A Damaged Trust

by Amanda Carpenter

  Neil sensed the rudeness in Gabe’s manner, and stiffened. Habit, however, and his experience at hiding his true emotions came to the fore. He replied easily, “Right now, I’m a Congressman, but who knows what may happen in the future? You were right when you remarked that—anything might happen.” His eyes, light and strange looking in the half-lit room, met Gabe’s, dark and impenetrable. There was a brief clash that was broken by Carrie.

  She asked, uncomfortable at the two men’s inexplicable, behaviour, “Er—Gabe? Neil?” They both looked at her. “Would you like some coffee? I know Emma would be happy to fix us some.”

  The atmosphere eased considerably. Gabe refused, again the polite and charming man she knew. Neil also refused politely.

  Standing lithely, Gabe turned to Carrie and said, very low, “I’ll call you very soon, all right? Take care, little one. Don’t exert yourself too soon.” This was all too low for Neil to hear. Then, with a quick goodbye to Neil, he left the room quickly. The room seemed to her much more empty without his vitality filling it.

  Neil, watching her face, realised how tired she was. Great dark circles were again under her eyes. “We’ll talk later,” he said quietly. She started to shake her head. “No, I mean it, Carrie. You’re dead on your feet. Let’s call it quits and get you back upstairs, all right?”

  She finally agreed. All the time Neil was helping her up the stairs to her bedroom, she couldn’t get the thought out of her mind of the strong, protective arms that had carried her up two nights ago. She couldn’t help comparing.

  She was bothered that evening with thoughts of Gabe. The scene earlier that day had been unsettling in a subtle way. Gabe had been hard and vaguely menacing, a trait that made him a stranger to her, putting distance between them, a gulf she didn’t particularly like. All her feelings about his latent potential for violence came flooding back to haunt her, lurking about the corners of her mind. It was a quality that she couldn’t resolve in her own concept of the sensitive and caring man she thought she knew. And yet, when she thought back over the conversation in the living room, she couldn’t pinpoint anything definite that Gabe had said.

  It was this unrest that drove her to pick up the phone late that evening and dial his number. Twice she hesitated, and hung up, but finally she made a decision and finished the sequence of numbers that put her through to his home. She listened to the ringing, her mind in a turmoil, and almost hung up again. She wanted to be in the same room as he, to see his eyes and to watch his smile.

  Someone picked up the phone on the other end of the connection. A pause, and then, “Gabe Jackson.” His voice was terse and abrupt.

  She had to swallow before she could get anything out. “Hello, Gabe. It’s Carrie,” she said quietly into the receiver. “How are you?”

  “About the same since the last time you saw me,” he replied with a shortness that sounded as if he was rebuffing her. She drew in a breath, getting the impression that this was not the right time to call.

  “Should I call back some other time when it’s more—er—convenient for you to talk? If you’re busy, I’ll be glad to,” she offered quickly.

  She heard him sigh, a sound suddenly bitten off as if he had just realised she could have heard it over the wire. “No, it’s all right, I’m not too busy at the moment. What can I do for you?” he asked.

  Carrie hesitated. What should she say? “I was calling to save you the trouble of keeping to your promise to call me,” she said lightly. There was a suspicious sound from the other end of the connection, and she protested, “Don’t you snort at me, Mr. Jackson! I wanted to talk to you.”

  “Well, you have a captive audience, madam, so fire away.”

  “Was…anything wrong today when you stopped by?” she asked diffidently. “You left so abruptly. I didn’t get a chance to ask you how the advertisements were going for the shopping centre, or if you were planning on going to the Fourth of July picnic, or what you ate for breakfast, or if you’d stay for lunch.” She deliberately ended the little speech with an overly plaintive note in her voice, prompting a reluctant laugh from Gabe.

  “I’d only checked by to see how you were feeling,” he explained. “You were entertaining company, so I left as soon as possible, it’s as simple as that. The advertisements are bringing in quite a response, I am going to the picnic, yes, and I had bacon and eggs for breakfast this morning. Anything else, madam?” He ended his reply as easily and as lightly as she had, and yet he gave her the sensation of deliberately blocking any real response. It was quite the nicest rebuff she had ever experienced.

  She dropped her light tone. “No, nothing else, I guess,” she almost snapped, with a feeling of frustration in her voice. “See you at the picnic.” She started to hang up, but Gabe’s voice stopped her.”

  “Carrie…are you there?” he asked sharply.

  She hesitated, then held the receiver back to her ear. “Yes, I’m here. Barely, though,” she replied reluctantly.

  “Listen, I’ll talk to you later, but now isn’t a good time, okay?” he said, attempting a reasonable tone of voice, but only managing to sound impatient.

  Carrie spoke offhandedly. “No problem. I caught you at a bad time, that’s all.” She spoke too carelessly, and gave away completely how upset she had been at Gabe’s rebuff.

  “That’s not it!” he bit off. There was a short silence and then, “How long is Stanton staying with you? Will he be at the picnic?”

  “I have no idea,” she said, surprised at the unexpected question. “Probably so, I would doubt if he’d be able to schedule a flight before then. Why?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Gabe replied unpleasantly. “See you at the picnic.” And with that, the odd and disturbing conversation was ended.

