CHAPTER TWELVE

Jackie

Maybe I was jealous of Dessie, but I didn’t think so. First of all, why would I be jealous? If I were madly in love with Ford Newcombe and some woman was about to take him away, I would, yes, be very jealous. Or if Dessie were the type of woman who wanted to “do” for a man, that old Southern term that meant wait on him hand and foot, and I thought my job was in jeopardy, I’d probably try to break them up.

But Dessie Mason wasn’t like that. True, I could imagine her marrying Ford and assuming that I was to be her slave. And of course she’d move me out of the best bedroom and into the servants’ quarters at the top of the house, but I couldn’t see her firing me. No, I did too much work to be fired. I ran the house, was Ford’s social secretary, was cook and purchasing agent. I did everything except have sex with him—and I was sure that Dessie would take over that job.

So why would I be jealous, as Ford constantly let me know he thought I was? He smirked at me so much I was afraid his face was going to shift to one side.

The problem I saw on that first day was that Dessie was setting her cap for him and she meant to have him. And if she got him, I was sure she’d make him miserable.

Yes, Dessie was beautiful. Actually, she was more than beautiful. She was luscious. I could imagine that over the years thousands of men had declared undying love for her. My personal opinion was that she’d probably left L.A. because there were too many beautiful women there. Her beauty combined with her formidable talent as a sculptor made her the Queen of Cole Creek. The residents mentioned her name in whispers.

So now Dessie had decided she wanted my boss and I had no doubt she’d get him. Ford was smart when it came to books, but he didn’t seem too smart about women. On the night Dessie came to dinner, Ford was after her like she was in heat. Truthfully, I thought it was disgusting.

First of all, Dessie made a big production of showing Ford a sculpture she’d created. It was good, true, and maybe I was being petty when I thought she was presuming too much, but I didn’t think a sculpture of Ford’s late wife and mother-in-law was something she should have made without asking his permission.

But since she did make it, why hadn’t she shown it to him in private? Why did she have to make a big production in front of other people and make Ford cry like a baby? That poor man had tears rolling down his cheeks from the moment he saw the sculpture until the lid was put back on.

I’m sure I’m just being cynical, but I bet she’d never made an uncommissioned sculpture for a poor man. It was all too much of a coincidence that Ford was rich and she’d made a 3-D portrait of two women he’d written millions of love words about.

When he told me he was going to her house on Sunday to discuss casting the sculpture in bronze, I was anxious to see how many other pieces he’d order from her. Ford and Tessa had already littered the garden with about fifty hideous little concrete statues, and I’d seen Dessie looking at them with calculating eyes. She’s probably planning to replace them with something of hers that she’ll charge Ford six figures for, I thought.

I told myself that none of it was my business. Ford had a right to have an affair with or marry any woman he wanted to. My job was to—Well, the truth of the matter was that I was beginning to wonder exactly what my job was.

For the last week, any time I mentioned research, Ford changed the subject. He said he was working on something else and he’d get to the devil story “later.”

But I felt that the truth was, he was afraid for me. Since we’d both decided that my devil story was probably based on something I may have seen when I was a kid, I wasn’t unhappy when he didn’t pursue it.

Besides, I was happy working on my photography studio. And, okay, I was happy living with Ford. He could be very funny sometimes, and if anything had to do with books, he was a great companion. Every night while I fixed dinner, he read to me from one of the many books on photography he’d ordered, and both of us were learning a lot.

And his generosity was boundless. I made out an order for the bare essentials of photography equipment I’d need, but Ford added to the list and upgraded it until the total price was something that made me sick to my stomach.

“I can never pay this back,” I said, handing the list back to him.

Ford shrugged. “We’ll work out something.”

Earlier, I would have thought that meant sex, but I’d come to realize that Ford didn’t think of me in that way. Actually, I was beginning to think he thought of me as the daughter he’d never had. And, truthfully, that was beginning to depress me. So, okay, maybe I’d been pretty adamant about there being no sex between us when I first met him. But at the time I’d been engaged to Kirk, and when I left for Cole Creek with Ford, I’d just been ripped off by a man. My distrust of men was understandable. But since then…Well, since then, I’d come to find Ford rather attractive. But ever since we’d arrived in Cole Creek he’d been lusting after other women, first Rebecca and now Dessie. All I could do was be his assistant and his business partner.

