The Secret He Keeps

by Julieann Dove

  There was one person she wasn’t able to avoid on her big trip to the grocery store that day. Karen Tussle, the woman who worked at the local bookstore downtown. She seemed to think she owned it, too. Rachel closed her eyes when she heard her high-pitched squeal. “Rachel Miller, it’s been ages!”

  Rachel slowly turned around, looking in the cross hairs of Karen Tussle’s four eyes. The short busybody could barely be seen behind the stacks of bread and bags of pretzels. They were buy one, get one free this week. Karen stepped out from back of it. Rachel noticed she still wore her bangs cut straight across her face and square down to her ears. And the orange-as-a-carrot color seemed to be something that was sticking with her idea of a fashion statement.

  “Hello, Karen. It’s so nice to see you.”

  Karen beamed with excitement, grabbing Rachel’s cheek with her stubby fingers and gasping. “Rachel, you know we just started a new book by Kate Fisher. It was my turn to pick. I wanted something with a little mystery to it. The last one we read was so boring, I barely made it through it. Monica Taber had picked it. And you know Monica Taber.” She touched Rachel’s coat sleeve and rolled her eyes. “She likes to read those international ones and I frankly don’t get them. Russian government conspiracy theorists? Plus, mine has a little bit of a sexy side to it, if you know what I mean. Mr. Tussle better watch out!” She leaned in a little and winked, although it was difficult to see under the magnification of her thick glasses.

  Rachel met Karen two years ago through one of her patients, Jean Chadwick. Jean was an avid reader, even bringing her book into the examination room to read while waiting for Rachel to come in. She explained to Rachel she was in a book club and they met every Wednesday evening at Martha’s Bookshelf, down off Carter Drive, next to the Petite Wine Shop. The women were nice and it gave everyone a chance to sit around and talk about the characters in the book, and not everyone else, for once. The idea sounded like something Rachel wanted to try. It might even bring in more business for her practice, so she joined during the next new book and was hooked for the next ten months. It helped take her mind off work and Wednesday nights Scott could go out with the guys.

  Still wearing the synthetic smile from her psychiatrist visit, Rachel replied, “That’s great, Karen. It was nice seeing you, and I hope you enjoy the book.”

  Karen’s jolly cheeks formed into round cherries as she smiled at Rachel. “We’ll be finished in three weeks. Do you want to come back and the next book can be your pick? And don’t worry your pretty little self that anyone is going to say anything about you leaving the group so abruptly, as you did. Although I found it peculiar you never returned after that night your husband came to the bookstore, and you all had that little talk outside. Must’ve been a doozy whatever he came to say to you. I felt so bad you dropped your lighthouse platter on the way out. Lovely thing shattered to pieces.” She shook her head and bit her bottom lip. “I tried calling the next day, but you never returned my call. I just wanted to check on you and to let you know that I could probably find you a new platter through eBay. My intentions were as innocent as can be. No matter what Peggy says to people at the diner. I don’t delight in gossip.”

  Rachel thought a moment. Scott came to the bookstore? That seemed absurd—why would he? And the lighthouse dish? Funny, she couldn’t remember what Karen was talking about. It was broken? She needed to check her cabinet when she got home. And for that matter, she couldn’t honestly recall the moment she stopped going to the book club. What would it have to do with Scott? She figured it was between books and then the accident happened. No one could certainly fault her for a major life crisis, could they? It’s not as if she stepped to the dark side of audio books or film adaptions for books they were reading and discussing.

  “I’m sorry, so abruptly? I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”

  Karen pinched her lips. “I shouldn’t have even brought it up.”

  But Karen lived to bring things up. Bringing things up went hand in hand with gossiping in grocery stores and reading between the lines. Lines that never usually existed, but were now in the editorial section of the Community Crier. Peggy was right when she crowned Karen as head busybody of Mystic.

  “No, that’s quite all right. I suffered some memory loss and I can’t quite recall what you’re describing.”

