Into the Storm (Signal Bend #3)(84)

And then, at last, he let himself go. He seemed to come forever, pulling it from the farthest reaches of his body. When he was finally finished, he pulled out and dropped to her side, their limbs tangled together.

He felt her hands in his hair, combing gently through, and he closed his eyes.

He could not believe he’d once thought he could live the rest of his life without this. Then again, he hadn’t known anything quite like this before.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO



Show opened the door, and Shannon walked through. The air was hot and stale, the June sun serving only to make the house swelter without brightening it up. The dust was too thick on the windows for that.

The dust was thick everywhere.

They stood in the front hall on a big, round braided rug in a faded red, white, and blue pattern. The last time Shannon had been in this house, she’d been too confused, and then too overwhelmed, to really pay attention to her surroundings. Now, though, as she waited for Show to do or say something, she looked around.

The house had a bizarrely schizophrenic quality, both half-empty and overfull. From the hall, she could see a dining room, a living room, a staircase, with a long, narrow hallway alongside and behind it. The only room she’d been in before was the living room. There were several important pieces of furniture missing— a couch, tables, things like that. It held only a loveseat and an old, commodious recliner in upholstered in dark blue fabric.

The dining room was empty but for four straight-back chairs in a Shaker style, each with a red gingham seat cushion tied to it. No table. Oh—there was a low sideboard in the far corner, too. Also Shaker.

What made the rooms feel most unsettlingly empty, though, were the walls. They were oppressively busy. The living room walls were painted a medium blue, and the dining room a rust red. A border of red gingham wallpaper ran along the dining room walls at about chair-rail height. The same border ran along the top of the living room walls. The hallway walls were fully papered in the gingham. There were things hanging all over every wall—dried flower wreaths and swags, cross-stitch samplers, inspirational quotes painted on boards in old-timey font and in rustic style, shadowboxes and curio cases with thimbles and little figurines. And one whole wall in the dining room was devoted to family photographs.

That was obvious, because there were photographs on the wall of Show. A young, beardless Show with short hair standing with a man and woman who must have been his parents, the man as tall as him and with the same strong, straight nose and heavy brow. A teenage Show in a football uniform, one knee down on a field. Show in a suit (!), with his arm around a short, busty blonde woman, several months pregnant, in a white dress. Show with a little girl on his shoulder. Show squatting between two pretty little girls with white-blonde hair, a baby girl on his knee.

The rest of the long wall, though, was bare. It hadn’t always been—it faced the windows at the front of the room, and the sun had clearly faded the paint over time. All over were the ghosts of frames that must have hung there for years. Shannon didn’t have to ask what had happened; she knew. The things that were missing must now adorn the walls of Show’s ex-wife’s home. There were other ghosts on other walls, but nowhere so haunting as on that one faded red expanse. Show’s missing family blazed out from those empty spaces so vividly that Shannon’s eyes filled with tears.

She blinked them away and turned to Show, who hadn’t moved or spoken. He was staring down the narrow hallway. There were three doors at its end—one on each side and one at the end, facing the front of the house, where they stood. From the style of the door—the kind that swung—Shannon surmised that the kitchen was back there. He’d told her about that room. It was why they were here. Or, rather, it was where they were starting. If he could.

Laying her hand on his back, rubbing over the patch on his kutte, she whispered, “Show?”

He stirred and looked down at her. “Yeah. Yeah. Okay.” He reached out and pulled her into his arms, hugging her tightly. “Thank you. I’m glad you’re here. Not sure I could do it alone.”

“You don’t have to do it at all, you know.”

“Yeah, I do. It’s been long enough. And this is the day. It’s the right day.”

Today would have been Daisy’s seventeenth birthday. Shannon didn’t understand it herself, but Show had decided that this day was the day he had to reclaim his house. They were here, ostensibly, to air it out and clean it up, get it livable again. He said he was ready to move back in.

He also wanted her to move in with him, but they hadn’t worked all that out yet. She’d deflected by saying that until he himself was comfortable in it, she didn’t know how he could expect her to be. And that was true. Standing in this entry, surrounded by so much Americana country kitsch the house itself could be one of the Main Street shops, Show’s ex-wife still so present Shannon felt literally unwelcome, she was having a very hard time imagining ever feeling comfortable here. But Show thought that having her here would help him reclaim the house.

She was conflicted. They basically lived together already; she couldn’t remember a night that he’d stayed at the clubhouse when he was in town. The only nights that they were apart were those when he was in Arkansas to see his girls, or off on a run, and those were few. But she really did love her little apartment.

She loved that it was her space. Even with Show with her there so much, it felt like hers. How this house would feel like hers was beyond her. But he wouldn’t sell, and she understood. His daughter had never lived anywhere else. Of course he wouldn’t sell.