Chapter 9-4
1093 Words
Bill felt her pressing her knee so hard against his. What had just happened? The woman beside him made the lost waif look rational.
“You gotta see them!” His son started towing Bill out of his chair and pointing toward the grooming stations at the back of the dog show.
Once he was on his feet and the table was cleared, Tamara had started leading them. But she drifted back to coax Perrin out of her chair when she didn’t follow right away.
Perrin had scared the hell out of him. The stark terror on her face exceeded anything in the awful movies his kids sometimes made him watch, even the ones he wouldn’t let them watch. He’d certainly never seen anything like it in real life. For a moment Perrin had been gone and the woman in her place had been terrified for her very life.
Somehow, she’d reached deep and pulled it together. He’d watched her fight some titanic battle while he’d distracted the kids. It had almost killed him to not go to her as she stood so alone in the aisle, facing whatever demons had sent her crashing into him. But he couldn’t.
She was also right, they were going to have a talk, and real soon. If there was something he needed to know to protect his kids, she’d have to explain it, shields be damned. Or else they were through.
A glance back showed that Tammy had slipped a hand around Perrin’s forearm, for Perrin’s hands were plunged deep in her pockets. She’d looked like a ghost of herself. She was slowly recovering, but he could see the brittle layer, the near transparent façade holding her together.
He almost called Tammy away, maybe Perrin had been right about not bonding with the kids.
But he couldn’t do it to her. She looked so frail, and that wasn’t the woman he knew. That wasn’t the woman who had brought his daughter back to him so effortlessly, and had designed those magnificent costumes.
He’d wait and see. He just hoped to god he wouldn’t be left with some huge disaster to clean up.
“Here they are,” Jaspar practically squealed.
In moments both kids were down on their knees. A beleaguered Cairn terrier looked up that them as eight little puppies walked all over her.
“Aren’t they just so cute?” Tammy scooped one up carefully to show him the little brindle-coated pup.
Bill glanced at the owner, a big man relaxing comfortably in a small folding chair, he offered a friendly nod. “Your young ‘uns know the way of it.” His accent Kentucky or Tennessee, but with an overlay of watching too many episodes of Game of Thrones.
“Be ready to adopt in another month. The sire is over to yonder giving his all for Best in Show. Won’t get it, but we won’t be tellin’ him.” The man winked to show he was just glad to be here.
Perrin drifted up to Bill. She tentatively reached out and touched him lightly on the hand, asking permission. He wrapped his fingers around hers and she clamped down hard, proving that all of the sewing had made her a very strong woman indeed.
Not releasing his hand, she again glanced for permission, far more tentative than she’d been even half an hour before, then knelt behind the children. For a moment he feared that the life had gone out of her, as if that wild spark of life and fire were gone.
“Your dad swore that we’d never convince him to get a dog,” her voice was close to normal. “Not even if we all ganged up on him. What do you think, should we try?”
Okay. So, the spark wasn’t gone. She’d simply been asking if she’d screwed it up permanently. Not yet. His antenna were now out, but she was still okay.
He squeezed her hand briefly to let her know they were still okay.
“But no dog,” he told the three of them.
He hoped she’d ease up on her grip soon, before his fingers went completely numb.
It took a while to extract the kids, but Bill had made it out with his fingers intact, and no dog. But it had been a close thing on both counts.
In the sunny afternoon, they’d walked along the waterfront, doing all of the touristy things together. They rode the Seattle Great Wheel, the hundred-and-seventy-five foot Ferris wheel standing at the end of one of the piers, their gondola practically scraping against the low scudding clouds at the top of the trip. They poked into Ye Olde Curiosity Shop and made faces at the shrunken head and explored one of the most amazing kitsch collections he’d ever seen.
Jaspar had departed Pirate’s Plunder with an eye patch that he could see through, but looked opaque from outside. Tammy found a head scarf that made her look mature and, in pulling back her hair, exposed a younger version of Adira’s beautiful neck.
“That green color looks great on you, kid.”
Tammy had offered one of her enigmatic smiles.
“Makes you beautiful like your mom.”
That earned him the melty-happy expression he’d been hoping for.
It was only as they wandered into the Seattle Aquarium that he noticed Perrin wore an identical scarf.
“You like it? Tamara insisted we had to match.”
“What color is your hair? Really?” The scarf did look good on her, mixing the blond and the black into a soft cascade onto her back. He fooled with it a bit, relishing the softness.
“The white-blond is about as close as I’ve ever let it get. It was originally a gold-blond, but I left that behind long before I was eighteen. First goth black, then just any color that goes with my latest clothing design.”
He’d like to see that original color some day. See it grown out, all golden-blond. Maybe in that gold dress he’d seen the first day. But it wasn’t his place to tell her how she should look. And he liked the nutty style, it made her uniquely Perrin. But he’d wager that the true blond would be stunning. There must be something behind that eighteen line, all her stories stayed on this side of that line.
And that led him back to his earlier dark thoughts. Who was she, under the woman that she wore like a fine set of clothes? Who was the terrified creature he had glimpsed so briefly? The one who’d thought that he’d… He shoved the thought aside in disgust.
He knew he was falling in love with the first woman. He’d been in love with Adira, knew what that felt like even if they were so different. Adira his quiet anchor and Perrin who made him feel more alive than he ever had other than the first time he’d held his children. It was a shock, but he could recognize it in himself.
The second woman worried him. Worried him badly.
- Writer
