Home to Harmony. Dawn Atkins

late than never for you.” Her mother pushed to her feet, arms trembling, and led Christine to a half-dozen pedal-powered potter wheels and motioned Christine onto a clay-splattered stool. “Now sit.”

      In for a penny, in for a pound, Christine thought, sitting. She’d have to share that with Marcus, when she told him his advice had worked.

      “BUT I CAN’T do MY homework,” David whined as Christine drove him into New Mirage for his first appointment with Dr. Mike. “Dial-up’s too slow. It freezes all the time.”

      “You don’t need the Internet once you’ve downloaded the assignments. Look, do you want to be a junior when school starts or not?” She gritted her teeth and twisted her hands on the steering wheel. Losing her temper wouldn’t help a bit. “You made a deal, David.”

      “I’m sick of the deal. Let’s go home. I hate it here. It’s boring and stupid. There’s nothing to do.”

      “There’s plenty to do. You’re just not doing any of it.” He’d been assigned to work in the garden with Marcus and help Bogie in the greenhouse, but he was constantly wandering off. Sullen with her, full of complaints, he stayed mostly in his room, except when he talked to Brigitte, and he was sneaking in extra calls, Christine was certain.

      David showed no improvement, but at least Christine had made progress at the clay works in the past week. The agency’s designer was putting together the Web site using digital shots Christine had sent of Aurora’s most beautiful pieces and Christine had been contacting previous clients about new orders, as well as generating new business with cold calls to tourist boutiques around the state. Maybe boosting the commune’s income made Christine a slave to the capitalist overlords, but she didn’t care. Aurora and Bogie must have huge medical bills to handle. This was a way Christine could help.

      Aurora came out to the barn each morning to issue opinions, question everything and generally slow things down. The first two days, Christine steamed with annoyance, barely holding her tongue. But she gradually saw this was Aurora’s way to hang on to the place a little. She looked so relieved when Christine would suggest Aurora head back to “handle things in the house,” which was code for lying down.

      Christine had downloaded heart surgery postoperative instructions and read them out loud to Aurora, over her strenuous objections. She was supposed to rest every day, take breaks between activities, avoid stairs, not cross her legs, not lift anything over five pounds and not drive.

      The good news was that if she followed the rules, in six to eight weeks, she’d be back to normal, with decades of life ahead of her, which relieved Christine immensely.

      Christine parked in front of Dr. Mike’s office, which used to be a Laundromat, crossing her fingers that this visit would change things.

      Dr. Mike wore an Indian tunic and flowing pants, and his office smelled of patchouli and was ringed with shelves of crystals, stoppered bottles of herbal remedies and books on alternative medicine. Okay, so not traditional therapy, but if the man helped David, Christine didn’t care if he used a Ouija board and danced under a full moon.

      Leaving David in his hands, Christine headed to Parsons Foods to pick up a few things. She saw that Susan Parsons was “filling in” at the register again and she reminded Christine of the dinner at her house Saturday night.

      On her second day, Christine and Marcus had gone on a grocery run together and Susan had insisted they both come to supper and bring David to meet her twin sixteen-year-old sons. To get David friends, Christine would endure a night of Susan showing off her husband—she’d mentioned that he was the mayor at least five times before the groceries got bagged—and her, no doubt, perfect princess home.

      Back at Dr. Mike’s office, Christine wrote a check and walked a smiling David out to the car. Her hopes soared. Maybe this would help. In the car, she asked, “So how was it?”

      “He looked into my eyes and told me my nutrition is bad.”

      “He what?” Christine’s hopes dropped like stones. “Didn’t you talk about your problems?”

      “I don’t have any problems. He said my irises were muddy, which means my bowels are blocked.”

      “Just great.”

      “He gave me some breathing exercises to clear my heart chakra.” He demonstrated, huffing while patting his stomach. “Then we talked about the Phoenix Coyotes. He likes hockey.”

      Dammit, Aurora. Dr. Mike was no more capable of counseling David than he was of doing Aurora’s heart surgery.

      “You’re not going back there.”

      “Why not? It’ll get the principal off your back.”

      “More roughage is not going to help us here. We’ll have to find someone in Preston.” Which meant a two-hour round-trip.

      “Come on. He said he’d hypnotize me next time.” David was clearly loving this. Christine shook her head. Now what?

      “NOT THAT PLATTER, the swirled glaze one,” Aurora ordered Christine, whose only wish was to keep the couscous as moist as her own skin in this boiling-hot kitchen.

      She and Marcus had kitchen duty, instructed by Bogie and Aurora, who were supposedly resting, though Bogie had been up and down seasoning things and Aurora had been barking commands.

      “If you’d keep the trays in the same place, it would be easier,” Christine said, forcing herself not to snap at her mother. She was dying to say, Go lie down, for Pete’s sake.

      “Here you go.” Marcus handed Christine the tray. It was one of her mother’s surreal creations in green, blue and turquoise. “And the serving utensil and leftover pita she’s about to tell you about.” He winked. “Saving you time.”

      “Thanks,” she said, vividly aware of how close he stood.

      After a week of seeing Marcus, mostly at meals, Christine could no longer deny how attracted she was. Whenever he was near, she felt a low electric hum start up inside. It was delicious. She wasn’t going to do anything about it, it was just…fun.

      She rarely dated, but when she did she kept it casual and mostly physical. She had David and engrossing work, of course. Plus she’d been burned the few times she’d gotten serious by charmers who let her down—like David’s father, Skip—or pursued her relentlessly until she fell for them, then disappeared or went cold on her.

      Not good. Her judgment when it came to relationships plain reeked. Short-term hookups were fine for now. Maybe some day, when she got smarter, less emotional or developed better mating instincts, she’d go for more, the whole picket-fence deal.

      Marcus felt the attraction, too, she could tell. It was thrilling to get a man as restrained as Marcus all charged up. She liked making him laugh, too. And talking to him. She realized she didn’t spend much relaxed social time with men, so this was a nice change.

      It was all good fun. She enjoyed the tease and retreat and he seemed to, too. She had too much on her hands with David, her mother and her work to even think about sex. Well, she could think about it. But that was it.

      Marcus seemed equally reluctant, pulling back from any accidental contact, when they brushed hips in the entry to the dining room or tangled fingers over the dishes they washed.

      Marcus had the goulash pot in both hands and gestured for her to pass in front of him. She did, then glanced over her shoulder to catch him watching her backside.

      She got that roller-coaster dip in her stomach. “Watch your step,” she said, nodding at the bump in the floorboard, but she was grinning and he cleared his throat.

      This was such a kick.

      At the entrance to the dining room, Christine paused to admire the rough-wood table holding the ceramic plates in her mother’s singular style, the pewter flatware and Mason jar water glasses. Bogie had let David choose the cuttings for the bouquet of fragrant herbs, river bamboo and exotic