Dance Upon the Air Page 0,12

to fill out these forms." She gestured to the neat stack on the desk.

"I've dated them yesterday. How's the lunch crowd moving?"

"Smoothly enough." Nell sat. Her palms no longer sweated when she filled out forms. Name, date of birth, Social Security number. Those basic facts and figures were hers. She'd seen to it personally. "Peg dives right in. I made up tomorrow's menu."

"Mmm." Mia took the folded paper Nell pulled out of her pocket, read it over while Nell filled in the form. "It looks good. More adventurous than Jane's tended to be."

"Too adventurous?"

"No, just more. So... what will you do with the rest of your day?" Mia briefly looked at the first completed form. "Nell, no middle initial, Channing?"

"Take a walk on the beach, do some gardening. Maybe explore the woods around the cottage."

"There's a small stream where columbine grows wild this time of year, and in the deeper shade jack-in-the-pulpits and ferns. The kind that make you think the faeries hide in them."

"You don't strike me as the kind of person who looks for shy faeries."

Mia's lips curved. "We don't know each other well yet. Three Sisters is alive with legend and lore, and the woods have all manner of secrets. Do you know the story of the Three Sisters?"

"No."

"I'll tell you one day when there's time for tales and stories. But for now you should be out in the light and air."

"Mia, what happened before? At noon?"

"You tell me. What do you think happened?"

"It felt like an earth tremor, but not. The light changed, and so did the air. Like a... blast of energy."

It sounded foolish when she said it, but she pushed on. "You felt it too. But no one else did. No one else felt anything out of the ordinary."

"Most people expect the ordinary, and that's what they get."

"If that's a riddle, I don't know how to solve it." Impatient, Nell shoved to her feet. "You weren't surprised by it-a little irritated but not surprised."

Mia sat back, intrigued, and lifted a brow. "True enough. You read people very well."

"Survival skill."

"And sharply honed," Mia added. "What happened? I suppose you could call it a connection. What happens when three positive charges occupy the same space at the same time?"

Nell shook her head. "I have no idea."

"Neither do I. But it'll be interesting to find out. Like recognizes like, don't you think? I recognized you."

Nell's blood went cold and burned under her skin. "I don't know what you mean."

"Not who you are, or were," Mia said gently. "But what. You can trust me to respect that, and your privacy. I won't pry into your yesterdays, Nell. I'm more interested in the tomorrows."

Nell opened her mouth. She nearly, very nearly, let it pour out. Everything she'd escaped from, everything that haunted her. But to do so put her fate in the hands of another. That was something she would never do again.

"Tomorrow I'll serve a summer vegetable soup and a chicken, zucchini, and ricotta sandwich. That's as complicated as it's going to get."

"That's as good a start as any. Enjoy your afternoon." Mia waited until Nell reached the door. "Nell? As long as you're still afraid, he wins."

"I don't give a damn about winning," Nell replied. Then she stepped out quickly and closed the door behind her.

Chapter Three

Nell found the stream, and the wild columbine-like little drops of sun in the green shade. Sitting on the soft floor of the forest, listening to the stream gurgle and the birds chirp, she found her peace again.

This was her place. She was as sure of that as she'd been of any single thing in all her life. She belonged here as she'd belonged nowhere else.

Even as a child she'd felt displaced. Not by her parents, she thought, running her fingers over her locket. Never by them. But home had been wherever her father was stationed, and until his orders changed. There'd been no single place for childhood, no pretty spot for memories to take root and bloom.

Her mother had had the gift of making a home wherever they were, and for however long. But it wasn't the same as knowing you would wake up to the same view out of your bedroom window day after day.

And that was a yearning Nell had carried with her always.

Her mistake had been in believing she could soothe that yearning with Evan, when she should have known it was something she had to find for herself.

Perhaps she had, now. Here in this place.

That's