“He’s been without anybody to talk to a long while. I see your pond’s found a new use.” Stebbs glanced toward the pond where Eli was gliding across the ice on his boots, Lucy perched precariously on his shoulders, hooting like a loon.
“Mother would roll in her grave if I’d been able to dig her one,” Lynn said, but there was a smile on her face.
“Nice braids,” Stebbs said.
“Shut up.”
Their visitors stayed through the evening, and Lynn brought some of the larger wood chunks inside to set upended to use as chairs. The four sat in a comfortable circle near the stove while they ate their supper, topped off with some peaches that Stebbs had brought along mixed with snow.
“It’s kinda like ice cream,” Lucy said, juice dripping down her chin.
“Kinda,” Stebbs answered.
“What’s ice cream?” Lynn asked.
“You poor deprived child.” Eli shook his head in mock despair, earning a whack on the back of the head from Lynn. She had found herself making excuses to touch him all day. Lucy had coaxed her out on the ice, and even though her balance was good, she’d slipped more than once when Eli was nearby. He always caught her neatly and propped her back on her feet, much to Stebbs’ amusement.
“I wish you had your guitar, Uncle Eli,” Lucy said, once they finished their peaches. “I’d like to hear a song.”
“You know, it’s funny, I forgot to grab it when the police kicked down my door and arrested me.”
Lucy crawled into Stebbs’ lap. “Do you have a guitar down in your secret basement?”
“No, little one, sorry,” he answered, smoothing her hair. “Wish I did.”
“I think there’s one in the attic,” Lynn piped up, to everyone’s surprise. “Seems like I’ve seen one up there.”
Lucy bounced up and down on Stebbs’ lap. “Go check! Go check!”
“I’ll come with you.” Eli stood with Lynn and followed her up the stairs after grabbing a flashlight. Lynn opened the door into the kitchen.
“I haven’t been inside a real house in a while,” Eli said, flashing the light off the walls. “Almost feels funny.”
“It’s weird, sometimes when I think about it,” Lynn said. “This is my own house, and I never use it. Mother grew up here, her dad was raised here too, but all I ever see is the basement.” She didn’t add that having Eli beside her in the upstairs should feel weird too, but it didn’t.
“You never come upstairs?”
“Rarely. The bathroom here on the first floor is set up so that we can use it, and Mother stored a lot of stuff in the attic. But mostly no, we stayed in the basement.”
“Why’s that?”
“Easier to heat in the winter, stays cool in the summer. Only one access door and the windows are too low to the ground to pose much of a threat. Anyone tries to come in those we’ve got an advantage on them. The windows here on the first floor are a good eight feet long, at least four to a room. Impossible to defend.”
They walked through the dining room and into the living room, where Eli looked at the windows in question. “It’s such a waste,” he said. “I know it’s a smart decision, staying downstairs. But this is a beautiful old house; you’ve got all this space and these high ceilings. In the city, even in the nicer part where we lived, there’d be ten people living in a space this large.”
Lynn shuddered at the thought and led him to the curved staircase. “I had a bedroom upstairs for a while. I remember, kinda, what that was like. Attic’s here, watch your step.”
The door opened onto a narrow staircase that led up into a gabled room. Eli followed Lynn up the stairs, flickering the light in front of her so that she could see. “Look at all this stuff.”
The walls were lined with furniture, old bulky antiques that had once filled the downstairs rooms. Steamer trunks were against one wall, tightly rolled area rugs leaned against the other.
“Mother moved most everything up here a long time ago,” Lynn said. “She figured anyone foraging for stuff would look in the downstairs windows and think our house had already been emptied of anything useful.”
“Who would steal a piano?” Eli asked, striking one lonely key that rang out through the small attic.
“Nobody, probably. But Mother didn’t want to take the chance. Everything up here meant something to her, and she didn’t want to see it go up in smoke for someone’s firewood, or one of her great-grandma’s rugs used for a blanket.”
“Makes sense, I guess.”
