Sunburst

take care of him. So he’d take off and disappear until his father came back, worrying everyone sick. And if anyone dared criticize anything Joel McCrery did…” Martha shook her head expressively. “Nine years old and one time he took on a grown man who said Joel could have spent a penny’s more time on work and a penny less on Irish whisky. This was a smaller community then, and we all rather thought Joel was digging a hole for himself and dragging his son in with him, but for the most part we kept quiet. Maybe we were wrong. Everyone liked Joel; he just wasn’t a simple man… His wife died when Kyle was real young, and Joel was never the same after that. We all tried, but Kyle was the only one he cared for… And Kyle, he turned out fine once he stopped being a perfect little hellion. You’re trying to rub the finish off?” she questioned Erica curiously.

Erica looked at her hands, white-knuckled from the thorough polishing she was giving the wood. Martha was talking about loyalty in the way Kyle had related to his father, and loyalty was a word Kyle had treated with contempt and disparagement the night before. Digging a hole and dragging his son in struck another painful spot; if Kyle was in a hole, it was Erica’s nature to dig in with him, as if she couldn’t help herself.

She felt as if Martha had inadvertently provided the missing puzzle pieces with her casual comments. Troubled, she felt she finally had caught a glimpse of something that really mattered, that would really help her understand Kyle…but she could not put all the pieces together. She ached when she thought of Kyle as a child. Joel sounded irresponsible, Kyle as if he had far too much to handle for one little boy. Fiercely loyal…independent, needing no one… Those traits were all echoed in the mature Kyle. She thought fleetingly of an earlier conversation she’d had with him, when he’d seemed to feel guilty for not loving his father as he felt he should have…yet how could he? How much could anyone put on one little boy before he started feeling resentful? Before love changed to a sense of duty? But what did any of it have to do with their marriage?

“…class president,” Martha continued irrepressibly. “But he did have a reputation with the girls. Hell on wheels, I believe, is the polite phrase. Always knew he would never settle for a small-town girl like the ones he took out, though. In fact, I would have guessed you for Kyle’s wife just by the look of you.”

“What on earth do you mean by that?” Erica asked, surprised. The table was completely finished, shining under the midday sun. There were a half dozen bowls and various other items to put away, but…

“Oh, I can picture pretty well how you’d look if you were all dressed up. High class right down to the toenails, an aristocratic nose, silks and emeralds…”

Erica chuckled, with a pointed glance at her shorts and halter, well splashed by this time, her knees red from kneeling. “I see what you mean,” she said, deadpan.

“Oh, it’s there,” Martha insisted. “Believe it or not, it’s there, even dressed as you are. Thank God the personality doesn’t fit. From the time I was a teenager, I had a picture in my mind of the sort of girl Kyle would marry. She certainly wasn’t the kind to let a mutt jump all over her or get down on her hands and knees the way you have all morning. I figured her for a real beauty but a sheltered type; he was always so protective. Anyway…” Martha pivoted around, her hand screening the sun from her eyes, searching for the dog. She turned with a smile for Erica, who had both arms full of supplies to take back to the house. “I’ll see you-say, about six tonight? Bring Kyle, of course, if you can tear him away from the work.” She chuckled, adding, “Watch this.”

The hammering and sawing had stopped as the lunch hour approached. Lurch was lying on a pile of boards, surrounded by tools and half covered in sawdust, his head drooping in sleep. Martha called to him, but the dog didn’t even raise an eyelid. She marched to the truck, got in and started the engine, with another grin for Erica. Lurch sprang up instantly at the sound of the truck engine, and galloped past Erica in a blur of parti-colored fur. When the truck pulled out of the yard, the dog was settled in the back with his head angled out to catch the wind.

Chapter 8

Erica’s smile slowly faded as Martha’s pickup pulled out of sight. Balancing the assorted pails and buckets, she glanced toward the house. She knew Kyle was inside; it was lunchtime. She was going to have to face him and talk to him for the first time since last night, and she hadn’t the least notion of what she was going to say.

