Ari was a beautiful child, again she found no features common to him and Jason Kendall. Lifting the child and the afghan Jason had covered him with, she found him lighter in weight than she thought he should be, but still heavy for her. She tried to put him on her shoulder, how Jace had held him, but he slipped down her body and she nearly sat him back on the sofa.
“Here, let me,” Jace said, coming to her rescue. In two strides he was by her side and taking the small bundle from her arms. He had set a small suitcase on the floor. It took a moment for them to exchange arms and legs. Kelly smelled the rain on Jace. The need to lean in closer and inhale deeply caught her off guard. Quickly, she lifted the suitcase, giving herself something to do to ward off the possibility that she might let her mind go where it wanted to. She turned and led them up the stairs, walking faster than usual.
She hadn’t thought about Jace in a while. All her energy was used up renovating the house and grounds. There were nights when she’d walk about the property and remember seeing him recklessly riding a horse over the jumping course. The old horse-racing track was farther away from the main house. Kelly thought Jace used it to annoy his brother.
He’d changed a lot. When she opened the door she would not have known him if he hadn’t given his name. The boyish good looks had been replaced with a rugged worldliness and an unhappiness that seemed to ooze from his pores. His body was solid, however. She’d felt that when he’d taken Ari from her grasp. His skin was tanned so he must have been outside a lot. The one thing he still had was the intensity that she had recognized as a teenager when she hung on the back fence and watched him ride.
Reaching the smallest guest room, Kelly switched on the light as she went inside. Rushing to the bed, she pulled the covers back and Jason laid the boy on the sheets. As Jason reached for the suitcase, she stepped out of his way and then left the two of them alone.
He came out of the room several minutes later. Kelly had checked the adjoining room to make sure it was clean and there were towels in the bathroom.
“You can sleep in this room,” she directed him.
“That’s all right. I’ll sleep here with Ari.”
“The two rooms are connected through the bathroom,” she told him. “It’s more comfortable in there. If Ari wakes up and calls for you, you’ll be close by. I’m sure, after such a long time traveling, you want someplace comfortable to sleep.”
“As tired as I am, I could sleep standing up,” he said in a road-weary voice.
“That won’t be necessary,” she told him with a smile. “Good night.”
Kelly left him. She turned to go back downstairs. It was late and she needed to turn off the lights and go to bed herself.
“Kelly,” Jason called.
She paused and turned.
“Thank you,” he finally said.
Kelly didn’t want to look at him. Her emotions were involved. Though clearly, to find out that he’d lost both his home and the woman he once loved in the same day was pushing him to the limit. It was a lot for anyone to handle.
“Good night,” was all Kelly could think to say. “It’s only one night,” Kelly whispered to herself. She owned the house now and no matter what stories she’d heard about Jason Kendall and how his father and brother had treated him, it was only one night.
* * *
SUNSHINE BLAZED THROUGH the huge windows that looked out on the back lawn. Kelly opened her eyes and squinted at the brightness. After all the rain the night before, the light seemed especially brilliant. She loved waking to sunshine and always left the drapes open. But it wasn’t the light that woke her today. The feeling of being watched encroached upon her sleep.
She was startled to see Ari’s eyes, barely higher than the coverlet, peering at her.
“Am I dead?” he asked.
Kelly blinked, pushing herself up on her elbows to see his entire face.
“Ari, why would you think you’re dead?”
“Everything is so white. And you’re an angel. Only an angel would know my name,” he answered in childlike logic.
Kelly looked at her bedroom. The cover was white, the rug was white and the walls were white. The totally white room had splashes of color in the throw pillows, and gold accents that Kelly had used to decorate the space. “Well, thank you,” she said. “But I am not an angel.”
“This is what the priest said heaven was like, except...” He trailed off.
“Except what?” Kelly prompted.
“Except for your wings.” He tried to look behind her as if she was hiding her angel wings within the folds of the bed cover.
Kelly laughed. “You’re not dead, Ari.”
He frowned and looked around the room, up at the ceiling, at her bed, and then back at her. “This isn’t heaven?”
“This is my bedroom.”
“All by yourself?” His eyes opened wide.
“I’m afraid so.”
“Wow!” he said. “Is my room for only me?” He pointed to himself as his boy-soprano voice went up hopefully at the end of the sentence.
Kelly sat fully up. She couldn’t tell the child he wouldn’t be staying. She’d only given Jason Kendall and his son a room for the night. Today they had to go.
“Where’s your father?” she asked instead of answering his question.
“I don’t know. Is he dead, too?”
“Ari, you’re not dead and neither is your dad.”
“What is this place? My dad said we were coming to his old house. This doesn’t look like a old house.”
Kelly stopped herself from correcting the boy’s grammar. “Actually, this is a very old house. It was built a long time ago.”
“Before I was born?”
Kelly smiled. “Before your father was born,” she told him. “People will want to come and see it when it’s complete. A lot of work has been done to make it look like it did back then.”
“Did you do it?”
She smiled. She’d forgotten that kids ask a lot of questions. “Yes, Ari, I did a lot of it.” Pushing her arms into the robe that matched her nightgown, she asked, “Are you hungry?”
He quickly began bobbing his head up and down.
“Good, then you can’t be dead. Because dead people don’t get hungry.”
He seemed to be weighing the truthfulness of that in his four-year-old mind. After a moment he nodded and she guessed he agreed with her.
“How about we go and get something to eat?” Kelly didn’t wait for an answer. She offered her hand and he took it. The two went downstairs to the kitchen.
“Wow,” he said again as they entered the spacious kitchen. “I never saw a room this big.”
Kelly was getting a picture of how they must have lived. Their home was probably a lot smaller in comparison. The house at the Kendall, constructed in 1860 by Caldwell Kendall on land that was a bequest upon his marrying a nearby landowner’s daughter, couldn’t be called a farmhouse. It wasn’t a purely serviceable structure. The Kendall was built to display the grandeur of the time.
The place had been magnificent when Kelly was a little girl. What it looked like when she bought it was another story. Slowly she was trying to give it back that glory. But it was expensive and she was having to find alternative means to keep it solvent.
“Do you like waffles?” she asked.
“What’s waffles?”