TWO SATURDAYS AFTER Natalie first met Jack in Mrs. Klosterman’s kitchen under less than ideal circumstances, she met him there a second time. Under less than ideal circumstances.
Since his arrival two weeks earlier, she had made it a practice to get dressed and put in her contact lenses before leaving her apartment, but, hey, it was Saturday—and she hadn’t seen him around the place on the weekends—so she hadn’t dressed particularly well today. Her blue jeans were a bit too raggedy for public consumption, and her oatmeal-colored sweater was a bit too stretched out to look like anything other than a cable knit pup tent. Nevertheless, she was comfortable. And, hey, it was Saturday.
On the upside, Jack hadn’t dressed any better than she had. And he hadn’t dressed in black, either—well, not entirely. In fact, his blue jeans were even more tattered than hers were, slashed clear across both knees from seam to seam, faded and frayed and smudged here and there with what she assured herself couldn’t possibly be blood. And the black shirt he’d paired them with was faded, too, untucked and half-unbuttoned. On the downside, he had a better reason for being dressed that way than her lame hey, it is Saturday. Because he was lying prone beneath Mrs. Klosterman’s sink, banging away on the pipes with something metallic-sounding that she really hoped wasn’t a handgun.
Oh, stop it, she told herself. After all, not even mobsters fixed their kitchen sinks with handguns. They could blow their drains out.
Mrs. Klosterman, however, was nowhere in sight, which was strange, because she usually arrived for their Saturday morning breakfasts together before Natalie did. Ah, well. Maybe she was sleeping late for a change. It was a good morning for it, rainy and gray and cold. Natalie would have slept late herself, if her dear—and soon to be dearly departed, if he didn’t stop waking her up so friggin’ early on Saturdays—Mojo would have let her.
“Good morning,” she said to Jack as she placed her teapot carefully on the table. The last thing she needed to do was spill something on him again, after that disastrous episode the first time she met him.
But her greeting must have surprised him, because the metallic banging immediately stopped, only to be replaced by the dull thump of what sounded very much like a forehead coming into contact with a drain pipe. And then that was replaced by a muffled “Ow, dammit!” And then that was replaced by a less-muffled word that Natalie normally only saw Magic Markered on the stall doors in the bathroom at school.
Okay, so maybe he would have preferred she spill something on him again. Because he sure hadn’t used that word two weeks ago.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
The legs that had been protruding from beneath the sink bent at the knee, punctuated by the scrape of motorcycle boots on linoleum. Then Jack’s torso appeared more completely—and my, but what a delectable torso it was, too—followed by the appearance of his face. And my, but what a delectable face it was, too. Natalie wasn’t sure she would ever get used to how handsome he was, his face all planes and angles and hard, masculine lines. It was as if whatever Roman god had sculpted him had used Adonis—or maybe a young Marlon Brando—as a model.
Of course, she reminded herself, she wouldn’t have an opportunity to get used to how handsome he was. They ran into each other only occasionally, and he’d made clear his lack of interest in seeing any more of her. Oh, he was friendly enough, but she could tell that was all it was—friendliness. Common courtesy. She hadn’t invited him to join her for dinner again after his initial rebuff, however polite it had been. But he hadn’t brought up the “another time” thing, either. There was no point in trying to pursue something that wasn’t going to happen.
Which was just as well, anyway, because she still wasn’t entirely sure about who or what he was, or why he was even here. She still recalled his half of the phone conversation she had overheard a week ago, and even if it didn’t prove he was up to something illegal, it did suggest he was up to something temporary. He’d told whomever he was talking to that he’d come here to do a job, and that he wasn’t leaving until he’d done it. Which indicated he would be leaving eventually. So it would have been stupid for Natalie to pursue any sort of romantic entanglement with him. Had he even offered some indication that he was open to entangling with her romantically.
“No problem,” he said as he sat up. But he was rubbing the center of his forehead, which sort of suggested maybe there was a bit of a problem. Like a minor concussion, for instance.