“I think maybe she was hoping someday life would be normal again—her kind of normal—and that she’d put everything back the way it was supposed to be. Like sometime in the future, when we wouldn’t have to worry about whether or not two people could defend the living room.”
“That sounds nice,” Eli said sadly, trailing the light over the furniture. “What’s in the trunks?”
“Old clothes, mostly.” Lynn kneeled down next to one of them. “This is where I got Lucy’s clothes and shoes from. It’s my old stuff. Bring the light over here.”
Eli followed and Lynn spotted the guitar case, propped behind one of the trunks in between a secretary desk and an old rocking horse. “Knew I’d seen it recently,” she said. They made their exit quietly, leaving the relics of a safe past behind them in the dusty darkness.
They’d found the guitar, but the trip had been in vain. Eli strummed the chords, and Lucy made a nasty face. “Ugh. What’s wrong with it?”
“Out of tune,” Eli said, running his hands along the strings. “I can tu—”
“That’s a disappointment, and no mistake,” Stebbs said as he rose to his feet. “Can’t tell you the last time I heard music. I best get going. I’m sure I’ve lost the fire, but I can probably stir up some coals yet, if I get back home.”
Lucy bounced up when Stebbs did. “Can I come with you? I want to play witch.”
“It’s all right with me, if it’s okay with Lynn.”
“You got a gun on you?” Lynn asked.
“Course,” said Stebbs.
“It’s all right with me then,” she said, somewhat reluctantly. “You listen to Stebbs crossing the field, Lucy,” she warned as the girl zipped up her thick coat. The child nodded solemnly and took Stebbs’ hand.
“You two have a good night,” Stebbs tipped Eli a wink as he went up the staircase.
“Slick old guy, isn’t he?” Eli said to Lynn when she came back from locking the door behind them.
“What’s that?”
Eli ran his fingers over the strings once more, letting their discordant music fill the basement. “I can tune this up in a few minutes, if I want. I’m guessing Stebbs knows that as well as I do, but he slid on out of here and took Lucy with him so we could be alone.”
Lynn blushed and blurted out the first thing that came to mind, which wasn’t the best choice in the moment. “How is Neva?”
“She’s all right, I guess.” Eli said, avoiding Lynn’s eyes. “It’s hard, you know, being stuck in a small space together for a long time. That’s part of the reason I came today; I think she needed some time alone. I wanted to see you too though,” he added quickly.
“I’m glad you came,” Lynn admitted.
“Really? It’s not easy to tell with you.”
“I am glad.”
“Good.”
“Lucy seems happy,” Eli said. “She misses her mother. I know it didn’t show today, but she was so excited to see you and thrilled to be outside. At night though, she cries after she thinks I’m asleep.” She didn’t share with Eli how torn she felt, lying in her own bed and listening to the quiet mourning. The basement gave them so little privacy, she wanted to allow Lucy the peace to cry alone. And some nights Lynn’s cheeks were wet as well, her own mother near in her mind.
“Will Neva ever be ready to take her back?”
“Do you want her to?”
Lynn leaned back against Lucy’s cot and shut her eyes. “No. But she’s not mine to keep. I know
Neva thinks she’s not capable of caring for her.”
“It was true at the time she said it,” Eli answered. “But she’s doing better, physically anyway. All the wildness of this place scares her though. She only leaves the house to visit the baby’s grave.”
“There’s no shame in being scared,” Lynn said. “I imagine if I were plunked down in the middle of Entargo I’d probably hide too.”
“Our mom thought there was shame in it,” Eli said. “Even back in the city, Neva jumped at the smallest things. Mom wanted the best possible wife for Bradley, said he was the kind of person who needed to keep the race going. A girl who cries when there’s a mouse in the kitchen didn’t exactly fit the ideal Mom had in mind for him.”
“What about you? Aren’t you the type that’s supposed to carry on the race?”
