Home Again Page 10

  She ignored it.

  Or would have if Porter hadn’t pulled back, let cold air seep between them.

  “Damn,” he whispered, his eyes hot, his fingers still tangled in her hair.

  “Where did you come from, Clementine? Because it sure as hell isn’t any world I’ve ever lived in.”

  He reached down, grabbing the keys he’d dropped.

  “And, in case you’re wondering,” he added, “that wasn’t an insult either.”

  He unlocked the door, pushed it open, and she was still standing silently, all her words gone. Just like they’d been when he’d kissed her before.

  “I called to have the electricity turned on,” he continued as he stepped inside. “Let’s see if the lights are working.”

  He flicked a switch, illuminating a spacious foyer. She could see it clearly from her position frozen solid on the front porch.

  “Hey,” he said, taking her hand and pulling her across the threshold, “aren’t I the one who’s supposed to be afraid?”

  “It’s archaic to think that only men can be commitment phobic,” she responded stiffly.

  He frowned. “Afraid of the house, Clementine. Not of you or us or whatever you think I was talking about.”

  Right.

  Of course.

  The house.

  The one he’d grown up in.

  The one he’d left and never returned to. Until now.

  “Are you?” she asked, her cheeks hot, her lips still tingling from his kiss, but her mind finally functioning again. “Afraid of being here, I mean?”

  “I’m embarrassed to admit I thought I would be.” He glanced around, the frown still creasing his brow.

  “Fear is nothing to be embarrassed by.”

  “Maybe not, but I was special forces in the military. I faced a lot of dangerous situations and a lot of really terrible people, so being afraid to come home? That’s not a comfortable feeling for me.”

  “Home isn’t a place, Porter. It’s a feeling. One you have when you’re at exactly the right place with exactly the right people.”

  “Then I guess this isn’t home.”

  “It was once. For someone,” she responded, eyeing the stained wallpaper and marble floor, the mahogany banister and curved staircase. “And it will be again, but it might need a little . . . love to get there.”

  “Love, huh?” He touched the railing as he moved through the space, his fingers trailing through thick layers of dust. “I think it’ll take a lot more than that to make this a home. My father bought it because it was a showpiece. He wasn’t concerned about warmth or functionality.”

  “What about your mother? Did she like living here?” she asked, her voice echoing through the cavernous hallway.

  The place felt like a museum.

  Or a mausoleum.

  It sure as heck didn’t feel comfortable, happy, or welcoming.

  “That’s a good question,” he responded, opening pocket doors at the end of the hall and stepping into what had probably once been a ballroom. A grand piano stood in one corner, ivory keys peeking out from beneath a torn black cover.

  “You never talked about it?” she asked, her heart heavy as she followed him from one huge, nearly empty room to another. If there’d ever been happiness here, the walls hadn’t soaked it up. All she felt was sadness, heartache, and regret.

  “By the time I was old enough to think about things like that, my mom was dying of cancer. We talked about that and about the fact that she didn’t want to leave me and my brothers. We talked about how much she loved us, but we never talked about this house. Or my father.” He added the last as if it didn’t matter, but she knew it did. She knew that every dusty floor and dark corner was a reminder of the man who’d wanted a showplace more than he’d wanted a home.

  They walked through a 1980s kitchen and a huge dining room, stepped through a small parlor and, then, back into the foyer.

  “It’s just like I remember,” Porter said as he headed upstairs. There should be photos on the walls, vases in the built-in niches. Beautiful textiles tossed over comfortable chairs. Meaningful things filling the space.

  “This was my room,” Porter said, opening one of several doors and stepping inside. There were no overhead lights, no lamps, no moonlight filtering in through the boarded-up windows. It was pitch-black, the space cold and dead feeling.

  “Maybe we should come back in the morning,” she said, grabbing his arm and tugging him back into the hall. “With the windows boarded up, it’s too dark to see anything.”

