Wonderful You (18 page)

He had barely heard a word she said.

Could this really be the same Zoey Enright who had chased him and her brother through the fields to the cattail-lined pond to see who could catch the biggest frog?

“Ben?”

“What?”

“I said, would you like to see the vases?”

“Oh, sure.” He nodded enthusiastically.

She stood up and reached to the shelves that flanked the fireplace, lifting a cobalt blue vase and handing it to him.

“He worked in a sort of free-form style, apparently, in the later stages of his career. His earlier pieces were made from molds, but the colors were always the same brilliant tones.”

Ben turned the pottery piece around and around in his hands.

“The blue is almost the same color as your eyes.” He’d been thinking it, but hadn’t planned on saying it aloud. It almost seemed that the words had found their own minds and had made the decision to be spoken independently of him.

To her complete and everlasting embarrassment, Zoey blushed.

Flustered, she took the vase from his hands and returned it to the shelf. Crossing in front of him to the other side of the fireplace, she took down the second vase and held it out to him. “This is by the same potter.”

“What was his name?”

“Who? The potter?”

He nodded.

“Elmer Langtree. Isn’t that a great name for a country
artist?”

“It is.” He turned the vase to the window and turned it in his hands. “Interesting shade of green,” he commented, adding, “but I prefer the blue
.”

He gave it back to her and watched as she stood on her tiptoes to replace it on the narrow shelf. Her movements were self-conscious somehow, as if she was aware that his eyes were following her.

“And through here”—she gestured for him to follow her through an archway leading to a hall—“I have a guest room, a bath and my little office.”

He nodded his approval of the welcoming guest room, with its twin bird’s-eye maple spool beds and two dressers, one with an attached mirror, and the sma
ll-
scaled wing chair in one corn
er. A wreath of dried flowers hung on one wall, and over the beds marched a line of framed prints of roses. The lace curtains were tied back with what appeared to be small nosegays. The room was cozy and charming, and he told her so.

“Thank you. I planned it for overnight visits from my mother or sister, but right now, while the second floor is still being worked on, I’m using it as a bedroom. I do like it. It does feel cozy, as you say.” She smiled and pointed across the hallway. “And this is the sitting room/office.” He stepped inside the room with its dark green walls and palest gold carpet. A small sofa with a bright floral print and a mound of decorative pillows stood along one wall, a curved desk fit nicely into an alcove on another. A third wall had two windows, side by side, with deep sills lined with pots of African violets, while the fourth had shelves that reached almost to the ceiling.

“I see you’re still a reader,” he said softy. “I remember how in the summer you used to lie in the hammock and read the latest Nancy Drew.”

“Till two certain parties would come along to dump me out onto my butt.”

“You remember that?” He grimaced.

“Do
I
ever.” She laughed and rubbed her backside unconsciously.

“And I see you have what appears to be an entire collection of your mother’s books.” He pulled one off the shelf and flipped through it.
“The Flute Maker.
An excellent tale of suspense. Ah, and here’s
Over My Dead Body.
Another great favorite of mine.”

He paused to read the dedication aloud.

For Ben—wherever he may be.

They stood in silence for a long moment before he said, “You will never know how much it meant to me to read those words.”

“Perhaps you should tell my mother.”

“I already have.”

“When?”

“Right after I finished reading it. It was my first year at school in England.” He sat on the arm of the sofa, his fingers tapping lightly on the back cover of the book. “I always made it a point to buy every one of Delia’s books. They were my connection to
…
well, to a time that had passed. Sometimes, all of it—those days in Westboro— seemed to be nothing more than something I had dreamed, like none of it had ever happened at all. Then another of Delia’s books would be published, and I would read it, and I would remember the places she wrote about. I remember the farmhouse in this book—it was out on Cross Creek Road. And the oak tree that she talks about hanging over the road ‘like a giant parasol of the finest lace,’ I
know
that tree. I’ve climbed it.” He stood and walked to the shelf, laying a finger on the spine of yet another book. “There’s a scene in this one where she describes two boys stealing out of a house in the middle of the night to go canoeing. Until I read that
scene, I had no idea that she had known that Nick and I used to do that.”

He returned the book to its place on the shelf, then turned to her.

“Your mother’s books kept all those places alive in me all those years, Zoey, in spite of my best efforts to shut them all out.”

Zoey wanted to ask
why
he should have made such an effort, but something in his face had tightened slightly, and she let it pass.

“I have read every one of these books many, many times,” he added, “searching for whatever little tidbit of the past she had hidden there for me to find.”

Zoey smiled. “Is that what you used to think? That she hid things for you in her books?”

“She told me she did. She said it was her way of letting me know that it was all still there.”

“When did she tell you this?”

“She sent me a package right before I left for college. It was her newest book, let’s see
…
”
His eyes scanned the shelves until he found the book he was looking for. “Here we go.
The Devil’s Light.
”
He thumbed through it, searching for the page. When he found it, he looked up at Zoey and met her eyes. “Your mother had marked this page with a card. It wasn’t difficult to find the passage.” He handed the book to Zoey and watched as her eyes scanned the page, then in a soft voice, began to read.

“
‘She wanted, more than anything, for the boy to know he could always come home. That the places he had loved would always be waiting for him, that it would never be too late.’ I have read that ten times, and never made the connection,” she told him. “And she did something like this in every book?”