She winced inwardly. “I really am sorry,” she apologized again.
“Really, it’s fine,” he told her. “I have a hard head.”
Which had to come in handy when one made one’s living by knocking heads together, she thought before she could stop herself.
“You’re up early for a Saturday,” he continued, dropping his hand to prop his forearm on one knee.
His shirt gaped open when he did, and Natalie saw that the chest beneath was matted with dark hair, and was as ruggedly and sharply sculpted as his facial features were. Nestled at the center, dangling from a gold chain, was a plain gold cross, and she found the accessory curious for him. And not just because he seemed like the sort of man who would normally shun jewelry, either. But also because he seemed too irreverent for such a thing.
“I’m always up by now,” she said. “Mrs. Klosterman and I have our tea together on Saturday mornings. In fact, she usually gets here before I do.”
“Mrs. K was here when I came down,” Jack said. “She was having problems with the sink, and I told her I could fix it for her, if she had the right tools. I found them in the basement, but by the time I got back up here, she had her coat on and said she had to go out for a little while.”
Now that was really strange, Natalie thought. Mrs. Klosterman never went anywhere on Saturday before noon. And sometimes she never left the house at all on the weekends.
“Did she say where she was going?” she asked.
Jack shook his head. “No. Should she have?” Natalie shrugged, but still felt anxious. “Not necessarily. Did you notice if she’d painted on jet-black eyebrows, and mascaraed her lashes into scary jet-black daddy longlegs?”
Now Jack narrowed his eyes at Natalie, as if he were worried about her. “No…” he said, drawing the word out over several time zones. “I don’t think she did. I didn’t really notice anything especially arachnid about her appearance.”
Wow, that wasn’t like Mrs. Klosterman, either, to go out without her eyebrows and daddy longlegs. “Gee, I hope everything’s okay,” Natalie said absently.
“She seemed fine to me,” Jack said. “But that’s interesting, now that I think about it, that stuff about the mascara and eyebrows. My great-aunt Gina does the same thing.”
Aunt Gina, Natalie echoed to herself, nudging her concern for Mrs. Klosterman to the side. Hmm. Wasn’t Gina an Italian name?
And what if it was? she immediately asked herself. Lots of people were Italian. And few of them fixed kitchen sinks with handguns. Inescapably, she glanced at Jack’s hands, only to find the left one empty, and the right one wielding not a weapon, but a wrench.
See? she taunted herself. Don’t you feel silly now?
Well, she did about that. But she couldn’t quite shake her worry about her landlady. Why hadn’t Mrs. Klosterman mentioned her need to go out this morning? Not that Natalie was kept apprised of all of her landlady’s comings and goings, and you could just never really tell with Mrs. Klosterman. But the two of them did sort of have a standing agreement to have breakfast together on Saturdays, and if one of them couldn’t make it, she let the other know in advance.
“What’s the matter?” Jack asked. “You look worried. Like maybe you think Mrs. K is sleeping with the fishes or something.”
Natalie arched her own eyebrows at that. Now, of all the things he could have said, why that? Why the reference to sleeping with the fishes? Why hadn’t he said something like, You look worried. Like maybe you think she’s in trouble. Or Like maybe you think she’s lying dead in a ditch somewhere. Or even Like maybe you think she’s been abducted by aliens who’ve dropped her in the Bermuda Triangle along with Elvis and Amelia Earhart and that World War II squadron they never found. Anything would have made more sense than that sleeping with the fishes reference.
Unless, of course, he was connected.
No, Natalie told herself firmly. That wasn’t it at all. He was just making a joke. A little Mob humor? she wondered. No, just a joke, she immediately assured herself.
“No, it’s not that,” she said. “I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. She and I usually have breakfast together, that’s all, and it’s odd that she didn’t tell me she needed to go out this morning. But you know, you can just never really tell with Mrs. Klosterman.”
Jack nodded. “Well then, since she’s not here to have breakfast with you, how about I take her place?”
