Wincing at the slam of the door behind him, Asher paused on the deep porch of Chatam House. The guilt he’d been trying to outrun slammed into him, dealing a full body blow that made him stagger and moan.
He had done it. Good grief, he had actually kissed her! He hadn’t just thought about it. He hadn’t just anticipated it. He’d actually done it.
Dear Lord, what’s wrong with me?
he mentally howled, but before he could pursue that prayer to any satisfactory conclusion, a familiar voice called to him.
“Asher? Dear boy, whatever is the matter?”
He spun on one heel to find Odelia sitting in the same position where he’d last seen her, except this time she was swathed from head to knee in white faux fur. She appeared, in fact, to be wearing a hooded cape, which on anyone else would have been an oddity.
“Is something wrong?” Odelia pressed, obviously alarmed by his silence.
“Uh. No. That is, there was an insurance investigator here, and I was called in to run a little interference.”
“Oh. I didn’t realize. I only saw your car pull up in front of the house from my bedroom window, but by the
time I made my way down here to wait for you, there was no one else about.”
“He didn’t stay long,” Asher said, moving on to the more salient point. “You wanted to see me?”
Odelia smiled, but her gaze remained troubled. “Oddly enough, you seem to be the only one I can talk to about my situation.”
Asher was almost relieved, and the irony of that was not lost on him. Just days ago he’d rather have taken a blow to the head than talk about his old auntie’s crush on a past beau. Now, it seemed a much-needed distraction from his own tortured feelings. He would not think of
that
as a crush. No, no, a mature man did not form a crush on a woman young enough to be his…okay, daughter was a stretch. Still, she was too young.
Shaking his head, he walked over and took a seat next to his aunt. “How can I help you, Aunt Odelia?”
“I’m not sure you can, dear,” she admitted, looking down at her lap. “I’m not sure anyone can. It’s just that I’m so confused.”
“About what exactly?”
She bit her lip, her capped teeth making significant indentations in the thick layer of bright pink lipstick that she wore. The sight made Asher smile despite everything. It struck him suddenly that despite the fact they’d been born on the same day, Odelia had somehow managed to stay younger than her sisters. He hadn’t realized it before because their looks, if not their styles, were so similar. Something vibrant shone from Odelia’s countenance, something that made her seem strangely innocent.
“Do you think it’s possible,” she finally began, “to find love at my age? Romantic love, I mean?”
No
sprang to the tip of his tongue. It was the wisest
answer he could give her, the surest. But he couldn’t say it. He looked at that sweet face and those sad, yet expectant eyes, and he couldn’t find the strength to crush her dreams.
“There is much to consider for someone in your position,” he began carefully, only to feel the words he wanted to say dwindle away. Several awkward moments passed, during which he felt uncharacteristically unsure of himself. Gulping, he finally said, “I have to answer with a qualified yes. Anything’s possible, after all…” He paused again, struck by the hope that had kindled in her eyes. Realizing suddenly that he couldn’t argue his way out of this with logic alone, he stopped trying and gave her what she obviously needed to hear. “Yes. I think it’s possible for someone your age to find love and romance.”
She stared off into the distance. “Well,” she said finally, “it’s a moot point. Even if Kent should harbor some true feeling for me after all this time, nothing has changed. I still can’t contemplate leaving my sisters, you know, not that I would expect to have the opportunity, mind you.” She shook her head. “No. Regardless of what Dallas says, it’s not my romance that God has ordained this time.”
“This time?” He tilted his head, feeling that he’d missed something important.
She reached across and patted his knee. “I’m so very glad for you,” Odelia told him warmly.
He had definitely missed something important. “I don’t understand.”
“Now, don’t be coy. We’ve come to expect it, you know.”
“Expect what?”
Odelia giggled. “Surely you’ve noticed. Every time
someone seeks sanctuary in this house, a romance soon follows. Yours is no exception.”
“Mine!” he yelped, jerking sideways in his chair.
“Well, yours and Ellie’s. Tell me,” she went on curiously, “when did you first notice her that way?”
Notice her? Notice Ellie?
That way?
The truth blindsided him, knocking him out of his chair and onto his feet.
He had noticed Ellie the first moment that he’d laid eyes on her, when she’d been nothing more than another incoming freshman at BCBC. He’d instinctively buried the attraction beneath the knowledge that she was his baby sister’s friend and, therefore, too young and off-limits. She was
still
too young.
Wasn’t she?
Client,
he reminded himself desperately. Baby sister’s best friend. Fifteen years his junior. Client. Plus, he had no intention of ever remarrying. He did not want to get married again. Period. End of discussion.
Apparently not, however, so far as his aunt was concerned.
