by E V Lind
“What do you say?” his mother prodded, with a poke of her finger to his ribs where she knew, to his cost, he was ticklish. “Can she stay?”
He grunted and nodded his head in assent. What the hell harm could it do? It wasn’t like she’d stick around anyway. Along with the trouble that hung about her she had flight written all over her face. It was there in the furtive glances she constantly made toward the doors and the windows, as if she was regularly searching for an escape route. Comprehension hit that his mother had probably noticed the selfsame things and come to her own conclusion.
Had he got it all wrong? Was she really exactly what his mother said she was? Only time would tell.
*
If anyone had told Beth that she’d willingly get into Ryan Jones’s truck with him again that day she’d have probably laughed herself silly. Except Beth didn’t laugh. In fact, she didn’t even remember the last time she’d even wanted to. Nothing touched her emotions. And now here she was with a sack full of groceries on the bench seat between them, together with a packed sports bag filled with clothes, and on the way to some abandoned house on the Jones dairy farm.
Mary-Ann had wanted her to wait, to come out to the property a couple of days from now, but once Beth had made her decision and accepted the offer, she wanted to act on it. Besides, if Dan found her, she didn’t want Mary-Ann to become a casualty of his madness simply by proximity.
Beth looked around the countryside as they drove away from the river and further inland, then slowly but surely curved back toward the river again. Purplish gray clouds, swollen with more rain, hung low in an oppressive sky. She suppressed a shudder of foreboding. It was better to be alone.
Ryan spoke up for the first time since Mary-Ann had told him to take Beth out to the property. “The house is just across the road from the river. If you go out walking, be careful on the river’s edge. It can be unstable here and there.”
“Thanks,” she acknowledged and watched carefully as Ryan began to slow the truck to turn into a rutted driveway that led toward a rustic looking two-story house that had clearly seen better days. Her expression must have mirrored her thoughts.
“Yeah, I know. It’s in need of some TLC but Mom had some contractors check it out a few weeks ago, do a few minor repairs to the roof and guttering and stuff. It’s basically sound.” He gestured to the overgrown shrubbery that all but obscured the veranda that appeared to wrap around three sides of the house. “I’ll come over later in the week to clear that away.”
She nodded.
“You don’t say much, do you?” he commented.
She shook her head. What was the point in talking when most of the time no one listened to you—not even when you screamed?
Ryan made a derisive noise at the back of his throat and rolled the truck to a halt. He reached for the grocery sack and the bag the same instant she did. Their hands brushed and Beth jerked her hand back as if he’d burned her. The unexpected skin-to-skin contact burned a searing path up her arm.
“Sorry,” she muttered and scrabbled for her door latch before tumbling from the truck, barely making it onto her feet and holding her balance.
Ryan came around the front of the truck acting as if he hadn’t even noticed that she’d just made an almighty fool of herself with her overreaction. Beth stood where she was—her breath coming hard and fast, her heart all but beating its way out of her chest. When he hesitated at the front door and cocked an eyebrow as if to say, are you coming, she followed him up the wide, shallow wooden stairs that led to the veranda.
Narrow stained-glass panes ran in parallel lines on either side of the heavy wooden door. Ironic, she thought, that the door was so sturdy and yet a sharp kick to one of the windows would be all that was required to gain entry.
Relax, she told herself. He doesn’t know where you are. Yet. A shiver ran down her spine.
“Cold?” Ryan asked, pulling an incongruously bright pink, heart-shaped key ring from his jacket pocket. From it, he selected a large old-fashioned key and pushed it into the lock.
“A bit,” she admitted.
She was always cold these days.
“There should be firewood stacked outside the kitchen door out back. I’ll bring some in for you before I go. I wouldn’t trust any of the electrical heaters in the house until they’ve been checked but I know the fireplaces are clean and the chimneys were swept when the roof was repaired.”
“I can do that,” Beth offered. “Get the wood, I mean.”
Ryan countered with a skeptical expression. “Humor me,” he said bluntly.
Beth jumped as the front door squeaked loudly as Ryan pushed it open.
“I’ll see to that for you, too, before I leave.”
“No,” she said shaking her head. “It’s okay.”
At least if the door made a noise, she would have plenty of warning if someone tried to enter through it. Someone? Who was she kidding? There was only one person who’d try anything if he found her and she knew exactly who that was.
Ryan gave her an assessing look and for a second, she thought he’d insist. The property was his, after all, and its maintenance was his concern. But then he merely turned his head and flipped a light switch. He gestured to the rooms off the main entrance.
“This was the original farm house, built in the late 1800s. The second floor was initially attic space but was made into rooms in the 1920s.” He gestured to the right. “There’s the old master bedroom with the bathroom just down the hall. To the left is the main parlor which leads through to the dining room.” He walked past the narrow stairwell which bore a threadbare carpet runner. The stairs turned back on themselves half way up and disappeared to the second floor.
“Upstairs are two more bedrooms and, through here,” he continued, pushing open a door and turning on another light, “is the kitchen.”
