Forever: A Novel of Good and Evil Love and Hope Read online

  “Food,” she answered, puzzled.

  “No, this.” He held up a package of cheese with individually wrapped slices and another package of “pizza snacks.”

  “It’s—” she began.

  “I know what it is,” he said impatiently.”I can see what it is. I just meant. . . .” He didn’t say anything else, but scooped up everything she had in the cart and shoved it onto a shelf in front of the canned peas.

  “You shouldn’t do that,” Darci said, frowning. “I’ll put everything back in its right place.”

  “And let everyone in this town see your hair? I’d tell you to go back to the guest house and wait for me there, but I don’t think you’d obey. Go find some of those tie things that girls use and pull your hair back so it covers that missing piece. I’ll do the shopping.”

  “You’ll—?” Darci said, eyes wide, as though that were the most extraordinary thing she’d ever heard in her life.

  “Let me guess,” Adam said under his breath. “Underground tunnels don’t surprise you, but the idea of a man buying groceries does?”

  Darci could only nod in silence.

  “Go,” he said. “And don’t let anyone see the back of your head. I’ll meet you outside. Stand somewhere where people can’t see you, and don’t talk to anyone. Understand?”

  Darci didn’t move. “I’d have to pay for the hair ties.”

  Adam started to say something sarcastic about how little they would cost but then he gave a sigh and handed her a ten-dollar bill.

  Holding the bill, Darci just looked up at him, not moving. “How will I get your change back to you?”

  “I’ll trust you until we get back to the room.”

  Darci still didn’t move.

  “Keep the bloody change!” he said much louder than he meant to; then Darci ran down the aisle so fast that he thought of Road Runner cartoons, with the bird leaving a cloud of dust behind him.

  “I have never seen anyone so in love with money as she is,” Adam muttered as he pushed the cart to the deli section of the grocery and began filling it, starting with Brie cheese and a carton of hummus. “What’s she saving her money for?” he muttered. “A wedding gift for her big, strong, young Putnam?”

  “Sorry. I couldn’t hear what you said,” the man behind the counter said, and Adam was embarrassed to have been caught talking to himself. He ordered three fresh salads and a quarter pound each of four different kinds of meat. “On second thought, better make that a half pound each,” he added.

  In the end, he bought twice as much food as he should have. But then he found himself thinking, I wonder if Darci has ever eaten a pomegranate? As he went up and down the aisles of the small grocery, he kept tossing things into the cart, all the while thinking hard. I must send her away. She doesn’t understand how dangerous this could be. Oh! Wonder if she’d like smoked oysters? She treats all of this like a joke. We can drive to Hartford tomorrow and find a good hairdresser there. I’ve got to send her away until I need her. Maybe if she had some really good chocolate, she’d give up those dreadful candy bars. This last thought came to him as he dropped a twenty-five-dollar box of Godiva chocolate into the basket. Then he found himself grabbing six bouquets of autumn-colored flowers from the selection along the wall as he wheeled the cart to the checkout stand. Maybe if they went to Hartford, they’d have time to see Mark Twain’s house. Darci would probably like that.

  “Credit or cash?” the woman at the register asked, and Adam had to bring himself back to reality.

  “Is there a liquor store near here?” he asked. “Somewhere I can get a bottle of wine?” He smiled when he was told that a liquor store was two doors down.

  When they got back to the guest house, Darci disappeared for a few moments to remove the squashed candy bars from inside her cat suit, and Adam was hoping she’d put on something less revealing. Instead, when she reappeared, she still had on the clinging leotard. Her only concession to modesty was to take a sweatshirt of his out of the closet and pull it on over the suit, but her Lycra-covered legs were still exposed beneath it.

  “You couldn’t find anything of your own to wear?” he asked, sounding more snappish than he meant to.

  “Don’t want to wrinkle anything,” she said as she picked up the bags of groceries and carried them to the little kitchen.

  Adam had planned to make sandwiches with as little fuss as possible, but Darci shooed him away and she took over. She didn’t set the food on the little table in the corner of the room, but instead, cleared the coffee table of its fabric flowers in a pot and set out plates, knives and forks, and glasses from the kitchen cabinets. In the kitchen, she began unloading the food from the plastic bags. She rummaged inside the cabinets until she found a vase and he watched in surprise as she took a pair of scissors from a drawer and expertly snipped the stems of the flowers. Within seconds, she had arranged them, making the flowers form a perfect oval above the vase.

  “Where’d you learn that?” he asked.

  “Putnam Flowers. I worked there for a few months.”

  “Handy thing to know,” he said. “My cousin Sarah would like to be able to do that. She has thousands of flowers in her garden but not a clue as to how to arrange them.”

  “‘Thousands,’” Darci said as she took the flowers into the living room.

  “Yeah, well, it’s a big house,” Adam said, feeling embarrassed. He didn’t like to reveal things about himself, and he was grateful when Darci didn’t ask him any questions. Instead, he stood back and watched as she pulled long loaves of French bread from the bags, then opened the containers of food and carefully put them into dishes that she carried from the kitchen. For his part, he would have eaten from the cartons but Darci seemed to want to make as elegant a table as possible.

  When she was finished, she motioned for him to take his seat on a couch cushion on the opposite side of the coffee table, and immediately, Darci began asking questions about each item he’d bought. When he didn’t have a sharp knife to cut open the pomegranate, she jumped up and got him one; then she watched intently as he cut it open and began to extract the seeds. Without hesitation, she dropped a handful of the seeds into her mouth and declared them delicious.

  She tasted everything, exclaimed with delight over every item, and Adam found himself talking more and more about the food. She wanted to know where each cheese had been made, how oysters were smoked, and why the water crackers were called that. Adam tried to answer her every question and when he didn’t know the answer, he handed her the food container and she read what was printed on it to him. And there was a lot of discussion about vineyards and how wine was made.

  In the end, the meal took over two hours, and afterward Adam realized he’d enjoyed himself a great deal. And to his disbelief, the two of them had eaten everything. But still, he found that he somehow had room for the Godiva chocolates, and for a moment, he watched Darci close her eyes and let the rich chocolate melt down her throat.

  Adam knew that he’d better say something or he’d find himself reaching for her. “Why don’t you get fat?” he asked.

  Darci opened her eyes. “No fat cells. I never developed any as a kid, and my metabolism is very fast. My mother says I must get it from my father, because she says that if she eats a piece of lettuce, she gains weight.”

  “What does your father do for a living?”

  Darci looked into the big box of chocolate and made no answer.

  “I was just curious,” Adam said. “You often mention your mother but never your father. Does he live in Putnam, too?”

  “I don’t know,” Darci said quietly. “Sometimes you can keep secrets in a small town because I don’t know who my father is.” Her head came up and she smiled at him. “What about yours?”

  “My father? Dead. Both my parents are dead. They died when I was three so I never really knew them.”

  “How did they die?” she asked, but as soon as she asked the question, she saw that closed-down look come over Adam’s fac