Key of Valor
Page 71

“So I see.” There were dishes, glasses, bottles of soda and beer, bags of chips and other jetsam of a male afternoon spread over the counters and table. “Well.” So saying, she rolled up her sleeves.
“Wait a minute. Just wait.” More than a little embarrassed that he’d let the state of the house get quite so out of hand, he grabbed her arm. “If we’re talking about deals, you’re not supposed to pick up after me.”
“I’m not picking up after you.” After brushing him off, she plucked up a half-empty bag of taco chips and rolled up the end. “I’m picking up after all of you, which balances out you having Simon underfoot all day while I was off doing something else. Do you have any clothespins?”
“Clothespins?” He struggled to find the connection. “You’re going to hang out wash?”
“No. These chips’ll stay fresher if you clip them closed. You can buy those plastic spring things they make for it, but clothespins work just as well.”
Amused, he slid his hands into his pockets. “I don’t believe I have any of those in stock at the moment. We could order them for you.”
“I’ve got my own. I’ll bring some by.” With quick, efficient moves, she had the bags rolled and stored, or crushed and thrown away. And started straight in on the dishes. “A man’s got a beautiful house like this, he shouldn’t let it get to be such a mess. I imagine the game room looks like an army was bivouacked in it.”
He began to jiggle his change. “Maybe. I have a cleaning crew—” He broke off at the single steely look she sent over her shoulder. “Am I going to have to vacuum?”
“No, Simon is, to thank you for the day. Meanwhile, I was talking about houses. Flynn’s got a great house. I imagine he bought it because it pulled some string inside him and made him comfortable. Made him at home. He didn’t do a lot with it until Malory came along, but there was something about that place that told him this is the one, this is my place.”
“Okay, I’m following that.”
With the dishes loaded, she damped a cloth to wipe off the counters. “There’s the Peak. That’s a fantastic place. A magic one. But it’s a home, too. It was a place that meant something special to Jordan even as a boy. Something he aspired to. He and Dana are going to make it their own.”
She poured a couple of swallows of warm beer in the sink, tossed bottles into the recycle bin. Watching, Brad was certain he’d never seen a room put so quickly to rights.
“I could never live in a place like that,” she continued. “It’s too big, too grand, too everything. But I can see how it’s right for them.”
She got out a pot, measured water by eye and set it on the range. While she spoke, she pulled out vegetables and the sealed bag of beef she’d marinated that morning. “Then there’s Indulgence. As soon as I saw it, I knew, this is the place. The place where I could make something. Where Mal and Dana and I could make something. It was a crazy idea when you really think it through.”
She julienned peppers and carrots with what looked to Brad like the skill of a veteran line chef. “How so?”
“Putting it all under one roof that way, with the bare minimum of seed money. Buying the place, too, instead of pushing just to rent. But I wanted to buy it, to have it, as soon as I saw it.”
“You don’t say it was a crazy idea for the three of you to go into business together so quickly after you’d met. Or that it was crazy to take on that much work.”
“Those aren’t the crazy parts for me.” She cut strips of onions, minced garlic. “There was never any question for me about Malory and Dana. And work, that’s just what you do. It was the place, Bradley. It held the same kind of magic for me as my house. That’s why I thought, I really thought for a while that was where I’d find the key.”
“You don’t think so now.”
“No, I don’t.”
She moved from one task to another without breaking rhythm, measuring out rice, cubing tomatoes, slicing beef. He thought it was like watching a kind of poetry.
“Malory’s key was there. In the painting, yes, but she had to do the painting in that house. And Dana’s was at the Peak—or in the book, in Phantom Watch, which was based on the Peak. When you look back through their clues, you can see them being led around to it. Through their connections with the place, through their connections with Flynn, and Jordan.”
She drizzled olive oil in a skillet. “The painting for Malory. The book for Dana. But they needed the place, too.”
“And for you?”
“For me, it’s not a thing so much. It’s a kind of journey with different paths. Some I took, some I didn’t, and the whys of both, maybe. And it’s a struggle, a kind of battle.” She added garlic and onion to the sizzling oil. “Maybe it’s understanding that the ones I lost were as important in their way as the ones I didn’t. I think maybe you can’t see clearly where you’re going next if you don’t see where you’ve been. And why.”
He had to touch her, just to feel her under his hand for a moment. He brushed his fingers over her hair, down the long, lovely line of her neck. And got the absent smile of a busy woman in response. “Where are you going, Zoe?”
“I can’t say I know that, not for sure. But I know where I am right now. In this house. In this house that pulled a string in me the first time I saw it. Here I am, cooking dinner in the kitchen, and Simon’s out there playing with the dogs. I have a connection here. To this place. To you.”
“Enough to stay?”
The beef she’d started to slide into the skillet slipped out of her fingers and plopped into the oil. “That’s one sure way to scatter my thoughts.” She picked up another slice, concentrated fiercely on the exact placement. “Bradley. I can’t—I just can’t step that far off the path. I made promises to myself when Simon was born. Promises to him.”
“I want to make them to you.”
“I’ve only got until Friday to do this,” she said quickly. “Only a few more days. If I don’t do this right, I feel like I may never do anything right again.” She looked at him pleadingly. “I see her face in my sleep, Bradley. I see all of them, waiting for me to do this last thing.”