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CHAPTER THREE

IT WASN’T EVEN ten o’clock, yet already the morning had managed to turn into one nonstop nightmare after another.

On the drive home, Merry discovered that Charlene was capable of speech. So far, though, the only words she’d freely offered were—“You’re taking me home, right?”

And that was the last sign of animation she’d gotten out of the girl. They’d collected a suitcase of stuff, stashed it in the back of the Mini, had the caretaker sign a form releasing Charlene to her care, and started out.

After that, the kid locked herself in the passenger seat and sat there like an obedient machine. She wasn’t rude. She just volunteered no smiles, no conversation. She sat with the literal posture of a marine—boots clomped on the ground, posture straight, eyes focused ahead.

Merry kept glancing over, trying to reconcile that stupid brush cut on the face of a little girl with big blue eyes and fragile features and a tiny rosebud of a mouth. It was like trying to pair peanut butter with pickles. The darn kid was tucked inside that seat belt as if she didn’t have a fear or emotion or worry in her life—and for darn sure, wouldn’t admit to one.

Merry felt so rattled she forgot what road signs she was supposed to be watching for. In fact, she was pretty sure she’d turned the wrong way out of the driveway from the get-go.

This silent business just couldn’t go on. “Charlene—” she started to say.

“If you don’t mind, I’d rather be called Charlie.”

“Okay. Charlie, then.” Merry smiled, thinking, Oh God, could an eleven-year-old girl be suffering from gender issues? Or transgender issues? Or whatever it was called when one gender wanted to be another? “Charlie, I don’t know if anyone told you who I am.”

Well, that at least forced a little more dialogue. “Of course people told me. Mr. Oxford told me I couldn’t go home until there was someone to take me. Then Mrs. Innes came to talk to me, and I heard that you were coming. So I could go home for a while.”

“More than for a while, Charlene—Charlie.” Cripes, she almost zoomed through a red light. And her hands on the wheel were slick as slides. She thought landing in suburbia was confounding, but this…she desperately wanted to help this little girl…only so far she hadn’t even caught a glimpse of a little girl inside those big, scruffy combat boots.

“We don’t know for how long,” Charlene said matter-of-factly. “Things may not work out. You don’t know me.”

“And you don’t know me. But we can both try fixing that, starting right now, okay?”

“Sure.” The child said “sure,” but her voice and posture said I don’t believe you. I don’t believe anyone.

Merry fumbled. She’d always been so gregarious that she figured she could talk to a wall, but how to get a conversation going with a youngster who didn’t seem to want to talk back? She said, “Maybe I can share something about myself, and then you can tell me stuff about you, all right?”

No answer.

“Okay! I’ll start!” God, had she ever seen that street corner before? She turned right. “I love dark chocolate. Bubble baths. Can’t stand peas. I never wear shoes if I can help it and tend to scream if I see a mouse…”

Okay, no response from the other side of the car, so trying to be cute wasn’t working. She tried a different tack. “I grew up in Minnesota, mostly in the country around Rochester—where the Mayo Clinic is. My dad’s an anesthesiologist. We never lived in a suburb like you do. We had a place on a lake, lots of woods. I have two sisters, but they’re both more than ten years older than me, so growing up, it was pretty much just me and my dad…”

Merry thought it might help for the child to know their circumstances were the same, the daughter-and-dad-living-alone thing, but Charlene showed no response to that either. Merry considered shutting up, but surely the more the child knew about her, the faster she’d start to feeling comfortable, right? So she bumbled on.

“I can’t say I was a great student. Mostly got Bs and Cs. Just couldn’t seem to stick with the books. Did the cheerleading thing…” Definitely didn’t add the promqueen type of history. Not to a girl wearing army fatigues. “I did a couple years in college, but just didn’t really have a career in mind…”

She tried to think, what to say, what not to say. “So I just started working. Worked as an assistant DJ for a radio station—that was fun. Worked in an insurance office—actually, that was kind of interesting, too. A way of helping people, hearing about their lives. Was a management trainee at Ann Taylor for a while…”

Finally, a voice piped up from the passenger seat. “You don’t have any idea where you’re going, do you?”