Her feet obligingly picked up and moved, but she was conscious of her disheveled hair, the skimpy halter top and shorts. Hardly the window-dressing sort of wife Martha had her figured for. The kind Kyle wanted? Her step faltered again at the door, weighted down by a frightening feeling of hopelessness. She’d learned a great deal about Kyle from Martha, but not enough to erase the feelings of frustration and hurt left by their argument, the memory of Kyle’s face when he had shouted at her… The bowls clattered in her arms and she raised her chin, her bleak eyes turning tawny in resolve.

As an entrance, it lacked something. Pushing the back door open with her hip, she hurried to the counter before half the clutter in her arms gave way entirely. The tiny iodine bottle managed to slip to the floor and roll around, barely noticed as she dropped the rest helter-skelter on the counter.

Kyle was sitting at the table; from the corner of her eye she saw an empty plate in front of him, and another plate with a sandwich obviously intended for her. She saw as well that he wore jeans and boots, that his bare chest and back were burnished from yet another morning in the sun… His light blue eyes silently caught hers.

She bent down to snatch up the iodine bottle, averting her eyes, thoroughly irritated. He was smiling, obviously amused at the chaotic mess of toothpaste and vinegar, iodine and ash…among other things. She had laughed at the same thing all morning…but she felt too tense now to smile, and she resented his mirth. At that moment, she resented everything about Kyle. The smooth slope of his shoulders was pure gold, as if his skin still held the warmth of the sun. She felt an annoying urge to touch him, to change the quiet, watchful blue in his eyes to the fire of turquoise she saw when she was in his embrace; she felt an overpowering urge to hold on and be held in a way that would erase the memory of his hurtful words. It wouldn’t do. To reach out after he had wounded her so badly would show a lack of pride, and Erica’s expression remained distant, radiating the aristocratic cool Martha had talked about.

Kyle cleared his throat. “Erica. Last night…”

“Let’s leave it,” she said swiftly. The put-away jobs were all done, and she seemed to have little choice but to sit across from him and pick up the sandwich.

“I was angry,” he said quietly. “But not at you, Erica. I never meant to take it out on you-”

“I met someone this morning,” she remarked. “A woman named Martha Calhoun. You used to know her, I understand? She asked us for dinner tonight.”

“Erica-”

“You don’t have to go; I can fix something for you and Morgan ahead of time. But I think I will. I liked her very much…”

There was a short silence, while Kyle studied her averted face and nervous movements. The thing was, she was terribly afraid she was going to cry if he pressed the subject of last night’s argument. She didn’t want to hear again what he thought of her love or her loyalty. It was hard enough trying to assimilate that she was sitting across from Kyle and yet their marriage was disintegrating, that for some impossible reason the sandwich was even going down and she had actually laughed that morning, that nothing seemed to alter the physical awareness of him she had always had. When his hand reached over to cover hers, she could no more have pulled away from him than she could have stopped breathing.

“We’ll go to dinner at Martha’s,” he said softly. “Maybe later you’ll feel like talking.”

“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

He ignored that. “Erica, I think we’ve both had more stress than we can handle lately. The roof’s going up tomorrow; that should take three days, more or less. After that, there’s electricity and all the trimmings, but we should be able to steal a few days… Erica, I want a few days alone with you.”

He went on, his tone strangely soothing. She had the ridiculous sensation that he was trying to calm her, and she resented that, too. He had always known her too well, had always been the only person in her life who knew exactly how to gentle her out of her resentment. She listened vaguely. Perhaps they would go to the Door Peninsula, he was saying, drive along the shore of Lake Michigan…see some treasures, lost ships, the lighthouse at Vermilion, perhaps do some diving…

Shortly after that he got up, bent over to place a kiss on the sun-streaked crown of her head and went back out