  Karen’s eyes twinkled like new bulbs on a Christmas tree. “Oh, I didn’t realize.” She grabbed her mouth momentarily to seemed shocked, but Rachel knew better. “Well then, it was during our usual Wednesday night and Scott rushed into the bookstore like he was being chased by aliens.” She grabbed her chest. “Come to think back, he seemed kind of weird…like spacey. He didn’t even take the time to say hello to any of us. He claimed to have lost his keys to get into the house. But then you went outside and talked with him. After you came in, you said your good-byes, rushed out, dropping your poor platter, and you stopped coming after that.”

  That made no sense to Rachel. Scott came to the reading group for lost keys? He kept his house keys on his keyring, the one that held the key to his vehicle. And why would Rachel not return to the group? She enjoyed the group and the discussions. She even found a way to tolerate Karen during the sessions. Bringing chocolate cake seemed to keep her quiet for at least the first fifteen to twenty minutes.

  “I’ll have to get back to you on joining the group for the next book, Karen. I’m in a slight rush right now.” Rachel turned her body, ready to run before Karen could think of anything else to say to keep her stranded in the grocery store. Instead, she took a deep breath, waved and walked briskly to the front registers. She didn’t want to give Karen any false hope, and she didn’t want to commit to hearing about her and “Mr. Tussle’s” sex life or lack of, for the following three weeks. The book group seemed to always take a turn to Karen’s personal agenda.

  The grocery store had all thirteen registers manned that day. Baggers were running from the outside to gather carts to the inside end of conveyor belts to pack hundreds of dollars in emergency supplies for their customers. Mike Massey was at the end of the lane next to where Rachel waited her turn. She noticed he was using his arm without any apparent problem. She’d set his broken ulna two summers ago when he got a new moped to travel to and from work. He was turning left into the parking lot when Mr. Tompkins blindsided him. Mike suffered a broken arm and Mr. Tompkins got his license taken away. He should’ve never been driving in the first place. He was ninety-one, suffered from cataracts, and had stolen the keys to the car when his daughter was in the backyard, mowing the lawn.

  And there Rachel stood. Confused more than ever, Rachel. Once a practicing doctor who set broken bones and cooked every Sunday evening, now behind the lady who shared the ten items or less lane with her. The woman was placing her thirty cans of “fancy cat” cat food on the belt, mumbling something under her breath. Her hair was long and stringy, the tired color of what once looked blonde. Now it was a dirty-looking white. She wore gloves with the fingertips missing, as she hoisted a bag of kitty litter onto the counter before putting the marker down for Rachel to add her things. Clearly she thought the ten items meant ten different items. Rachel only understood it to mean socially challenged.

  Rachel happened to see some of the other customers staring at her and the cat lady and looked down with shame. Was this who she was now? Some hobbit who ran to her room to avoid tiny dressed-up children begging for candy? A bully book reader who wanted to go into Karen Tussle’s house at night and slip Mr. Tussle a Viagra so Karen would stop wanting to add erotic themes to the poor club’s list? Okay, so she was, but the verdict was still out whether she would continue to be. Somewhere inside that body, among the pickled liver and HBO saturated brain, there was a girl who yearned to find her way back to whatever a new normal would eventually be. This normal was getting old.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Damsel in Distress

  The sun managed to stay hidden the entire day. A couple of times, John thought it
was going to rain. A few drops had fallen on his arm, making wet stains on his coat. It might as well have rained; that’s all that was missing from this terrible day. His ex-fiancée texted him last night, wanting to come over and talk. What was there to say? He just needed to get past her and all the drama she brought to his life. You would think six months would’ve been long enough to purge her from his system. Sadly, he still thought of her every now and then.

  John knew it was getting late by the growls of his stomach. The calories from the burger and fries at lunch had long ago been worked off from carrying tools back and forth to help repair a street power box. He knew the temperature was dropping because of the stiffness in his fingers as he tried to pull the spool of cables off the back of his truck. Rick took it from him and ran it to the other guys in the crew, two houses down on the right. As John looked for a roll of tape in the mobile repair box, his attention was caught by a repetitive banging, coming from the back area of Rachel’s house. He walked closer to find out what was making the noise.

