Nash was preparing to leave for his short but necessary trip to Oregon. From the moment I showed up at his house he kept handing out instructions like a nervous new mommy but I didn’t mind. In fact it was rather adorable.
“He’s got six bottles in the fridge. And there are plenty of diapers in the nursery but in case you need more there’s a stockpile in the hall closet. And I just did all of his laundry so there’s a bunch of those stretchy little outfits in his room. Oh, and if he gets too gassy the bottle of drops is in the hall bathroom upstairs.”
“Got it,” I said, trying not to smile. Nash had come a long way in a short time. It was hard to believe only two months had passed since the morning I watched him get covered in baby vomit right here in the kitchen after he haplessly overfed Colin.
Over in his bouncer Colin babbled and grabbed for the toys hanging overhead. His chubby fingers latched onto the fuzzy pink pig and he emitted a squeal of triumph.
Nash tickled the baby’s foot and looked anxious. “I’ll miss you, kid.”
I ran my finger over Colin’s smooth cheek and he gave me a drooling grin. “I promise I’ll take good care of him.”
“I know you will.” Nash raked a hand through his hair. “There’s no one on earth I’d rather leave him with. It’s just the longest I’ve been away from him so my stomach’s all tied up in knots.” He let out a hoarse chuckle. “Listen to me. I sound like an uptight jackass.”
“No,” I argued, elbowing his ribs. “You sound like a parent.”
He looked at me and his eyes were serious. “Thanks, Kat.”
“You’re welcome.”
The serious expression left his face and was replaced by something else as his eyes swept over me. The weather had turned very hot this week and I wore a red tank top and shorts, my hair loose and flowing.
“I like the idea of you sleeping in my bed,” he said softly because Emma was in the next room.
“I like the idea of sleeping in your bed too.”
Nash reached out and swept the hair off my left shoulder, his fingers brushing across my skin. It was amazing how the briefest touch from him could produce such a powerful shudder of desire. He slipped one finger under the strap of my tank top and his voice became gruff.
“I’ll be thinking of you there. In my bed. Doing things to yourself and wishing I was there to do them for you.”
“What kind of things?” I whispered, feeling as if I might swoon. The physical chemistry between us was magnetic, irresistible. It grew stronger every day.
“Mommy!” Emma shouted and Nash stepped away from me a split second before she came barreling into the kitchen with Roxie on her heels.
“What the matter, honey?”
Emma stuck out her lower lip and her eyes filled. “I forgot Mr. Ford,” she wailed.
Roxie licked her hand and let out a sympathetic whine.
“Who’s Mr. Ford?” Nash wanted to know.
“It’s this stuffed duck my mother had given her at Easter,” I said.
“You need to get him,” Emma said, nodding over her own solution. “Or he’ll be sad.”
I picked up my purse. “Is it okay if I leave her here while I run back home?”
“Sure,” Nash said. He picked Colin up out of the bouncer. “Hey Miss Emma, let’s take Roxie in the backyard so she can show you how well she catches a Frisbee.”
“A what?”
“A Frisbee.”
“What’s that?”
I smiled. “I’ll be right back.”
Nash was already heading out of the room. “Take your time.”
The drive back to my place only took a few minutes. Emma had left Mr. Ford sitting on the kitchen table. His black embroidered eyes regarded me placidly as I picked him up.
I was locking the front door when a shadow startled me into dropping my keys.
“There was a man,” said Mrs. Sofia Fetucci. She was eighty-seven, the widow of a former national boxing champion and she rarely left her unit on the other side of the duplex. Last week I’d run into her daughter who confided that she was moving her mother to an assisted living facility down in Scottsdale, closer to where she lived.
“Are you okay, Sofia?” I asked, bending down to retrieve my keys.
The tiny old woman peered at me, her faded blue eyes covered with a milky layer of cataracts. I wasn’t even sure how much she could see at this point.
“There was a man here,” she insisted and the whole incident was beginning to feel a little spooky. I wondered if she was talking about Nash but to my knowledge he hadn’t been here today.
“He was at your window,” she said, pointing a bony finger at the kitchen window.
“When?” I asked, looking around and feeling more uneasy than ever. Sofia might seem lost in her own personal cloud sometimes but I’d never known her to hallucinate.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“But you saw a man looking through my windows earlier?” I asked for clarification.
She nodded. “Yes.”
“What did he look like?”
