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“I think I can handle it,” she said, thinking maybe she was talking about more than salsa. She forked in a large bite of eggs—the stuff definitely had a kick, but she’d had hotter. “And you know, if this really is about gettin’ to know me, you’ll have to take at least some of it on face value, since it’s not like I’ve got a half-dozen character witnesses in my back pocket. But I swear, I didn’t come here to mess with anybody’s head.” The salsa hit the pit of her stomach with a small explosion. “Least of all Robbie’s. And I also swear…”
“What?”
Winnie chewed for a moment, thinking that while she could probably B.S. her way through this little interview, in the long run what would be the point?
“Okay,” she said, noting that Aidan seemed suitably impressed that she hadn’t sucked down half a glass of water to douse the flames, “this probably isn’t gonna earn me any points, seeing as you already think I’m a couple bricks shy of a load as it is. But since you brought up the whole human will thing? I didn’t exactly decide to come out here.”
“What you said about not having any family left notwithstanding. ”
“Oh, that was—is—true enough. Only that alone wouldn’t’ve been enough to make me do something like this. But a couple days after my grandmother died…” She blew out a breath. “It was almost like I heard…a voice. Although not a voice, voice, more like…a real strong feeling. That I had to come here.” At his what-kind-of-fool-do-you-take-me-for? expression, she shrugged. “I know. Elektra thought I was nuts, too. So there’s another tick mark in your column.”
“Elektra?”
“She runs my grandmother’s diner. My diner now, I guess.”
“You don’t sound exactly thrilled.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not like I just inherited a chain of five-star hotels or anything. And I know I should be grateful. It’ll never make me rich, but that’s okay, I wouldn’t know what to do with rich if it bit me in the butt. It’s just not…me.”
“And what is…you?” he asked, unsmiling.
“I think maybe I want to work with kids—I’ve got my teaching degree, I just have to get certified—but I haven’t had five minutes to myself to think about it.” Then she let out a sound that was equal parts laugh and sigh. “And here I’m supposed to be at least trying to make a decent impression. But you know what? I am who I am, either you deal with that or you don’t. I may be a bit on the flaky side, but I’m not a bad person. Not anymore.”
“Anymore?”
“Oh, come on—when we met, I’m sure I must’ve looked like I had the devil’s mark on me. I sure felt that way at times. Although,” she said, waving her fork, “I was not a rebel without a cause. Or at least a reason.”
“You got pregnant on purpose?”
At least he looked more intrigued than judgmental, for what that was worth. “If I say I’m not sure,” Winnie said, “it’s not because I’m trying to evade the question, okay? It’s because after all this time I still don’t know.” Frowning, she finally took that sip of water, then met his gaze. “Mostly I wanted to make my own decisions, about my own life. Even if they were stupid. But I’m not that person anymore, Aidan, you’ve got to believe that.” She sucked in a long, shuddering breath. “I swear.”
The tremor of sympathy happened before Aidan could squelch it. Oh, he definitely remembered the Winnie from back then, those big blue eyes bleeding a mixture of anger and fear and resentment. But most of all, an unfathomable sadness that, even then, had burned something inside Aidan. He remembered how wrong it had felt, that his and June’s happiness should be predicated on someone else’s misery.
“And how, exactly, d’you think you’ve changed?”
“Well…for one thing,” she said after a moment, “I’ve stopped making myself the victim of my own anger. Took a while, though, before it finally dawned on me that trying to hurt somebody else is a surefire way of hurting yourself more. But until I got to that point…” She stared at her plate, her breathing hard, and Aidan waited out the next wave of sympathy. “Who knew it would be so much harder to love myself than my grandmother?”
“She didn’t exactly strike me as the warm fuzzy type,” Aidan said quietly, and Winnie snorted.
“That’s what fear’ll do to a person, I suppose. She was so afraid I’d go off half-cocked like she was convinced my mother did. Ida couldn’t help being strict, that’s just how she was raised herself. But every time she said…” Her face tilted toward the window; Aidan saw her swallow. “Every time she said, ‘You’re just like your mother,’ the more I figured, what the hell, she already thinks the worst of me, might as well live up to her expectations.”
Aidan’s stomach clenched. “And what did she mean by that? Your being just like your mother?”
