“Sorry, baby,” Baba said, patting him on the head and nudging a couple of pies out of the way to make sure that the bottle with the Water of Life and Death was still in there. She eyed it speculatively for a minute, giving Liam a look that made him ask with alarm, “What?”
“Nothing, nothing.” She couldn’t exactly tell him that she was thinking that the magical water could extend his life, so he could live it out with her. As if. Baba grabbed one of the pies and plopped it on the counter, pulling out some Limoges plates and silver forks to go with it. It was too soon to even consider such a thing. She must be losing her mind. It was just that when he stood that close to her, it made it nearly impossible to think at all.
“Well, if all there is is cherry,” Chudo-Yudo said, growling menacingly at the stainless steel fridge, which responded by showing his reflection with a pink tutu and fairy wings, “I’m going to go outside and pee on things.” He stalked over to the front door, making hideous faces at it until it opened with a reluctant squeal and then slammed shut behind him.
Baba ignored all the drama out of long habit, although Liam’s face held a slightly shell-shocked look. She hid a smile behind masses of dark hair.
“I hope you like cherry,” she said, cutting them each a precisely equal slice and sliding them onto plates. “Apparently that was what the Airstream was in the mood for.”
They went back over to the couch and sat down next to each other, knees almost touching. Liam forked up a bite and made a blissful noise deep in his throat that sent shivers down Baba’s spine. She didn’t even taste the bite she ate, distracted by the way his eyes closed slightly as he savored the sweet-sour tang of the fruit.
“You know,” he said, when he’d devoured most of it, “I envy you a little.”
Baba blinked, confused. “You want a magic refrigerator?” She swallowed a tiny mouthful of glistening red paradise, licking the juice off one finger where it had fallen.
Liam laughed. “Hell no. I’m happy enough with regular appliances like my simple, everyday toaster. You put bread in, you get toast out; that’s magic enough for me.”
She narrowed her eyes at the toaster sitting on her counter, which sometimes popped out a piece of toast (although not always of the type you put in), but was just as likely to toss out a bagel, a buttered croissant, or on one memorable occasion, spaghetti Alfredo. Man, and hadn’t that been a nightmare to clean up.
“I see your point. Then what do you envy?”
Liam gestured around the Airstream. “All this. You travel around the country; no roots, no ties, having all sorts of adventures and meeting new people. It must be nice not to constantly have folks tugging at you, expecting you to solve all their problems for them, knowing everything about you down to whether you wear boxers or briefs.”
Baba raised an eyebrow, and he flushed a little.
“Briefs. But that’s not my point.”
She smiled. “But that’s what you like about this place, isn’t it? It’s home. And solving people’s problems is your job. I thought you liked that too.” She would not think about Liam, naked except for a skimpy pair of briefs. She stuffed some more pie into her mouth as a distraction.
“I do, mostly.” He sighed. “When I don’t have Clive Matthews and the county board breathing down my neck, and children disappearing right and left.” Outside the open window, an owl hooted, and the shadow of a wing seemed to glide across his face.
“But I’ve lived here all my life,” he continued, stealing a forkful of Baba’s pie, now that all of his was gone. “Except for a short stint in the military when I was young. Everyone knows me and my business, and thinks they know how I should live my life. There’s a certain freedom in anonymity; maybe I envy you that.”
A sliver of something caught in Baba’s throat; maybe a tiny fragment of a cherry pit. Or a glimmer of irrational hope. Fracture lines appeared in the wall she’d built around her heart, as if an earthquake rocked the world all unseen.
“Have you ever thought about just picking up and leaving?” she asked casually. “If they’re going to fire you in a couple of weeks anyway, there’s nothing to stop you, is there?”
“There was a time, a few years ago, when I seriously considered moving out of town,” he admitted.
Surprise made her blurt out, “Really? What on earth happened?” Despite their current conversation, she couldn’t imagine Liam without Dunville. Or for that matter, Dunville without him.
He hesitated, looking down at his hands as if the calluses there held some kind of map to guide him through the minefield of his memories. “I had a baby,” he said slowly, voice low. “A little girl. She died. SIDS—you know, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. It was . . . terrible. One day she was alive, smiling and kicking out with tiny feet and grabbing onto my finger with her strong little hands. The next she was gone. Dead in her crib. I wasn’t even home when it happened; out on a late-night call trying to keep some drunken asshole from breaking up a bar.”