On Saturday our little household was shaken. First of all, I was in a bad mood about the way Ford had made a fool of himself over Dessie the night before. I didn’t mind his crying in front of everyone—that was kind of sweet—but I did mind the way he couldn’t stop looking at her. She had on a dress that showed her enormous breasts about as much as was legal, a wide belt that cinched in her spreading waist, and a full skirt that attempted to camouflage a rear end that had to be forty-five inches around. Dessie talked and laughed all night, but Ford just sat there nursing a beer and looking at her. He stared at her little pink toenails until I moved the chair she had her feet propped on, so she had to put her lacquered toes out of sight under the table.

But no, I don’t think I was jealous. I think that if Dessie had acted like a woman on the verge of falling in love, I would have been happy. Or even if I’d seen that she was in lust with Ford it would have been okay. But Allie told me that everyone in Cole Creek knew that Dessie was sleeping with her twenty-five-year-old gardener. One time I saw her looking at Nate, and both Nate’s grandmother and I stepped between her and the beautiful boy. When Dessie laughed, it was the only honest emotion I saw on her face all evening.

Anyway, Saturday morning I wasn’t in a good mood, so I decided to take my camera and go shoot some flowers. But just as I was leaving, Ford showed up and insisted he go with me.

He has some good points, but he can also be the most infuriating man on earth. By the time I got him outfitted, the sun was high in the sky, which meant I wouldn’t get interesting shadows on the flowers, and I wished with all my might I’d let him spend the day with Dessie. Let her do whatever she wanted to with him.

Worse, when we finally got on the trail, he complained every step of the way. We didn’t go more than a mile, if that, but to hear Ford’s grumbling, you would have thought we’d hiked thirty miles on a survival trek. He ate and drank every step of the way, grunted and groaned over every twig in his path, and even whined about cobwebs across the trail. I felt like smacking him!

In the end, though, it was good he went with me because I had another one of those disaster-dreams. Only this time I was fully awake. Sort of awake. I think I blacked out for a few minutes. When I came to myself, Ford had a fire going and had heated water in a cup, and he started feeding me one of those pseudo-nutritional bars he eats by the dozen.

He was the one who figured out that I’d had another vision, and the second he said it, I knew he was right. Thirty minutes before, he’d been lying down, with all the energy of a dead slug, but suddenly he was a jet engine. He grabbed both packs, put one on his back, one on his front, and started running back to the truck. Yes, running.

When he got behind the wheel of the truck, I had to hold on for dear life. He was asking me a million questions about my dream-vision, but I could hardly concentrate for fear he was going to turn the truck over. What really amazed me was that he drove like that with one hand on the wheel and didn’t seem to think it was at all unusual. All his books ran it home that he (in a fictional guise) wasn’t like his redneck relatives, but all he needed that day was a cigarette in his mouth and a rifle across the back window, and I would have put him up against any Billy Joe Bob in the U.S.

In spite of my head repeatedly hitting the roof of the truck, I managed to get Dessie on his cell phone. I called her because I felt sure she wouldn’t care about anything outside herself. Allie would have asked me a hundred questions, none of which I wanted to answer.

Thanks to Dessie, we found the house of my dream-vision in record time, then slipped in the backdoor and put out the fire before the house went up in flames.

I must say that the whole thing was exhilarating. The wild ride, then accomplishing a task that saved the lives of two children…Well, truthfully, it turned me on. I wanted to get naked, pour champagne over my body, and make love until the sun came up. With Ford. Yeah, that shocked me a bit, but when we were laughing on the way home, it seemed possible that we could end up fooling around. Maybe not all night with a man his age and in his physical condition, but still…

At my suggestion, we stopped and got pizza and beer and took it home, and I was contemplating the best way to suggest that we could…Well…

But when we arrived at that beautiful house, Dessie was on our front porch with a basketful of champagne and smoked oysters, and she was saying how she’d been so worried about Ford that she’d just been sick. Her accent had deepened into Classic Southern Belle, and she’d even managed to pull in her belt another notch. I wondered if she’d had a colonic.

Ford gave me an I’m-helpless-to-do-anything-about-this look, so I said I was tired and wanted to go to bed. He started to get all fatherly on me, but I pushed his hand away from my forehead, and went upstairs. I had to close all my windows to keep from hearing Dessie’s exaggerated laugh as she and Ford sat in the garden talking for most of the night.

Even if I wasn’t jealous, I was certainly lonely on Sunday. Because he’d stayed up so late, Ford didn’t get out of bed until noon, and even then I could see that his mind was elsewhere. I made him a big cheesy omelet, put it on the plate in front of him, then went outside to the garden to reread one of the new books on photography. I’d meant to go to church, but the truth was that I was feeling so lazy I couldn’t seem to work up any interest in going. At twelve-thirty I called Allie but no one answered the phone.

