Charlotte's Homecoming

by Janice Kay Johnson

  But Faith had been hoping for a long time, and it hurt to be disappointed. Char was here out of a sense of obligation, that was all, and expecting more was asking to be hurt once again.

  Faith had sworn, when she left Rory, that she’d never invite that kind of pain again.

  So don’t.

  THE TEMPERATURE NEVER USED TO get up into the nineties, not when she’d lived here. Summers had just plain gotten hotter. As humid as it was in the Puget Sound area, today had been close to unendurable. Thank God for indoor plumbing—Charlotte had taken three showers today—and for nightfall. It didn’t stay hot at night here summers the way it did in, say, Chicago where Charlotte had landed her first postgrad job.

  It was now past midnight, and she’d tried turning out the light and going to bed, but sleep was eluding her.

  Why she hadn’t tumbled onto her bed at 8:00 p.m. and conked out, she had no idea. Well, not at eight—in August, the sun didn’t set until nine-thirty or so and she’d never been able to sleep with daylight outside the window. On the other hand, she hadn’t worked this hard physically in ten years or more, and she should be exhausted.

  She was, in one way—she hurt. Having made a habit out of hitting the gym at least four days a week, she’d kidded herself that she was in decent shape. Ha! Not. The damn sunburn wasn’t helping, and it was her own fault. Charlotte had forgotten how white her skin was. Sunburn wasn’t much of a problem in the foggy Bay Area, especially since a half-hour jog was about the longest she was ever outside.

  But aside from the physical aches and pains, she felt weirdly energized by the past couple of days. It seemed hard work suited her, or at least that she’d needed some to pull her out of the funk she’d been in when Faith called. Picking berries, weeding the perennial beds that wrapped the barn and making jam had seemed so…real, compared to what she did normally with her life. She’d been ridiculously proud of what she had wrought, when she admired the rows and rows of jars sitting on the kitchen countertop. She was going to enjoy selling her jam.

  Too bad she hadn’t made any blueberry.

  She was too smart to waste a thought on Gray Van Dusen, part-time mayor, part-time architect. But she kept doing it anyway.

  He was a good architect, according to Faith, and probably a good mayor, although he hadn’t been on the job long enough yet to have gotten far with West Fork’s many problems. He was also an incredibly sexy man, which was why she kept having to nudge him out of her head.

  He wasn’t her usual type, which was a thin, intense geek. Funny, because even in high school that was her type. Jocks so didn’t interest her.

  Gray would have been a jock. Although, in fairness, she suspected he was exceptionally smart, too. He was…not huge, but probably six feet tall or so, broad-shouldered and lean in the way of a man who probably ran for exercise, maybe still played fast-pitch or basketball but wasn’t interested in the tedium of weight lifting. His hair was just a little longer than she suspected some of his constituents would like, a brown that was streaked bronze and gold by the sun. Calm, gray eyes—what else, considering his name? A face that should have been ordinary-handsome, but was somehow more than that, maybe because his nose looked like it had been broken at some point, maybe because of those hooded eyes that were thoughtful but also tinged with humor. She didn’t see Mayor Van Dusen as being volatile. He’d be the kind to mull over his options for a good long while before he made decisions.

  And stubborn. She just knew he’d be stubborn. The traffic thing, according to Faith, was an example. He’d made three visits now to discuss it, including one yesterday. Charlotte had seen him walking into the barn and had slipped out the back. Instinct had told her to evade him, jolting her into motion before she even knew what or whom she was running from.

  It was just common sense, she told herself. Letting herself be attracted to a man in West Fork wasn’t logical, considering how short her stay was likely to be.

  She probably hadn’t had to bother slipping out today. If he’d had traffic on his mind, it was Faith he wanted anyway, not her. But somehow, she didn’t quite believe he’d been motivated to stop by the Russell farm a second day in a row because he was determined to talk about cars merging onto Highway 519. No, he’d been interested in her. The way he’d gently suggested she walk him out to his car, and she’d obliged without a second thought…If she gave him any toehold at all, he’d be as relentless as a tiny, ceaseless drip of water that eventually hollowed out granite.

