willing to take.
He rang the doorbell and got no response. After an interval he rang it again, then started pounding. An old guy was out in the front yard next door, using hand clippers to nibble away at a hedge that was already trimmed to perfection. He straightened and glared. Jakob didn’t care.
“Amy,” he bellowed. “I know you’re in there. Open this door.”
He heard noises inside at last. Fumbling with the locks. Then the door opened a crack.
“What?” she snarled.
Oh, man. She didn’t look good, even though he was seeing only a slice of her face. What he could see was wan, freckles he’d hardly known she had standing out like splotches of paint.
Jakob planted a hand on the door and pushed her inexorably backward despite her obvious alarm.
“What are you doing?” she cried in panic. “I told you, I want to be alone.”
“And I’ve left you alone,” he said grimly. “Apparently, for longer than I should have.”
He slid inside the opening and felt a new jolt of shock. “You’re sick.”
Her glare was surly. “I am not.”
He bit off an expletive. “You look like hell. Damn it, Amy...!”
Her hair, that beautiful mass of red-brown curls, was a thicket of tangles, flattened on one side, kinked on the other. Amy’s eyes were huge in a face that he would swear had lost flesh in only two days. It was six in the evening and she wore wrinkled flannel pajama bottoms and a tank top that was faded and stretched out. Her arms, long and skinny, were wrapped around herself as though they were all that held her together.
The defiant stare stayed in place, but as he watched she swayed on her feet.
He swore again and reached for her. She scrambled backward.
“Don’t touch me!”
Was she afraid of him?
“You’re ready to keel over.”
“I’m not. I’m fine. I’m...” She apparently derailed. Her eyes became increasingly glassy. “I’m...”
“Sick.”
“I’m not! I’m fine, I’m...”
“Either sick or in shock.” So what if she was afraid of him? Jakob grabbed her arm. “Where’s the kitchen?”
“What?”
He made a decision and marched her toward the back of the house. She stumbled beside him but seemed to have run out of protests.
The kitchen, he saw, had been entirely remodeled at some point with white cabinets, granite countertops and a copper rack for pans. A table sat in a breakfast nook in front of French doors. He pulled out a chair and let Amy drop into it.
“When’s the last time you ate?”
Her face held no comprehension. “Ate?”
Answer enough. Jakob opened and closed cupboard doors and the refrigerator until he had the ingredients for a primitive and quick menu. Soup and sandwiches. He dumped a spicy corn chowder he liked himself into a saucepan and started it heating while he assembled cheese sandwiches and heated a small frying pan to grill them.
“You can’t make me eat,” Amy said sulkily.
“Watch me,” he told her.
“Why are you here, anyway?”
“You promised to call. I got worried.” He stirred the chowder.
“I didn’t want to talk to you.”
“Yeah, I figured that out.” A fire was burning in his belly. He kind of hoped some food would put it out. “Tough shit,” he added after a moment.
Apparently that silenced her. Her head bent and she stared down at her hands, clasped childishly on her lap.
Jakob got out bowls and plates, flipped the sandwiches and stirred the soup one more time, not once looking at Amy, but aware of her with every cell in his body. He was mad again, and self-aware enough to guess it was a cover for everything else he felt.
Finally, he dished up and set her food in front of her. “You going to tell me what you want to drink, or should I decide for you?”
Her chin shot up. “Wine.”
“Milk,” he decided, and poured them both glasses. Thank God she didn’t buy skim. He could live with two percent.
He sat down kitty-corner from her with his own sandwich and soup. Maybe it would help if they weren’t looking right at each other. “Eat,” he ordered her, and started in on his food. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her stare at the food as if she didn’t know what it was, then finally pick up the spoon. After some hesitant sips, she began to eat faster and faster until she was all but gobbling.
Good.
The meal settled him down some, too. Without a word he got up and set the coffeemaker to brewing, then sat again.
“Okay,” he said. “Now we talk.”
She’d worked up enough spirit to glare. When she opened her mouth, Jakob interrupted.
“It’s not going to do you any good to say ‘I don’t have to.’”
“I don’t understand why you care.”
He fell back on the old standby. “We’re family.”
And finally she quit fighting. The pain in her big brown eyes was so vast, his stomach clenched.
“No,” she said. “I don’t think we are. And you know it, don’t you?”
* * *
SO, WHY DO you care? she wanted to beg him again.
But maybe she didn’t want to know. Because...he was here, and whether she was willing to admit it or not, she’d needed someone. Anyone at all.
“Tell me what you learned,” he said, not addressing her accusation. There were lines on his forehead that hadn’t been there. Despite the neutral tone, she thought he wasn’t only here out of obligation.
Maybe she was kidding herself, but she was going with it for now.
“I’ll show you,” she said, after a minute. Two days ago, she had swept the manila envelope and its contents along with her baby book and the photograph album into a reusable shopping bag—Mom had a whole drawer full of them, neatly folded—and hid it at the back of the coat closet under the staircase, which she went to retrieve.
She returned to find he’d piled the dirty dishes in the sink and was pouring coffee. Amy dropped the bag with a thud in the middle of the table. She pulled out
