She mumbled something that sounded like a swear word, then rushed over and began to scoop together the mess.
“Girls, help me here.” She jammed soda cans under her arms and he tried not to laugh.
“Don’t mess up the puzzle, Mom,” the youngest girl said as she bent down and picked up a spoon that had fallen on the rug next to a big gray cat that was sound asleep.
From the way Catherine darted all over the place snatching up empty food containers, he could see she was embarrassed.
Both girls stood there in front of him, soaking wet and staring at him as if they expected him to do something strange, like split and multiply.
He should just leave. Take his tool belt and go back to his cabin and forget Catherine was ever here.
Instead he squatted down and gave the cat a stroke on his back. “Hey, fella.”
“He likes you.”
Michael looked up at the kid called Aly and nodded. “You sound surprised.”
“He doesn’t usually let strangers touch him. His name is Harold.”
Harold rolled over on his side and began to purr loudly.
“What would you like to drink?” Catherine called out from the kitchen where she was stuffing trash into a bag under the sink. “I don’t have beer, but I have soft drinks and plenty of coffee.”
Michael sat down on the sofa and flinched. He reached behind him and pulled out an empty aluminum can.
Cream soda.
The youngest girl giggled and took it from him. He gave her a quick wink and said to Catherine, “Coffee’s fine.”
Catherine looked at her daughters and said, “Go upstairs and change out of those wet clothes, girls. I’m not sure which one of you is the muddiest.”
Dana gave him a look as if she were weighing whether he could be trusted to be left alone with her mom.
Aly jabbed her with an elbow. “Come on.”
They went upstairs together arguing over who looked the worst.
At the top of the landing Aly stuck her head out over the stair rail and looked down just as Catherine came out of the kitchen with a tray.
“We’re both wrong, Dana.”
Catherine stopped in front of the coffee table and looked up at her daughter, who was grinning down at her.
“Mother’s the muddiest!” she said, then disappeared after her sister.
He watched Catherine’s face as she looked down at herself for the first time. He could read her expression perfectly.
Again his first thought was that he should be a gentleman and leave. Instead he stood and took the tray from her. “Go get into some dry clothes.”
She nodded and muddy hair fell into her face and stuck to her lips. She looked at him rather helplessly, then raised her chin as if she wasn’t soaked and covered in mud and she walked toward the back bedroom.
Catherine Wardwell and her stubborn pride; it was still there after all these years.
He watched her, because she was Catherine and because he didn’t want to look away, even though he knew it would make her feel less conspicuous.
Just before she turned the corner of the hall, she flicked on the hall light and he caught the expression on her pale face. She looked like she wanted the ground to just open up and swallow her.
Catherine certainly had wanted the earth to open up and swallow her. The trouble was, she looked as if it already had and then spit her back out again.
She stood at the mirror in the bathroom and had trouble looking at herself without wincing. It was worse than she had imagined.
There was grass in her hair, which was glued to her head and plastered around her forehead and ears. Flecks of mud and slim green blades of grass were stuck to her cheeks and neck. Her sweatshirt was soaked and clung to her chest.
She stepped back and turned around. The muddy sweatpants were stuck to her butt, too. She continued to stare. Oh, why had she quit step-aerobics?
Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot!
She shoved back the shower curtain, turned on the shower and stripped off her clothes, then hopped inside. She soaped up, washed her hair and was out in about two minutes. She dried off, shrugged into a robe, brushed her teeth longer than necessary, then went into the bedroom.
She changed clothes seven times in under five minutes, until she finally decided her bra was the problem and put on a different one, then hiked the adjustment on the straps up a good inch. After that her green cotton sweater looked better.
She hopped around the room, shoving her legs into the pair of jeans that made them look the longest, then she laid down on the bed so she could zip them up.
She stood and jerked the sweater down over her butt and ran back to the bathroom, where she swiped on some deodorant, brushed her wet hair back and twisted it up, then stuck in a hair pick to hold it.
She slapped on some makeup. She didn’t need any blush; her face was too flushed already. She was nervous, so she put on more deodorant, then stood back and looked at herself.
He had been attracted to her once, when they were young. But what would he see when he looked at her now?
When she looked at herself she saw her outside changing, growing older, while inside she still felt young. Aging was a strange thing—made you feel like you were wearing a striped shirt and plaid pants. Mismatched. Because you never felt as old inside as you looked on the outside.
There were those days now when she went to put on her eye shadow and little lines of it caked at the corners of her eyes. She had to smudge the eye shadow into her skin with a Q-tip.
And there were those little vertical lines along her lips that her old lipstick had recently started bleeding into. She’d had to change types of lip liner and lipstick, something matte that wouldn’t seep in the age cracks that were just beginning to show on her lips.
She put one finger at each end of her mouth and pulled her lips back. Collagen? A peel?
Neither appealed to her.
Bad pun.
She stood there for a long time, gripping the sides of the sink with her hands, hesitant to go out of the bathroom. Scared. Deep down inside, she wanted to still be young for him.
She stared at herself in the mirror. A moment later she pulled her bra straps out of the neckline of her sweater and tightened them another half an inch, then she bent over and grabbed the bottom of her bra and wiggled so she filled the cups differently. Higher. Younger?
She looked at the result in the mirror, then tugged down on her sweater. That was better. She wished she had packed perfume. She lifted her arm. She smelled like Camay soap and baby powder-scented deodorant.
Better than smelling like a garden slug.
Her hand closed over the glass door knob. She took a deep breath and finally mustered the courage to leave the bathroom.
Eight
Michael knew the exact moment she stepped into the room. It should have frightened him that he could be so attuned to another person that her mere presence could distract him. With anyone else he would have fought that awareness with a vengeance. Because it was a control thing, and he was a man who needed to be in control.
His awareness of Catherine was different; it didn’t threaten him. It somehow felt right, as if the power between them, this thread of something that linked them together, was an innate part of him.
He glanced up at her from over the rim of a coffee mug. She stood framed in the