The kitchen was larger than Beth expected, taking up about two-thirds of the rear of the house. A scarred, square wooden table sat in the middle of the room, with four spindle-back chairs around it. She noted that the floorboards near the table had some movement to them. A bench with a deep porcelain sink ran under the kitchen window and at one end of the room, recessed in a red brick inglenook, stood a massive solid fuel range.
Ryan put the bags down on the kitchen table, which rocked slightly under their weight, and crossed the room to yank open a cupboard door, revealing a hot water heating unit, and reached inside to flip a switch.
“Way back, the kitchen was in a shed outside, that’s the laundry now, and the kitchen was incorporated into the house around 1910. Back in the sixties, my granddad insisted on installing an indoor toilet and electric hot water for the bathroom. He wanted to put an electric range in here, too, but Mrs. MacDonald held firm on keeping the old range. It’ll take a few hours to get hot water, I’m sorry. If you’d waited until tomorrow...”
“It’s okay, I’ll manage,” Beth assured him.
“I’ll bring some traps in the morning.”
“Traps?”
“For the mice.”
Beth shuddered. She supposed mice were a byproduct of abandoned homes anywhere, let alone during cold weather out in the country. “Thanks.”
“You afraid of mice?”
“They’re the least of my worries.”
Her unguarded response earned an enquiring look but she turned away and stared out the kitchen window. Ryan moved about behind her.
“I’d better check if the fridge is still running,” he said and flipped a switch on the wall.
The room instantly filled with the racketing hum of the fridge’s motor running. Like all the other appliances dotted around the kitchen, it was forty years old, or more, but it seemed to be working okay. Beth grabbed a packet of paper towels and some cleaning spray from the grocery sack and wiped out the empty refrigerator before putting away the bread, eggs and milk she’d accepted from Mary-Ann’s kitchen. While she was busy, Ryan brought in several armfuls of wood. Some he stacked by the firep
lace in the kitchen, the rest he took upstairs.
When he got back down he prepared the range for her. “You can light this in the morning when you wake up. It’ll pay to keep it going all day,” he said, dusting off his hands. “I’ve already lit the fire in one of the upstairs rooms for you.”
Upstairs? She’d planned to sleep down if she could. Up there she’d be cut off if anyone came up the staircase at night.
As if he could read her mind, he continued, “You’ll be safe here. I’ve checked all the windows and doors, upstairs and down. Everything’s locked tight.”
But locks only kept honest people out, didn’t they?
She forced herself to respond. “Thanks. You and your mom have done so much for me.”
“I figure we’ll get our pound of flesh in return if you can clean this place up. I’m planning to move my farm manager and his family in here sometime in the new year. I reckon it could take at least that long to get rid of the dust.”
He winked at her, and a flash of humor crossed his face. She was taken aback at how young it made him look. How approachable. But, as if he realized he’d dropped the curmudgeonly act too soon, the lightness in his expression was gone in an instant.
“Right,” he said wiping his hands on his jeans before shoving them into the pockets. “I’ll be off. You sure you’ll be okay? I can just as easily take you back to Ma’s and she can bring you out in a few days’ time like she wanted.”
His movement drew her attention to the worn denim across his hips and Beth wrenched her gaze away.
“No,” Beth blurted, rather more abruptly than she’d planned. “No, it’s fine. I’ll be all right on my own.”
Ryan nodded. “I’ll be by in the morning once milking is done.”
“That won’t be necessary,” she answered. She and Mary-Ann had agreed that she wouldn’t start working at the café until the beginning of next week. “There’s no need to check up on me.”
“Mouse traps, remember?” He drawled the words like some good ol’ boy reminding her he was delivering on a promise but the flint in his gaze said otherwise. “Like I said, I’ll be by in the morning.”
She huffed a breath of impatience. For a while there, he’d almost been civil. She should have known it wouldn’t last, not when he’d made his distrust of her so apparent earlier. Beth followed him back toward the front door.
“Thank you,” she said stiffly as he handed her the key ring.
The old-fashioned keys looked incongruous compared to the bright pink sequins decorating the key ring and Ryan must have noticed her expression.
“The key ring is—was—Aggie’s. She likes pink. You’ll see that from her room upstairs.”
“Oh, the lady who lived here?”
“Yeah. Apparently, she went crazy for pink after her mom died. From what I remember of Mrs. MacDonald, she would not have approved. The woman knew more shades of gray than anyone I know. Anyway, I’m off. See you tomorrow.”
He gave her a short wave and then hunched his shoulders against the rain that had begun anew. He walked to the car, or limped, more precisely. She wondered again how he’d hurt himself and if maybe that was why he was so distrustful. God only knew what she’d been through and how that had scarred her. Both mentally and physically.
She closed the door on the tail lights of his truck before he reached the end of the drive and turned the key carefully in the lock. A few months, he said. It was pretty open-ended. By then, if she was still here, everyone would know about the baby she carried.
If they both lived that long.
FOURTEEN
Riverbend, OR, October 1941
Dear Diary,
Mamma has been working up at the big house for a few weeks now, which leaves me with Aggie. She's a sweet child, but lacks concentration and she's terrified of Halloween approaching. Keeps whispering about raising the dead and not wanting to see him like that. Whoever "him" is. I can't let her out of my sight for more than a moment or she wanders off in some day dream or another.
