“Why do I get the sense that you’re trying to tell me something?”
“I’m not,” Olivia said, tossing her the pink baby dolls. “Not yet, anyway.”
By the end of the day, Jenny had discovered a new level of fatigue. Until now, she had taken the concept of “home” for granted, as most people did. The simple knowledge that your home—your favorite chair, your stereo, your bed, the stack of books on your nightstand—was waiting at the end of the day was a true source of comfort, something she hadn’t thought about until it was gone. Now weariness dragged at her, and she thought wistfully of her own home, her own bed. The moment she stepped inside Rourke’s house with her shopping bags, the fatigue hit her like a giant wave.
“You look like you’re ready to drop,” he said. The dogs came galloping in from their run in the yard, shaking snow from their fur, tails waving in greeting. Clarence, the one-eyed cat, followed, slipping into the fray.
“Good guess,” she said.
He fed the animals, talking to them as though they were people, which Jenny found unexpectedly charming. “Move aside, boys,” he instructed. “And don’t gulp your food. You’ll get the hiccups.”
Despite her fatigue, she caught herself smiling as the dogs lined themselves up, watching with adoring eyes while he fixed their dinner. Why hadn’t she ever adopted a pet? That unconditional love was incredibly nice to come home to.
“How about you?” Rourke asked her. “What do you want for dinner?”
Oh, boy. “Anything. At this point, I’m not picky.”
“Good, because I’m not much of a cook.”
“You want some help?” she offered.
“Nope. I want you to take a good long shower, because you’re going straight to bed afterward.”
She thought about his cushy bed and felt a wave of yearning as she headed into the bathroom. The shower, like everything else in his house, was meticulously clean yet oddly generic. She resisted the temptation to snoop in his medicine cabinet. There was, she knew for a fact, such a thing as learning too much information about a person. Besides, the more she learned about Rourke, the deeper his mystery seemed.
After her shower, she put on the soft yoga pants and hoodie she’d bought earlier, combed her hair and went to the kitchen, where Rourke was putting dinner on the table.
“So this is the ‘serve’ part of ‘to protect and serve,’“ she commented.
“I take my mission very seriously, even if it’s just canned soup and ham on rye. Made with the best rye bread in the known world,” he added.
“You have excellent taste in bread,” she said, recognizing a loaf of Sky River Bakery’s traditional Polish rye. “Did you know the starter for this bread is more than seventy years old?”
He looked blank. Most people did when asked to consider bread starter.
“It’s a live culture. You use a bit to make the dough, and cultivate more so it never runs out. My grandmother got it from her mother when she was a new bride in Poland. A traditional wedding gift is the pine box the size of a shoebox for the pottery container. Gram brought the culture in its carved pine box to America in 1945, and she kept it alive all her life.”
Rourke slowed down his chewing. “No kidding.”
“Like I would make this up?”
“So some part of my sandwich dates back to Poland before World War II.” He frowned. “Wait a minute. You didn’t lose it in the fire, did you?”
“No. We keep all the bread cultures at the bakery.”
“Good. That’s something, at least. So if you ever lose it or run out or whatever, can you make a new starter?”
“Sure. But it’ll never be exactly the same. Like wine from different vintage years, the aging process adds character. And it’s tradition for a mother to pass it on to her daughter in a chain that’s never broken.” She picked at her sandwich. “Although I guess my own mother took care of that.”
“The stuff’s safe and sound at the bakery,” he said, clearly shying away from the topic of her mother. “That’s what matters.”
“What, a rye bread starter matters more than my mother?”
“That’s not what I said. I didn’t mean to bring up a sore subject.”
“Believe me, she’s not a sore subject, not after all this time. I have bigger worries at the moment.”
“You do,” he agreed. “And I’m sorry if I said anything to upset you.”
How careful he was being with her, Jenny observed. “Listen, I’m going to be okay,” she said.
“I never said you weren’t.”
“That look says otherwise. The way you’ve been treating me says otherwise.”
“What look? What way I’ve been treating you?”
“You’re watching me like I’m a bomb about to go off. And you’re treating me with too much care.”
“I can honestly say that’s the first time a woman has ever accused me of being too caring. So I’m supposed to … what? Apologize?”
She wondered if she should bring up the pact of silence that had governed them for so long. At some point, they were going to have to discuss it. Not now, though. Right now, she was too tired to get into it. “Just cut it out,” she said. “It feels strange.”
“Fine. I won’t be nice anymore. Help me with the dishes.” He got up from the table. “Better yet, you do the dishes and I’ll see what’s on ESPN.”
“Not funny, McKnight,” she said.
They ended up loading the dishwasher together. She noticed a small, framed photograph on the windowsill over the sink. It was one of the few personal items in the house, and she wasn’t in the least surprised to discover it was a picture of Joey Santini, Rourke’s boyhood best friend—and also the man to whom Jenny had been engaged. The shot showed Joey, a soldier in the 75th Ranger Regiment, serving in the Komar Province of Afghanistan.
Against a desolate airstrip with a Chinook cargo helicopter in the background, he looked completely happy, because that was Joey—happy to be alive, no matter what. In his sand-colored BDUs, his elbow propped on a jeep, he was laughing into the camera, in love with the world, with life itself, even in the midst of the scorched earth of battle.
“I have that same picture,” Jenny said. “Or, had. It was in the fire.”
“I’ll make you a copy.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him if he ever thought of Joey, but she didn’t have to ask. She knew the answer: Every day.
“I have dessert,” Rourke said, shutting the dishwasher and cranking the