Winnie’s mouth curved into a wry smile. “I gathered Mama was stubborn as all get-out, too. She apparently bucked my grandmother every chance she got, the crowning touch being to elope with my father the second she turned eighteen.” Her eyes veered to Aidan’s. “I remember Daddy being a good man. Kind. He just wasn’t real successful, if you get my drift. I’m sure Ida saw Mama’s ‘bad choice’ as her own failure, but growing up, all I knew was that my grandmother constantly bad-mouthed the people I’d loved most in the world. It didn’t sit well.”
Their breakfasts and their surroundings all but forgotten, Aidan caught himself a split second before he stumbled head-on into the now dry-eyed gaze in front of him. While he knew Winnie wasn’t playing him for a con, anger still swamped him with an intensity bordering on painful.
He didn’t want to feel sympathy for Winnie Porter or anybody else, dammit, didn’t want to get sucked into anybody else’s sad tale. Not now, not ever again. June had been the compassionate one in the marriage, the one with the bottomless heart. But while Aidan had loved his wife beyond measure, and would do anything for his son…
Refusing to even finish the thought, he jabbed a fork into his now cold eggs. “Your antipathy sounds completely justified to me.”
“Maybe. But even I realized it wasn’t healthy. By the time Ida got sick, I’d come to terms with a thing or two. At least, I learned to channel the anger in more positive ways.”
“You forgave her?”
Winnie sighed. “The resentment gets to be a real bitch to lug around, you know? Her wanting more for my mother wasn’t a bad thing in itself. And I know it nearly killed her when Mama died. God knows it was no fun living with a woman who tended her disappointment and heartache like some prize orchid, but it wasn’t her fault she got sick. And if nothing else, I sure learned a lot from her example.”
“And what’s that?”
“Not to take out your own pain on anybody else. Least of all an innocent child.”
After a long moment, Aidan said, indicating her now empty plate, “Are you done?” When Winnie nodded, he signaled for Thea, pulling his credit card out of his wallet when she gave him the bill. “I suppose you think I’m being a hardnose by not wanting Robbie to know who you are.”
Winnie wiped her mouth on her napkin, demolishing what was left of her light-colored lipstick. “You’re his father, Aidan,” she said at last. “Like you said, I gave up any right to a say in the matter a long time ago, and I have to trust that you know what’s best for your own son.”
“And has it occurred to you,” Aidan bit out, “that since he’s already seen you, already knows you’re staying on our property, what might happen if and when he does ask about you down the road? You’ve put me in an untenable position, Winnie. You do realize that, don’t you?”
Her cheeks flushed scarlet. “I’m so sorry,” she muttered, getting up and grabbing her purse from the floor. “Here I’m telling you how far I’ve come, about learning that’s it not all about me, and then I go and do exactly the same thing I’ve always done.” She straightened, swiping a stray piece of hair out of her eyes as a markedly less bubbly Thea set the charge slip in front of Aidan. “All I wanted…” Shaking her head, she backed away, stumbling into an empty chair before turning and striding toward the door.
A sane man would have let her go, with her earnestness and regret and those damnably soulful eyes. Eyes that had shaken him nine years ago, even when he’d been happy and in love and she’d been little more than the means to his becoming a father. Ashamed, angry, Aidan scribbled his signature on the slip and took off after her. Already to her truck, she turned at his approach, her gaze wary. Embarrassed. He stopped a few feet away, breathing hard. Annoyed as all hell.
“Okay, look,” he said, determined to keep the blame for this whole mess firmly at her feet, “I still think the timing sucks, that tellin’ Robbie the truth right now…” The very thought made him ache, even if he couldn’t completely define the “why” behind it. “But maybe…”
Turning slightly to dodge the hope in her eyes, Aidan felt the ends of his too-long hair whip at his face. “Maybe if he got to know you a little first, we could somehow ease him into it.”
After too many beats passed, he looked at Winnie again. She was frowning, holding her own wind-blown hair out of her face.
“You sure about this?”
“Not a’tall.”
Her expression didn’t change. “What you really want is for me to say I’ve changed my mind, isn’t it?”
“You have no idea.”
She looked away then, frowning, then back at him. “I promise, I won’t tell him. Not until you give the go-ahead.”
“Come to supper tonight, then,” he said, feeling the none-too-solid ground he’d been navigating for the past year give way a bit more. “Around seven. Just follow the road up from the Old House. And keep an eye out for the chickens.”
