Katie whimpered and pointed.
“It’s okay, honey,” Stephanie said, though it wasn’t.
She released her seat belt and pushed open the car door.
The smell of burned wood permeated the air, making her daughter wrinkle her nose.
As Stephanie started toward the house, Ben warned, “Don’t go inside. We don’t know what’s secure.”
Katie clung to her mother’s hand. Stephanie trembled as they walked to the side of the house past the many azaleas and hydrangeas, past the hawthorns and bridal-wreath bushes to where their bedrooms were located. The garden that had contained her flowering perennials had been crushed and was covered with soot. The annuals were gone, trampled and destroyed in the attempts to get her daughter and put out the fire. The walls to the bedrooms had been severely damaged, especially Katie’s room.
Her stomach turned, and she felt queasy as she saw how much damage Katie’s room had sustained.
Her daughter wouldn’t have lived had Ben waited for the firemen to get her out.
“Thank you, God,” she whispered, shuddering.
Katie tugged on her hand, slipped free and ran toward the blackened wood.
“Katie! Watch out. It’s dangerous there.”
“My bear, Mama,” she said, and squatted in the mess that had once been the outside wall to her room.
Stephanie hurried after her and got to her just as she stood.
Sure enough, black-coated but amazingly not too wet or burned, was the white teddy Katie liked to sleep with.
The little girl pounded the bear on the ground. “She’s dirty.”
“She sure is,” Ben said, walking up. “We can wash her out at my house,” he offered.
Stephanie wasn’t sure how well the bear would fare being washed, but she didn’t argue. Instead she said, “Mr. Ben is right. We can clean it all up.”
If only she could say the same thing about the house, she thought as her daughter ran toward the car to show John what she’d found.
Katie didn’t know what a stranger was.
Stephanie surveyed the rest of the house from where she stood.
Ben walked next to her. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”
“It looks pretty bad,” she said and laughed. It was not a laugh of joy but of welling despair. It was a laugh with a touch of sarcasm, a laugh that escaped to cover the tears that would come otherwise.
She had the oddest feeling Ben knew that as he slipped an arm around her and gave her shoulders a hug.
“We’ll come back tomorrow and go through everything. Just from this side it looks like the fire started toward the back and spread. I guess breaking your daughter’s window gave the fire enough oxygen to really destroy her room, but I’d be willing to bet the rest of the house is intact, if not a little water-and smoke-damaged.”
“I don’t know,” she murmured. “Standing here…”
“You need to rest.”
Glancing at the man beside her, she realized he was right. She was numb.
He was very perceptive.
Studying him, she realized he wasn’t feeling as well as he sounded, either. “Does your throat hurt as much as mine does?”
A crooked grin tilted one corner of his mouth. “I don’t know. How much does your throat hurt?”
“Feels like a rusty railroad track, and the train derailed somewhere along the line,” she admitted.
He chuckled. “Come on. Let’s go to the house. You can take one of those pills the doctor gave you—after you shower.”
“Clothes!” she said, suddenly realizing all she had were the pajamas she was dressed in.
Ben glanced down, realizing what she was wearing.
“Ah, um…” He stepped away from her, looking acutely uncomfortable. “You can borrow one of my shirts. You really shouldn’t go in there until we’re certain how stable the structure is. And your daughter, well, can she wear a T-shirt maybe?”
He acted like he was embarrassed or unsure of the offer. To her it sounded like a lifeline. “Thank you—again,” she said.
He nodded.
“Let’s go,” he said firmly but gently.
She nodded and headed to the car. “Thank you again,” she whispered as she started to climb in the car.
Ben smiled and said as he shut her door, “We’re going to have to talk about this thank-you thing.”
She thought they could talk, but after seeing what her daughter’s former bedroom looked like, she’d never get tired of saying it.
No matter what he said.
Chapter Four
Family are the people who know everything about you and are willing to comment on everything even if it’s not their business.
—Ben’s Laws of Life
“Do you need to call your boss? Maybe some friends to let them know you’re okay?”
Ben stood in the living room watching the way the little girl, Katie, clung to her mom as her mom hung up the phone from the insurance company and then dialed Katie’s school. She had said those were the two calls she had to make. He thought it was strange that she didn’t call friends or a boss. They looked so odd standing there in his kitchen, covered with soot, dirtying his phone. The child clung to the mother and the grimy teddy bear clutched to her chest with equal desperation.
He wondered what the two saw in his house. Trying to see it through their eyes, he noted the stark wood furniture with the brown cushions. A large tan rug covered part of the polished wooden floor in the lower section of the living room where he stood.
Various pads and pencils were tossed on the coffee table and end tables. The shelf over the fireplace was empty except for a few gifts his sister had gotten him—mugs, a picture of her, her husband and two kids.
There were no knickknacks or crocheted table covers like his grandmother had had sprinkled all over her house. He had some in a box somewhere that he’d gotten when Grandma Betsy had died, but he’d never bothered to unpack them.
He hadn’t understood their use—until now. The house looked sort of bare without such things.
“No. I mean, there’s the church, but then there’s not a lot they can do—except maybe clothes and food—after I figure out what I’ll need. As for friends, well…” She shrugged. “And, well, I’m my own boss, actually. I do ad campaigns for businesses. Art and things like that. Graphics. I also do Web sites.” She shrugged and replaced the phone in the cradle, which rested on the wall near the kitchen.
He was glad he tended to keep a clean—if empty—house. The kitchen had a couple of dirty dishes in the sink, but that was it. The dining room table in front of the patio doors was spotless except for a few more pads of paper.
Suddenly, he smiled triumphantly. There were place mats there—the ones his sister had bought him last Christmas.
Realizing the woman was staring at him, he said, “That’s interesting. You know, I was thinking of hiring someone to create a Web page for me and work up an ad. My business has been picking up this last year, and I wanted to focus on expanding it through the media.”
It was the truth.
It was also an invitation for her to talk. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this awkward around a woman. Seeing her there in her pink frilly pajamas… Oh man,