“I suppose you’re an artist?” she asked.
He nodded. “It’s the one thing I don’t screw up.”
Bettina stopped. She thought that was probably the first honest thing he’d said since he’d arrived.
Donal took another step before he realized she wasn’t coming. Turning, he looked back at her.
“Why do you think that is?” she asked.
He regarded her for a long moment. “Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph. Don’t you think it’s a bit early in the day to be philosophizing? We don’t even have a pint in us yet.”
She nodded and started to walk again, leading him to the kitchen door, fust before they went in, he caught her arm. She looked pointedly down at his hand until he let go.
“Look,” he said. “We’re getting off on the wrong foot. I don’t mean to be such a shite. It just happens. I don’t even know what I’m saying ’till the words’re out of my bloody mouth.”
“You don’t have to explain yourself.”
“But I want to.”
She waited.
“You’re not making this easy,” he went on. Before she could speak, he held up a hand. “I know, I know. There’s no reason you should. It’s just… I’m not much good with the social graces, you see, so I act like an eejit.” He gave her a quick smile. She could tell he was trying, but the warmth still didn’t quite reach his eyes. “When I’m painting, it’s the only time I feel like I have… you know… any worth….”
His voice trailed off. Bettina considered him for a moment. She could feel a fetish taking shape in her mind, how she would define him if he came to her for healing. She could see the stitches, knew the milagro she would choose. There would be paint pigment mixed in with the dirt. Cobalt blue, definitely. A touch of raw sienna.
“Perhaps,” she said, “you should approach the rest of life as though you had a paintbrush in hand.”
He looked at her for a long moment, then nodded. This time, when his lips twitched, the smile reached his eyes.
“That’s good, you know,” he said. “It’s worth a try.”
She shrugged, not entirely sure if he meant it.
“Go on inside,” she told him, “and warm up. I’m just going to top up the birdfeeders and then I’ll put on a pot of coffee for us.”
“Let me help.” When she hesitated, he added, “I’ll keep my gob shut.”
“Gob?”
“My mouth. I mean I’ll be quiet.”
“Bueno,” she said. “We keep the seed in the shed out back.”
True to his word, he held his peace, and surprisingly, the silence that fell between them as they measured out seed and filled the feeders wasn’t uncomfortable.
Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all. Bettina found herself thinking, but then she had to smile at herself. And maybe el cuervo could bleach its black wings and pass itself off as a dove. But it wasn’t likely. Like a crow, this Donal Greer was no innocent. Let the smile reach his eyes. But beneath the kindly charm he presented to her now, a darkness remained….
Y bien. It wasn’t her problem.
11
The day wasn’t unfolding at all the way Ellie had expected it would. Which, she decided, was becoming the story of her life, really. Just consider how well things had gone yesterday morning when Henry Patterson threw his control-freak hissy fit, ha-ha. Bloody hell, as Donal would say. She’d much prefer sailing through life on an even keel to the seesawing highs and lows that the weekend had produced so far, but what could you do? Unless you were Jillv or Miki—both of whom seemed to be gifted with the innate ability to spin some kind of gold out of the worst situation’s straw—you simply had to take what was thrown at you and make the best of it.
And when you thought about, she really shouldn’t complain. Take the good with the bad, as her mother would always say. Unlike the people she and Tommy saw most nights driving the Angel Outreach van, she at least had ups to compensate for the otherwise less-than-wonderful parts of her life.
Patterson had ruined yesterday morning, it was true, and he might well kill any potential she had to make a career as a portraitist of the city’s business community, but she’d had a good time at the dance last night and it had been nice to get to know Hunter as more than a face behind the counter at the record store. And Hunter had seemed attracted to her as well, which was no small thing for a woman to whom the word “date” had simply come to mean the edible fruit of a palm tree. So he couldn’t hold his liquor. So he’d had to go home early. That was no big deal. Considering how much Donal could put away—“I’m your man for the gargle,” as he liked to put it—and how their relationship had gone, she wouldn’t mind if the next man in her life was a complete teetotaler.
As for today’s seesaw… Well, she’d had the pleasure of meeting Bettina, and wouldn’t she make a great subject for a bust with her striking Latina features—those eyes, that hair—but then Donal had to start acting like such a little shit.
And now this.
Musgrave Wood, if that even was his/her name, was proving to be more cantankerous than Donal at his worst, and wasn’t that saying something? The Old World charm Wood had conveyed when they’d met the other night wasn’t even remotely in evidence today. Ellie had been nervous enough about coming to Kellygnow in the first place, and she was of half a mind to simply walk right out of the cottage now, if this was what she could expect. But for all her dislike of mysteries and puzzles, curiosity had managed to get the better of her and she found herself staying. She supposed she’d been hanging around with Tommy too much lately. The next thing you knew she’d be driving up to the rez with him to ask the Aunts for advice.
“Would you like some tea?” her androgynous host asked.
Ellie glanced at the door Wood had so recently closed in Donal’s face. She was surprised that he wasn’t hammering on its panels.
“My friend,” she began.
“Will be fine. No doubt they’ll be waiting for you in the house.” When Ellie didn’t immediately respond, Wood added, “You’ve come this far. At least hear me out.”
“I suppose. It’s just…”
“First let me get the tea,” Wood said. “Go on and take off your coat and sit. And don’t worry about your boots. The floor’s seen worse than a bit of snow in its time.”
Ellie hesitated a moment longer before finally crossing the floor to where a pair of rustic wooden chairs stood at an equally roughly hewn table. Her boots shed melting snow with every step.
She’d often had a fantasy of moving into some little log cabin in the Kick-aha Hills—the idea of it appealed to the same part of her that thought she liked camping. However the two times she’d actually gone camping, the discomforts had seemed to far outweigh the pleasanter aspects of those outings. But she thought she could live in a place like this.
The open-concept room was dominated by a rather large cast-iron wood-stove. One corner of the floor space, the part where she was sitting, had been sectioned off as a kitchen area. The rest formed a combination sitting room and bedroom, furnished with a rather narrow four-poster brass bed that had a cedar chest at its foot, and a reading chair that was pulled up by the stove, a floor lamp standing behind it. The kitchen boasted a sink and counter, a hutch, fridge, and some cupboards under the counter. There was a row of books on a shelf near the bed, leather-bound, their titles indecipherable from where she was sitting, and a small curtained area in the far corner that was probably the bathroom, or a closet. Or both. It seemed wonderfully cozy, with the views from the windows looking out on only trees and lawn. One could almost think they were out in the hills somewhere, instead of the middle of the city.