A Place Called Home (10 page)

Lucky mothers, Thea was thinking as she watched him go to the door. He paused on the threshold and she half expected that he would say something. When he remained quiet for a full beat, she said, “Thank you for coming.”

He glanced over his shoulder, unable to hide his startle reflex. He knew it wasn’t flattering for him to be surprised by her appreciation, but there it was. “Thanks for not throwing me out.”

She smiled. “Good-bye, Mitch.”

He shut the door quietly behind him.

Thea’s knees went wobbly the moment she heard the latch click. She got around her desk and let herself just fall into her chair. There was a soft
poof
as the leather gave to accommodate her shape and weight. “Oh my,” she said under her breath.

Her body filed a status report to her brain. Racing heart. Noodlelike limbs. Metallic taste in her mouth. And when her stomach finally uncurled there was the faint sensation of nausea. Thea found none of it encouraging and all of it a little frightening. She was familiar with the aftermath of an adrenaline rush, but having one in response to a person who meant her no harm was outside of her experience.

Even as she thought it, Thea recognized that it wasn’t entirely true. She had made a point of avoiding Mitchell Baker for years. If she was going to be honest with herself—and apparently she was—her behavior had been due in part to some not fully realized understanding that he made her uncomfortable. Or more factually, that he made her uncomfortable in this heart-stalling, jelly-kneed, short-of-breath way.

Thea swiveled in her chair so she was facing the wet bar where Mitch had been standing. She resisted closing her eyes as too juvenile a response. As it turned out, she didn’t require a blank screen to recreate his image in her mind’s eye. Almost instantly all six-feet-two of him was leaning casually against the wet bar, his shoulders hunched a little in the gently scarred leather jacket. He wore jeans and a pale blue Oxford shirt. There was no tie. A crosshatch of brown and blond, Mitch’s thick hair was wind-ruffled and finger-combed and neither effect was unappealing. He flashed a smile suddenly and Thea actually blinked. It was a killer smile, just a kilter off from being male-model perfect. Each time he turned it on his eyes brightened to a shade of green that seemed to be outside the standard spectrum. Amused or serious, he conveyed interest and intelligence in his glance.

There was another look, one with his eyelids at half-mast that was both watchful and intense, that Thea would not let herself dwell on. The image in front of her flickered and she stamped Mitch’s features with the mischievous grin, the one that made him seem no more dangerous than Case and Grant.

“Ms. Wyndham?”

Thea was torn out of her reverie by the disembodied voice of her assistant. She turned to the phone. “Yes?”

“I’m here, Ms. Wyndham.” Jane Amundson’s voice came from the doorway. She had a pad and pen in hand. “Some of us are ordering out for lunch. Jim is going to pick it up. Would you like a sandwich?”

Thea looked at her phone for the time. “I have to be leaving for a meeting.” She saw Mrs. Amundson’s frown, obviously trying to remember what she had downloaded from Thea’s e-planner. “It’s not on my schedule. Something that I arranged just last night. I’ll be gone about an hour and a half.” Thea pretended to misunderstand her assistant’s disapproval. “Don’t worry that I won’t eat. I’ll pick up something on my way back. Thank you for asking.” It was an effective dismissal, and Mrs. Admundson only hesitated another moment before stepping back into the outer offices.

When she was gone Thea picked up the receiver on her phone and punched in Rosie’s number. Smiling to herself as voice mail picked up again, Thea left a brief message. “Mitch was here,” she said. “I’m going to see the kids on Saturday. I’m on my way to a meeting now but I’ll be back around two-thirty. You can call me at the office if you want. I could use some movies-suitable-for-kids ideas.” She started to lower the receiver, then the streak of honesty that had been plaguing her of late compelled her to state the real reason she had called. She added softly, “A pep talk wouldn’t be unwelcome.”

Thea worked until almost eight. The meeting and Rosie’s return call had put her behind in her work. She regretted neither but she also didn’t want to haul projects home with her. The alternative was to stay late and greet the cleaning staff. The last month notwithstanding, they were used to seeing her, and she was vaguely discomfited by the realization. It registered with Thea quite suddenly that this was progress of sorts. Not so very long ago she wouldn’t have been aware of that feeling at all, or known what to do about it if she had been.

On the way home she stopped at the supermarket and picked up a cartful of staples and essential favorites. She was so used to eating out that she experienced something akin to sticker shock when the clerk gave her the final total.

