Things We Hide from the Light (Knockemout Book 2) Lucy Score
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THINGS WE HIDE FROM THE LIGHT
LUCY SCORE
Copyright © 2023 Lucy Score
All rights reserved
No Part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electric or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without prior written permission from the publisher.
The book is a work of fiction. The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
ISBN: 979-8-88643-904-5 (ebook)
ISBN: 979-8-88643-905-2 (paperback)
lucyscore.com
021623
CONTENTS
1. Tiny Little Embers
2. Avoidance Tactics
3. Dead in a Ditch
4. Downright Filthy
5. What Happens in the Shower Stays in the Shower
6. The Middle of a Pissing Contest
7. We Weren’t Dry Humping
8. Green Beans and Lies
9. A Neighborly Cockblocking
10. Sweating with the Oldies
11. Panicking Never Helps
12. Welcome to the Danger Zone
13. Bed Buddies
14. Snack Cake Heists and Bad Apples
15. Satan in a Suit
16. A Pair of Thank-Yous
17. Pillow Talk
18. Eggs Benedict for Assholes
19. Khaki Is Not Her Color
20. Carpool Confessions
21. Fan, Meet Shit
22. Soccer Game Showdown
23. Team Lina
24. Pecan Pie Punch and Pointy Elbows
25. Speeding Ticket
26. Nash Who?
27. Snakes and Shakes
28. Shark Week Crappy Hour
29. Winning Career Day
30. Surveillance with a Side of Drama
31. Would You Like Onion Rings with That?
32. A Courtesy Warning
33. Book or Treat
34. Inevitable
35. Pushed Too Far
36. High Fives and Orgasms
37. A Hole in the Wall
38. First Date
39. The Gang’s All Here
40. Smile Pretty for the Camera
41. Words of Wisdom
42. Chocolate Chocolate Chonk
43. Bad Day, Bad Advice
44. Eye Water
45. A Perfectly Good Parachute
46. Blame the Candy Penises
47. Pantsless and Ass Up
48. They Kidnapped the Wrong Girl
49. A Score to Settle
50. Brecklin Is the Worst
51. When Did You Stab Him with a Pitchfork? Epilogue
Author’s Note to the Reader About the Author Acknowledgments Lucy’s Titles
In memory of Chris Waller, the reader husband who reached out and asked me to include the word “gusset” in a book just so he could win a bet with his wife. Kate, I hope it makes you smile when you find it again inside.
ONE TINY LITTLE EMBERS
Nash
The federal agents in my office were lucky for two reasons.
First, my left hook wasn’t what it had been before getting shot. And second, I hadn’t been able to work my way up into feeling anything, let alone mad enough to make me consider doing something stupid.
“The Bureau understands you have a personal interest in finding Duncan Hugo,” Special Agent Sonal Idler said from across my desk where she sat with a ramrod-straight spine. She flicked her gaze to the coffee stain on my shirt.
She was a steely woman in a pantsuit who looked as though she ate procedures for breakfast. The man next to her, Deputy U.S. Marshal Nolan Graham, had a mustache and the look of a man forced into something he really didn’t want to do. He also looked like he blamed me for it.
I wanted to work my way up to pissed off. Wanted to feel something other than the great, sucking void that rolled over me, inevitable as the tide. But there was nothing. Just me and the void.
“But we can’t have you and your boys and girls running around mucking up my investigation,” Idler continued.
On the other side of the glass, Sergeant Grave Hopper was dumping a pint of sugar into his coffee and glaring daggers at the two feds. Behind
him, the rest of the bullpen buzzed with the usual energy of a small-town police department.
Phones rang. Keyboards clicked. Officers served. And the coffee sucked.
Everyone was alive and breathing. Everyone but me.
I was just pretending.
I crossed my arms and ignored the sharp twinge in my shoulder.
“I appreciate the professional courtesy. But what’s with the special interest? I’m not the only cop to take a bullet in the line of duty.”
“You also weren’t the only name on that list,” Graham said, speaking up for the first time.
My jaw tightened. The list was where this nightmare had begun.
“But you were the first one targeted,” Idler said. “Your name was on that list of LEOs and informants. But this thing is bigger than one shooting. This is the first time we’ve got something that could stick to Anthony Hugo.”
It was the first time I’d heard any kind of emotion in her voice. Special Agent Idler had her own personal agenda, and nailing crime boss Anthony Hugo to the wall was it.
“I need this case to be airtight,” she continued. “Which is why we can’t have any locals trying to take matters into their own hands. Even if they’ve got badges. The greater good always comes with a price tag.”
I rubbed a hand over my jaw and was surprised to find more than a fiveo’clock shadow there. Shaving hadn’t exactly been high on my priority list lately.
She assumed I’d been investigating. Reasonable given the circumstances. But she didn’t know my dirty little secret. No one did. I might be healing on the outside. I might put on my uniform and show up at the station every day. But on the inside, there was nothing left. Not even a desire to find the man responsible for this.
“What do you expect my department to do if Duncan Hugo comes back here looking to shoot holes in a few more of its citizens? Look the other way?” I drawled.
The feds shared a look. “I expect you to keep us apprised of any local happenings that might tie in to our case,” Idler said firmly. “We’ve got a few more resources at our disposal than your department. And no personal agendas.”
I felt a flicker of something in the nothingness. Shame.
I should have a personal agenda. Should be out there hunting down the man myself. If not for me, then for Naomi and Waylay. He’d victimized my brother’s fiancée and her niece in another way, by abducting them and terrorizing them over the list that had earned me two bullet holes.
But part of me had died in that ditch that night, and what was left didn’t seem like it was worth fighting for.
“Marshal Graham here will be staying close for a while. Keeping an eye on things,” Idler continued.
Mustache didn’t look any happier about that than I was.
“Any particular kind of things?” I asked.
“All remaining targets on the list are receiving federal protection until we ascertain that the threat is no longer imminent,” Idler explained.
Christ. The whole damn town was going to be in an uproar if they found out federal agents were hanging around waiting for someone to break the law. And I didn’t have the energy for an uproar.
