Harvesting the Heart Read online

  chapter 3

  Nicholas

  hen Nicholas was four years old, his mother taught him about trusting strangers. She sat him down and told him twenty times in a row not to speak to someone on the street unless it was a friend of the family; not to take the hand of just anyone to cross the street; never, under any circumstances, to get into someone's car. Nicholas remembered fidgeting on the chair and wishing he could be outside; he'd wanted to check the tin of beer he'd left overnight on the porch to catch slugs. But his mother would not let him leave, would not let him even take a break for the bathroom--not until Nicholas could repeat, verbatim, her lesson. And by that time, Nicholas had conjured images of dark, stinking phantoms wearing ratty black capes, hiding in cars and in the creases of the sidewalk and in the alleys between stores, waiting to pounce on him. When his mother finally told him he could go outside to play, he'd chosen to remain indoors. For weeks after that, when the postman rang the doorbell, he had hidden beneath the couch.

  Although he had got over his fear of strangers, he had never forgotten the consequences, which made Nicholas the one person in a group to stand off to the side. He could be charming if the situation called for it, but he was more likely to feign interest in a frieze on the ceiling than to be drawn into a conversation with people he didn't know. In some individuals this was passed off as shyness; but in someone of Nicholas's background and stature and classic features, it seemed more like aloof conceit. Nicholas found he didn't mind the label. It gave him time to size up a situation and to respond more intelligently than those who spoke too quickly.

  None of which explained why he impulsively asked Paige O'Toole to marry him, or why he gave her the spare key to his apartment even before hearing her answer.

  They walked from Mercy to his apartment in total silence, and Nicholas was starting to hate himself. Paige wasn't acting like Paige. He'd ruined it, whatever it was that he had liked about her. Nicholas was so nervous he couldn't fit the key into the door, and he didn't know what he was nervous about. When she stepped into the apartment he held his breath until he heard her say quietly, "My room was never this neat." And then he relaxed and leaned against the wall. He answered, "I could learn to live messy."

  Conversations like that in the first hours after he proposed to Paige made Nicholas realize that there was a great deal he still did not know about her. He knew the big things, the sort of things that make up the talk at dinner parties: the name of her high school; how she became interested in drawing; the street she had lived on in Chicago. But he did not know the little details, the things only a lover would know--What had she named the mutt her father made her give back to the animal shelter? Who taught her to throw a sliding curve ball? Which constellations could she pick out in the night sky? Nicholas wanted to know it all. He was filled with a greed that made him wish he could erase the past, oh, six years of his life and relive them with Paige, so he wouldn't feel he was starting in the middle.

  "This is all I've got," Nicholas said to Paige, holding out a box of stale graham crackers. He had sat her down on the black leather ouch and turned on the halogen lights. She had not said whether or not she would marry him, a detail that Nicholas had not overlooked, To all intents and purposes, he should have wanted her to pass off his proposal as a joke, since he still wasn't sure what had prompted him to make such a rash statement. But he knew Paige hadn't taken it lightly, and to tell the truth, he wanted to know her answer. God, he was all knotted up inside over the prospect of her laughing in his face, which told him more than he cared to admit.

  Suddenly he wanted to get her talking. He figured if she would just stop looking at him as though she'd never seen him before in her life, if she would start telling him about Chicago or quote one of Lionel's little epigrams or introduce any other favorite subject of conversation, then she might happen to mention that, yes, she wouldn't mind being his wife.

  "I'm not really hungry," Paige said. Her eyes roamed the walls of the apartment, the dark shadows of the hallway, and Nicholas began berating himself for scaring the hell out of her. She was only eighteen. No wonder she was shying away. Sure, he wanted to be near her; maybe he could even admit that he was falling for her; but bringing up marriage? He didn't know where that idea had come from. Christ, that was like using a sledgehammer to kill a fly. But he still didn't want to take back the offer. Paige was looking down at her shoes. "This is weird," she said. "This just feels so weird." She twisted her hands in her lap. "I mean, I didn't have to worry about this before. This feeling. I hadn't planned his. You know, when I was just sort of hanging around with you, it wasn't--it wasn't--" She looked up, groping for the right words. "So momentous?" Nicholas filled in.

  "Yes." Paige's face broke into a smile, and she exhaled in one long breath. "You always know what to say," she said shyly. "That's one of the reasons I like you."

  Nicholas sat beside her on the couch. He stretched his arm around her. "You like me," he said. "That's a start."

  Paige looked up at him as if she was going to say something, then shook her head.

  "Hey," Nicholas said, tipping up her chin. "Nothing's different. Forget I said anything. I'm still the same guy you told off in the middle of Route 2 a day ago. I'm still the one you can beat the pants off when you play poker."

  "You just happened to mention getting married."

  Nicholas grinned at her. "I did, didn't I?" He tried to sound flip, unconcerned. "That's the way I end a third date."

  Paige leaned her head against his arm. "We haven't even had three real dates," she said. "I can't stop thinking about you--"

  "I know."

  "--but I don't even know your middle name."

  "Jamison." Nicholas laughed. "My mother's maiden name. Now, what else is standing in your way?"

  Paige turned up her head to look at him. "And what's my middle name?" she challenged, trying to make her point.

  "Marie." Nicholas took a stab in the dark, trying to buy time to figure out his next counterargument. Then he realized he'd got it right.

  Paige was staring at him, her mouth dropped open. "My father used to tell me I'd know when someone was the perfect match for me," she murmured. "He said God worked it so that you'd always be in the right place at the right time." Nicholas waited for her to elaborate, but she wrinkled her forehead and stared at the carpet. Then she turned to him. "Why did you ask me?" she said.

  There were a million questions wrapped into that one, and Nicholas didn't know how to answer them all. He was still reeling from the fact that, unbidden, her middle name had just materialized in his thoughts. So he said the one thing that popped into his mind. "Because you didn't ask me," he said.

  Paige looked up at him. "I really do like you," she said.

  He leaned his head back against the couch, determined to have an ordinary conversation, the kind people who've been together forever have all the time. He brought up the weather, and the local sports teams, and then Paige began to gossip about the waitresses at Mercy. Nicholas was soothed by the sound of her voice. He kept asking her questions just to keep her talking. She told him in detail about the angles of her father's face; she told him that she'd once tried to read the dictionary from cover to cover because a classmate told her it would make her smarter, but she'd only got to N. She described wading into Lake Michigan at the end of May, so vividly that Nicholas actually shivered and got goose bumps up his arms.

  They were lying side by side on the narrow couch when Nicholas asked Paige about her mother. She'd mentioned her at the diner, and from what Nicholas could tell, the elusive Mrs. O'Toole drifted across Paige's consciousness like a shadow from time to time but Paige wasn't willing to share the details. He knew that the woman had left; he knew that Paige had been five; he knew that Paige didn't remember her very well. But she had to have feelings about it. At the very least, she had to have an impression.

  "What was your mother like?" Nicholas asked gently, so close his lips were brushing Paige's cheek.

  He fel