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“Oh, Drew.”
“I know it was wrong to snoop, and I’m very sorry. I apologized really good to Mr. Tannehill.” Drew paused a moment before adding, “He doesn’t like Christmas at all. He’s like the Grinch when it comes to Santa Claus.”
Willow sighed. She could relate. Though she pasted on a happy face each year for the children’s sake, Willow would be content to skip the Christmas season entirely. The worst time of her life was tied to the holidays. She’d discovered her husband’s affair during a Christmas party. She’d made her decision to leave him while watching Drew’s rehearsal forthe Christmas pageant at church. Andy had wrecked his car with their son aboard and died on December 14.
Distracted by thoughts of grinchery, Willow was slow to pick up on the tale her son had begun to relay about setting a dollhouse on fire.
“What? Wait!” Willow held up her hand, palm out. “Wait a minute. You set a toy on fire?”
“Not me. Mr. Tannehill. And it wasn’t a toy or an accident. He did it on purpose. And guess what, Mom? He let me put it out!”
So, the Grinch of Lake in the Clouds played with fire? And he’d encouraged her son to join him?
Anger flashed through her and, on its heels, concern. What sort of man set toys on fire to entertain a child?
Serial killers set fires. They tortured animals.
Drew continued in an excited rush. “He taught me how air is fuel for a fire and P.A.S.S to put it out. And if you’re ever in a burning building, touch the door to see if it’s hot before you open it!”
Willow walked up to Drew and took him by the shoulders. “Stop. Drew, hush. I need some context here. I want you to start at the beginning and tell me what happened. Slowly.”
He did his best. When he was finished, all Willow knew for sure was that her son had trespassed because a sign had been too tempting for an eight-year-old Santa believer to resist. Why he and his host had spent the better part of the hour occupied with fire, she still didn’t understand.
She knew she didn’t like it. Drew got into enough trouble on his own without encouragement from an adult. So why in the world would Noah Tannehill play with fire with Drew? Her gaze shifted from the workshop to the house and then back to her son. “Where is Mr. Tannehill now?”
“He’s in his house. Guess what? He has a cuckoo clock! I saw it when I went inside to take a poop. It was almost three o’clock, and I wanted to stay and watch it and see if it sounded like any of Auntie’s clocks do, but he told me I had to wait for you outside because he could hear your car, and you were almost here.”
“I see. Okay, then.” Willow made a scooting motion with her hand. “Go get in the car with Nana and Auntie and your sister, Drew. I need to thank Mr. Tannehill for helping you.”
And maybe give him a piece of her mind about mingling children and fire.
Not that she had much of a mind left to be doling out pieces of it.
As her son scampered away toward the SUV, Willow turned to the house. She was facing the back of it and could easily follow the footsteps through the snow to the back porch steps, but this didn’t feel like a back-door sort of call. She decided to walk around to the front.
The house was dark. She heard no music nor the sound of a television drifting from indoors. Certainly didn’t hear the barking of a dog or the mewl of a cat. She’d have believed the house to be empty had Drew not insisted that the man was inside.
Willow climbed the front porch steps, and when she didn’t spy a doorbell, she rapped three times on the door.
Nobody responded.
She knocked again, harder this time.Rap. Rap. Rap.
Silence.
Well, what now?
Good manners demanded she not leave without thanking him, but honestly, that was just an excuse. She wanted tomeet this man in person. She wanted to look into Noah Tannehill’s eyes and take the measure of the man.
As best she could, anyway. She hadn’t always been the best judge of character, had she?Hello, Andy Eldridge’s ghost. I’m talking about you.
Willow remained haunted by the mistakes she’d made where her husband was concerned.
Stop. Don’t go there right now. This isn’t about what happened in your marriage in Nashville. It’s about today in Lake in the Clouds, where it’s time to play Mama Bear and make sure everything is on the up and up here on Running Elk Road.
She wanted to assess this stranger whose space her son had invaded. She needed to reassure herself that he’d had reasons for playing firebug with her son that went beyond psychopathic tendencies.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
