“She needs your permission to do that?” Billy shook his head. “Then I don’t understand why she asked if she could.”
“She wishes to lay flowers upon my chest. It is an old tradition, one she and I did for her mother. We would ask if we could visit before laying the flowers there. Her mother, God rest her soul, was not a fan of having flowers cut. We did it, Bethany and me, when we went to see her grave. She’d ask her mother if it was all right and there would be a small bloom, no matter the time of year, opening just as we went to the garden. I never understood it much until now.”
Kari nodded. She thought it was amazing how the dead made their presence known, and it was something that the two of them did, so she knew it would bring Beth comfort. As she made plans to have rooms aired for her mother-in-law, she thought of what Steele was going to say. The man was going to be as excited as she was.
Chapter 11
Steele moved around his office twice, making sure everything was put right before he sat back down again. If Kari had been in here with him, she would have told him to stop pacing several times by now. Instead, he was here with Nick.
“You do know that she’s going to love you, right?” Steele looked at his best friend and shook his head. “There’s some sort of law, I think. That moms have to love their kids. Not all of them get that thing in their heads, but it’s there all the same.”
“She doesn’t even know me. And my father raped her.” Nick nodded and leaned back on the couch almost to the point where his head was resting on the wall behind it. Then he closed his eyes. Steele knew that he wasn’t resting so much as trying to appear as if he was. The man never stopped. “Do you ever get all hyped up about anything?”
“Sex.” This was said without Nick opening his eyes or moving. “And food. I really get hyped up for food. Especially those little apple things that Kari makes. They are delicious.”
They were too. She called them fritters. Best way to cook an apple as far as he was concerned. And he had to beg her to stop making them. He’d eaten ten of them last night after dinner.
“My grandmother said that you’ve been out to the cemetery a lot more lately; that you are often there when Mitch isn’t. Are you all right?” Nick nodded but still hadn’t moved. “Nick? Are you all right, really?”
He sat up now and stared at him. Steele noticed the dark circles under his eyes, the vacant, almost scary look in his dark eyes too. But his smile, sad as it was, made him think that his friend wasn’t anywhere close to being all right.
“I’ve been dreaming of her.” Steele sat down but didn’t speak as Nick continued. “There’s this woman who’s hurt. I can’t save her no matter what I try to do. Every time I dream the dream, she’s dead at the end and I feel as if I lost a great…something because of it.”
“Who is she, do you know?” Nick shook his head and got up to go to the bar. He was pouring himself a bourbon when Steele spoke again. “Do you think that she’s dead now or that you’re to save her from death?”
“I’ve no idea.” He drained the glass and refilled it before he came to sit again. “The way she dies is never the same. And before you ask me, no, I have no idea what she looks like either. When I’m dreaming, I see her. As clear as a bell, and I think, wow, that’s for me. But by the time I wake, not only is her face gone from me, but the reason that I need to save her.”
“Your other half maybe?” Nick snorted and sipped his drink this time. “I can’t help you without more details. And you should think of finding someone in your life. It changes you. Calms the inner beast.”
“You’re so full of shit. But I know you love Kari. But this woman…her name is something short, sassy, and something so exotic that it makes me hard just to think about it. Her hair is long, but I’ve no idea what color it is. Her mouth…her mouth is lovely. I have an insane urge to taste it and her, though if I did, I can’t remember it. She’s smart and mouthy. That much I do remember, and she’s in deep trouble.” Steele nodded but said nothing while Nick got up to pace. “There’s something else too. Something that…she’s not like us. She’s normal.”
“You’re normal.” Nick snorted again. “Well, you are. What makes you think that you’re not?”
“I have seen normal, buddy, and we are not it. We try. We try very hard, but we’re far from normal.” He pointed around the room with his glass. “There are seven people in this room, including us. Two of them are your friends, one is a woman that I have no idea, and the other two are…they’ve been here a long time. I would say since the house was built.”