“I don’t need protection,” I said. “If Duncan Hugo had two brain cells to rub together, he wouldn’t be hanging around here. He’s long gone.” At least, that was what I told myself late at night when the sleep wouldn’t come.
“All due respect, Chief, you’re the one who got himself shot. You’re lucky you’re still here,” Graham said with a smug twitch of his mustache.
“What about my brother’s fiancée and niece? Hugo kidnapped them. Are they getting protection?”
“We have no reason to believe that Naomi and Waylay Witt are in any danger at this time,” Idler said.
The twinge in my shoulder graduated to a dull throb to match the one in my head. I was low on sleep and patience, and if I didn’t get these two pains in the ass out of my office, I wasn’t confident I could keep things civil.
Mustering as much southern charm as I could, I rose from behind my desk. “Understood. Now, if y’all will excuse me, I have a town to serve.”
The agents got to their feet and we exchanged perfunctory handshakes.
“I’d appreciate it if you’d keep me in the loop. Seein’ as how I’ve got a ‘personal interest’ and all,” I said as they hit the door.
“We’ll be sure to share what we can,” Idler said. “We’ll also be expecting a call from you as soon as you remember anything from the shooting.”
“Will do,” I said through gritted teeth. Between the trifecta of physical wounds, memory loss, and the empty numbness, I was a shadow of the man I’d been.
“Be seein’ you,” Graham said. It sounded like a threat.
I waited until they’d strutted their asses out of my station before snagging my jacket off the coat rack. The hole in my shoulder protested when I shoved my arm into the sleeve. The one in my torso didn’t feel much better.
“You all right, Chief?” Grave asked when I stepped out into the bullpen.
Under normal circumstances, my sergeant would have insisted on a play-by-play of the meeting followed by an hour-long bitch session about jurisdictional bullshit. But since I’d gotten myself shot and almost killed, everyone was doing their damnedest to treat me with kid gloves.
Maybe I wasn’t hiding things as well as I thought.
“Fine,” I said, harsher than I’d intended.
“Heading out?” he prodded.
“Yeah.”
The eager new patrol officer popped up out of her chair like it was spring-loaded. “If you want lunch, I can pick something up for you from Dino’s, Chief,” she offered.
Born and raised in Knockemout, Tashi Bannerjee was police academy fresh. Now, her shoes gleamed and her dark hair was scraped back in a regulations-exceeding bun. But four years ago, she’d been ticketed in high school with riding a horse through a fast-food drive-thru. Most of the department had skirted the line of the law at some point in our youth, which made it mean more that we chose to uphold it rather than circumvent it.
“I can get my own damn lunch,” I snapped.
Her face fell for just a second before she recovered, making me feel like I’d just landed a kick to a puppy. Fuck. I was turning into my brother.
“Thanks for the offer though,” I added in a slightly less antagonized tone.
Great. Now I had to do something nice. Again. Make yet another I’msorry-for-being-an-asshole gesture that I didn’t have the energy for. So far this week, I’d brought in coffee, doughnuts, and—after a particularly embarrassing loss of temper over the thermostat in the bullpen—gas station candy bars.
“I’m heading out to PT. Be back in an hour or so.”
With that, I stepped out into the hall and strode toward the exit like I had business to attend to just in case anyone else had a mind to try to strike up a conversation.
I blanked my mind and tried to focus on what was happening right in front of me.
The full force of northern Virginia fall hit me when I shoved my way through the glass doors of the Knox Morgan Municipal Center. The sun was shining in a sky so blue it hurt the eyes. The trees lining the street were putting on a show as their leaves gave up the green for russets, yellows, and oranges. Pumpkins and hay bales dominated the downtown window displays.
I glanced up at the roar of a bike and watched Harvey Lithgow cruise by. He had devil horns on his helmet and a plastic skeleton lashed upright to the seat behind him.
He raised a hand in greeting before rumbling off down the road doing at least fifteen over the posted speed limit. Always pushing the bounds of the law.
Fall had always been my favorite season. New beginnings. Pretty girls in soft sweaters. Football season. Homecoming. Cold nights made warmer with bourbon and bonfires.
But everything was different now. I was different now.
Since I’d lied about physical therapy, I couldn’t very well be seen grabbing lunch downtown, so I headed for home.
I’d make a sandwich I didn’t want to eat, sit in solitude, and try to find a way to make it through the rest of the day without being too much of a dick.
I needed to get my shit together. It wasn’t that fucking hard to push papers and make a few appearances like the useless figurehead I now was.
“Mornin’, chief,” Tallulah St. John, our resident mechanic and co-owner of Café Rev, greeted me as she jaywalked right in front of me. Her long, black braids were gathered over the shoulder of her coveralls. She had a grocery tote in one hand and a coffee, most likely made by her husband, in the other.
“Mornin’, Tallulah.”
Knockemout’s favorite pastime was ignoring the law. Where I stuck to the black and white, sometimes it felt like the rest of the people around me lived entirely in the gray. Founded by lawless rebels, my town had little use for rules and regulations. The previous police chief had been happy to leave
citizens to fend for themselves while he shined up his badge as a status symbol and used his position for personal gain for more than twenty years.
I’d been chief now for nearly five years. This town was my home, the citizens, my family. Clearly I’d failed to teach them to respect the law. And now it was only a matter of time before they all realized I was no longer capable of protecting them.
My phone pinged in my pocket, and I reached for it with my left hand before remembering I no longer carried it on that side. On a muttered oath, I pulled it free with my right.
Knox: Tell the feds they can kiss your ass, my ass, and the whole damn town’s ass while they’re at it.
Of course my brother knew about the feds. An alert probably went out the second their sedan rolled onto Main Street. But I wasn’t up for a discussion about it. I wasn’t up for anything really.
The phone rang in my hand.
Naomi.
It wasn’t that long ago that I would have been eager as hell to answer that call. I’d had a thing for the new-in-town waitress riding a streak of bad luck. But she’d fallen, inexplicably, for my grumpy-ass brother instead. I’d given up the crush—easier than I’d thought—but had enjoyed Knox’s annoyance every time his soon-to-be wife checked in on me.