She scrunched up her face. “Tall,” she said. “Maybe.”
“Do you remember anything else?”
“No. He might not have been tall.”
Well, that narrowed it down. I wouldn’t even know what to tell the police.
“My elderly half blind neighbor might have seen a nondescript possibly tall man near my kitchen window at some point.”
“Did you see where he went?” I asked. I wasn’t completely sure the man was real but that didn’t stop the hair from standing up on the back of my neck.
“No,” she sighed and I saw her hand trembling. She seemed upset and unsteady so I offered her my arm for stability and then walked her back over to her place. Sofia’s daughter had hired a maid, a meal delivery service and also a nurse to check on her mother several times a week but there was no one in the neat little apartment now. Her rooms were a mirror of my place, except all the furniture was covered with crocheted blankets and there were cat cross stitch pictures all over the walls. When I was satisfied that Sofia had everything she needed I left, making a mental note to find her daughter’s contact information and share the strange encounter.
I got behind the wheel of my car feeling bothered, nervous. Sofia had probably just seen a solicitor or maybe one of the missionaries who would frequently canvas the neighborhood searching for people to spread their religion to. And her cataracts were so bad I wasn’t even certain her version of events was correct.
But still, the flames of my anxiety were sufficiently fueled and I kept glancing in my rearview mirror. For a few blocks I thought I was being followed by a silver car. It remained a good twenty yards behind me and when I reached Nash’s street the vehicle turned in the opposite direction.
Nash’s car to the airport was already idling by the curb when I returned. There was a small municipal airport forty miles away where he’d catch a plane to Phoenix and then take a flight to Portland from there. I’d offered to drive him myself but he adamantly refused.
“Colin’s napping upstairs in the crib,” he said.
“I’ll kiss him goodbye for you.”
Nash flashed a grin. “I’ll get to Portland this evening,” he said, tossing a small carry on bag into the waiting car. “Then I’ll rent the truck, drive out to the coast, pack up, maybe catch a few hours of sleep and be on my way back here as soon as I can.”
“Don’t worry about Colin,” I told him, clutching Mr. Ford and still feeling a little rattled over the whole Man at the Window mystery. “Between Emma and me and Roxie he’ll be well taken care of.”
Emma suddenly burst through the front door and ran to me, claiming Mr. Ford and hugging the toy in a rapturous reunion.
Nash paused before sliding into the backseat of the car. His face searched mine. “Call me anytime, Kat.”
“You do the same.”
We stared at each other and he started to take a step toward me. I wondered if he planned to kiss me goodbye. I wanted him to. In spite of the fact that we were just good friends who gave each other incredible orgasms I wanted him to give me one gentle kiss before he left.
But Nash looked over at Emma, who was dancing around the front yard with her stuffed duck, and backed off. He winked at me before getting into the car.
I watched the car disappear and felt sad for some reason. Or maybe it wasn’t sadness. Maybe it was because I needed Nash Ryan more than I’d ever intended to.
I held out my hand to Emma and returned to the house where Roxie awaited with her tail wagging. Emma introduced her to Mr. Ford and didn’t appreciate when the dog tried to chew on Mr. Ford’s soft beak.
After checking on Colin, who still slept soundly as the crib mobile rotated slowly overhead, I returned downstairs to the kitchen, washed the handful of dishes in the sink and checked out the contents of the fridge. Nash had urged me to help myself to whatever I found and I wondered if Emma and I would be eating old cheese and stale bread for dinner. I really didn’t want to embark on a grocery store adventure unless it was necessary.
But surprisingly, Nash’s fridge was well stocked. I scanned the contents and planned to make a salad and spaghetti for us solid food eaters while Colin would be pleased enough with his formula and canned peaches.
Emma was talking animatedly in the next room. I listened for a moment and couldn’t figure out what she was up to so I went to go see.
I found a haphazard tea party in progress. Emma was lying on her belly on the floor while Roxie crouched beside her and Mr. Ford stared serenely at the sofa. As I was watching, the stuffed duck did a face plant although Emma was quick to reach out and right him.
“Sit up, Mr. Ford,” she scolded. “Don’t you like your tea?”
That’s when I noticed the ‘tea’ was being served on Heather’s carefully acquired antique china.
“Emma, where’d you get that?” I exclaimed, getting down on the floor and plucking a one hundred year old cup away from the curious snout of Roxie. “These are not toys.”