“Huh?” How many times had her dad asked her that in real life? Was she ever going to get a clue where she was going, find a job she wanted to stick with, a place she was willing to stay?

But apparently Charlene meant something else entirely. The child said patiently, “You keep driving in the wrong direction. I mean, I don’t know where you’re trying to go. But you’re headed the wrong way if you’re trying to drive toward home. My home.”

“We are headed toward your home. Um, I don’t suppose you know the way, do you?”

“Sure.” Finally, some conversation. Precise, clear directions.

Well, hell. They were only seven or eight miles out of the way. God knew, Merry had done worse. “You do want to go home, right, Charle—Charlie?”

“Yes.”

There. The first sign of emotion she’d seen so far. An honest yes. A desperate yes. A yes that captured Merry’s heart and made her determined to reach the child no matter what it took. And she reminded herself of the obvious. They were just getting started. No one ever promised her this was going to be easy, and she hadn’t expected it to be.

“What was it like,” she asked, “being with your great-grandmother this last week?”

Charlene scrunched up her nose. “Is that a trick question?”

“No. You were staying there, so I figured—”

“When we first moved to Virginia, I was really little, but I can remember my dad saying that was why. I mean, why Virginia. Because his grandmother was here and there was no one to take care of her. Only that was ages and ages ago. She doesn’t know who I am anymore. She doesn’t know who anyone is. Everybody there was nice enough. I just really, really want to be home.”

“You missed some school?” Merry already knew the answer to that question, but Charlene had finally started talking; she wanted to keep it going.

“Yeah, I know. That’s freaking everybody out. But I think that’s pretty stupid. I only missed a week or so, because it was still Christmas vacation before that. And I was already getting all As. And I could keep up just as well from the books as from classes anyway.” Her face suddenly turned toward Merry. “I’ll bet you’re thinking that I’m going to be a big problem. But I won’t be. I promise. If you just take me home, I won’t bother you. I won’t bother anybody. I don’t need anybody to take care of me.”

“Charlene, I wasn’t worried about that at all—”

“Charlie.”

“Charlie, then. I—”

“You’re lost again, aren’t you.” This time, the squirt didn’t waste time phrasing the comment like a question.

Merry said, “Looks like. Feel like a burger or an icecream cone or anything?”

“No.”

“Do you, um, know which way to turn from here?”

Merry zealously obeyed the eleven-year-old’s instructions. Left at the first light, then four blocks later and so on. It was a new experience, actually paying attention to directions, but it still didn’t seem to win her any brownie points.

She rashly assumed it might help warm up the waters if she tried talking about Charles. “I knew your dad back when you were just a toddler, when you two lived in Minnesota. We were really good friends. I thought the world of him.”

“Come on.”

“Come on?” She heard the disbelief, but had no idea where it was coming from.

“If you were such good friends, how come I never heard your name before? How come we never saw you?”

“We were good friends at the time of your parents’ divorce, Charlie. Maybe your dad didn’t talk about it because it was such a painful time for him—and it wasn’t something he wanted you to remember, either.”

Zip. Silence.

She pushed on. “But at the time, your dad talked about you all the time. How much he loved you. All his parenting ideas, how he wanted to raise you, how much he wanted you to be happy…”

When they finally pulled into the driveway, the kid bolted out of the car as if jet-propelled to get away from her. Merry hadn’t felt this wrung out since she’d paid for a fitness trainer—a foolish move she’d never repeated.

The culmination of the impossible morning, though, was when she got inside the front door, and found Charlene standing in front of the tree. “What is this?”

“Now I realize it’s past Christmas, but I knew you missed out on the holiday. I just thought it might help to try and make up.” Hell’s bells, back in Minnesota when she’d thought of this, the idea had seemed brilliant. Only now Merry realized the kid could think she was trying to buy her. Or trying to imply that a bunch of silly presents could make up for her dad’s death. How could a nice intention turn out so rotten wrong?

And Charlene kept looking at her as if she were from another planet. “That’s real nice of you,” she said politely. “But…it’s pink.”

