“You sound exhausted.”
“I’m just done, that’s all.” She heard him yawn. “I can’t wait to see you. Did you have a good day?”
After a while, their talk waned, and Joy had asked him if he wouldn’t like to say good-bye so he could get some sleep.
“Would you mind very much if I stayed on?” he’d asked groggily. “We’ve never slept together, you know.”
She opened her mouth to say something light and teasing, but then paused. “All right. If you like.”
“Good. I like listening to you,” he mumbled.
“Everett, I’m not saying anything,” she admonished gently.
“I can hear you breathe.”
“Are you suggesting I have a Darth Vader issue?”
He chuckled tiredly. “No, you’re a much sexier breather than Darth.”
Two minutes of silence later, she started to hang up when he didn’t respond when she called his name. She stopped herself, though.
She listened to his slow, even breathing as he slept for longer then she’d care to admit.
* * *
Seth and Joy arrived in Vulture’s Canyon at dusk the next day.
“Weird little town,” Seth murmured, peering out the window onto a deserted Main Street as he drove. She had the strangest feeling they’d just wandered onto a movie set as she stared at the ancient storefronts. Behind the shadow of the rickety porch overhang of the Dyer Creek Trading Company, she saw a sign painted in neon-bright bubble lettering: BODY AND SOUL—ART AND FOOD FOR LIFE.
If the road hadn’t been paved, and if there hadn’t been a sporadic car or truck parked along the side of the street, they might have been in a town built in the eighteen hundreds. The setting sun, the surrounding hills and the thick forest only added to the surreal feeling of having entered a time warp.
“Yeah. That’s pretty much how Katie described Vulture’s Canyon to me—weird,” Joy said. “A lot of them work at a cooperative farm and use the produce to feed needy families in the Midwest and Appalachian region. It all sounds very free-spirited. There’s quite a contingent of artists here, I understand. You’ll fit right in.” She smiled when she heard her uncle’s doubtful grunt. “We’re supposed to go straight through town, pass Dyer Creek, and take the first right we come to. It’s called Eagle Perch Road,” she said, squinting in the dim light to see the directions she’d written down. “Rill and Katie’s place is at the top of the hill. According to Everett, we won’t be able to miss it.”
“Let’s just hope Everett gives directions as well as he acts,” Seth muttered.
Joy gave him a sideways glance. Was that a stab at Everett’s questionable motives when it came to her, an allusion to the fact that Everett could be merely playing the role of an interested, persistent male? Seth and she had had a lot of opportunity to talk on the short flight from Chicago to St. Louis, and then the hour-long drive from St. Louis to Vulture’s Canyon. She recalled again what her uncle had said about Everett while they waited for takeoff.
“Hughes has gone through women like tissues for the past fifteen years.”
“That’s not entirely fair,” Joy had replied levelly. “It seems to me that I’ve read he’s been in several serious relationships. Didn’t he date Jennifer Turner for quite a long period of time? And Liv Arlo, as well?” Joy had asked, referring to a highly respected actress and a well-known Hollywood publicist. “I’ve never gotten the impression he has a Don Juan syndrome from the press, even if they do splash photos of him on every date he’s ever been on. It can’t be easy for him.”
“Yeah, I feel real sorry for him,” Seth had said dryly, trying to adjust his long frame in the tiny airplane seat. “It’s rough having more money than you can possibly spend and knowing you can have any woman on the planet with a twitch of your finger.”
“Careful. You’re sounding jealous,” Joy had teased, trying to lighten his grim mood. “You used to tell me you really liked Everett. When did you change your mind?”
“Since he started nosing around you,” Seth had said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Her expression had softened when she saw his stark concern.
“I just can’t help but feel you’re going to get hurt in this,” Seth had said.
She’d said something similar to herself almost every time she’d gotten off the phone with Everett this week, but she didn’t want Seth to know that.
“I’m not going to get hurt,” she’d told Seth. “Because I’m not expecting anything besides the present moment.”
Seth had looked doubtful. “I don’t know if I like the sound of that any more than I’d like it if you said you were falling in love with the guy.”
Joy had smiled. “Why is it that men can have casual affairs without anyone blinking twice, but if a woman says she’s going to have one, everyone gets all concerned? I’m not that fragile, Seth.”
“I never thought you were fragile. But you’re not cold-hearted, either. You’re like Alice,” he’d said, referring to her mother. “You feel things deeply. It’s not easy for you to feel just a little bit. We left that to your father,” he’d mumbled bitterly.