  Which was why she was not going to think about him, and would continue to slip out one door when he came in the other. He’d get the message, and she wouldn’t have to bother for long.

  Without turning on her bedroom light, Charlotte got out of bed, slipped on the shorts she’d worn that evening and groped with her toes for her flip-flops. Because of the heat, she’d worn panties and a tank top to bed, so she was now decent. She had a sudden craving to step outside, savor the cool night air, maybe walk away from the house, listen to the silence, and tip her head back to see the stars in a way she never could in a city.

  Home smelled different, too. So, okay, part of what she’d smell was manure, but that beat automobile exhaust, didn’t it?

  Faith’s bedroom was right across the hall, where it had been ever since they’d turned ten and Charlotte had insisted on having her own room. Faith, she’d known, was unhappy when she moved out and started shutting her bedroom door, but she had needed that space and privacy with a desperation she couldn’t explain, that felt like a fever reaching dangerous heights. She hadn’t wanted to hurt Faith, but she would if that was the only way she could separate herself. She’d been as miserable as if they were conjoined, condemned to share a life unless they chose the huge risk of surgical sunderance. Charlotte had read up on identical twins when she was eight or nine, and she remembered staring with fascination and horror at pictures of conjoined twins.

  I could not bear it, she’d thought, and meant it.

  She would have chosen in a heartbeat to have the surgery to divide them, even if she didn’t survive it. Her need had been that great, and that irrational.

  Today was the first time in years that she could remember talking to Faith and laughing and forgetting, for moments at a time, that they were more than just sisters. She’d looked at Faith’s face without seeing a reflection of her own.

  Maybe, at last, her efforts to define herself were working. Or maybe she had just put aside her discomfiture because Faith—and Dad—needed her.

  And maybe, she thought with a twinge, it had something to do with Gray Van Dusen, who had been surprised when she told him she and Faith were identical twins.

  You and Faith aren’t that much alike, are you?

  No, she had thought sadly; Faith’s the strong one, and I’m the coward. Running, always running.

  What she didn’t know was where she thought she was going. Just lately, it was a question she’d begun to ask herself. A need for the answer just might be one reason she hadn’t started job hunting more aggressively.

  From long habit, she skipped the third step from the bottom, which always squeaked. Not that she was sneaking out, exactly, but she was in a solitary mood.

  She’d put her questions out of her mind, too. Right now, she didn’t want to think about why she felt something was missing from the life she’d carved for herself. She just wanted to be.

  Rather than go out the front door, which looked toward the highway, Charlotte went through the kitchen. Rows and rows of jars still sat along the countertop, the glass reflecting glints of moonlight falling through the kitchen windows. Without turning on the overhead or porch light, she stepped out the back door, the screen door creaking as she let it snap shut behind her.

  The night air was as cool as she’d hoped, but with her first breath, she smelled smoke. Her head turned sharply. What was burning? Even as she hurried toward the corner of the house, her mind tried to find a good reason for a midnight fire. A woodstove? Not on a hot August day. Slash burn
ing on cleared land, even just a neighbor who’d cut out blackberry vines. No, she’d seen the sign announcing a burn ban out in front of the fire station. And besides, she hadn’t smelled a fire when she’d gone to bed at ten or so. She rounded the house and stopped dead.

  Flames crawled up the side of the barn.

  Charlotte gasped, whirled around and ran back the way she’d come, stumbling once and barely noticing the pain. She flung herself up the couple of steps and through the kitchen.

  At the bottom of the stairs, she bellowed, “Faith! Wake up! The barn’s on fire!” She wheeled again and raced for the kitchen, grabbed the phone and dialed 9-1-1. “Barn’s on fire,” she gasped and gave the address before dropping the telephone and bolting back outside. Heart pounding, she ran.

