All she needed was a little rest. She'd be just fine. He lightly stroked his fingertips over her eyebrows.
He saw she had a spray of freckles over the bridge of her nose.
She didn't have any freckles anywhere else. And he'd looked. He hadn't meant to, but he had. He really liked the freckles on her nose.
No doubt about it. He was in deep shit.
She woke up to the smell of garlic, onion, and tomatoes. Her mouth started watering even before her brain fully registered food. Her stomach growled. She felt just fine, no more nausea.
"Good, you're awake."
"What are you cooking?"
"Penne pasta with sun-dried tomatoes, pesto, onions, and garlic. And some garlic toast. You're drooling, Sherlock. You've got an appetite, I hope."
"I could eat this afghan."
"Not that one, please. It's my favorite. The nurses told me you hadn't eaten much all day. Time to stuff yourself. First, here's a couple of pills for you to take."
She took them without asking what they were.
"No wine. How about some cider?" He put a tray over her legs and watched her take her first bite of Savich pesto pasta. She closed her eyes as she slowly, very slowly, chewed, and chewed some more until there was nothing left in her mouth but the lingering burst of pesto and garlic. She licked her lips. Finally, she opened her eyes, stared at him for a very long time, then said, "You'll make a fantastic husband, Dillon. I've never tasted anything so delicious in my life."
"It's my mom's recipe. She taught me how to make the pasta when I was eighteen and headed off to MIT. She'd told me she'd heard that the only thing they ate up there was Boston beans. She said guys and beans didn't mix well so I needed to know how to make something else. You really like it better than the pizza you devoured a couple of nights ago?"
"Goodness, it was just two nights ago, wasn't it? It seems like a decade. Actually, I like it better than anything I can ever remember eating. Do you make pizza too?"
"Sure. You want some for breakfast?"
"You cook it anytime you want, I'll consume it." They didn't say anything more for a good seven minutes. Savich's tray was on the coffee table, close enough to keep a good eye on her. She stopped halfway through and stared down at the rest of her pasta. He thought she was going to cry. "It's so good. There's just no more room."
"If you get hungry later, we can just heat it up."
She was fiddling with her fork, building little structures with the pasta, watching the emerging patterns with great concentration. She didn't look up as she said, "I didn't know there were men like you."
He studied his fingernails, saw a hangnail on his thumb, and frowned. He didn't look up either, just said, "What does that mean?"
"Well, you live in a beautiful house, and I can't see a speck of mess or dust. In other words, you're not a pig. But that's just extraneous stuff, important, sure, but not a deal breaker. You have a big heart, Dillon. And you're a great cook."
"Sherlock, I've lived alone for five years. Man cannot live by pizza at Dizzy Dan's alone. Also, I don't like squalor. There are lots of men like me. Quinlan, for example. Ask Sally, she'll say his heart is bigger than the Montana sky."
"What do you mean you lived alone for five years? You didn't live alone before that?"
"Your FBI training in action. Very good. I was married once upon a time."
"Somehow I can't see you married. You seem so self-sufficient. Are you divorced?"
"No, Claire didn't divorce me. She died of leukemia." "I'm sorry, Dillon."
"It's been even more than five years now. I'm just sorry that Claire never got to live in this wonderful house. She died three months before my grandmother." "How long were you together?"
"Four years. She was only twenty-seven when she died. It was strange what happened. She'd just read that old book by Erich Segal-Love Story. She was diagnosed with leukemia just weeks later. There was a certain irony in that, I suppose, only I didn't recognize it for a very long time. I've watched the movie several times over the years. Claire's death wasn't serene and poignantly tragic like the young wife's death in the movie or the book, believe me. She fought with everything in her. It just wasn't enough. Nothing was enough."
Jesus, he hadn't spoken of Claire this much since her death. It rocked him. He rose abruptly and walked over to the fireplace, leaning his shoulders against the mantel. "I'm sorry." "Yes."
"Do you still miss her?"
He looked toward one of his grandmother's paintings, given to him on his graduation from MIT, an acrylic of a bent old man haggling in a French market, in the small village near Cannes where his grandmother had lived for several years back in the sixties. Then he looked at Lacey, his expression faintly puzzled. "It's odd, but you know, I can't quite picture Claire's face in my mind anymore. It's all blurry and faded, like a very old photograph. I know the pain is there, but it's soft now, far away, and I can't really grasp it. Yes, I miss her. Sometimes I'll still look up from reading a book and start to say something to her, or expect her to yell at me when I go nuts over a football play. She was an ice skater. Very good, but she never made the cut to the Olympics."
"That's how Belinda is now to me. At first I never wanted the pain to lessen, but it did anyway, without my permission. It's almost as if Belinda wanted me to let her go. When I see a photo of her now, it seems like she was someone I knew and loved in another place, another time, maybe the person who loved her was another me as well. Sometimes when I'm in a crowd, I think I hear her call out to me. She's never there, of course."
He swallowed, feeling tears of bittersweet memory he hadn't felt in years. Maybe the tears were for both of them.
Her eyes were clear and calm as she said, "You know, I'd fight too. Never would I go quietly into that good night, just sort of winking out and isn't that too bad, and wasn't she a nice person? No, I'd be kicking and yelling all the way."
He laughed, then immediately sobered. Guilt because he'd spoken about Claire, then laughed? Suddenly, he laughed again. "I would too. Thanks, Sherlock."
She just smiled at him. "My head doesn't hurt anymore. One of those magic pills?"
"Yeah. Now, would you like to watch the news while I clean up the kitchen?"
"No dessert?"
"You didn't clean your plate and you're demanding dessert?"
"Dessert's for a completely different stomach compartment, and my dessert compartment is empty. I know I smelled cheesecake."
She ate his New York cheesecake while he cleaned up the dishes. She watched the national news. More trouble in China. More trouble in the Middle East. More wiping out of Kurds, only which Kurds? They were as divided a group as were all the countries surrounding them. Then, suddenly, there was Big
John Bullock, Marlin Jones's lawyer, full of bluff and good nature for the reporters, flinging out answers as they pursued him from the Boston courthouse to his huge black limousine.
"Will Marlin Jones go to trial?"
"No comment."
"Is Marlin crazy?"
"You know the ruling." He rolled his eyes and shrugged his massive shoulders.
"Will you plead him not guilty?"
"No comment."
"Is it true you told everyone that he had a bad childhood, a mother who beat him up, and an uncle who sexually abused him?"
"Public records are public records." "But there's a confession."