Now, though, it felt like one more responsibility that I just couldn’t handle.
I sent the call to voicemail as I rounded the corner onto my street.
“Mornin’, chief,” Neecey called as she hauled the pizza shop’s easel sign out the front door. Dino’s opened at 11:00 a.m. on the dot seven days a week. Which meant I’d only made it four hours into my workday before I’d had to bail. A new record.
“Morning, Neece,” I said without enthusiasm.
I wanted to go home and close the door. To shut out the world and sink into that darkness. I didn’t want to stop every six feet to have a conversation.
“Heard that fed with the mustache is stickin’ around. Think he’ll enjoy his stay at the motel?” she said with a wicked gleam in her eyes.
The woman was a glasses-wearing, gum-chewing gossip who chatted up half the town every shift. But she had a point. Knockemout’s motel was
a health inspector’s wet dream. Violations on every page of the handbook. Someone needed to buy the damn thing and tear it down.
“Sorry, Neece. Gotta take this,” I lied, bringing the phone to my ear, pretending like I had a call.
The second she ducked back inside, I stowed the phone and hurried the rest of the way to my apartment entrance.
My relief was short-lived. The door to the stairwell, all carved wood and thick glass, was propped open with a banker box marked Files in sharp scrawl.
Still eying the box, I stepped inside.
“Son of a damn bitch!” A woman’s voice that did not belong to my elderly neighbor echoed from above.
I looked up just as a fancy black backpack rolled down the stairs toward me like a designer tumbleweed. Halfway up the flight, a pair of long, lean legs caught my attention.
They were covered in sleek leggings the color of moss, and the view just kept getting better. The fuzzy gray sweater was cropped and offered a peek at smooth, tan skin over taut muscle while highlighting subtle curves. But it was the face that demanded the most attention. Marble-worthy cheekbones. Big, dark eyes. Full lips pursed in annoyance.
Her hair—so dark it was almost black—was cut in a short, choppy cap and looked like someone had just shoved their fingers through it. My fingers flexed at my sides.
Angelina Solavita, better known as Lina or my brother’s ex-girlfriend from a lifetime ago, was a looker. And she was in my stairwell.
This wasn’t good.
I bent and picked up the bag at my feet.
“Sorry for hurling my luggage at you,” she called as she wrestled a large, wheeled suitcase up the final few steps.
I had no complaints about the view, but I had serious concerns about surviving small talk.
The second floor was home to three apartments: mine, Mrs. Tweedy’s, and a vacant space next to mine.
I had my hands full living across the hall from an elderly widow who didn’t have much respect for privacy and personal space. I wasn’t interested in adding to my distractions at home. Not even when they looked like Lina.
“Moving in?” I called back when she reappeared at the top of the stairs. The words sounded forced, my voice strained.
She flashed me one of those sexy little smiles. “Yeah. What’s for dinner?”
I watched her hit the stairs at a jog, descending with speed and grace.
“I think you can do better than what I have to offer.” I hadn’t been to a grocery store in… Okay, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d ventured into Grover’s Groceries to buy food. I’d been living off takeout when I remembered to eat.
Lina stopped on the last step, putting us eye-to-eye, and gave me a slow once-over. The smile became a full-fledged grin. “Don’t sell yourself short, hotshot.”
She’d called me that for the first time a handful of weeks ago when she’d cleaned up the mess I’d made of my stitches saving my brother’s ass. At the time, I should have been thinking about the avalanche of paperwork I was going to have to deal with thanks to an abduction and the ensuing shoot-out. Instead, I’d sat propped against the wall, distracted by Lina’s calm, competent hands, her clean, fresh scent.
“You flirting with me?” I hadn’t meant to blurt it out, but I was hanging on by sheer will.
At least I hadn’t told her I liked the smell of her laundry detergent.
She arched an eyebrow. “You’re my handsome new neighbor, the chief of police, and my college boyfriend’s brother.”
She leaned in an inch closer, and a single spark of something warm stirred in my belly. I wanted to cling to it, to cup it in my hands until it thawed my icy blood.
“I really love bad ideas. Don’t you?” Her smile was dangerous now.
Old Me would have turned on the charm. Would have enjoyed a good flirt. Would have appreciated the mutual attraction. But I wasn’t that man anymore.
I held up her bag by the strap. Her fingers got tangled around mine when she reached for it. Our gazes met and held. That spark multiplied into a dozen tiny little embers, almost enough for me to remember what it was like to feel something.
Almost.
She was watching me intently. Those whiskey-brown eyes peered into me like I was an open book.
I extricated my fingers from hers. “What did you say you do for a living?” I asked. She’d mentioned it in passing, called it boring, and changed the subject. But she had eyes that missed nothing, and I was curious what job would let her hang out in Nowhere, Virginia, for weeks at a time.
“Insurance,” she said, slinging the backpack over one shoulder.
Neither one of us retreated. Me because those embers were the only good thing I’d felt in weeks.
“What kind of insurance?”
“Why? Are you in the market for a new policy?” she teased as she started to pull away.
But I wanted her to stay close. Needed her to fan those weak sparks to see if there was anything inside me worth burning.
“Want me to grab that?” I offered, hooking my thumb at the box of files against the door.
The smile disappeared. “I’ve got it,” she said briskly, making a move to step past me.
I blocked her. “Mrs. Tweedy would have my hide if she found out I made you haul that box up those stairs,” I insisted.
“Mrs. Tweedy?”
I pointed up. “2C. She’s out with her weight-lifting group. But you’ll meet her soon enough. She’ll make sure of it.”
“If she’s out, she won’t know that you didn’t aggravate your bullet wounds by insisting on lugging a box up a flight of stairs,” Lina pointed out. “How are they healing?”
“Fine,” I lied.
She hummed and raised that eyebrow again. “Really?”
She didn’t believe me. But my craving for those tiny slivers of feeling was so strong, so desperate, I didn’t care.
“Right as rain,” I insisted.
