Part 22 (1/2)
She slipped her hands nto the pockets of her coat and faced Hunter ross the floor. ”I thought we were getting to be lends.” He tucked his hands under his, arms and said nothing. ”Did I do something wrong?” she asked.
He shrugged dismissively. ”Did someone in town say something about me Jhat upset you?” There might have been gossip about her baby, or where she'd come from, or what she planned to do with the Notch when the year was done. He shook his head. When he remained silent she pulled out the drawing she'd made of the silver key and brought it to him. ”Have you heard about this?” He gave the drawing a pa.s.sing glance. ”Nolan showed it to me. Where did you get it?” She told him the story, then said, ”I want you to help me find out where it came from and where it is now.” ”Me?” he asked. ”Why me?”
”Because I like you.” He looked wary. ”I'm not a likable person.” ”Who told you that?”
”It's the message I've been getting my whole life.”
”Then you read messages wrong. Judd likes you.
The guys at work like you. I think you set yourself up not to be liked, then when it doesn't happen you 463 Harbam Deunshy turn and walk away and tell yourself that it happened anyway.”
”Thank you, Dr. Freud.”
Chelsea chuckled. ”Cydra should be here.” She missed her. They talked often on the phone, but it wasn't the same as sweating on the road together. That had been therapy, both the exercise and the talk. ”Do you remember Cydra from the open house?”
”I remember her.”
”She was intrigued with your looks.”
”Most women are.”
”If she came up for a week, would you take her out?”
”I don't take women out,” Hunter said. ”I do my thing and leave.” My thing. Chelsea gave him a droll look.
Enticingly she said, ”Cydra's a great girl.” He gave her a disinterested look. ”Okay, if you won't do that, will you help me find the key?” His hands fell to his hips. His suddenly cross expression was Oliver all the way. ”What in the h.e.l.l can I do?”
”Ask around.”
”Nolan's been asking.”
”But you're on the inside,” she argued. It was time she actively looked, but she couldn't *do it alone. ”You know the Corner like Nolan doesn't. People might tell you things that they won't tell him, or me.
Someone has to know where the key is.” ”What does it go to?” he asked, retreating into his old defiance. He sounded as if he were testing her, and she supposed that was fair. She was asking him to put himsel(out. He had a right to know what for. 464 The Pamdons of Chelvea Kaw ' was told it goes to a music box.”
”But you don't have that. So why do you want the ”Because it's mine,” she said with a defiance of Z”,her own. ”I have nothing at all of my birth parents Awt that. I want it back. And if I can't get it back, I t to know who gave it to the lawyer who then nt it to my mother.”
”Who was the lawyer?”
”I don't know. On the Baltimore end, the adoption was handled by a friend of my parents, but he died and left no records behind. It was a home birth, so there were no hospital records. I checked with Neil on the chance that my mother might have had a '[email protected],problem during the pregnancy and gone to the hos- ”'-pital for that, but the only visit like that at the, time was made by your mother.
I thought I might have a chance with the midwife.”
”Did you talk with her?”
”Oh, yes.” Chelsea remembered their meeting vividly. ”She claimed that she had been too young to a.s.sist at any births then and that her mother would have been the one to know, but her mother is dead.” Chelsea had sensed that the woman knew more. She had begged. She had offered money. Desperate, she had even threatened to go to court, though that would have been a waste of time and effort. If the woman wouldn't talk, she wouldn't talk. One thing Chelsea knew for sure. She wasn't having that woman deliver her baby. Home birthings were supposed to be warm, intimate, and emotionally rewarding. Given the choice between a more formal hospital delivery and a home birth attended by a midwife who couldn't see a legitimate human need 465 Barba= Deffngaw when it was right before her eyes, Chelsea would choose the hospital any day. ”So since she wasn't any help, the key is the only thing I have to work with. Will you help me look?” He took his time answering, and then it was an ungracious, ”I suppose.”
”Supposing isn't good enough. You either you do or you don't.” And she didn't care if she did sound like Kevin, she felt strongly about the cause. ”You just want me to ask around?”
”I'm offering a reward. One thousand dollars for information leading to the return of the key.” He made a sarcastic sound. ”That the best you can do?”
”For starters. It may change. Well?” After another long moment, during which time he stared at her, he took the paper, refolded it, and slid it into the pocket of his jeans. ”Thank you,” she said with an exaggerated sigh of relief, and crossed that mattei off the list in her mind. ”One more thing.” He scowled. ”What now?”
”Thanksgiving. I'm having dinner with Judd and Leo. Join us?” ”I thought you were going to the Farrs'.” After five months of living in the Notch, Chelsea was still occasionally surprised by the work of the local grapevine. ”What do you know of that?”
”I know it got Donna in deep s.h.i.+t. Matthew was shooting his mouth off in the bar at the inn. So, they decided not to invite you?”
”Oh, they invited me,” though she wished Donna had never asked Lucy. The price she'd had to pay wasn't fair. ”But they didn't want Judd or Leo or Nolan.” 466 The raswons of Cheism xane ”You ought to go. Wear skintight clothes.”
”Shame on you, Hunter.”
”Still, if you're on the A list, you ought to go.” Let me tellyou something,” she said conversa- ”I've been on the A list for most of my life, ,,:and I haven't been impressed. People on the A list are usually so busy either getting there or staying there that they don't have time for much else, which makes them very boring people. I'd opt for dinner with the B or C list any day. So. Will you join us for Thanksgiving dinner?” He returned his hands to his armpits. ”I don't know.”
