“Why are you here?” she asked.
“Is this the existential portion of the conversation?”
“Answering a question with another question is a sign of avoidance.” She wrapped her arms around her knees and pulled herself in tighter. “It also reveals an intent to conceal. Are you hiding something from us, Xander?”
That she’d dropped the formality with his name felt like progress, but the way she continued to watch him made him feel like prey beneath the talons of a persistent hawk.
“No one’s life is an open book. No matter how fast you might try to turn the pages.”
Her lips quirked and her eyes glimmered with appreciation. “A wordsmith after my own heart. Why did you take this job?”
“Because I needed to.” It didn’t occur to him to lie. Not to her.
“But not because you felt a connection to the work.” She leaned forward and those amethyst eyes of hers peered deeply into his. “Intent matters, Xander. The energy you put into something matters. This sanctuary might be some throwaway project to you, something to make your résumé sparkle and shine, but this place matters to us. It matters to me. I suppose it might come off as eccentric or silly to someone like you, protecting creatures as innocuous as butterflies. Just as I—” she touched her fingers to her heart “—might think that the stone monstrosities humans create in reverence to themselves come off as harmful and egocentric. But it’s respect that keeps us from voicing our misconceptions, isn’t it?”
“You don’t think I respect you?”
“I’m not talking about me,” Calliope admonished with the expertise of a teacher chiding a naughty student. “I’m talking about the work. I’m asking you to consider that building something as innocuous and simplistic as a butterfly sanctuary might have a longer lasting impact than a shopping mall in Greece. Or a high-rise in Chicago.” She pushed to her feet and brushed her hands down the back of her dress as footsteps pounded inside the house.
“I’ll go open the gates for our guests and get the baskets ready!” Stella bounded out of the house, feet bare, flowered dress ruffling around her ankles as she darted down the stairs.
“What is it you want from me?” Xander asked Calliope as she stepped off the porch. He didn’t like the idea he’d disappointed her in some way. In any way. And yet...he had.
“An open mind. Listen, Xander. Not to me. Not to Gil or anyone else who might have an opinion of what should be done. Listen to all that surrounds you. Listen to your heart.” She tapped her ear and smiled as the heaviness in her eyes faded under the morning sun. “That’s where all answers can be found.”
CHAPTER SIX
“TRY IT AGAIN!” Socket wrench in hand, Calliope stepped back from the hood of her normally trustworthy car and crossed her fingers. Click. Click, click, click.
Stella sagged in the driver’s seat. “It’s dead. Now what do we do?”
Calliope swallowed hard, frustration knotting so hard in her stomach it almost hurt. They were already an hour later than she wanted to be for the drive to their mother’s care facility. If only she hadn’t promised Emmaline she’d be there today. If there was one thing Calliope never did, it was break a promise.
Even if the person she’d made the promise to wouldn’t remember.
Her heart stumbled as tears burned the back of her throat. Trips to visit their mother were the only reason she kept the car in the first place. Without it...
“Sounds like your starter.”
Calliope spun at the voice, shocked and a little unnerved at the way Xander casually stepped out from around the house. He’d bought one of Stella’s baskets, a sturdy one with a vine-wrapped handle, and filled it with a healthy selection of produce along with a cellophane bag of scones.
The snarky retort poised on her lips unsettled her. Why was his mere appearance enough to set her on edge? Because no man had any right to look as beautiful as he did walking through her gardens, black hair blowing in the breeze like some Renaissance painter on his way to his studio. He’d rolled up his shirtsleeves and left the buttons at his collar undone. And his shoes—those gorgeous impractical shoes—were caked in mud and dirt.