Keeping the Peace (9 page)

Melanie said, “Please, Mr. Strand, let me take your coat.”

“Thanks, but please, call me Gabe,” said their guest over the ensuing mayhem. He handed her his coat and stood, looking around. “This is a great room.”

The dogs swarmed him, barking, but he wasn’t disturbed. He held out his hand, and they both sniffed, then started to wiggle and jump, begging for attention.

“Go lie down, you idiots,” John said harshly to the dogs as he crossed the room.

The visitor extended his right hand. John shook it.

“What brings you all the way out here in this storm? Is there more trouble?” Melanie asked.

Strand looked away from John and smiled at Melanie. “I just had to make amends,” the musician said. In his left hand, he held two longish paper-wrapped packages. He handed one to Melanie. “I’m really very sorry for crashing into you this morning.”

She took the package and looked down through the top. “Ooohh, flowers,” she said. “Thank you so much. They’re beautiful.”

Mia and Emmie were standing, struck dumb, beside the couch. The Ragged Rainbow front man handed the other package to Mia. John noted with some shock that his daughter had somehow managed to shed her neck brace and her arm sling. They were nowhere in sight. He could see his daughter’s hand shake as she took the flowers. Emmie’s face was flushed.

“Thank you,” said Mia, almost in a whisper. “Thank you so much.”

“Did everything check out okay with you at the hospital?” Strand asked.

Emmie nodded vigorously. She said rapidly, “Oh, yes! She’s really, really good. They gave her a prescription for Vicodin, but she won’t take it. She’s not in that much pain. She—”

“I’m fine,” said Mia, cutting her friend off. “Thank you for asking. Thank you for coming. Really. Oh, this is my friend, Emmie Cohen.”

“Nice to meet you, Emmie.” Strand extended his hand again.

Only her mother’s good training and guidance throughout the years gave Emmie the presence of mind to shake his hand, John thought.

Melanie stepped in smoothly. “She’s had some whiplash, that’s all. Please, Mr. Strand—”

“Gabriel. I think Mr. Strand is my father,” the young man said, laughing.

“Well, then, Gabriel,” said Melanie, “please join us for dinner. My husband’s cooking.”

In the heat of the kitchen, Melanie had unzipped her turtleneck sweater. John saw the lace trim of her camisole and the gentle swell of her breasts. He also saw the musician’s eyes flicker over Melanie’s chest, but Melanie didn’t seem to notice.

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Gabriel asked, a friendly smile playing on his lips.

He snorted to redirect their guest’s attention from his wife’s chest. “That’s a very good thing. Baked penne with Parmigiano Reggiano and sausage. Homemade bread and apple pie.”

“I’ll stay,” Strand said, smiling at Melanie. “Can I do anything?”

“Actually, yes, you can,” John answered quickly, handing him a bottle of Chianti. “You can open this—” he took three wine glasses down from the cabinet “—and pour us all a glass of wine.”

Chapter Eight

O
VER
T
HE
Y
EARS
, Melanie had slowly come to realize the effect she had on men and, in turn, the toll it took on her husband. In the early days of their love, she had been unaware that he might be jealous or insecure. He came home every weekend from college, and when she started college the next year, he had traveled to see her. She had expected it; she enjoyed it. Young and naïve, she hadn’t been aware of his fear—fear that she would meet somebody else and leave him. It was Becky that first brought it up to her bluntly. “John’s crazy about you. You’ve got to stop flirting in front of him.”

“I don’t flirt,” Melanie had insisted.

“You just have to look at a guy, and they’re mush,” Becky had exclaimed. “You’re too pretty and, and, too
something
, to smile at guys. It’s just your manner, I guess, but guys take it as an invitation.”

Sometimes, through the years, there was gossip to contend with, but John had seemed to settle his demons. She knew he trusted her, and he’d seemed to have come to the conclusion that there were things about his wife he would just have to accept. For her part, she made a conscious effort to let him know how much she truly loved him.

