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.There was no other word for it.The damnable thing was, as he stood outside again, he realized that for an instant, he’d really felt a little better.* * *Cooking was not an art that had come easily to Celia.Her mother had never entered a kitchen in her life, and her father, being male and Texan, could hustle up pecan pie or biscuits, but nothing substantial.As a result, Celia had spent the past ten years slowly but surely educating herself on the finer points of putting a meal together.It was mathematical and orderly, and she enjoyed the meshing of ingredients that formed a new product.It soothed her.In the late afternoon after seeing Eric at the school, she baked one of her grandmother’s specialties, turtle brownies.It was the first real baking she’d been able to do since the flood, and as the scent of chocolate and caramel and pecans wafted through the newly cleaned kitchen, a sense of ease crept through her.She hummed under her breath as she washed the bowls and spoons, then shook out a paper doily to decorate a plate.When the brownies had cooled, she cut them into perfect squares and arranged them on the lacy paper, admiring the contrast of dark chocolate against snowy white.Pretty enough for an entry in the fair, she thought, then grinned—as if she’d dare compete with women who’d been cooking for thirty or forty years!Her grandmother had won first-prize ribbons for watermelon-rind pickles and plum jam and peach chutney every year.Celia remembered sitting on a stool in this very kitchen, listening to injunctions about sterilizing jars and washing the lids with a hot wet cloth; about cutting plums just so and loading slices of fruit into the jars in an even way.She had yet to tackle canning.Maybe this fall.When the brownies were finished, she showered and changed into a cool cotton sundress, then brushed her hair.It wasn’t until she found herself on the road toward town, the brownies in her hands, that she allowed herself to realize she was on her way to Eric.But the truth was, he’d nearly tripped down the steps in his haste to get away this morning—tripped like a gangly fourteen-year-old who suddenly couldn’t think of anything to say.When he had first seen her, his eyes had filled with a hungry appreciation any woman who wasn’t a complete idiot would recognize.It had pained her a little, and she knew she’d given him what her daddy would have called a ‘a dirty look.’And then Eric, flustered, had turned to flee, nearly tripping on the stairs.It made him seem so vulnerable that Celia had been thinking about him all day.As old-fashioned as it was, she was taking him brownies to make up for being mean.Thick evening fell, turning the sky a purply silver above the cottonwoods and pines as she walked.Hidden just beyond her field of vision, Jezebel sang softly to the gathered birds drinking from her skirts.Aside from the chiming of crickets and the occasional call of a bird, the world along this narrow country road was still.Celia found herself slowing, feeling every pore in her body open to the warm, cottony air, to the nectar of silence no city could ever hope to reproduce.As it had so many times since she’d finally accomplished her dream of coming here, a swell of joy overtook her.Never before had she felt as if a place embraced her, as if the land itself welcomed her into its bosom.Only in Gideon.Home at last.She had never been to Laura Putman’s house, but a discreet inquiry at the grocery store had narrowed it down to only three possibilities.She passed the first with a wave to an old man who smoked a pungent pipe.He nodded and puffed.As she approached the second house, several hundred yards farther on, she heard the mournful notes of a harmonica floating in the air.Her nerves rustled.She knew the sound of a harmonica would now always remind her of Eric.She slowed her steps even more, listening.The notes were poignantly sad.They conjured up slow marches through rainy graveyards and widows cloaked in black and something even deeper and wider and more sorrowful yet.It pierced her clear through.The house was an older bungalow, in need of paint but otherwise sound.As Celia turned up the swept path, she saw Eric.He sat in a kitchen chair on the wooden porch, shirtless and barefoot in the warm evening.When he spied her, he played two or three more notes, watching her come up the path, then put the harmonica down.She climbed the steps in his silence, and when it was clear he wouldn’t speak, she held out the brownies.“I brought you something.”He eyed the plate, then took it from her carefully, a little shyly.“Thank you.”His hair gleamed with a fresh washing, falling in casual disarray around his face and neck in glossy black waves.A single curl rested against the rise of a muscle in his shoulder and Celia resisted the urge to smooth it back into place.“Have any luck finding your sister?” she asked.“No.” The word was nearly a growl.Celia saw his throat move as he swallowed his worry.All locked up tight behind the walls, she thought.Impulsively, she reached forward to touch his arm.“It’ll be okay, Eric.”At her touch, he flinched, then yanked his arm away in an almost violent gesture.“Go home and leave me be, would you?”Her first instinct was to whirl around and do exactly that.Let him brood alone.But that was pride speaking.Another part of her, one she didn’t dare put a name to, saw how frightened he was.She knelt next to his chair.He kept his head bent, as if refusing to look at her would make her disappear.Celia simply waited, absorbing some of the terror that seeped from behind the walls.After a few minutes, a little of the fight left him
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