  “There’s a light in the attic,” he responded. “We’ll go up there and look around. Then we’ll leave. Unless you’d rather go now?”

  “I don’t mind staying,” she lied.

  “Good, because you’ve made me curious. I want to see if the box of books is still there.”

  “Great. Glad I asked you about that,” she muttered, and he laughed.

  “It’s not that bad, is it?”

  “Not compared to a crypt at the cemetery,” she replied.

  “I’d take a crypt over this place if my father were still around.”

  “That’s one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard,” she said, following him up another flight of stairs. The higher they climbed, the darker it got. She wasn’t sure if they were in the attic or just another level of the home.

  “My childhood wasn’t a happy one. That’s for damn sure. Wait here. This place is packed with stuff, and I don’t want you to fall.”

  “And it’s okay if you do?” she questioned, but she did as he’d asked, standing still and listening as he moved through the darkness.

  She heard the quiet rattle of a chain. Light spilled from a bulb hanging from a ceiling beam, and she realized they were in an attic. One stuffed to the rim with things.

  “Wow,” she said, trying and failing to take it all in. Couches. Love seats. Chairs. Most covered by white sheets. Framed pictures leaning against walls. Lamps. Bed frames. A crib.

  “Yeah. It’s a lot. None of us wanted to deal with it after our father died, so we carried it up here to keep it safe from renters and left it.”

  “Is this original to the house?” she asked, pulling a sheet off a Victorian settee. Crushed blue velvet and scrolled wood made it look like a period piece, but she was no expert.

  “It could be. I think my mother said the place was furnished when Dad bought it. Which might explain why we were never allowed to sit on the chairs or sofas.” He pulled a huge mirror away from the wall. “I hid the box in the floor between the joists. Let’s see if it’s still there.”

  She moved closer, watching as he removed a loose board and lifted something from the cavern beneath it.

  A shoe box?

  She’d expected something bigger.

  “Is that it?” she asked, and he nodded, turning the box so she could see the stack of three-by-five cards it contained. Someone had punched holes in the edges of the cards and woven colorful threads through them.

  “She made the books out of card stock. I guess she was hoping they would last.” He lifted one, smiling a little as he turned the pages. “I don’t think she expected any of us to keep them.”

  He passed her the book, and she studied the first page. A cover sketched with colored pencils. No title. No words. Just a drawing of four cars with smiling faces, puttering along a road, heading somewhere together.

  Each page showed the cars on that same road, happy white puffs of exhaust floating from their tailpipes. Mountains in the background. Then the ocean. City skyscrapers. Bridges. Valleys. The cars traveled the globe, the details of each page extraordinary and vivid, words unnecessary, because the cars told the story. Expressions changing with the turn of every page. Joy. Fear. Excitement. Nervousness. Triumph.

  “Your mother was very talented,” she said, handing him the book and accepting another one. This time, it was the story of a mother cat and her kittens searching for a home. They went to a dilapidated barn, rain falling through the
holes in the roof and landing on their scruffy heads. From there, they traveled to an inhospitable church where a lady with a beet-red face and purple curls chased them with a broom. They tried the garbage dump and a fancy house and the culvert beside a road. And, finally, just when the mother cat seemed to have given up hope, found the perfect spot under the porch at a poor man’s farmhouse. He fed them scraps of food and they chased away the rats, and on the last page, they were in the house, cuddled together on the hearth in front of a crackling fire.

  Home.

  The word was etched into the fireplace mantel. The first and only one she’d seen in either book. She could feel the longing in it, and her eyes burned, her throat tightened. She wanted to reach through the pages and into the past, pull Porter and his brothers and their mother out of the mausoleum of a house and into her childhood home. The one filled with the scent of fry bread and incense. The one with mats on the floor for sleeping and roosters prancing outside the windows. The one where food and water and love were the only things necessary for survival.

  “Don’t cry,” Porter said quietly, taking the book from her hand and placing it in the box.

  “I’m not crying,” she said, sniffing back tears. “Much.”