Suddenly, the realization washed over her, even as she listened to Gabriel Strand while he answered John. That was what had been missing lately: that conscious renewal of their love every day. When had it weakened? What had dulled the delicious sharpness of the leap of her stomach each evening he returned home? When had he ceased to slide his hand up under her clothes, under her bra, to cup her breast? And worse, why hadn’t she noticed it before this? She felt the young musician’s eyes on her chest. It felt good to be noticed. She turned toward him and met his eyes.

“I can handle that,” the mesmerized man replied. “Corkscrew?”

Peter rummaged in one of the kitchen drawers and handed the smiling singer a corkscrew.

“And your name is?” asked Strand.

“I’m Peter.” Then, in a burst of civility, he added, “And this is my brother Michael.”

The three shook hands around.

Strand uncorked the bottle and poured the wine, handing a glass first to Melanie and then to John. The girls had not moved. They stood rooted beside the couch, their cheeks pink.

Melanie said, “Girls, come put these flowers in a couple of vases.”

At her words, the two seemed to find their sensibilities. They took the flowers and went about the task.

“Let me propose a toast,” said the guest. “A toast to the fact that everyone’s in one piece, in spite of my California driving.”

The glasses clinked, and everyone laughed.

“What are you driving now?” John asked, stirring the sizzling sausage in the pan with onions and garlic. The spicy aroma filled the room. “That’s not your Mercedes.”

“No, it isn’t,” said Strand, grimacing. “The Mercedes wasn’t mine, either. It was a rental. Anyway, Bruce—Bruce Blake; he’s one of the promoters—had this local girl cornered in the bar at the inn. She’s a hostess there, I guess. She was coming on to him, and it looked like a hook-up to me, so I told her I wanted to see you, and she let me borrow her car. I think they wanted to get rid of me.”

“Must be nice to be a rock star,” John muttered, only loud enough for Melanie’s ears. He added the crushed tomatoes and the cheese with another grumble. “Have a perfect stranger lend you their car. It’d be hard enough for
me
to commandeer one.” He finished the preparations, his little rant seemingly over, and said more vocally, “This is ready to go into the oven.”

Melanie stepped up and opened the oven door. The hot air blasted her face, and John slid the green enameled pan in next to her apple pie.

“Twenty-five minutes,” he announced. He turned his back to the room, washing up some utensils in the sink.

“Here, chew on these while you wait.” Melanie reached a mitted hand back into the oven and brought out a cookie sheet full of stuffed mushrooms. “There’s crabmeat in these,” she said to Strand, “in case you have allergies.”

“Thanks. I don’t. They look very good. Let me help.” He took the spatula she had been holding, his fingers brushing hers ever so lightly.

“Oh,” she said softly. “Oh, thank you. You can put them on this plate.” She turned abruptly away, saying into the room, “Girls, set plates and silverware out on the kitchen table. We can help ourselves buffet-style and sit in the dining room.”

The girls were slowly losing their shyness. Mia said, “Where do you live, really?”

“I live in Beverly Hills now. I just bought my first house,” he said. “It’s a nice one. I like it. It’s not too big, but it has a great pool and a pretty garden. My mother likes to garden.”

“Oh, your mother lives with you?” asked Emmie.

“And my sister. I grew up in a small town just outside San Diego. My father was in the Navy. I was an only child until I was twelve years old. Then, my sister was born! She’s fifteen now. After I had enough money and I bought the house, I brought them there to live with me.”

“Are your parents divorced, then?” asked Mia.

“My father died when my sister was five.”

“Oh, I’m, ah, I’m sorry,” Mia stammered.

“Food’s served,” interrupted John, elbowing through and setting the hot casserole dish on the trivet.

Melanie followed with the salad bowl, and John sliced the bread.