My daughter rose to a sitting position and pouted as I started stacking up the pieces. “I can play with these,” she argued.
“No honey, I told you to always ask first before you take something from here and start playing with it. This isn’t our house. What happened to your coloring books?”
“Heather said I could play with it!”
I bit my lip. “Emma, you know Heather couldn’t have told you that.”
“She did! She showed me where they were in that brown thing.” Emma pointed to the old curio cabinet in the corner of the room. “And she said I could play with this tea set any time I wanted and I promised to be careful.”
I stopped stacking the tea pieces. “When did Heather tell you this?” I asked gently. Emma was an imaginative child. She might have made up the entire scenario. But my discomfort from earlier returned and I wondered if there was any such thing as the supernatural.
Emma scrunched up her face in the same way Sofia Fetucci had. “I don’t know.”
I swallowed. “It wasn’t today, was it?”
She looked at me as if I’d just asked the most ridiculous question ever. “No. It was the day I came here and made red hearts.”
“Valentine’s Day?” I asked and Emma shrugged.
I sighed, understanding now what she meant. Valentine’s Day had been a Saturday and a new client, a custom furniture maker who lived up in the mountains, had begged for some emergency help because his ex-wife had sabotaged all his files. Heather offered to watch Emma and keep her overnight if I was too tired to pick her up. I’d accepted gratefully, though I felt a little guilty because my cousin had only given birth three weeks earlier. Heather had set up an assortment of paper crafts on the kitchen table and promised Emma they would have a special day. She was holding Colin when I turned back to see her waving at me from the kitchen window. I waved back and then faced the drive up to the mountains on a bitterly cold morning.
“Where are they?” Emma asked in a hushed voice and I saw she was staring at a photo of Chris and Heather on their wedding day.
I thought I’d cried all my tears for them already but no, I still had more. I tried to blink them away so Emma wouldn’t see and get upset. “They’re gone, baby.”
Emma considered the answer. Heather and Chris had been important to her too. Hopefully she would keep some memories of them and be able to tell Colin someday.
“I wish they weren’t gone,” she said and her lower lip trembled.
I set the teacups down and opened my arms to her. I stroked her hair, soft and dark brown, remembering how I’d once stroked hair just like it while a man I cared about cried on my lap and begged me to tell him when his agony would end. Emma would never know him. But I remembered him every time our daughter looked at me with his solemn eyes.
Emma’s sad mood didn’t last long. Roxie trotted over to kiss her face and she started giggling. Colin awoke from his nap and I sat holding him in the backyard while Emma played in the grass with Roxie. Nash’s dog always impressed me. Despite her size she was astonishingly gentle and enchanted by any attention Emma was willing to give her.
The afternoon passed quickly with no more troubling shadows. It was rare for me to take a complete day off but while sitting outside, listening to my daughter’s laughter and Colin’s happy squeals, I decided to take a break from whatever work awaited on my laptop. It would still be there tomorrow.
After an early dinner and quick baths we settled down in the living room to watch Beauty and the Beast. Colin nodded off on my shoulder and Emma let out a sleepy yawn as she rested her head against my arm. I thought about what a sweet moment this was. The only thing that would make it more perfect was if Nash was here to share it.
Now that I was thinking of Nash, I checked the time and figured out he must be in Oregon, probably on his way to that coastal town where he used to live. I spied my phone on an end table three feet to my left and reached for it while trying not to disturb the baby. Nash deserved to see this calm, happy scene just in case he was worrying about Colin. I would snap a quick photo and send it to him.
About two seconds after the photo finished sending to Nash a call came in. It wasn’t Nash.
“Where are you?” my mother demanded to know.
“I’m watching Colin for the weekend so Emma and I are staying at Nash’s house. I told you this the other day.”
“And where did that Nash character go?”
I sighed. “He had to go to Oregon and pick up the rest of his stuff. Mom, I already told you that too.”
She made a few more passive aggressive comments that I chose to ignore and then cryptically stated she needed to talk to me about something.
“Can it wait?” I asked, shifting Colin around because my shoulder was getting numb.
“Fine,” she huffed. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Give my baby girl a kiss from Grandma.”
“Good night, Mom,” I said, barely even curious about what kind of dire subject she needed to discuss. My mother meant well but she had a flair for drama. Perhaps she was feuding with the public library staff again over late fees.
I’d been planning to go to sleep early for once instead of burning the midnight oil. But once Emma and Colin were tucked away in bed I found that I was not even slightly tired so I wandered around the house.