This time it was Natalie’s turn to be surprised. Not just because of his offer, but because of the natural way he made it. Like he thought she wouldn’t be surprised that he would want to have breakfast with her. So what could she do but pretend she wasn’t surprised at all?
“Sure,” she said, hoping that wasn’t a squeak she heard in her voice. “Fine,” she added, thinking that might be a squeak she heard in her voice. “Tea?” she asked, noting a definite squeak in her voice.
Jack grinned. “Actually, I’m more of a coffee drinker. But that’s okay. Mrs. K put a pot on for me before she left.”
Natalie nodded dumbly, just now noticing the aroma of coffee in the air. Probably she hadn’t noticed it before because she’d been too busy noticing, you know, how handsome Jack was, and the way his shirt was only halfway buttoned, and how the chest beneath was matted with dark hair, and—
Well. Suffice it to say she probably hadn’t noticed it before now because she’d had her mind on other things.
She watched as Jack heaved himself up to standing, tossed the wrench into the sink with a clatter, then crossed the kitchen to pour himself a cup of coffee. And why each of those actions, which should have been totally uninteresting, should fascinate her so much was something Natalie decided not to ponder. But the way the man moved…Mmm, mmm, mmm. There was a smoothness and poetry to his manner that belied the ruggedness of his appearance, as if he were utterly confident in and thoroughly comfortable with himself. Natalie couldn’t imagine what that must be like. She constantly second-guessed herself and she never moved smoothly.
Probably she put too much thought into just about everything, but she didn’t know any other way to be. Jack Miller, on the other hand, didn’t seem the type to waste time wondering if what he was doing was the right thing. Or the smart thing. Or the graceful thing. Or the anything else thing. He just did what came naturally, obviously convinced it was the right, smart, graceful or anything else thing to do. And from where Natalie was sitting, he did his thing very, very well. There was something extremely sexy about a man who was confident in and content with himself and who didn’t feel obligated to make an impression on anyone.
Not that it made any difference, mind you, since she didn’t plan on spending a lot of time pondering the finer points of Jack Miller. Well, no more time than she already had. No more than, say, eighty or ninety—million—minutes a week.
“It’s nice of you to fix Mrs. Klosterman’s sink,” she said as he pulled out the chair on the other side of the table and lowered himself into it. Boy, even the way he sat down was sexy.
He shrugged off the compliment. “She’s a nice old lady. It’s the least I can do for her. Plus, it’s not fixed yet. I still have to put it back together again.”
“Still, a lot of guys wouldn’t see it that way,” Natalie told him. “They’d tell her to call a plumber.”
“A lot of guys are jerks, then,” Jack proclaimed.
Not that Natalie for a moment disagreed with him, but she found it interesting that he’d make such an observation. Then again, he’d mentioned having sisters as he’d picked up her groceries last week. So maybe he’d seen them with jerk guys.
“So how many sisters do you have?” she asked him, telling herself it was only because she was making conversation and not because she wanted to learn more about him. She just wanted to show him the same common courtesy he’d been showing her, that was all.
To his credit, he seemed not the least bit confused by the segue, because he replied readily, “Four. All of ’em younger.”
She smiled. “Wow. Four sisters. That must have been fun.”
He twisted his mouth into something that might have been a smile. Maybe. Possibly. In the proper lighting. After a couple of mai tais. “Yeah, well, fun might be one word,” he conceded with clear reluctance. “Another word would be damned annoying as hell.”
“Actually, that’s four words,” Natalie pointed out.
“Yeah, one for each sister.” And before she could comment further on that, he turned the tables, asking, “How about you? Got any brothers or sisters?”
She shook her head. “I’m an only child. My mother had a lot of trouble with my delivery and wasn’t able to have any more kids after me.” And not a day had gone by that she hadn’t taken a few moments out of her life to remind Natalie of that.
