The curl of a smile turned into a sneer, then disappeared completely. “She was my wife.” He turned on his heel and left the room.
“Oh, dear.” Hazel watched him go.
“I thought he was getting better,” Faye—or Lois?—said with a sigh. “It’s a good thing school’s back in session tomorrow or he’d be shut up in his cabin for days.”
“Grief is a dreadful thing when it turns inward,” Hazel said very softly. “I’ll get you aspirin and a glass of water.”
“How long has Katherine been dead?”
“Three and a half years.” Janet took three steps into the room. “We don’t talk about it.”
“I see. I’ll apologize before I leave.”
“Best not mention it again,” Janet said flatly. “We have a baby bed.” She glanced over her shoulder toward the doorway. “But it’s in the attic. The twins and I will bring it down tomorrow.”
“Please, don’t bother. We won’t be imposing on you any longer than necessary. If we push a chair or something against the edge of the bed so he doesn’t roll off, he can sleep with me,” Katie said hurriedly. She didn’t want to think about Jacob Owens or his dead wife any more that night. It would be hard enough finding the courage to face him in the morning before she left this place.
If she ever saw him again. The prospect of never laying eyes on Jacob Owens again in her life was not quite as appealing as it should have been but she felt too miserable to analyze her feelings.
“We can arrange that.” Janet went off in search of furniture to act as a guardrail for Kyle. Hazel went to get the aspirin and a glass of water. Faye—or was it Lois?—smiled a good-night and left the room, as well. Katie and Kyle were alone.
“I feel a little like Alice down the rabbit hole,” Katie confessed to her son as she nuzzled the soft, warm skin at the nape of his neck. “Except I don’t think there’s a tall, dark, very handsome ogre in Alice in Wonderland.”
She considered what she’d just said. “Handsome?” The word came out more of a snort than a question. “The man is not handsome. He’s a monster. A son of a…gun,” she finished hastily, remembering how quickly Kyle picked up new words these days. “But,” she said thoughtfully, sitting her son in the middle of the bed as she started to undress. “I think he’s an ogre with a broken heart.”
“Is she asleep?” Jacob asked his aunt Hazel as she came through the swinging door that separated the dining room from the kitchen.
“Yes. She’s exhausted, poor thing, but I don’t think she’s seriously ill.”
“Great-grandmother’s cherry bark tea will fix her right up,” Almeda said from her customary place at the head of the oblong hickory table that had stood in the window alcove since his father’s father was a boy.
Janet followed her sister into the kitchen. She was trailed closely by the twins. “Jacob. We thought you’d gone back to your cabin.” The younger Owens sisters exchanged speaking looks.
“I wanted to check on the furnace before I turn in for the night,” he said, not quite truthfully. He didn’t want his aunts alone in the house with that woman, although he didn’t want to say so and bring their combined wrath down on his head. He didn’t trust Kate Smith’s story, or her intentions, even though she did look sick and tired and terrified beneath her know-it-all facade. He wondered, briefly, what she was really running away from.
Kyle’s father? He wasn’t altogether certain he believed her statement that he was dead. The information had come too easily to her lips. After three and a half years he could barely speak the words aloud.
Was she fleeing a lover? That was more likely.
Or the law? Possible, but for some reason he didn’t think so.
“Jacob, I’m speaking to you.” Almeda’s voice cut into his thoughts. “Seeing you’re so worried about us having a stranger under our roof, do you wish to spend the night in the house?”
“Maybe I will,” he said too quickly.
Almeda narrowed shrewd dark eyes beneath white eyebrows. “The invitation is withdrawn if you plan to haunt the upper hall and spy on our guest all night long.”
“The thought never crossed my mind,” he lied.
“Yes, it did.” Almeda wrapped her gnarled hands around her mug of tea. “You think she’s going to murder us in our beds.”
Jacob laughed; it was rusty and almost devoid of humor, but it was a laugh, nevertheless.
Faye kicked Lois under the table but Jacob didn’t notice.
“No, but she might run off with all the money and silver in the house.”
“In her condition?”
“She’d never get out of the yard with Weezer on the porch,” Janet pointed out.
“Good point,” Jacob conceded.
“She’s nothing but a poor, frightened young woman who’s running away from someone or something that has her scared half to death,” Hazel said, echoing his own reluctant conclusions. “I’m certain of it.”
“Well, I’m not.” Jacob leaned his hips against the tiled countertop. He folded his arms across his chest. “But I promise not to harm a hair on her head.”
Almeda refused to be drawn into an argument. “Good. That’s settled. Remember, she’s our guest and she stays as long as she needs our hospitality.”
“It’s the Christian thing to do.”
“It is the season, after all,” Lois said quietly.
“It’s still November.”
“Close enough,” said Faye. “Christmas is my favorite time of year.”
Jacob set his coffee mug on the counter. “I give up. She stays as long as she wants. I’m going back up to my place to put some more wood in the stove. I’ll check on Weezer once more, then I’ll come back here and spend the night in my old room.”
“That sounds like an excellent idea.” Almeda seconded the suggestion. “We should all be in our beds.”
“Not me,” Janet said. “I’m going to watch Tales from the Crypt. Anyone care to join me?”
“No.” Hazel shuddered. “I hate that show. It gives me nightmares.”
“We’re going to bed,” the twins said, taking turns. “We’ve got a million things to do tomorrow.”
“I meant what I said about the lights on the roof,” Jacob reminded them. “Not till it thaws.”
“Of course.” They grinned. “If the sun comes out you can do it as soon as you get home from school.”
Jacob shook his head. He was defeated, and he knew it. “Good night.” He shrugged into his coat and headed out into the snow.
“He smiled,” Faye said in a stage whisper after he’d gone.
“And he laughed. Almost,” her twin sister added. “I can’t remember the last time I saw him laugh.”
It was many hours later when Jacob returned to the house. He’d forgotten the term papers that needed to be graded. But the back door was unlocked for him, as he knew it would be. His aunts were the most trusting souls on earth. And thank God, beyond ordinary common sense precautions, in Owenburg they still could be. He shook the snow off his coat and hung it on a hook by the door. He did the same with his hat, then took off his shoes. He walked through the house in his stocking feet, climbed the stairs and stopped before his father’s and his grandfather’s room.