Lynn Reilly has landed her dream job as a schoolteacher on beautiful Treasure Island.She should be happy as a clam, but someone is keeping her from enjoying her new life. Her nutty aunt Delphine is determined to set her up with her very eligible (and very cute) neighbor, Reverend Jack Marks. The only problem is…Delphine is a ghost.A meddling aunt is one thing. A relative stirring up trouble from the grave is quite another. Especially when Delphine's matchmaking shenanigans include trickery, humiliation and an alligator named Buster! But with all Delphine's outrageous haunting high jinks, it looks as if Lynn and Mark won't stand a ghost of a chance!
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To Buster, who spent some time in my koi pond and didn’t
eat the fish. The fish thank you.
To African gray parrots everywhere. You talk, but
we don’t listen. Well, except for a handful of scientists…
And thanks to Discover magazine for teaching me
that African grays really do talk intelligently,
although not as rudely as a certain bird.
And thereby hangs the tale.
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
EPILOGUE
“I TAKE IT YOU weren’t satisfied to be quantum consciousness dispersed through eleven dimensions?”
Lynn Reilly stood in the living room of her little bungalow, the tropical breeze of Treasure Island blowing through open windows and screened doors. The furnishings, though sparse, were wicker with brightly colored pillows. Curtains matching the pillow covers—which Lynn had made herself—tossed gently in the breeze.
It should have been an idyllic evening scene: tropical breeze perfumed by exotic flowers, the sound of the surf in the distance, the sun settling low in the sky and casting a golden glow everywhere it touched.
Should have been being the operative phrase.
Lynn had forgotten all that beauty because she was standing in the doorway of the room staring at her Aunt Delphine.
Delphine looked pretty darn good. As if she’d had a face lift. Nothing exaggerated, just enough to take a few years off. Her skin tone was great, too. Lynn would have given her right arm to achieve that particular satiny rosy look.
So Delphine looked great. The only problem was, she shouldn’t have been standing in Lynn’s living room.
Because Delphine had died five years ago of a stroke.
Delphine smiled. “You could at least say, ‘Hi, Aunt Delphine. It’s been a while.’”
Instead, Lynn said, unable to wrap her mind around what was happening, “You’re supposed to be dead.”
“Pah!” Delphine replied, frowning. “Death is far overrated, dear! And by the way, you’re wrong about the number of dimensions.”
Lynn’s knees started to give way and she sagged onto the nearest chair. Was she really discussing quantum physics with her dead aunt? Shaking her head in shock, she asked, “Okay, so how many are there?”
“Sorry, dear,” Delphine said. “You’ll have to earn your Nobel Prize on that one.”
And that was Delphine, as enigmatic in the afterlife as she had been in life. Wasn’t she supposed to be playing harps with angels or something? How could God have let her escape from heaven to come to Treasure Island?
But then, given Delphine’s nature, the better question might have been: How could God have prevented her?
“You’re not supposed to be here,” Lynn said lamely.
“Probably true.” Delphine said. She was wearing her favorite green dress which was covered in huge red cabbage roses, and settled onto the other wicker chair. Well, not settled, exactly. She almost…floated. “But I thought I’d drop in anyway.”
“How soon can you drop out?” Lynn asked pointedly.
God, this was impossible. She loved Delphine. How could she not? The woman had raised her from the age of ten, when her parents had died in an accident. But she shouldn’t be here. Lynn was a scientist. Reality didn’t behave this way.
Did it?
“Lynn, honey. You and I need to talk.”
Uh oh, Lynn thought. Whenever Delphine said that, she was in for the Lecture.
“I can’t understand why in the world a young woman your age, with your training and credentials, would move to a tiny island to teach little kids. You should be at Stanford or MIT. There are hardly any eligible men here!”
“Delphine…” But then Lynn bit her tongue. She had had this discussion with Delphine before. Too many times. When she’d decided to major in physics and mathematics, Delphine had told her she would alienate men. When she had graduated summa cum laude and decided to pursue a Ph.D rather than a Mrs., Delphine had told her she would surely end up a lonely old woman.