“I know, I know. It was the only tree I could find this late after Christmas,” she lied.

“That’s okay,” she said.

But obviously nothing was okay. The kid sat down by the presents as if waiting for a shot at the dentist’s. She gingerly opened each gift and produced an obligatory “thank you” even when she didn’t have a clue what the item was.

Merry knew—knew—this was going all wrong, yet it was like changing your mind about a permanent in the middle of a hairdresser appointment. It was just too late, once they got that chemical going.

Charlie wasn’t trying to be difficult. She was so clearly trying to do anything Merry asked her, anything Merry wanted, whatever it took to be home. But everything Merry had chosen, from the Juicy Couture purse with the rabbit’s foot, to the tweed hat with the bumblebee pin, to the spangly beads, to the Ashton Kutcher poster…oh, God. Each thing was worse than the last.

The rock-bottom worst, though, were the pink cashmere socks with the butterfly motif.

“Wow,” Charlie said. The word hung in the air like a cooking odor.

When it was over, Merry perked up—because, hey, there was no place to go from rock-bottom but up, right? How could anything more ghastly happen that day?

GOD KNEW, HE LOVED his job, but as Jack pulled into the driveway, he was hungrier than a bear in spring.

No one had twisted his arm to skip lunch or work late. He just forgot the time. When people asked him what he did, he always responded “desk jockey” because that answer worked like a charm. No one ever asked him further questions. They just assumed he was some kind of bureaucrat—no surprise, since there were a lot of white-collar pencil pushers running around Langley and Arlington.

The label had an element of truth besides. Once he “retired” from the navy—Special Ops—he’d settled into a non-dangerous job. Truth to tell, he thought he made more of a difference now than when he’d fought for his country with a weapon in his hand, but whatever. He loved it.

Right now, though, he was conscious that he’d completely forgotten the clock, and he had one of those stomachs. The kind that went with a six-one, hundred-and-ninety-two-pound man. The kind that needed filling or he got real, real cranky.

Whistling up a storm, he took the porch steps two at a time, grabbed the mail, and shucked off his shoes inside the door. He flipped on lights, shocked to discover no one had done the laundry or picked up after him this morning. Of course, he had Hire-A-Wife coming on Monday, but somehow it always seemed a surprise, what complete chaos the house could turn into before they got here.

After the divorce, he’d changed some things in the house—like redoing the kitchen in chalk and stone. Maybe it wasn’t “decorating” on a woman’s terms, but smooth surfaces sure seemed easier to clean up. Still whistling, he flipped on the kitchen light and opened the freezer. Ages ago, he figured he needed both a fridge and freezer in the kitchen, because almost everything he ate came out of the freezer. Today that meant lasagna, garlic bread, and a cherry-berry pie with—he checked—half a container of Cool Whip to put on top.

Of course, it all had to be cooked—but that just meant throwing it all in the oven—except for the Cool Whip. Baking Cool Whip was not a good idea. It was the kind of lesson a guy only had to learn once. He got it all going, then scrounged around for some cashews to stave off imminent starvation. He punched on the kitchen TV and had just popped the lid on a soda—hadn’t had a single bite of food or sip yet, not even one!—when he saw her.

It had to be past ten. The night was a pitchy, witchy black, with one of those moaning winds that whispered through the trees. A full moon kept sneaking around the clouds now and then, though, so he could see her clearly enough.

She was sitting on her back porch. On the cold cement. She had her head in her hands, in a posture that sure looked as if she were crying her heart out.

She’d left the back door gaping open behind her. What was with that woman and doors?

He chomped down on the salty cashews, chewing furiously. Moonlight shined on her head as if her profile were illuminated with silver dust. Even though she was outside, it was unlikely anyone could see her but him. All the bushes and landscaping around the house sheltered the back porch from view.

But he was stuck being able to see her. Far, far too clearly. None of his business, he told himself, and chewed another handful of cashews even more furiously. He didn’t do the white-knight thing, not for anyone, not anymore. How could it possibly be his problem, that a stranger decided to have a boo-hoo fest in his vision?

