Claimed, page 22
After that, Candy went to her sedan, got in, and drove off.
Lydia stood where she was and watched the woman go, arms crossed over her chest, the setting sun bathing her in gentle light. To get her attention, Daniel knocked on the windowpane—and then regretted it as Lydia wrenched around, fear on her pale face. He lifted his hand in what he hoped was a friendly way. A calm-cool-collected way.
Which was not at all how he was feeling.
If he went with his emotions, he’d be rushing out there and throwing his arms around her. Holding her tight. Not letting her go, maybe forever—
Fuck, Mr. Personality might have a point, he thought.
As she came over to the building, her eyes were on the ground, and the second she stepped inside, she seemed to gather herself, her shoulders straightening, her chin lifting.
“Sorry I was gone so long,” she said.
“Guess you owe Candy some gas money, huh.”
“I refilled the tank before I came back.” She took a deep breath. “You were right, a drive really helps clear the mind.”
“I do my best thinking on my bike with an empty road ahead of me.”
There was a pause. And then she said in a far-off way, “How do you know when to leave? A place, I mean. A job.”
Daniel shrugged. “I don’t know. For me, it’s kind of an internal clock—or maybe it’s more like one of those oven stuffer roasters with the pop-up buttons? Something inside just shifts and I’m done.”
As she looked around, her eyes lingered on Candy’s desk and then went to the hall that led back to the offices and the clinic entrance.
“Can you help me free the wolf tomorrow?” she asked.
“Absolutely.”
“Thanks.” She seemed to refocus herself as she brushed her hair back. “I’m just going to go feed him now. You’re free to head home. Or… off, I mean, wherever you’re going, if you’re…”
“I’ll be in my tent again tonight on your back forty.”
When she just nodded absently, he wasn’t sure she’d even heard. But then she said, “Have you ever had suomen makaronilaatikko?”
“No? I’m pretty healthy, though. Little cough now and then, but nothing more than that.”
Lydia blinked and then laughed softly. “It’s Finnish macaroni and cheese. I have some frozen back home and I was wondering if you’d—”
“Oh, right. Actually, I love solemn macaroni. It’s right up my alley, a serious dish for a man who has no sense of humor.”
Her smile lasted a little longer and he was glad.
“Okay, well,” she nodded over her shoulder, “I’m happy to walk home, if you’d like to go—”
“I’m waiting for you right here. You take your time with your wolf.”
Just in case there was an argument, he went over and parked it on the waiting room’s sofa, crossing his legs ankle-to-knee. Fortunately, Lydia didn’t fight him; she just murmured an I’ll-be-quick and strode off.
Daniel rubbed his face and then let his head fall back. The sun was setting, the light fading from the sky, everything starting to go dark. Funny, how some days were long.
And some seemed like a lifetime.
Just as his neck was getting sore, he heard a car pull up to the building. As he straightened and looked out the window, he put his hand into his windbreaker, onto the butt of his gun. It was a UPS truck, boxy and brown with the right logo in the right place in the correct color. A man in a coordinated short-sleeved uniform got out with a box the size of a toaster oven.
Looked legit. But Daniel didn’t trust anything.
He kept his hand on his gun as he got up and went to the door. Opening it, he smiled casually. “That need a signature?”
“Yup,” the guy said. “Here ya go.”
“Thanks.” Daniel scribbled on the electronic reader with his left hand. “Hopefully this is your last stop.”
“Two more and I’m off. You have a good night.”
“You, too, man.”
Stepping back inside, Daniel locked things up and went to the window. The truck did a wide turn and nearly clipped the Harley, but then it was off, moving away down the gravel road.
“Who was that?” Lydia said as she poked her head out of the clinic’s door. “I just saw someone’s taillights.”
“UPS.” He held up the box. “And it’s addressed to Peter Wynne.”
LYDIA HELD ON to the package all the way back to her house. She kept it between Daniel’s body and her own on the bike, one of her arms around his waist, the other keeping the box tight as a football in a receiver’s grip.
She forgot to tell him to go the long way to the back of her property, just to make sure no one saw them. But really, after everything that had happened? Who the fuck cared. If Susan and Bessie wanted to carry the news he’d given her a ride home to everyone who ate at the diner or bought a carton of milk and a newspaper, so be it.
Besides, all anyone would be talking about was Rick.
God, how could he be gone? As the question ricocheted around her mind for the hundredth time, Daniel pulled into her drive and went up to her house—
Had she left that light on?
“What is it?” he said as he cut the engine and she didn’t get off.
“I can’t remember whether I…”
“Your bedroom light was on when we left.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yup, but let me go through the house first.”
“I’m not staying out here.” She dismounted and got her keys from her pocket. “I feel like a sitting duck everywhere I go right now.”
“Let me put the bike around back.”
She nodded and walked with him as he rolled the Harley out of view from the driveway. Then they entered into her kitchen. As he closed them in, she looked around.
“Everything seems distorted,” she said. “Like my whole world has been shifted a quarter of an inch to the left.”
“So something’s out of place?”
“No.” But she double-checked just to be sure. “It only feels like it.”
