Part 26 (1/2)

Brody. A stranger.

How was that possible?

After supper, Matt reluctantly agreed to take his shower and get into his PJs.

Brody cleared the table, and when everything was in the sink, he paused to pick Matt's drawing of the stick family up from the desktop, pondering it solemnly.

”Everybody wants the same thing,” he murmured, holding the sheet of paper as though it were somehow sacred. ”A family.”

Steven's throat tightened. ”Yeah,” he managed, when he could get the word out. He went to check on Matt next, because his eyes were burning, and while the boy probably wouldn't notice, he couldn't risk letting Brody see.

When he came back, after toweling Matt off and digging out the pajamas he'd forgotten to bring into the bathroom with him, the door was standing open and Brody was gone.

Had he left again, already, without even a goodbye?

Considering the possibility, Steven felt his heart skip a beat or two before common sense overtook him. The dog was outside, and Brody was with him.

He went to the doorway.

Brody was hauling a suitcase from under the tarp in the back of his truck. That piece of luggage looked like it was bought at a thrift store, beaten with a tire chain and then dragged down five miles of rough road behind a tractor.

But, then, so did Brody. Life had used him hard, that much was clear.

He might want to talk about it eventually, or he might never say a word. Cussed-stubborn as he was and, conversely, unpredictable, it might go either way.

Brody brought in the suitcase, along with a couple of tattered blankets, the kind they sell cheap in the markets of Tijuana and Nogales, and set everything down on or near the couch.

Steven didn't say anything. He just went to the door and whistled for Zeke, who was chasing some kind of flying bug around the yard. It was a comforting sight, somehow, a dog playing in the twilight, with the old house standing watch in the near distance.

”I'm done with my shower!” Matt announced turning up at the end of the hall. ”And I brushed my teeth, too!”

”Good deal,” Steven said.

”I don't need a story tonight,” Matt added manfully. ”You probably want to talk to Brody and everything.”

Steven smiled. ”There's always time for a story,” he said. Ever since Matt had come to live with him, scared and small and confused, clinging to his blanket and his toy skunk, they'd read out of a book every night. Even when Steven wasn't home, he'd made sure the babysitter kept up the ritual.

”I'd just like to look at my picture for a while,” Matt said. He sounded mighty philosophical, for a short guy.

My picture. The photo of Zack and Jillie, skydiving on their honeymoon, Steven thought. He was about to say it was right where they'd left it, on Matt's bedside table. The photo of Zack and Jillie, skydiving on their honeymoon, Steven thought. He was about to say it was right where they'd left it, on Matt's bedside table.

But the boy scampered across the living-roomkitchen and claimed the drawing he'd made at day camp.

That's you, and that's Melissa, and that's me.

Steven's eyes started burning again. ”If you change your mind about the story,” he said, his voice hoa.r.s.e, ”just let me know.”

Matt nodded, then gave a wide grin. ”'Night, Dad. 'Night, Brody.”

Steven just nodded.

”Good night, Colorado,” Brody said seriously.

Matt beamed at that. Summoned the dog. ”Come on, Zeke,” he said. ”It's time for bed.”

Zeke, who had been sniffing at his empty kibble bowl, obediently trotted over to Matt, and the two of them vanished down the hallway and into the second bedroom.

”All right if I take a shower?” Brody asked Steven when they were alone again.

”Of course it's all right,” Steven said, maybe a touch more abruptly than he should have. ”You need anything?”

Brody grinned. ”You mean, like a toothbrush, Boston? h.e.l.l, I haven't sunk that that low.” low.”

”You're not going to tell me about the time you've been away, are you?” Steven asked, already knowing the answer.

”Not yet,” Brody said, with sadness in his eyes, briefly resting a hand on Steven's shoulder. ”You asked me for a favor earlier. Now, I'm asking you for one. Let me get around to talking in my own way and my own time. I'm still sorting through things myself.”

Steven nodded in agreement.

Brody left the room without another word, and a few seconds later, Steven heard the shower running.

FOR THE NEXT FOUR DAYS, Melissa's life ran smoothly.

She worked. She gained two pounds after having supper with Ashley and Jack and the one-time flashers on several nights. The tenants, meanwhile, remained on their best behavior, probably because, one, there was a child in the house and two, Jack clearly wasn't the sort to put up with any nonsense.

After work, she happily weeded her little patch of garden. She mediated more disagreements, thankfully minor, between the members of the Parade Committee, and ran into Steven fairly often-in the post office, in the grocery store, once at the Sunflower Cafe, when she stopped for a bottle of water during her run, and another time at the dry cleaner's next door to his new office. He introduced her to his visiting cousin, Brody.

These encounters, mundane as they were, both unnerved and excited Melissa, but she'd said it herself: Things had been moving pretty fast between her and Steven. She was grateful for a breather-and equally grateful that she saw him almost every day.

On top of all this, the weather was flat-out perfect. Warm, but not hot. Sunny, but not glaring.

Happily, there were no confrontations with Velda and no calls from Eustace Blake, lodging his interminable complaints about s.p.a.ce visitors.

Nathan Carter had apparently left town again, because Melissa hadn't seen him around, which was a weight off Deputy Ferguson's mind, and hers, too.

Her cuts and bruises healed, and the last of the soreness faded away, although she could still feel ecstatic little catches of physical pleasure sometimes, when she allowed herself to remember how it was, making love with Steven Creed.

Rummaging through Ashley's closet one evening, she even found a killer dress to wear to the dance on Sat.u.r.day night-an aqua-blue sundress with thinnest-of-thin vertical silver stripes s.h.i.+mmering through the silky fabric.

Life was downright idyllic, all things considered. Which was precisely why she should have been prepared, she would think later.

On Sat.u.r.day morning, she met with the members of the Parade Committee, as agreed, for the walk-through-a sort of rehearsal, but without the costumes and the floats.

Bea Brady and Adelaide Hillingsley were still on the outs over the toilet-paper question, but the ice was broken when Tessa Quinn and a few a.s.sistants showed up at the meeting place in the park with coffee and a big bag of fresh doughnuts, her contribution to the community effort.