The old house had a different feeling after the sun went down. The wooden floors creaked under my weight and every corner was thick with shadows. Old buildings possessed a certain kind of heaviness, as if burdened by the weight of all the human experiences lived within their silent walls.
I paused in front of a closed door. Nash always kept it closed. I expected when I opened it I’d find the room in exactly the same condition it had been in when its former occupants slept within. I was right.
Everywhere I looked there were signs of life interrupted. A woman’s pink sandal that had been dropped near the closet. A half empty bottle of water on a bedside table. And pictures, so many pictures. Pictures of the two of them, and far more pictures of Colin as if they’d been anxious to seize every moment of the painfully short time they’d been a family.
My throat felt thick with unshed tears.
I understood why Nash avoided this room, why he’d taken no steps to sort through any of its possessions.
I backed out and closed the door with a sigh and headed downstairs.
Nash’s dog was already curled up in her comfortable bed in the corner. She raised her head when I appeared and then lowered it when she saw I was alone.
My phone was still on the end table and when I looked at it I saw Nash had texted while I was roaming around upstairs.
Got the truck all packed. Will sleep for a few hours then will hit the road. Expecting twenty hours of driving. Thanks for the picture.
The words were informative and unsentimental. Somehow that bothered me. I shouldn’t expect more and I was pissed at myself for feeling any frustration. Nash and I had a clear understanding. There were no requirements except mutual friendship, respect, and mind-blowing sex.
“Nothing complicated about that,” I muttered, opting not to return the text since he mentioned he planned to get a few hours of sleep. I noted the time was a quarter to nine. Assuming he’d sleep for three or four hours and depart by one a.m., he’d be here around this time tomorrow if he drove straight through.
An ominous low growl sent sudden chills up my spine. Roxie had bolted from her sleepy corner and was now prowling beneath the living room window, teeth bared, hair visibly standing on end. Despite Nash’s claim that the German Shepherd was a good watchdog I’d never seen her react like this before.
“You hear something, girl?” I whispered, switching off the table lamp before approaching the window.
I pushed aside the eyelet curtains and saw nothing except the yellow glow of the old fashioned street lamp shining on my car where I’d parked it beside the curb. The porch lights of the house across the street were on but I saw no one there nor was there anyone passing in the street. A gust of wind rattled the high branches of the box elder tree in the front yard but there was no other movement.
“Must have just been a cat,” I assured the dog, patting her head. Roxie looked at me with doubt.
I double checked the front door lock while Roxie paced back and forth. Another growl rolled out of her throat and she bounded toward the kitchen. I found her staring at the side door and the noise escalated from a growl to a sharp bark.
“There was a man.”
My throat was dry and I was clutching my phone in my hand, prepared to call 911. Sofia Fetucci’s earlier warning kept playing in my head.
Roxie’s barking died down and she let out one final soft growl before sitting on her back haunches and looking at me as if to say, “I swear there was something out there.”
It took a fair amount of my courage to approach the door and push the curtain aside to peer through the glass panel. There was nothing out there.
Roxie nudged my hand with her wet nose.
“Good girl,” I praised her, scratching behind her ears. I watched for another few minutes but did not see or hear anything to be alarmed about. The dog’s senses were far more acute and in all likelihood she had sensed some passing night creature. A coyote, or maybe a flock of bats.
Roxie yawned and I checked the lock on the kitchen door before retreating. I offered the dog a biscuit from the box Nash kept in the pantry and she chewed happily. There was no noise from upstairs so apparently Roxie’s brief outburst had not awakened Colin or Emma.
All the doors and windows were checked one more time. Roxie returned to her bed and watched me with sleepy eyes. I patted her head once more before heading upstairs.
All was silent except for the soft noise of Colin’s crib mobile. The kids were both sound asleep. A sudden weariness overcame me and I raided my overnight bag, quickly changing and brushing my teeth. Nash’s room was tidy, his bed neatly made. He’d finally stopped living out of his suitcases and placed his clothes in the closet and chest of drawers. I slipped between the cool sheets, inhaling the spicy and familiar scent of Nash’s aftershave that clung to the sheets. It was like inhaling the scent of sex itself and my hand traveled between my legs as I thought of him, wishing he was here doing the things that I was doing to myself.
Sleep came quickly after that although my dreams were a puzzling collage of past events that left me feeling disturbed in the morning.