Free Damon by Vanessa Hawkes

anything special.
    “Today,” he said. “After I saw the drugstore owner was in the picture.”
    “Wait. You came back after lunch? Why didn’t I see you?”
    “I came in the back when nobody was looking.”
    Before he could finish speaking, I gasped in surprise. “That’s what was in the locked cabinet. You picked the lock.”
    “How else could I get in?” he said.
    “You’re unbelievable. That’s why you broke into my house, and wanted to see Corky’s house. To find the box. Not to remember your childhood.”
    Not because you were interested in me.
    “I’m not a machine, Maggie,” he said, passion growing in his tone. “I wanted to find the box, but I also wanted to remember my past, and I wanted to get to know you. I also wanted to leave home and do something new.” He tapped his head. “I’ve got all sorts of things going on in here.”
    “I can see that,” I said dryly.
    He licked his lips and stared at me intently. “So what’s the verdict?”
    “About what?”
    “Are you going to relax or kick me out?”
    “Well… I don’t know. I don’t know what any of this means. So you came here to find a box. How does that make me trust you?”
    “Because I told you the truth. Now I’m not hiding any secrets.”
    “Really?” I could overlook the secrets about his murdered mother and murdering father. I wouldn’t have wanted to talk about that. Especially to someone I’d just met. But, he still hadn’t told me his real name. Then again, I hadn’t been exactly honest about my real name, either. “So what was in the box?”
    “Wait,” he said. He reached for the wine bottle and the two juice glasses he’d brought from the kitchen. “This first.”
    “ Maaagggic ,” my mother wailed from the living room.
    I jumped up automatically and pressed my lips together. “Be right back.”
    Mama had lost the remote control and while I searched for it, Damon was up to something. He walked through the living room, wiggling eyebrows at me over a serious face, and went out the backdoor. When he returned barely a minute later, he kept his hand behind his back and wouldn’t look at me.
    I found the remote under Mama’s chair, brought her another cup of raspberry tea and a shortbread cookie, then hurried back to Damon’s room.
    “What are you up to?” I immediately asked. But he wasn’t in the room. His front door to the porch was open, leaving only the warped screen door protecting my grandmother’s quilt from the moths dancing around the porch light.
    I followed him outside.
    “Kick off the light,” he said.
    I turned off the light and shut the wood door.
    Damon sat in one of my white wicker rocking chairs. I sat in the other. It was the perfect night to sit outside. Unseasonably warm with a light, fragrant breeze. The birds weren’t ready for bed yet and continued to sing to one another. I could almost hear the fountain I might afford now that I didn’t have to pay to have the house painted.
    The sound was Damon pouring red wine. He held the glass out toward the streetlight as if examining its color, then handed me the glass. He relaxed back to rock and enjoy the evening. Absently, he reached over and held my hand.
    I leaned my head back, closed my eyes and let out a long breath, releasing all the tension of the day. If ever a scene should have herded my thoughts toward the frights of marriage, it should have been this scene of the two of us rocking on the porch, listening to the birds and sipping wine like an old married couple. Yet, somehow, on a night such as this I couldn’t imagine anything unpleasant.
    “What happened to your dad?” he asked after a while.
    Even such an intruding question didn’t disturb the peace of the evening. I’d given up being sensitive on that issue long ago. And I’d planned to ask him about his own father, eventually. “He never existed.”
    “No?”
    “Mama doesn’t have a clue.”
    “No idea?”
    I thought back to my early teenage years when I’d