Mist on the Meadow (23 page)

She didn’t invite him in when he walked up
the porch steps. Instead, she glared at him, arms folded high on
her chest.

“Can I come in?” he asked through the storm
door.

“Where’s my son?” she shot back.

“He’s not in jail, if that’s what you’re
asking.”

She pushed the door open but didn’t wait for
him to walk inside. She turned her back and walked toward the
kitchen, leaving Wolf to fend for himself. He glanced at the living
room where Chuck was normally stuck to his video games. A few steps
further he stopped by the family room, but there was still no sign
of his uncle. And now he’d reached the kitchen, and his Aunt
Corrine’s wrath.

“Where is he?” Wolf asked. As much as he
needed to confront his uncle, he didn’t want to put her through
another outburst like he’d subjected her to yesterday.

She opened her mouth a couple of times, as
if she wanted to say something. Finally, she dropped into a chair,
clutching the dish towel in her hands. “Are you taking him to the
police, too?”

“No ma’am, not unless he’s done something
illegal.” Like break into Marissa’s apartment.

“I’m not sure I can trust you anymore, Wolf,”
she said.

He wanted to laugh—wild, howling laughter.
“Do you have any idea what’s going on?”

The towel twisted and bunched around her
fingers. “Your uncle hasn’t seen fit to enlighten me. Perhaps you’d
like to?”

“What’re you doing here?” His uncle’s voice
was slurred, his eyes bloodshot.

“A little early for cocktail hour, isn’t
it?” Wolf faced his uncle.

“’S not your fault, you know. ’S that
Maitland woman. She’s cast a spell on you.” He scowled.

Aunt Corrine rose to her feet.

“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,”
Uncle Pete went on.

“Pete!” Aunt Corrine threw the dish towel
onto the table. “I swear I’m going to break every bottle in the
house.”

Wolf narrowed his eyes. “Why salt?” he
asked.

“It wards ‘em off, doncha know? Witches, evil
spirits, they don’t like salt.”

Wolf rolled his eyes. As good as a
confession. “You do know she’s a baker? She owns a café? Have you
seen the salt shakers there?” He took a step toward his uncle, who
faltered on shaky legs. “But of course you have. When you finished
at her apartment, you went to the café, didn’t you? Tried to blow
it up.”

His uncle squinted. “Wha’? An’ donchu take
another step or I’ll throw you outta my house.”

Wolf stopped. His uncle had admitted to
breaking into Marissa’s apartment easily enough. In his current
state, it seemed unlikely he’d deny being at the café.

“Is someone going to tell me what you’re
talking about?” Aunt Corrine asked.

Wolf told her about Chuck and the accident,
and then he told her about Marissa’s apartment. If his uncle didn’t
know about the café, there was no point in relaying that part of
the story. The scene Wolf had caused yesterday wore heavily on his
conscience. He could have handled that better.

Aunt Corrine set her hands to her hips and
faced his uncle down. “You spread salt all over that poor girl’s
apartment?”

“’S not his fault,” he mumbled again. “Poor
l’il Wolf’s under a spell, he is.” His uncle turned to Wolf. “Fight
it, boy. Her magic’s powerful stuff. A woman like that, she’s not
for you. Think about it. You like ’em scrawny and refined, them
city types. Only way you go for her is if she bewitches you.”

Scrawny and refined. More like shallow and
self-absorbed. Distant. Deliberately chosen for that reason.
Marissa was more than he’d bargained for, to be sure, but
bewitched? No. If he was bewitched, he wouldn’t have been able to
let her go this morning. His emotions scared the shit out of him.
Marissa had barged her way into that part of his heart that he’d
locked away after he’d lost his family. The family his cousin had a
part in killing.

“Wolf,” Aunt Corrine said gently, “he’s
drunk. Don’t pay attention to him.”

Sweet Aunt Corrine, quietly putting her head
in the sand once more. He didn’t have any more to lose, so he told
her about Harper Electronics, about the way his uncle had quietly
ignored the missing inventory, requisitioned parts that never
showed up in the warehouse. And then Uncle Pete blubbered.

“I didn’t know,” his uncle said.

“You didn’t want to know. Your mismanagement
has nearly bankrupted the company.”

