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“Ah,” Quinn said, “but you haven’t had mine. Wait one second, though.” She headed into her bathroom and came out with a handful of tissues, which she pressed into Janey’s hand in what she hoped was a matter-of-fact fashion. Victims cried on the witness stand, too, but tissues let them maintain some dignity. After that, she went into the kitchen and opened the lid on her pig-in-overalls cookie jar.
“Snickerdoodles this week,” she said, pulling out a couple of the cream-colored rounds with their tempting cinnamon-sugar-embedded cracks. “I believe in variety. Wait. Milk. Required.”
When Janey had succumbed, too, and they were sitting around her worn round oak table and Troy was sporting a milk mustache, Beckett said, “All right, I’m tempted. Mind if I try one?”
She waved her half-cookie at him. “Go ahead. You know where the jar is. Get some milk, or make tea, if you like.”
“You have the best houseever,”Troy said. “You have to come see my bedroom, Dad. It’s called an attic, though, not a bedroom.”
Quinn said, “I can see you thinking about building codes and fire hazards. I believe in laws. Also building codes. I put in dormer windows, don’t worry. There’s no closet, though, so it’s technically not a bedroom. Also not extremely finished, but—”
“But it’s so cool,” Troy said. “Can we live here, Dad? Please? Bacon will want to live in an attic.”
“Maybe you should show me,” he said. He looked rattled to her, she thought, and wondered what was wrong.
She might find out in time, she decided, and once they’d finished their cookies, she took them upstairs once more, then up the pine-board staircase and into the attic. She told Beckett, “Like I said, not completely finished. We put in insulation and a floor—well, subfloor, technically—and ceiling, but the walls still need drywall, and of course, an adult can only stand up in the center. But it has windows and lighting and electrical outlets and no scary hundred-year-old wiring. I was planning on making an office of it at some point. It stays warm in the winter, too, because it’s an attic. Like the front porch, I thought, but an opposite-season retreat. If I moved one of the twin beds up here, and we found a secondhand table for beside the bed and a dresser and a lamp and a rug and maybe an easy chair, it could be a bedroom. Screw a few hooks into the beams, and you have a closet, or close enough.”
“And you can see all the way out,” Troy said, running to one of the octagonal windows at either end of the space. “You can see the mountains, and the tops of the trees, like flying in an airplane, and that’s my school over there. Quinn says you can probably see our apartment, too, if you knew which one it was, because they all look the same. There’s heaps of room for Bacon to run, too. I could throw his lamb for him, and it wouldn’t matter if his toenails scratched the floor, Quinn says! She says you could even ride a skateboard up here. I don’t know how to ride a skateboard, but if I did, I could do that! If I had a skateboard.”
“We’d have to look after the place,” Beckett said, “and be tidy and quiet if we lived here. Stay out of Quinn’s way, not make noise over her head and scratch her floors.”
Seriously? She’d thought Australians were casual. Easygoing. And Troy’s face … “Houses are meant for using,” she said, “not for showing off. Sorry if that offends your construction-manager sensibilities. I understand the new lodge is going to be very high-end, and I guess most people love that, but it’s too much work for me. I go through my whole day without being able to relax, because, not to be arrogant about it, my decisions affect people’s lives. I want to come home afterwards and make a fire in my wood stove and have dinner and eat a cookie and feel … and feel cozy, and safe, andhome. If I had a dog here, and … and all of you, it’d be even—”
She stopped. That was because Beckett was staring at her, and so was Janey. And, possibly, because she’d almost said, “a family.” They weren’t her family. They were possibly going to be her tenants. She believed in boundaries. Shesetboundaries. Here she was, blurring them right and left, and Beckett looked one second away from bolting for the door, convinced she was about to enter “insane ex-girlfriend” territory. Without ever even being the girlfriend!
This had been such a bad idea. Half of her wanted to cry, suddenly, even though it was ridiculous. You couldn’t manufacture a family, or closeness, either, and you definitely couldn’t manufacture love. She knew better than this, but somehow, the emotion was out of control. Janey’s tears, Troy’s excitement. Theideaof them, here with her. The idea of Beckett in his jeans, his hair wet from the soapy shower a working man needed at the end of a long, hard day, his big feet bare, smiling at her when she came home, making dinner with her …
No.She raised her chin with an effort and said, “It was a thought, that’s all. If it doesn’t seem like a good idea, no harm done.”I’m not begging anybody to want me,she didn’t say.My life has worked just fine for me so far, and I’m going to keep being just fine.
It wasn’t feeling that way at the moment, but moments weren’t minutes, minutes weren’t hours, and hours weren’t a life. You could feel the emotion, accept it, and move on. She was fine.
* * *
Beckett said, “Hang on. I—”And then didn’t go on, because the doorbell rang.
Quinn said, “Never mind. Probably Jehovah’s Witnesses.” But it rang again, and she said, “Right. Just a minute,” and headed down the stairs.
What was going on here? He wasn’t sure. What had happened to all that cheerful composure and self-possession, not to mention that touch-me-not thing she’d been doing? The way she’d looked just now, like he’d slapped her, and Janey’s outburst, and Troy, who was silent again, looking crushed.
Beckett felt scraped raw, dragging that weight again. Sitting around her table eating those cookies she’d baked, looking at her in her soft, snug clothes and her absolutely touchable body, her unpretentious house and her openness, had felt too much like …
Like something he hadn’t had in a long time.
Voices from downstairs, fainter from all the way up here. One of them was deep and a bit loud, though. That was a man. He looked out the window. Another ute, a big black shiny one with signage on the door and a toolbox across the bed.
Definitely a man.
Well, she could have friends. Or dates. Or whatever. Not his business.
He couldn’t keep standing here in the attic, though, and he needed to talk more to Janey. They hadn’t even got to Mrs. Hobarts, and then there were those clothes of hers. It was Sunday, which meant he had time to do something about that. Meanwhile, he could think about whether he could keep himself under control, living here, though he was pretty sure he knew the answer. He said, “Let’s go.”
“But Dad—” Troy said, and stopped.
“We’ll think about it,” he said. “But we have things to do.”
“Are we going to live here?” Janey asked. “If I can have my own room—”
“We’ll talk about it later,” he said, and headed down the stairs. You had to keep moving forward if you wanted to lead. He was the leader of this family, so he moved. He heard feet behind him eventually, which meant the kids were coming. Good.