It was while the phone was ringing that I heard Ford’s car and looked out the window to see him driving away. He hadn’t even said goodbye!

I sat down on the little upholstered chair by the telephone and suddenly felt bereft. No, actually, for the first time, I felt like an employee. Yes, I know he gave me a paycheck, but still…

It was absurd of me and I knew I was acting like a kid, but it was the first time Ford and I had been apart since we’d arrived. Would Dessie cook something divine for him? Would she wear black toreador pants and a red blouse? Would she show a cleavage four and a half feet long?

I gave a great sigh of disgust at myself. For someone who wasn’t jealous, I was certainly acting like I was.

Maybe I was just bored. I called Nate’s house. Maybe he and his grandmother would like to come over for lunch, or invite me to their house. She was a nice woman and I’d enjoyed telling Ford that the grandmother was his age. Ford had replied that he wasn’t going to marry her and that Nate wasn’t going to be forced to bunk with me so I might as well stop trying. As always, we’d laughed together.

There was no answer at Nate’s house.

“Where is everyone?” I said aloud. Was there another tea party and I hadn’t been invited? Maybe that’s where Ford was now, I thought. Maybe he and Dessie were going to the party without me.

I told myself that I needed to get a grip. And I needed to find something to do with myself that didn’t involve other people. Which, of course, meant taking pictures.

For a moment I hesitated and had to work to stamp down a feeling of panic. What if I went into the woods and had another vision? Who would be there to help me if I blacked out again? And even more important, who would help me undo the horror of what I saw?

Sitting there for a second, I lectured myself on codependency. I’d had twenty-six years before I met Ford Newcombe, so I could certainly spend an afternoon without him.

I got up from the chair and went upstairs to my bedroom. Empty, the house seemed too big, too old, and too creaky. And it seemed that I heard sounds from every corner. The exterminators had rid the house of the bees, but now I wondered if there were wasps in the attic. Or birds.

I checked my big camera backpack for film and batteries, picked it up and went downstairs. I didn’t know where I was going, but I certainly needed to get out of that vacant house.

As it turned out, I only walked about a mile down a narrow road when I came to a little sign that said “trail.” It was one of those signs that looked hand carved—and maybe was for all I knew—and made a person feel as though she was about to embark on an adventure.

The trail was wide and worn down, the bare earth hard packed, the tree roots exposed and worn smooth by many feet. Why don’t I remember this trail? I thought, then laughed at myself. I felt eerie when I did remember things and confused when I didn’t remember them.

It didn’t take me but minutes to find flowers worth preserving forever. I mounted my F100 on the tripod, used Fuji Velvia ISO 50, and shot some Downy Rattlesnake Plantain standing in a tiny spot of sunlight. I clicked the cable release and held my breath that no wind would move a leaf and blur the picture. But it was dead still at the moment so I had hopes that the photo would come out sharpedged.

I really loved to photograph flowers. Their colors were so gaudy that I could satisfy the child in me who still loved the brightest crayons in the box. I could look at pictures of brilliant reds and pinks and greens and still feel I was doing something “natural.”

When I photographed people, I liked just the opposite. The expressions on people’s faces and the emotions they showed were, to me, the pyrotechnic “color” of the picture. But I’d found that color film too often drew attention to skin that was too red, or blotched with age spots, and so hid the emotion I wanted to show. And with a child, how could you look at a face when it was competing with a shirt that had four orange rhinos dancing across it?

Over the years I’d learned to satisfy my color lust with photos of brilliant flowers taken with film of the finest grain. I could blow up a stamen to 9 x 12 and still have it crystal clear. And I indulged my love of seeing the insides of people by using black-and-white film—true black-and-white, the kind that had to be developed by hand instead of churned out by some giant machine.

I shot four rolls of Velvia and two of Ektachrome, then packed up and headed back toward the house. It was nearly four o’clock and I was hungry and thirsty, but I’d brought nothing to eat with me. I guess that in the last weeks I’d grown used to being with Ford because wherever he went food and drink followed close behind.

I allowed myself a great, self-pitying sigh as I shouldered my pack and headed back down the trail. But the truth was, I was feeling better. I wasn’t feeling lonely anymore, and I was no longer angry at Ford. I’d had a nice afternoon and I felt sure I’d taken some good photos. Maybe I could start a line of greeting cards and sell them to tourists passing through the Appalachians, I thought. Maybe I could—

Suddenly, I halted and looked around me because I didn’t recognize where I was. There was a narrow stream in front of me, but I knew I hadn’t crossed a stream on my way in. Turning back, I looked for the trail I’d come in on—all the while imagining how very sorry Ford Newcombe was going to be when the National Guard had to be called out to look for me. “I shouldn’t have left her alone,” he’d say.