“Oh, don’t purse up at me,” Delphine scolded. “Do you have any idea how blessed you are?”
Blessed? Lynn sat up straighter. Blessed? Blessed to have the world’s most interfering and manipulative aunt returned from the grave? Not that she didn’t love Delphine to pieces, but the last five years had been undeniably…calmer. More rational. Because nobody had been trying to make Lynn over into her own image.
Even as she thought it, Lynn realized she was verging on tears. Interfering and manipulative, yes, but so, so loving. Part of her wanted to fly across the room and try to hug her aunt just one more time. But the scientist in her erupted in a state of armed rebellion. This could not be real. It had to be an hallucination, and giving in to it would be dangerous to her sanity.
“I’m going to take a walk,” Lynn said, clutching frantically at the straws of her mental health. “I expect you to have vacated the premises by the time I return.”
“But we’re not finished!” Delphine said.
“Oh yes, Aunt Delphine,” Lynn said. “We are. Go juggle some comets, or pick a star to send into supernova…or whatever else you might have to do. But let me live my life, okay?”
Without waiting for an answer, Lynn rose and stormed out, tamping down irritation and fear, pondering the inevitability of what had just happened.
Of course Delphine would do this. Even if she was an hallucination.
REVEREND JACK MARKS was in his driveway, washing the ancient, cranky Jeep that was his emergency transportation. The island’s salt air made rust a constant problem, and keeping the Jeep clean was a near daily chore, at least when they weren’t having a drought. At the moment, car washing was limited to once a week.
But it wasn’t really a chore, for it gave Jack time to think about life, God and his place in the universe, time to meditate as he went through the repetitive, mechanical motions of scrubbing and rinsing, scrubbing and rinsing.
Nearby, the island’s pet alligator, Buster, waited on the grass for a spray from the hose. Buster, who’d lately been spending most of his time up at the airport, had apparently been driven into town by the island’s recent lack of rain. Jack obligingly hosed him from head to tail, listening to Buster’s groans of pleasure.
“Oooh, that feels good,” Jack said to the gator. Grinning, he hosed the beast yet again, even though he was well aware that he was wasting precious water. Even Bridal Falls had shrunk some for lack of rainwater. The pool beneath looked smaller, too. But Buster was a living being who needed his share of water, too, and as Jack thought about it, he decided Buster needed the water more than the Jeep. So he turned the hose back on the gator until the beast was in the midst of a muddy puddle.
Buster approved, rolling in it. So much for the scrubby lawn.
Jack was not the stereotypical image of a clergyman. He eschewed clerical garb for Hawaiian shirts, khaki shorts and leather sandals, even when he was leading worship. It wasn’t that he disrespected God. Far from it. He simply knew that God looked beyond what clothes a man was wearing, and was more interested in the cleanliness of the soul than the cleanliness of the suit. Treasure Island suited his view to a T: liberal and laid-back.
He glanced up as his new neighbor, the pretty dark-haired schoolteacher, emerged from the front of her house. So much for cleanliness of the soul. He fought down the urge to take a third glance, because upon the second one, he realized she certainly was fetching in bicycle shorts and a sports bra. He told himself not to notice, that women on Treasure Island often exercised in such garb, as the tropical heat would permit little else. And to be honest, with most of the women he saw dressed in that way, it wouldn’t have disturbed him.
But there was something about this woman that made his heart skip a beat. Maybe it was the dark eyes that seemed at once placid and deep, or the smile that could easily have substituted for the island’s power plant or even—so much for cleanliness of soul again—the long legs that seemed to carry her with such effortless grace. Whatever it was, this woman was certainly worth a fourth and fifth glance, if not an outright stare. Not the sort of thing a man of the cloth ought to do. But then, he was a man like any other, and he had the sneaking suspicion heaven would understand.
He was about to call out a friendly hello—having convinced himself that he meant nothing by it beyond the sort of neighborliness that typified the community here on Treasure Island—then hesitated when he realized she was not moving with her usual, casual grace. She was almost stomping, which, he could not help but notice, gave ever the slightest bounce in her…pectoral region. She was upset. Even angry, maybe. Certainly disturbed. Not the time for a friendly hello.