“I wouldn’t have put you and Ellie together,” Odelia was musing, tapping the cleft in her chin, “but God always knows best about these things.”
Asher searched for the words that would lay to rest her romantic expectations on his behalf once and for all. “I fear you’ve misconstrued the situation, Aunt Odelia. Ellie is not…my type.” Unless not being able to stop thinking about her said otherwise. “No?”
“I mean, she’s a delightful wo…er, girl.” He couldn’t quite remember when he’d started thinking of her as a woman.
“Such a sunny nature,” Odelia confirmed with a
smile, “and you know what they say about opposites attracting. Oh, not that you’re dour by any means, just so very…serious,” she finished apologetically.
Asher stared at her for a full five seconds, no idea what to do or say. In the end, he took the coward’s way out. Shivering, he clapped his arms about himself. “Brr. Chilly out here. Easy to forget it’s still technically winter until the sun sets, isn’t it?” He got up and sidled toward the steps at the edge of the porch, babbling, “But you didn’t forget, did you? Nice and toasty in that lovely cape, I imagine. Me, I am…”
The world’s greatest idiot.
“In a hurry. Sorry.” He darted forward and smacked a kiss on her cheek then rushed to the steps, calling, “Stay warm. See you later.”
“Bye-bye, dear,” Odelia returned, lifting a hand in a tentative wave.
Asher fled as if someone had set the hounds on him. It was not, he reflected later, his finest moment, but it paled in comparison to what he’d done there in the library with Ellie, and it did not haunt his dreams that night.
Ah, no.
When at last he turned out the lamp on his bedside table that night, he dreamed, not of flight, but of kisses and violet eyes that seemed to look straight into his shabby soul.
“T
he house is Ellie’s inheritance,” Kent Monroe said, laying an arm on the edge of Asher’s desk as he leaned forward in earnestness. “It’s all I have to leave her, you see. My young partner at the pharmacy is making semiannual payments on the buy-in, but upon my death, everything having to do with the business goes to him.”
Asher nodded. It was standard practice for partnerships, particularly if one of the partners carried a heavier load in conducting the business, as Asher assumed Monroe’s younger partner did. Certainly the man had made no complaint when Asher had stepped into the pharmacy Friday morning to ask Kent for a word in the privacy of his office down the street.
“So the renovations were in aid of assuring the integrity of your granddaughter’s inheritance,” he said, intentionally suggesting a valid argument in support of their case.
“Just so,” Mr. Monroe confirmed.
“And you paid for those renovations with the funds from the buy-in?” Asher asked hopefully.
Monroe shifted back in his chair, letting his hands fall onto his knees. “Not entirely. I had other funds.”
“Savings.”
“Some.” Monroe sighed. “It’s all gone now, of course, with very little to show for it, I’m afraid. Oh, the upstairs was not damaged by the fire, so technically what I paid for remains, with minimal smoke and water damage, but what difference does it make with the downstairs unlivable? I suppose I should be thankful that it wasn’t the renovated portion that burned.”
Asher tapped a finger against the arm of his chair, considering. Kent’s version of events dovetailed neatly with Ellie’s, and yet he could not escape the feeling that something was amiss.
“Can you think of anything else that I should know about this matter?” he asked.
Kent Monroe shook his balding head, but Asher noted that he averted his gaze. “Of course, I’m no lawyer.”
Asher studied the man for a moment longer, trying to see him as Odelia and Ellie did, but his lawyer’s sense told him that like his granddaughter, the old fellow was not being entirely forthcoming. Stymied, Asher decided not to press the matter further—for the moment.
“All right. Thank you for your time, Mr. Monroe.”
Looking greatly relieved, the older man said, “Kent, please.”
Asher rose to his feet. “Well, then, Kent, I’ll see you on Monday afternoon at three-thirty.”
Kent took several seconds to hoist his bulk to a standing position, but his handshake was strong when he grasped Asher’s hand in farewell. “Oh, ah, Ellie says a quarter of four is about the best she can do. Something about bus duty.”
Asher sighed. Ellie hadn’t been out of his head for
ten minutes at a stretch in the past forty-eight hours. Just the mention of her name drove him to distraction, and he couldn’t afford to be distracted—not with the insurance adjuster about to return to the scene.
After seeing Kent out, Asher returned to his desk, but his disquiet would not yield to the usual panacea of work, and he eventually turned away from the computer screen to pray.
“Lord,” he whispered, “I don’t know what I ought to do now, but all I ask is that You please somehow help me protect Ellie.”
