meals, quickly prepared, and only Wendy kept him just about on the straight and narrow with the main food groups.
He closed the windows.
Vivian had been gone half an hour or more. It wasn’t his place to mention this to Charlotte.
The vegetables he’d finished cutting up were in a pressure cooker and he’d cleaned the chopping block. Everywhere he looked he imagined Vivian there, doing whatever she did, and the feelings he got disturbed him. He wasn’t a man who moved fast when it came to women, not anymore. Once he’d made that mistake…no, not a mistake—his haste had given him Wendy.
“Vivian goes off on her own like this,” Charlotte said without looking up. “Always has. She thinks a lot and likes a little time alone sometimes. She’s unusual in the kind of way that catches a person’s interest.”
“I can tell she’s unusual,” Spike said with honesty.
“She doesn’t have a temper, mind. Just never gets cross. Very easygoing, very reliable. A good mind, too, and creative.”
Spike said, “I’m sure.”
“Never a bad word about a soul,” Charlotte continued. “Heart of gold and the patience of a saint.”
He crossed his arms and rested his chin on his chest. If he didn’t know better he’d think Vivian’s mother was giving a commercial message about her girl.
From the corner of her eye, Charlotte saw Spike lean against a counter and seem deep in thought. She had good instincts where men were concerned. She’d always been able to pick out the good ones and she was sure Spike Devol was one of the best. David had been the best of all and she’d picked him for herself. Fortunately he’d picked her, too, and they’d made love at first sight a reality.
She blinked back tears she rarely indulged and finished rolling out her crust.
The silence grew too long for Spike. “Is Vivian your only child?”
“One and only. We would have liked more but it just didn’t happen.”
“Maybe there’s just one child meant specially for some of us?” he suggested, feeling awkward.
“I’d like to meet your Wendy,” Charlotte said. “I hear she’s a sweet one. But you’re young, you’ve got plenty of time to have more beautiful children. Would you like more?”
Charlotte Patin asked her questions easily so even the real personal ones didn’t sound out of line, not too much out of line. “I can’t think about that now. Between bein’ Deputy Sheriff and runnin’ a business—and keeping up with a busy little girl and an ornery, well, with my dad—there isn’t much time left over.”
“But you wouldn’t mind having more?” The crust moved magically from a board to cover a full pie dish. “Sometimes more are easier, or so I’ve been told.”
“I guess I wouldn’t mind,” Spike said with the sensation that he’d finally said what Charlotte wanted to hear, although if she was matchmaking he couldn’t understand why. Vivian could have any man she wanted and even if she were attracted to him, which he just thought she might be, she wouldn’t be interested in getting too close to his baggage.
“Better get on with it, then,” Charlotte said. “It’s best to have your children when you’re young so you’re still young when they leave you. Then it’s time for the second honeymoon, the one that keeps on going.”
Spike’s smile charmed Charlotte. She decided he made her feel a whole lot younger herself. Dimples like that, and those teeth. His children couldn’t help being handsome—any more than Vivian’s could.
“I do believe you’re laughing at me, Spike Devol,” she said, tipping her head on one side.
“Just smiling at the thought of beautiful babies,” he told her. “Now that’s a picture worth smiling about. When you hold your own baby for the first time—” he shook his head “—you feel the happiest you ever felt, then sad at the same time because that moment is too short. I like having the memory.”
Well, Charlotte thought, if he wasn’t the nicest man she’d met in a long time. Not opposed to more children, either, and a hard worker. It was time Vivian married and had some grandchildren—children that was, grandchildren for Charlotte who was wasted without any. She decided not to mention Spike’s father. She’d already heard Homer’s reputation around Toussaint. Word had it that he was a bitter man with no time for women.
“Everyone says your dad idolizes little Wendy,” she said. Couldn’t be any harm in saying that.
“She’s the only one he gives a damn about.”
Charlotte looked at him and smiled a little. He blushed easily and she liked that. “That must be what he wants you to think. I never did meet a parent who didn’t love their own child.”
Spike wasn’t so sure about that but he kept his own counsel. “I can watch things here if you want to go check on Vivian.” That sounded nonchalant enough. He was beginning to worry she’d hidden herself away because she didn’t want to be around him.
“No need,” Charlotte said lightly. “She probably decided to shower and change. The day kinda got away from us.”
Spike spent a few satisfying moments considering Vivian in the shower, then rubbing her skin dry until it turned pink.
The front doorbell rang and the heavy door opened, then shut with a reverberating thud. Eventually a voice he recognized as belonging to Cyrus called from the passageway into the behind-stairs area, “Charlotte, where are you?”
“In the kitchen,” she called back. “Come on in.”
Cyrus entered, his black hair plastered to his head and his shirt stuck to his shoulders and chest.
“You’re soaked,” Spike said. “It must be tipping down to do that on the way from your car.”
“Come stand by the oven,” Charlotte told Cyrus. “Let me guess, you won’t listen to reason because you know everything, so that beat-up Chevy of yours is parked out by the road yet again.”
Cyrus looked sheepish. “Be nice to my Chevy,” he said of the maroon station wagon he’d driven for years and which several parishioners managed to keep running most of the time. “I park it there because it’s easier if I need a tow truck.” His shirt started to steam a little in the warmth from the oven. “Remind me to fill you in on Ozaire Dupre, Spike. He’s hopping mad about you taking food out of his family’s mouths…his words. Exaggeration, of course.”
Spike ground his back teeth. “There’s enough boiling business for both of us in this town. He just thinks he should get it all. Okay, we’ll get to him later.” Ozaire was the custodian at St. Cécil’s and his wife, Lil, kept house for Cyrus. Spike didn’t know how anyone could put up with them.
“Put your troubles aside, Father, you’re in plenty of time for a good, hot meal,” Charlotte said and grimaced. “We had company that didn’t want to go home and she made me late with dinner.”
“I’ve eaten,” Cyrus said. “Thanks anyway. Madge made us muffulettas that must have weighed a pound apiece. That girl can make magic with a mess of oysters and mud-bugs.”
“She surely can,” Spike agreed. Cyrus and Madge sometimes troubled him. The priest was married to his calling and his church and Madge served the man and his passions with cheerful efficiency, but Spike had known both of them too long not to have felt the bond between them, the unrequited love—at least on Madge’s part, and Cyrus’s affection and protectiveness toward her.
“You hung up on me, Charlotte,” Cyrus said.
Spike watched the woman’s facial expression with interest. He’d swear she had no recollection of hanging up on Cyrus.
“I did not,” she said. “Well, maybe I didn’t exactly