be he could never shut up. Always thundering about something and never listening.”
“Maybe he’s improved with age.”
Sam wasn’t even going to toy with that idea. Elijah was Elijah. Lions didn’t turn into lambs. “That’s about as likely as a leopard changing its spots. Besides, what’s one of the first things he said to you?”
“Something about the books I use to teach literature.”
“Exactly. Give him until the school year starts, then he’ll be out to cleanse the school library.”
“I hope not.”
Sam shook his head and braked for another turn. “Waste of effort. He’ll do it. He’ll also probably try to close down the X-rated video rental room at Baker’s Video Rental. Not that I like those things, but…”
“I always thought it was good they put those tapes out of sight where the kids can’t find them.”
“Me, too. It shows some responsibility, without interfering with people’s choices. And it’s all soft-core, anyway.”
A little giggle escaped her. “You’ve checked it out?”
He sent her a sour look. “Only in my official capacity. Somebody complained that they were renting child pornography.”
“Were they?”
“Of course not. The woman who complained hadn’t even been in the store. She’d heard it from someone, who’d heard it from someone else. You know how that goes. Anyway, the stuff they’re renting is pretty much on the level of an R-rated movie, just more of it.”
“Well, I’ll be the first to admit I don’t understand the fascination for those things. But then, I’m a woman.”
“I’m a man,” he said, stating the obvious. “I don’t read girlie magazines, either.” Then, unable to resist, he added, “Why settle for pictures if you can have the real thing?”
He heard her gasp; then a deep laugh escaped her. “You are wicked, Sam Canfield. Wicked, wicked.”
“So my father always said.” But this time he said it without bitterness. Somehow Mary’s laughter had taken the sting out of her teasing words—and the sting out of remembering his father. He wished it would last.
As they approached her house, she said, “Why don’t you come in for breakfast?”
“I don’t want to trouble you.”
“It’s no trouble. I’m an old hand at fast breakfasts. I can microwave bacon and some sausage biscuits, and make coffee in a jiff. And you need to eat something.”
He couldn’t argue with that. Nor, he realized, did he want to. Exhausted as he was, he was still too wound up to hit the hay. He figured it might take him an hour or so to wind down from working all night. It always did.
“Thanks, Mary. If you’re not too tired.”
“I’m as wired as can be. I got my second wind along about 5:00 a.m. And I’m hungry, too.”
So he parked in her driveway. For an instant he wondered if his father was watching from across the street, then told himself he didn’t care. It made him uneasy, though, that Mary had intimated his father was showing interest in him. In Sam’s experience, Elijah grew interested only when he believed his son was messing up.
The air in town was hazy now, not as bad as up in the pass, but the effects of the fire were reaching here, too. The morning sun, heralding yet another dry day, looked pale through the smoke, and yellowed.
“It smells smokier than a frigid winter night,” Mary remarked as she unlocked her door. He knew she was referring to the number of woodstoves that burned around there when it got cold.
But the smoke hadn’t penetrated her house, at least not yet, and Sam noticed a delicate scent of lilac on the air. “Is that lilac I smell?” he asked.
“Yes. I love it. It’s in the carpet freshener.”
Almost in spite of himself, he smiled. “When I was about six, we lived for a while in Michigan. My dad was pastor of a small church up near Saginaw. And we had this huge lilac bush at the corner of the house, just covered with blossoms. I used to like to suck the nectar out of them. And I used to hide under it. Nobody could find me there. I seem to remember spending entire afternoons daydreaming, surrounded by lilacs.”
Mary led him into the kitchen, shucking her flannel shirt and hanging it over a chair back. “Did you have to hide often?”
He found himself looking into her green eyes. Sinking into her green eyes. And he saw a gentleness there that made his heart slam. Gentleness wasn’t something Sam had experienced very often in life, not even in his marriage. It had an unexpected effect on him, an effect that held him rooted to the spot even as she turned away, apparently accepting his silence as an answer.
“How many sausage biscuits do you think you can eat?” she asked, opening the refrigerator door.
“Uh…” Her question might as well have been spoken in another language. Somehow it didn’t connect with his brain.
She smiled over her shoulder. “Why don’t you wash up in the bathroom, and I’ll make coffee. The caffeine might clear the cobwebs.”
He was grateful for the easy escape. Because, for no reason he could figure out, Mary’s tidy little kitchen had suddenly seemed as threatening as a dragon’s lair. As if something awful might leap out at any moment.
A strange way to react to a gentle smile.
One look in the mirror over the bathroom sink almost caused him to laugh out loud. He looked like a raccoon, so much smoke, sweat and dirt had stained his face. He was surprised any woman would offer him breakfast, looking the way he did.
And now that he noticed, his shirt stank of smoke and sweat, too. Oh, man. He ought to slink out of here now, before she noticed.
Although how she could have failed to notice, sitting right beside him in the truck cab, he couldn’t imagine. Maybe the smoke covered the sweaty smell.
If he’d had a change of clothes, he might have hopped into her shower. Instead he had to strip off his shirt and do what he could with a washcloth and a bar of soap. And when he was done, it was kind of embarrassing to look at the black stains on the cloth. He rinsed it out as best he could, but it was going to take a heavy-duty trip through a washing machine to save it. And it was pretty, too, not just some colorless white cotton of the kind he owned.
That was when he noticed that the whole bathroom was pretty. Lavender and lilac and cream dominated in the shower curtain and rug, along with the soap dish and other stuff he never knew the names of. He bet her whole house was pretty. Feminine.
He and Beth had been kind of basic about such things, preferring instead to spend their money on skiing and a recreational vehicle. Not to mention a boat for fishing on the reservoir.
There was even a tiny old medicine bottle holding a few tiny dried purple flowers.
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