Man With A Miracle

Mariah turned from putting the last of the casseroles in the refrigerator and dusted off her hands. “Just about filled that up.” Then she reached to the floor for another paper bag. “These are toiletries and some makeup samples I got at a house party and never used.” She put the bag on the table and pulled out a few things. “We thought if you needed clothes, you might need some other things, too. Shampoo and conditioner, moisturizer, a sample bottle of perfume.” Then she put it all back. “So you don’t have to use guy stuff.”

Beazie was overwhelmed, and couldn’t help wondering what Evan had told them. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

Haley waved away the necessity for thanks. “The only thing we couldn’t find was shoes. What size do you wear?”

“Eights.”

Mariah shook her head regretfully. “Haley’s are too small and mine are too big. But there is…” She rummaged in several bags and emerged triumphantly with a pair of pink chenille slip-on slippers. “Here. At least you can be comfy around the house.”

Beazie sat down and put the slippers on. They were perfect.

The baby burped loudly and Haley laughed. “Well. Our work here is done.” She stood to go.

Mariah began collecting empty bags and pushed those still full of clothes against the cupboards and out of the way. “Pick through those and just return what you can’t use.”

“Can you stay for coffee?” Beazie asked, remembering belatedly her good manners.

“Thanks,” Mariah said, “but I have kids to pick up, and Haley has to get to a Traffic Safety Committee meeting. We have lunch with Jackie every Friday, though. Would you like to join us?”

“Jackie’s the mayor of Maple Hill,” Haley explained. “My sister-in-law.”

Beazie nodded, following them as they moved toward the door. “Evan told me about that. Your brother has a company of tradesmen temps.”

“Yes. Turned out to be a brilliant idea. They’re so busy, though, the jobs are hardly temporary anymore.”

“We’re all in the phone book,” Mariah said, opening the door for Haley and the baby. “If you can’t remember names, just call Whitcomb’s Wonders—that’s the company—and Haley’s mom is usually taking calls. She can reach any one of us.”

“Thank you again.”

“Sure. You take care.”

Beazie watched as Haley fastened the baby seat in the back of a green sedan and Mariah climbed into the passenger seat. Haley tapped the horn as she drove away.

Beazie closed the kitchen door behind her, then, noting the late-afternoon shadows, flipped on the light. Silence fell on her like a blanket. The sudden arrival of the two women and the baby had been like a cheerful tornado in the quiet house, and now that they were gone it seemed even more silent than before. While she could acknowledge that solitude was preferable to being chased, she’d spent most of the past six years trying to chase away the silence.

That was the worst part of loneliness, she’d often thought. A single person had only the sounds of the clock, the refrigerator, and the television, which she usually put on the moment she arrived home and turned off just before she went to sleep.

But a house should have the cheerful noise of projects under way. The hum of a sewing machine, the whine of a saw, the discordant but encouraging music of a child learning an instrument, the bark of a dog.

This house had the look of what she wanted, she thought, turning in a tight circle to take in the kitchen, but none of the sounds. She experienced one brief moment of utter and complete loneliness, then forced herself to bury it and move on. She knew how to do that. She’d done it many times.

She took the bags of clothes upstairs and spent the next half hour trying things on. She kept two pairs of Mariah’s jeans, a blue and a black, a simple black skirt and sweater, and a green fleece top patterned with red poinsettias. Christmas was just around the corner. She put on the blue sweats, hung the things she was keeping in the wardrobe, then packed everything else back into the bags and stashed them to return tomorrow.

Then she padded downstairs in the slippers and checked out the casseroles. There was ham, potato and broccoli casserole in a square dish, lasagna in an oblong one, and chicken and noodles in a round bowl, each thoughtfully labeled with cooking time and temperature.

She took out the square casserole and preheated the oven. Mariah had also left a bowl of salad and a bag of dinner rolls on the counter.

When she searched the cupboards for plates, Beazie was surprised to find a four-place setting of fine china, patterned on the rim with red and yellow flowers and a gold trim. She took down two plates and stared at them. She’d expected a bachelor to have pottery or plastic.

