Free Family Skeletons by Bobbie O'Keefe

hardwood floor, yet she couldn’t exactly recall leaving the
parlor to track his exit. She should mop up the water before it spread to the
parlor rug. She also needed to clean up the broken lamp pieces and apologize to
Cat. But she remained still, gaze glued to the closed bathroom door.
    Is that what hung like a horse means?

 
    Chapter Eight
    In deportment, on a scale of one to ten, Jonathan
was an eleven.
    When he appeared downstairs after his bath, he
seemed somewhat stilted, but Sunny had already figured out he’d been born that
way. Wearing a sea green sport shirt that very closely matched the color of his
eyes, along with dark slacks and polished black shoes, he stood in the parlor
doorway and waited to meet her eyes.
    “Excuse me,” he said formally.
    “Of...course,” she said.
    He then entered the room and settled in the other
armchair to watch the action film Sunny had found. He sat ramrod straight,
never looked her way, and absolutely no comment, wiseass or otherwise, occurred
to her.
    The image of a naked and magnificent male was
imprinted in her memory cells. Nothing either of them could do about that. But
also impressive was his instant reaction when he’d heard her scream. With no
thought for anything other than that something was wrong downstairs, down he
had come.
    As she sat there and watched the few minutes of
movie in between the several minutes of commercials, her respect for him grew.
Odd, but she could think of very few men, other than Ryan, whom she respected.
And none, other than Ryan, she’d ever felt she could count on.
    She swallowed hard and realized she’d lost the
thread of the movie. It was disconcerting to discover how unaccustomed she was
to thinking about issues of trust, and how accepting she’d been to having so
few people in her life worthy of it. The kind of single-mindedness that brought
a man stampeding down the stairs when someone screamed was close to
incomprehensible to her.
    It was silly, if one wanted to look at it from a
clinical angle, that Jonathan had come racing to her rescue because the TV had
startled her after she’d jacked up the sound. Yet it still made her feel...funny
inside. Quivery, unsettled, wistful. Yeah, funny. The word fit.
    * * *
    Early the next morning they got back to work. The
trapdoor that allowed access to the attic was located in a recess off the
upstairs hall, and Jonathan carried the stepladder they’d found in the shed up
the stairs, while Sunny let Cat outside to roam. The kitten was lightning-fast,
could climb anything, and Sunny didn’t want to contend with the animal while
they explored the attic.
    Nor did she want the cat to decide she liked it up
there and not want to come out.
    The ladder was in place when she joined Jonathan.
Though he wasn’t exactly sloppily dressed, neither was he his usual natty self.
He wore faded, serviceable chinos she could tell he’d actually done physical
work in. Though they looked clean, they were permanently soiled. Evidently he
worked on his truck himself and had packed his workpants just in case. Her
jeans were the oldest she owned, one leg torn at the knee and the hems frayed.
    She noted that the trapdoor was laid back as she
ascended the stairs, so he’d already been up there, but he was politely waiting
for her before proceeding further. As she climbed toward him, the image of him
at the bottom of the stairs in all his glory crossed her mind. She just let it
cross and took hold of the ladder.
    “I should go first,” he said quickly.
    She paused and looked at him. “Why?”
    When he appeared not to have a ready answer, she
grinned. “Ah, chivalry. It rears its head.” That was nicer than asking him if
he really thought he was more capable than she. Because of course he did.
    He frowned, but she caught a look of sheepishness
behind the frown.
    “I can handle my own spiders,” she told him. She
climbed into the dark hole, waved one arm above her to search for the chain to
the light bulb,