Only after the words had left his mouth did he realize exactly what he’d said or what it was that weighed so heavily upon his heart. It was no surprise, really, that he hadn’t recognized it earlier. In his lifetime, Asher rarely had known real fear. Bitter disappointment, yes. Heartbreak, even. Loss. Failure. Shame, too, once or twice…the entire gamut of negative human emotion.
But this was the first time he’d felt such fear for someone who had become so important to him.
On the following Monday afternoon, Ellie turned the truck into the familiar narrow drive and got out to walk around to the front, where she huddled inside her hooded raincoat, waiting for her grandfather to join her. Asher stood on the front porch of the house, his luxury SUV at the curb. The day had taken on a gray cast and sputtered intermittently with a cold, brittle mist that would have coated the ground with a slick sheet of ice only a couple weeks earlier. Today, it produced only gloom, which seemed sadly appropriate.
Dreading what was to come, Ellie surveyed the beloved old Victorian house. As always, its white, pink and pale gray gingerbread exterior, complete with a
turret, elaborate trim, shutters and tall brick chimneys, evoked thoughts of horse-drawn carriages and courtly manners, of young girls in wide-skirted ball gowns and prosperous gentlemen in swallowtail coats. However, it no longer quite felt like home.
How odd. She still felt very much a guest at Chatam House, and this place had always been home to her, even when she’d lived elsewhere with her parents. Yet, that somehow seemed in the past to her now.
Asher walked down the three broad, wooden steps to the cobblestone walkway that bisected the shallow front yard and stood impatiently, his hands brushing back the sides of his suit jacket to lightly bracket his waist. Ellie hung back enough to let her grandfather take the lead. He traded words of greeting with the younger man and trudged up the steps. Asher met her gaze grimly before holding out an arm in welcome or perhaps encouragement. She walked ahead of him up the steps and into the deeper gloom of the porch, wishing she could have a moment to speak to him. But now was not the time.
The X-shaped metal bar that the fire department had bolted across the front door had been removed and now lay to one side. Without preamble, her grandfather opened the door and went inside. Ellie followed, the scent of burnt wood and fabrics assailing her nose.
Gray streaked the flocked green-and-white wallpaper in the entry; brown water stains mottled it into a garish mess. The red oak hardwood floor had been scorched in a wavy pattern right up to the edge of the narrow staircase with its delicate, hand-turned spindles. Soot covered everything, including the small but elaborate chandelier overhead.
Down the hall, she could see the remains of the kitchen with its warped cabinets and soggy, molding
linens. Only the tin ceiling panels had kept the ceiling from falling down in that room. They had not been so fortunate in other parts of the house.
Turning left, they took in the parlor. It looked like nothing so much as a garbage heap. The heavy velvet curtains had burned right to the rods, one of which had fallen down. Chunks of ceiling plaster hung down like spooky, ragged flags and covered what sodden furniture still existed in great gray clumps and fine white spatters. The carpet had melted to what was left of the floor, and the far wall had burned to the studs.
The only truly intact section of the room was the fireplace, which shared a sturdy brick wall with the dining room. The brick and mortar would need a great deal of scrubbing, but at least the ornately carved wooden mantle remained untouched.
After looking around for a few minutes, Asher nodded at a burned-out section of the parlor floor where the couch had stood. “Is that where it started?”
Some oblong lumps of charcoal were all that was left of the sofa, which had sat facing the doorway, and the tall, narrow table that had stood behind it. A rusty-looking tin can, a small, twisted rod and a few shattered pieces of milky, grayish glass showed where the lamp had fallen.
Her grandfather nodded. “Yes, that’s it. The lamp stood on a table at the back of the couch, and the workmen had placed some tools and supplies behind there so they’d be out of sight. It was a tall lamp on a tall, narrow table. Gave good light, that lamp.”
There were no overhead lights in the parlor, and the large glass shade on that lamp had provided ample illumination, which was why they’d kept it despite its top-heavy proportions. Ellie suspected that her grandmother
had added the wide, domed, cobalt blue glass shade herself years earlier.
They talked through what information they’d been given and their own actions of that day several times before the insurance company rep arrived. To their surprise, before he asked a single question, he walked them through what he knew, and by the time he was done, it had become abundantly clear to Ellie and everyone else that the paint remover had been turned over
before
the lamp had fallen.
“I just assumed that the lamp had to fall and knock over the can,” her grandfather said, shaking his head. “The lamp was top-heavy, after all, and the plastic bucket with the paint thinner inside was on the floor.”
Lawrence made a noncommittal sound at that and walked over to the window. “The other window on this wall has a storm unit affixed to the outside. This one does not. Why?”
“Cross ventilation,” Ellie supplied. “My grandmother hated the central air unit after it was installed and often preferred to open a window, but she had a difficult time with the storm windows, which is why we removed one on each side of the house for her. We just never replaced them.”