After setting the table, she made a pot of coffee, put a small fern she’d found in the living room in the middle of the table and waited for Evan to come home.

EVAN HAD NOT BEEN GREETED at the door in— Well, he couldn’t remember how long it had been. Probably since his mother welcomed him home when he was in high school.

And it had been that long since he’d walked in the door to the aroma of dinner in the oven, coffee brewing and a woman fussing around him, a floral perfume wafting in her wake.

Well, Beazie wasn’t fussing, but she’d come to take one of the two grocery bags he carried. And when he saw her, for a moment he couldn’t move.

She’d showered and shampooed her hair and tied it up with a piece of twine into a fat, glossy ponytail. The blue sweatshirt she was wearing intensified the blue of her eyes, and when he looked for her freckles, he couldn’t find them. She had a finished, almost glamorous look—despite the sweats. And she was giving him that smile.

He felt himself wanting to go back outside and drive away. He knew this woman could be dangerous, and not just because she was being chased. Still, he’d sometimes been stupid, but he’d never been a coward. And she needed help.

“Hi,” he made himself say with an answering smile as he went to the counter with the other bag of groceries. “Mariah must have been here.”

“She was.” She pulled canned soups and vegetables out of the bag and lined them up on the counter. “Thank you. It was thoughtful of you to scrounge a wardrobe for me. And she brought me shampoo and makeup.”

He nodded. “I noticed the freckles were gone.”

“Not gone, just undercover. Mariah and Haley also brought three casseroles so I wouldn’t have to cook—because everyone seems to know that you don’t.”

“That’s because every time we have a gathering and I have to bring something, I get it from the deli. Dead giveaway.”

“You’re lucky to have friends who want your company.” She folded the now-empty paper bag. “Anyplace in particular you’d like these things?” She opened a cupboard and analyzed its meager contents. “Is there a system?”

“No. There’s seldom anything in there. Just put it wherever you like.”

“Okay.” She began putting things away with a swift confidence that spoke of experience. She paused to grin as she held up a jar of peanut butter and a box of grape Kool-Aid that were already in the shelf. “Do you like your peanut butter with jelly or marshmallow cream?”

He put the bags in a recycling bin at the edge of the counter and pulled off his jacket. “I don’t like it at all,” he answered. “I baby-sat for Cam and Mariah one night at the last minute, and Mariah, knowing how I am, sent those things with the kids so they’d have something to snack on. We went out for pizza, instead.”

“I love peanut butter,” she said, placing it back on the shelf and collecting canned goods around it. “I practically lived on it when I was first on my own because it’s so economical and nutritious.”

He thought it strange that they were talking about peanut butter and groceries, when just this morning she’d been bedraggled and hunted and holding a bat on him. Tonight she seemed like any well-adjusted young woman performing the simple domestic duty of stocking her shelves.

Only they were his shelves. And neither one of them should forget that.

The timer rang and she closed the doors on a very orderly cupboard, picked up two kitchen towels to use as pot holders and pulled the casserole out of the oven. It smelled wonderful.

He poured water and coffee, and they sat across from each other at the table. For the first time since he’d walked in the door, he felt tension. He ignored it, sure it must be just his own reaction to having a strange woman in his home after a year of comfortable solitude.

“Where’s your family?” she asked companionably, passing him the basket of rolls. “Were you born in Boston?”

His family. He missed them, but he’d tried hard not to think about them since leaving home. He’d dealt with and accepted what had happened, but he couldn’t find his place in their circle anymore. It was easier to put them out of his mind.

“I was born in the Midwest,” he replied. “We still have a lot of family there. But my mother moved us to Boston when she married my stepfather.”

“I love Boston,” she said chattily as she buttered a roll. “I was born in Buffalo. We moved to Boston when my mother remarried after my father died.” She took a dainty bite of the roll. “But that didn’t work out and she married a third time, then a fourth. The last husband was a banker, an older man who seemed very steady and solid, but she got sick, and I guess that wasn’t what he’d planned for his golden years, so…” She made an awkward little movement with her hand. “He left, she died, and I…stayed in Boston.”

“How old were you?”