Dr. Fielder—Jerry—opened the door. “Please come in,” he said, standing aside with a sweep of his hand. “Millie! Our guests are here!” he called, turning a little toward the back of the house.
Millie Fielder hurried into the living room. She was wearing a blouse and skirt similar to mine, but in a golden brown print. It really suited her dark hair and eyes. Over her skirt she wore an apron, which had seen some use. She became aware of it the same moment she shook my hand, and she looked mock-horrified. “I never remember the apron!” she said. “Excuse me.” She untied it and bundled it under her arm. “Pretend you can’t see it,” she told Eli.
“See what?” he said.
“That’s a relief.” She smiled, and you had to like her when you saw her smile. Millie wasn’t exactly a pretty woman, but that smile was a wonder. “Please have a seat, and I’ll bring you all a drink. Wine or bourbon?”
“Bourbon for me,” I said. “Eli?”
“For me also,” he said, taking a seat. He gave me a complicated look. I realized I was supposed to offer to help Millie in the kitchen. “Can I give you a hand?” I said quickly. “I’d love to see your kitchen.”
Millie looked a little surprised, but she invited me to come with her with another wonderful smile.
The floors were polished wood scattered with throw rugs. We went from the living room into the dining room, then to the right of a fireplace and through a swinging door into the kitchen. I stared around me at the gleaming countertops and the oven with a cooktop built in on top of it. The sink was white like the stove and the refrigerator. The floor was linoleum, a dark green. There was a big wooden preparation table running down the middle with a white painted chair pushed up under it.
“This is so pretty,” I said. “And it smells so good.” A pot or two bubbled on the stovetop and a chicken was in the oven. There was a small tower of dirty dishes by the sink, and a much larger tower of washed and dried ones on the other side. A platter and some vegetable bowls were set out ready to use.
Millie had her back to me while she poured our drinks, but she whipped around as if she thought I’d been mocking her. She relaxed when she saw my face. “You mean it! But I figured… when Jerry told me your husband was a grigori, I thought you must be real rich.”
“Not me,” I said. “Not us. We haven’t been married long,” I said, after another pause. “In case you wondered. What about you two?”
“Oh, for four years,” Millie said. She tried to sound like it was nothing, but she turned her back to me again and began pouring into the glasses. Her back was stiff. What did this mean?
“You must have been real young.”
“ ’Bout your age, I figure. You aren’t twenty yet, are you?”
“No, a few months until then.”
“When I say we’ve been married four years, most people say, ‘And no babies yet?’ ” Millie said, her back still to me.
“Not my business,” I said, surprised.
She stopped pouring and halfway turned. “Really? Because everyone else on God’s green earth believes it’s their business.”
I shrugged. “Not me.”
“Thank you,” Millie said.
“Quite a few women don’t even want any,” I said, when I should have kept my mouth shut.
Astounded, she gazed at me blankly. “Like who?”
“Prostitutes,” I said. “And people with an illness. And people who just aren’t crazy about babies.”
“You’re the most interesting person I’ve ever met,” Millie said, after a second of silence.
“That means I said something wrong.” I couldn’t figure out what it might have been.
“Not at all,” Millie said. “Can you get the kitchen door? I can handle the tray.”
Very soon we were sitting in the living room, Eli and I side by side on the couch, and the Fielders in matching armchairs, a table between them. Its surface was mostly taken with a pile of books, leaving just enough room for their glasses. It was almost dark outside, and the bugs were battering the screen doors. The wooden doors had been left open for the breeze, which almost amounted to nothing now.
I took a cautious sip of my bourbon, and it was good. I was working, and I would not finish this glass, but I could savor a sip or two. Jerry and Eli were chattering away, while Millie vanished to do something in the kitchen every few minutes.
I was quiet for the most part. I felt like I was visiting another world. Jerry was asking Eli a lot of questions about healing magic, and when that conversation had run its course, Millie asked me how Eli and I had met.
I glanced at Eli, who was looking like he wanted to hear the answer. Okay. “He and his partner Paulina hired me to guard them on a trip to Mexico,” I said. “I’m from Texoma.”
The Fielders looked a bit stunned. “And you guarded them?” Jerry asked slowly, as if he was feeling his way through a jungle or something.
“I did.”
“How?”
“Oh, I’m a gunnie.” They looked blank. “A shooter,” I explained. “That’s my job.”
They didn’t seem to know what to make of that. “You shoot people,” Jerry said very cautiously.
“I do. If they attack whoever or whatever I’m hired to guard. Not for fun.” I wanted to make that clear.
“Lizbeth is famous,” Eli said, and damn if he didn’t sound proud. I smiled right at him.
“Are you armed now?” Millie asked.
And then the gun was in my hand. “Yep,” I said. And it was back in my handbag.
“We aren’t going to go after your husband,” Millie said teasingly.
“We got the walk back to the hotel,” I said, matter-of-fact.
And there was another one of those weird pauses. Eli kissed my cheek, just when I was feeling pretty bad.
Millie stood, still looking at me like a half-dead bird her cat had dragged in. “Supper must be ready to go on the table,” she said. She kind of braced herself. “You want to give me a hand, Lizbeth?”
“Sure.” I hopped up and followed her back into the kitchen.
Millie got a roasting pan with a chicken out of the oven, and I held the platter while she eased it on. The juice went into a gravy boat. The mashed potatoes went into a bowl. The snap beans into another. And the rolls came out of the oven and went into a basket. The butter dish came out of the icebox. “This is it,” Millie said. “I made a chess pie for after.”
“It looks great and it smells wonderful,” I said honestly. I hesitated, and then I said, “You know how people always ask you why you don’t have babies? People who don’t know the business, they always want to know how many people I’ve shot.” Not that I’d ever met many people who didn’t understand my line of work. But it had happened.
“What do you tell them?” Millie was fascinated.
“I tell them as many as it took to do my job,” I said, and we began carrying the food through the swinging door to place on the dining table.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Since Eli and I had only had ice cream for our lunch, we were very enthusiastic about Millie’s cooking. And it was fun to talk to people we didn’t have to lie to… or at least, we didn’t have to lie to them much. Millie told me about her ladies’ group at the church, and her gardening, and her elderly mother who lived two houses down. Jerry talked about going to medical school in Boston, and how living in Brittania and talking to its people had changed him.