"I'm not sure okra's supposed to be in beef stew."
"It is now. Set the table, okay?"
They ate in the kitchen. The okra wasn't a big hit with Ty, who left it on the side of his plate and said it looked like something out of a swamp. They'd pulled through a fast-food place on their way to New Hampshire, but Carine hadn't eaten much. She ate two plates of Gus's stew, and after dinner, she brought a stack of Oreos out by the fire. She sat on the floor, her knees up, and when Gus and Ty joined her, she told them everything that had happened to her over the past day and a half, start to finish. About her lunch and how she hadn't thought about photographing wild turkeys, about Louis Sanborn asking her if she wanted a ride and the toddler chasing the pigeons on the Commonwealth Avenue mall-and finding Louis dead, what she saw and heard, how she'd run out of the house and straight into Manny Carrera.
She left nothing out, except for launching into bed with Tyler North. He knew, she knew and Gus didn't need to know.
When she finished, her uncle got up and put another log on the fire. "I want you to hear me out on one thing, Carine." He stared into the fire, not at her, and its flames reflected on his lined, lean face. "Don't try to pretend you didn't see a man you know dead in a pool of his own blood."
"Gus, please-"
"Don't fight it. Don't hide from it." He shifted his gaze, glancing down at her. "Give it time. You'll learn to live with the memory."
"I don't have any other choice."
"That's just it. You do have a choice."
He brought in more wood while she and Ty did the dishes. Carine washed, dipping her hands into the hot, sudsy water, trying to stay focused on the simple chore, the routines that reminded her of normalcy. She and her sister and brother used to take turns doing the dishes. In his various home improvements, Gus had never seen the need to buy a dishwasher.
She rinsed a handful of silverware under hot water and set it in the dish strainer. "You've seen dead men," she said. "Men you knew."
"Yes," Ty said.
"What do you do?"
He lifted out the silverware into a threadbare towel. "Focus on the job I'm there to do."
"That must be when all the years of training pay off. Do you think Manny misses the work?"
Ty opened a drawer and sorted the dry silverware into their appropriate slots. "I think Manny's eaten up inside."
After they finished the dishes, Carine put on her barn coat, noticing her reflection in the window. She didn't look as raw-nerved and traumatized as she had earlier, but she was exhausted. "It'll be good to sleep in my own bed tonight."
"Sorry, toots." Ty shook his head, shrugging on his brown leather jacket. "You don't have a guest room, and I'm not sleeping on your couch. Been there, done that. I don't fit, even without you."
"Ty-you can't be serious." Once she got to Cold Ridge, she thought she'd be on her own, at most with only Gus's hovering to deal with. "I'm home. I'm safe. It's okay-"
He wasn't listening. "I have three guest rooms, and there's a pullout sofa in the den. You can have your pick."
"I'm not in any danger!"
"Someone broke into your apartment today."
"We don't know that."
"You were first on the scene after a murder yesterday. We do know that. And we know the police haven't made an arrest and are, in fact, barking up the wrong tree for their man. So-" he zipped up his jacket "-it's my house or here with the parrots and the okra."
"Let's not make this Gus's problem."
"Suits me."
She was left to choose between bad and worse- staying with Gus and Stump was clearly worse. At least at North's place, if it came to actually staying there, which she hoped it wouldn't, she'd be within short walking distance of her cabin, and there wouldn't be dog hair on her blankets. "All right. Have it your way."
"I know you're not giving in, Carine," he said cockily. "You're buying time. You think you can talk me out of it before we get to my place. Put yourself in my position. What would you do?"
"Give me a nine-millimeter to put under my pillow."
"You might be good at flutter kicks, but a gun's a different story."
"Gus gave us basic firearms instruction when we were kids. I can shoot." But she didn't want a nine-millimeter-she wanted her life back, and she thought North knew it. "You're in your Three Musketeers mood,
Ty. I'm not going to fight you."
"Because you don't know what happened yesterday."
"No, because I do know what happened." Her barn coat, she realized, wasn't warm enough for the dropping nighttime mountain temperatures. "I hope the police don't focus on Manny for too long. Whoever killed Louis-" She swallowed, feeling a fresh wave of uneasiness, even fear. "I don't want anyone else to end up dead. That's all I care about. Just catch whoever killed Louis, and make sure no one else gets hurt."
Ty nodded. "Fair enough."
Gus appeared in the kitchen doorway. "You two leaving? Carine, I'm here if you need me. Got that?"
"I know, Gus. Thanks. I love you."
"Love you, too, kid." His tone hardened. "North? You'll be wanting Carine looking better tomorrow morning, not worse."
A neat trick that'd be, Carine thought, but said nothing as she followed her ex-fiancé outside, the night clear, cold and very dark. But without the ambient light of the city, she could see the stars.
By the time they reached his house, Ty noticed that Carine was ashen, sunken-eyed, drained and distant. He'd watched the energy ooze out of her during their ride out from the village, along the dark, winding road to his place, the ridge outlined against the starlit sky, a full moon creating eerie shadows in the open meadow that surrounded the old brick house her ancestor had built.
He suddenly felt out of his element. What the hell was he doing? Even with the dangers and uncertainties of a combat mission, he would know exactly what was expected of him, exactly what he was supposed to do. Right now, nothing made sense.
Carine was used to his house-she'd been coming there since they were kids. His mother had given her painting lessons, helped to train her artistic eye and encouraged her to pursue her dream of becoming a photographer. As much as odd-duck Saskia North had been a mother to anyone, Ty supposed she'd been one to orphaned Carine Winter.
Carine insisted on carrying her tapestry bag to the end room upstairs and said she could make up the bed herself, but North followed her up, anyway. Her room was next to his mother's old weaving room, which he'd cleared out a couple of years after her death. The different-size looms, the bags and shelves of yarns, the spinning wheel-he had no use for any of it and donated the whole lot to a women's shelter. His mother would sit up there for hours at a time. Her room had a view of the back meadow and the mountains, but she seldom looked out the window. She had a kind of tunnel vision when it came to her work, a concentration so deep, Ty could sneak off as a kid and she wouldn't notice for hours.
He didn't know why the hell he hadn't died up on the ridge. Luck, he supposed. But he'd started to wonder when his luck would run out-how much luck did a person have a right to?
"It's so quiet," Carine said as she set her bag down on the braided rug. "I never really noticed before I moved to the city. One of those things you take for granted, I guess."
"It's supposed to be good weather tomorrow. On the cool side, but maybe we can take a hike."
"That'd be good."
Ty got sheets out of the closet, white ones that had been around forever, and they made the bed together, but Carine looked like she wouldn't last another ten seconds. "Sit," he told her. "Now, before you pass out."
"I've never passed out."
"Don't make tonight the first time."
"You've got your own medical kit downstairs. What do you call it?" She smiled weakly. "Operating room in a rucksack."