I walked for about twenty minutes, but still saw nothing I remembered. I was beginning to be concerned when I looked to my left and saw the sunlight flash off something that was moving.

Curious, but also a little frightened because I didn’t know where I was, I stepped off the path and into the forest. I tried to move as quietly as possible on the soft earth and succeeded in making little noise. The forest was quite dark; there was a great deal of underbrush, but I could see the sunlight ahead. I saw the flash again and my heart leaped into my throat. What was I going to see? Thoughts of Jack the Ripper and a flashing knife went through my mind.

When I got to the edge and could see through the trees, I nearly laughed out loud. I was looking at someone’s backyard. On the far side was an old fence nearly broken by the weight of the pink roses that covered it. When a slight breeze came up, rose petals fluttered softly to the ground.

The grass had been recently mowed and I closed my eyes for a moment at the heavenly smell. The forest I was in was on one side, the fence on two sides. The fourth side, to my right, had shade trees so dense that I couldn’t see the house that I assumed was farther up the hill.

But the truth was that the White House could have been up there and I wouldn’t have seen it, because I was distracted.

Under a huge shade tree was a wooden park bench and sitting on it was a man. A very, very handsome man. He was tall and slim, his neck resting on the back of the bench, his long legs stretched out in front of him. He was wearing blue jeans, gray hiking boots, and a dark blue denim shirt, the kind with snaps down the front. His thick hair was as black as a crow’s wing and it didn’t look as though it had been dyed. The silver flash I’d seen was a cup. He was drinking something hot and steamy out of the top of a tall aluminum Thermos that stood on the ground by his feet.

Also on the ground was a blue canvas bag with a loaf of long, skinny French bread sticking out of it. Beside the bag was—I drew in my breath and my eyes widened until they hurt—a Billingham camera bag. Billingham bags were made in England and they looked like something the duke of somewhere would carry, something handed down from his ancestors. Prince Charles once said he didn’t think anyone actually bought tweeds, that tweeds were just something people had. That’s the way Billingham bags looked: as though they’d always been there. They were made of canvas and leather, with brass buckles. Prince Charles aside, the truth was that Billingham bags could be bought, but, like tweeds, they cost dearly.

I was standing there, skulking in the trees like a voyeur, lusting after his big camera bag, when I felt the man looking at me. Sure enough, when I looked up, he was staring directly at me, a faint smile on his lips, his dark eyes warm.

I turned at least four shades of red and wanted to flee into the forest. Like a unicorn, I thought. But then, unicorns probably knew how to find their way out of the forest.

Taking a deep breath, I tried to pretend I was an adult as I walked toward him. “I didn’t mean to spy on you,” I said. “I just—”

“Wanted to make sure I wasn’t the local mass murderer?”

Full face, he was even better looking, and he had a beautiful voice: rich and creamy. Oh, no, I thought. I’m in trouble.

Moving to one side of the bench, he motioned for me to sit down beside him. He was so beautiful in such a sophisticated, elegant way, that as I removed my pack, I made myself keep my eyes on the roses. “Beautiful, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” he said, turning to look at them. “I knew they’d be blooming now so I made a point of coming today.”

I put my vinyl and canvas camera bag on the ground beside the Billingham and they seemed to make a New World versus Olde Worlde statement.

As I sat down on the far end of the bench, I kept looking at the roses, but the man was between them and my eyes, so my vision strayed.

He turned toward me, eyes twinkling, the sweetest smile on his face. As I’d come to know Ford, I’d grown used to his looks, but this man made me feel like a nerdy teenager alone with the captain of the football team.

“You must be Jackie Maxwell,” he said.

I groaned. “Small town.”

“Oh, yes. Very small. I’m Russell Dunne,” he said, holding out his hand to shake mine.

I gave his hand a little shake then released it. That’s my self-discipline for the year, I thought. Releasing that big, warm hand had not been easy to do.

“Is that your house up there?” I asked, looking back through the trees, but all I could see was more trees.

“No,” he said. “At least not anymore.”

I wanted to ask what he meant but didn’t. I was so attracted to the man that I seemed to have electricity running through me.

“You aren’t possibly hungry, are you? I brought too much food and either it gets eaten or I have to haul it back.” He looked at me through long, spiky lashes. “It’s heavy so you’d be helping me out if you shared it with me.”

What could I do? Refuse to help him? Ha ha.

