A few steps down the narrow back hall returned them to the kitchen. He glanced inside the refrigerator—pretty bare since Lucinda had transferred most of the perishables into his own refrigerator—then said without thinking, “You can eat with Jordan and me next door. Breakfast is at five-thirty, dinner’s around noon, and supper’s about six-thirty.”
“Thank you.” She sounded surprised, as if she hadn’t expected such an invitation—which was fair, since he hadn’t intended to make it. He would take it back if he possibly could. The last thing he needed was her in his house, sitting at his table three times a day.
But what did it matter whether they ate together when he was going to be spending plenty of other time with her? Lying to her. Pretending to be somebody he wasn’t to her. Deliberately misleading her. Even thinking about it made his stomach queasy.
Opening the silverware drawer, he withdrew the extra key his mother kept in the corner and laid it on the counter halfway between them. “Any questions?”
“Only about a thousand. Starting with—” In the brief silence came the rumble of her stomach, making her blush. “Well, gee, starting with the fact that I haven’t eaten since dinner last night so can I get some lunch?”
“Come on.” She was close on his heels as he left the house, crossed the deck and unlocked the door to his own house. He’d neglected to tell her that the same key that opened Lucinda’s door also opened his, but figured that was something she didn’t need to know. Unlike Lucinda, he hadn’t had the time to lock away anything he might not want a nosy reporter to see.
The layout of his half of the house was identical to his mother’s, but his mudroom/laundry room had been turned into an office. A battered oak desk with a computer was pushed into one corner, Jordan had built shelves into one wall, and two oak file cabinets stood side by side against another. Papers, records, magazines and stacks of mail were piled on most of the flat surfaces, including the old-fashioned desk chair made of hickory. He saw the glint of amusement in Natalie’s gaze as it swept over the mess, and felt his face grow warm. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”
“Actually, it looks like home. This is the Thaddeus Grant Method of Record Keeping.”
“And yours?”
“Uh, no. I’m a bit more…compulsive. You’ll see.” Without waiting for an invitation, she went ahead of him into the kitchen. He stood where he was for a moment, watching her move with a lazy grace as if she had all the time in the world, and enjoying the view, before giving himself a mental shake and starting after her.
His kitchen was just like Lucinda’s, but where she had floral wallpaper and oak-stained cabinets, his walls were painted yellow and his cabinets and all the trim were white. Her appliances were harvest gold and practically antique. His were white and practically new. He wondered how it compared to Senator Chaney’s kitchen, or if any of the Chaneys had ever actually set foot in their kitchen. He also wondered idly if there was any money in winning Pulitzer Prizes, having a school named after you or lecturing students. He assumed there was, since she’d said these days her old man entertained the rich and powerful.
“Sandwiches okay?” he asked as he scrubbed his hands at the double sink.
“Sure. Can I help?”
“Just have a seat.”
With a nod Natalie turned toward the table. It was oval, massive and looked about a hundred years old. She could easily imagine generations of Rawlinses gathered around it, sharing meals and the events of their days. If her memory was good enough, she could probably count on both hands the number of times she and her father had sat down to a cozy dinner together. He’d traveled so much when she was growing up, and even when he was home, it seemed that work just naturally required his attention in the evening. She’d spent so much time alone, wishing for his company and vowing to grow up to be just like him.
She’d tried…and failed miserably.
Shying away from thoughts that would only depress her, she forced her attention to the walls behind the table. More than two dozen framed photos hung there, some recent, some discolored with age. Jordan’s pictures were easy to pick out by their sheer newness, but J.T.’s were identifiable, even if half a lifetime had passed since the most recent. “Is this your brother?” she asked, studying the third subject.
“Yeah.”
“How much older is he than you?”
“About five years.”
“Jordan looks more like you than his father.” In fact, she thought, if not for the obvious difference in the age of the photographs, a person could easily mistake Jordan in his football uniform for the teenaged J.T. in his uniform.
He set two plates on the table with more force than necessary. “Jordan and—Tate aren’t part of your interview or your book, remember?”
As he slid into a chair, she claimed the seat across from him. “Sorry. I’m more than a little fascinated by families.”
“So write about your own.”
“I don’t really have one. It was always just my father and me.”
“You didn’t have a mother? Guess that proves my theory that reporters aren’t born. They’re created in a lab somewhere.”
“I had a mother,” she said with a faint smile. “She died when I was six. I just have a few memories of her.”
“Sorry.” He said it brusquely, but she suspected he was sincere. “What about grandparents? Aunts and uncles?”
“My father was an only child who wasn’t close to his parents. My mother was the youngest of four children, but her family resented my father for taking her away. After she died, we never had any contact with them.” She glanced at her plate, at a ham sandwich too large by half for her appetite, a pile of potato chips and two home-baked chocolate chip cookies. J.T.’s plate held the same, plus an additional sandwich. “You know, I’m supposed to be asking the questions, not answering them.”
“So ask.”
She chewed a bite or two before leading into her first question. “I understand that your father—”
“Chaney was a sperm donor, not a father. Call him whatever you want, but not ‘father.’”
Natalie nodded in agreement. “Senator Chaney tried to establish a relationship with you some time back, but you refused to return his calls or answer his letters. Sounds like a pattern, doesn’t it?”
“Sounds like you people from Alabama are pushy.”
“Some of us more than others,” she replied with a smile. “At least he didn’t show up on your doorstep.”
J.T. wasn’t the least bit amused. “If he had, I really would have called the sheriff.”
“Aren’t you even curious about him?”
“No.”
“There’s nothing you want to say to him? No answers you’d like to get from him?”
He shook his head.
“I think
