Rachel Lee - No Ordinary Hero

A faint flush stung her cheeks. “Stupid, huh?”

He shook his head. “I was just thinking that you look like you could take on the whole damn world. That’s a compliment.”

“Thanks.” But now she felt foolish. She’d investigated odd sounds many times in her life, but never before had she felt compelled to carry a knife on the hunt. “Major overreaction.”

“Not really. Not when you consider that Colleen has been complaining of noises. That’d raise my action-alert level, too.”

He really was a very nice man. Her embarrassment seeped away and she turned for the stairs. “Let’s go get that salad.”

He also turned out to be a comfortable companion. She felt no pressure to talk as she finished the salad and served them at the table. She often spent large chunks of her time inside her own head, busy with her hands, and most of the time she preferred it that way. There was a soothing rhythm in her work, and it left her feeling content at day’s end.

Someone who could share that silence while seeming to remain comfortable was unusual indeed.

“I don’t spend much time on cooking,” she said apologetically as she put the last bottle of dressing on the table. “Healthy foods are the best I can do, as quickly as possible. Oh! I have some frozen garlic bread, if you’d like some.”

“This is fine.” He smiled and gestured her to sit with him. “I don’t cook much at all myself. A fresh salad is a treat.”

She returned his smile and motioned him to serve himself first. “With Colleen I probably keep a better eye on things than I would otherwise.”

“Understandable. I think the animals in my kennel have a far better diet than I do. When I get sick of bottles, cans and frozen foods, I go to Maude’s.”

“Maude’s is one of my guilty pleasures, too. I’m surprised I haven’t seen you there.”

“I don’t go often.” Something in his tone suggested there was a reason for that, and she wondered but didn’t say anything. She didn’t know him well enough to ask any personal questions.

She paused just as she poked her fork into a bit of tomato, as the sound of the slamming door sounded once again, this time in her head. “I’m sorry,” she said after a moment. “I don’t think I can hold a normal conversation right now.”

He put his own fork down and looked attentively at her. “The noise we heard?”

“That and the noises Colleen is hearing. Yesterday I was wondering if she was imagining them, and not knowing what was worse—her imagining them or the sounds being real when I couldn’t find the source.” She tightened her lips. “I didn’t imagine that slam.”

“Hardly. I heard it, too, remember?”

She hesitated, then said, “Colleen has been through hell. So much so that I keep waiting for her to shatter in some way. I mean, to lose your dad and be paralyzed all at once, at her age …” She trailed off as her throat tightened. Finally she found her voice gain. “Except for the first month or so, she’s been an amazing trouper.”

“I get that impression. So you were wondering if her hearing things was the shattering you feared?”

“It crossed my mind. Awful of me even to think that.”

“No, I think it was reasonable to wonder. Look, I doctor animals, but I’ve seen them with post-traumatic stress reactions, too. With some of them, they seem fine at first, and then one day they start acting out somehow. Your fear was entirely reasonable. But apparently that’s not what’s going on.”

“Apparently not. And now I’ve got to wonder what caused that sound. Maybe we misinterpreted something else.”

“That’s possible.” He pushed back from the table. “Tell you what. I’m going to go through the house and slam doors. You holler out when you hear the one that sounds like what we heard.”

She nearly gaped at him, then felt almost embarrassed, though she wasn’t sure why. “I think I invited you to join me for dinner. You should finish eating first.”

A soft chuckle escaped him. “Salad will keep for five minutes, and I’m as curious as you are. Let me go slam some doors. You sing out if one of them sounds the same.”

In the doorway, he paused to look back. “Stand where you were before, if you don’t mind. That way we can be sure it was the same sound.”

“Okay.” She was actually glad to hop up and go stand by the counter, facing the same direction. She needed to solve this problem, the sooner the better. Then maybe she could put Colleen’s fears to rest and silence her own concerns.

Maybe.

She stood leaning against the counter, eyes closed, listening to slam after slam, first from downstairs, then from upstairs. The bangs moved through the house, but by the time Mike returned she was certain of one thing.

“None of them, huh?” he asked as he returned to the kitchen.

She pivoted to face him. “The sound was similar on the upstairs doors. But I noticed something else.”

“What?”

“The vibration passed through the whole house when you slammed them.”

His eyes widened a hair. “So we heard the sound, but there was no vibration. You’re right. I didn’t feel the door slam.”

“Nope.” And what had been a small worry blossomed into a big fear.

“This is not good,” he said.

She couldn’t have agreed more.

“I don’t believe in hauntings,” she said as they washed up after the meal. Hunger had pretty much deserted them, and there was a lot of salad left. And haunting was the only other explanation her mind kept turning up for the sound of a door slamming when none had.

“No?” His question was neutral.

She looked at him as she handed him the last plate to dry and realized he wasn’t looking at her. “Do you?”

“I was raised in a different culture.”

She reached for a spare towel and dried her hands. “I’d like to hear about that if you don’t mind telling me.”

He shrugged one shoulder and put the dried plate in the cupboard with the rest. “I’m a man of science. I’m supposed to believe in the mechanistic view of life.”

“But you don’t?”

“Only insofar as it’s useful.”

Curious, she grabbed a couple of fresh coffee cups and filled them, putting them on the table before he could refuse and thus insist it was time to leave. She was well aware that she was taking a lot of his time, but she wasn’t ready to let him go. Couldn’t, if she were to be honest about it. Sitting in this house alone wondering about that noise was apt to keep her up all night.

He hesitated but didn’t argue. She made up her mind right then that one of these days she was going to get to the root of the way he hesitated about so many things. But not now. She had just asked enough of him for one night.

“I’m sorry I can’t offer you a more comfortable place to sit.”

One corner of his mouth lifted. “I’m a table-and-chair kind of person. My family held every gathering around a table.”

“Mine, too.” At least a point of connection.

As soon as she returned to her seat at the table, he joined her. “So what did you mean?” she prodded gently.

“I’m Cheyenne. I know, dirty word around here.”

“Not in this house,” she informed him firmly.

Again that half smile of his. “How’d you avoid it?”

“I was always weird.”

This time a real laugh escaped him. “Weird how?”

“Well, I got into a bit of trouble when I was six. I was in religious education class and when the teacher said Judas went to hell for betraying Christ, I asked how that could be possible, since God had planned it all and somebody had to do it.”

“Wow. How much trouble did you get into?”