An amused expression crossed her features before settling back into concern. “What are you going to tell him? About why I’m there?”
“I’ve no idea. I suppose I’ll figure something out.”
She nodded, then opened her door. Hugging the shimmying dog, she angled her head enough to say, “Thank you.”
But Aidan didn’t want her thanks. He didn’t want any of this, not the responsibility or the sympathy those damn blue eyes provoked or…any of it. Most of all, he didn’t want to be nice or kind or even civil unless absolutely necessary. So he spun around and strode to his own truck, parked on the other side of the small lot, thinking that she’d been dead wrong, about needing makeup in the daylight.
“So that’s the update,” Winnie said to Elektra later, leaning against her truck’s bumper, watching her creditcard bill soar as the little numbers flicked by on the gas pump faster’n she could read ‘em. Her nerves much too frayed to go back to the little house and sit there staring into space, Winnie had instead decided to do some sightseeing, immediately nixing Santa Fe—very pretty, way too crowded with looky-loos for her and Annabelle’s taste—for a nice, long meander along the back roads connecting any number of little towns like Tierra Rosa. The weather was almost embarrassingly gorgeous, the views of endless blue sky and color-splotched mountains definitely spirit-lifting. Not to mention head-clearing.
“Huh,” Elektra said, adding, “Hold on, baby.” Following the whirring of the credit card machine, Winnie heard E’s “Y’all have a safe trip, okay?” before she came back on the horn. “So tell me something…would you have gone out there if you’d’ve known June had passed?”
“I don’t know,” Winnie sighed out, frowning as the pump kept going…and going…and going…“All I know is, whatever’s gonna happen tonight, is gonna happen. Robbie and I are either gonna click or we won’t.”
Silence. “You could leave.”
“No,” Winnie said quietly. “I can’t. Not now.” When a great sigh sailed over the line, she said, “Aidan’s right, E—Robbie’s a lot less likely to freak when he finds out who I am if he already likes me. Right?” The pump finally stopped, exhausted; blowing out a relieved sigh of her own, Winnie plugged the nozzle back into place and took her receipt, not having the courage to look at it. She got back into her truck, dodging Annabelle’s kisses. Would she could do the same to Elektra’s heavy, meaningful silence. “It’ll be okay, E,” she said.
“Uh-huh. And maybe this’ll be the week I finally win the lottery.”
“Maybe it will, you never know. Gotta go,” Winnie said over the old engine’s growl. “They’re really serious about no driving while using a cell up here—”
“Baby?”
“Yeah?”
A pause. Then: “Be careful.”
I am, dammit, Winnie thought, tires crunching gravel as she pulled onto the road leading into Tierra Rosa, even as another voice snorted, Like hell.
“Who asked you?” she muttered.
Twenty minutes later she was back in town; starving, she swung by Garcia’s, to be greeted by a still perky but slightly subdued Thea.
“Well, hey, again…Winnie, right? What can I get you?”
“Steak and cheese burrito to go.” Thea yelled her order toward the kitchen, then turned back, questions blatant in amber eyes as Winnie paid. Ignoring them, she instead looked around.
“Great place.”
“Thanks. Not that I can take any credit, I just work here.”
A customer came up to the register to pay; Winnie noticed the blonde’s hands were shaking when she made change from the twenty. When he’d left, Winnie leaned in and whispered, “You okay?” and Thea’s eyes snapped to hers. “It’s just I couldn’t help noticing this morning…” She felt her face warm. “None of my business, sorry.”
“No, it’s okay, I’m…touched that you cared enough to ask. Not that I’m gonna unload on a complete stranger, but…” Her mouth curved. “Thanks—”
“Thea! Order up!”
The waitress hurried to the rear to pick up Winnie’s wrapped lunch, handing it over just as a couple came in, cutting off any chance of further conversation.
Just as well, probably, Winnie thought as she got back into the truck, fending off Annabelle, who was also partial to steak and cheese burritos. The plan had been to head straight back to the house for a nap that would hopefully make up for her lost sleep the night before. Not stop at the pumpkin patch she’d passed earlier. Except who could resist the afternoon sun blazing across pumpkins as far as the eye can see?
Certainly not her.