Uncle Pete floundered for a chair and sat
with a thud. “My boy. What’d you do with my boy?”

Wolf didn’t blame Chuck for wanting to avoid
this. At least he’d manned up. Chuck might be a useless piece of
shit, but he’d done the right thing.

“Your boy’s fine,” Wolf
said. “Marissa is not a witch, and if you do anything—” he pointed
at his uncle, “
anything
to hurt her, our next conversation will be much
less congenial. You stay away from her. Do you
understand?”

“Wolf,” Aunt Corrine laid a hand on his arm,
“you’re angry.”

He rounded on his aunt. “Marissa’s afraid to
go home because someone violated her home—my uncle, as it turns
out. And the best part is that he didn’t take anything, he only
sprinkled salt everywhere. That’s the only thing keeping me from
hauling his ass down to the police right now.” He shook his head.
“She can’t go home. She’s afraid someone will break in again.”

His uncle squinted. “She ain’t staying at
Harper Manor, is she?”

Wolf slammed the chair against the table.
“If she was, that would be your fault for scaring her out of her
own home.”

“Witch can’t abide salt,” his uncle
repeated.

“It isn’t the salt that scared her away.”
Wolf grabbed his uncle by the shirt. “It was my sad excuse for a
family. I’m done with you.” He headed for the door amid protests
from his aunt trying to convince him that Wolf couldn’t mean what
he said. But he did. Every word of it.

Marissa sat in the cafe
parking lot and listened to the voicemail message again.
I love you
.

She wanted to believe Wolf,
but she’d worked too hard to establish her identity. Marissa
Maitland, half-owner of
Mangela
—a successful business—a
business someone had tried to take away from her. Now she wasn’t
sure who she was, primarily due to the legacy Uncle Balt had left
her.

She turned her cell phone off.

Salt. Again, what was the point?

And then there was that uneasy sense of
growth in her abdomen.

Life, as she knew it, had
changed overnight. She needed distance from Wolf until she could
re-establish some sort of rationality to her life.
Her
life.

She was not going back to that apartment to
wait for someone to break in again.

Marissa itched to bake something, to use her
hands to create something fabulous, but the café was still a crime
scene. Not today.

She veered onto the street without any sense
of where she was going, and then she stopped at the extended stay
hotel. Hotel rooms, complete with kitchenettes. A home away from
home.

Since she’d come into her legacy, everything
was different. She couldn’t talk to anyone about this ‘gift,’ not
even her parents.

What was she supposed to do with this new
skill? Marissa laughed. She couldn’t exactly take a class to learn
it.

She needed one of those quiet moments, isn’t
that what Uncle Balt had told her? And what were they, other than
moments of quiet meditation? She knew how to meditate, to quiet her
mind. She didn’t have to wait for the world to present the moments
to her.

Marissa walked into the hotel and reserved a
room for a week.
A week
. New Year’s Eve was tomorrow and the
sense of isolation squeezed the air out of her lungs. Angela was
going to Phoenix. Max and Noah were most likely going to a party,
and the last thing she wanted to do was go to a party with her
parents’ friends.

Wolf
.

She would not call Wolf. Instead, Marissa
went to the grocery store to stock her temporary kitchen at the
extended stay. Until she could expend her energy, she wouldn’t be
able to meditate.

Thirty-six cupcakes and twelve dozen
hand-decorated cookies later, Marissa packaged up her handiwork and
drove to Angela’s. Angela answered the door in her robe and bunny
slippers and Marissa handed her the stack of boxes. “Tell your
Christmas sailor to take these back to the base.”

And then Marissa walked away, leaving her
confused friend to stare after her.

When she returned the hotel suite, chocolate
should have been the strongest scent to greet her and yet Marissa
smelled cinnamon. She’d made a point not to buy any, not to prepare
any of her baked goods with the spice. Wolf haunted her senses.

Marissa sat on the floor and closed her eyes,
determined to regain her peace of mind. Hex leapt into her lap.

Clear your mind
. She took several deep
breaths and began a series of relaxation exercises. The neighbor’s
television, muffled through the walls, gradually faded beyond her
hearing.

I’m proud of you, Liebling.

“I miss you,” she whispered.

Be happy
. The quiet voice settled on
her like a warm blanket.