“Every book.” He nodded.

“She never told me.” Zoey leaned back against the door frame and shook her head. “How ’bout that? She never told me. And
every
book held a message?” She repeated incredulously.

He nodded again.

“Amazing. Now I will have to go back and read each one again and see if I can find your passages.”

“Most of them are pretty obvious, if you’re looking for them. Mostly just a little something to let me know that I—and my mother—hadn’t been forgotten.”

“That was so lovely of her to do that.”

“Yes. Yes, it was.”

“When you see her, you’ll have to tell her that you remember the passages.”

“I already did.”

“Did what? Tell her, or saw her?”

“Actually, both. I stopped out today to see
…
” He cleared his throat. “To see the place.”

“This was the first time…
?”

“Yes.”

“Nicky and I used to wonder if you ever came back. If, when no one was there, you would walk through the house, or go out into the fields or the ba
rn
.”

“No. I never did.”

“Why, Ben?” she whispered. “Why did you stay away from us for so long?”

He looked across the room and began to say something, then stopped, and gave a half shake of his head, as if what he thought, what he felt, could not be expressed.

“Come into the kitchen and I’ll make some tea.” She held her hand out to him, her instincts telling her that this was painful ground, that perhaps what she had perceived as rudeness had hid something much deeper than bad manners.

His soft chuckle was unexpected.

“What’s so funny?” She began to withdraw her hand, but he reached out for it and took it before she could hide it in her pocket.

“That’s the second time today that one of the Enright women has invited me for tea.” He squeezed her hand lightly. “Except that your mother plied me with pineapple upside-down cake as well.”

“Well, I’m afraid I can’t top that. But I might have a cookie or something to throw your way.”

“Better yet, why don’t you let me take you to dinner? We could sit and talk and I can try to make up for being such a bozo the other day.”

“I’m not really dressed to go out.” She frowned, pulling at the front of her sweatshirt, which still bore tiny bits of leaves and dirt. “And it would take a while for me to get cleaned up.”

“Well, you could always make one of those cheese omelets I saw you cook on the air the other day.”

Zoey groaned.

“But you have to promise to keep the shells out,” he added.

“That is a promise I could not keep. But I do a mean take-out.” She pulled him by the hand into the kitchen, where the room was brighter and less intimate than the dark shadows of her office had been. Even Ben’s mood seemed to lighten.

“Zoey, you weren’t kidding, were you?” He flipped through the take-out menus Zoey had handed to him. “Chinese, Mexican, pizza, Italian, a deli,
Thai
…
”

“Georgia calls it the ‘culinary league of nations.’
” Zoey laughed. “My sister does not understand the entire concept of
take-out
food. Georgia either cooks and eats in, or goes out to eat. She does not
take out
to
eat in.
”

“Well, which do you recommend?”

“Ummm
…” She p
eered over his shoulder and pondered. “I usually have Italian on Wednesdays.”

“Fine. Call in an order for two and we’ll go pick it up.”

She shook her head. “They deliver. It takes a little longer, though.”

“You have take-out delivered?”

“Just about every night that I’m home.”

“You have to be kidding.”

“Well, I do eat out several nights, when I’m working, and usually my friend CeCe comes for dinner once a week.”

“Ah, and you cook dinner for her.”

“No, she cooks.”

“You invite her for dinner and she cooks?”

“Usually she invites herself. She really enjoys cooking.”

“Then why doesn’t she invite you over to her house—”

“Because I have a great kitchen and she doesn’t.” She leaned back against the counter. “What is that look for?”

“I’m trying to figure out why you would have a beautiful kitchen like this built into your home if you never intend to use it.”

“I
use
it. I eat here. I sit here in the morning and have coffee and watch the birds on the feeder out there. Wally gave it to me for a housewarming gift.” She pulled a curtain aside and pointed out the window to a low hanging branch of a pine tree. “I just don’t do a whole lot of cooking. But someday, I might. And besides, the contractor talked me into it. He convinced me that if I ever wanted to move, I’d have a better chance of selling the house if it had a kitchen.”

Ben laughed, his face crinkling into remembered creases that had been mere pencil lines the last time she had seen them.

She handed him the menu with the flag of Italy on the front. “Any of the pasta dishes are wonderful, the chicken is to die for, and the shrimp wrapped in bacon with horseradish appetizer is a must.”

They made their selections and called them in. “Forty minutes,” Zoey told Ben when she hung up the phone. “What can I offer you to drink while we wait? I have diet Pepsi, sparkling water and tea—both iced and hot—and I think there’s some wine.”

“Actually, I think I’d like a cup of hot tea.” He eased himself into one of the comfortable-looking chairs that stood around the small kitchen table and stretched his leg out, grateful to be off his throbbing ankle.

“So. Did you have a good visit with my mother today?” Zoey asked, wondering why her mother hadn’t called to tell her that Ben had been out to the house. “And what did you think of the changes she has made to the property over the years?”

He frowned, trying to recall changes. The things that had meant the most to him had not changed at all.

She counted them off on her fingers. “The indoor pool, the sunrooms, the exercis
e room, the new barn
, the indoor riding ring
…”

“Oh. Right. Wonderful,” he said. “I think it’s wonderful that she’s done so much for herself. For her own comfort.”