The Invitation (Montgomery/Taggert 19)

“Sometimes parents have very odd ideas about their children. They think they should all be alike. They seem to think there is an ideal child, and they try to make them all like that ideal. If a child doesn’t like sports, parents say, ‘You should get out and play football.’ If the kid likes to play games outside, parents say, ‘Why don’t you ever sit down and read a book?’ It seems that whatever kind of a child you are, someone wants you to be different.”

“But your baby-sitter wasn’t like that?”

“No, she wasn’t. She liked or disliked people for what they were. She didn’t try to change them.”

Jackie found this conversation extraordinarily interesting and very much wanted to continue it, but she was falling asleep. “She didn’t try to change you?” she whispered, her eyes closed.

“No. She didn’t complain that I was too…whatever. She didn’t complain that I wasn’t like the other kids, because she was like no one else, either, and she understood what it was like to be different.”

“A misfit. You were both misfits.” Her voice was barely audible.

“No, we were both unique.” Leaning forward, he kissed her forehead. “Now go to sleep and maybe the Good Fairy will bring you what you most want during the night.”

She smiled at that and was still smiling when he turned out the light and left the room.

Chapter Seven

When Jackie awoke the next morning she was immediately aware of a throbbing in her right hand and a spectacularly empty stomach. Too weak and too lethargic at first to get out of bed, she slowly became aware of a dull thudding noise coming from the direction of the kitchen. Curiosity won over her lethargy, and, too, there was a smell she couldn’t identify coming from the kitchen: chicken? herbs? freshly baked bread? and something tangy, like hot apple cider. She got up and followed where her nose led.

William was just outside the kitchen, standing on the little flagstone pavement, straddling her unhinged screen door, which he was shaving with a small hand plane. The sun came in through the bright white lace curtains of the kitchen, and the round pine table was loaded with bowls of food covered with weighted cloths.

For a while she watched him, his strong back straining against a pale blue cotton shirt that was frayed at the cuffs. His strong, lean hands moved the plane along the edge of the door in what was almost a caressing motion.

Smoothing her hair with her hands, Jackie resisted the temptation to go back to the bathroom and spend an hour or so on her face and hair, maybe do her nails too. She forced herself to stay where she was. She wasn’t going to give in to silly female ploys. “What are you doing?” she asked.

Turning, he smiled at her, a smile as bright as the sunshine. “Fixing a few things.” He leaned the door against the side of the house and came toward her. “Let me look at my patient.” Tenderly he put both his hands on her head and turned her

face toward the light.

“My hand was hurt, not my face.”

“You can tell a great deal from looking into a person’s eyes.”

“Nearsightedness? How much the person had to drink the night before? That sort of thing?”

“In your case, no. The whites of your eyes are clear this morning, whereas last night they were gray with pain and fatigue. Are you hungry?”

“Famished.”

“I thought so. Have a seat and I’ll get you a plate.”

She allowed him to wait on her. It was so pleasant being waited on by a man that she didn’t protest, didn’t say that he was her guest and that she should be waiting on him. This morning she didn’t feel as though he were her guest. This morning she felt…She didn’t want to look too deep into how she felt.

Maybe it was the aftereffects of the pain pill or of the pain itself, but this morning she wasn’t as nervous as she usually was around him. Usually she felt as though she had to run away from William, that her life depended upon getting away from him, but this morning the world seemed kind of fuzzy and pretty, as though she were seeing it through foggy glasses.

She sat quietly while he poured steaming coffee for her and didn’t complain when he loaded it with both sugar and milk—coffee for a child, she thought, but she knew that today it would taste good.

“Breakfast or lunch?” he asked.

A quick glance at the clock told her that it was nearly one o’clock in the afternoon and that she had slept nearly fourteen hours. She doubted if she’d ever before in her life slept that long.

“Lunch,” she answered, then watched as he piled her plate high with a generous scoop from an enormous chicken pot pie. Creamy gravy oozed over chicken, carrots, and peas. There was coleslaw flavored with fennel, and bread still warm from the oven. Hot apple cider filled a stoneware mug.

“Did you cook this?” she asked in disbelief.

He laughed. “Not quite. Compliments of my family’s cook. One of my brothers drove it out here just an hour ago.”

She was too busy eating to comment, ignoring the fact that William was staring at her, watching her with a dreamy smile on his face.