The Man Behind The Mask
Nora cast Brendan a glance. He didn’t look at all sympathetic to Luke feeling like a wreck trying to keep his treachery hidden.
“Why,” Brendan asked carefully, “did it freak you out when you thought it worked? You could have been into some real cash.”
“I didn’t like the way it felt.”
Nora’s sweet sensation of relief was tempered somewhat when Luke shrugged and sent her a look. “Who wants to be like her?”
Even though she was used to his barbs, it hurt. And even though it was the story of her life. She was careful not to let how badly it hurt show.
Over the years, some people saw what she did as a gift, but most saw it as just plain weird. She was cautious about showing people that side of herself. Even in the column, she didn’t reveal she wrote it, didn’t always say exactly what she wanted to say, tempering it with what people wanted to hear.
Nora glanced at Brendan. He was watching her. She had the uneasy feeling he saw everything, even the things she least wanted to reveal.
Again she had that aggravating feeling. Instead of feeling exposed, she felt in some way not alone.
She tore her eyes away from him, forced herself to focus on her nephew. “Luke, do you understand how terrible this is? You gave false hope to a poor little old lady—”
“No one would resent being called old more than Deedee,” Brendan said mildly, “and we won’t even go into the poor part.”
“The point is she was afraid to lose her cat, and Luke played on her fear and took her money.”
“I needed the fifty bucks!”
“You allowed that boy to blackmail you! I have to call his parents.”
“That’s why I didn’t tell you! Dammit, Auntie, I didn’t really have permission to borrow his bike. Do you have to be so gullible?”
Brendan’s tone remained mild enough, but there was steel running through it. “You don’t use language like that in front of women. And your aunt is not the guilty party here. You are. What really happened with the bike?”
Nora was aware she should have said that, not him. She felt it again, though. The tempting weakness of liking the fact she was not handling this alone.
“I took it,” Luke said, jutting out his chin defiantly. “I stole Gerald’s bike because he was mean to me. He made fun of my hair in front of the whole class. You think it’s not hard enough being new? And everybody knowing your aunt does voodoo?”
“Voodoo,” Brendan said, with just a trace of approval.
“What do you mean, everybody knows I do voodoo?” Nora asked, horrified. “I don’t! I run a shelter for abused and abandoned animals. That’s all!”
“No, it isn’t,” Luke said wearily.
And suddenly she wondered if it had been about Luke’s hair at all. Or if it had been about her.
“Anyway,” Luke continued, “Gerald said he’d back my story that I borrowed the bike if I gave him fifty dollars.”
“You’ve made everything worse,” Nora said, but not too strongly. It was bad enough Luke was being teased about his hair. He was being teased about her, too! She was an adult and she could barely handle the mockery. That was why she wrote her column in secret.
“I think the question now is how are you going to fix all this?” Brendan asked.
“Naturally, we’ll give your grandmother back her money,” Nora said, hearing the resignation in her voice.
“No. You won’t,” Brendan said.
“Excuse me?”
“Luke did it. He needs to figure out how to make amends to her.”
“What’s amends?” Luke asked suspiciously.
“Just what it sounds like. You broke something, you mend it.”
He pondered that. “I don’t know how.”
“I’ll give you a chance to figure it out.”
Luke seemed to be back to his old self, arms folded over his narrow chest, bristling with barely contained hostility.
Take charge, Nora ordered herself, so she added, “Figure it out. With no computer. And no cell phone.”
“That sucks,” the boy said, and got up from the table and marched away.
“You’re bossy,” Nora said to Brendan, feeling somehow she had to hide the fact that she was so grateful someone was helping her through this.
“You’ve already said that.”
“Sorry to bore you by repeating myself.” She needed time to gather herself. Needed to show leadership, and wasn’t. She was letting Brendan take charge.
Only because it had been a strange week. She’d been injured. She’d let down her guard around Brendan. Invited him into her life.
Still, it was a new blow that Luke was being teased at school because of her.
“Tell me what you’ve heard about me,” she said to Brendan.
“Deedee heard you were a healer. She was making biblical references, about the laying on of hands. She’s expecting a miracle.”