I heard a low ringtone and saw the flash of annoyance as Lina retrieved her phone from some hidden pocket in the waistband of her leggings. It was only a glimpse, but I caught “Mom” on the screen before she hit Ignore. It looked like we both were avoiding family.
I took a chance and used the distraction to retrieve the box, making a point to use my left arm. My shoulder throbbed, and a cold bead of sweat
worked its way down my back. But as soon as I locked eyes with her again, the sparks came back.
I didn’t know what this was, only that I needed it.
“I see the Morgan stubbornness is just as strong in you as it is in your brother,” she observed, tucking the phone back into her pocket. She gave me another assessing look before turning and starting up the stairs.
“Speaking of Knox,” I said, fighting to keep my voice sounding natural, “I take it you’re in 2B?” My brother owned the building, which included the bar and barbershop on the first floor.
“I am now. I was staying at the motel,” she said.
I sent up a prayer of thanks that she was taking the stairs slower than she had on the way down.
“Can’t believe you lasted that long there.”
“This morning, I saw a rat get into a slap fight with a roach the size of a rat. Last straw,” she said.
“Coulda stayed with Knox and Naomi,” I said, forcing the words out before I was too out of breath to speak. I was out of condition, and her shapely ass in those leggings wasn’t helping my cardiovascular endurance.
“I like my own space,” she said.
We made it to the top of the stairs, and I followed her to the open door next to mine as a river of icy sweat snaked down my back. I really needed to get back to the gym. If I was going to be a walking corpse for the rest of my life, I should at least be one who could handle a conversation on a flight of stairs.
Lina dropped her backpack inside before turning to take the box from me.
Once again, our fingers touched.
Once again, I felt something. And it wasn’t just the ache in my shoulder, the emptiness in my chest.
“Thanks for the help,” she said, taking the box from me.
“If you need anything, I’m right next door,” I said.
Those lips curved ever so slightly. “Good to know. See you around, hotshot.”
I stood rooted to the spot even after she shut the door, waiting until every single one of those embers went cold.
TWO AVOIDANCE TACTICS
Lina
Iclosed my new front door on all six feet one inches of wounded, broody Nash Morgan.
“Don’t even think about it,” I muttered to myself.
Usually, I didn’t mind taking a risk, playing with a little fire. And that was exactly what getting to know Studly Do-Right, as the ladies of Knockemout had dubbed him, would be. But I had more urgent things to do than flirting away the sadness that Nash wore like a cloak.
Wounded and broody, I thought again as I lugged my files across the room.
I wasn’t surprised that I was attracted. While I preferred the enjoy ’em and leave ’em lifestyle, there was nothing I loved more than a challenge. And getting under that facade, digging into what put those shadows in his sad hero eyes would be exactly that.
But Nash struck me as the settling-down type, and I was allergic to relationships.
Once you showed an interest in someone, they started thinking it meant they had the right to tell you what to do and how to do it, two of my least favorite things. I liked good times, the thrill of the chase. I enjoyed playing with the pieces of a puzzle until I had the full picture, then moving on to the next one. And in between, I liked walking into my place, full of my things,
and ordering food I liked without having to argue with anyone about what to watch on TV.
I dumped the box on the tiny dining room table and surveyed my new domain.
The apartment had potential. I could see why Knox had invested in the building. He’d never been one to miss potential under the surface of hot mess. High ceilings, battered wood floors, big windows overlooking the street.
The main living space was furnished with a faded floral couch facing an empty brick wall, the small but sturdy round dining table with three chairs, and some kind of shelving system built out of old crates under the front windows.
The kitchen, which was closed off into a tiny, drywalled box, was about two decades out of date. Not a problem since I didn’t cook. The counters were a garish yellow laminate that had long outlived their heyday, if they’d ever had one. But there was a microwave and a fridge big enough to store takeout and a six-pack, so it would work just fine for me.
The bedroom was empty, but it had a sizable closet, which unlike the kitchen was a requirement for me and my clothes-whorish tendencies. The attached bathroom was charmingly vintage with a claw-foot tub and an absolutely useless pedestal sink that would hold zero percent of my makeup and skincare collection.
I blew out a breath. Depending on how comfortable the couch was, I might be able to hold off on making a decision about a bed. I didn’t know how much longer I’d be here, how long it would take me to find what I was looking for.
I hoped to hell it wouldn’t be long now.
I flopped down on the couch, praying for it to be comfortable. It was not.
“Why are you punishing me?” I asked the ceiling. “I’m not a horrible person. I stop for pedestrians. I donate to that farm sanctuary. I eat my vegetables. What more do you want?”
The universe didn’t respond.
I heaved a sigh and thought about my town house in Atlanta. I was used to roughing it on the job. Returning from an extended stay in a two-star motel always made me appreciate my expensive sheets, my overstuffed designer couch, and my meticulously organized wardrobe.
This particular extended stay, however, was becoming ridiculous.
And the longer I stayed in town without a break or a clue or a light at the end of the tunnel, the antsier I got. On paper, maybe it looked like I was an impulsive wild child. In reality, I was simply following the plan I’d made a long time ago. I was patient and logical, and the risks I took were—almost always—calculated.
But weeks on end in a tiny town thirty-eight minutes from the closest Sephora without the slightest indication that I was on the right track were starting to wear on me. Hence the conversation with the ceiling.
I was bored and frustrated, a dangerous combination, because it made it impossible to ignore the niggling doubt in my head that maybe I didn’t enjoy this line of work as much as I once did. The doubt that had magically sprouted when things had gone south during the last job. Something else I didn’t want to think about.
“Okay, universe,” I said to the ceiling again. “I need one thing to go my way. Just one. Like a shoe sale or, I don’t know, how about one break in this case before I lose my mind?”
This time, the universe answered me with a phone call.
The universe was a jerk.
“Hi, Mom,” I said with twin pulls of annoyance and affection.
“There you are! I was worried.” Bonnie Solavita hadn’t been born a worrier, but she’d accepted the mantel that had been thrust upon her with an enthusiastic dedication to the role.