His first instinct was to mosey over that way and ask if something was wrong. But before he could make up his mind about a proper approach to something which might prove to be delicate, Lynn Reilly turned around and walked back into the house. Looking, Jack thought, rather like a woman determined to face a great unpleasantness. She disappeared inside and the screen door slapped closed behind her. Shrugging, Jack started washing his Jeep again.
A moment later, his head snapped up as he heard Lynn Reilly’s voice float clearly through her open windows.
“You,” Lynn said loudly, “were supposed to dissipate!”
TREASURE ISLAND RESIDENTS rarely minded their own business. Indeed, on this island, if you suggested that someone should mind own business, hewas likely to look at you as if you had inquired about the marital status of a tuna sandwich. It was one of those places where, if you didn’t know what you were doing, someone else surely did. Jack had only a few more scruples. In short, if he learned something in confidence, he held it in confidence. On this island that rarely happened.
Still, he hesitated. He hadn’t yet met the schoolteacher. She’d arrived just before the opening of the term, and he’d been away on a rare vacation. Bursting into her house demanding to know if something was wrong seemed hardly likely to endear him to her.
But curiosity had sunk its teeth into him, and if Jack had any significant flaw, it was his curiosity. Since his childhood, people had been saying that curiosity killed the cat, but that hadn’t slowed Jack any. Piqued, he stepped over Buster with a muttered apology and strode straight toward the new schoolteacher’s house. Behind him, Buster lifted his head from the mud curiously.
After all, he told himself, the sanity of one of the island’s very few teachers was a matter of concern. So was her safety. Either one constituted ample excuse to butt in. Especially on Treasure Island.
He supposed he didn’t look very reputable, pretty much wet as he was and covered with soap stains and grime from scrubbing the Jeep’s wheels. His nails would have shamed a coal miner. So as soon as he rang Lynn Reilly’s bell, he shoved his hands into his pockets.
She appeared on the other side of the screen door, looking harried and maybe even a tad frightened. “Yes?”
“Ms. Reilly, I’m your neighbor, Reverend—”
“Yes, I know,” she interrupted. “Jack Marks. I’m sorry, but this isn’t a good time for a social chat.”
Give her points for being blunt, he thought. He always liked that in a person. “Social chatting can wait,” he said, giving his best ministerial smile. “I understand that just dropping by can be inconvenient, although on this island it’s hard to escape.”
“Then what?” she asked.
Maybe she was a little too blunt. And there was something about the way she was standing, as if she were trying to block something from his view. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I heard you while I was washing my car, and I thought you sounded…distressed.”
To his amazement, color rose to the roots of her hair. Had he interrupted some kind of tryst? But no, he was absolutely certain that she had sounded as if someone were bothering her.
“I…uh…” Words appeared to have utterly escaped her, surely a strange state of affairs for a middle-school teacher. Her color deepened even more, reminding him of a freshly boiled lobster…although he had long since sworn off eating anything that had to be cooked alive.
“Unexpected quantum field collapse.”
He gaped at her. What language was she speaking? She made a visible effort to gather herself.
Then a recognizable word burst out of her. “Telephone,” she said.
“Telephone?”
“Telephone.”
“What about the telephone?” he asked.
“Someone was bothering me. I hung up on her.”
He nodded. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you then.”
“No. I mean, it’s okay, it’s just that, well, I have an interfering aunt.” She gave him a weak smile.
“I have an interfering mother,” he said with genuine sympathy. “Treasure Island is just far enough away.”
Her smile was sickly. “Aunt Delphine is…never far enough away.”
“She can afford the international long distance, eh?”
She nodded. “It’s as if she were right in the room.”
He chuckled. “I’m more fortunate. My mother insists that I call her.”
“I wish Aunt Delphine would learn the same manners.”
“Well, I’m sorry to have bothered you. I’ll just go back to washing my car then.”
“Thanks for caring.”
“Sure.” More polite smiles. He was halfway back to his Jeep when something made him look around. Lynn Reilly still stood in her doorway, behind the screen, watching.