  He smiled gently, cupping her jaw and kissing her forehead. There was nothing of the passion and heat she’d felt on the porch. This kiss was warm comfort and friendship, and she didn’t think she’d ever felt one just like it. Not from any boyfriend she’d ever had. Certainly not from Sim.

  She sniffed again, because thinking about that made her realize how pitiful her search for love had been. Even when she’d thought she’d found it, she’d really only been settling for the holey barn or the inhospitable church or the garbage dump.

  “I shouldn’t have brought you here. This place sucks the joy out of everyone,” Porter said.

  “It’s not the place. It’s that story and what I saw in it. The mother so desperate to find a safe place for her babies. Seeing those drawings was like seeing pieces of your mother’s soul.”

  “She would have left,” he said, taking her hand and turning off the light. “If she’d lived.”

  “Do you really think that?”

  “Yes. I found stashes of money after she died. A plastic-wrapped wad of it hidden in a container of flour. A purse filled with coins at the bottom of the dirty clothes hamper. She was a stay-at-home mom, and my dad was a tightwad, but she’d managed to squirrel away nearly a thousand dollars.”

  “Did you use it to leave town?”

  “I brought it to a battered woman’s shelter in Spokane. It took me all day to hitchhike there, but if it helped one woman escape her abuser, it was worth it. Come on. Let’s get out of here.” He turned off the light and tugged her back through the crowded space, the shoe box under his arm.

  She could have said something.

  She probably should have.

  Her childhood had been filled with words spoken by profoundly gifted people. She’d spent summers with her mother, listening to some of the most well-respected philosophers in the country discuss the meaning of life and the pursuit of joy. She’d spent the remainder of the year with her father, soaking in ancient stories and modern lore and advice on how to make her way through the world. He’d brought her to visit tribe elders and faith healers. She’d visited churches and synagogues. She’d heard the best orators and the most passionate spiritual leaders, and she’d tucked bits and pieces of every lecture, meeting, and visit in her heart.

  But none of that had prepared her for Porter, for his mother’s books, for the oppressive feeling of loss that seemed to emanate from the walls of the home he’d grown up in.

  “It will be good to fill this place again,” she said as they reached the stairs. “It needs noise and laughter and a little happiness.”

  “Or to be burned to the ground,” Porter added.

  “I hope that was a joke,” she said, meeting his beautiful eyes. His face was scruffy, his eyes shadowed, the week of caring for his brother’s kids obviously taking its toll.

  He managed a smile, though. A real one that gleamed in his eyes and softened his face. “I don’t have gasoline and a match, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “I’m worried about making this right,” she responded, running her hand over the smooth banister. “Because everything about it is wrong. A house like this should be a happy place. Not a boarded-up relic of what used to be.”

  “A happy place, huh?”

  “You can’t imagine that?”

  “I can imagine a lot of things,” he replied, his gaze dropping to her lips. “Most of them have nothing to do with this place.”

  “Maybe it’s time to change that,” she managed to say, her mouth dry, a lot of imaginings filling her head. All of them having nothing to do with the house and everything to do with the man walking down the stairs beside her.

  “Maybe, but right now, I’m going to let the town council do its thing and expend my energy and effort on the kids. They deserve and need that a hell of a lot more than this house does.”

  Clementine and Porter had reached the second landing, and she could see the door to his room and the deep blackness beyond. She could picture lights and fabrics and colors and kids. A vision of what could be.

  Her vision. One she had no right to.

  This wasn’t her house, her past, her life.

  She was just passing through on her way to somewhere else.

  “Are they going to open the whole place to the public?” she asked.

  “From what I understand, yes. They’re hiring caterers and a string quartet. The mayor is getting the piano tuned, and he’s hiring a concert pianist to play it. The town council even hired a planner to organize the event. From what I’ve heard, she’s planning fairy lights and lit footpaths through the garden, if she can get it cleared. The wisteria and lilac should be blooming by then.”