Unable to sit still during these daily conversations, I got off the lumpy couch and headed to the table. “I was carrying something up the stairs,” I explained.
“You’re not overdoing it, are you?”
“It was one suitcase and one flight of stairs,” I said, flicking the lid off the box of files. “What are you all up to?” Redirection was what kept my relationship with my parents intact.
“I’m on my way into a marketing meeting, and your father is somewhere under the hood of that damn car,” she said.
Mom had taken a longer-than-necessary hiatus from her job as a marketing executive so she could smother me until I moved three states away to go to college. Since then, she’d reentered the workforce and climbed the ladder as an executive in a national healthcare organization.
My father, Hector, was six months into his retirement from his career as a plumber. “That damn car” was the in-desperate-need-of-some-TLC 1968 Mustang Fastback I’d surprised him with for his birthday two years ago courtesy of a big, fat bonus check from work. He’d had one when he was a young, studly bachelor in Illinois until he’d traded it in on a fancy pickup truck to impress a farmer’s daughter. Dad had married the farmer’s daughter —my mother—and spent the ensuing decades missing the car.
“Did he get it running yet?” I asked.
“Not yet. He bored me to death with a twenty-minute dissertation on carburetors over dinner last night. So I bored him right back with an explanation of how we’re changing our advertising messages based on the demographics of East Coast suburban sprawl,” Mom explained smugly.
I laughed. My parents had one of those relationships that no matter how different they were from each other, no matter how long they’d been married, they were still the other’s biggest cheerleaders…and biggest annoyances.
“That’s very on-brand for you both,” I said.
“Consistency is key,” Mom sang.
I heard someone ask a rapid-fire question on her end.
“Go with the secondary deck for the presentation. I made some tweaks to it last night. Oh, and grab me a Pellegrino before you go in, would you? Thanks.” Mom cleared her throat. “Sorry about that, sweetie.”
The difference between her boss lady voice and her mom voice was a source of endless entertainment for me.
“No problem. You’re a busy boss lady.”
But not too busy to check in with her daughter on her designated days.
Yep. Between my mother’s iron-fisted itinerary and my parents’ desire to make sure I was okay at all times, I spoke to a parent nearly every single day. If I avoided them for too long, they had been known to show up on my doorstep unannounced.
“You’re still in DC, aren’t you?” she asked.
I winced, knowing what was coming. “Thereabouts. It’s a small town north of DC.”
“Small towns are where busy professional women get seduced by a rough-around-the-edges local business owner. Ooh! Or a sheriff. Have you met the sheriff yet?”
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that bright young sister in her arms again she might not disgrace the welcome by crying outright. Who would have supposed that the months of separation would have stretched themselves out so! Louise was to have gone home certainly in a year from the date of her departure, and yet she didn't. It often happens in this world that, with all our planning, our lives move in exactly different lines from what we have prepared. So Louise had really never looked upon the face of her beautiful young sister since that morning when she became a bride. It is surely not much wonder that her heart beat hard at the sound of carriage-wheels, and it seemed to her, for a moment, that she could not get down the stairs.
It was not until just as daylight was fading that John came to be introduced to the new-comer. He had planned differently; but unexpected business had detained him at the village until a late hour, then he had taken his supper alone, and came to the piazza to meet Estelle, just as they were about adjourning to the house.
"Come," Louise said; "these insects must be shut out and you must be shut in. Oh, here comes John."
At that moment Dorothy brought the large lamp, and the glow of it fell full on Estelle's face. John had decidedly dreaded this ordeal. His life had been spent so much in shadow that there were certain creations before whom he was unreasonably timid—among these were young ladies; and to meet one, too, whom he was expected to help was formidable. Still, John's strong point was decision of character. What had to be done was to be done promptly, and with as little appearance of shrinking as possible. So he advanced boldly and raised his eyes to Estelle's fair, bright face. But instead of the greeting, in every way cordial, which he had planned, he gave Estelle the benefit of a prolonged astonished stare; and at last the words, uttered in an explosive tone, as by one from whom they were forced by astonishment, were,—
"You are the very one!"
"Of course," said Estelle, mischief shining in every line of her beautiful face; and, nothing daunted by this strange greeting, she held out her hand cordially, while Louise looked on amazed. "Did you think I was somebody else? Shake hands, won't you?"
"Is it possible that you remember me?" John said at last slowly, as one awakening from a dream, and then looking from her to Louise, then back again to her, studying the two faces like one who had been puzzled, but who had just found the answer to his riddle.
"Not in the least," Estelle said promptly. "I don't think I ever saw you before in my life; but since you seem to be acquainted with me, I thought I would be friendly."
"You have seen me before," John said, recovering his natural manner, and giving the small white hand a cordial grasp; "and it is your resemblance to Louise which gave me such a vivid impression of your face and so strange a feeling of having seen you before somewhere."
Then Estelle laughed. "What an idea!" she said gaily. "I don't look the least in the world like Louise, and never did; and, what is more trying, I am not in the least like her, as you will find to your sorrow. Where did you see the being whom you think I am? I'd like to have a glimpse of her."
Nothing but bright, thoughtless mischief in voice or manner; but John was still earnest and eager
"Louise," he said, turning to her for sympathy, "isn't it strange that it should happen so? She is the very young lady who gave me that card on that miserable and memorable night, and invited me to the meeting."
A vivid blush overspread Estelle's face. She had given some curious thoughts to the forlorn specimen of humanity whom she had invited to the meeting; it was the only attempt she had ever made at evangelistic effort, and it stood out in her memory. She had commented upon his appearance to her mother; she had given a laughing description of him to her young friends. Now it seemed a most improbable thing that this well-dressed, nice looking young man and her forlorn tramp were one and the same!
"Are you an adept at masquerades?" she asked at last. "You certainly played the character of a woe-begone street wanderer to perfection; or else you are doing the well-dressed young man very well. Which is the assumed character?"