Some impulse, born of the devil he later thought, caused him to say, “Why don’t you come over for dinner tonight? Just a simple salad and grilled fish, but I have plenty.”
“Thank you! I’d love that.”
He thought her acceptance sounded awfully relieved for the circumstances, but he shrugged inwardly and returned to his car.
Then, through the open window, he heard Lynn Reilly say, “Just leave me alone!”
He winced, hoping she didn’t mean him.
“GOT A LADY COMING over tonight?”
The voice came from the yard next door, and it belonged to Zedediah Burch, aka Zed-the-Bait-Guy. Not that there were that many other Zeds on the island. None, in fact. But somehow it was always Zed-the-Bait-Guy, run together into a single word. He caught and sold fresh chum for the commercial fishermen and the few sport fishing boats the island boasted. You could always count on Zed-the-Bait-Guy for exactly what you needed to entice the kind of fish you were looking for.
Jack paused in the process of spreading out a tablecloth on the slightly rusted wrought-iron table on his small brick patio, a patio that rippled and dipped a bit because his predecessor hadn’t thought to make a level bed of sand to support the bricks, all of which looked like castoffs from a brickyard.
“What makes you think that?” he asked.
Zed-the-Bait-Guy shrugged and moved a wad of chewing tobacco a little more firmly into his cheek. “Tablecloth.”
“Oh.” Jack looked at the oilcloth he was spreading, a sheet he’d bought from Hanratty’s general store a couple years back. It was already cracking along the folds. “You think this is fancy?”
“I think you wouldn’t bother for me.”
Jack had to grin at that. “You’re right, Zed. For you I’d let the rust show.”
“Rust adds to the taste,” Zed said. “So who is it?”
“The new teacher. I thought I’d be neighborly.”
Zed nodded and turned to spit into the spittoon he kept on his side of the property line. The wad landed with an audible ping that sent a shudder up the back of Jack’s neck. He had to remind himself that millions of viewers watched baseball players do exactly the same thing, dozens of times during each game. In glorious full-color close-ups, too. The reminder didn’t help.
Jack swallowed hard, then spoke. “Could you move that a bit farther away while we’re eating tonight?”
Zed shrugged. “Won’t be here. Big game tonight.”
“What are the stakes?” Jack asked. He didn’t have to ask what kind of game. Poker was the game on Treasure Island.
“Me and Fred Hanks are facing off with Mick McDonald and Joe Cranston. Winner gets to ask Hester LeBlanc out to dinner.”
“Ahh.”
Hester had been widowed nearly two years ago when her fisherman husband had gone overboard during a severe squall. There was some talk that he’d gone over on purpose, rather than face Hester’s anger, since she’d just learned he was sparking around with Camille Danza. Some went so far as to suggest that Hester…arranged…his untimely demise, although Jack saw nothing in her that would hint at such a possibility. Even on Treasure Island, sometimes gossip was just that—gossip.
Regardless, thus far the island’s middle-aged, would-be lotharios had respected her mourning. Apparently they had decided that long enough was long enough. “Good luck.”
Zed shrugged philosophically. “Winning only means you get to ask first. Doesn’t mean she’ll say yes.”
“True.”
“That schoolteacher though…” He smiled. “Quite a looker.”
“I hadn’t noticed.” Liar! Jack felt instantly ashamed. He was a preacher for heaven’s sake. He had no business lying.
“Maybe you’d better get Buck Shanahan to fly you into Aruba to get your eyes checked then,” Zed suggested, with a twinkle in his eye that made clear he did not believe Jack one iota. “Whatcha making?”
“Just salad and grilled fish.”
Zed shook his head. “No dessert? No taters? Look, I got a couple of bakers you can have. They’re pretty good cooked on the coals. And I have some rum cake I picked up in Aruba. Ain’t been opened yet.”
Before Jack could say anything, Zed was hurrying toward his back door.
Jack shook his head smiling and finished spreading the oilcloth. That was one of the things he loved about this island. On Treasure Island, being neighborly wasn’t merely a phrase; it was a way of life.