Three children played on a swing set beside
Harper Manor, Wolf’s dream.

I’m here for you. I love you
.

And then a tall man disrupted the tranquil
scene, a man with bushy, gray eyebrows drawn close together and a
shotgun over his shoulder. His face was wrinkled with time, frown
lines carved into his jowls.
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to
live,
he said through clenched teeth.

A spasm wracked Marissa’s body and she opened
her eyes. Hex purred in her lap, undisturbed by her sudden
movement.

So much for meditation.

* * *

Wolf closed his eyes while his fingers played
the Moonlight Sonata. The tempo had grown progressively slower as
the evening wore on.

He was tired. Tired of the anger. Tired of
the grief. He wanted Marissa. Had he planned to seduce her when
he’d gone to her café before hours? His uncle had said she’d
bewitched him.

Wolf had seen into Marissa’s thoughts, too.
What did that make him?

He pulled his hands from the piano, laid them
in his lap and stared at them. He’d be lucky if Marissa ever spoke
to him again.

He’d found his
Kundigerin
. Now what?
And yes, she’d shown him the truth. A truth he’d been searching out
for eleven years. At what cost?

“Finally done?” Ralph asked from the
doorway.

“What do you mean ‘finally’?”

Ralph glanced at his wristwatch. “Three
hours, in case you weren’t paying attention. Want to talk about
it?”

Wolf scoffed. “Men don’t talk about their
feelings, don’t you know that?”

“Where’s your lady friend?”

Where indeed? She hadn’t returned his call,
but somehow that didn’t worry him. Not yet. What did worry him was
that if they truly were bewitched, he and Marissa, the separation
might break the spell, and he wasn’t sure he wanted that to happen.
She was the first breath of truth he’d heard in eleven years. “She
has some things to take care of,” he said more from instinct than
actual knowledge.

Wolf lifted his hands to the keys once more,
but laid them down silently. He was played out. His eyelids were
heavy and his head felt like a bowling ball. “Do you have a new
assignment yet?” he asked. Wolf fought to train bleary eyes on
Ralph, Ralph who would be leaving him soon, as well.

“Leaving tomorrow. New Year’s Eve with my
brother and his family before I go on to my next job. That’s why I
wanted to catch up with you.” Ralph took a step into the room, eyes
downcast. “We’re still friends, you know. I’m not sure how you feel
about mountain bikes, or hiking or fishing, but if you ever want to
get away—”

Wolf nodded. “Sounds good. As soon as I get
this business taken care of.”

Ralph returned the nod. “Did you ever find
your
Kundigerin
?”

Yes, he’d found her, and lost her, at least
temporarily. For a moment, he caught the scent of vanilla sugar. He
thought about Marissa’s smile, her grace under fire on Christmas
Day, her gentleness with his reawakened grief, the way she shared
herself with him. “Yes.”

“Then you’ll be able to get the estate
settled. Will you be selling Harper Manor? You probably don’t need
your place in the city and the Manor out here.”

Wolf looked at the walnut molding around the
floors, at the sea green plaster walls. This place was a part of
him. His grandmother hadn’t done as much maintenance as she should
have, but for those years after the accident and before college,
Harper Manor had been a refuge for him—was still that refuge. He
exhaled a loud sigh. “I guess that depends on my uncle.”

“Not like he wants this place.” Ralph
surveyed his surroundings.

“No, more like he doesn’t want me to have
it.”

“I can help.”

Wolf looked at Ralph once more. He couldn’t
imagine how a hospice nurse could alter the course of events.
“Thanks. I can handle it.”

Ralph stepped forward and grasped Wolf’s
hand. “You know where to find me.” He pointed a finger at Wolf. “I
mean it.”

Wolf nodded. Ralph was a good man, but the
guy didn’t have a permanent address that Wolf knew of. He went from
home to home, taking care of everyone else’s families. Like he’d
taken care of Wolf and his grandmother for the past year.

No, Wolf could take care of things.
Tomorrow.

A police car waited in the parking lot when
Marissa arrived at the café. She stepped out of her car and huddled
deeper into her coat against the frigid morning air. The policeman
did the same. He wasn’t much taller than she was, maybe an inch or
two.