“Sure,” I said, and the next minute he was standing before me and stretching. Oh, yeah, sure, I knew he was showing off his drop-dead gorgeous, hunky body, but well…

I made myself stop looking as he picked up the canvas bag and pulled out a red and white checked tablecloth. I knew that pattern was a little hokey but, still, it looked perfect spread on the dark green grass.

“Help me?” he asked as he sat on one side of the cloth.

In an embarrassingly short time I was sitting on the tablecloth, both of us facing the splendid view of the roses, and I was arranging the items he pulled out of the bag.

I must say that he’d been able to pack a great deal in that bag. There was a bottle of cold white wine and two crystal glasses—the kind that ping when you tap them—and plates from Villeroy and Boch. The food was wonderful: cheeses, pâtés, olives, meats in little cold packs, three kinds of salad.

“This is like the loaves and fishes,” I said.

He stopped unloading and looked at me, puzzled. “What do you mean?”

He hadn’t spent a lot of time in church, I thought. I told him of Jesus feeding the multitudes with a few fish sandwiches.

The story seemed to amuse him and he smiled. “Nothing Biblical, just an experienced packer.”

Had it been anyone else, I would have thought my joke had fallen flat, but his smile was so warm that I returned it. He poured us glasses of wine, broke bread from the loaf, and handed me a plate of cheese and olives. It was my absolute favorite kind of meal.

After we’d eaten some, I leaned back on one arm, sipped my delicious wine, and looked at the roses. “So tell me everything about yourself,” I said.

When he laughed, the sound was as rich and creamy as the Brie. “I’d much rather that you tell me what all of Cole Creek is dying to know. What’s going on between you and Ford Newcombe?”

Startled, I turned to look at him. “Why would anyone care to know that?”

“Same reason you want to know all about me.”

“Touché,” I said, smiling and beginning to relax. My physical attraction to him was so strong that I didn’t trust myself to behave, but I was beginning to calm down enough to think and talk. “So who goes first?”

“How about scissors, paper, rock?” he said, and I laughed again. That had been the way my father and I often settled who was going to have to do the more onerous chores.

I won. “Who are you? Why weren’t you at the Annual Cole Creek Tea and what happened to your house up there?” I squinted into the deep shade of the forest at the last question.

“Okay,” he said, chewing, swallowing, dusting his hands off. Then he got up, bowed to me, and put his right index finger to his temple. I knew he was imitating Jack Haley, the tin man in The Wizard of Oz—one of my favorite movies.

“Russell Dunne,” he said. “Thirty-four years old. Associate professor of art history at the University of North Carolina in Raleigh. I lived in Cole Creek until I was nine, and after we moved, we sometimes returned to visit relatives. My mother grew up in the house that used to be there, but it burned down about ten years ago. I was married but I’m a widower now, no children, no real attachments, actually. I wasn’t at the party because I don’t live here and am not considered part of the town.” He looked at me, eyes laughing. “What else?”

“What’s in the Billingham?”

His laughter turned to mock seriousness. “So now we get down to your real interest in me. And here I thought it was my charisma. Or at least the cheese.”

“Nope,” I said, glad to pretend that I wasn’t already thinking about my bridesmaids. “What equipment is in there?”

Stepping over to the bench, he picked up the big bag, set it on the edge of the tablecloth and withdrew a camera I’d only seen in catalogs: a Nikon D1-X.

“Digital?” I asked and I could hear the sneer in my voice. I like automatic focus on my cameras but that’s as modern as I got. I hated zoom lenses as I didn’t feel they gave me as clear a photo as a fixed lens. As for digital, that was for Mr. and Mrs. Homeowner. Even though I knew that his camera body, no lens, cost thousands wholesale, still, in my view, it wasn’t a “real” camera.

Turning the camera toward the sunlit roses, Russell fired off a couple of shots, then opened a door and removed a plastic card from the side. As I drank wine, he looked inside his bag and withdrew a little machine—two of them could have fit in a shoe box. At first I thought it was a portable DVD player and wondered what movie he was planning to show me. I hoped it wasn’t too sexy or I’d never be able to keep my hands off of him.

When he stuck the card in the machine, I paused, glass frozen to my lips, and I don’t think I breathed until I saw a photograph come out. When he handed the photo to me, I set my glass down and marveled at a 4 x 6 photo of perfect color and clarity. I could see the thorns on the rose stems.

“Oh,” was all I could say. “Oh.”

“Of course you can put the photos on a computer and manipulate them, and there are much better printers than this gadget, but you get the idea.”