When Lynn Reilly arrived, he had the potatoes wrapped in foil and baking on the hot gray coals, the salad tossed and ready, and the fish seasoned with dill and on the rack, prepped for grilling.
He’d even dug into the church’s supply of communion wine for a bottle of passable red, although he knew he ought to serve white wine with fish. Unfortunately, his budget didn’t allow for buying wine from the only supplier on the island, the casino.
“Smells delicious,” Lynn said appreciatively as she took a chair at the table and accepted a goblet of wine. She had changed into a white sun dress that caught the red of the setting sun and reflected it back as pink. The sky overhead seemed ablaze tonight, probably heralding rain for tomorrow.
“I hope you like dill,” he said, reaching for the wire fish basket.
“Love it.”
The potatoes were done, so he put the fish over the heat. It would cook fast, even though the coals had burned low and gray.
“It’s nice of you to ask me over,” Lynn said. “I’ve got a grill out back and a patio, too, but every time I think of actually grilling, it seems like a lot of effort for just one person.” She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table. “It’s funny, when I moved here, I was sure I was going to do all those things that come to mind when you move to the tropics. Cook and eat outside, spend hours on the beach or in the water.”
He chuckled. “I know. It turns out you have to make a real effort to do it, just the way it was back on the mainland. I fight the battle every day.”
“Do you?” She looped her fingers and rested her chin on them.
“Yep. I don’t know if I feel lazy because of the weather and the lifestyle, or if it really is too much trouble to bother for one person.”
She laughed, her brown eyes sparkling. “The air is so soft it’s almost tranquilizing. And when the breeze starts in the evening, I just want to sit and enjoy it.”
“Yeah, I have the same problem. The longer you live here, the easier it gets to function, but at first you just want to go on a permanent vacation.”
“School keeps me busy, thank goodness. Some things can’t be ignored, like teaching a class or grading papers.”
He flipped the fish over. “How many students do you have?”
“All the younger ones, from first grade up, then high-school physics one and two, calculus and applied math.” She held up a hand. “It sounds like a lot, but I have a total of sixty-three kids.”
“So lots of individual attention.”
“That’s what attracted me to this island in the first place. With so few students in each class, we can explore more. And I can get some of them hooked on science, so maybe they’ll stay with it after they graduate.”
“You’re passionate,” he said.
She shrugged. “There’s a big universe out there. The better we understand it, the better we’ll know our place in it. Maybe we’ll stop acting as if it’s our garbage can. In fact, I’m thinking about taking some of the classes for a day trip to see an island in its pristine state. One of the parents was telling me about a small island where the only fresh water is in a rain pool.”
Jack nodded and tested the fish. “Just another minute.” Looking back at her, he continued. “I don’t think our kids appreciate just how important rain pools are to our survival. This island would be dead without rain, and we’ve had to dig cisterns in the rock up on the volcano to ensure a steady flow. It doesn’t just magically come out of the tap.”
“It doesn’t do that anywhere,” she smiled. “But yes, I agree with your point. It’s especially critical on these small islands. Rain is truly the gift of life.”
“Just ask Mars.” He removed the fish from the grill and gently pushed a piece onto each plate. Then he forked the potatoes out of the coals and set them on a separate plate. “I’m afraid I don’t have sour cream, but I have—”
“I have sour cream,” said a voice from the deepening dark next door. Zed stepped out of the shadows. For once tobacco didn’t create a bulge in his cheek. “You must be the new schoolteacher.”
Jack rolled his eyes. “Lynn, this is Zed.”
“Zed-the-Bait-Guy,” Lynn said quickly.
“Hi.” Zed extended a hand in greeting and smiled broadly, a mistake considering what the chaw had done to his teeth. “Let me get that sour cream for you.”
Jack put his hands on his narrow hips. “I thought you had a poker game?”
Zed smiled. “Was just getting ready to leave.”
Right, Jack thought. And people complained about his curiosity.
Zed returned in thirty seconds with a carton of sour cream. “Keep what you don’t use,” he said. “Seeing as how I can get more when I buy more spuds.”
“Thank you,” Lynn said.
“Yeah, thanks,” Jack said. “Your game?”