Nora groaned softly. “I’m sorry. Do you think that’s what Luke’s classmates are hearing about me, too?”
“I assume some version of that. You bring a dead dog to life, and you’re the talk of the town.”
“I didn’t bring a dead dog to life!”
“You’re not used to small towns, are you?”
“No.”
“It’s like that game you played in junior high school. The teacher whispers, ‘The green tree on Main Street is dying,’ to the first kid in the line, and they whisper it to the next. But twenty kids later it has become ‘Mrs. Green killed her husband on Main Street with a tree branch.’”
“We never played a game like that in school.”
“A shame. The power of distortion would not be such a surprise to you. What really happened with the dog?”
“He’d been hit by a car. He was knocked out. Not dead.”
“Technicalities. So, you have no gift with animals?”
“I didn’t say that. I’ve always liked animals, sometimes a whole lot more than people. There is an energy element to animals that is very strong, and I seem to be able to connect with that. But I’m not a vet, and I don’t try to take the place of one.”
“Ah.”
She had said enough. But despite her vow to herself to keep the barriers up between her and Brendan, it felt strangely and nicely intimate to be sharing her kitchen with him, telling him things she didn’t always feel free to say.
“What I have no gift with, I’m afraid, is adolescent boys,” she added, since she seemed bent on confessing private things about herself.
“I see cookies in a jar and good food on the table every night. There are drawings on the fridge and homework being done. Where are his folks?”
She could not quite keep the shaking from her voice. “My sister died.”
“And his dad?”
“He went before Karen. Luke’s never said anything to you? you guys have been doing chores together for days.”
“Yeah, well, you know guys.”
But she didn’t. She didn’t know guys at all. That was probably part of the problem with Luke.
Brendan sighed. “We don’t talk about deep things. Discussion runs to who is the best hockey player in the world. Last night’s baseball scores. Who can clean a cat cage the fastest and with the least gagging.”
Nora really didn’t want to confide one more thing to this man. But she heard herself saying, “I’m not sure that Karen would have trusted me by myself with this. She saw my fiancé, Vance, as the stable one, a vet with a well-established practice. I’m afraid I’ve always been seen as the family black sheep.”
“It seems to me your sister would think you were doing well at making a home for your nephew.”
“So, now you know! I’m an orphan,” Luke exclaimed from the doorway. “Doesn’t that just suck? Who even knew there was such a thing anymore?”
Nora hadn’t seen him reappear, but there he was, bristling defensively.
“And you think that isn’t bad enough?” Luke continued, jerking his head toward her. “She was going to get married. And then Vance wouldn’t marry her. Because of me.”
CHAPTER NINE
NORA’S MOUTH FELL open. Her eyes clouded with tears. She’d had no idea Luke knew about that awful conversation between her and Vance.
“Just because I glued his stupid golf clubs to his golf bag.”
“Why’d you do that?” Brendan asked mildly.
“He didn’t want Auntie Nora to get me a skateboard, because I’d been suspended from school. So she didn’t. So I glued his golf clubs to his bag. Super Duper Gobby Glue works just the way it says in the commercial.”
“I’ll remember that,” Brendan promised.
“‘It’s him or it’s me,’” Luke quoted. His mimicry of Vance might have been hilariously accurate, if it wasn’t for the context. “She picked me. Dumb, huh?”
And then Brendan said, his voice steady as a rock, “I don’t think it’s so dumb.”
Despite the fact Nora could have done without her whole life story being exposed, she could have kissed Brendan, she felt so grateful.
Unfortunately, that made her look at his lips.
The thought of kissing Brendan Grant made her dizzier than the bump on her head.
“You don’t think it was dumb that she picked me?” Luke said, and the hopeful look in his eyes tugged at her heartstrings. He quickly covered it. “Sure. I just took money from your grandmother.”
“You know everybody makes mistakes. Your aunt Nora when she got engaged to a jerk.”
Her heart filled with the most unreasonable gratitude that someone saw Vance’s defection as a statement about him, not about her.
