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* * *
SUNSHINE BLAZED THROUGH the huge windows that looked out on the back lawn. Kelly opened her eyes and squinted at the brightness. After all the rain the night before, the light seemed especially brilliant. She loved waking to sunshine and always left the drapes open. But it wasn’t the light that woke her today. The feeling of being watched encroached upon her sleep.
She was startled to see Ari’s eyes, barely higher than the coverlet, peering at her.
“Am I dead?” he asked.
Kelly blinked, pushing herself up on her elbows to see his entire face.
“Ari, why would you think you’re dead?”
“Everything is so white. And you’re an angel. Only an angel would know my name,” he answered in childlike logic.
Kelly looked at her bedroom. The cover was white, the rug was white and the walls were white. The totally white room had splashes of color in the throw pillows, and gold accents that Kelly had used to decorate the space. “Well, thank you,” she said. “But I am not an angel.”
“This is what the priest said heaven was like, except...” He trailed off.
“Except what?” Kelly prompted.
“Except for your wings.” He tried to look behind her as if she was hiding her angel wings within the folds of the bed cover.
Kelly laughed. “You’re not dead, Ari.”
He frowned and looked around the room, up at the ceiling, at her bed, and then back at her. “This isn’t heaven?”
“This is my bedroom.”
“All by yourself?” His eyes opened wide.
“I’m afraid so.”
“Wow!” he said. “Is my room for only me?” He pointed to himself as his boy-soprano voice went up hopefully at the end of the sentence.
Kelly sat fully up. She couldn’t tell the child he wouldn’t be staying. She’d only given Jason Kendall and his son a room for the night. Today they had to go.
“Where’s your father?” she asked instead of answering his question.
“I don’t know. Is he dead, too?”
“Ari, you’re not dead and neither is your dad.”
“What is this place? My dad said we were coming to his old house. This doesn’t look like a old house.”
Kelly stopped herself from correcting the boy’s grammar. “Actually, this is a very old house. It was built a long time ago.”
“Before I was born?”
Kelly smiled. “Before your father was born,” she told him. “People will want to come and see it when it’s complete. A lot of work has been done to make it look like it did back then.”
“Did you do it?”
She smiled. She’d forgotten that kids ask a lot of questions. “Yes, Ari, I did a lot of it.” Pushing her arms into the robe that matched her nightgown, she asked, “Are you hungry?”
He quickly began bobbing his head up and down.
“Good, then you can’t be dead. Because dead people don’t get hungry.”
He seemed to be weighing the truthfulness of that in his four-year-old mind. After a moment he nodded and she guessed he agreed with her.
“How about we go and get something to eat?” Kelly didn’t wait for an answer. She offered her hand and he took it. The two went downstairs to the kitchen.
“Wow,” he said again as they entered the spacious kitchen. “I never saw a room this big.”
Kelly was getting a picture of how they must have lived. Their home was probably a lot smaller in comparison. The house at the Kendall, constructed in 1860 by Caldwell Kendall on land that was a bequest upon his marrying a nearby landowner’s daughter, couldn’t be called a farmhouse. It wasn’t a purely serviceable structure. The Kendall was built to display the grandeur of the time.
The place had been magnificent when Kelly was a little girl. What it looked like when she bought it was another story. Slowly she was trying to give it back that glory. But it was expensive and she was having to find alternative means to keep it solvent.
“Do you like waffles?” she asked.
“What’s waffles?”
It was her turn to be surprised. “You’ve never had a waffle? Well, today is your lucky day.”
Kelly was used to fending for herself. She hadn’t grown up in the shadow of the luxury that was the Kendall. Her home was a small house a few miles away. Losing her mother when she was ten, she was raised by her father. He’d worked as a groom at a nearby farm, making barely enough money to make ends meet. Most of his money he drank before getting home. When he did come home, she’d take whatever she could find to buy food. Consequently, Kelly learned to make meals from practically nothing. And she never wasted anything.