Oh, yeah, I thought. I could see uses for this. A sort of New Age Polaroid.

“But I also use this,” he said as he pulled a big Nikon F5 out of his bag. Take my camera, add some features and a couple of pounds, and you have an F5.

I love a heavy camera. I really do. I said that to Jennifer once and she said, “Yeah, like a heavy man.”

Maybe it was as sexual as she was implying, but there was something so fundamentally solid about a camera that weighed a lot that I could never get interested in the little ones.

I was impressed by what he’d shown me, but I didn’t want to gush. “So what else do you have in there?”

Lifting the top flap, he peered inside. “A scanner, a 6 x 6. Couple of lights. A backdrop or two. A motorcycle to get home on.” When he looked back at me, we laughed together.

Maybe he’d been joking about the motorcycle, but as he sat down, he pulled out a palm size Nikon digital that I knew was new on the market and touted as tops.

“Last one, I promise,” he said. “Go on, shoot.”

But as I lifted the camera and pointed it toward him, he put his hands over his face. “Anything but me.”

I aimed the camera at the roses. Had I been sitting there with Ford I would have clicked off a dozen photos of him, hands or not, but I didn’t feel secure enough with this man to go against his wishes. Or maybe I was in that girl mode where I didn’t want to displease him.

“Your turn to tell all,” he said as I played with the camera, pushing its many buttons to see what would happen.

“Absolutely nothing between Ford Newcombe and me,” I said emphatically. “In fact, today he’s out on a date with Cole Creek’s most illustrious citizen.”

“Ah,” Russell said, and his tone made me look at him. He had a striking profile, his features sharp and clear, as though they were carved from stone. I bet Dessie would like to sculpt him, I thought, then it hit me what that tone in his voice was.

“Do you know Dessie?” I asked quietly.

“Oh, yes. But, then, don’t all men know the Dessies of the world?”

Yeow! I thought. There was a condemnation if I ever heard one. I vowed then and there not to make a pass at beautiful Russell Dunne. I didn’t ever want him, or any man, to refer to me like that. “She’s…?” I wasn’t sure how to phrase my question. How much danger was my innocent, naive boss in?

When Russell turned to me, all humor was gone from his face. His dark eyes were intense—and I thought I might wilt under his gaze. “Look, do me a favor, will you?”

“Anything,” I said, and, unfortunately, I meant it.

“Don’t mention meeting me to anyone in Cole Creek, especially not to Newcombe. He might tell Dessie and she’d tell others and it could get, well, unpleasant. I’m not welcome in Cole Creek.”

“Why ever not?” I asked, aghast. A man with his manners and elegance not welcome? This man made James Bond seem like a redneck.

Russell smiled at me in a way that made me want to lie down on my back and open my arms to him.

“You’re good for my ego, Miss Maxwell.”

“Jackie,” I said, trying to stay upright. I made myself look back at the camera. “Okay, I’ll keep your secrets but I need to know all of them.” I was trying to be lighthearted, sophisticated even. I fiddled with the zoom lens, making it go in and out, then flipped the switch to screen view and looked at the few photos he’d taken. All landscapes, all perfect.

After a while he looked back at the roses and I relaxed.

“I wrote a bad review of one of Dessie’s shows,” he said. “I earn a little money on the side from writing reviews, and I wrote an honest opinion, but no one in Cole Creek has ever forgiven me.”

I didn’t do a little dance of joy, but I wanted to. It was, of course, downright mean-spirited of me to want Dessie to get a bad review, but still…

“That’s it? The town dislikes you because you gave a bad review to one of its citizens?” I asked, looking up at him.

He gave me a little one-sided smile that nearly made my socks curl off my feet. If I were in a Disney film, bluebirds would have flown down and plucked at my silk gown.

“That and the fact that I’m an outsider who knows they crushed a woman to death,” he said.

I nearly dropped the camera. If I’d fallen off a cliff I probably would have held whatever camera I had protectively to me, but what Russell said nearly made me drop that beautiful instrument.

“Shocked?” he asked, looking at me hard, but all I could do was nod. “Shocked at what I said or shocked that I know?”

“Know,” I said, and my voice was so hoarse I had to clear it.

He seemed to study me for a moment before he finally looked away. “Let me guess. Newcombe got wind of the story somehow, but when he asked questions, no one in Cole Creek knew anything about it.”

I was ready to run away with this man, certainly to have a mad affair with him, but I wasn’t ready to reveal what I’d found out since I’d arrived in this town. If I did that, I might slip and start telling him about my visions and that I remembered too many things. I decided to say as little as possible about what I knew.