”Yes or no.”
”I may not be around.”
”Where are you going?”
”I usually leave town for the holidays.”
”Because they're depressing,” she guessed. ”Well, I'm giving you an chance to stay here without being depressed. Join us.”
”I'll see.” ”I want a commitment.- ”Why?” he asked, and his crossness returned. ”Why are you on my back? And don't say you like me, because that's a crock, and don't say you want me, because we both know you want Judd. What are you after?” She wished she knew. From the first she'd been drawn to two men in the Notch, Hunter and Judd. She understood her attraction to Judd. It had a face and a name. Her attraction to Hunter was different.
She felt an affinity for him, didn't know why or where it was supposed to lead, only that the draw was there. She wanted to be his friend-but she'd told him that before. So, with a sigh, she said, ”What 467 BWbam Deffnsky I want is to be able to communicate with someone who has experienced similar things to me.”
”Similar things?” Hunter exclaimed.
”Baby, we're talking black and white, night and day, bad and good.” She shook her head. ”We were born in the same town in the same year, to women who conceived when they weren't supposed to. Neither of us has any blood relatives who acknowledge us. We both like cla.s.sical music, even though we're not musical ourselves, we both like motorcycles, and we both wear earrings. For all we know,” she went on brashly, ”Oliver was my father, too, only instead of hid me away for five years, my mother gave me up adoption. How does that sound? Think we might e half brother and sister?”
”No, I don't!” Hunter yelled. ”Okay. No sweat. I can understand why you wouldn't want to be related to me. I'm sharptongued, filthy rich, and pregnant.” Her voice gentied in a final plea. ”But I really would like to spend the holiday with you. Think about it, please?” Hunter never did give her an answer. As though it were an issue of control, he refused to be pinned down. Nonetheless, shortly before four on Thanksgiving afternoon, he came with a swirl of failing snow through Judd's door. Nolan was there, as was Millie Malone, who had no family in town, and the ever-faithful Buck. As Thanksgivings went, it was totally different from. the formal feasts with rented tables and chairs, a full service staff, and dozens of guests. Chelsea didn't miss the pomp; she did miss Kevin 468 nw Paswons Of CJ”qww KOM Abby. For that reason she was grateful for the rk involved in preparing the meal. Judd was in kitchen as much as she was, which made the fun. Hunter was inoffensive, even entertaining n he could be cajoled into talking. Leo was innotly vacant, once he recovered from a small fit r when Emma was arriving, and Millie, though licitous to his needs, giggled her way through ore than her share of the wine Judd uncorked. nly Nolan seemed distracted. Chelsea didn't get him alone until the very end of e meal.
She was making a pot of coffee in the Itchen, setting up for dessert while the football 1, , went on in the living room. Nolan had volun- red to help, which suggested he wanted to talk, ”You're worried about Donna?” she guessed. She knew about the recent intensification of their rela- and what had prompted it. Donna had spilled all when the issue of Thanksgiving had come up. Nolan leaned against the counter with a look of distress. ”Matthew's a difficult man.”
”She should be fine today,” Chelsea reasoned, but she, too, was uneasy when she thought of what Donna's day would be like. She wished she were there, if only to act as protector. But her presence would have stirred Matthew up, which was why she had decided not to go. So now she rationalized, ”The house will be packed. There's safety in numbers.”
”Not with Matthew. He's doubly mean to her when they're with family, because then he's more frustrated than ever. His sister-in-law is -nearby, but he can't touch her.”
”Does Donna know about Joanie?” Chelsea hadn't 469 Barbam Deunsky gotten any hint of it and wasn't callous enough to ask outright. Nolan sniffed. ”She knows there's a woman, but she's too good-hearted to guess who.” He studied his hands. ”I keep telling her to divorce him. She doesn't need him. I'll take care of her. But she won't.” Donna had told Chelsea that, too. ”She's afraid for Jos.h.i.+e, and for the family name. It's commendable, I suppose.”
”It's stupid.”
”That, too,” Chelsea mused, because Donna was suffering so. Nolan ran a hand through hair the color of the speckled gray granite at Moss Ridge. He wasn't handsome by a long shot, but Chelsea could see why Donna loved him. A kinder man would be hard to find. ”What scares me,” he said, ”is that it'll take something really bad before she leaves him. He slaps her around. He throws things at her.” The pain in his eyes was a vivid enough picture, yet he painted another. ”He threw a fork at her-I mean, had to have hurled the thing just like a knife, because she had puncture wounds right where it hit, and they were a long time in healing. That's a.s.sault with a deadly weapon. She could take him to court on it. But she won't.” His nostrils flared. ”I'm a G.o.dd.a.m.ned officer of the law, and that b.a.s.t.a.r.d's going to break the law one more time and really hurt her, and there isn't anything I can do to prevent it.”
”Talk to him, Nolan. Tell him what you know and what you can do.”
”Know what he'll do then? He'll take it out on her. So maybe he won't hit her, but there's different 470 ”M ALSWOOMS Of Chermw KMW to skin a cat. He could take every cent from cash drawer, scatter it all over the store, and e Donna scrounge around until every blessed nny is accounted for. How can I do that to her?” asked, then swore. ”I haven't felt so hamstrung in whole life. I swear there're times I'd like to put y badge in the drawer and hit the street with my otgun.”