“Now that sounds like fun,” he said, “being an only child.” And he was definitely smiling now. “No waiting for the bathroom every morning. No waiting to use the phone every night. No incessant giggling. No getting spied on every time you had friends over—”
“No one to share Christmas morning with,” Natalie interjected. “No one to play with—or even fight with—on vacations. No one to commiserate with when you had asparagus for dinner. No one to back you up when your mother made you wear stupid clothes to school, because she was sure you were making it up when you said everyone else wore jeans and sneakers.”
Jack’s smile fell as she spoke, and only when she saw his…oh, she wouldn’t say horrified, exactly…expression did she realize how much she had just revealed.
“Not that I’m bitter or anything,” she hastened to add.
“Of course not,” he agreed. But he didn’t sound anywhere near convinced.
“It wasn’t that bad,” she assured him. “Just…I would have liked to have had at least one sibling. Preferably a sister. It would have made childhood much more—” she caught herself before she said bearable, and replaced it with “—fun. It would have been more fun.”
“So do your folks live close by?” Jack asked. “I remember you said you grew up here.”
She shook her head. “No, they’re both gone. I lost my father to Alzheimer’s when I was in college, and my mother not long after that. I think caring for him really took a toll on her, and she missed him a lot.” And her daughter hadn’t been enough for her to make her want to hang on any longer.
Though Natalie didn’t say that last part out loud, she suspected Jack understood what she was thinking, because his expression softened some. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Yeah, me, too,” she replied. “But thanks.”
Although her parents hadn’t been the most loving, attentive people in the world, neither had they been especially terrible. And they’d been all Natalie had, both of them moving here from other places. Any extended family she claimed lived in cities hundreds, even thousands, of miles away. She’d seen little of her grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles as a child, and nothing of them as an adult. That was probably one of the reasons she’d bonded so quickly with Mrs. Klosterman. Her landlady was like the grandmother Natalie had never really had.
“Cousins?” Jack asked. “Aunts and uncles?”
“Scattered all over,” she said. “None local. And you grew up where again?” she asked, wanting to divert attention from herself and hoping he wouldn’t remember that he hadn’t already told her that.
“Brooklyn,” he said. But he didn’t elaborate.
“And your family is still there?” Natalie asked, hoping he wouldn’t interpret family to mean anything other than what it traditionally did.
“Most are,” he said. “My immediate family is. Well, except for my sister Sofia.”
Sofia, Natalie reflected. Also an Italian name. In a word, hmm…
Or, in four words, one for each sister, she thought further. Stop being so silly.
“Where’s Sofia?” she asked.
“Vermont,” her told her.
Ah-ha! Natalie thought. This proved he didn’t have ties to the Mob, if his sister was living in Vermont. Hell, they wouldn’t even let Wal-Mart into the state. No way would they welcome La Cosa Nostra.
“But I’ve got extended family spread out all over the country, too,” he added. “Philadelphia. Boston. Chicago. Las Vegas. Palm Springs. More recently, Miami. And also Sheboygan.”
In other words, she thought, all the places where the Mob flourished. Well, except for Sheboygan. But then, what did she know? Maybe Wisconsin was a real hotbed of Mob activity. Just because the cheese wasn’t mozzarella…
Stop it, silly.
He was surprisingly chatty this morning, she thought, considering how reticent he’d been that first day. Of course, they’d had two weeks to run into each other, and had talked informally on several occasions around the house and at the museum that day, so maybe he felt more comfortable around her.
Or maybe he was planning to off her once he’d completed the job he’d come here to do, so it didn’t matter what he told her now.
Natalie sighed inwardly. This had to stop. It had gone beyond silly and was now getting ridiculous. It was just that once Mrs. Klosterman put the idea into her head of Jack’s being possibly connected, it suddenly seemed like everything the man said or did had Mob implications. Had her landlady suggested Jack worked as a handyman, Natalie would no doubt be seeing references to spackle everywhere. It was just a good thing Mrs. Klosterman hadn’t fingered him as a proctologist.
And, oh, she really wished she hadn’t thought that.
