Kiss in the Dark (25 page)

Before he knew it, he was pulling into the motel parking lot. He decided to leave the basket of cookies in the pickup. He figured there was less chance of a cockroach finding its way to them in his truck than in his room. Being the honey-homemaker Boston obviously was, she’d lined the basket with cellophane before arranging the cookies in it. Vance popped one more cookie into his mouth and tied the cellophane closed at the top with the orange ribbon Boston had provided. He looked at the basket, smiling as a clever idea began to ooze into his tired mind.

Yep! He’d return the basket for a refill all right. He would definitely return the basket for a refill—but he wouldn’t return it empty. No siree!



“I just want it understood,” Danielle began as Boston entered the apartment Thursday after work.

“You want what understood?” Boston asked. The expression on Danielle’s face was gleeful, somehow even a little triumphant.

“That I get to say, ‘I told you so,’ at the wedding,” Danielle said. “Just once. I’ll only say it once…but I get to say it.”

Boston laughed. Danielle’s playfulness only added to her good mood. She’d been offered the assistant news scriptwriter’s job that afternoon, Vance had texted her after lunch letting her know his cookie basket was empty, and there hadn’t been a cloud in the sky all day.

“Wedding?” Boston asked. “Danielle…what are you talking about?”

Danielle stepped aside, gesturing toward the kitchen table. “My idiot of a brother had your cookie basket returned today.”

Boston gasped. There, in the center of the kitchen table, sat her cookie basket. It was definitely her cookie basket; she would’ve known it anywhere, even without the enormous flower arrangement sprouting from it.

“What?” she exclaimed.

“Oh, Vance is wrapped around your little finger, honey!” Danielle giggled. “There’s a card…but I was strong enough not to read it, thank you!”

“Oh my heck!” Boston breathed as she hurried to the table. “It’s…it’s massive!”

“Oh, yeah! Vance never does anything average—a barrel of Tootsie Pops…a field of flowers.”

Boston shook her head, unable to believe the beautiful arrangement was actually sprouting from her simple cookie basket! The basket was stuffed with butterscotch daisies, miniature sunflowers, orange and yellow mums, orange lilies, and Leonidas roses that were rather terra cotta on the inside and creamy yellow on the outside. Stems of dried wheat and red berries embellished the already beautiful arrangement, and a small gift card was held by a plastic florist peg protruding from its center.

“I have just one question,” Danielle began. “What did you put in those cookies?”

Boston shook her head, still awed by the beautiful floral arrangement on the table. “Nothing. Nothing different from what I usually do…except I used milk chocolate chips instead of semisweet.”

“Oh! Yeah…I guess so,” Boston said. Carefully, she removed the small card from its little plastic peg. She smiled as she read her name on the envelope, sprawled in nearly illegible man-writing (as she and Danielle liked to call it).

“Read it to yourself first…in case he says something I might feel compelled to chew a hole in him for,” Danielle suggested.

Boston giggled, opened the envelope, and removed the card.

“
Boston
,” she read aloud, ignoring Danielle’s suggestion for the sake of her own zeal. “
More cookies, please. Be sure the lights are out when I come over to pick them up. Love, Vance.
”

“Love?” Danielle squealed. “Love? Oh my heck! I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!”

“Danielle,” Boston began, “he’s just being nice. I’m sure…I’m sure he signed it that way out of habit. We all do it.” Still, Boston’s heart hammered like a train rolling down the tracks as she looked at the word
love
scribbled in Vance’s sloppy handwriting.

Danielle seemed to ignore Boston, however, and simply exclaimed, “Oh my heck!” She snatched the card from Boston’s hands and read, “
Be sure the lights are out when I come over to pick them up.
” Danielle smiled a knowing smile. “To the best of my knowledge, whenever the lights go out with you and my brother in the same room…oooo! Muchas smooches! Oh my heck!”

