“To be fair, I’ve never heard you kidding. Who knows what you sound like?”
“You’ve never heard me do a number of things, Vivian. You have no idea what I might sound like.”
Ah. Nighttime Clark. I curled onto my side, cuddling the blanket a little tighter. “Okay, I’ll bite. What in the world is so important about the Legless Knight that you had to call me after one in the morning?”
“You’ll bite?” he asked.
I clutched at the pillow a little more. “Clark . . .” I warned.
I got another chuckle. “I was thinking that perhaps we were a little too quick to get rid of him. After all, he’d been the man around the house for quite some time. Perhaps he should stay around a little longer?”
“You were the one that said that not everything was worth keeping. Which was impressive by the way, and correct. There was entirely too much house packed into that house.” But I had to admit I’d been a little sad to see the knight go. “Besides, who knows where he even is now, since John took him to the antiques store?”
“Actually, the knight stayed with him. He thought he might want it for the restaurant. I think his exact words were ‘might add a touch of class to the patio.’ ”
“Not really sure a medieval theme is the right message you want on a restaurant patio.” I laughed.
“Exactly what I told him when I went to bring it back.”
“Wait, so you already went and got him?”
“I did.”
“You were sure I’d say yes to bringing him back to the house?”
“I was.”
“You’re a little full of yourself, aren’t you?”
“I am.”
“So what the hell did you call me for? Sounds like you’ve got it all worked out already, Clark,” I said, rolling over on my back. “You sure that’s the only reason you called?”
It was silent on the other end of the phone. Except for the almost imperceptible sound of him taking a sip of what I assumed was Scotch. Water. Neat. An image rose in my mind: Clark, sitting low in a leather armchair, one hand on the phone, the other on his glass. Hair, unparted and messy. Eyeglasses, abandoned for the evening next to a book on the side table. Jeans. White button-down, untucked and the top two buttons undone. Blue tie, loosened but not untied. A five o’clock shadow that had progressed to scruffy goodness.
I pulled my pillow from behind my head and covered my face to muffle my giggle. What in the world had gotten into me?
Then I heard him take a breath. Deep, prolonged, and almost . . . shaky? Almost a . . . shudder?
My own breath? Caught. Held hostage by a librarian three thousand miles away who called me in the middle of the night to ask me about a bisected suit of armor.
I held so very tight to my pillow.
“You want to know if that’s the only reason I called, Vivian?” he asked finally, his voice octaves and octaves lower than Daytime Clark. Raspy, gruff, rough-and-tumble.
“Uh-huh?” I squeaked.
“That’s the only reason,” he said. “Have a good night. Sweet dreams.”
He hung up.
I buried my head into the pillow, kicking my legs into the air.
Eventually, I slept.
But sweet dreams? Not in the slightest. Salty? Hell, yes.
Over the next week, my activities mirrored what I’d been doing on the West Coast. Except instead of packing up someone else’s things, now they were mine. My things, my clothes, my pictures, my knickknacks and paddywacks and everything I owned. It was easier and harder than I thought it would be. Harder, because I was hanging my hat in a new state, and new state of mind. I was leaving my family and my brothers’ families.
Yet it was also easier, because I was ready to sink my teeth into the renovation and get started on whatever was coming next. Easier because I missed waking up to the sound of the waves crashing, missed the fresh sea air and rocking in my old lady rocking chair on the back porch while the sun set on the ocean, Scotch in hand.
Mendocino was on my mind, but Philadelphia would always have a piece of my heart. And part of that piece of my heart was currently in the kitchen, packing up my collection of refrigerator magnets. My mother insisted on wrapping each one of them in tissue paper, even though there was nothing remotely fragile or breakable about a magnet that said “I got crabs in Key West, Florida.” Stone crabs, to be clear. Good eating. My magnet collection was my one spot of tacky chaos in my chaos-free apartment.
“Ma, you really don’t have to do that, seriously. Just throw them in a box, it’s all good,” I said, walking past her on the way to the living room, where the fort of boxes was getting higher and higher. Clothes, personal items, artwork—both mine and some I’d purchased over the years. My furniture was either going into storage (read: my parents’ basement), being donated, or being appropriated by a brother. My mountain bikes were bound for Cali, same for my kayaks. I couldn’t wait to get out on the trails and into the water out there.