“But most of my family is still in Brooklyn,” Jack continued, bringing her attention back to the conversation. “The neighborhood where I grew up is the kind of neighborhood where people don’t move far away, you know?”
Natalie did know. For all her traveling, she had never wanted to live anywhere but here. Particularly in Old Louisville, which was the neighborhood where she herself had grown up. She supposed a lot of people were like that when it came to their homeplaces.
“We’ve had our share of problems in the neighborhood, too, though,” he added. “And in my family. I mean, just because a family is big doesn’t necessarily mean everyone’s always happy.” He met her gaze levelly. “In fact, sometimes it’s the big families you really have to look out for, you know?”
And something about the way he said that just sent chills down Natalie’s spine. Although she was fairly certain he wasn’t talking about his own blood relations when he made the comment, he still seemed to be talking about something with which he had an intimate acquaintance. A family other than his own, but a family he knew well.
But what kind of family was it? Natalie wondered. That was the question she wished she knew the answer to.
“YOU KNOW, Natalie, you should get out more,” Mrs. Klosterman said the following Sunday evening as the two of them worked on a jigsaw puzzle in the living room. It was a new one her landlady had just purchased, five thousand pieces, a sweeping vista of the Alps that was almost all blue and purple and white, and which Natalie estimated would cover half the dining room table if they ever managed to finish it. But they’d probably have more success scaling the actual subject matter than they would completing the puzzle.
She pretended to be interested in whether one lavenderish piece might go with three other lavenderish pieces she’d pulled from the box. “What do you mean?” she asked.
Mrs. Klosterman lifted one shoulder and let it drop, but there was nothing casual in the gesture. But then, there was hardly anything about Mrs. Klosterman that was ever casual. Today was no exception, seeing as how she was dressed in a neon orange sweatshirt that boasted—sort of—how she was a Bunco Babe. At least it matched—kind of—the chartreuse running pants she’d paired it with. And her Day-Glo pink fuzzy slippers were exactly the right accessory to go with.
“It’s just not right,” Mrs. Klosterman continued, looking up at Natalie now. “A pretty girl like you, sitting home alone night after night the way you do.”
Natalie could debate the pretty part, since her own attire—slouchy blue corduroys and an even slouchier white, men’s-style shirt, and she hadn’t even bothered with shoes herself—didn’t have that much more to recommend her than Mrs. Klosterman’s wardrobe did. Still, she did debate part of her landlady’s remark.
“I don’t sit home alone night after night,” she denied. “Sometimes I sit home with you.”
“Even worse,” Mrs. Klosterman told her. “You don’t need to be keeping an eye on an old lady.”
“What old lady?” Natalie quipped. “I’ve seen you get carded.”
Mrs. Klosterman smiled. “Only when the waiter is looking to increase his tip, dear.”
“I could go out if I wanted to,” Natalie said. “I just don’t want to, that’s all.”
When her landlady said nothing in response, Natalie glanced up to find Mrs. Klosterman studying her with obvious concern. “That’s what bothers me most,” she said. “That you’d rather do this—” she gestured down at the puzzle “—than make whoopee.”
Natalie smiled. “I’ve made whoopee before and I think it’s highly overrated,” she said.
Now Mrs. Klosterman smiled. “Not when it’s with the right man, it isn’t. When it’s with the right man, there’s nothing better than making whoopee. You just haven’t found the right man yet, Natalie. And you won’t find him,” she pressed on when Natalie opened her mouth to object, “if you stay home every night. You need to get out more. Mingle. Go places. Meet people.”
“I do get out,” she defended herself. Why, just that afternoon, she got out for a walk. “And I do mingle.” Why, every weekday, she mingled with scores of surly teenagers and dozens of crabby teachers. “And I do go places.” Why, just last weekend, she’d gone to the museum. “And I do meet people.” Why, just last weekend, at the museum, she’d met Jack Miller.
“But not the right people,” Mrs. Klosterman objected.
