Charlotte's Homecoming

She flushed, and he smiled. Good, he thought.

Then he wondered at her choice of verb tense. Had implied that she no longer had a job, or perhaps the condo. Or both.

“How long do you plan to be here?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Depends how quick Dad recovers, how much of a nuisance Rory turns out to be.”

Gray frowned. “Has Faith called the police or tried to get a protection order?”

Charlotte shook her head. “I don’t think so. We’ll talk about it.” She eyed him. “Is this traffic thing something I should know about?”

“Depends how involved you get with the farm. I’m just worrying about your customers pulling out right onto the highway, especially on this curve here. Somebody misjudges distance or speed, and we’ll have multiple fatalities.”

“What do you suggest?” she shot back. “We sell the farm? You know a housing development will replace it. Then you’ll have that traffic to contend with.”

“Developers,” he pointed out, “are required to mitigate traffic problems. Maybe pay for a left-turn lane, and to add one to give cars pulling out room to accelerate.”

“We can’t afford anything like that.” She stared him down. “Why don’t you go to the state and ask for a lower speed limit, or a center lane?”

“Because that would take years, expensive studies and bureaucratic obstacles beyond either of our imaginations. Meantime, people are going to die.”

“You don’t want us running a retail business right off the highway.”

“I’m not happy about it.” Or about alienating her before he’d even had a chance to ask her to dinner. “I’ve got a couple of ideas, though.”

She gave her head a quick shake. “You’ll want to talk to Faith, then. With Dad so woozy, she’s the decision-maker. I’m here to be a minion.”

His mouth quirked. “A minion?”

“Yeah, you know. A helper. A floor-mopper, cashier. I suspect she’ll have me making jam and driving the tractor before I know it. A nurse, too, I suppose, when Dad comes home.” She made a face at that. “Although Faith would be much better at nursing than I would.”

“Because of her gift for serenity.”

“And my impatience with my fellow human beings.”

“What do you do for a living?” he asked.

“Design software.” She pressed her lips together, opened them as if to say something else, then decided not to.

A solitary occupation. He wondered what kind of software she designed. Word processing? Financial? Something arcane that made computers run faster or repelled viruses? Games?

Probably not games.

He glanced over his shoulder and saw that a van was pulling in. A family would shortly be spilling out of it.

“Nice to meet you, Charlotte Russell,” he said with a nod. “I’ll see you again soon.”

For the first time, her expression seemed to turn shy. Her tone, in contrast, was flip. “Like I told you, Faith’s the one you want to talk to.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “I think I’d enjoy talking to you.”

She gave him a look that, if he wasn’t mistaken, held alarm.

The van came to a stop. When the side door slid open, at least four kids scrambled out, as well as two women from the front seats.

She said only, “I’ll tell Faith you were here,” and greeted the customers, leading the way into the barn.

Not until Gray was alone did he say softly, “Faith’s not the one I want.”

Want, he thought, was a mild word for what he felt for a woman he’d barely met. One who was prickly in personality and too skinny. He’d liked how fierce she had been in her sister’s defense, but her smile was what had really gotten to him. Her smile, and the vulnerability he’d seen in her eyes.

But he’d seen plenty of beautiful smiles, and had met his share of women who looked as if they needed somebody to take care of them. So why, this time, did he feel as if he’d been sucker punched?

Frowning, he got in his car. By the time he backed out, he was already thinking about how soon he could stop by the Russell farm again.

CHAPTER TWO

FAITH SAT AT THE KITCHEN TABLE cutting circles out of calico fabric, each of which would dress up a jar of jam or jelly. Her scissors followed the lines she’d traced on the fabric with a quilter’s marker, using a saucer as the pattern. The fabric would be held taut across the top of the jar, then flare into a ruffle below the ring. The work to make the Russell Family Farm jams and jellies look fancier—more worthy of gift-giving—was worth it, she thought.

Out of the corner of her eye she watched Char use tongs to lift sterilized jars from a large pot of boiling water. Raspberry jam bubbled on the other larger burner. She’d looked aghast when Faith tried to give her the job of cutting fabric.

“Don’t you remember what a disaster I made out of every sewing project I ever tried?”

“Um … yes.” Faith actually had forgotten. Although how, she couldn’t imagine. The apron Char had once made Mom for Christmas had been … Well. She cleared her throat. “This is just tracing and cutting.”

Backing away from the proffered fabric yardage Faith had held in outstretched hands, Char said firmly, “I’d a thousand times rather make jam.”

The Russells had hardly ever bought fruit or vegetables; they grew and preserved their own. By the time the girls were ten years old, they could can green beans or whip up a batch of apple jelly or blackberry jam without supervision. Faith had always been more eager to learn chores like that—she’d liked just about everything to do with farm life better than her sister had. But, obviously, the lessons had stuck even for Char, who’d been able to jump in without hesitation this morning, leaving her sister to water potted plants in the nursery and then start the finicky work of tracing circles.

It was wretchedly hot today, and even with windows standing open and a rotating fan running nonstop, it was at least ninety degrees in the kitchen. Poor Char, who had gotten sunburned yesterday helping pick the berries, had lost all resemblance to the chic urban woman who had arrived two days ago. Despite the fact that she wore only shorts and a tank top, she was sweating and kept having to reach for a kitchen towel to wipe her face. Her hair poked up in damp tufts and stuck to her forehead and temples. Forget makeup. She hadn’t bothered with earrings this morning, either.

She was trying; Faith had to give her that. No, the fact that she was here at all was amazing enough.

Be grateful for that.

Faith was trying, too—to be grateful, that is. She was trying not to hate the fact that Char could hardly stand to look at her.

Char was handling this stay she’d felt obliged to make by sticking to business. They talked about Dad and how they’d take care of him once he came home, about the corn grown almost tall enough to open the maze to the public, about how much jam would sell and about whether they could afford to increase the hours of the teenage girl Faith had recently hired to help out part-time.

And Rory. Char wanted to talk about him, too. Faith was the one sliding away from that conversation because she knew perfectly well that Char would want to take action that Faith didn’t believe was justified. It wasn’t as though she still loved him; he’d killed anything she’d once felt for him a long time ago, but she did have memories of the Rory she once had loved. And he’d give up eventually on his own, wouldn’t he? When he couldn’t get a rise out of her either way?

But that was one of the many ways she and Charlotte differed. Char’s instinct was always to come up swinging. Literally, when they were kids—Char was the only girl at their elementary school who was called in to the principal’s office not just once, but twice for brawling. Both times she was defending Faith, who hadn’t seen any need for defense.

Char, she knew, would have booted Rory out on his butt the first time he questioned why she was late and who she’d been talking to. She wouldn’t have waited until he hit her, and she’d never have given him second and third and fourth and fifth chances. In Rory’s case, Char would have been right. As it turned out, he hadn’t deserved any of those chances. But people often did, in Faith’s experience, so was it really so awful that she’d wanted to believe in the man she had loved?

She should try to articulate how she felt to her sister. After all, she was the one who had begged Char to come and who had admitted that Rory scared her. But Charlotte-at-a-distance and Charlotte-actually-here were not at all the same sister. It was a little like the way Faith saw Rory, as if he were a layer of transparencies on the overhead projector in her classroom, and she could peel a few off and there would be the Rory she’d first known.

The Charlotte she’d first known was her twin. Her other half. They’d curled in the womb together, slept side by side in the same crib, shared toys and clothes and their mother’s arms. They’d never needed words to understand each other.