Free Keeping the Peace by Linda Cunningham Page B

opened the oven door. The hot air blasted her face, and John slid the green enameled pan in next to her apple pie.
    “Twenty-five minutes,” he announced. He turned his back to the room, washing up some utensils in the sink.
    “Here, chew on these while you wait.” Melanie reached a mitted hand back into the oven and brought out a cookie sheet full of stuffed mushrooms. “There’s crabmeat in these,” she said to Strand, “in case you have allergies.”
    “Thanks. I don’t. They look very good. Let me help.” He took the spatula she had been holding, his fingers brushing hers ever so lightly.
    “Oh,” she said softly. “Oh, thank you. You can put them on this plate.” She turned abruptly away, saying into the room, “Girls, set plates and silverware out on the kitchen table. We can help ourselves buffet-style and sit in the dining room.”
    The girls were slowly losing their shyness. Mia said, “Where do you live, really?”
    “I live in Beverly Hills now. I just bought my first house,” he said. “It’s a nice one. I like it. It’s not too big, but it has a great pool and a pretty garden. My mother likes to garden.”
    “Oh, your mother lives with you?” asked Emmie.
    “And my sister. I grew up in a small town just outside San Diego. My father was in the Navy. I was an only child until I was twelve years old. Then, my sister was born! She’s fifteen now. After I had enough money and I bought the house, I brought them there to live with me.”
    “Are your parents divorced, then?” asked Mia.
    “My father died when my sister was five.”
    “Oh, I’m, ah, I’m sorry,” Mia stammered.
    “Food’s served,” interrupted John, elbowing through and setting the hot casserole dish on the trivet.
    Melanie followed with the salad bowl, and John sliced the bread.
    “Now everybody grab a plate and dish up. We’ll go into the dining room to eat.” Melanie handed a plate to each girl. “Michael, you sit at one end, Dad will sit at the other. Girls on that side. Gabriel, you sit between Peter and me.”
    As they helped themselves to their meal, a low sigh seemed to pass through the room. Gabriel looked up from the salad bowl, alert.
    “Don’t worry,” Melanie said. “We don’t have ghosts in this house. At least, we haven’t seen them. That’s the wind you’re hearing. It’s an old house.”
    John added, “The storm is about to blow itself out.”
    “I bet we got two feet,” said Peter gleefully. “I’m going skiing tomorrow.”
    “If there’s no school,” Melanie said.
    “Now is when we’ll get a power outage,” predicted John. “Some tree will go down under the weight of the snow or something.”
    The family and their guests took their places around the table. The dining room was long and narrow, papered in black and white toile. The long windows were draped in sheer curtains that reached to the wide spruce floorboards, shiny with the footsteps of the comings and goings of the generations of the past one hundred and fifty years. There were old family portraits on the walls, of those people and the horses they’d owned. A fireplace crackled at the far end of the room, and Melanie’s cobalt glass collection glowed in its light. She loved to eat in the dining room. She felt oddly alive, as though a bothersome care had been lifted from her, as though there was promise yet to the night ahead.
    Melanie noticed Gabriel, sitting quietly, looking around at the room. Ignoring her husband’s sharp glance, she asked, “Is everything all right? You look a little sad.”
    “I like it here,” Strand said. “You don’t know, but I never get a chance to be normal. Not for years now. You’re all so nice. It makes me miss my mother and sister. Does that sound cheesy?”
    “Not at all,” said Melanie. “How about a girlfriend? Do you have one?”
    “Mom!” Mia gasped, scandalized.
    The musician laughed out loud, his dark eyes sparkling and his hair waving irresistibly around his face.