The Other Side - J. D. Robb [159]
“No, no. If you don’t know how long my beginner’s luck is going to last, then I’m quitting while I’m ahead. I’m not stupid, you know.”
“Oh, I know that.” His fingers slid over hers as he took her club and put both his and hers in the rack at the beginning of the course. “At least be a good sport and agree to let the loser buy you a coffee or a drink. How about dessert? King’s is open until eleven, and they have great homemade cobblers.”
It tickled her that he was trying so hard to keep their date from ending. She held her hand out, as she had in the beginning, and waited for him to take it, saying, “Can I have a rain check? By the time we walk back to the house and I drive home, it’ll be late, and I want to come back early again tomorrow.”
“You may have a rain check,” he said with great benevolence as he took her hand. But instead of simply holding it, he looped it over the bend in his elbow so they stood closer and walked arm in arm. “And a sun check and a snow check and a wind check and an earthquake check. . . . ”
She laughed.
“But tell me what you’ve been doing in the house. Something I can help you with?”
“No, not really, it’s just . . . well, it finally occurred to me that I’m actually the last Hedbo. And while I have no compunctions about tearing the house down and selling the land and the contents, I am having second thoughts about some of the pictures and papers. . . . I found some love notes my father sent to my mother and pictures of my only true blood cousin before he died. There’s a whole drawer full of original recipes that belonged to my Aunt Odelia—I’m thinking of finishing her cookbook for her.”
“Your favorite aunt?”
“I barely remember her.”
“Then why go to all that trouble?”
She shook her head. “Because I barely remember her? Does that make any sense?” She thought about her answer. “I told you my father died when I was four, and my mother remarried . . . three more times. I didn’t . . . I don’t have good sense of family. I don’t feel like I ever had one, really. Just about the time I started settling in, my mother would divorce and marry someone new. I’m in touch with Larry Biderman, who cared enough to give me his name and keep track of me for years afterward, and one of my stepsisters from my mother’s third marriage, but that’s not exactly family, is it?”
“It is, I think, if that’s what you’ve got. People make families with far less. It isn’t the legal or blood links you have to people that make them family, it’s the bonds you make with your heart that tie a family together.”
“That’s just it, though. I haven’t let many—any people, really—get close enough to me to make those kinds of bonds. And wandering around that old house, learning more about my mother and her sisters—who they were and why they made some of the choices they made . . . well, I’m learning a lot about me, too.”
“Like you want to publish a cookbook?”
She laughed. “No. That was one of my aunt Odelia’s dreams. I thought . . . I’d hate to die without seeing at least one of my dreams come true, wouldn’t you?”
“I would.” He studied her face as she watched the sidewalk in front of them. She could feel him preparing to ask about her dreams and decided to cut him off so she wouldn’t have to get explicit.
“And don’t ask me which dream I want to make come true, because now that I’m thinking about them specifically, it turns out I have several, and I haven’t decided between just one or maybe all of them.”
Playfully, he made his eyes big. “All of them?”
“I’m a very big dreamer.”
“Isn’t that a little greedy?”
“As it happens, I’m a lot greedy. You got a problem with that?”
“No, ma’am.” He grinned. “Not when it comes to dreams. As a matter of fact, I have a few of my own.”
The old streetlights were soft and cozy, protecting them from the night. They made it easy to see the spark in his eyes that made her heart quiver with the knowledge