And Natalie, alas, couldn’t disagree with her there.
“You need to be more like Jack,” her landlady told her. “He’s hardly ever home.”
Which hadn’t exactly escaped Natalie’s notice. What also hadn’t escaped her notice was how much she’d noticed that. And it hadn’t escaped her notice, either, how much she wondered what he was up to. And how she wondered even more who he was with when he was up. Or something like that.
In any event, she did wonder about Jack. More than she should, really. Not that she could help that, because he just offered her so much to wonder about. And she told herself his presence in the house had nothing to do with why, lately, she’d been even more reluctant than usual to get out more and mingle and go places and meet people.
“He reminds me a lot of Mr. Klosterman,” Mrs. Klosterman began again, drawing Natalie’s attention back to the matter at hand. Whatever that matter had been.
“Really?” she asked. And then, in an effort to make her landlady see how silly it was to keep insisting that her new tenant was a mobster, she added, “Was Mr. Klosterman connected to the Mob, too?”
Mrs. Klosterman uttered a soft tsking sound. “Of course not. But he was a successful counterfeiter before he met me.”
“What?” Natalie gasped, certain she must have misheard. “A counterfeiter?”
“Oh, sure,” her landlady said. “Didn’t I tell you that?”
“You told me he was a milkman.”
“Well, he was. He was a very successful milkman. But before that, he was a very successful counterfeiter. Well, okay, maybe not all that successful, since he put in a stretch at LaGrange Reformatory.”
“What?”
“But that was before he met me.”
Natalie’s head was buzzing now, as if it had been invaded by a swarm of killer bees from South America. Or maybe they’d just come from Mrs. Klosterman, since those international visas were getting harder and harder to come by. But then her landlady smiled with what was obviously fond reminiscence, and Natalie softened. And she found herself wondering if maybe someday she herself would be able to smile like that. A girl could hope, she supposed.
“Mr. Klosterman turned his life around after he met me,” her landlady continued a little dreamily. “Because that’s all it takes, you know.”
The buzzing kicked up in Natalie’s head again after that, even louder this time. Yep. It was definitely coming from Mrs. Klosterman, and not South America.
“That’s all what takes?” she asked, thinking she must have fallen asleep for a few minutes and missed part of this conversation. It wouldn’t be the first time. Mrs. Klosterman did tend to have that effect on a person sometimes.
“That’s all it takes to reform a man,” her landlady clarified. “A good woman. Or, more specifically, the love of a good woman. My Edgar was headed straight for skid row when I met him. But once he realized how good life could be for the two of us if he took the straight and narrow path, he turned his back on his criminal ways and embraced the dairy industry.”
“Wow,” Natalie said. “That’s…that’s really touching, Mrs. Klosterman.”
She nodded. “That’s what Jack needs, too,” she announced.
“To embrace the dairy industry?” Natalie asked, thinking she must have dozed off again.
“No,” Mrs. Klosterman said. “Unfortunately, milkmen don’t make nearly the money they used to, and their health benefits are terrible. What Jack needs is the love of a good woman to make him turn his life around.”
And he was probably getting the love of a good woman right now, Natalie thought, since he hadn’t come home last night. Not that she’d noticed, mind you. Just because she’d stayed up until four-thirty herself watching movies and never heard him come in, and just because she hadn’t heard a sound from his apartment all day, that didn’t mean she’d noticed anything. It just meant, you know, he hadn’t been home. And that meant he’d been out. Probably getting some love from a good woman. Or, at least, an expensive woman. Which probably meant she was good. She might even be great. She might even be phenomenal, depending on how much he’d paid for her.
Not that Jack seemed like the kind of guy who had to pay for the love of a good woman, Natalie thought further. Or a bad woman, either. In fact, there were probably a lot of women—good and bad—who would have paid for a man like Jack. Women like, oh, Natalie didn’t know…her.