“Exactly,” I said. “Miss Essie Lee.”

Russell smiled. “Ah, yes. The inimitable Miss Essie Lee. She was there, you know. She heaped stones on that poor woman.”

I tried to stay calm. I’d read newspaper accounts of horrible things happening, hadn’t I? But my stomach lurched at the thought of having been near someone who had done such a vile thing. “Was anyone prosecuted?” I managed to ask.

“No. Everything was hushed up.”

I asked the question that Ford loved so much:“Why? Why would they do such a thing?”

Russell shrugged. “Jealousy would be my guess. Amarisa was loved by many people—and hated by a few.”

“Amarisa?” I asked.

“The woman who was crushed. I met her when I was just a kid and I thought she was very nice. She…Are you sure you want to hear this?”

“Yes,” I said. I set down the camera, drew my knees to my chest, and prepared to listen.

“Amarisa’s brother, Reece Landreth, came to Cole Creek to run a small factory that made pottery. There’s a lot of good clay around here and tourists were coming into the area so I guess the owners thought it would be a good business to get into. Reece opened the factory and hired some locals to work in it. The trouble came about because the prettiest girl in town was a Cole—”

“One of the founding families.”

“Yes,” Russell said. “Harriet Cole. She was young and beautiful, and Edward Belcher wanted to marry her. I remember him, too. He was a pompous bore. But Ms. Cole wanted to get out of Cole Creek, so she latched onto a man who was free to move around.”

“The young and handsome potter.”

He was silent for a moment. “Did I mention ‘young and handsome’?”

“Must have heard it somewhere,” I mumbled, cursing myself for giving too much away.

“Anyway,” he said, “the problem was that after Harriet and Reece were married, he found out she was the town bitch, and she made his life hell. The irony was that she’d married him to get away from Cole Creek, but afterward she refused to leave her parents. By the time poor Reece found out his wife wouldn’t leave the town, they had a daughter he was mad about, so he was trapped.”

I didn’t say anything. There was no reason whatever for me to believe that I was that daughter. Because my memories fit the story exactly wasn’t enough evidence. “How did Reece’s sister, Amarisa, fit into all this?” I asked.

“Her husband had died and left her well off, but she was alone, so when her brother asked her to move to Cole Creek, she gladly accepted. I remember hearing my mother—who despised Harriet Cole—say that Amarisa knew her brother was in trouble so his rich sister came to Cole Creek to bail him out. And it was true that by the time Amarisa got here, the pottery works had gone out of business and Reece was working for his father-in-law. My mother used to say that Reece worked fourteen hours a day, but old Abraham Cole stole all the profits.”

“So Amarisa saved her brother,” I said.

“Yes. Amarisa supported her brother and his little family.” Pausing for a moment, Russell looked at me. “But the problem wasn’t money. The problem was that everyone in town liked Amarisa. She was a lovely woman. She listened to people and, as a result, they told her their secrets.”

When he didn’t say any more, I looked at him. “Do you think she knew too many secrets?”

Russell began to clear away the food. “I don’t know exactly what happened, but I do remember hearing my mother say that people in Cole Creek were jealous of Amarisa and it was causing problems.”

“So they killed her out of jealousy,” I said. Even if I didn’t know the details, I could imagine the strong emotions.

“That’s what my mother said,” Russell said. “One night she was crying hysterically, ‘They killed her! They killed her!’ I was in bed pretending to be asleep but I heard it all. The next day my father put my mother and me in the car and we left our home, never to return.”

I felt a tightening of my skin. I had a kinship with this man. I, too, had been bundled up and taken away from my home. Only I had also been taken away from my mother. Had she been Harriet Cole, the “town bitch”?

“But you came back to Cole Creek for visits.”

“After my mother died when I was eleven,” Russell said softly, “my dad and I returned here for visits. Not often and we never stayed in the old house. I don’t know why. Maybe it had too many memories for him. I do know that my mother was never the same after that night when she came home crying.” He was silent for a moment, and when he looked at me, his eyes were dark with pain. “I think that on that night they killed my mother as well as Amarisa. It just took my mother longer to die.”

We sat in an intimate silence for a while, and I’m not sure what would have happened if it hadn’t started raining. Never in my life had I met anyone who’d been through what I had. I’d been younger than Russell when I’d “lost” my mother, but we shared the trauma of having been whisked away from everything we knew.

But perhaps what really bound us together was that maybe we had been through the same tragedy. Maybe Amarisa’s death—murder—had disrupted both our lives.