Viewing it from John's standpoint, there was no comical side to this episode in his life. He answered her with intense gravity,—
"The street wanderer was a real, and certainly a sufficiently dreary, wanderer; he thought himself a hopeless case; but he will never cease to thank God for sending you to put out a rescuing hand that night."
The flush that had been fading from Estelle's face became vivid again; how was she going to jest with one who took matters so solemnly? She did not
know what to say to him, and turned away embarrassed. Now indeed was John roused. Intensity was a part of his nature; what he did at all, he did with all his might. Louise, looking on, anxious as to what this revelation would effect, was presently satisfied that it had roused his interest in her as nothing else could have done. The fact that the one who had been the direct means of bringing him into the light of Christ was herself walking in darkness filled him with pain.
From that hour he fixed upon her as the subject for his constant prayer; he brought her before his Master only as one can who has learned the sweetness of being a servant of Christ, and who longs to call in others. Now and then a word with her, as opportunity offered, but the most of his strength spent on his knees.
It chanced that on the way to the district prayer-meeting, which, by the way, had been started, and which had flourished. John was Estelle's companion. It was really the first time he had seen her alone. He had not to waste time in trying to make up his mind to speak to her on the subject; he was eager to speak.
"I was so surprised," he said. "I had been so accustomed to pray for the one who gave me that card as one would for a saint almost. I had not thought of the possibility of your not being a Christian."
"And now all those prayers have been lost—so much wasted strength! What a pity!" Estelle did not really mean to be wicked, although her tone was mischief itself. She had accustomed herself to parrying personalities on this subject in some such jesting way; the usual effect was to shock into silence the person addressing her, and so give her freedom for the time being. She did not even mean irreverence; she meant simply fun, and to be let alone. John, however, was not used to sparkling nonsense in conversation. Since he began to converse at all, he had talked nearly always with earnest people, and been tremendously in earnest himself. So he answered her as if the remark had been made in all gravity.
"No, I don't think that; for of course God know just where you were, and he accepted the spirit of the prayer. But isn't it strange that with Louise for a sister you have lived so many years without Christ?"
Louise was a person about whom Estelle did not jest; she could be flippant to her, but not about her, so to this sentence she had no answer at first but silence; then she rallied.
"Come now, isn't it strange that with Lewis for a brother, and Mrs. Morgan for a mother, you lived so many years without paying any attention to these things? Didn't you ever hear that people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones?"
"Ah, but," said John eagerly, "I didn't believe in it; I didn't think there was any such thing as conversion, nor any reality in religion. I was a fool, to be sure, but I was an honest one; I really didn't believe in these things. But you had a different bringing up. My mother is a young Christian, you know. You had no such doubts to trammel you, had you?"
"No," said Estelle slowly, reluctantly obliged to be truthful before this truthful young man; thinking of her mother, of her father, of her sister Louise, she must say, "No."
"Then why haven't you been a Christian these many years?"
"I don't know."
"Then why don't you be one now?"
"I don't know."
John was betrayed into an exclamation not unlike the half sneer with which he used to express his entire disapproval of an act, and his tones were very significant as he said, "Seems to me if I were you I'd find out."
Estelle was silent; this to her was an entirely new way of approaching the subject. This grave young man gave her some thinking to do. She had had her bit of scepticism to struggle with, albeit she did not know it by that name. In her heart she had believed that some persons were by nature religious in their youth; mamma was, and Louise was like her. Mamma said that Louise, when just a baby, would lie quiet by the hour to be read to from the Bible; while she, Estelle, never lay quiet at any time for anything but sleep. She was not by nature religious, she argued; some time, when she was old and grayhaired, it would become natural to her to think about these things. Some people were called in their youth, and some in later life; it must be that she was designed for a middle-aged Christian. Into the face of this theory came John—young, keen, intense, fierce by nature, as irreligious by nature as a man could be, as far-away from even outward respect for the cause as a scoffer could be. Louise, whose intuition had shown her somewhat of this reasoning, had taken pains to explain in detail John's past life and John's intense nature. Here was a problem that Estelle must work out for herself; that
she had begun to work at it was evidenced by her grave, sincere answer, "I don't know."
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE OLD AND THE NEW.
IT is not because there is not much concerning the Morgan family which would be pleasant to me to tell that I pass in silence a stretch of years. It is simply that the lengthening chapters remind me it is high time to have done with them; and yet there are certain things that I must tell. Therefore it is that I drop you into the midst of June roses again, after a lapse of five busy, earnest years. Back at the old farmhouse, which really was not the old farmhouse at all; and yet it was—that is, it was in a new dress. A corner had been put on here, a bay-window there, a piazza at the south side, and a wide oldfashioned porch at the east, until really the house would not have recognized itself. Within, not a single room, from the yellow painted kitchen onward, remained the same. Was this the new house, planned years before? Well, not exactly. The new house was built, and built with the bricks and mortar, just as it had been planned on paper, and a gem of a house it proved to be; but its location was next to the church, in the village, and Dorothy and the minister were the occupants.
"It isn't exactly a parsonage," Father Morgan said, "and yet it is; at least the minister lives in it, and is welcome to, of course, for it belongs to his wife; but if another minister should come in his place, why then I suppose it couldn't be called a parsonage."
At present there is no prospect that another minister will come in Mr. Butler's place. The people like both him and his wife. That is a strange statement, I am aware—almost an unnatural story; and yet every one knows that there are a few parishes left in which the people continue to stand by a faithful pastor even after a lapse of years. Dorothy had certain advantages. To be sure, Mr Butler had done what is supposed to be an unwise thing—married the
daughter of one of his parishioners; but it will be remembered that in her early girlhood she had almost no acquaintances with the people of the village. She had not mingled with them in any capacity. They knew no more of her character, and almost as little of her life, as they would have done had she lived a thousand miles away; and, somehow, the one whom they used, on rare occasions, to speak of as "that Morgan girl," seemed to the people an entirely different person from their minister's wife, as in truth she was. So, as if to verify the promise about "all things working together for good," the very obscurity in which Dorothy had spent her girlhood worked well for her in her present sphere. So Dorothy reigned in the new house, and ruled it well, and her mother had grown used to looking upon her as a married woman and a housekeeper, ay, and a mother.