As he spoke to her, she knew he wasn’t paying attention. His eyes were sweeping over the windows, the door into the cellar, the rooms beyond—which were dark.
She wished she’d left every light she had on.
“Are you always armed?” she asked as that hand of his stayed in his windbreaker’s pocket.
Daniel looked at her. “Would it bother you if I said yes?”
“Considering the day I’ve had? No. Not at all.”
“My weapon is legal and I know how to use it.”
“Good.” She put the box on the table and then dead-bolted the door. “I’m coming with you while you check.”
“Okay, but stay behind me. Bullets don’t have a reverse gear.”
Just as she went to follow him, she doubled back and grabbed the box. With him in front, like he was a shield, they went through to the parlor, leaned into the study; then turned to the stairs.
“At least you don’t have a flood coming down them,” Daniel remarked as they started for the second floor.
“Where the hell do you think Peter is?” she asked, more to herself than to him.
“I don’t know if you’ll ever find him.”
The sound of a rattle coming out of the box made her shake the thing just to double-check it was the source of the noise. It was. Whatever had been shipped to Peter was loose.
Please, God, let it not be bones, she thought.
Daniel made quick work of the two bedrooms and bathrooms, and he went through closets and checked under the beds. There wasn’t an attic.
“I’ll do the basement when we get back downstairs,” he said.
“It has a dead bolt because there’s a storm door to the outside.” She went over to the window seat and sat down. “I want to open this now. Up here.”
Where no one could see them.
He took something out of his back pocket and tossed it across. “Use this.”
Lydia caught the Swiss Army knife and flipped the big blade free. “Thank you.”
The box was sealed up with clear packing tape—all of its seams, even the ones that didn’t have to do with top or bottom flaps, were covered with a double layer. The UPS label had a return address from Lancaster, PA, and a delivery of—
“Wait.” She looked up. “This was supposed to go to Peter’s home. Not the WSP.”
“Maybe he changed it online under delivery preferences. We used to do that at some of the apartment buildings I worked at for equipment that the management office didn’t want to deal with.”
“It was mailed twelve days ago.”
As she turned the box over, so she didn’t mess up the label by cutting through it, the contents rattled again, some kind of weight thumping into place.
One quick slice and she was in, popping the flaps.
“What is it?” Daniel asked.
“Just old floppy disks.” She took some out. “The kind before USB drives took over everything.”
The black plastic squares with their silver slides were branded Memorex and unmarked with labels. They’d been in holders, but the three half containers were as loose as the floppy disks, unable to hold on to their contents.
“What do you know,” she said as she set them aside. “Radio Shack is still alive and well.”
“You going to see if you can open them up?”
“Maybe.” She cleared her throat. “You want to eat?”
“Oh, yes. I’m starved.”
They went back down, and as she got out frozen servings of her favorite Finnish comfort food, he unlocked the cellar door and went into the basement. After she turned on the oven and put two carb blocks on a baking sheet, she sat down at the table.
And felt like crying.
Instead of giving in to all that nonsense, she took the gold medallion her grandfather had given her on his death bed and rubbed it back and forth between her fingers.
When Daniel came up the stairs, his weight was so great, the wood steps creaked, and then he was in the open jambs.
“Would you like to stay in the guest room?” she said abruptly.
“Yes,” he answered. “I would.”
* * *
Out at his Harley, Daniel lit up a cigarette. He only coughed once, which was progress in a bad direction. But whatever, as soon as shit got handled, he was going to quit again. This was just a vacation, not a permanent relocation, to Nicotineville.
Biting on the filter with his front teeth, he leaned down and unbuckled his saddlebags. When he straightened, he checked the barren lawn and the rough line of the forest—or what he could see of things as the night sucked the light out of the sky. Still, the silence around him was so pervasive, he was inclined to trust what his ears were telling him: Nobody else was on the property.
At least not right now.
“I didn’t know you smoked.”
He looked over his shoulder. Then he bunny-eared the cigarette and exhaled. “I un-quit today.”
“I can’t say as I blame you.”
“I won’t do it inside, and this is not, like, I’m not forever with this.”
“My grandfather smoked a pipe. More fragrant, but not that different.” Lydia sat down on the back steps. “Was stopping part of your health kick?”
“That and the drinking. I was never into drugs—but I got a little too fond of Jack Daniel’s. That I will never un-quit.”
“I’m glad you got things under control there.”
“Me, too. Not a road I’m going down again.”
Out on the county road, a car approached and kept going, the headlights white, the taillights red.
“I’m sorry you’re mixed up in all this.” She took her hair out of its tie and rubbed her scalp as if she were trying to relieve a headache. “You came for a job, and now—”
“I have a job.”
“Well, technically, that’s just an eight-thirty to four-thirty kind of thing. So you’re working overtime and not getting paid here.”
Daniel exhaled over his shoulder even though the wind would have carried the smoke off anyway. “I’m not staying with you for work. We’re… friends. I’m here because a friend needs my help.”
“Friends.”
“Yup.” He tapped the cigarette. “Unless you have a better word for it.”
“English is my second language. I wouldn’t know.”
“Wow, you sound like a native speaker to me.” He looked around again at the lawn, the drive, the house. “No accent. Good vocabulary. If there were another word, I think you’d know it.”