Later that night, however, when she was ladling homemade potato soup into a bowl, she knew a sense of satisfaction that was almost out of proportion to her accomplishment. It hardly mattered that she was eating dinner at ten-thirty or that there was a mess in the kitchen. The soup was creamy and warm and every last bit of it went down like a liquid hug.

Thea fell asleep on the couch, holding the empty bowl in her hands.

Mitch was not fully awake when the phone rang. He made a halfhearted attempt to reach it but let his hand slide from the nightstand and dangle over the edge of the bed. It rang two more times before it stopped and he grunted softly with approval, believing the caller had given up. A moment later he found out he was wrong.

“Uncle Mi-itch!”

It was Emilie. There was no mistaking that singsong emphasis in her voice as it floated up from the bottom of the stairs. He had ceased thinking of his name as a single syllable.

“The phone’s for yoo-oooo.”

He made another stab at reaching it and succeeded in knocking it off the stand. “Find out who it is.” It was amazing, he thought, that he didn’t have to raise his voice at all for Emilie to hear him, yet she remained firm in her opinion that shouting improved communication. For a while he enjoyed the relative silence while Emilie did as she was told. He could hear the muted sounds of the TV in the living room—Case and Grant rose at the obscene hour of six, even on Saturdays—then Mitch recognized the Nickelodeon theme in the background and knew a sense of relief. Good boys, he thought sleepily. TV-G.

His eyes opened wide. Glancing at the clock he saw that more than fifteen minutes had passed since Emilie had called to him. He lurched out of bed and grabbed the phone off the floor, straining a muscle in the small of his back as he did so.

“Aaah, dammit!” His thumb pressed the Talk button at the same time he swore. Holding his back with one hand and the receiver with the other, he raised the phone. “Hello?”

No one spoke. Mitch thought Emilie must have turned the caller away before he realized he wasn’t hearing a dial tone either. “Hello?” he repeated. “Emilie? Are you on the line?”

There was a soft click but still no dial tone.

Thea said, “I think you scared her off.”

“Thea?”

“Uh-huh. It’s me.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“I’m not offended,” she said. “But you’ll probably have to apologize to Em.”

Mitch rubbed his back and tentatively tried a lateral stretch. “Yeah. I’m getting to be a real pro at that. Who knew eleven-year-old girls were so sensitive?”

I did
. Thea didn’t offer any response to his rhetorical question. “What happened?” She listened as he told her about his lurch for the phone and try as she might, could not imagine him as graceless as his description. Mitch Baker didn’t have a false move. “I didn’t mean to wake you,” she said.

“Not a problem. I needed to be up.”

It occurred to her that he was standing in his bedroom, disheveled and loose-limbed, and quite possibly naked. Immediately she put briefs on him, changed those to boxers, changed those to sweats, and finally covered him up in a long nightshirt with tails that flapped around his calves. She’d never actually seen one of those on a man, but there was an illustration in a childhood book that she remembered and liked. The man had worn a striped stocking cap as well. It didn’t look good on Mitch.

“You still there?” asked Mitch.

“What? Oh, yes. I’m here.” She removed that stocking cap quickly. “I was wondering if I should bring something for the kids when I come out this afternoon. What do you think?”

Mitch rubbed his chin, felt the stubble, and padded into the adjoining bathroom. He absently scratched his bare chest while he looked in the mirror. The face staring back at him was vaguely disreputable, and not in a sexy way. “I don’t know, Thea. What were your thoughts?” He started running cold water and picked up his toothbrush.

Thea placed an orange half in the juicer and squeezed. Her mouth watered instantly. “I used to bring things with me when I came to visit. Nothing big, you understand. Puzzles. Games. Maybe a DVD they didn’t already own. Kathy usually had suggestions when I asked. But this is different now. I don’t know how to do it. It’s a visit, but more than a visit. At least it seems that way. I don’t know what they expect from me.”
Hell,
she thought,
I don’t know what I expect from myself.

“You were talking to Emilie, weren’t you?” Mitch managed to keep the phone in the crook of his neck and shoulder while he put toothpaste on his brush. Multitasking, he thought. It used to be walking and chewing gum was the benchmark for coordination. He was really pushing the envelope here. “Did you ask her?”

“Ask her what?”