Now, what she thought she was gonna do with them, she thought a half hour later as she lugged a half dozen of the suckers out of her truck bed, she had no idea. Especially considering she’d be back in Texas long before Halloween. And, once she’d rearranged them several times on the porch until she and Annabelle were satisfied, she realized they clashed terribly with the bright pink cosmos. Still, Winnie had always been impressed with how things could work together in nature that you could never pull off in, say, your own house. Or on your body, she thought with a grimace, recalling more than one unfortunate outfit she’d thought the very height of fashion at the time.
A breeze whooshed through the trees, like a soft laugh. Winnie took a deep breath, than another, letting the wind suck the tension right out of her, as she decided the earthy orange and purply pink actually looked pretty damn good with the vibrant blue trim on the doors and windows. So there.
At last she wolfed down her burrito, chasing it with a glass of milk, then collapsed across the unmade bed, barely kicking off her boots before she’d passed out. And who knows how long she might have slept if somebody hadn’t knocked on the door, maybe an hour later. Finger-combing her hair and trying to shake off the dregs of sleep, Winnie plodded in socks to the door, just as whoever was on the other side knocked again. A lightish knock, not the pounding one might expect from, say, a six-foot-something grumpy Irishman.
Throwing caution to the winds, she swung open the door to face a very disgruntled nine-year-old in a dusty hoodie standing on the porch, his bike collapsed in the dirt a few feet away.
“So who are you, anyway?” Robbie said, with the exasperation of somebody who’d been thinking about this for some time.
Chapter Four
Robbie didn’t know why somebody staying in the Old House bugged him so much. Especially since the lady’d said she was only there for a week. And she seemed okay and all, when he’d met her in the store. But why was she staying here? He asked Flo, but she was no help. All Robbie knew was that the lady’s being there felt worse than when Florita would come into his room without knocking.
Because this was where he could think about Mom all he wanted, sometimes even talk to her—even though he knew he wasn’t really talking to her, he wasn’t some dumb little kid who believed in ghosts—but he could say things to her he couldn’t to Dad, like about how much he still missed her and stuff. It was even okay if he cried, because there was nobody around to see him. Of course he thought about Mom up at his real house, too, or when he was out walking in the woods or riding his bike, but this was different.
All day at school, he kept thinking about how it felt like this lady was coming between him and Mom, even though he knew that was stupid. Poor Miss Carter, she’d had to tell him to focus like a million times.
So as soon as he got off the school bus, he decided to just go ask her himself. As soon as he did, though, he felt really dumb. Especially since the lady got this strange look on her face.
“My name’s Winnie,” she said, smiling and coming out onto the porch. She didn’t shut the door behind her or anything, but Robbie still felt like he was being kept out, which made him mad. Only then she said, “I’d invite you inside, but I’m sure you know you shouldn’t do that with a stranger,” and it freaked him out, a little, that she’d kinda read his mind. “You’re Robbie, right?”
He nodded, then said, “Why’d you come?”
“I saw a piece in a magazine about Tierra Rosa, and it looked so nice I decided to come see it for myself, and since you don’t have any motels or anything—”
“I don’t want you here,” Robbie said, his face getting all hot; as he looked away, the dog came up to him and licked his hand, like she understood how bad he felt.
Instead of getting upset or mad, though, Winnie slipped her hands into her pockets. “This is your hideout, isn’t it?”
Robbie’s face got hotter. Ten times worse, though, was feeling like he was gonna cry. “Sorta.”
“I didn’t know,” Winnie said softly, calling the dog to her. Not looking at him. “When I made arrangements to stay here, I mean. I had no idea this was your place.” She got quiet for a moment, then said, “I won’t be here long, though. I promise.”
“You said a week, back at the store.”
“I might leave sooner. I haven’t decided yet.”
Something in her face made Robbie feel like he was looking in a mirror, like she was as sad as he was, but trying real hard not to show it. Which made him feel bad, because it wasn’t like her fault or anything. Then he noticed the pumpkins.
“If you’re not gonna stay, how come you got all these pumpkins?”
Winnie laughed. “It was just one of those impulse things.”
“What’s that mean?”
“When you do something without thinking it through.” She sighed, then ruffled the dog’s fur. “I do that a lot. It’s a bad habit.”
Staring at the pumpkins, Robbie said, “Halloween useta be my mom’s favorite holiday.”
“Yeah? Mine, too.”
“You gonna carve faces in ‘em?”
“Probably. When I get back home, closer to Halloween. If I cut ‘em now, they’ll shrivel up too fast.”
