quite true, either. He did affect her, she just didn’t have a name for the feelings he inspired. Gratitude didn’t seem to cover her reaction to his dedication, and acceptance of his presence didn’t enter into it, either. For she realized now that she always felt aware of him, seemed ultrasensitive to his comings and goings. She had the unusual sensation of seeming to know when he was present, when he wasn’t.
Rather than being indifferent to him, as she’d tried telling herself, she was all too conscious of him. Was this due to that odd sense of recognition she felt about him? Or was it far more dangerous than that? Was her awareness of him what troubled both Elise and Allie? Were they concerned that Jillian was aware of someone outside her immediate family circle for the first time in a year?
She realized that her fascination with him might be much darker than any of those suppositions. She might deliberately be blinding herself to things her loved ones could see. She might be a textbook case, a vulnerable widow actually falling willing prey to a fortune hunter.
She flicked on the outside lights and studied the courtyard, as if it offered proof of Steven’s benign intentions. How different it looked now from the way it had only two weeks ago. Steven had trimmed the trees and evened the lilac hedge, and had gone so far as to rehang the tall wooden gates in the even taller adobe walls. He had seamed cracks and even whitewashed the creamy thick walls surrounding the courtyard.
What was not to trust about a man who did such careful work without even needing direction? Especially a man who took the money she paid him and, without looking at it, folded the bills and casually shoved them in his back pocket? And did this with an apparently deliberate avoidance of touching her.
“I only wanted a place to stay,” he’d said that first time, but he had given in to her insistence that he be paid, as well. That sort of indifference to money didn’t seem to indicate a fortune hunter. Unless it was part of an elaborate scheme.
The huge flagstones gleamed with some sort of wax or sealant he’d applied, and now looked as though they’d been designed as interior flooring rather than as an exterior patio. The flower beds were turned, mulched and ready for a long winter’s nap. The narrow strip of grass had been mowed, the hammock shaken and rolled up and stored for the cold season and all the light fixtures painted and repaired, fitted with new energy-saving bulbs.
Even the pile of leaves Steven had so carefully been raking that afternoon was already gone, scooped out of sight, almost out of memory. He seldom spoke, hardly seemed to move, and yet had managed to make his presence felt in every inch of her property.
She shivered, remembering how their eyes had linked that afternoon…
And how many times in the unknown past?
…but her reaction wasn’t based on fear, unless it was misgivings about that odd trembling that seemed to snare her still.
Allie materialized at her side and pressed her silky, still-damp head against her. Jillian ran her hand over her daughter’s warm, soft hair, down over her thin, rounded shoulder, and pulled her even closer. This was a moment of total affirmation, of acceptance, of that all-too-elusive concept of “bonding.”
Though Jillian knew she should send her daughter back to bed, she couldn’t make herself spurn this evidence of Allie’s need. And she couldn’t possibly have denied herself this precious gift.
“It looks a lot different, doesn’t it, Mom?” Allie asked.
“Yes,” Jillian said. “A lot better.” She felt her chest tighten with love for Allie, love for this fragile child, grateful for Steven’s handiwork, grateful that tonight Allie could see good in things again.
“Like when Dad was here.”
Jillian forced a smile. “Better, sweetheart,” she offered.
She felt Allie tense slightly, and wondered if Allie would ever be able to accept that anything in life could ever be better than the days with her daddy.
“Remember that day when I first found Lyle?”
Lyle. Jillian felt herself stiffen. Was the invisible creature with Allie now? Was Lyle standing behind them at this minute, hovering too close, looking at her curves, eyeing her back?
Jillian craved a moment with Allie, devoid of the ever-present fantasy-inspired companion. And she desperately wanted a second or two when her shoulder blades didn’t itch or her skin didn’t tighten against that ridiculous, if pervasive, feeling of being watched.
“I remember,” Jillian said. Did her voice sound as tightly wound as she felt?
“The grass was really deep, and there were weeds everywhere.”
Jillian patted Allie’s shoulder. “Quite an improvement, eh, kiddo?” Was she trying to sell Allie on Steven, or to convince herself?
“I was dancing,” Allie said, her voice dreamy with memory, her reflection revealing a wistful smile.
Jillian tried to smile, too, remembering.
On that afternoon, Allie’s mouth had been working as she sang some melody Jillian couldn’t hear. Her hands had been crammed with fading yellow dandelions and dull orange calendula blossoms and had wavered on the air in counterpoint to her peculiar-rhythmed dance.
Totally unaware of her mother’s troubled gaze, she’d sung and danced in that neglected garden, a tiny nymph performing a haunting rite of passage on that last day of summer vacation. Jillian recalled how a single tear had carved a hot trail down her own cheek, scalding her with her own inability to stem it, making her thankful her daughter wasn’t seeing that fresh evidence of the unassuaged wounds in their lives.
But at that moment, on that afternoon a little over a month ago, Jillian hadn’t been crying because Dave was absent. She’d cried because Allie looked so normal, dancing in the grass, petals and blossoms in her hands, her hair swaying in rhythm, a song on her full, delicate lips.
Jillian had felt that sense of wonder steal over her and had known that anyone watching Allie, anyone spying that farewell-to-summer homage, would never have guessed the tragedy that had swept through her daughter’s world. And the realization of how rarely she’d seen Allie simply being a child had made her almost ill with pain. And the hot tear on her face had carved the first trail of hope Jillian had felt in months, a hope that recovery was finally within their grasp, that Allie would be okay.
Now she thought that her own reflection looked confused, even abandoned, as she—and Allie—replayed a mental tape of that ethereal, unconscious dance.
Jillian said, “I remember wanting to run outside and grab you and hug and hug you.”
She found herself wishing that Allie would understand the underlying meaning. Her hands tightened around her daughter’s shoulders, holding her very close, the way she hadn’t done that sun-dappled afternoon. She touched Allie’s hair now, stroking that child-soft face.
She shook with the memory of how she’d longed to smell her daughter’s dewy skin, kiss those stained, sticky fingers, but hadn’t, because she didn’t want to interrupt that carefree dance, that innocent romp, that momentary return to normality.
If only she had.
Instead, Jillian had simply watched, a dazed smile on her own face, as her daughter—unbronzed by the summer sun, fair hair dark from too