He grabbed the soda bottle, then chunked it back on the counter. It was colder than ice out there. She didn’t even have a hat on, for Pete’s sake.

As far as he could tell, she didn’t have the sense God gave a goose.

He yanked on a jacket and stomped outside. The closer he got, the more the view deteriorated.

She wasn’t a good crier. She was one of those throw-her-whole-self-into-it criers. Yesterday, he’d adjusted to the idea of having a flaky neighbor on the grounds that she was damn beautiful, and a guy was generally willing to tolerate a lot when the view was soothing.

But that deal was off. Her face was all blotchy. She was gasping for air. Eyes getting all swollen.

And that was before he was stuck seeing her up close.

“Hey,” he said. And then wanted to wince. Maybe he wasn’t feeling particularly happy, but he hadn’t meant to sound like a bear growling at her.

Her head jerked up as if someone had slapped her. “Oh. You. Good grief. I didn’t realize anyone could see me. I’m fine—”

Yeah, right. She was “fine” like cats flew. He wanted to suggest that she go back inside to cry her eyes out—after closing the damn door. But it seemed even he couldn’t be quite that coldhearted.

“You sick?” he asked bluntly.

She lifted her hands. Apparently the simple question turned on a new blubbery tears switch, because out they came. “She hates me!”

He could have asked her who in God’s name she was talking about, but that was pretty silly, when the only conceivable subject of the problem had to be Charlie’s daughter. “I take it you met her today.”

“Yes. And I expected it to be tough, but not like this. This is so way beyond a mess. She hated the pink tree—”

“No kidding?”

“Her problems are beyond anything I know how to cope with. I don’t even know where to start. She doesn’t want to start—not with me. She doesn’t want to talk to me, doesn’t want me around—”

He sank on the cement next to her, not because he wanted to continue this conversation, but because if he was trapped listening, it’d just been too long a day to stand indefinitely in the cold. “You don’t think you could be jumping to conclusions? She doesn’t even know you, Marta.”

“Merry, not Marta. And it’s Merry as in M-e-r-r-y, not as in M-a-r-y.”

He dug in his pocket for Kleenex. Because he often jogged on cold mornings, he tended to carry a bunch. Apparently the last time he’d run out and ripped off some paper towels. Whatever. They enabled her to blow her nose. To give her credit, she didn’t waste time apologizing for crying or make it out like it was a big to-do that he’d seen her.

When she quit blowing, she said, “You said you knew Charlie. So you had to know his daughter, right?”

“Well, sure. I mean, she was around all the time, but I can’t say how well I knew her. Charlie and I were great buddies, good neighbors together. Shared a beer often enough, bitched about yard work, did some fence talk about raising kids, life, ex-wives. Neither of us pried. We just got along. I liked him.”

“I did, too. From the first time I met him, there was just this…click. Not a sexual click. Just a friendly one. He was straightforward and funny and bright. And caring—”

“You liked him so well you never saw him once in the last five years?”

“I take it that’s how long he lived here.” The faucet had almost quit dripping, but now it gushed again. “No, I never saw him here. And I never imagined that he’d live in a place like this.”

“Okay.” He washed a hand over his face. “The whole neighborhood’s been asking the same questions. You hadn’t seen him in years. You never met his daughter. You didn’t know anything about his current life, apparently. So how did you end up being Charlene’s guardian?”

“Well, I’m not ‘the guardian’ exactly. More a guardian trainee. And if I can’t make this work a lot better than it did today, I’ll be flunking the course for sure. Which would be fine, if it was just about me. But darn it, it’s about what happens to Charlene. And the thing is—”

She seemed to do a lot of emotional talking with her hands, which meant she almost smacked him in the nose. He ducked. “The thing is…what?”

“The thing is that everyone was against my doing this. My dad. My sisters. My friends. They all kept telling me I was being crazy impulsive to just up and quit my job. Sublet my place. Put all my stuff in storage, except for what I could fit in the car, and just move—”

So there were intelligent people in her life, Jack thought, but it was the same old story about being able to lead a horse to water. “And you did all this for a stranger? A girl you didn’t know from Adam?” She looked at him, with a fresh bout of diamonds in her eyes. “Hell, I’m not trying to upset you more. I’m trying to understand why you did this.”