  He stopped when he turned the back corner, his mouth agape at what he saw. Rachel stood, feet apart, wielding an ax toward a large piece of wood that sat cockeyed on the ground before her. Each clash of the ax was a tiny miracle it didn’t split her foot in two. John ran toward her, as the ax was on the downswing.

  “Rachel.” His volume was high enough to be heard, yet calm enough not to send the ax flying in his direction.

  She spun around, the ax still mid-air. “You scared me to death!” Her cheeks were smudged red from the exercise and chilled air. Little puffs of air came from her mouth and stray hairs from her ponytail streamed in her eyes. She used the back of her hand to rub them away.

  “You are scaring me to death! Do you know what you’re doing?” he asked.

  Rachel put the ax down and with one hand, she perched on the handle. “What are you talking about? Of course, I know what I’m doing. I’m splitting wood. I have a brother. I watched someone doing this before, you know.”

  Seeing that he was putting her on defense, he changed his approach. “I just meant, do you need help?”

  With her guard still drawn, Rachel replied, “No, thank you. Just work on returning my power, and I might not need to split wood and forage for food tonight.”

  “I’m sorry. I know you don’t have power and it’s frustrating. I shouldn’t have acted like you didn’t know what you were doing. Of course you do. Obviously you do.” He pointed at the few pieces of hacked wood around her, suddenly hoping she didn’t take it as sarcasm.

  She rubbed her forehead with her hand. “No, I’m sorry. It’s got nothing to do with you.” She kicked a piece of the splintered wood. “Crap, I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what I’m still doing here in this house. In this state. On this earth.” She took a look at the sky. “Just chalk it up to a bad day, I guess.”

  She grabbed the back of her neck, closing her eyes for a second before she continued. “I’m cold. I was forced to share some shoe leather they sold me as chicken with my dog. Who, by the way, thinks I’m a total loser and freak. I talk to him all day and I’m sure he’s wondering when I’m going to shut up so he can just sleep, for goodness’ sakes. I have no wood because I waited too late to call to get some. Incidentally, out of the two guys I did call, one laughed and said he delivered his last bit before the storm, and the other one said he’d get here by next Friday.”

  John watched the swirling tornado of this girl, wondering what to do. He could program transformers, install transmissions, and even get some guesses right to the answers on Jeopardy! in the evenings, but how was he going to handle the breakdown of this girl? Especially when that was all that he wanted to do at that moment. He could identify with a little of what she was going through.

  Some of it he was hearing. Some of it he was understanding. She used a lot of hand gestures and eyebrow arches, but most of all she was pretty cute. All that fiery energy made him like her even more.

  Finally, she stopped.

  “I have a trick my dad taught me when I was little. Do you mind if I show you?” More than once he had been told by girls that his eyes were his secret weapon. He tried using them on Rachel.

  After taking a slow breath, Rachel conceded the ax over to him and she backed up, waiting to see this magnificent trick he was going to pull out of thin air.

  “You have to center the piece on a larger stump.” He picked up the wood, carrying it to a nearby flat surface.

  She followed him. He placed it down on a large stump, watching her closely. Seeing whether she was interested or merely patronizing him. He couldn’t tell. Kelly, his ex, mostly patronized him. But Rachel stood, arms folded, with one of her hands pressed to her lips. God, she looked helpless. Wearing nothing more than a vest, her red nose looked almost painted. Her hands looked no warmer. She must have weighed all of a hundred pounds. He knew she could never pull off this job of wood splitting by herself.

  “Then you hold the ax kind of like a baseball bat.” He looked in her eyes, waiting for a nod. Some type of recognition. She gave a half of one. “My dad said, look at the center of the wood and think of the meanest person you can, and then crack it.”

  She let out a small laugh. “That’s the secret? Imagine someone mean and then ax them to death?” She shifted back and forth. “He’s not serving time in the state pen, is he?”

