Hurrying up the stairs, she called Tara’s name. Careful not to slip on the smears of mud dropped along the floor, the old woman reached the top step in time to hear the slam of a door and the click of a lock.
Pausing outside Tara’s room, Winnie gasped for breath, her hand to her chest. Finally able to speak, she tapped on the door. “Tara, honey? Are you okay?”
She could hear sobbing behind the door. Tossing her hands in the air, she turned to amble back down the hall. Years of experience had taught her that Tara wouldn’t talk until she was ready.
When she reached the bottom step, pounding on the front door startled her again. “Lawd above.” Three more thunderous knocks resonated through the house before she toddled into the living room.
As she opened the door, Justin burst through into the living room. “Where’s Tara?” he demanded.
Taken aback by his demand, as well as his bedraggled and sodden appearance, Winnie couldn’t answer immediately.
Justin turned and marched toward the kitchen. He was shaking with an emotion she couldn’t pin down, but he was obviously upset.
“Stop please! Justin!” she called after him.
When she reached the kitchen, he was barging from the laundry room. His eyes wide, chest heaving, he frantically glanced around the kitchen.
“Young man!” Winnie commanded.
He halted, his anxious eyes meeting hers. “Winnie, oh God, Winnie. I’m so sorry. I’ve got to talk to Tara, now.”
“What you need to do is calm down. Tara won’t be talking to anyone for a while.”
“Is she hurt? Is she okay?” He paced the length of the kitchen wringing his hands. “Oh God, oh God.”
“Tara is upstairs crying. Would you mind explaining what happened?” she inquired, her fists planted on her hips.
He collapsed onto a bar stool at the island. “Oh Winnie, I guess I scared her. I was so caught up and I scared her.” His head hung and he scrubbed his hands back and forth across the top of his head.
“Back up, please. I sent you to the warehouse to find her, what on earth happened? Why are you both soaking wet?”
He stared at his lap.
“Justin?”
He glanced up, flinching when his eyes met hers. “Oh Hell. I’m never sure what happened when it comes to her.”
“Just start at the beginning, dear.”
He sighed and rubbed his hand along one jaw. “I went to the warehouse and we talked about furniture.”
She nodded.
“And then we got in a water fight with the hose.”
Winnie cocked one eyebrow, but she nodded again.
“And she was laughing and something just…”
The old woman pulled up a stool and slid onto it. “Something just what, dear?”
He moaned, his eyes searching Winnie’s for understanding. “I’ve never seen her laugh like that, with her head thrown back. It just kind of snapped something in me and…”
She leaned forward. “And…?”
He jumped up and strode to the door. Lacing his fingers across the top of his head, he sighed. “I don’t know, I really don’t.”
Winnie’s eyes dropped to her lap. “What did you do?”
He turned to her his eyes huge, hollow spheres. “I—I wanted her so bad. I kissed her—but I wasn’t gentle, I was— it was— Ah shit!” He swung back to glare out the door.
Winnie sighed. “You better sit down, young man.”
Justin planted his fist on the doorframe in frustration, mumbling curses under his breath. “I’ve never scared a woman in my life!” He twisted toward Winnie. “I swear I’d never hurt her. I— I don’t understand what happened. I’ve never felt— She was so happy— and her eyes were so beautiful. I needed to— and she just ran.”
The old woman grimaced. “She does that.”
He threw his hands in the air. “Yeah, but she usually doesn’t knee me in the crotch first.” He blushed. “Sorry, ma’am.”
Her mouth dropped open then snapped shut. The corner of her lips twitched. “Are you okay?”
He waved her off as he paced back to stare out the door.
Taking a deep breath, Winnie twisted her apron in her fingers. “Justin, I think it’s time you understood a few things about Tara…”
Chapter Eighteen
Her corner was never small enough. Not tight enough, not dark enough, and not distant enough.