Boston couldn’t help but catch hold of Danielle’s excitement. The Steph-poisoned Boston was afraid to believe Vance meant the basket flower arrangement as anything more than a kind way of thanking her for the cookies. Yet the true soul of Boston Rhodes dared to hope differently. After all, there was nothing trivial, mediocre, or casual in such an effort, expense, and insinuative inscription.

“Maybe he’ll come over tonight!” Danielle said. “Dempsey called and wants me to run over and see the new ad campaign he’s working on. Maybe while I’m gone…maybe Vance will come over and turn out the lights for a little while.”

“And if not?” Boston asked, hopeful that Vance would drop by. She knew the job he was working on had run late the past few nights—but she hoped anyway.

“If not,” Danielle said, picking up a large Priority Mail box from one of the kitchen chairs. “Then you can start going through these for me!”

Boston gasped, opened the box, and squealed with delight when she saw its contents.

“The pictures?” she asked Danielle. “The pictures you’ve been begging your mom to send so you can start scanning them?”

Danielle nodded. “Look how many there are,” she said. She balanced the box on one arm, reached inside, and pulled out an ancient, sepia print. “I mean, I know this one. It’s my Great-Great-Grandmother Nathaniel.” She tossed the picture back in the box. “But when I got to digging through them, I found these three…that I thought our weird, sort of morbid curiosities about the past might find interesting.”

Boston watched, entirely intrigued, as Danielle reached into the box and withdrew three old, Victorian-era photographs. “Take a look,” Danielle said, handing them to Danielle. “I don’t recognize the names on the back…first names anyway.”

Boston looked at the three photos. Her eyes widened; a chill prickled the hairs at the back of her neck. One photo was of an elderly man, the other two of young women. Instantly, Boston knew why Danielle had thought them intriguing.

“But you’re intrigued too, huh?” Danielle said. “I know I am. I figure when I get back from Dempsey’s, we can go through the box. But it might be interesting to start with these.”

“Are there any more in there?” Boston asked, glancing into the box.

Danielle shrugged. “I don’t know. Mom sort of sent a conglomeration. There are old ones…really old ones…but there are even some of my old school and prom pictures mixed in. It’ll be fun to organize them. Don’t you think?”

“Oh, totally!” Boston agreed, still studying the three postmortem photographs in her hand.

Boston loved photographs, especially old ones, and the thought of going through Danielle’s old photographs with her was like anticipating the grandest adventure.

“Okay,” Danielle began as Boston placed the three postmortem photos back in the box, “so if Vance doesn’t show up—which I think he will, simply to see if you liked the flowers, if nothing else—then you can start going through the photos.”

“Oh, I’ll love looking through them!” Boston exclaimed.

“Not as much as you’ll love making out with my brother,” Danielle said. She giggled, grabbed her purse off the kitchen counter, and headed for the door. “I’m off to Dempsey’s. See you later!”

“Have fun!” Boston called to her. As Danielle closed the door, however, she remembered that in all her excitement over the flowers, she’d forgotten to tell Danielle she’d gotten the assistant news scriptwriter’s job at the station. Oh well. It was no big deal. She could tell her later.

Boston turned, sighed, and smiled as she studied the beautiful flower arrangement. It was September, and the orange, crimson, and gold colors arranged in the basket caused Boston’s already grand appreciation of the beginning of the season to heighten. She leaned forward, sniffing each rose, caressing a lovely orange mum with the tips of her fingers. She hoped Vance did come by to see if she liked the flowers—she just hoped he came by at all.

Yet as six o’clock spent its hour and then seven, Boston wondered if a long day working the stretch of road between the city and Mustang had been too wearing for him. She tried not to think of Vance trapped in that crummy motel. She wished the previous owners of his house would move out early.

Sighing with disappointment in the lack of Vance’s presence in the apartment, Boston turned off the TV. Yawning, she went to the kitchen, retrieved the box of pictures Danielle’s mom had sent, and returned to the sofa to leaf through them.

There were so many photographs—and from so many eras! To Boston, it was like opening a treasure chest and finding a wealth of gold pirate treasure.