“My game?” Zed blinked. “Oh, yeah, my game. Wouldn’t want somebody else to get at Hester first because I didn’t show. See ya later.”
After his footsteps vanished into the sound of the surf that was only a few blocks away, Lynn asked, “Does Hester know they’re playing for her?”
Jack reached for a spoon to use with the sour cream and passed both to Lynn. “Probably. There aren’t a lot of secrets around here.”
She nodded. “Makes sense.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “You think so?”
“Why not?” she asked. “Human attraction is largely random anyway. It’s a matter of pheromones—whether the other person smells like a viable reproductive partner. And we don’t even know it. At the most basic level, it’s about whether proteins in our brain are open or folded, a largely random function of precisely where the potentiality wave collapses into a point particle. So why not turn it over to the deal of a card?”
Jack looked at her, trying to find words. “Umm…”
She laughed. “Sorry. I go over the top sometimes.”
“It’s just that I’ve never heard love spoken of in such…cold terms.”
“Noooo,” she said. “It’s not cold at all. It’s quite beautiful, in fact. The universe deals to each of us in turn, random shuffling at the Planck scale, and yet we’re responsible for how we play every card we’re dealt. It’s a mathematical and ethical symphony beyond imagining.”
“Planck scale?” Jack asked, then shook his head. “Never mind. How’s the fish?”
“Fantastic! I don’t think I’ve ever had fish this fresh.”
“It came in on the boat this morning. One of the perks of living here.”
For a little while they were quiet, enjoying the food and the deepening tropical evening. As the last of the daylight faded, two citronella candles in clay pots provided the illumination. If there were any mosquitoes on the island, Lynne had yet to run into them, but the candles drew the attention of an equally successful pest: moths.
With her chin resting in her hand, she watched as Jack gently waved them away, saving them from death by fatal attraction. She couldn’t help but find it touching; surely he was the first person she’d ever met who actually cared what happened to a moth.
“These fellows,” he said as he waved them away, “are harmless, though not particularly pretty. It won’t be long though before the real butterflies start emerging. The colors are glorious.”
“That would make a great class project for my younger students.”
“Just don’t kill them to examine them.”
She sat up a little straighter. “Observation without interference?”
“Exactly,” he said. “You can catch them alive, look them over, then let them go.”
“You realize, of course, that observation without interference is not even theoretically possible,” she said. “Heisenberg? Schrödinger? Wave-particle duality? Double slit experiments? Any of this ring a bell?”
“Umm…you’ve gone into that other language again.”
“That was English,” Lynn said. “Well, Heisenberg and Schrödinger are German names, but still…it can’t come as a shock to you that we change the universe whenever we look at it.”
“When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back into you?” Jack asked.
“Well, that’s Friedrich Nietzsche. He was a philosopher, not a physicist.”
“Is there a difference anymore?”
Lynn smiled. “Touché. When we start to look at the most fundamental building blocks of the universe, we do tend to blur that line, don’t we?”
Jack shrugged. “I really couldn’t say. I don’t know all that much about it. But listening to you…well, I’m reminded of some of our more esoteric conversations back in seminary. How many angels really can dance on the head of a pin, and the like.”
Lynn felt the flush rise to her cheeks. Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was the shock of a dinner invitation on the heels of Delphine’s visitation. “I’m sorry, Jack.”
He held up a hand. “No, don’t be sorry. I have to say, I’m fascinated. Truly.”
Fascinated. That was a word that could mean a lot of things. Some of them purely intellectual. Most of them not. The latter could be…dangerous. Very dangerous.
She sighed.
“Something wrong?”
Lynn shook her head. “Just tell me to hush when I start babbling about things that sound too weird.”
“On Treasure Island?” he asked with a wink. “Trying to define weird here is like stepping into a tar pit.”
“But—”
“Lynn,” he interrupted, “just be yourself. Don’t try to impress me, because you already have. And don’t try to play to my expectations, because I don’t have any. If I’d wanted to be surrounded by staid, ordinary, never-risk-looking-weird people, I’d have stayed in Connecticut.”