She had a maternal grandmother living in Arizona and several cousins she’d heard of, but never seen. After her own mother died, she was too young to think of going to live with her grandmother and her father hadn’t begun to drink yet. By the time Kelly was old enough to think of leaving, she felt her father needed her. They’d fallen into a routine. While she couldn’t keep him from drinking, there was a weird stability to their relationship.
The Kendall had a part-time cook and housekeeper. The housekeeper came once a week and did the heavy cleaning. It was Kelly’s plan to increase her hours when the Kendall was self-sustaining.
“Can I pour now?” Ari asked after she’d stirred the mix.
“Ari, you speak English really well, how did that happen?”
“My dad teached me.”
Kelly smiled. Close enough, she thought.
While it had taken Kelly nearly six months to repair and replace the kitchen, she could say it was now properly christened. A fine coat of flour blanketed the surface of the granite counter and part of the floor. The waffle iron had burned sap oozing over the sides. And Kelly’s white angelic nightgown and robe were stained down the front with grape juice. Ari didn’t fair well, either. The grape stains on his pajamas trailed from neck to toe and his bronze-colored hands were white with flour.
“It’s my turn to pour,” Ari insisted.
“You bet it is,” Kelly told him. “But you have to be careful because this is very hot.” She pointed to the waffle iron.
“I can do it,” he assured her.
“All right. Are you ready?”
“Ready,” he said with a big smile on his face.
Kelly handed him a small mixing bowl with just enough batter to fill the waffle iron.
“Evenly,” she whispered. He made wide circles with the bowl, spreading the batter over the iron and watching it melt together to cover the surface.
“Now close the top,” she instructed.
He handed her the bowl and the two of them lowered the hot lid.
“Good,” she said. While they waited, Kelly finished the bacon and eggs and poured herself a cup of coffee. She hazarded to give Ari another cup of grape juice, only this time she found a cup and fashioned a top. Ari opened the waffle iron and, while the shape of the iron was circular, she flipped the strangely shaped trapezoid onto a plate. At the table seconds later, Ari dug into his breakfast. With his mouth full, he said, “I like it. Can we have these every day?”
There was that permanent question again. Ari thought he was here for good. Jason had told him they were coming here, coming home. Only he didn’t know about the sale. This wasn’t their home and Kelly couldn’t take them in. She was having a hard enough time getting the place back on its feet.
Ari took another bite of the syrupy confection. “I like it,” he said again. He put another forkful of food in his mouth then stopped and lowered his fork. He put his hands in his lap, looking down as if he shouldn’t be enjoying his meal.
“Is something wrong?” Kelly asked.
“Is my dad going to eat with us?”
“I’m sure he’s still asleep,” Kelly said. Jason had been dead on his feet last night and it was well past one o’clock when she’d shown him the room where he could sleep.
“He always eats breakfast with me,” Ari said.
“We could wake him up, but he’s very tired,” Kelly told him. “Do you think you can eat with me? Just this once?”
He cocked his head in a questioning manner and considered her offer. “He’s been tired before, but he always ate with me.”
“How about this,” Kelly asked. “When he wakes up, you can eat with him again?”
Ari smiled. Apparently, she’d hit upon the perfect solution. “I guess that’s all right.” Picking up his fork, he resumed his meal.
Kelly figured it would be lunchtime before Jason opened his eyes. She’d let him sleep. Ari was a delightful child. He had dark curly hair and eyes that were practically black. He was thin and limped slightly when he walked. Without a resemblance to Jace, Kelly thought Ari must look like his mother.
She wondered where his mother was now. Suddenly a terrible thought occurred to her. Suppose Jason had kidnapped his son and brought him here without the mother’s consent? After all, he’d shown up in the middle of the night without a place to stay and with a child. This could be trouble, she thought. And she’d had enough of that to last a lifetime.
* * *
THAT WAS THE best dream Jace had ever had. He and Ari played on a hill. They were safe. He knew nothing would happen to them there. Father and son ran, jumped and rolled over the ground. Jace heard his son laughing. He didn’t wheeze or limp, but hung on tightly when Jace swung him around in circles. Waking, he held on to the image for a moment longer.