“I did it because she had no one else!”

“That may be, Merry. But that should have been her father’s problem. Not yours.”

“Maybe so. But Charlie kind of made it my problem by not handling it himself. After his divorce, he went to the trouble of making a will. That was when I knew him, when he was making that first will, trying to plan for Charlene in case something happened to him. I have no idea why he didn’t change the will in all this time, but as far as I can tell, there simply was no one else he could leave her with.”

“But that doesn’t make it your problem, Merry.”

“But it does. Because I can’t imagine abandoning a child to foster care if there’s any choice. And I am a choice. I’m free, no husband or kids, no ties, no job I couldn’t shake loose from. I love people and I love kids. And to tell you the truth, I just assumed that I’d love her, but…” She made an emotional gesture. “I think she sees me as an alien from another planet.”

He squinted at her. “Trust me, you don’t remotely look like a Klingon.”

“I’m not kidding! She thought I was talking a foreign language. I couldn’t do anything right, or anything that made any sense to her.” Out poured more froth. “She didn’t even know what a hair scrunchie was.”

“You’re kidding.” He didn’t have a clue what a hair scrunchie was either, but he finished the last of the mop-up with the edge of his glove. Might be a few tears still glistening from those thick, soft eyelashes, but she was definitely starting to dry up.

“I put some fresh flowers in her room. She took them back to the kitchen. I got her to open the other presents, but when she saw the rhinestone tee, she looked at me as if I’d sprouted a third head. Apparently she doesn’t listen to music. At least not ‘tweenie music. And I happened to get lost driving from the rest home this morning. She thinks I’m dumb. She thinks I’d get lost in a closet. And you know what?”

“What?”

“I do. Get lost in closets. I admit I’m not the most logical card in the deck, but that doesn’t make me a cream puff, Jack. She looks like a marine.”

The way she said “Jack” triggered a buck in his pulse. A sexual buck.

He felt the first fringe of fear.

She was not a woman he wanted to feel that buck for…but he couldn’t seem to help it. She was talking to him as if she knew him. As if they were friends. As if she inherently assumed he was someone she could be honest with. He couldn’t think of way to respond except straight. “She’s grieving.”

“Oh, God. I know that. But that’s also the terrifying part. Because I want to help her, and I’m afraid if we don’t get along, that I could make it worse.”

He’d waited as long as he could, but now he motioned to the back door. “You want me to close the door there?”

“No, no. I deliberately left it open. She fell asleep. But I’m afraid she could wake up, think no one was there, that she’d been abandoned. I want to be able to hear her.”

So at least this time there was a reason why they were heating the entire outdoors, even if he didn’t buy it as a logical choice himself. He cut back to the chase, understanding that she needed direct information. “About the clothes she’s wearing…first off, the uniform’s army, not marine. But to put a general frame on that picture, when Charles first died, a teacher of hers came over to stay at the house until the funeral. Authorities had already figured out that she had no one, got the lawyer and court system involved. I don’t know exactly how it all went down, but when the funeral was over, a social worker had become part of the story, and had decided that she could camp out for another week at the rest home where her great-grandmother is. The idea was to buy enough time for the lawyers to do their thing. Hell, I’m bogging this down with the side details, but I’m just trying to explain the timetable of how things happened—”

“And I want to know. In fact, I’d like to know anything you’re willing to tell me. I’ve really been batting in the dark.” The tears had definitely stopped now.

“Well, getting back to the issue of the army uniform business. After the funeral, the social worker went in the house with her, waited while she packed some things. I was at the funeral, although honestly, I don’t remember what she wore. I can’t say I ever paid any attention to her clothes or things like that. I mean she’s just a child, so whatever. But the thing is…when she came back outside, she was wearing her dad’s clothes. Not straight army, but army reserves.”

