* * *
Chase was happy to see his mother show up and have dinner with them that evening. Mary had her own home about a mile down the road from the main ranch house. Living alone, he ate for one. But now, with Cari agreeing to stay for an unknown amount of time, there were two people he had to cook for.
Mary had dropped over and she brought a huge casserole of bread pudding, still warm from the oven, for dessert. He was grateful. As usual, his mother had saved the day. She’d even brought homemade caramel to drip over the dessert. And luckily, when he was ten years old, she’d started teaching him how to cook, and not just open a can and eat out of it, either. Tonight, he’d had some leftovers and made them each a beefsteak salad replete with spinach leaves, European greens, yellow pear and red tomatoes, shredded carrots, celery, and his special homemade Italian dressing. Luckily, he had some leftover biscuits he’d made from a day ago, to add to the meal.
Cari had come out from her suite when the doorbell had rung. He’d caught sight of her, and she was wearing a pair of soft green linen slacks with a pale yellow long-sleeved tee. Her hair had a bluish tint to it as she moved across the living room in a pair of cream-colored shoes. Chase tried to quell his physical and emotional reaction to her. He knew from her résumé she was single. Did she have a man in her life? A woman? Nowadays it wasn’t good to assume anything about a person’s gender until it became known. He had seen an almost unearthly glow around her face as she stood talking with the bees earlier today. Unable to shake what he saw, he knew he was seeing something . . . well . . . miraculous, sort of . . . He had not had the time he needed to really digest and absorb that incredible, out-of-time moment. Her whole demeanor seemed to change. It wasn’t obvious, it was something he sensed more than saw.
Having been a hunter and sniper, Chase had learned to rely on things that weren’t in any military manual or, for that matter, anywhere else. He sometimes felt invisible to the man he was hunting, as if in another dimension but able to see into the normal third dimension where everyone else lived.
There had always been a shift when that invisibility cloaked him, when he needed not to be seen or detected, waiting for his quarry. And that same shift of energy happened today, out there on that knoll where Cari stood quietly, unmoving, in front of the beehives. Maybe she was right; he read too much science fiction. Wryly, he smiled to himself. There was something . . . well . . . magical, about Cari. What was it? He would dig for that answer until he knew. That glow around her face reminded him of a saint with a halo around their head. What had caused that glow? He believed in what he saw. There was this faint, almost golden glow that came to her face as she communicated with the bees.
And he didn’t look too hard at why he wanted her to stay here. Maybe the bees were an excuse, because the woman was certainly unlike any other woman he had ever known. And Chase had seen and been with his share of women. He’d always seen women as somewhat mysterious, unknowable, and yet, like a proverbial moth to a flame, he was drawn to the opposite sex. It wasn’t their physical form or face that drew him first. No, it was something else, something gossamer and unseeable. An energy he felt, maybe? Energy wasn’t seen, but one could sure as hell see it in action and motion in this 3D world of theirs. Wind couldn’t be seen, but it could wreak havoc, even death, on humans if a tornado or hurricane hit an area. Gravity couldn’t be seen, but when an avalanche of fifty tons of rocks exploded when there was an earthquake in Afghanistan, less than a mile from his hide, those bus-sized boulders all rolled down that mountain, because gravity proved its existence in spades.
In his business of being a sniper, he never talked about his “shift,” as he referred to it. But one day, when back at the base, another sniper, a friend of his, Jason, had just come in off another mission. They sat in the cantina with cold beers between their roughened hands, trading sniper stories. They were pretty damned drunk at that point, three pitchers of beer shared between them, a “coming down” from the constant danger they were in for weeks at a time, he supposed. And then, Jason told him how something weird had happened when he found his quarry, and he felt like he became invisible to the Afghan tribesmen nearby as he stalked his enemy. He didn’t know what it was, or that it had really happened, but it was a strange feeling, as if moving through another veil, as he referred to it, and he couldn’t any longer be detected as he set up to take the shot.
Chase had played dumb, but listened raptly to his friend. He wasn’t sure he wanted to confirm that shift or feeling to Jason, for fear someone would send him to a psychiatrist and he’d be given a medical discharge from the Marine Corps. Still . . . as they parted to stagger back to their bunks to sleep off the beer, that story Jason shared had never left him.
He nodded in Cari’s direction as she came to a halt at the edge of the U-shaped kitchen that had a long island in the center of it. “That’s my mother, Mary. Would you get the door?”
“Sure,” she said. “Finally, it will be nice to meet her in person.”
Chase brought the sheet of biscuits out of the oven that had warmed them up. So? What had he seen today with Cari? She hadn’t disappeared or become invisible. But she had that unearthly glow around her face. Was she aware of it? Did she feel something happening when she talked with the bees? Hopefully, he could gain her trust and she would open up more. His sniper mind was used to ferreting through a lot of debris, and finding proof of what he sought. Mary had always said she thought he’d make a great police detective. And even the sheriff, Dan Seabert, had said the same thing of him. He had to be patient with Cari, gain her trust and allow her to open up to him. Did she have a secret regarding what he saw earlier? Was she really of the fey people? Not really a human, but here for some reason? He liked the mystery she presented. It was a challenge to him, rather exciting and unexpected. Who was Cari Taylor? Really?
“Hellooooo,” Mary sang, coming through the door.
“Hey, Mom,” he called. “Mary, meet Cari. Cari, meet my mother, Mary.”
Mary grinned and hugged Cari’s shoulder, quickly releasing her. “Oh! I’ve waited for this moment, Cari! Welcome! We’re so glad you came to see us!” She put down a casserole dish on the nearby kitchen counter and then shed her lightweight blue spring coat, hanging it on a wooden peg near the door.
“Wonderful to meet you, Mrs. Bishop.”
“Oh, pshaw! Call me Mary.” She pointed to the casserole. “Bread pudding for dessert tonight! Made it myself! Would you carry it into the kitchen, slide it into the oven so we can warm it up?”
“Of course,” Cari said.
Mary smoothed down her bright red slacks and walked up to the table where Chase was placing the warmed biscuits into a blue glass bowl. “Mmmmm, smells good, son. What are we having for dinner tonight?”
“Leftovers,” he said, and grinned. “Steak salad.”
“I was hungry for vegetables today,” Mary said, taking the bowl of biscuits that now had a red-and-white striped towel over them to keep them warm, to the table. “You must have been reading my mind again!” Mary turned and looked at Cari, who was closing the stove door. “You know? My son is probably gonna scare the pants off you, Cari. He reads minds. Scares me sometimes!” She chortled, going into the kitchen.