“Oh, I know why,” I tease. “I’m your secret lover.”
She bursts into laughter. “Secret lover. You make us sound like a telenovela.” She hesitates, then says, “Do you want to come in and meet Einstein? He’s real too, you know.”
“How do I know you’re not trying to lure me into your house so you can lock me in your basement?”
“I guess you’d just have to take the chance.” She looks deep into my eyes. “Do you feel like living dangerously, Cal?”
Continuing whatever this is with Molly is more dangerous for me than she realizes. But being with her makes me feel more alive than I’ve felt in years, since even before Alice’s death. There’s this feeling I used to get when I’d try to figure out the perfect use for a piece of wood—the anticipation of getting it right and the worry that I’d screw it up. Being around Molly is like living in that moment.
“Yeah,” I say, more solemnly than I intended.
She seems to hear it, because she studies me for a moment before reaching for her door handle. “Then let’s go.”
The dogs bark at the door as we get out and walk up to the front porch.
“First danger of the evening,” she says, “is Ein himself. He hates most men. So don’t be freaked out if he loses his mind. He doesn’t have more than, like, four teeth, so he can’t hurt you, but he has a pretty intimidating bark for such a little guy.”
“Which is why you don’t bring him to the dog park,” I say as she unlocks the front door.
“Exactly.”
She pushes the door open, and the dogs instantly jump on her. Chaco’s tail is furiously wagging, but Einstein quickly realizes that a stranger has followed his aunt home and releases a low growl.
“Ein,” Molly admonishes. “Behave.” She leads them outside, and they follow her like she’s the Pied Piper. I stay on the porch so I don’t distract them, and after they do their business, Molly claps her hands and says, “Okay! Let’s go inside. I’m sorry I wasn’t home earlier to feed you. Who’s hungry?”
Chaco goes crazy, chasing her up the porch steps and then bursting into the house as if it’s an agility competition, while Einstein lumbers up the stairs and pauses to growls at me in the doorway, making it very clear he wants no part of a stranger in his house.
Molly grabs his collar and tries to drag him to the kitchen.
“Do you want me to wait outside?” I ask, lingering in the doorway.
She’s engaged in a tug-of-war, but she looks up in alarm. “You’re not leaving, are you?”
“No,” I say, because I’m not ready to say goodnight yet, and the man in me is gratified she feels the same way. “I’ll just sit out on the porch.”
Relief covers her face. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
I walk out onto the porch and check out the seating arrangement. There are a couple of wicker chairs, but I sit on the newer-looking cushioned love seat and take in the view of the pasture across the street. Or what I can make out of it in the dark.
I can hear Molly inside, baby-talking to Chaco and giving a stern lecture to Einstein. A few minutes later, she comes out with a bottle of wine and two glasses.
She looks pleased when she sees me on the love seat and sets the glasses and wine on the end table. “I can get some water if you’d prefer.”
“No,” I say. “This is good.” I don’t plan on drinking much, so it doesn’t matter.
She sits down next to me. The bottle is a screw top, and she pours white wine into both glasses, then hands one to me.
I take a sip, watching her. She’s close enough for me to feel the heat of her body, but it’s not close enough. The inch between us feels like a canyon.
“Your sister is protective of you,” I comment. “Do you see her often?”
“No,” she says, sinking back into the cushion. “Not as often as I should.”
“I always wanted siblings,” I find myself saying, “but my mom died when I was young. Dad remarried when I was fourteen, but his new wife had no interest in having children.” I shrug. “It worked out for the best. She would have been a terrible mother.”
“I liked seeing you with your dad,” she says, then takes a sip of her wine. Watching her lift the glass to her lips, I have the unsettling realization that I’m jealous of her wine glass. “It says a lot about a person, the way they are with their family.”
She’s right. Isn’t that why I wanted to hear her conversation with Maisie? “Anyway, he’s amazing,” she adds. “Thanks for introducing us.”
“Did you get what you needed?”
“I did,” she says, her face lighting up. “And I loved the stories he told us at dinner.”
“Some of them were new to me too,” I say, then take a sip. The wine is sweeter than I prefer, but I keep that to myself.
“That’s the beauty of the interviews,” she says. “Many of the people I talk to tell me things they never thought to share with their kids. So much history that could potentially be lost.”
“So you’re a history buff?” I ask, loving the excitement that glimmers in her eyes when she talks about her side project.
“Not really,” she says. “It’s more about the people and their stories.”
“Then you’re a storyteller.”
She drinks slowly from her wine and seems to mull that over. “I don’t think so,” she says. “They aren’t my stories. They belong to others. I just record them.”
“But storytelling itself is an art,” I say. “The delivery makes all the difference.”
She turns, placing her back against the arm of the love seat, and hugs her legs to her chest, her chin on her knees. She tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “How so?”
I find the movement distracting, wanting to tuck the strand myself, but I pull myself back to the question. “Let’s say you and I both tell the story of the Three Little Pigs. I’m going to give it the bare-bones treatment—the facts and nothing but the facts. But you, you’d talk to their friends and relatives, you’d look up the weather conditions the night of the big bad wolf’s attack. You’d turn it into an engaging story. You might be writing what people tell you, but you bring their stories to life.”
“How do you know?” she teases, placing her foot on my thigh and giving it a small shove. “You’ve never read them.”
“But I’ve read your other pieces. You have a gift, Molly. It was wasted at Beyond the Sheets.”
Her smile fades, but she doesn’t look unhappy. More contemplative. “Everyone always said my dad had the gift of the gab. I guess maybe I got it too. What about you?”
“What about me?”
She takes another drink. “I noticed some of your woodworking pieces at the Cluster. They’re beautiful and distinctive. Where does your creativity come from?”
I buy myself time to think with a slow drink from my wine, then say, “Honestly, lots of places. Some of the smaller pieces I’ve done were inspired by the wood itself. The grain and the shape.” I feel a spark I’d thought dead burn back to life. “I can look at the wood and just know what to do with it. Larger pieces can come from the wood—like a tabletop—but often I decide to create a particular piece and then find the wood to fit it.”