  The fire had already leaped higher, toward the roof, but it wasn’t huge yet. Oh, God—as old as this barn was, the wood was the perfect tinder. She’d done the watering tonight, and knew exactly where she’d dropped the nozzle and where the faucet was. She turned it on full blast and aimed the nozzle toward the barn wall. Even when she pulled the hose out taut, the stream barely reached the fire, and she could see that it wouldn’t be enough, but she kept spraying, above, around, below.

  The house lights had sprung on behind her, and Faith wasn’t a minute behind her, running in some kind of thin nightgown and flip-flops like Charlotte’s.

  “You called 9-1-1?” she yelled as she ran past, and Charlotte yelled back, “Yes!”

  There was another faucet round back, Charlotte remembered, but a minute, two minutes, passed before a second stream of water joined hers. Faith had probably had to hook up a hose.

  The scream of the siren wasn’t far behind. They were lucky, so lucky, that the volunteer fire station was less than half a mile away. The first truck roared in, the headlights spotlighting Charlotte but not her sister, who was behind the barn. She kept the stream of water aimed at the barn even as the firemen ran toward her pulling a hose that made hers look like a child’s toy.

  “Get back, ma’am, please get back!” she was told, and she let the nozzle fall from her shaking hand.

  Adrenaline roaring through her, she backed away and kept backing until she felt mown grass under her feet again. She was hugging herself when Faith reached her and they grabbed each other and held on, neither of them looking away from the fiery scene and the eerie sight of water soaring in great arcs to cascade down over their 100-year-old barn and the licking flames.

  “Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no,” Faith moaned.

  “Everything inside will be wet,” Charlotte whispered.

  Faith whimpered and buried her face briefly against her sister’s neck, then lifted her head again as if she couldn’t stand not to watch her dreams burn.

  The smell now was stomach-turning: smoke and the wet, charred odor of a campfire doused in water. Something else, too, Charlotte thought in one corner of her mind. Gasoline, maybe from the fire trucks?

  The fire sank back quickly, not big enough to defy a drowning. Faith and Charlotte clung to each other and kept watching as firemen prowled outside and stepped through the hole burned in the side of the barn to check, presumably, for hidden embers.

  Eventually, one of the firemen, bulky in a cumbersome yellow suit, crossed the yard.

  “Faith, is that you?”

  “Yes, and Charlotte, too. Char, you remember Tim Crawford?”

  She nodded. “Of course I do. I’m…um, really glad you got here so quick, Tim.”

  He’d been one—two?—years ahead of them, and best friends with Jay Bridges, quarterback, whom Faith had gone with her freshman year. Charlotte had liked Tim better than Jay, not that either of them were her type.

  “We’re confident we’ve got the fire out,” Tim was saying. “It’s real lucky one of you noticed it before the whole barn was engaged.”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Charlotte said. “I was just going to come out and sit on the back steps and admire the stars. But I smelled smoke the moment I got outside.”

  “Lucky,” he said again, nodding. “Five, ten more minutes, you’d have lost the barn.”

  A shudder ran through Faith. Charlotte tightened her arms around her sister.

  “How do you think it started?” Charlotte asked.

  “It’s arson,” he said bluntly. “Can’t you smell the gasoline? And I know it’s hard to see the smoke at night like this, but it was black. I’m going to make sure someone is out here in the morning to talk to you about it.”

  “Can we, um, look inside?” Faith asked shakily.

  Sounding kind, he said, “Why don’t you wait until daylight? Get a good night’s sleep. Didn’t look like that much damage to me.”

  “Oh.” Faith nodded, and kept nodding. “Oh, okay.”

  “Thanks, Tim,” Charlotte said, and steered her sister toward the house. Behind them, the volunteer firemen were reeling in their hoses and climbing aboard the two trucks. Engines started before the two women reached the house.

  In the kitchen, Charlotte said, “I don’t know about you, but I want a drink. Do you have anything?”

  “Daddy keeps some bourbon up top of the refrigerator, but I’d settle for tea.” Faith sank into a kitchen chair as if her legs had just failed her. “In a minute. When I can stand up again.”