He waved his hand over the candles again, sending a few more moths back to the safety of the shadows. She took the opportunity to study him, really study him. She’d spent most of the evening avoiding directly looking at Jack except in brief glimpses. The interface of observer and observed was never more apparent than in human interaction. All her life, she’d had a strong tendency to watch people, to examine every movement, every facial tic, every shift of the eye or the posture, looking for cues to their thoughts. It had consistently made people uncomfortable, to the point where she’d trained herself not to look at people directly. That had grown into a shyness that had plagued her through childhood and into the present day.
Right now, however, she decided he was an attractive man. Person. Not a movie-star type, but handsome enough in a laid-back sort of way. His face seemed to want to smile, and laugh lines decorated the corners of his eyes and etched the edges of his mouth. The sun had bronzed him, nothing surprising here in the tropics, and left his brown hair streaked with blond. Almost a surfer look in a way, except his eyes held so much more depth.
That was when he realized she was staring at him. To her astonishment, he didn’t squirm. Instead, he smiled, revealing great teeth. “You look like you’ve never seen anyone push moths away from flames before.”
“I haven’t.”
He nodded. “I actually find it an interesting paradox. God gave most creatures a desire to live and the means of survival. Then we have the moth, who seems willing to immolate himself just to approach the light. One would think the heat would warn him off.”
“Not if he can’t feel it.”
He nodded. “Or…if the light is so beautiful the moth wants to approach at any cost.”
Instinctively, she looked into the candle flame. “It is beautiful.”
“And for the moth it is at once a desirable goal and a deadly trap.”
She glanced his way. “Are we talking metaphor here?”
“Why do people always think I’m speaking in parables?”
“Maybe because you’re a minister.”
He laughed at that. “Sorry, I was just marveling at one of nature’s oddities.”
“There certainly are a few of those. Although…”
She leaned on her elbows on the table. “Well, I shouldn’t I guess.”
“What?” he asked.
“The moths aren’t attracted to the flame.”
“Is that a fact?” His eyebrow lifted.
She nodded. “It’s actually the warm candle wax that’s the attraction. The infrared signature of warm candle wax coincides with that of the sex-attractant chemical emitted by female moths. Light-conducting spines on their antennae carry that signal to their brains, and they think there’s a…well…they think there’s a horny female moth there.”
“That would certainly explain the self-immolation,” Jack said. “Huh. So it’s not the flame at all.”
“I didn’t mean to spoil it for you.”
“Not at all! Why would you say that?”
She shrugged. “People are more comfortable with the familiar. The assumption is woven into the fabric of our language—‘Like a moth to flame.’ Then science comes along and shows something else entirely. People resent it when science turns their beliefs upside down.”
“Some people do,” he said. “I’m not one of them.”
Lynn nodded, wondering if his casual smile were covering something else. In her experience, discussing science with religious people tended to end very badly.
He paused for a moment, then continued, “Lynn, I’ve always felt that we miss so much if we don’t realize that the entire universe around us is full of wonders. Every breath of air, every beat of our hearts, is a kind of miracle. A beautiful, beautiful gift. Understanding why it happens, at a scientific level, doesn’t disprove the miracle. It helps us to appreciate the miracle even more.”
Right then and there, Lynn decided she liked Jack. And that, she reminded herself, could be a serious problem.
She jumped to her feet—not too quickly, she hoped—and said, “I’ve had a wonderful time, Jack. Thank you so much. But I have a stack of papers waiting to be graded.”
He rose immediately. “Then get to it, teach.” With a grin, he shook her hand. “See you around.”
She nodded and fled while trying to look as if she weren’t fleeing. This was going to be bad. Very bad. A neighbor who cared enough to save the tiniest creature from its own urges, and wasn’t offended when she shot holes in his worldview. Someone she could appreciate and also talk to. Yes, this was going to be very bad.
To her great relief, she found her living room empty of Delphine. She plopped into a chair and drew a deep breath, taking a moment to look into every dark corner of the room, making sure Delphine wasn’t hiding in the shadows before letting out a deep sigh.
She was alone.
Alone was good.
She could handle alone.
Right?
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