Dancing in the Dark

“Well, it can’t be easy, puttin’ up a place all by yourself, workin’ only weekends.”

“It’s the only way I could manage to do it.”

“Uh-huh. Nothing like free labor. Heard tell you got a good price when you bought that land, too.”

Seth bit back a smile. Philo heard everything sooner or later. “Yeah, I did. I guess I could have hired somebody to help me out, but I enjoy the work.”

“Figured that.” Philo opened the stove’s fire door and added another maple split. “It’s none of my business, I know....” He cleared his throat. “It’s just, well, the wife and I were talkin’ at breakfast this mornin’ and we were wonderin’... Are things okay between you and the lady?”

Seth raised one dark eyebrow. This was a small town. What passed for gossip elsewhere was neighborly concern here, but asking him such a personal question about his love life—or what passed for his love life—was, well, unusual.

“Sure,” he said carefully. “Things are fine.”

“Ah.” Philo nodded as if a burden had been lifted from his shoulders. “Well, the wife’ll be happy to hear it. Phyllis always liked her. Me, too, for that matter, though I never knew her very well.”

Seth looked at Philo with curiosity. There was an off-kilter feel to this conversation, not just the sudden interest in his private life and his relationship with Joanne, but the way Philo was talking about it. Jo had only moved into the area a couple of years back. She lived in New Ashford. As far as Seth knew, she’d never even been into the Coopers’ store.

“Well,” he said, even more cautiously, “she’s a private sort of person.”

“Uh-huh. We figured that. Especially now with, you know, all the stuff that went on....” Philo’s Adam’s apple slid up and down. “So,” he said briskly, “is she back for good? Or is it true, like some folks say, that she’s only here to visit?”

Seth felt his heart give an unsteady thump. They definitely weren’t talking about Joanne. He searched his mind for a “she” who might fit the conversation, a woman he’d know well enough for Philo to ask him such intimate questions. Then he realized from the look in Philo’s eyes, from last night’s dream, from the memories that had been tormenting him...

He knew who they were discussing, and what it meant.

Wendy was home.

Except he didn’t believe that you dreamed about what was going to happen. The images in his head were there because of the time of year, and all this proved was that he’d never quite gotten past thinking about her.

“Is who back for good?” he said, as if Philo’s question might simply be about one of the winter visitors who’d asked him to do some repairs on her cabin.

He thought he’d spoken with casual ease. One look at Philo and he knew he hadn’t pulled it off. The other man’s plump cheeks reddened. Even his ears seemed to burn with embarrassment.

“Damn it,” he mumbled, “I’m sorry, Seth. I told Phyllis this wouldn’t be a good idea. ‘Phyl,’ I said, ‘honey, did it ever occur to you that the man might not want to talk about this? That he just plain might want to avoid—’”

“I’m not trying to avoid anything. I just don’t understand the question. Who are we talking about, Philo?”

Philo looked as if he wanted the floor to open up and swallow him. He lifted the poker, reached into the fire, made a show of rearranging the burning wood, then stared at the dancing flames as if they held the answer to Seth’s question.

Finally, he looked up.

“Wendy Monroe,” he said with a swift exhalation of breath. “And if you want to tell me to mind my own business about why she’s come back to Cooper’s Corner, or how long she’s goin’ to stay, that’s okay with me.”

* * *

THE SUN WAS LOW in the sky, the wind had picked up and it had begun to snow again. Main Street was one long sheet of ice. The sanding trucks hadn’t come through yet.

Seth drove carefully and fought to keep his mind on what he was doing. It wasn’t easy. All he could think about was Wendy. She was back. She was in Cooper’s Corner. The whole town probably knew it.

Now he knew it, too.

A car pulled out from the curb, skidded delicately to the left before its tires gained purchase. Seth braked gently, then fell in behind the slow-moving automobile.

Philo had all the details, though he’d been uncomfortable providing them. She’d flown in yesterday. Alison Fairchild had picked her up at the airport in Albany and driven her to town.