“He was a jerk,” Luke said. “A sanctimonious, knowit-all, stuck-up jerk.”
Nora’s mouth fell open. First of all, she’d had no idea Luke’s dislike of Vance had run so deep. Second, she had no idea that he could use a word like sanctimonious correctly.
“She should have asked Rover,” Brendan deadpanned, and then he and Luke cracked up. Brendan must have caught her disapproving expression, because he sobered.
“So, everybody makes mistakes,” he said. “When you took that money from Deedee, it was a mistake. What matters is whether you choose to grow from them or not.”
“What kind of mistakes have you ever made?” Luke challenged, not laughing anymore. Nora could tell he wanted to believe there was hope that a mistake could turn out okay, and was afraid to believe at the very same time.
Which she understood perfectly, of course.
Brendan hesitated. He tossed his cards down on the table. For a moment, it looked as if he wasn’t going to say anything at all.
Then, his voice so soft she felt herself straining to hear it, he said, “My wife died because of a terrible mistake I made. She was carrying our baby.”
Nora laid her hand on his, almost unbearably grateful that Brendan had seen how great Luke’s need was. And possibly hers. that he had overcome so tremendous an inner obstacle and given something of himself to both of them confirmed that her instincts had been right, after all.
There was a common place between them.
But it seemed to her that common place was the most frightening thing of all. It asked her to put aside her past injuries and her petty fears. It asked her to think less about protecting herself and more about reaching out to another human being.
Reaching out to animals was easy. Human beings were far more complicated.
She wasn’t ready. She ordered herself to withdraw her hand.
And yet her hand, as if separate from her mind and linked to her soul, stayed right where it was.
Brendan could not believe he had said that to Nora and Luke. What if these were the words that broke open that dam of emotion within him?
But no, the dam was safe. He had not cried then, and he would not cry now. Still, there was nothing he hated more than sympathy. He waited for her to say something that would make him regret confiding in them even more than he already did.
But Nora said nothing at all. Instead, with a tenderness so exquisite if felt as if the dam of emotion was newly threatened, she laid her hand on top of his.
For a moment he felt only the connection, her small hand covering part of his larger one, the softness of her palm against his toughened skin.
But then he was stunned by the warmth that began to pour from her hand, some energy vibrating up his wrist into his arm. It felt as if his whole body was beginning to tingle.
And suddenly, the world’s greatest cynic believed what he had only suspected until now.
She could heal things.
The light shining in her eyes almost made him believe she could heal the most impossible thing of all: a heart smashed to pieces.
For a stunned second, he felt his throat close. But then he fought it.
Because who would want that fixed? For what reason? So that it could be smashed again? So that a man could face his impotency over the caprice of life all over again?
He jerked his hand out of hers, and she stiffened, guessing it, correctly, as rejection. Then she had the good sense to look relieved. She actually glared at her hand for a minute, as if it had mutinied and acted on its own accord.
She turned rapidly from him, ran a hand over her eyes, winced when she touched the bump on her head.
“I should get some footage of Charlie for Deedee and then go,” he said.
Luke, looking pensive and solemn, went and got the cat.
Nora was completely composed when she turned back to Brendan.
“Thank you for telling us. I know it was hard for you. And yet he needed to hear it. He’s known you only a short time, but he looks up to you.”
Brendan shrugged, withdrawing, uncomfortable.
Luke came back with Charlie and set him on the counter.
The cat gave a yowl of indignation and made for the edge, as if he fully planned to leap to the floor.
Brendan stared. This was a cat that had barely been able to lift his head a few days ago. “What are you feeding him?”
Luke made a quick grab and caught Charlie by the back of the neck. The cat hunkered down, resigned but unhappy.
“There’s no cure for old age,” Nora told Brendan gently. “There’s nothing that stops life from unfolding in its natural order.”
As Luke lifted his other hand so that both of them rested on the cat, Brendan was aware again of that vibration, of an energy he didn’t understand. It was almost as if the light in the room changed.
The cat stopped struggling. It was as if Charlie had been tranquilized. He closed his eyes and a deep purr came from him.