Tara pressed her head against her knees and squeezed her eyes shut. The floor was hard and cold and hot tears dried on her cheeks. Her heart twisted with agony in her chest, and she choked on revulsion.
For as long as she could remember, she’d believed that the bottomless ache would be horrific enough to swallow her whole but somehow, even her despair was insufficient to accomplish oblivion.
With the corner of the room at her back, the ancient chest of drawers pressed against her side; the long-sought sanctuary offered her little solace. It didn’t consume her, blot out the confusion, or calm her pounding heart. It never had.
Her elbows locked around her knees and her face buried in the crook of her arms, she rocked rhythmically, wishing she could vanish – instantaneously transform into a wisp of smoke, curl silently into the room, waft out the window, and blow far away, into nothingness.
If she had to exist, why couldn’t she be more normal? Why were the edges of her world so sharp – the noises more thunderous, the smells more insidious, the fear more pungent? Her reality more cruel?
* * *
Three ketchup packets and half a six-pack of beer, that was it. This was the third time in less than an hour that Justin had stared into the fridge, and yet a solution had not materialized. Not in the fridge, not in the drawings scattered across the dining room table, not out the back window.
Cool air wafted from the humming appliance onto the screen porch. The beer didn’t beckon. The rusted wire racks blurred. No matter where he stared, he could find no focus. Slamming the refrigerator door, his arm swinging with it in an exaggerated arc, he wandered toward the front of the house to stare down at the jumble of blueprints.
His hands jammed into his pockets.
He’d allowed a woman to distract him.
He’d come here with a goal, a plan, a dream. He’d spent a wad of money buying a house and a truck, and in a few short weeks, he had allowed a woman to drag him into a tangled web of emotion, a fruitless diversion of sentiment. And he’d lost his edge.
This was business, not a game. Not a rollercoaster ride of surging tides and desire. The resort was key to his success. It was not about long, tan legs, passionate kisses, or bright, laughing eyes. It was about making a living – his career.
He dropped into the chair.
It was time he took the project in hand and built a resort. He had a partner, and he’d make it work.
Things weren’t going the way he’d planned. So what? If Muffy wanted Tara’s design and his body, he’d find a way to manage his part of the deal and reach his financial goal.
He’d concede and give Tara the house and barn, but he’d build the spa. The amenities would be supreme. and the whole damn place would be connected and secure. He’d not compromise on that.
His fingers drummed on the pages of prints. Tara’s drawings of the barn theater lay on top of the pile.
Finally, he slammed his palm on the heap, then dug through the drawings to find his cell phone. Scrolling down the list of contacts, he stopped at Elliott Reynolds, his architect.
As he waited on the phone for an answer, a realization dawned. Deep down, he’d been nurturing the illusion that Tara would magically admit his wishes were hers as well, and not only would the resort be completed but they would ride off into the sunset, enjoying passionate sex on an unlimited basis.
Not that he’d had any clear idea of how that would come about. The vision had been vague at best, a silly fantasy, formed from the need for sex, and a misguided desire to fix a broken, messed up situation.
A voice murmur
ed from his phone.
“Hi Jessica, is Elliott in?…Thanks.”
He was back in the driver’s seat now, and there would be no more messing around.
“Hey Elliott, it’s Justin. We need to rehash my resort. I’m talking complete overhaul.”
Distractedly, he rolled a pencil back and forth across the blueprints. “Yeah, well I’ve had a partner forced down my throat, and I’ve spent the last few days trying to figure how to make it work. Fact is, the money behind the project wants to go a different way. I know we’ve never gone this route, but how do you feel about something along the lines of a ‘Hampton Cottage’?”
He tapped the pencil in staccato beats against the edge of the table as he listened.
“Thing is, there’s an existing house and barn on the property that we can’t lose. They are turn of the century and the owners want to keep them. We’ll be updating and adding on. The partner has plans that I can get to you but above all, I want you to design the spa. You know what I want, just change the style so we can make it all cohesive. We’ll also need bedrooms and bathrooms and all the technological components added to the design, as well as a couple of pools and alterations to the grounds.