For the first time Eli’s smile wasn’t a nice one. “Oh, I’m not Bradley. That’s something I’ve known since I could see. The population schedules are figured according to the male. So a woman could have two kids but each of them would have a different father, one child per male. My dad died before I was born so I don’t know what he was like, but he certainly didn’t have the place in Mom’s heart that Bradley’s dad did. If I’d had a child when we were still in the city, it wouldn’t have been half the event Bradley’s was.”
Lynn nodded and looked at Eli in the firelight. She hadn’t seen him without layers of clothing since their first meeting by the stream, and he had improved since then. Sinewy muscles lined his arms, the hollows in his cheeks were filled. He caught her looking and she glanced away, clearing her throat.
“But you said your mom had a musician picked out for you?”
“She said my best attribute was my voice, and she found me a nice little pianist.”
“I’d say your bow shot is your best attribute,” Lynn said.
“That would win me a lot of girls back in the city,” Eli said. “They all want a man who can nail a squirrel at fifty yards.” They both laughed. “Besides,” he went on, “Stebbs says I’ve got nothing on you.”
“True enough,” Lynn said, and they laughed again. “I’m better with the rifle though,” she added. “I spend so much time prone on the roof peering through that scope my neck’s got a permanent crick in it.”
“Oh, really?”
“Mmm-hmm.” Lynn cracked her neck to illustrate.
“You know, that pianist told me I give pretty good back rubs.”
“Oh, did she now?”
“Yup.” Eli smiled at her. “Course I imagine you’ve got more stress than a city musician.”
“A bit.”
“A fellow can try though, right?”
Lynn eyed him gravely for a moment. “You’re not going to try to have sex with me, are you?”
For the briefest moment, Eli was speechless and Lynn felt a flush running up her neck at the thought that she’d said something stupid. The moment was broken when he threw both hands in the air in surrender. “Wouldn’t dream of it! Well . . . I might dream—” Lynn tossed her boot at him, cutting him off mid sentence. He swatted it out of the air with ease. “Get over here.”
Lynn laughed and scooted over the floor to lean back against his legs. He touched her gently at first, only on the shoulders, and Lynn felt her entire body tense under the contact. He moved slowly but thoroughly, running his thumbs up and down the strong cords of her neck and down to the tops of her shoulder blades. Soon the newness of being touched by him was less alarming and more pleasant, and Lynn sagged against him, allowing all the tension of her life to seep out under his practiced hands.
“Yeah, you’re okay at this,” she said eventually, breaking the silence.
“Don’t be so critical. You’re slightly more tense than the pianist.”
“Oh, am I?” Lynn asked, but she noticed that Eli had yet to call his old girlfriend by her name. “What was she like?”
“Who?”
“Your girlfriend.”
“Oh, well . . .” Eli’s hands stopped moving for one second, but he picked the rhythm back up. “She was a nice girl, and we got along fine, but that spark was missing, you know?”
“I don’t know. The only people I knew in my life before you guys were Mother and Stebbs.”
“There’s no real way to explain it,” Eli said. “Sometimes you meet a person, and even if you don’t know them at all you can’t stop thinking about them. And every time you talk to them you get nervous, and when you go home you think about every word you said to each other, replaying it in your mind.”
Lynn rested her head against Eli’s knee, relishing the feel of his hands against her neck. “I guess I do know,” she said.
His hands came to rest on her shoulders. “It wouldn’t take all that much for me to tune the guitar, if you want.”
“Really?”
“Give me a few minutes,” he said, propping her up gently and easing out from behind her shoulders.
She watched his hands moving expertly up and down the strings, as familiar with the instrument as she was with her gun. His head cocked to the side as each note, all new to her ear, was adjusted to his liking. When he was finished, he struck a simple chord, the sound echoing inside the stone walls.
“I feel bad Stebbs is missing it,” Eli said. “I know he said it’s been a while since he heard music. Not that I don’t like having you to myself.”
“I’ve never heard music,” Lynn said.
Eli’s hand stopped moving over the strings. “Never? Not once?”
She shrugged. “How would I? We had bigger worries.”
“No pressure on me then,” Eli joked. “It’s only the deciding moment on whether or not you reject music for the rest of your life.”