Luke jerked his hands away. He took the cat off the counter, set him on the floor, watched him scoot off. Uncaring that there would be no pictures tonight, he shoved both hands in his pockets. His face was white and his voice was brimming with anger.
“Life’s natural order?” he spat out. “My mom was thirty-four. What’s natural about that? Oh, and Aunt Nora is a healer, all right. Ask anyone. My mom always talked about my auntie Kookie, how her room was filled with mice and birds and cats and dogs, and she could heal them all.”
“Luke, that’s an exaggeration. I liked animals. I couldn’t—”
But he cut her off. “I was here when they brought that dog in. It was dead.”
“It wasn’t,” Nora said. “Obviously it wasn’t.”
“And then she puts her hands on it, and poof, he’s alive and wagging his tail. And in three days he’s running around the yard, bringing me sticks to throw.
“But when it really counts? When it’s cancer? Forget it! Who would want a gift like that, anyway? That’s why I don’t want to be like her! You can’t change anything that matters.”
And then he spun on his heel and followed the cat, and Nora and Brendan stood in frozen silence as he thumped up the stairs.
“How did he know Charlie has cancer?” Brendan asked.
“He doesn’t,” Nora said too quickly, her troubled eyes on the empty doorway her nephew had gone through. “His mom—my sister—died of cancer. I’m sorry, I don’t think there’s anything more I can do for Charlie. You should take him home to Deedee. She can spend his last days with him.”
Brendan could feel weariness like a dull ache in his bones.
Not just because it was late, either.
It was the weariness of it all.
A boy who had lost everything and who already knew you could not change anything that really mattered. A woman who was trying desperately to help him through it, even though she had lost, too.
Brendan realized he had actually been thinking that cat was getting better. Had been bringing Deedee pictures, instead of preparing her to face yet another loss.
This was the truth he had been doing his best to outrun for two and a half years. It was just as Luke had said. When it really counted?
A man was powerless.
And there was no feeling in the world quite as bad as that one.
Luke came back down the stairs. He looked as if he had been crying, and Brendan almost envied him those tears, the release they brought from the inner storm.
The boy’s face was white and strained with the manful effort of trying not to let everything he was feeling show. He had Charlie tucked under his arm, an unwilling football.
“I’m going to fix him! And I’m going to pay you back your money, too!” Luke stomped back up the stairs.
Nora bit her lip, sent Brendan an imploring look.
He shrugged. He wanted to be a dyed-in-the-wool cynic, but the past few days had challenged that. The aunt had something. He had felt it when she’d touched his arm.
And Luke had something, too. That cat was acting better, even if he wasn’t actually getting better.
Though that something that Nora and Luke had—that gift with things wounded—was not necessarily what they needed.
Despite the shrug, he knew his indifference was pretended. Caring had crept up on him.
Brendan recognized their lives were a web he could get tangled in.
Was already tangled in, whether he wanted to be or not. And he didn’t want it. He’d spent a long time locked in his lonely place, avoiding entanglement.
He walked out the door, refusing to look back at Nora. Free of the enchantment of her house, walking through the warmth of the early summer evening to his car, Brendan Grant vowed to himself he wasn’t coming back here. Not until it was time to pick up Charlie.
Dead or alive.
Nora loved the barn. It had taken a dozen volunteers and a hundred man-hours to make the falling-down old structure into an animal shelter, but now it was perfect. She was in the small-animal section, two rows of roomy cages facing a sparkling clean center aisle.
After a night like last night, she needed the peace she felt working alone here. She had a rock-and-roll station blasting, music from the fifties. It was partly to keep her moving through the exhaustion after twenty-four hours of being woken every hour on the hour. It was partly a nice distraction from her whirling thoughts.
But the animals loved music. Humming along, she reached inside the rabbit cage, picked up a droopyeared bunny she had named Valentine, and tucked him into her bosom.
He wriggled against her, snuggling deeper.
“You want to dance, sweetheart?”
“Sure.”
She whirled. Brendan was standing there, watching her. The rabbit must have taken the sudden hard beating of her heart as a warning of imminent danger, because he scrambled out of her arms, over her shoulder and down her back. He hit the floor running.