Lewis Morgan had not a little to do with the successful ministrations of his brother-in-law. When he, after his period of mental depression and discouragement, rallied at the time of Dorothy's conversion, and tasted anew the joy of working for Christ, he took what perhaps I may reverently term a new lease of spiritual life, and gave himself up to joyful service, since which time he had been eagerly busy for the Master, the refrain of his song still being, "How sweet the work has been!" Imagine what such a wide-awake, prudent, faithful Christian could be to a pastor. Imagine the alert eyes he could have to the needs, and the wishes, and the whims of the people. Imagine the kind suggestions he could offer to a pastor younger than himself, who not only thoroughly respected, but loved him as a brother. Certainly Lewis Morgan, heavy though the cross had been to give up what is called active work for Christ, was yet as active in his way, and perhaps fully as successful, as though he were from the pulpit preaching the gospel. I make that distinction because Lewis Morgan, in his class, in the prayer-meeting, in his daily life, was assuredly preaching the gospel.
The renovated farmhouse was still large enough for the two families. Yet the new house—the other new house—was in process of building. Louise's plan again. One of the prettiest of houses; but that too was in the village, and it was planned with special reference to the needs of Dr. John Morgan. Yes, he was going to settle down in the little village. No, I forget; the word "little" really does not apply to it very well. It had, during these years in which I remember I have said almost nothing about it, sprung into life and growth, aided by the junction of another railroad, and a large machine-shop; and Dr. John had accepted a partnership with the gray-haired physician who had held the practice in village and on hillside for miles around during the space of forty years. Just as soon as the new house was finished and furnished (and it was nearly done), he was going to begin housekeeping.
Every cheery, sweet-smelling room in the Morgan farmhouse had a sort of gala look on this afternoon of which I write. They were such pretty rooms! I wish I could describe them to you—simple, quiet-toned, in keeping with the wide-stretching green fields and the glowing flowers, and so pretty! Bright, clear carpets, in tasteful hues and graceful patterns; muslin curtains, looped with ribbons to match the carpets; easy-chairs, nearly every one of them of a pattern peculiar to itself; wide, low couches, with luxurious pillows, inviting you to lounge among them; books and papers and pictures in profusion; Louise's piano and Louise's guitar in convenient positions, and Louise's tasteful fingertouches everywhere. Who can describe a simple, pretty room? It is easy to tell the colour of the carpet, and the position of the furniture; but where is the language in which to describe that nameless grace, speaking of comfort and ease and home, that hovers over some rooms, and is utterly lacking in others?
Upstairs, in the room that was once Louise's, and which she had vacated now for the more sunny side of the house, special care had been exercised. It was a fair pink and white abode; the carpet was a sprinkling of pink moss-rose buds on a mossy ground; the white curtains were looped with pink ribbons; the cool, gray furniture, of that peculiar tint of gray that suggests white, was adorned with delicate touches of Louise's skill, in the shape of moss-rose buds that matched the carpet; the toilet-stand was a mass of delicate white drapery, through whose thinness a suspicion of pink glowed; and the very china had been deftly painted in the same pattern; easy-chairs and large oldfashioned rockers occupied cosy nooks, and Louise, her face aglow with merry satisfaction, had adorned them with the veritable tidies which she had brought from home as a bride, or with others made after a like pattern, to look like the identical ones. She was arranging real roses with unsparing hand in the mantel vases, on the little toilet-table, wherever she could find a spot for a vase to stand. Then came Nellie and stood in the door—herself a vision of beauty—in flowing curls, and spotless white garments, made after the latest and most approved fashion for young misses of thirteen, and with a flutter of blue ribbons about her, from the knot fastened in some deft way among the curls to the dainty bows perched on her slippers. She made a little exclamation, indicative of her happy satisfaction in the appearance of all about her, and Louise turned.
"Will this do for a bride?" she asked, her smiling eyes taking in Nellie as a very satisfactory part of the picture.
"It is too lovely for anything," Nellie said in genuine girl parlance; "and it looks just exactly like Estelle."
Louise laughed; she had been thinking something very like that herself. Don't imagine that I think I have startled you now with a bit of news; I have given you credit for penetration enough to have surmised, long ago, that the gala day was in honour of a coming bride, and the bride none other than Estelle herself. I did not propose to say much about that; such things are so constantly occurring in all well-regulated families that you would have been stupid, indeed, not to have foreseen it.
Louise did not, however; she had been as blind as a bat about it, though the old story was lived right before her very eyes. Glad eyes they were, however, when they took in the facts. Louise loved her brother John. Was he not the one whom God used at last to bring her darling Estelle to a knowledge of his love?
"Louise," said Nellie, coming back to commonplaces as soon as the eyes had taken in all the beauty, "mother wants you. She wants you to see if you think the table looks overloaded, and whether you think the turkey platters haven't too much dark meat on them, and half-a-dozen other things that I have forgotten; won't you come right away?"
"In three minutes," said Louise; but she had hardly time to attend in person to all these important matters when Nellie's voice shouted through the house,—
"There they come! There's the carriage; it has just driven through the archway. Oh, I wonder what John thought of the archway!"
When I tell that it was decorated with evergreen, on which there glowed, in roses arranged by Nellie's own fair hands, the words, "Welcome Home!" you will be sure that John liked it. Then the family gathered on that south piazza to greet the bride and groom. The aroma of coffee was stealing through the house, and the spacious dining-table, spread its entire length in the large dining-room, did almost look burdened with its weight of dishes for the wedding-feast.
Mother Morgan tarried to cover a cake-basket before she hurried to the piazza. Give one moment's time to her. Her face had grown younger; it was smooth and fair, and set in calmness. Her dress was a holiday one of soft, neutral-tinted silk, and her white lace cap, which Louise's fingers had fashioned, was wonderfully becoming to her pleasant face. Dorothy had seated herself, matronly fashion, in one of the large easy-chairs with which the piazza abounded, for the fair bundle of muslin and lace bobbing around in her lap was too restless to admit of a standing position, although admonished
thus: "Do, little Miss Louise, sit still, and receive your new auntie with becoming dignity."