Mitch jammed the brush in his mouth. “What she expected.”

Thea frowned at the odd slur in his speech. “Mitch? Are you all right? What are you doing?”

“Brushin’ ma tee.”

“Oh.” Thea wrung the juice out of another sweet orange. “You mean I can actually ask her that?”

“Sure.” He got his crown molars, the back of his incisors, and his tongue. “Jus a min-ute.” Mitch spit and rinsed his mouth. He spit again. “That’s better.”

Maybe for you, she thought. Thea felt like she was sharing a bathroom with him. If she heard the toilet next, it wouldn’t be the only thing flushing. “What would I say?”

“I don’t know.” He considered it a moment, running his hand through his hair. “Just maybe ask her if there’s anything she needs from you. She’ll give you some concrete stuff at first, like neon pink fingernail polish and a tongue stud, but I’m pretty sure with a little prompting she’ll get the idea of what you really mean.”

Thea’s voice was tentative. She paused in pouring her orange juice into a glass. “Umm, about the other two things. I should say no to those, right?”

Mitch smiled. “Neon pink’s okay. I’m boycotting black even though she says it’s a mourning color. Emilie can be very dark at times and she doesn’t need nails to match. No on the tongue stud, though, otherwise I won’t know what to get her for her sixteenth birthday.” Silence. “I’m kidding about the birthday present.”

“Oh, yes. Of course.”

Mitch could only shake his head. Even Emilie had gotten the joke quicker. Maybe the phone wasn’t a good medium for his half wit. “If you want to bring something with you, I don’t really see the problem. Just make it something you can do with them.”

“All right.”

“And, Thea?”

“Hmmm?”

“Thanks for asking.” He fumbled with the opening on his boxers. “I’ve got to go now.” He hadn’t meant it as a literal description of his current bodily needs, but the alacrity with which the phone went dead told him Thea had taken it that way. Heat crept into his cheeks as he set the phone on the sink top. “You’re smooth, Mitch Baker. Real smooth.”

Thea pulled up to Mitch’s redbrick Colonial and parked on the street behind a bright yellow SUV. Feeling decidedly unhip for herself and her classic Volvo, Thea patted the dashboard lightly. “It’s okay, baby. You’re safe.”

Inside the house the curtains in the living room fell back into place. Case flopped dramatically onto the sofa. “Aunt Thea’s here!” With the gap in his front teeth, he was announcing the arrival of someone named Anthea. “And she’s talkin’ to her car!”

“Go open the garage door, Mega-mouth,” Mitch told him. “Let her in.” He gave Gina a nudge off the arm of the chair he was sitting in so he could get up. Emilie and Grant had already dropped the Wii game controls and were running after their brother.

Gina flicked her wrist and looked at her watch. “Well, she’s on time. That’s something.”

Mitch shot her a glance. “Be nice.” He hadn’t missed the fact that Gina had been edgy since she showed up. He didn’t even want to think what that was about. Taking her hand, Mitch gave a tug. With only minimal resistance, Gina let herself be pulled along. By the time they reached the garage, she was practically curled around his arm.

Thea dropped the box she was carrying as the twins and Emilie launched themselves at her. To keep from getting bowled over, she fell to her knees in the driveway. Case and Grant were like frisky puppies while Emilie got an arm around her torso and held on.

“Goodness,” Thea said. “What a welcome!” She managed to close in on all three and squeezed. Over the top of Emilie’s dark head she saw Mitch walking out of the garage sporting a stunning young woman where his right arm used to be. She closed her eyes against that feline smile. “Ooooh! I’ve missed you guys.” They loosened their grips enough so that she could get a good look at them. “Should I pinch cheeks?”

Grant gave her an impish smile and patted his behind.

“Grant Reasoner!” Thea exclaimed. “Don’t tempt me.” She made a play for his bottom but he scampered backward, almost falling on it in his eagerness to get out of reach. “That would have served you right.” She looked at Case who was shifting his weight in anticipation that she would go after him. Loath to disappoint, Thea reached around Emilie, her fingers and thumb curled like pincers. Case laughed and danced away. “What happened to your tooth? Did your brother knock it out?”

Both boys thought that was funny. Emilie just shook her head at their laughter. “They’re being stupid,” she confided to Thea. “Uncle Mitch says it’s what they do. Like it’s their job or something.”