Magic hour: a novel (16 page)

Max knew he should back away now, leave before she noticed him, but he couldn’t move. The sound of her voice had captured him somehow, as had the glimmer of pale moonlight on her hair and skin.

“I guess this means you like watching,” she said without looking at him.

He would have sworn that she’d never once glanced at the door, but she’d known he was there.

He stepped into the room. “You don’t miss much, do you?”

She put the last of the papers in her briefcase and looked up. Her skin appeared ashen beneath the dim lighting; the scratches on her cheeks were dark and angry. A yellow bruise marred her forehead. But it was her eyes that got to him. “I miss plenty.”

Her voice was so soft, it took him a second to really hear what she’d said.

I miss plenty.

She was talking about that patient of hers, the one that killed those children in Silverwood and then committed suicide. He knew about that kind of guilt. “You look like a woman who could use a cup of coffee.”

“Coffee? At one o’clock in the morning? I don’t think so, but thank you.” She sidled past him, then herded him out of the day care center and shut the door behind him.

“How about pie?” he said as she headed down the hallway. “Pie is good any time of the day.”

She stopped, turned around. “Pie?”

He moved toward her, unable to keep from smiling. “I knew I could tempt you.”

She laughed at that, and though it was a tired, not-quite-genuine sound, it made his smile broaden. “The pie tempted me.”

He led her to the cafeteria and flipped on the lights. In this quiet time of night, the place was empty; the cases and buffets were bare. “Take a seat.” Max eased around the sandwich counter and went back into the kitchen, where he found two pieces of marionberry pie, which he covered with vanilla ice cream. Then he made two cups of herb tea and carried a tray out into the dining room and set it down on the table in front of Julia.

“Chamomile tea. To help you sleep,” he said, sliding into the booth seat opposite her. “And marionberry pie. A local favorite.” He handed her a fork.

She stared at him, frowning slightly. “Thanks,” she said after a pause.

“You’re welcome.”

“So, Dr. Cerrasin,” she said after another long silence, “do you make a habit of luring colleagues down to the cafeteria for early morning pie?”

He smiled. “Well, if by colleagues you mean doctors, there aren’t exactly a lot of us. To be honest, I haven’t taken old Doc Fischer out for pie in ages.”

“How about the nurses?”

He heard a tone in her voice and looked up. She was eyeing him over the beige porcelain of her cup. Assessing him. “It sounds to me like you’re asking about my love life.” He smiled. “Is that it, Julia?”

“Love life?” She put a slight emphasis on
love.
“Do you have one of those? I would be surprised.”

He frowned. “You sure think you know me.”

She took a bite of pie. “Let’s just say I know your kind.”

“No. Let’s not say that. Whoever you’re confusing me with is not sitting at this table. You just met me, Julia.”

“Fair enough. Why don’t you tell me about yourself, then? Are you married?”

“An interesting first question. No. Are you?”

“No.”

“Ever been married?”

“No.”

“Ever get close?”

She glanced down for a second. It was all he needed to know. Someone had broken her heart. He’d bet that it was fairly recent. “Yes.”

“How about you? Have you ever been married?”

“Once. A long time ago.”

That seemed to surprise her. “Kids?”

“No.”

She looked at him sharply, as if she’d heard something in his voice. Their gazes held. Finally, she smiled. “So I guess you can have pie with anyone you’d like.”

“I can.”

“You’ve probably had pie with every woman in town.”

“You give me too much credit. Married women make their own pie.”

“And how about my sister?”

His smile faded. Suddenly the flirting didn’t seem so harmless. “What about her?”

“Have you . . . had pie with her?”

“A gentleman wouldn’t really answer that, now would he?”

“So you’re a gentleman.”

“Of course.” He was becoming uncomfortable with the course of their conversation. “How is your face feeling? That bruise is getting uglier.”

“We shrinks get popped now and then. Hazards of the trade.”

“You can never quite know what a person will do, can you?”

Her gaze met his. “Knowing is my job. Although by now the whole world knows I missed something important.”

There was nothing he could say, no real comfort he could give, so he stayed quiet.

“No platitudes, Dr. Cerrasin? No ‘God doesn’t give you more than you can bear’ speech?”

“Call me Max. Please.” He looked at her. “And sometimes God breaks your fucking back.”

It was a long moment before she said, “How did He break you, Max?”

He slid out of the booth and stood beside her. “As much as I’d love to keep chatting, I have to be at work at seven. So . . .”

Julia put the dishes on the tray and slid from the booth.

Max took the tray to the kitchen and put the dishes in the dishwasher, then they walked side by side through the quiet, empty hallways and out to the parking lot.

“I’m driving the red truck,” she said, digging through her purse for the keys.

Max opened the door for her.

She looked up at him. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

She paused, then said, “No more pie for me. Just so you know. Okay?”

He frowned. “But—”

“Thanks again.” She got in the truck, slammed the door shut, and drove away.

EIGHT

J
ULIA REFUSED TO LET HERSELF THINK ABOUT
M
AX
. S
HE HAD
enough on her mind right now without obsessing over some small-town hunk. So what if he intrigued her? Max was definitely a player, and she had no interest in games or the kind of man who played them. That was a lesson Philip had taught her.

