
“Except Winnie’s leaving in the morning,” Aidan said, “so the point’s moot.”
“You think if she disappears, so will his questions?” When Aidan grimaced a second time, Flo added, “Maybe you should ask yourself…what would Miss June do? What would she wan’ you to do?”
A few minutes later, tall boy in hand, Aidan stood outside on the second story deck looking down toward the Old House, slivers of window light barely visible through the trees. And in that house, a woman with the courage to ask for something even she’d acknowledged she had no right to ask. As much as her plea had annoyed him, it had also threatened some part of himself he’d thought he’d secured good and tight months ago.
One hip propped against the railing, Aidan took a swig of his beer, replaying that whole cat-and-mouse thing in his head. Except people weren’t cats. In fact, that was the trouble with humans—the more they knew, the more they wanted to know. Winnie Porter had already demonstrated that, hadn’t she?
Aidan pushed out a groan into the rapidly cooling air. Winnie’s coming here was definitely an aggravation he did not need. However…what would June do? Where would her sympathies lie?
Stupid question, he thought on an airless laugh. As thrilled as his wife had been about adopting Robson, hadn’t she been the one to worry about how Winnie was dealing with it, if she had anybody to talk to who understood what she was going through? Then when Winnie cut off communication, he’d thought surely Winnie herself couldn’t be taking it any harder than June.
His mouth curved. In so many ways, June had been as tough as they came, taking on causes nobody else would touch, having no qualms about stirring up trouble if she thought stirring was warranted. But her heart was soft as cotton. She was more than a loving person, it was as though love was her purpose in life. Not the kind of love blind to human failings, but the kind that sees through those failings to the core of a person. His wife had no patience with stupidity, but deep down she believed in the basic goodness of mankind.
Aidan’s lungs filled with the sweetly acrid air, that pungent blend of moldering leaves and fireplace smoke that would always remind him of his wife. For her, not spring, but autumn had always been about new beginnings. She saw in the blaze of color that swept the mountains not death, but beauty. Comfort. Joy.