He held the phone between his shoulder and ear, biting the end of the pencil. “Believe me, I’ve taken all that into account and I get it, but this can’t be helped. Money is talking and it’s my job to listen, right?”
His forehead puckered and he doodled in the margin of a drawing. “Okay, right.”
The doodle turned to slashing scribbles. “Well, it is what it is. I’ll overnight you the drawings of the house and the grounds, and you scope them out and put together some numbers. When do you think you could get back to me?”
The voice buzzed and Justin pinched the bridge of his nose. “Right. Okay. Thanks man. Sorry to throw a monkey wrench into the works at this point, but life happens.”
He dropped the pencil and stood. “Okay, talk to you then. Bye.”
He pocketed the phone and wandered over to stare out the front window. A long sigh liberated the tension that had been building in his gut the past week.
“Time to pull it together, buddy.”
* * *
Under the brilliant morning sun, drops of sweat crawled along Tara’s scalp. At least she hoped it was sweat. Wiping her forehead on her shoulder, she pressed the buzzing sander farther down the side of the dresser. Digging the sander into the wood and watching the paint fall away felt therapeutic.
A fine cloud of sawdust drifted around the power tool and wafted downward to the cracked concrete pad behind the warehouse.
Pushing deeper into the multiple layers of paint, the sander tore away years, exposing bare wood, almost as if it were revealing her raw heart. She pushed the power button and laid the tool aside. Her entire arm continued to buzz, and her fingers felt numb.
Clenching her fist and shaking out her hand, she took a step back and tilted her head to gaze at the dresser.
Her cell phone rang from the seat of her truck. Ignoring it, she reached forward to smooth her fingertips along the wood. The paint was gone but pushing the sander had left ridges and grooves in the smooth wood surface, scars in the solid core of the piece that were now exposed.
Without the distraction of peeling paint, the lines of the old dresser stood out, naked and unadorned. She understood that feeling.
The usual surge of satisfaction was missing from her perusal as she rounded the dresser and turned the sander on high. Attacking the peeling paint with a vengeance, she ground the tool in up and down motions, as if she could control her own experiences with a power tool.
Sweat and sawdust gathered in the creases around her red, swollen eyes. Her back screamed in pain as she bent, pushing the droning tool harder into the wood. Forcing her unfeeling fingers to clench the sander, she ground her teeth.
Dark blobs trailed the sander and she cursed. Straightening, she turned off the tool and dropped it on top of the dresser to clasp her aching back. Arching into the pain, she stared blankly at the blue sky overhead.
Refusing to acknowledge the crushing fatigue, she snatched up the sander and turned it over. She clasped the torn and filthy sandpaper and tore it from the small machine to fling it toward the growing pile near her feet. The scrap dared to swoop once in the breeze, before landing dirty-side up.
Somehow annoyed that the filthy, useless sandpaper hadn’t slammed to the ground with the force of her resentment, Tara dropped the tool back onto the dresser top and stomped to her truck. Water droplets flung in all directions as she yanked a bottle of water from the cooler Winnie had packed.
Regret marred Tara’s expression as she gulped from the water bottle. Water mixed with perspiration rolled down her neck into her cleavage. With her expression dark as an evening thunderstorm, she frowned as she remembered the old woman packing the cooler for her that morning.
For most of her life, Tara had watched Winnie hover over her like a parachute. As if the old woman was studying her, waiting for a break in Tara’s defenses, so she could swoop down and smother the pain, suffocate the torment that held Tara captive.
But she was tired of feeling like prey, everyone watching, waiting, expecting her to fall apart. She was tired of needing to be fixed – tired of fighting the coil of fear that would spring from her gut without warning.
