Key of Valor
Page 80

“It’s Thanksgiving.”
“Which forces me to broach the question.” Dana frowned at her paring knife. “Why are the three of us doing all the work in here while the men laze around like kings?”
“I wanted the three of us to be alone for a while,” Zoe told Dana. “This was the simplest way.”
Dana set another potato aside. “So you say.”
“And Bradley watching me like a hawk makes me nervous.”
“A man’s entitled when you swoon into his arms,” Malory pointed out.
“I don’t blame him. It’s interesting, too, that he was there to catch me. Don’t you think? Romantic, I guess, but interesting, too. He’s upstairs asleep, and I’m out there for—I don’t know how long. Hours. It felt like minutes, but it was hours.”
She glanced toward the doorway to make certain no one was hovering. “Then he’s not just asleep—Kane’s got him running around in the dark, getting his hands all cut up. He tried to get him to go back to New York in his head, where everything’s ordered, everything’s normal.”
“But he didn’t do it.” Malory set the strainer of cranberries in the sink. “At the threshold—a moment of decision, and he made his choice.”
“He made it, and so did I when I ripped Kane’s face. Those are decisions we can both feel pretty damn good about today.”
“Wished I’d seen you do it.” Dana attacked the potatoes again. “My one regret.”
“It was great,” Zoe assured her. “I don’t know when I’ve done anything that’s made me feel that powerful. But anyway, after all that, Bradley gets downstairs just in time to keep me from falling flat on my face.”
Zoe brought her knife down with a thunk. “Kane tried to keep him away, to trap him in that illusion.”
“Didn’t want a man interfering,” Malory said sourly, “while he bullied the little lady.”
“No, and I think he didn’t want us together while he tried to make me feel like a loser.”
“Doesn’t sound like you’re feeling like a loser.”
“He pushed all the right buttons, I’ll give him that. But he’s not the first one to push them, and I’ve learned how to push back. He pushed them because he’s scared. Because I’m close. Because he knows I can beat him. So he worked on my insecurities and my feelings, then he tried to bribe me. And when it didn’t work, he got pissy.”
“Pissy.” Malory stepped over to touch her fingers gently to the bruise on Zoe’s cheek. “Honey, he clocked you.”
“Maybe so, but I can promise you, he looks a lot worse.” She threw back her head and let out a hoot. “If I’d been thinking straight, I’d’ve followed up. A good kick to the balls. If he has balls. I hurt him, and Bradley beat him. We’ve got him running scared. And that just makes my whole damn day.”
She saw the flicker in Malory’s eyes and sighed. “I know. I know I don’t have much time left. Part of me wants to go running through this house like a mental patient trying to find the key. But that’s not the answer. I don’t know what is, only that isn’t it. So I’m going to make Thanksgiving dinner, a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner. Because I do belong. I do belong with all of you, and I’m thankful for it.”
Dana set the paring knife aside. “He did get to you some.”
“Maybe he did,” Zoe admitted. “He hit me where I live. Poor little Zoe McCourt who got herself knocked up by the first boy who smiled at her. The high school dropout scrounging for pennies so she can buy diapers for the baby she’ll be raising on her own. What makes her think she can do anything that matters?”
She spooned her yams into a casserole dish. “Because I can, that’s what. Let’s have some wine.”
“Well, now you’re talking.” Though Dana exchanged a look with Malory behind Zoe’s back, she got out a bottle of Pinot Grigio.
“There are things I’m going to do today,” Zoe said as she took glasses out of the cupboard. “Besides making this meal with you and eating it. Things I’m going to do, things I’m going to say. I’ve just got to work them all out in my head first.”
She set the glasses down, tilting her head as she looked out the window and spotted Brad and Simon walking along one of the paths that wound through the garden shrubs toward the trees. “What in the world are they doing?”
Dana laid a hand on Zoe’s shoulder as she leaned over to pour the wine. “I can tell you what they’re not doing. They’re not peeling potatoes.”
“What’s that he’s carrying?” Absently, she lifted her glass of wine, shifted to get a better angle. Her son was dancing around Brad, and the dogs raced back and forth, hoping for a game. “It looks like . . . well, for heaven’s sake.”
She watched, dumbfounded, as Brad hung the bird feeder from a branch so that it dangled over his lovely ornamental shrubbery. Then he lifted her son so Simon could pour seed into the opening.
“For heaven’s sake,” she repeated. As if in a dream, she set the wine down and walked to the door. Walked outside.
“What the hell is that about?” Dana wondered.
“You’ve got me.” With her nose all but pressed to the glass, Malory smiled. “What is that thing? Why are they hanging a boot from a tree?”
Zoe hadn’t thought to get a jacket, but she didn’t mind the bite of wind. It carried Simon’s laugh to her as he raced away to play with the dogs. And her heart was too warm for the chill to touch it.
Brad stood on the path, his hands in his pockets, grinning at the bird feeder. Hearing her footsteps, he turned to greet her. “What do you think?”
She’d helped make it, guiding Simon through the steps of turning the flashy red cowboy boot into a bird feeder, steadying his hands as he’d cut the hole in the leather, watching him measure the strips of scrap wood to make the little pitched roof.
He’d been so proud of it, she remembered, so pleased that no one else in his class would have a project quite like his.
He’d told her they could hang it in the backyard at home after it was graded and given back.
At home, she thought.
“Simon gave it to you?” she asked carefully.