We sat on the tablecloth, watching the fading light on the roses, saying nothing, thinking our own thoughts, but when the first raindrops fell, we went into action. Protect the equipment! was an unspoken command. I grabbed my yellow poncho out of my bag as Russell grabbed a blue one out of his. We tossed the big ponchos over our heads and clutched our precious equipment to our bosoms.

When we looked out the head holes and saw each other, we began to laugh. The canvas bag containing what was left of the food (not much) was in the rain, and Russell had a jacket slung across the bench—but our camera equipment was safe and dry.

Scooting over to me, he raised the front end of his poncho, then lifted mine so that we were sitting under a little tent, our bags of equipment between us. The rain was coming down hard, pelting the plastic over the top of us, but it was cozy and dry inside our little tent. Too cozy, actually.

“I want you to take these and play with them,” Russell said, holding out the little camera and the tiny printer. The camera had five million pixels. Gee. Funny how your scruples disappear when something becomes free. Had I been disdainful of digital photography merely because I couldn’t afford a digital camera?

“I couldn’t. Really,” I began, but he was slipping both items into my bag.

“It’s just a loan.” He was smiling, and at this close range I could smell his breath. Flowers would be jealous. “Besides, to get them back I’ll have to see you again.”

Looking down at my bag of camera equipment, I tried to smile demurely. What I really wanted to do was tattoo my address and phone number across his upper thigh. “Okay,” I said after what I hoped was a suitable interval.

“That is, if you’re sure there’s nothing going on between you and Newcombe.”

“Nothing whatever,” I said, grinning. I didn’t add that there might have been, but Ford had dropped me the second he saw Miss Dessie’s cleavage. And her talent, I thought. I didn’t want to be fair, but I was cursed with the ability to see both sides of a problem.

Russell peeked out of the ponchos. The rain didn’t seem to be letting up. “I think we better go or we’ll be caught in the dark.”

Wouldn’t that be a tragedy? I wanted to say, but didn’t. I was feeling a bit frantic that we hadn’t exchanged telephone numbers, but I didn’t want to appear anxious.

Russell solved the problem by opening a pocket on the side of his bag and removing a couple of cards and a pen. “Could I possibly persuade you to give me your telephone number?” he asked.

I would have said that I’d give him the number of my bank account, but I’d done that with Kirk and look what had happened. Oh, well, that was water under the bridge. I wrote the phone number for the house I shared with Ford on the back of one of the cards, but before I handed it to him, I turned the card over and looked at it. “Russell Dunne” and a telephone number in the lower left corner was all that was on the card. I looked up at him in puzzlement.

He understood my unspoken question. “When I had them printed, I was about to move and I couldn’t decide whether to put my new address or my old one on it.” He shrugged in a way that I found endearing. “Ready?” he asked. “I think we should try to get out of here while we can.”

If we couldn’t spend the night together, I guess I’d have to follow him to wherever he was going. Minutes later we were on the trail, heads down against the driving rain, camera equipment safe under our ponchos, mud clinging to our shoes. Somewhere along the way, I told myself that I needed to ask him what his address now was. Was he staying nearby? Or had he driven here all the way from Raleigh? When would he return to his job and his real life?

But the rain and our fast pace kept me from asking anything. I just kept my head down and followed him, watching his heels, not looking ahead, and having no idea of the direction he was taking to get us out of there.

After a while we came to pavement, but it was still raining too hard for me to look up. It was odd that even though I’d just met this man, I had complete faith that he knew where he was going. I followed him as though I were a child with its father, unquestioning.

When he halted, I almost ran into the back of him, and when I did look up, I was surprised to see that we were in front of Ford’s house. The rain was making such a racket that I knew we couldn’t talk. I looked up at Russell and made a gesture for him to come inside for something warm to drink.

Lifting his poncho-covered arm, he pointed to where a wristwatch went, and shook his head. Then he used his finger to do a pantomime of tears running down his cheeks and sniffed. Like most people, I hated mimes, but he was making me change my opinion.

Turning the corners of my mouth down, I imitated great sadness. Pretended to imitate. Actually, I wanted to take him inside, tell Ford I’d found him in the forest, and could I keep him? Pretty please?

Smiling, Russell leaned forward, put his beautiful face inside the hood of my poncho and kissed my cheek. Then he turned and was gone from my sight in seconds.

For a moment I stood there looking into the mist of the rain and sighing. What an extraordinary day, I thought. What a truly extraordinary day.

Turning, I went down the path, up the porch stairs, and into the house. Like something in a 1950s teen movie, I floated up the stairs. I just wanted to take a hot bath, put on dry clothes, and dream about Russell Dunne.