Slowly she leafed through the photos, giggling when she came upon an awkward school dance photo of Danielle. Brace-faced and with a giant zit protruding from her chin, Danielle still looked beautiful—even at fourteen, fifteen, or whatever teen year she was enduring at the time the photo was taken.

“
Sadie Hawkins
,” Boston read on the back of the photo. She reached into the box and drew out another photo. This time Danielle had shed her braces and the monster zit on her chin. Boston turned the photo over. “
Junior Prom
,” she read. She giggled and pulled out the postmortem photos instead.

“Who were you?” she whispered as she studied the photos. “Why did you die?” The thought intrigued her. Oh, she knew most people would think she was morbid for finding the photographs interesting. Yet she laughed—another human hypocrisy. People still took postmortem photographs, only usually they took them at funerals, when the deceased were already in their casket. But wasn’t it really the same thing? She’d even heard a lady once at a funeral commenting on how disturbing Victorians were for taking photos of their dead to remember them by. Boston had then watched the same lady walk up to her late uncle’s casket and take several photos. She’d always thought it was a connection with the past. People of bygone centuries did take photographs of loved ones before burial. It was a reflex borne of mourning, a desperate attempt to hold on, to always have a part of the loved one there, tangibly in view. People still mourned, still felt the need to hold on, still took photos of loved ones not for morbid reasons—but out of pure love, because losing someone hurt so thoroughly that the human spirit, heart, and mind often wondered if endurance of the loss was even possible. That’s why people took photos of loved ones before they were committed to the grave. It was why the Victorians did it, and it was why people still did it. And to Boston—well, she’d always understood it. Especially since her grandmother had passed away some years before. Oh, how she wanted to keep her image—even her last image—forever.

Boston turned the photograph of the elderly man over.

“
Noble Angus Nathaniel
,” she read aloud. “
39
^th
New York Infantry Regiment
.”

She smiled, her mind suddenly alive with possibilities. Boston hopped up and made for her bedroom. She knew Civil War infantry lists were often available on the Internet. If she could discover something on old Noble Angus before Danielle got home from Dempsey’s…

Chapter Twelve

Vance listened to Dempsey. He’d been talking to Dempsey on his cell almost all the way over to Danielle and Boston’s apartment. It seemed Danielle was at Dempsey’s place and that he had called Vance to make sure he approved of his starting to pursue Danielle. Vance had found Dempsey’s call kind of touching—completely unnecessary, but touching.

Naturally, Dempsey had turned the tables and asked Vance when he was planning to turn up the heat with Boston. Danielle had told Dempsey about the barrel of Tootsie Pops and now the basket of flowers. Dempsey already knew Boston and Vance had spent eleven minutes of bliss in the pantry at his party, so Vance hadn’t denied his attraction to and interest in Boston.

Gradually, their conversation had taken a different venue. Vance was now coaching Dempsey on how to get past his own fear of rejection.

As he parked and climbed out of his pickup, Vance said, “It’s easy, dude. Just coax her into the pantry, turn out the light, and go for it! I can’t believe you’re nervous.” He chuckled, “You always look like you’ve got it all together.”

“I’m a wreck, man!” Dempsey said as Vance sauntered toward Boston’s apartment. He’d been even more excited and more impatient to get over to Boston’s place when he learned that Danielle wasn’t home—that Boston was probably home alone. He’d been sweating over his plans all day, trying to build up his courage. Vance had decided to ask Boston out. He figured if she was willing to kiss him in the dark, maybe she would be willing to go out with him. He was scared to death, of course—but he couldn’t keep away from her any longer and needed to try. He’d begun to hope she could accept him—even for his past.

“You’re a wreck?” Vance laughed, forcing his mind back to Dempsey’s predicament. “Dude! She’ll be putty in your hands. I know my sister.”

“You don’t know how long I’ve been in love with your sister, Vance,” Dempsey admitted, lowering his voice. “What if she, like, throws up or something?”

Vance laughed again. “She won’t throw up, man. Just drag her into that pantry and lay one on her! It’s like a magic room, dude. I promise.”