Jonathon brought a kitten to the house today. He said there’d been an influx of mice at the big house, what with the colder weather and all, and he didn’t want them bothering us, too. He kept looking at me and smiling, as if looking at me made him happy inside.
Looking at him certainly makes me happy inside. And that's not all. His hand brushed mine as I took the kitten from him. I swear I nearly died from the thrill. How can something as simple as a touch make a girl—no, a woman—feel like that. As if all the stars have been hung in the sky just for her. As if every nerve ending in her body has lived for just that one moment.
If he never touched me again I would be happy. At least I'd have that memory. But if he did...oh, it would be heaven, I just know it.
Of course, when Mamma came home she said the kitten is a curse and a nuisance, but I really love the scamp to pieces. She will learn to stay out of Mamma’s way before long. Aggie told Mamma that when Jonathon spoke to me I'd turned as red as a beet. I did no such thing but Mamma gave me such a look and sent Aggie to her room to find something.
I wasn't expecting it when Mamma hit me with her open hand. It hurt, stung, yes, but the harm to my pride was worse. She called me a slut and warned me in horrible detail of what men do to women. How they force themselves on us, hurt us and cheat on us and then leave us to fend for themselves.
I know she's talking about Daddy, but he wasn't like that. He loved Mamma, I know he did. He never cheated on her, I'm sure. And he loved Aggie and me, too. I wish he'd come back.
And I know Jonathon Ryan Jones is not like that either.
I had no dinner tonight. My punishment for apparently being fast and loose with the Jones family son and heir. I'm lying here in my room, my stomach growling for the meal I cooked yet was not permitted to eat, but I tell myself I am content. I had that moment. That touch. For that brief point in time, Jonathon Jones was mine.
FIFTEEN
Slut!
Beth woke with a start and sat bolt upright in her bed. Her right cheek stung as if the strike she’d dreamed of had been as real as the daylight now streaming through the crack in the partially drawn drapes. She raised a shaking hand to her face. It was tender to her touch and she pushed the bed covers to one side and scrambled from the sagging mattress to check herself in the small mirror hanging over the dresser.
The glass was spotted with age but she could see her reflection. She turned her cheek to the light but there was no evidence of the assault that still left a sharp tingling down one side of her face. Beth turned away from the mirror. She had to be imagining things. Vague drifts of the dream she’d been having before she woke hovered on the periphery of her memory. Two women. One angry, one subservient. She tried to remember more but even as she did so vague thought slipped away from her consciousness in the way dreams so frustratingly do. It left a lingering sense of discomfort and anxiety in her mind—it was a feeling she was all too familiar with. Beth stared at her reflection in the mirror, silently repeating the words, I am good enough, over and over until the lingering fingers of unease faded away.
She turned to the window and shoved the drapes fully open. Weak sunlight exposed the dust motes that drifted on the air and that lingered on every flat surface in the room—something she’d have to take care of today, she thought. And probably shake those curtains out, too, if doing so wouldn’t see them fall apart completely.
By the time she’d come upstairs last night, after cleaning the kitchen from top to bottom, she’d been too tired to do more than slide out of her coat and jeans and put herself into bed in the room where Ryan had lit the fire. The grate was cold now and any residual warmth gone from the room. Beth picked up her jeans from where she’d flung them on a chair, and felt around in the sports bag for a fresh set of underwear and a clean top. She hadn’t wanted to accept the items from Mary-Ann, but the woman made even the most stubborn mule look agreeable by comparison.
Ryan’s mom had given her a couple of soft bath
towels as well, saying she had no idea how old the linens were in the MacDonald house or how clean they’d be, and had pressed some more toiletries upon Beth, too. Beth had accepted them on the condition that their cost was deducted from her wages when she started work at the café but she could tell from the set to Mary-Ann’s lips that her conditions would be ignored. Gathering up her things, she unlocked and opened the bedroom door.
Downstairs in the small bathroom, Beth meticulously locked the door behind her. She winced as she peeled off her socks and the soles of her feet connected with the frigid linoleum floor. The house, built long before the advent of insulation, was like a refrigerator. She quickly checked the wounds left by the blisters on her feet. Had it only been two days ago? It felt like so much longer. They were healing nicely.
Beth leaned across the chipped, claw-footed bath and turned on the taps to the ancient showerhead that arched over the tub. A dreadful gurgling sound filled the room and made her jump back for a moment before a sullen stream of brown water poured from the showerhead. Thankfully it didn’t take long for the dirty water to clear and Beth stepped into the bath and pulled the opaque and moldy shower curtain across.
The moment she was enclosed, a sense of panic began to build and she fought to return calm to her mind. In the end she decided that mopping up a wet floor was infinitely preferable to not being able to see if anyone was on the other side of that curtain and, with her stomach coiled in a knot of apprehension, she yanked it open. No one, of course. She knew, logically at least, that she was alone here, but even so she kept her eyes on the bathroom door while she raced through her shower. Her hand drifted up to her face and she gently fingered her damaged cheek. Locks were all too easy to get past.