“I already like it.”
“All you heard was the C chord.”
“Then shut up and play something.”
Eli tossed a pillow at her but she caught it deftly, the teasing smile on her face dissipating as he began his song, a slow, lilting melody that filled the dark corners of the basement. His voice joined the tune, very different from his speaking voice, lower and throbbing with the depth of the emotions that existed under his jokes. She watched him as he played, studying the small muscles in his arms that jumped as he picked the strings, the slight squinting of his eyes as he concentrated. He came to a slow stop and smiled apologetically.
“That’s as far as a I got, back home in Entargo.”
“You wrote that?”
“Yup. It’s not like holding a deer heart in your hand or anything, but it passes the time.”
The sound of spitting ice hitting the window brought them both out of their pleasant reverie. “Shit.” Eli stood and tapped at the window, but the freezing glaze on the other side didn’t move. “Do you think Stebbs and Lucy made it home in time?”
Lynn rose from the floor and stretched, still lost in the spell of his song. “Definitely, it only takes a few minutes, and he’s smart enough to have hurried her along.”
“I imagine it’d be pretty unpleasant to be stuck outside.”
“If you’re looking for an invitation to stay, you don’t have to fish for it. I won’t send you out in this. Will Neva worry though?”
“Doubt it. She’s probably asleep already.”
“All right then.” Lynn closed the door to the stove, dropping the basement into blackness.
“Damn,” Eli said. “I can’t see a thing. Is this your plan? For me to break a leg and be your prisoner?”
Lynn found his hand with hers. “Follow me,” she said, and led him to Lucy’s cot by the fire. “You can sleep here.”
“Wait.” His hand squeezed hers. “Who said that’s the end of the backrub?”
Lynn snorted in the dark. “There’s not room for both of us in there.”
“We’ll make it work.” He tugged on her in the dark, and she hesitated. “I don’t want anything from you, but I’m not ready to let go yet.”
She wordlessly climbed into the cot. Eli slipped
his shirt off and slid in beside her, snaking one arm around her rib cage. Lynn had expected to tense up again, with the feeling of his skin so close to hers, the entire length of their bodies. But instead she relaxed and leaned into him.
“You can think of it as heat conservation, if it makes you feel more practical,” Eli said in her ear and she giggled. She laid against him for a while in silence, enjoying the thud of his heart against her eardrum, the companionable tangle of their legs. The small differences in their bodies were fascinating to her; the rasping of his stubble against her cheek, the bony outcrops of his knuckles, so much more prominent than her own. She ran her thumbs over them, surprised at how strong his hands had become in the short time since she had met him. Her fingers strayed up his arms to the muscles that had developed there, tracing the lines of his veins.
Long nights spent alone in her bed had not prepared her for the intimacy of lying with him, no matter how comfortable. His hands were doing their own exploring and her breath caught in her throat.
Eli broke the silence. “So . . . I’m not used to asking for permission, but I don’t want to get shot either.”
“Permission for what?”
“A kiss.”
“Oh, sure,” Lynn said offhand, surprised that such a small thing had made him uncomfortable. She leaned forward and gave him a quick peck on his cheek; Mother’s ultimate show of affection that had followed her down into sleep on rare occasions.
“Uh, that’s not quite what I meant,” Eli said.
“What then? That’s how Mother always kissed me.”
“I’m not going to kiss you like your mother. C’mere.”
His hand tightened in her hair, and Lynn was surprised when he brought his mouth to hers. Then pleased. He moved against her and she quickly understood that body heat could be made and not just conserved.
He pulled away from her. “Okay, that’s enough—or I’m going to have to throw myself into a snowbank.”
“Why’s that?”
Eli tucked her head under his chin. “I’ll explain some other time.”
“Fair enough.” Lynn settled in against him.
Eli stroked her hair for few minutes more before speaking. “Earlier, when you asked about Neva, I meant to tell you she made something for me to bring Lucy as a present.”
Not a Drop to Drink Page 15