“But it was cold that night, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“So why open the window?”
“Paint fumes,” her grandfather answered. “The house reeked of them, and since we were busy moving things around, we were warm enough.”
“I notice that it has no screen,” Lawrence pointed out.
Kent grimaced. “I put a hoe handle through it while raking leaves last fall. I wasn’t in any hurry to fix it. No
insects in winter even if the window does have to be opened.”
Again, Lawrence made that noise, which was beginning to sound skeptical to Ellie. “So you left the house open while you moved furniture into storage?”
“Not intentionally,” Ellie told him. “I meant to close the window before we left.” Actually, she’d thought she had, but she’d opened and closed that window so many times since the renovations had started that she couldn’t remember one instance from another.
“Don’t suppose it would have mattered,” Lawrence said lightly, “since the fire department reported that they’d found the front door unlocked when they arrived.”
Ellie’s jaw dropped. At the same time, an expression of horror came over Kent’s face.
“That…that was my fault.” He looked to Ellie apologetically. “I know I said I’d take care of it, but when you mentioned locking the front door, that reminded me that I needed to look up the code to open the storage unit. Once I’d done that, well, I forgot about the front door.”
“Then anyone could have come into the house after you’d left,” Asher quickly pointed out. “Isn’t that right?”
Ellie gulped and nodded worriedly. “I suppose.” Anyone could have—but Dallas had been the one on the scene. Which was the last thing she wanted to point out to Asher.
Lawrence just smiled and asked who might have had reason to set the fire. Who, he meant, besides the owners of the house. Ellie said nothing. All her words and thoughts from that point on were reserved for God.
Asher had to give the young investigator credit for not blustering and pressing for answers. Then again, it was to the insurance company’s benefit to delay making a ruling on the case. By denying the claim without overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing on the part of their insured, they opened themselves up to a lawsuit. On the other hand, they could delay settlement via patient investigation. They had some very reasonable questions, after all. The problem was that in at least a couple of instances, the Monroes had no reasonable answers.
When he returned to the house after seeing Mr. Lawrence off, he found Ellie perched on the porch swing.
“Grandpa’s looking around out back for his cat,” she said, sliding to make room for Asher. Feeling unaccountably weary, he sat down. A number of issues clamored for attention, but he couldn’t seem to organize his thoughts just then. The gray of the day mirrored his gloomy mood perfectly.
“Think you’ll have to cancel soccer practice?” Ellie asked.
“Already have.”
“What about tomorrow?” she asked.
He shrugged. “We’ll have to see.”
Nodding, she used her feet to put the swing in motion, pushing against the floor of the porch. Asher let himself settle back and enjoy the lulling sway of the hard bench seat beneath him. Seconds later, however, he realized that he had to say something. He locked his knees, halting the movement of the swing.
“Ellie, I apologize for the other day. That kiss never should have happened.”
She made a small sound of distress, but when he looked at her, her gaze was trained woodenly on her lap.
He plodded on doggedly. “I don’t usually do that sort of thing. Especially not with clients. Especially not with young clients who could misunderstand how these things can—”
She got up and leaned a shoulder against a slender post supporting the porch roof, her back to him. “I’m not stupid, you know.”
“I never thought you were.”
Putting her spine to the post, she folded her arms and glanced at him before dropping her gaze to the floor. “Your aunts and sister think we’re having a romance.”
“I know.” Asher sighed and leaned forward to prop his elbows against his knees. “But they’re wrong,” he added softly.
“Are they, Asher?” she asked. Not waiting for an answer, she sent him an unreadable look then pushed away from the post, turned and calmly walked down the steps, putting her hood up. He watched her go to her truck and slide in behind the steering wheel. An instant later, she started up the engine. After a few moments, Kent trudged around the house and got in.
Asher sat where he was until the little truck had backed out and gone on its way. Finally, he pulled out his phone and called the fire department, asking for someone to come and put up the door blocks again.
Asher sat behind his desk and stared at the computer screen, trying to bully his mind into cooperation. He had a case coming up on the local docket and needed to prepare, but he couldn’t focus. The gray weather seemed disinclined to lighten, spitting chilly rain for another day. He’d had to call off soccer practice again, and he itched to do something besides sit and brood.
On pure impulse, he got up and tossed on his overcoat
before heading down the stairs and out onto the sidewalk. He crossed the street and walked to the corner. Shoving through the heavy glass door, he entered the pharmacy and went to the soda counter, realizing only then that he’d hoped to find Ellie or even Kent Monroe there. Instead, he found a teenage girl with too much eye makeup and pink streaks in her hair doing homework at the counter.