“Now everybody grab a plate and dish up. We’ll go into the dining room to eat.” Melanie handed a plate to each girl. “Michael, you sit at one end, Dad will sit at the other. Girls on that side. Gabriel, you sit between Peter and me.”

As they helped themselves to their meal, a low sigh seemed to pass through the room. Gabriel looked up from the salad bowl, alert.

“Don’t worry,” Melanie said. “We don’t have ghosts in this house. At least, we haven’t seen them. That’s the wind you’re hearing. It’s an old house.”

John added, “The storm is about to blow itself out.”

“I bet we got two feet,” said Peter gleefully. “I’m going skiing tomorrow.”

“If there’s no school,” Melanie said.

“Now is when we’ll get a power outage,” predicted John. “Some tree will go down under the weight of the snow or something.”

The family and their guests took their places around the table. The dining room was long and narrow, papered in black and white toile. The long windows were draped in sheer curtains that reached to the wide spruce floorboards, shiny with the footsteps of the comings and goings of the generations of the past one hundred and fifty years. There were old family portraits on the walls, of those people and the horses they’d owned. A fireplace crackled at the far end of the room, and Melanie’s cobalt glass collection glowed in its light. She loved to eat in the dining room. She felt oddly alive, as though a bothersome care had been lifted from her, as though there was promise yet to the night ahead.

Melanie noticed Gabriel, sitting quietly, looking around at the room. Ignoring her husband’s sharp glance, she asked, “Is everything all right? You look a little sad.”

“I like it here,” Strand said. “You don’t know, but I never get a chance to be normal. Not for years now. You’re all so nice. It makes me miss my mother and sister. Does that sound cheesy?”

“Not at all,” said Melanie. “How about a girlfriend? Do you have one?”

“Mom!” Mia gasped, scandalized.

The musician laughed out loud, his dark eyes sparkling and his hair waving irresistibly around his face. “That’s okay. Everybody asks. I don’t have a serious girlfriend right now. Being on the road all the time, it’s really hard to sustain a relationship. Sometimes I take some time off, when we get breaks in the concert series, but I just go back to California. Then I lock myself in my room and write songs. I gotta keep this momentum going for a little while longer. I need to take care of the family I have before I add to it, I guess.” He looked at Melanie, then quickly down at his plate.

Melanie said, “I think that’s admirable. And from what I read, when you do decide to have a relationship, there’ll be no lack of volunteers.”

Strand gave an ironic laugh. “Ha! I’ve got to be careful of that, too.”

It was then that the lights went out. All the little sounds that reverberate in the background of an active household ceased. The refrigerator quit humming. The furnace ground to a halt. The water circulating in the pipes gurgled to a stop. Everyone sat stock still around the table for a minute. The only sound was the crackling of the fires in the wood stove and the fireplaces.

“There it is,” John grumbled. “Well, break out the candles, and we’ll finish dinner.”

Melanie was already up, moving more candles to the dining room table. John followed right behind her, lighting them. In the kitchen, they lit two kerosene lamps. Soon, both rooms were bathed in a warm yellow light.

“This is amazing,” said the musician, smiling. “This is really cool.”

John snorted as he returned to the table. “As long as it doesn’t last too long. You get to miss your shower after a while, and it really gets old when you have to start hauling water from the pond for the animals.”

“Dad, we really need a generator,” Peter said.

Melanie ruminated over Peter’s remark. The elusive generator came up every time there was a power outage. John always promised to install one before the next winter, and somehow, it never got done. She brought the apple pie in from the kitchen and cut pieces for everyone. At the end of the meal, she said, “I put aside some water in the dishpan in the sink. We can scrape our dishes, and I’ll wash them. Everyone can help dry and put them away. Try not to open the refrigerator door.”

Clean-up was done in half an hour.

“Now what?” Mia pouted, forgetting the important guest she had to impress. “This is just great.”

“I’m sure your iPod is fully charged,” her father said dryly.

“Read a book,” said Melanie, “or we can have scintillating conversation! Actually talk to each other.”