Little Miss Louise's papa had just dropped her ladyship out of his arms, and gone forward to open the gate for the family carriage, which, with Lewis for driver, was just emerging from the shade of the evergreens. At this moment came Father Morgan from the small room at the right of the piazza, with a pompous specimen of three-year-old boyhood perched serenely on his shoulder. He was John Morgan, junior, and liked no place so well as his grandfather's shoulder. The carriage wound around the lawn, and drew up before the piazza door, and they all—father, mother, sisters, and baby—went down to meet it. And as Estelle's bright and beautiful face, a little matured since we first knew her, but rarely beautiful still, appeared in view, and her eager arms were thrown around Mother Morgan's neck, that lady, as she heartily gave back loving kisses, said, in a voice which I am not sure you would recognize, so little have you known of her in these latter days,—
"Welcome home, my daughter!"
I wonder if I have told you that the carriage contained others beside the bride and groom? Louise had not forgotten it, for her own father and mother were actually come to pay the long-promised visit. It had been arranged that they should meet the young couple returning from their wedding trip and travel with them homeward. Louise had been home several times in the last five years, but father and mother were just fulfilling a long-made promise to visit her; and here at last were they all gathered under the Morgan roof, the two families unbroken.
They went to the spacious dining-room, and sat them down to the bountiful wedding-feast; and among them all only two had vivid recollections just then of the contrast between that home-coming and the greeting that was given Louise and Lewis on that winter night. Mrs. Dorothy Butler remembered it, it is true; but such important matters had filled Mrs. Dorothy's mind in the intervening years, and everything was so utterly changed to her, that she much doubted sometimes whether she really had not dreamed all those strange earlier experiences, and only lived through these later years. To Estelle the house was new, of course, and really handsome, and everything was delightfully improved. But Estelle did not know that hearts and faces had greatly improved. She could not imagine Mother Morgan in her straight calico without a collar; she could not see John in his shirt-sleeves, his pants tucked within his boots, as Louise saw him in imagination at that moment.
Ah! There were sweeter contrasts than those. When the bright evening drew to its close, Nellie wheeled the little centre-table close to her father's chair, and set the student lamp on it. And Farmer Morgan opened the large old Bible which always had its place of honour on that centre-table, and read: "Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender mercies." And then Farmer Morgan said, with reverent voice, "Let us pray," and the two families, brought together by ties that reach into eternity, bowed together, and Father Morgan commended them all to the care of the God whom at last he and his house served.
They talked about old times just a little, the next morning, both upstairs and down. Louise, lingering in Estelle's room, listening well pleased to her lavish praise of all its adorning, said suddenly,—
"Do you remember this, Estelle?"
"Yes; indeed I do. The very tidy that Fannie Brooks made for your wedding present; and there is that white one I made. O Louise, isn't it funny? Do you remember my asking you what you were going to do with all those tidies?"
"Yes, dear. I told you I would find use for them, and you see I have. Do you remember, also, that you assured me that morning how impossible it would be for you ever to leave papa and mamma and go away with a stranger as I was doing?"
"Well," said Estelle, with an amused, half-ashamed little laugh, "I didn't go away with a stranger; I came with John. You see I didn't know him then."
And again Louise wondered what she would have said of him if she had.
Downstairs, an hour or so afterward, she lingered in the sitting-room to say a few loving words to her own dear mother, and while there Mother Morgan passed the piazza windows, young John by the hand, he loudly discoursing to her as to the beauties of a certain insect which she was being dragged by his eager hand to see.
"Mother spoils him," Louise said, with a complacent laugh, as the boy's shrill voice floated back to them. "She will go anywhere and do anything that he coaxes her to."
"The idea of mother SPOILING anybody!" said Dr. John, with incredulous voice and laughing eyes.
"Well, she certainly does. I suppose all grandmothers do."
Then she went about the pretty task of straightening the books and papers, and restoring the sitting-room to its yesterday's freshness.
"I am glad mothers don't spoil their children," her mother said, satisfaction in her voice, as she watched Louise moving among the disordered elements, bringing order out of confusion.
"I didn't spoil her, did I, Lewis? What a lovely home you have had here all these years! I am glad you have demonstrated the folly of the saying that no house is large enough for two families. How could anything be better than the arrangement which you have here? Mrs. Morgan was telling me this morning that when you talked for a time of going to housekeeping it almost made her sick. I'm very glad you didn't. Little John gives Louise care enough without the responsibilities of housekeeping; though your mother says, Lewis, that she takes a great deal of care from her. I think she has rather an exaggerated opinion of you, Louise; perhaps she is trying to spoil you."
"She is a remarkable little woman, you will have to admit," Lewis said, in a half-laughing tone, but regarding his wife with eyes in which she saw earnestness and tender feeling. "I am glad you brought her up so well, mother; there are not many who would have succeeded with the problem of two families in one house as she has done."
"Yes," said the mother emphatically; "and then there is another thing to be taken into consideration. She had unusual surroundings. Anybody can see that your mother is an unusual woman. Probably Louise's experience has been exceptional. I really believe at heart that there are not many houses large enough for two families. I trembled for Louise. I used to watch every letter critically for signs of failure. You see I did not know your father and mother. I did not feel so anxious about the father; they always get along well with daughters-in-law if the mothers do. But I worried a good deal, unnecessarily I can see now. Still it is, after all, an exceptional case. Don't you think so?"
Lewis turned slowly round from the mantel against which he had been leaning and regarded his wife with a curious look—eyes that were brimming with a mischievous light, and yet had behind the light a suggestion even of tears. His voice, when he spoke, had also that curious hint of pent-up feeling.
"Yes, it is an exceptional case. Very few daughters-in-law have such experiences. I do consider my mother an unusual woman, and my wife an unusual wife. And I tell you in all honesty, mother, that we of the Morgan family thank God every day of our lives for the vine from your branch that was grafted into ours."
THE END.
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