“Well, who says he doesn’t already have the love of a good woman?” Natalie asked, just now considering the possibility of such a thing. Really, for all she or Mrs. Klosterman knew, he could be married. Or engaged. Or at the very least, seriously involved with a good, and perhaps even phenomenal, woman.
“He’s not romantically involved with anyone,” Mrs. Klosterman said decisively.
“How do you know?” Natalie asked. “Did you ask him?”
“No,” her landlady replied. “I can just tell.”
Now this was something Natalie definitely wanted to hear. If for no other reason than it was bound to be amusing. “Okay, I’ll bite. How can you tell he’s not romantically involved with someone?”
“I can tell,” Mrs. Klosterman said, “because of his shoes.”
Natalie eyed the other woman dubiously. “His shoes?”
Her landlady nodded. “He never polishes his shoes. Men always polish their shoes when they have a special woman in their life.”
“They do?”
“Of course they do.”
“I never noticed.”
“That’s because you’ve never been seriously involved with a man,” Mrs. Klosterman pointed out. Correctly, too, Natalie had to admit. “If you’d ever been seriously involved with a man, you would have noticed that he polished his shoes for you.”
Natalie wasn’t convinced, but decided not to provoke her landlady. It would only lead to trouble. Or, at the very least, a migraine. “Well, that’s not very scientific,” she said, “but I suppose it’s as good a gauge as any. It’s possible you could be right.”
“Of course I’m right. Jack needs a woman. A good woman. If he found the right woman—the right good woman—she could make him forget all about his criminal ways. That’s all there is to it.”
“Mmm,” Natalie said noncommittally.
Except for the part about Jack’s criminal ways, to which Natalie would take exception—if she didn’t think that, too, would just provoke her landlady—she neither agreed nor disagreed with Mrs. Klosterman. These days, the decision to tie oneself to another human being had to be entirely up to the individual, and it had to be based on the individual’s personal experiences.
Certainly there were some men out there who would benefit from having a woman in their lives, just as there were some women out there who would benefit from having a man in their lives. But there were other people, men and women both, who got along just fine all by themselves. Natalie took pride in being one of them. Jack Miller, she felt certain, would consider himself a part of that group, too. But Mrs. Klosterman had been raised in a time when the ultimate goal for either gender was marriage and family. She would naturally think Jack needed the love of a good woman just as she thought Natalie needed to get out more and mingle. That was Mrs. Klosterman’s prerogative. It didn’t mean Natalie had to agree with or encourage her.
“Well, Jack might not agree with you,” was all she said. “He’s probably perfectly happy with his life just the way it is.”
“That’s only because he hasn’t had a chance to see what it might be like in a different way,” her landlady insisted.
“Mmm,” Natalie said again.
Because she really didn’t want to prolong this conversation any more than they already had. Not just because they’d never come to an agreement, but because she really wasn’t comfortable talking about Jack behind his back. So she fished another lavenderish puzzle piece from the box and tried to fit it with one of the others, fixing all her concentration on the task. Thankfully, Mrs. Klosterman said nothing more about Jack, either, and instead focused her energy on the puzzle, too. But where Natalie’s pieces refused to connect, her landlady managed to effortlessly join a good dozen pieces in the passage of a few minutes.
How did she do that? Natalie wondered. It was as if she knew the secrets to the universe, the ways in which everything in the cosmos was interrelated. You could just never really tell with Mrs. Klosterman.
“Since we missed breakfast yesterday,” she said after slipping another piece into the Matterhorn while Natalie watched in amazement, “why don’t we have dinner together tomorrow night?”
It had been a while since she and her landlady had dined together, so Natalie nodded eagerly at the invitation. Well, she also nodded eagerly because she knew she had nothing else planned for the following evening. Really, she was going to have to pencil in some mingling or something soon.
“That sounds good,” she said. “Thanks.”
“I’ll fix a nice casserole,” Mrs. Klosterman offered. “And maybe a salad to go with.”
“What can I bring?” Natalie asked.
Her landlady looked up at her and smiled. “Just bring yourself, dear. That will be treat enough.”