But he did. His instincts screamed it at him. The certainty of it burned through his hesitation and doubt.
He got out of the car, locked it, limped through the blowing snow and drifts, climbed the porch steps, and knocked. He had to knock twice more before she opened the door.
She stared at him. "John?"
She spoke his name as if it were unfamiliar to her, as if she had just learned it. Her blue eyes were bright and wondering, and gave full and open consideration to the fact that he was standing there when by all rights he shouldn't be. She was wearing jeans and a print shirt with the sleeves rolled up. She had been cooking, he guessed. He did not move to enter or even to speak, but simply waited.
She reached out finally with one hand and pulled him inside, closing the door behind him. She was grinning now, shaking her head. He found himself studying the spray of freckles that lay across the bridge of her nose and over both cheeks. He found himself wanting to touch her tousled blond hair.
Then he was looking into her eyes and thinking he was right, there had never been anyone like her.
She brushed snow from his shoulders and began unzipping his coat. "I shouldn't be surprised," she said, watching her fingers as they worked the zipper downward. "You've never been predictable, have you? What are you doing here? You said you weren't coming!"
His face felt flushed and heated. "I guess I should have called."
She laughed. "You didn't call for fifteen years, John. Why should you call now? Come on, get that coat off."
She helped him pull off the parka, gloves, and scarf, and bent to unlace his boots as well. In stocking feet, leaning on his still-damp staff for support, he followed her from the entry into the kitchen. She motioned him to a chair at the two-person breakfast table, poured him a cup of hot cider, and spent a few moments adjusting various knobs and dials on the stove and range. Savory smells rose from casseroles and cooking pans.
"Have you eaten?" she asked, glancing over her shoulder at him. He shook his head. "Good. Me, either. We'll eat in a little while."
She went back to work, leaving him alone at the table to sip cider. He watched her silently, enjoying the fluidity of her movements, the suppleness of her body. She seemed so young, as if age had decided to brush against her only momentarily. When she looked at him and smiled—that dazzling, wondrous smile—he could barely believe that fifteen years had passed.
He knew he loved her and wondered at his failure to recognize it before. He did not know why he loved her, not in a rational sense, because looking at the fact of it too closely would shatter it like glass. He could not parcel it out like pieces of a puzzle, one for each part of the larger picture. It was not so simply explained. But it was real and true, and he felt it so deeply he thought he would cry.
She sat with him after a while and asked about Nest and Bennett and the children, skipping quickly from one topic to the next, filling the space with words and laughter, avoiding close looks and long pauses. She did not ask where he had been or why he had a child. She did not ask why she had not heard from him in fifteen years. She let him be, perhaps sensing that he was here in part because he could expect that from her, that what had drawn them together in the first place was that it was enough for them to share each other's company.
She set the breakfast table for dinner, keeping it casual, serving from the counter and setting the plates on the table. The meal was pot roast with bread and salad, and he ate it hungrily. He could feel his tension and emptiness drain away, and he found himself smiling for the first time in weeks.
"I'm glad you came," she told him at one point. "This will sound silly, but even after you said you couldn't, I thought maybe you would anyway."
"I feel a little strange about that," he admitted, looking at her. He wanted to look at her forever. He wanted to study her until he knew everything there was to know. Then he realized he was staring and dropped his gaze. "I didn't want to be with a lot of people I didn't know. I didn't want to be with a lot of people, period. In a strange house, at Christmas. I thought I would go looking for..." He trailed off, glancing up at her. "I don't know what I thought. I don't know why I said I wouldn't come earlier. Well, I do, but it's hard to explain. It's ... it's complicated."
She seemed unconcerned. "You don't have to explain anything to me," she said.
He nodded and went back to eating. Outside, the wind gusted about the corners and across the eaves of the old house, making strange, whining sounds. Snow blew past the frost-edged windows as if the storm were a reel of film spinning out of control. Ross looked at it and felt time and possibility slipping away.
When he finished his meal, Josie carried their plates to the sink and brought hot tea. They sipped at the tea in silence, listening to the wind, exchanging quick looks that brushed momentarily and slid away.
"I never stopped thinking about you," he said finally, setting down the tea and looking at her.
She nodded, sipping slowly.
"It's true. I didn't write or call, and I was sometimes a long way away from here and lost in some very dark places, but I never stopped."
He kept his eyes fixed on hers, willing her to believe. She set her cup down, fitting it carefully to the saucer.
"John," she said. "You're just here for tonight, aren't you? You haven't come back to Hopewell to stay. You don't plan to ask me to marry you or go away with you or wait for you to come back again. You aren't going to promise me anything beyond the next few hours."
He stared at her, taken aback by her directness. He felt the emptiness and solitude begin to return. "No," he admitted.
She smiled gently. "Because I'd like to think that the one thing we can count on from each other after all this time is honesty. I'm not asking for anything more. I wouldn't know what to do with it."
She leaned forward slightly. "I'll take those few hours, John. I'll take them gladly. I would have taken them anytime during the last fifteen years of my life. I thought about you, too. Every day, I thought about you. I prayed for you to come back. At first, I wanted you to come back forever. Then, just for a few years, or a few months, or days, minutes, anything. I couldn't help myself. I can't help myself now. I want you so badly, it hurts."
She brushed nervously at her tousled hair. "So let's not spend time offering each other explanations or excuses. Let's not make any promises. Let's not even talk anymore."
She rose and came around to stand over him, then bent to kiss him on the mouth. She kept her lips on his, tasting him, exploring gently, her arms coming around his shoulders, her fingers working themselves deep into his hair. She kissed him for a long time, and then she pulled him to his feet.
"I guess you remember I was a bold kind of girl," she whispered, her face only inches from his own, her arms around his neck, and her body pressed against him. "I haven't changed. Let's go upstairs. I bet you remember the way."
As it turned out, he did.
CHAPTER 19
Bennett Scott stayed at the Heppler party almost two full hours before making her break, even though she had known before coming what she intended to do. She played with Harper and Little John, to the extent that playing with Little John was possible—such a weird little kid—and helped a couple of butter-wouldn't-melt-in-their-mouths teenage girls supervise the other children in their basement retreat. She visited with the adults—a boring, mind-numbing bunch except for Robert Heppler, who was still a kick—and admired the Christmas decorations. She endured the looks they gave her, the ones that took in her piercings and tattoos and sometimes the needle tracks on her arms, the ones that pitied her or dismissed her as trash. She ate a plate of food from the buffet and managed to sneak a few of the chicken wings and rolls into her purse in the process, knowing she might not get much else to eat for a while. She made a point of being seen and looking happy, so that no one, Nest in particular, would suspect what she was about. She hung in there for as long as she could, and much longer than she had believed possible, and then got out of there when no one was looking.