“I guess… friends it is.”
Daniel nodded, licked his fingertips, and crushed what was glowing orange—
“Ow!” she said as she jumped forward. But she stopped herself before she touched him, falling back into her sit. “Didn’t that hurt.”
“Pain is in the mind.” He tapped the side of his head. “All up here.”
“I thought that was fear.”
“Pain, fear, anxiety. The mind game is everything in life.”
“What about joy, love, happiness? Are they just in the mind, too?”
“Yup, exactly. It’s all an illusion, I’m afraid. Made manifest by a fruit salad of sensory receptors and bundles of neurons firing under your skull.”
“Wow, that is remarkably…”
“Biological,” he pointed out.
“Cynical.”
Daniel shrugged and finished undoing his saddlebags. “It’s the truth and you know it. You’re a behaviorist. Just because an emotion is felt deeply doesn’t mean it’s any more powerful than what it actually is—which is ephemeral. Intensity doesn’t change its nature, and all feelings fade over time.”
There was a length of silence.
“You know”—she looked at the sky—“I might be inclined to see your argument. If I hadn’t walked in on a good man just moments after he’d shot himself in the face this morning.”
Daniel swung the saddlebags up on his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I don’t need to be spouting my shit right now.”
“It’s okay.” She got to her feet. “Besides, you either don’t really believe your theory or you’re not as good at detachment as you think you are. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have taken up your old habit again today, would you.”
YOU’RE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT. The ketchup is everything.”
As Daniel Heinz’d his full plate of suomen makaronilaatikko, Lydia nodded at her houseguest across her little kitchen table.
“My grandfather always had it with lingonberry sauce, but ketchup works for me. And it freezes beautifully. Just like in Steel Magnolias.”
“Huh?” he said as he recapped the bottle.
“Yeah, that movie’s probably not in your collection. Annelle wants to give Maline’s family something that ‘freezes beautifully’ before the kidney transplant. I always think of that line when I make a big batch of this.”
“Classic comfort food.”
They fell silent, nothing but forks on plates making any sound. And then he was getting himself another mug of coffee and helping with the almost nonexistent cleanup.
“I can’t keep my eyes open.” She covered a yawn with the back of her hand. “I need to lie down.”
“Let’s go upstairs.”
He went across and checked the locks, and then as they walked around to the stairwell, he made sure the front dead bolt was engaged—and something about the care he took made her realize how much she’d been doing on her own.
Her legs were wobbly on the ascend, and when she got to the top landing, she said something to him about fresh sheets being on the guest bed, and her needing to take a shower, and that she hoped she didn’t snore. Chatter, chatter, chatter.
Then again, he was the first man she’d had in this house.
In any house she’d lived in, actually. Well, apart from her grandfather and he didn’t count in this situation.
“You’re going to be okay,” Daniel murmured. “It’s just going to take some time. If you need me, I’m here.”
He brushed her cheek, and then he went into the guest room and shut the door halfway.
Down in her bedroom, she undressed over the laundry basket, dumping everything she had on in it, and then she got her robe. When she reemerged into the hallway, she looked both ways like it was a busy intersection, and tiptoed over the bare wood to the loo. Just before she pushed her way in, she told herself not to look over to Daniel’s—
But of course she glanced in.
He had put his saddlebags down on the floor on the far side of the bed, and he was bending over them, getting something out that he tossed behind himself to the comforter. As he straightened and faced the far wall, he unzipped his windbreaker and removed it—and then he peeled off his T-shirt, taking it up and over his head.
His back was… spectacular.
He was so muscular, but also lean, as if he were an athlete: From his bulking shoulders to the strong line of his spine, muscles fanned out in a series of peaks and valleys that tapered to a tight waist. And below that? Well, those jeans were hanging low, but not because his butt wasn’t—
Daniel glanced over his shoulder.
As she flushed and looked away, he said, “Did you need something?”
“Sorry, I’m just taking a shower,” she said.
A freezing cold one.
“Okay.”
Shutting herself in the bathroom, Lydia leaned back against the door. All she could see on the insides of her lids was a bumper sticker she’d noticed on a car once: “Save Water, Shower w/a Friend.”
“Friends,” she reminded herself. And like she could handle anything else given all the damn drama?
The shower filled an alcove and was the only new thing in the house—as if an old Victorian claw-foot’er had bit the farm and required replacing. The glass enclosure with its tub looked great when it was clean, but keeping the soap scum at bay was a bitch. She’d finally resorted to a squeegee and a spray bottle of OxiClean down on the tile floor—
Wow, she was actually trying to distract herself with lame conversation.
In contrast to the cold wash her libido needed, she made sure the water was hot before she stepped in—and oh, God, it felt wonderful. Slumping under the spray, she hung her head and just let the warmth rush over her. When she started to worry about how much was in the hot water tank down in the cellar—you know, in case Daniel wanted one of these miracles—she got to the shampooing and a stiff-brushed wash, as her grandfather had called it. By the time she stepped out onto the bath mat, she was partially revived. No doubt it wouldn’t last, but she’d take the improvement for as long as it did.