Seth’s jaw knotted. He’d seen Alison just a couple of days ago, at Twin Oaks, when he’d stopped by to double-check the dimensions of the corner where Clint and Maureen wanted to put the china cabinet he was making for the dining room. On the way out, he’d bumped into Alison. Literally. He’d been trotting down the porch steps, his head full of measurements; she’d been coming up, on her way to visit Maureen, and they’d collided.

“Whoops,” she’d said with a quick smile, then apologized for having her head in the clouds. They’d had a perfectly normal conversation about how well the B and B was coming along, about the weather and the season and every damned thing in the world except the one that would have mattered to him—that Wendy was returning to Cooper’s Corner. There was no way he’d believe that Alison hadn’t known about it then.

And what about Gina? He’d kept in touch with Wendy’s mother. They spoke often. Well, not so often now, but for the first few years he’d phoned at least once a week to ask about Wendy’s recovery. To hell with her father. It was Howard’s fault Wendy had the accident. If he hadn’t been pushing her so hard...

Seth took a deep breath.

There was no sense in going through all that again. It was over. So was what he’d once felt for Wendy.

Calmer now, he understood that neither Alison nor Gina felt under any obligation to tell him Wendy was returning. In which case, why had he gotten so upset? Wendy was the past. Joanne was the future.

His hands flexed on the steering wheel. Okay. Maybe she wasn’t the future. Maybe what he felt for Jo wasn’t what it should be. Maybe it was time to tell her that, before things got any stickier. Maybe...

The tires spun. Seth felt the truck slewing toward the cars parked along the curb. He managed to recover with only a fraction of a second to spare.

Maybe, he thought grimly, he needed to get his head together before he ended up breaking his neck.

He put on his signal light and pulled into an empty parking space just ahead. Climbing out of the truck, Seth turned up the collar of his old leather jacket and trudged toward Tubb’s Café, just down the street.

The café was warm and steamy, fragrant with the aromas of coffee and freshly baked doughnuts. He slid onto a stool near the window, exchanged greetings with the college kid working the counter.

“Coffee,” he said.

The kid poured him a mugful. Seth wrapped his hands around it, letting its warmth chase the cold from his fingers. Maybe it was irrational, but it pissed him off that nobody had thought to tell him about Wendy. Hadn’t it occurred to Gina or Alison that he’d be interested?

He’d loved her, once.

No. Damn it, no! He’d been infatuated, that was all. What nineteen-year-old kid who’d come out of nowhere wouldn’t be infatuated with a beautiful girl? Wendy had been the town’s darling. The guy she went with should have been a local product. The captain of the football team. A jock with varsity letters and a family that went back a hundred years. Instead, she’d fallen for him. No family, no background, no varsity letters on his jacket...

There she was.

The mug trembled in Seth’s hands. He put it down on the counter, his gaze riveted to the window. Two people had just come out of a store. A man and a woman. Howard Monroe and Wendy. She was bundled in a dark-green anorak; her fiery hair was tucked up under a knitted ski cap so that only strands of it were visible against the pale oval of her face, and her eyes were hidden behind big, dark glasses. But none of that mattered. People hurrying past didn’t recognize her, but Seth did.

He’d have known her anywhere.

His heart turned over as she began walking alongside her father. It was the first time he’d seen her on her feet. Until this moment, the damage she’d suffered had been confined to his imagination. Now he could see the reality of it. Instead of her former graceful walk, Wendy’s hip and knee were stiff. Her limping gait after all those years of rehab, was evidence of the severity of the accident.

They reached her father’s SUV. Howard held out his hand, but she shook her head and said something that looked like “I can do it.” And she did, navigating the icy sidewalk toward the curb and the truck door with studied care.

Seth’s eyes narrowed.

Why wasn’t she using a cane? Why wouldn’t she take her old man’s hand? Why was she so damned thickheaded? She could fall. She could go down in the ice and snow and...

And it was none of his business.

Except it was. Wendy had meant something to him once upon a time, even if that time was long ago.