Brendan reached behind him and closed the door to prevent bunny escape, then turned back to her.
How unfair that he looked even better in the pure afternoon sunshine streaming through the windows high up the walls than he had looked last night.
He must have come from work. He had on a white shirt and gray pants. A tie was loosely knotted at his throat. He looked handsome and sure of himself, a model for GQ, only more real.
And she still had a lump the size of a baseball on her forehead, and was wearing a charming blue smock of the one-size-fits-all variety that swam around her.
“I—I haven’t seen you for a few days,” she stammered. She hoped there was nothing in her voice that revealed how she had waited. And watched.
And hated herself for both.
“Busy at work,” he said.
“What are you doing here now?”
“Deedee insisted. Luke’s been sending her pictures, but she had to come see for herself.”
Nora had no idea Luke had been sending on pictures of the cat. She probably would have asked him to stop, if she knew. What did they all think was going to happen?
“Yesterday he sent a video of that old cat playing with a ball.”
She looked closely at Brendan. “Please tell me you don’t believe that animal is going to get better?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know what to believe, Nora. The thing is, I’m getting better. And I never believed that would happen.”
“What do you mean, better?” she whispered.
He rolled his shoulders. “I’ve been in total darkness. I can feel the light trying to get through. There are cracks in the wall and light is seeping in, and every time I patch one crack, another one appears.”
It felt as if she couldn’t breathe. As if she was going to cry. It felt as if she could run to him and put her arms around him and whisper him home.
To her.
“But the walls have become who I am, so when they crumble, will I crumble, too?”
“No,” she whispered. “You won’t.”
“Uh-huh.”
The feelings were too strong. To hide how totally vulnerable she felt, Nora got down on her hands and knees and looked under a set of cages. Valentine stared back at her.
And then Brendan was on the floor beside her. His scent, clean and masculine, overrode every other smell in the building. It was not lightening the mood, having him so near, though he, too, seemed to want to back off from the intensity of the previous moment.
“I think he stuck his tongue out at me,” he said.
“Like life,” she said. “When you most want control, it will stick its tongue out at you.”
“Oh boy,” Brendan muttered, “I can see it coming now. Ask Valentine.”
She laughed and he smiled.
“There he is.” He reached under the row of cages; his shoulder brushed hers; Valentine hopped away.
Nora shot back before she did something really dumb, something she would regret forever, and crawled along the floor. “Valentine,” she crooned, “come here.”
“I dropped Deedee off at the house. Luke said you were down here.”
Did that mean Brendan wanted to see her? She glanced sideways at him, just as he shoved himself under the bank of cages.
“You’re ruining your clothes,” she said.
He ignored her. “I’m being outsmarted by a rabbit.”
Valentine hopped from underneath and took off down the row.
Brendan crawled out, dusted himself off, stood up. “Can’t you call him back with your energy?”
She glanced at him, annoyed at the barb, and then saw the little smile playing across his face. He was teasing her. Something dangerous rippled down her spine.
The awareness of him shivered more intensely around her. It was nice to be teased by him.
For a moment, she was going to fight it. The intensity, the subtle invitation to bring him into the light.
And then she found she couldn’t. By his own admission he had been in darkness. By his own admission he had come here to her.
With an inner sigh of surrender, Nora decided to play. To be the one thing she never was. Totally herself. She had been so serious for so long. She could not resist the temptations of this moment.
CHAPTER TEN
NORA PLACED HER fingers on her temples, squinched her eyes shut tightly and hummed. “Uzzy, wuzzy, fuzzy bunny, let this poem call you home.”
She opened one eye when she heard Brendan snicker. “Is it working?”
“That is the worst spell I’ve ever heard.”
“Oh,” she said, widening her eyes innocently. “Have you heard many?”
“Thankfully, no.”
“Why don’t you try?”
He seemed to debate for a moment. Why did her heart begin to beat faster when he gave in to it, too? To the invitation of life not being so serious. A smile tugged at the corners of that sinful mouth.