Unsuspecting Culprit

Chapter Seven

A banging on the door is heard in the early hours of the morning. Rayleigh stumbles out of bed cursing aloud, mumbling how early and how rude it is to wake someone up before the sun has hardly came up above the tops of the trees. The wooden floor beneath her is cold and she wonders if she should start using the heat. The thought falls away as she peeks through the peep hole in the center of the door. He's back-yet again.

Opening the door just a smidge, she strains her eyes to see him, as the light creeping in is bright. She sees the shadow of his figure until her eyes adjust to the light enough to see his grin, spreading all the way from the west coast to the east coast. She sighs internally.

"Good morning!" he says in a cheery voice, his eyes piercing into hers.

"Um, yeah. Morning. Why are you at the steps of my home this early again?" she says, eyeing him curiously, clearly not pleased by the disruption from her sleep.

"Oh, you know. Just strolling the neighborhood. I was wondering if you'd like to sit down sit down with me so we can get to know each other a bit more. I like to know the people living in the neighborhood." He says, smiling at her quickly after he says the word "neighborhood". Ray finds it a bit strange but averts her eyes away to the vehicle still parked, waiting patiently for a driver in his drive way. The drive way is sloped a bit and the pavement, oddly enough, is void of any cracks. The green, vibrant grass accompanying the house in his front yard is perfectly cut. OCD, maybe?

Ray brings her attention back to the stranger standing on her doorstep, feet spread equally apart on the 'WELCOME" mat placed outside of her heavy, storm door.

"Oh, uh. Sure, I guess." She debates on inviting him in or stepping into the threshold of his unknown home across the way. "Go ahead and come in, if you'd like. Tea or coffee?" Ray asks rubbing her eyes and crossing her arms over her chest.

"Tea, if that's okay with you." He quietly steps into the home, doing a quick once over. His eyes linger a little too long on a photo of Ray and her mother at an old amusement park they attended when Ray was just a child.

"Your mother?" He asks, his voice dripping with interest.

"Yeah. I was around 10 in that photo." Striding past him, she takes a right into the kitchen to put the teapot on. Her feet are tingling from the touch of the floor board. She glances back behind her. He still stands by the photo. Taking note of this, she says;

"So, what was your name? Never really caught it." Rayleigh turns on the stove, placing the teapot on the burner.

He glances up at her in the kitchen, takes one last look at the photograph and drifts into the living room.

"My name's Levi, but if you'd like you can call me Lee."

"Well, nice to meet you, Levi. Call me Rayleigh. If you wouldn't mind taking off your shoes, I'd appreciate it. Let me just change into something more appropriate. I wasn't exactly expecting any company this morning but I guess plans change."

Rayleigh walks swiftly to her room, crossing paths with him but avoiding eye contact. His eyes glide over her home, curiosity, wonder and something else rapturing his facial expression. Once Ray reaches her room, Levi steps around the furniture curtly and looks curiously at, and sometimes through, everything. He searches for something that could hint she has other living family, besides her mother. Nothing but books and notepads filled with notes of absolute nonsense that he can't seem to decipher. He becomes frustrated by his findings-nothing. Rayleigh comes back in just as he's looking over one of the notepads, concentrating hard to understand. The floor beneath her creaks. Lee's eyes dart up to where she stands, eyeing him incredulously.

"Oh, I was just looking around and saw something handwritten on one of these notepads. It was something different than all the books. Excuse my prying eyes." He says, putting the pad back where it came from; seated on the coffee table cluttered by books.

"It's just one of the many sheets of paper I use to take notes for the book I'm writing."

"Aha, you write?"

"I do. Besides my job as a columnist I also do freelance writing. Working on my third one actually."

Determined, and strong-willed. Maybe Dan was wrong? Lee thinks to himself.

"That's interesting." He says looking back down at her disheveled words. He wants to know more, but clamps down on the questions fighting their way up his throat. In the background the hiss of the pot grows more intense and Ray looks over quickly.

Lee watches her go to kitchen. Grabbing two large mugs from the cabinet to the left of the sink, she sets them side by side before pouring hot tea into both. Her movements are slow but precise. His eyes slide down the length of her body that's visible. She now wears a loose sweater and jeans. The lengthy bar and the island in the kitchen stand between them. He notices how clean and dust-free both are. He looks back to her; her body small and slender. He rips his eyes away as she begins to turn around, the ceramic mugs in hand.

"Sugar?" she asks.

He nods and so begins the long day for Ray dealing with a misapprehended stranger and Lee dealing with a woman completely different from what he's known.