“Him, your handyman…gardener, whatever you want to call him,” Elise said.
The man outside seemed far more than that. Somehow, when Elise gave a name to Steven’s profession, something in her tone made him sound like a person seeking a handout. From the first moment, he had struck Jillian far differently, almost as though he echoed some primordial chord deep within her, a musical note she scarcely understood.
Watching him absorb the sun now, Jillian realized that in very many real ways she’d been the needy one, not him. In an odd sense, by cleaning out a year’s accumulation of leaves, trash and old branches, he seemed to be cleaning out some dark corner of her soul.
She’d apologized for the state of the haciendalike grounds when she showed him around. He hadn’t smiled or tried to make her feel at ease.
He’d said, “Work is a fact of life. No task is ever quite finished.”
The words were simplistic, almost banal, and yet Jillian had been struck by the comment, and by the sorrow inherent in his voice as he’d spoken. And the almost supreme ennui—a stark boredom, or perhaps indifference. How could she not trust a man who had so effortlessly lifted the burden of guilt from her shoulders?
She said to Elise now, “His name’s Steven Sayers.”
Her words etched the cold glass with clouded breath, and she realized Steven’s absorption of the sun’s warmth had to be illusion only; the dimming afternoon was frigid. She thought of her daughter walking home from the bus stop. Should she go get Allie, cart her those last few blocks in the warmed Volvo?
“It might as well be Jack the Ripper, for all you’ve found out about him,” Elise said.
Jillian smiled, and looked at Steven even more closely, trying to see what triggered Elise’s doubts. He remained perfectly still, eyes closed, one hand holding the rake out to his left, the other open-palmed, stretched wide, conical fingers splayed. He appeared to be doing far more than simply drawing the warmth of the late-afternoon sun; he looked as though he were truly pulling it into him, collecting it for later use, storing it deep within him. What would it be like to touch him now, to feel that heat against him?
Jillian shivered.
Elise didn’t seem to notice and continued speaking. “No references, no background check. Get real, Jillian. You’re a rich woman. He could be anybody.”
He was anybody. And there was no way she could explain to Elise that she did know things about him, little things, bits and pieces of information that allowed her to form a tentative bridge of trust.
She’d taken over some linens for him that first night, and she’d seen the books he had neatly arranged in the small guesthouse bookcase. They were all hardbound, making her wonder what manner of man carted a trunkload of heavy books with him in his apparent vagabondlike lifestyle.
All the books appeared to be old and well read, and the authors ranged from Ovid to Malory to Anne Rice. Some of the texts were in what appeared to be Greek or Russian, while others were in German and Latin.
But she hadn’t told any of this to Elise, and didn’t now. The fact that the man could apparently speak several languages and yet sought a job as a handyman-gardener would hardly jibe for her friend.
“He’s a good worker,” Jillian said, trying not to sound defensive.
Aware of how long she’d been staring at him, and unwilling to give Elise even more food for thought, she dragged her eyes from the unusual man communing with the sun, turned finally and sat down at the table again. She deliberately sat with her back to the courtyard and the man.
Steven.
She smiled at Elise, and her friend smiled back, but said, “Admit it, honey, he’s as different as they come.”
Jillian couldn’t argue that, and didn’t even try. Steven Sayers epitomized “different.” His direct gaze gave nothing away, no hint of desperation for a job, no subservience, either. His broad shoulders remained squared and set and yet, oddly, presented no confrontational attitude, either. He projected a profoundly stark take-me-or-leave-me acceptance of the odd vagaries of life.
He responded to any of her questions—and, contrary to what Elise thought, she had asked a few—with simple one-or two-word answers. And he tackled the various projects around her house with a quiet and steady determination that was reflected in his progress, not his demeanor. But these “differences” were what made her welcome his presence.
“You slay me, Jillian,” Elise said now, shaking her head and, inadvertently, her coffee.
Jillian was truly and openly grateful for this friendship, thankful that at least one person around her remembered Dave, had known him before his death, and yet still included her, as well. All her other friends had slowly, almost deliberately, faded out of her life. Perhaps they had been as tormented as she by Dave’s death, as guilty as she, maybe, but instead of little things reminding them, she was the reminder, the constant harbinger of doom, the widow who underscored their vulnerability, who told them death waited like a hungry lion, just out of sight, eager to take, desperate to consume.
Those friends, those who had retreated from her, were the same ones who had urged her to move, start a new life, get out of Santa Fe, find an ocean somewhere, a deserted island, perhaps, and paint again, to go anywhere, do anything but be too near them. And when she hadn’t gone, they had deserted her instead, almost too easily and readily finding their own Santa Fe islands, safe harbors against the pain of knowing that all does not always end well.
This was true for everyone but Elise, who mothered her, hectored her and chided her for not checking Steven-the-handyman’s references, clucked at her over forgetting Allie’s therapy appointments, and loved her at least as much for her faults as despite them.
So she had let all but Elise disappear, but she hadn’t moved. She couldn’t have done so a year ago, and she still couldn’t. It would be like closing the door on her marriage, on her and Dave’s life together, their happiness, the richness of that joy. Even their grief therapist, still working once a month with both her and Allie, frequently suggested putting the rambling adobe up for rent and trying a different locale for a time, letting the traumas of the past heal before returning.
But Jillian knew those traumas would only be waiting for them when and if they came back. Besides, this creamy-walled, sprawling hacienda represented home, even if the great warm heart had gone out of it.
Elise glanced outside and back at Jillian before lowering her voice to ask, “What if this Steven guy is a murderer? What if he’s a child molester? I tell you, Allie acts oddly around him. Now, doesn’t that mean something?”
“These days Allie acts oddly around practically everyone,” Jillian said, but with no bitterness or shame.
What had happened to her daughter, to them, had changed their lives at the fundamental core; any altered behavior was only to be expected, tolerated, then slowly, slowly modified.
“Kids know things. You can always trust a child’s instincts when it comes to…well, bad people,” Elise said in an even more hushed tone, as if Steven were capable of hearing her through the double-paned French doors and three-foot-thick walls and despite the reality of his standing a good fifty feet away.
Jillian didn’t bother to answer. The truth was, kids didn’t know things; they learned them. In Allie’s case, it had been the hard way. And thanks to that year-ago horrible morning on the way to school, this particular eight-year-old didn’t have a clue about what was good or bad and her mother certainly couldn’t tell her anymore. When it came right down to it, Jillian suspected that no human being, unless psychic, had an instant recognition of either good or bad.