  John held the ax over his shoulder and smiled. “No, actually he’s a nice guy. Who, now that I think about it, didn’t do a fair share of cutting wood. He must’ve run out of mean people to imagine.”

  He covered his mouth partly, not wanting her to see his smile. “Now, come here. I think you were holding your hands too close together. Let me show you how to get some better leverage.”

  She moved closer, watching him with every step she made. He moved behind her when she got close enough to the waiting piece of wood. His height towered over her small stature. She turned her head slightly, waiting for the next step.

  “Okay, take the ax with your left hand and hold it midway down.” He placed it in front of her. “Now, take your other hand and hold it toward the back, about four inches from your other one.”

  He stepped behind her. Her hair touched his face as he leaned over her shoulder to help demonstrate what he was saying. It smelled like shampoo or hairspray. Something feminine. Oh, how he missed the smell of a woman. Especially when they got out of the shower. The thought of the steam mixed in with the perfume made him lonely for a woman. To see all the lotion bottles on the rim of his sink, and pink razors in the shower. Gosh, why was he so stupid not to see Kelly was a cheater? Was it him? Did he not do something that made her want someone else?

  Rachel turned her head. He suddenly remembered he was giving a lesson.

  “No, a little more.” He grabbed around her, moving her right hand a little farther back from her left one. The shift in position moved him closer. His body molded hers, making a surge in his testosterone level. He quickly backed up.

  “I think I have it,” she said.

  ***

  Rachel closed her eyes, feeling the heat coming off his body. The close proximity of him, his breath soft in her ear, his large hands resting on top of hers. It was more than she could handle. The last time she’d been feeling that turned on was after watching Friends with Benefits, with Justin Timberlake. She remembered having to drink the other half of her bottle of wine just to get to sleep that night. From there on, she kept mostly to action movies or movies that didn’t base their entire plot around having sex. Seeing as that was not in the cards with her solitary life, playing a nun in her monastery of a home.

  “I’m sure you have to get back to work.” She looked at the ground, hoping to avoid eye contact. Perhaps he would be able to read her naughty thoughts and she would die of embarrassment.

  “I can come back after we’re finished with work and help you. It really would be no problem.”

  She looked over to the pile of wood that was dumped two years
ago, by the shed. Still un-split, she knew it would be another two years before she hired someone to come and do it. It was obvious she was no Paul Bunyan. But she refused to ask for help. Especially from a complete stranger. Who made her want to rip off his bulky coat and run her cheek down his toned chest. She kinda already imagined it was buff. Not like the Hulk, buff. Just enough to ripple and bulge when he’d pick her up and lay her down. Good Lord, she was getting a hot flash.

  “No, really, I think I’ve got it. I see great results in the future with that new trick. I might have that entire wood pile cut by tonight.”

  Her mother always said she had a little bit of smartass in her. It was finding its way back to its rightful owner.

  He hesitated, looking a little doubtful. “All right, but yell if you need medical help.”

  “I will.” She gave a half-smile with a quick glance toward him. If only he knew she was state certified as a doctor.

  She watched as he jogged off around to the front of the house. Several times she saw herself, even heard herself, yell, “Stop—come back. I do need you. I’m a big talker, but please take care of me. I have no one in this world.”

  Rachel put her hands in the position he showed her and took a swing at the wood. The ax landed only three inches past the top surface. She pumped the handle a few times to release the blade from the wedge before trying a few more attempts. With frozen hands, she laid the ax by the back door and went inside.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Recurring Dreams

  After burning the last magazine she could find in the fireplace, Rachel pulled the blankets around her head. The fire took less than ten minutes to burn and twenty minutes to find the books and lug them to the living room. Now, at least the closet in the spare room was clean. She was never one to throw out a National Geographic. Scott’s dad had purchased them a subscription every year for Christmas. The pictures were some of the most magnificent she’d seen. It was depressing watching them curl backward and fade into blackness in the single flame that took away their existence. Sadly, they did little to provide heat.