She couldn’t make it stop. Winnie couldn’t make it stop. No one could make it stop. She wasn’t like other people. Her father hadn’t wanted her; he hadn’t loved her and that had set a precedent for her life. No matter how she polished the surface of it, she’d always be on the outside looking in, with no family, no roots, and no foundation. She was a castoff, remodeled, piece of trash – a fake, just like her furniture.
* * *
Finally ordering the cabinets for his kitchen, Justin leaned back in the chair at the hardware store to watch the clerk poke at his keyboard.
A woman walked past the consultation desk, a small girl clutching her hand. The child regarded him silently through wide eyes. His gut clenched and his stomach rolled.
Everywhere he turned today there was a child, a tangible manifestation of the nightmare that had jolted him awake at three a.m.
The youngster toddling beside her mother twisted in his mind to become a filthy, sunken- eyed child in rags, cowering in the corner of a dim dank room. The sound of breaking glass, screaming, slamming doors, and bottles crashing against walls reverberated around her.
The horrifying details Winnie had shared with him about the night she took Tara were still startlingly clear. As he had sat, dripping and distraught in her kitchen, he’d experienced Winnie’s crushing fear and blinding anger. Her frustration pounded through him when he’d heard how she’d pounded on the neighbor’s door, screaming for Tara’s father to let her in.
The image she’d painted of the tiny girl clinging to a broken chair for protection was burned vividly into the back of his mind.
The account played over and over again behind his eyes, like a movie on a never-ending loop. Everywhere he looked, she was there; a terrified six-year-old, crying in fear as Winnie pried her little fingers from the cracked wooden seat to drag her, protesting, to the door.
The helplessness he felt when he thought of the child reaching in desperation for her drunken, violent father, as she was hauled away, made him distraught enough to want to smash everything within reach.
He scrubbed his hands across his face. How long had Tara survived in that state? How many nights had she hid, with no one to protect her? With no place to run? Had the man laid a hand on her? Abused her, more so than mentally?
How could he, Justin, ever hope to touch Tara, if she was choked with memories of her father touching her? What exactly had happened?
A voice penetrated his living nightmare. Dragging himself back to the present, he turned to the clerk.
He had no idea how to cope with Tara at this point. His deepest unspoken fear was that his aggressive, high-handed manner had made her
miserable. And he couldn’t fix it.
Chapter Nineteen
Searching the rag for a clean spot, Tara twisted it in her hands. Smoothing the cloth over her fingertips, she dipped it deep into the furniture wax. Careful not to drop any crumbles off the rag, she wiped in methodical patterns across the top of the desk. Even streaks followed her fingers over the gleaming paint. She paused to smooth the wax into the cracks and crevices of the scrollwork trim, along the front of the piece.
Adding the appearance of grime and age to a piece of furniture had felt counterintuitive to her at first. Her early pieces of furniture had been sanded to perfection and shone fresh with new paint. But over time, she’d come to appreciate the charm of a piece that looked as if it had a story to tell. After all, didn’t everyone layer themselves with experience, real or wished for, to cover the child underneath? Her work with furniture felt intuitive on some level.
Tara knew the shabby chic trend had begun as a way for the average person of limited means to copy the well-worn look of old quality. A ratty desk from the 70s could be stripped down and made to look like an original piece from the 20s. It was a false front of sorts.
She usually found satisfaction in finding unloved furniture, stripping it down to the core, then rebuilding it, and giving it a unique flair, as opposed to buying a reproduction piece from a store. In the end, both were replicas, but hers was one of a kind.
This particular piece she had painted white, then added two coats of soft, sky blue. She’d painted on a thin layer of translucent silver paint over the blue to give it an opalescent glow, then she had sanded off key points where years of wear would have eaten away the paint on edges and around the knobs, to expose the undercoat of white paint. A thin layer of dark wax, rubbed into the cracks and crevices and worn spots, would now give the desk the distinction of age.
It took her some time to massage wax into the fancy scrollwork of the carved legs. Rubbing the back of her wrist across her forehead, she tilted her head to one side.
Hometown Series Box Set Page 14