  Charlotte shook her head. “I’ll make it.” She thought wistfully about a slug of the bourbon but instead got down two mugs, plopped in tea bags, filled them with water and stuck them in the microwave. One minute later, and the water was hot. Without asking Faith, she added more sugar than she liked to one of the mugs, then carried them both to the table.

  “Thank you.” Faith smiled wanly at her. Soot streaked her face, which was paler than it ought to be considering she had a good tan. Her thin nightgown had gotten a blast of water at some point and clung revealingly to her. Below the hem, her feet were filthy.

  Charlotte looked down and realized she looked just as awful. Her feet were not only filthy, but one of her toes was also bloody. She had a vague memory of stubbing it. “You know I had three showers today?” she said. “And now I’m going to have to have a fourth?”

  “It’s tomorrow now,” her sister pointed out. She stirred her tea, then lifted out the bag. “So this won’t be your fourth shower of today, it’ll be your first shower of tomorrow. No, today.”

  Suddenly they were both giggling.

  “Oh, Lord,” Faith finally said on a sigh, her hand pressed to her stomach. “I was sound asleep. I never would have woken up. It really is a miracle you happened to go outside.”

  Charlotte met her sister’s eyes. “Rory was awfully mad the other day.”

  “It could’ve just been a teenager. Why would Rory do something like this? He wants me back. He’d have to know that would blow any chance….”

  Charlotte set down her mug hard. “Does he have a chance?”

  “No!” Faith glared at her. “How can you even ask me that?”

  “You’re the one who just implied…”

  “I did not! I was trying to explain how he thinks!”

  Charlotte let out a frustrated breath. “When you called, you sounded like he’d been angry lately when he came around. And he was nasty from the minute he walked into the barn day before yesterday.”

  “There’s a big difference between…”

  God give her patience. “Yes, there is. But if he’s getting angry, it’s because he’s realized he doesn’t have another chance. You thought he’d just go away once he realized that, didn’t you?”

  Stricken, Faith finally closed her mouth and nodded, just once.

  “But when you were married, he got violent every time he thought he was losing control of you.”

  “Yes,” her sister whispered.

  “Maybe after he put you in the hospital he was ashamed of himself for a little while. Maybe he thought if he gave you time you’d forgive him eventually. But if he’s finally realized you aren’t going to, do you really think he’s not going to make some
…I don’t know, some parting gesture?”

  Head bowed, gaze fixed on her tea, Faith looked…broken. “I don’t know. I guess I was more afraid he’d get mad and hit me. This seems so…sneaky.”

  “He must know how badly you want to keep the farm going, for Dad’s sake, and because it’s ours.”

  She heard herself and thought, Ours? Where had that come from?

  Faith looked up, eyes red-rimmed and cheeks dirty. “This would have been one of the worst things he could do to me.”

  Charlotte didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.

  After a moment of silence, Faith said, “There are other possibilities. It could have just been random vandalism. Or… You know how Angie just started a couple of weeks ago?”

  “Yes, but what does that have to do…?”

  Faith interrupted. “I had a boy who worked for me before Angie. I caught him stealing money from the till and had to fire him.”

  Charlotte blinked. “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “He claimed it was the first time he stole anything, but I didn’t believe him.”

  “Really? You didn’t think he’d learned his lesson and would be grateful and loyal if you kept him on?”

  Faith sprang to her feet. “That’s enough! You don’t know me at all anymore. I will not let you treat me as if there’s anything wrong with believing my husband loved me enough to change.”

  Shame flooded Charlotte. She rose, too, facing her sister across the small kitchen table. “You’re right. I’m…really sorry.”

  Faith just looked at her, then turned and walked out of the kitchen. A moment later, footsteps went up the stairs and then Charlotte heard a door shut.

  “Why did I say that?” she asked the silent room. The awful thing was, she knew the answer, which made her feel even worse.

  CHAPTER THREE

  GRAY VAN DUSEN WAS THE first visitor come morning, which somehow did not surprise Charlotte. He was probably kept well informed about any exciting events in West Fork. She imagined him sipping his morning coffee while he perused an e-mail list of every fire and police call made in the previous twenty-four hours.