She turned onto Olympic Drive. This was the oldest part of town, built back in the thirties for the families of mill workers.

Driving through here was like going back in time. She came to a stop at the T in the road, and there it was, caught in her headlights.

The lumber store. In this middle-of-night hour she couldn’t read the orange banner that hung in the window. Still, she knew the words by heart:
This community is supported by timber.
Those same banners had been strung throughout town since the spotted owl days.

This store was the heart of the West End. In the summer it opened as early as three o’clock in the morning. And at that, men like her father were already there and waiting impatiently to get started on their day.

She eased her foot off the accelerator and coasted through a haze of fog. So often she’d sat in her dad’s pickup outside this store, waiting for him.

He’d been a cutter, her dad. A cutter was to an ordinary logger what a thoracic surgeon was to a general practitioner. The cream of the crop. He’d gone into the woods early, long before his buddies; alone. Always alone. His friends—other cutters—died so often it stopped being a surprise. But he’d loved strapping spurs onto his ankles, grabbing a rope, and scaling a two-hundred-foot-tall tree. Of course, it was an adventurer’s job. Near death every day and the money to match the risk.

They’d all known it was only a matter of time before it killed him.

She hit the gas too hard. The old truck lurched forward, bucked, and died. Julia started it up again, found first gear, and headed out to the old highway.

No wonder she’d stayed at the hospital so late. She’d told herself it was about the girl, about doing a great job, but that was only part of it. She’d been putting off going back to the house where there were too many memories.

She parked the truck and went inside. The house was full of shapes and shadows, all of which were familiar. Ellie had left the stairwell light on for her; it was the same thing Mom had always done, and the sight of it—that soft, golden light spilling down the worn oak stairs—filled her heart with longing. Her mother had always waited up for her. Never in this house had she gone to bed without a nighttime kiss. No matter how badly Mom and Dad were fighting, she always got her kiss from Mom. Julia was thirteen years old the first time she’d seen through the veil; at least that was how she now thought of it. In one day she’d gone from believing her family was happy to knowing the truth. Her mother had come in that night with bloodshot eyes and tearstained cheeks. Julia had only asked a few questions before Mom started to talk.

It’s your father,
she’d whispered.
I shouldn’t tell you, but . . .

Those next few words were like well-placed charges. They blew Julia’s family—and her world—apart. The worst part was, Mom never told Ellie the same things.

Julia went up the stairs. In the tiny second-floor bathroom that attached to her girlhood bedroom, she brushed her teeth, washed her face, and slipped into the silk pajamas she’d brought with her from Beverly Hills, then went into her old room.

There was a note on her pillow. In Ellie’s bold handwriting, it read:
Meeting at Congregational church at six a.m. to discuss girl’s placement. Be ready to leave at 5:45.

Good. Her sister was working on it.

Julia stayed up another hour, filling out all the paperwork required to be appointed temporary foster parent for the child, then she climbed into bed and clicked off the light. She was asleep almost instantly.

At four o’clock she woke with a start.

For a second she didn’t know where she was. Then she saw the ballerina music box on her white desk and it all came back to her. She remembered her dream, too. She’d been a girl again—
that
girl. The scarecrow-thin, socially awkward daughter of Big Tom Cates.

She threw the covers off her and stumbled out of bed. Within minutes she was in her jogging clothes and outside, running down the old highway, past the entrance to the national park.

By five-fifteen she was back home, breathing hard, feeling like her grown-up self again.

Pale gray predawn light, as watery as everything else in this rain-forest climate, shone in flashlight beams through the stand of hemlock trees that grew along the river.

She didn’t decide to move, didn’t want to, but before she knew it, she was walking across the yard toward her father’s favorite fishing hole.

Move back, Little Bit. Outta my way. I can hardly concentrate on my fishin’ with you skulkin’ beside me.

No wonder she had moved away from here and stayed away. The memories were everywhere; like the trees, they seemed to draw nutrients from the land and the rain.

She turned and went back into the house.

J
ULIA AND
E
LLIE WERE THE FIRST TO ARRIVE.
T
HEY PULLED UP INTO A
spot near the church’s front door and got out of the car.

Ellie started to say something, but the words were lost in the crunching sound of wheels on gravel. A snake of cars rolled into the parking lot, lining up side by side. Earl and Myra were the first people out of their car. Earl was in full dress uniform, but his wife had on fuzzy pink sweats. Her hair was up in rollers and covered by a bright scarf.

Ellie took Julia by the arm and hurried her into the church. The door clanged shut behind them.

Julia couldn’t help feeling a twinge of nerves. It pissed her off, that weakness. None of this old crap should bother her now. It wouldn’t have if she’d come home in triumph instead of shame. “I don’t care what they think anymore. I really don’t. So why—”

“I never understood why you let it all get to you. Who cares if they don’t like you?”

“Girls like you can’t understand,” Julia said, and it was true. Ellie had been popular. She didn’t know that some hurts were like a once-broken bone. In the right weather, they could ache for a lifetime.