  “That sounds magical.”

  “A hundred dollars a ticket for entry, and it’s going to be a black-tie affair. If that’s your idea of magical, then I guess it will be.”

  “I meant the lights and the garden paths, but the event sounds wonderful, too. Will you and your brothers attend?”

  “I can’t speak for them, but I’ll only be there if the right person is with me,” he said, and she thought he might ask her to join him. Thought that, just maybe, her trip to somewhere else might take a detour into his arms.

  They were on the second landing, and he was studying her face, reading something there that she thought only he could see. Because, she’d never had a man look at her like that—as if the answer to every question he’d ever asked was in her eyes.

  The front door flew open, banging against the wall with a crash that shook the foundation of the house and broke the spell that held them there—staring into each other’s eyes and faces.

  “Get down!” Porter commanded.

  And then she was on the floor, not sure how she’d gotten there. Cheek against cool wood. His weight pressing her into the floor, dust tickling her nose and throat.

  “What—?” she tried to say.

  “Shhhhh,” he whispered in her ear.

  She nodded, trying to let him know she understood.

  It was a mistake. A big one. Her hair dragged across the floor and dust motes danced in the air, coating her lips and her skin. Filling her nose.

  She was not going to sneeze.

  She wasn’t!

  She did.

  Loudly and with passion.

  Which disturbed more dust and made her sneeze again.

  And again.

  And again.

  Feet pounded on the stairs.

  Lights flashed, someone screamed, all hell broke loose.

  And she was still lying there, doing nothing but sneezing like a damn fool.

  * * *

  If Porter had been carrying his firearm, Randall Custard might be dead. That thought joined a dozen others that were pounding through his mind, the sta
ccato beat of them nearly drowning out the sound of Clementine’s sneezes.

  He stood, pulling her up with him, his focus on Randall and the camera flash. One. Two. Three photos in quick succession as the reporter hurried across the landing, his suit-clad body vibrating with excitement.

  “Take one more picture, Randall, and I’ll toss you and that damn camera into the river,” Porter growled, his heart still racing, his blood still pumping adrenaline through his system.

  He didn’t know who he’d been expecting when the door flew open.

  Not his father. That was for sure.

  But not Randall, either.

  He’d expected trouble, because that’s all that had ever visited the house. If he’d been carrying his gun, he’d have probably pulled it, pointed it, maybe even fired it. He didn’t know, was glad he hadn’t had a chance to find out. Randall was a nuisance, but he sure as hell didn’t deserve to die for it.

  “You wouldn’t dare!” Randall responded, unaware of just how close he’d come to dying.

  “Want to test the theory?” Porter growled, lifting the shoe box he’d dropped and tucking it under his arm.

  “What I want is to know what you’re doing in here,” Randall responded, twisting the end of a mustache that made him look like the gatekeeper from The Wizard of Oz.

  “I was going to ask you the same question,” Porter responded, his gaze shifting to a woman who was jogging up the stairs. Maybe midtwenties and just a hair over five foot, she looked like she’d been planning on a nice evening out. Fitted dress that hugged her skinny frame, high heels that would have made any kind of quick escape impossible, and a hat perched precariously on top of her bleached hair.

  “What the heck?” she yelled, her gaze darting from Randall to Porter and back again. “Randall, you told me this was going to be the story of the century. You promised I could write it. You said it would be on the front page of every newspaper in the country by morning!”

  “It is. You can. It will be, honey pie.”

  “Honey pie?” she spat, her eyes narrowing. “Let me tell you something, Randall. I may look like an airheaded floozy, but I’m not one. Everyone in town knows the Bradshaws own this place. Since that,” she said, jabbing her finger toward Porter, “is one of the Bradshaws, we obviously didn’t stop a break-in. We didn’t save millions of dollars’ worth of antiques, and the only thing I’m going to be writing is my resignation. You want a coffee girl and gal Friday? Maybe you should pay more than five bucks an hour.”