Merry brightened up as if a lightbulb dawned in her head. “So,” she said thoughtfully, “She’s wearing her dad’s clothes. Not hers.”

“Yeah. At least, that’s what it sounds like.”

“And the brush cut? Did she always wear her hair in a brush cut?”

“Um, no. Truthfully, I don’t remember how she wore her hair. Kind of short, I guess. But not buzz-cut short.” He had to think. “But, Charlie—”

“He wore it military short? I never saw it that way.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think guys change their hairstyles the way women do. They kind of stay with what they start with. But a few years back—well, I guess he got fed up, was annoyed because his hair tended to curl or something, said it was just easier to shave it off.”

“So her hairstyle is mimicking his, too.” Merry’s mind appeared to be racing now. Jack wasn’t sure if that was a good idea—not when her mind was already on the capricious and unpredictable side. “And she wants to be called Charlie. Not Charlene. Like her dad was called Charlie. So…it’s all starting to add up. Of course, that doesn’t make her behavior any less serious. But at least it’s better than worrying the child wants a sexchange operation at age eleven.”

He wanted to laugh. “Um, I don’t think you’ll find she was ever on the girly-girl side.”

“That has to be the understatement of the century.”

“She adored her dad. They did tons of stuff together. He really enjoyed time with her. And she just loved him from here to hell.” With alarm he saw her eyes well again, and chose a different topic at jet speed. “Hey, for the record, I don’t know what a scrunchie is, either. Is that some kind of code? Vocab or intel for a specific kind of initiation or something like that?”

She laughed. It wasn’t a big laugh, more on the tepid side, but it was obviously a mood changer for her. She was over the crying.

And something else changed at that moment. He didn’t know what. But until that instant, he’d just been sitting there, on the cold cement porch step, the heat from the house reaching his back, the streetlights down the neighborhood the only real illumination except for moonlight.

Suddenly, he was conscious of sitting close to her. Not hip-bumping close—not intrusive close, exactly, but close. She suddenly turned, facing him eye to eye, and abrupt as a slap he realized something else.

Possibly he’d recognized there was chemistry before this. Why wouldn’t there be? She was gorgeous. And he’d always had a hefty dose of testosterone. It didn’t matter if she was on the flaky, ditzy side; his body was always going to respond to a beautiful woman. Still, a guy on the experienced side of thirty-five knew enough to ignore the bulge in his zipper.

Like in her case.

One look and he’d known she was trouble clear through. Nothing he’d seen or heard from her since had changed his mind.

So he wasn’t looking at her that way. She was the one who was suddenly looking at him. Her expression changed. A quick frown furrowed her brow, almost gone before it started, as if she’d discovered something curious that she wasn’t expecting. And then, swift as a spring breeze, she suddenly leaned closer to him. Suddenly put a hand on his shoulder to brace herself. Suddenly tilted her head.

Suddenly kissed him.

Hell, was a guy ever prepared for Armageddon? Her mouth was satin-soft, the scent of her dizzying. His body perked up as if he hadn’t been laid in a blue moon. His heart abruptly remembered that it was lonesome. Beyond lonesome. And she was exactly the one it’d been lonesome for all this time.

More mortifying yet, she wasn’t coming onto him. It was just a kiss. A kiss where she touched his shoulder, then cupped his head, then simply laid those irresistible lips on him for a single miraculous second. Maybe two.

Then she eased back, still looking at him. “Thank you, Jack,” she said quietly, and then stood up, smiled. And simply went in the house. Even closed the door.

Hokay, he told himself. Hokay. But it wasn’t okay or hokay. Slowly he lurched to his feet and hiked back to his place. He told himself there was nothing wrong with what just happened, no reason to make more of that kiss than it was. She’d just apparently been trying to express a thank-you for talking to her. And that was just fine.

It was just…he’d never expected to feel anything honest and real with her.

He stomped in through his back door, hung up his jacket and abruptly caught the smell of his burned dinner. His very burned dinner. His inedible—very burned dinner.

Eventually the smoke cleared out, but Jack stayed fuming a while longer.

The new neighbor wasn’t working out at all well.