  As she readied herself for sleep, Carrie couldn’t help but mull over the odd events of the past couple of days. She suddenly wondered how Neil had fared with the other family in her absence these past few days. Neil would handle himself well, he always did on social occasions. Except once, she remembered. He had drunk too much at a party that they had been to, and had said some vulgar things to a woman who had criticized his political allegiance. Carrie marveled at how she could have ever forgotten the crude things Neil had said, his face hushed with drink, and his voice sneering. She wondered if it had been the true Neil that she had seen that night, when he had been stripped of his inhibitions. Drink did that to a person, it was said. Carrie didn’t want to know.

  As she was thinking over these things, she suddenly realised that Neil had never offered marriage, even though he had begun divorce proceedings. She began to wonder just what he had had in mind earlier in the afternoon.

  She would find out in the morning, she sleepily thought, snuggling down in her covers. Everything could wait until morning.

  “Hello, Neil,” she greeted him pleasantly as she lowered herself gingerly into a kitchen chair close by.

  Breakfast was an informal affair at the Metcalfes. The habit was that everyone helped themselves whenever they wanted to eat.

  He stood quickly. “Can I pour you a cup of coffee, Carrie?”

  “Please.” She sipped the cup he set before her carefully after adding sugar. It was strong, hot and delicious. She sighed with pleasure, then looked up at him, finding his gaze, light and disturbing, on her face. “Have you been kept busy these past few days?” she asked conversationally.

  He shrugged. “Well, that’s one way of putting it.” He spoke naturally with a charm that was an innate talent. “I’ve been taken all over this ranch and shown everything, down to the fences that are in need of repair. All this was on horseback, mind you. I don’t usually ride horses.” At this, he affected such a pained expression that she laughed, in spite of him and herself and all that was past and yet still to be said.

  “Good exercise,” she told him. “You don’t get that kind of exercise in the job you have. It’ll do you good.”

  Neil laughed lightly too. As he sobered, he took a quick glan
ce at her, trying to read something in her expression, but he was disappointed. Her face was polite, smooth, and quite blank; it was her very lack of expression that prompted him to say suddenly, “We need to finish our talk, Carrie. You can’t put it off forever, and I’m not going until we’ve resolved something.”

  Her expression never changed. If Neil was attempting to shock her into a betraying sign of emotion, then he was once again disappointed. She stirred, “You’re right, Neil. We need to resolve things right away, so we can get on with our lives once and for all.”

  Neil started to frown. That didn’t sound very promising. In fact, Carrie hadn’t sounded promising since he had shown up in Colorado. For the first time, he started to worry about the outcome of his visit. He stood up quickly and gracefully. “Would you like to talk outside?” he asked her. “It’s so pleasant, much warmer than Chicago can ever get.”

  “And there’s no possibility of being overheard without you knowing it, right?” she guessed accurately. “All right, Neil, we’ll go outside.”

  They walked slowly, allowing her to move at her own pace without hurting or pulling any sore muscles. As they walked, they chatted lightly about several different things until Carrie reached the lounge chairs beside the pool. She sat carefully while he picked another and brought it close by. Neil seated himself too, then opened the conversation to the real subject, the aim of his visit.

  “Carrie, you know I’m divorcing Joan, I told you that yesterday,” he said softly, reaching for one of her hands. She withdrew it from his reach and his hand fell away. There was a pause. Then he continued, “You know why I’m here. I’m here to tell you that I still want you, that I’ve jeopardized my future career for you. Will you come back with me to Chicago? I know the real reason why you came to Colorado, it was because you wanted to escape from you and me, but you can’t. We could be together—I’ve moved into an apartment. Please, Carrie darling, say yes!”

  Carrie listened to his words unemotionally, studying his every expression. He was very, very handsome, quite perfect physically. But she was beginning to glimpse more completely what he was like inside, and she recoiled from the sight. It was, as if his perfect exterior was cracking wide open, revealing something rotten and black in the very core of the man.

  Neil, in turn, saw the beautifully formed features that made up Carrie’s lovely face settle into a cold expression, the blue eyes, so like the sunny sky, hard. He drew up his head, nostrils flaring finely, like a high-bred horse sensing a storm.

  She asked him, “Would you want to marry me?” Neil was silent, watching her closely. “And,” she went on, “if you did, would you discard me as easily as you’re discarding Joan, should you happen to find someone who attracted you more? What if I should be in an accident and paralyzed for life? Would you care for me in sickness and in health, my dear? I’d like to know, really I would.” They watched each other.

  She smiled slowly, not a very pleasant one, and dismissive. “I thought not.” She stood up. “There’s nothing much to say after all, is there?” Neil stood too. His face was as if it were carved from marble, as cold and as still as stone. Only his eyes were ablaze with a smouldering fire. Carrie stared, astounded. He looked as if he hated her. She turned and started walking back to the house, suddenly not wanting to hear what he would want to say.

  Chapter Eight

  Neil caught up with Carrie, turning her around and inadvertently hurting her tender side. She winced with pain, but didn’t say anything. She stared up into his face again, trying to read his expression. He looked as if he had been punched in the stomach.

  “I don’t understand!” he snapped unpleasantly. “What happened to the passionate Carrie I knew? You used to be so responsive, darling! You’d have been willing if I hadn’t told you I was married—foolish of me, wasn’t it?”

  She sighed. “That Carrie still exists, I hope unscathed. She’s just, very wisely, waiting for the right person to come along. You know, in a way, it was rather foolish for you to tell me you were married. But I’m glad you did, Neil. You saved me from making a bigger fool of myself than I already had.” She made a sharp gesture with her hands. “I thought we’d shared something clean, untainted. Now it all seems as if a little child had walked up and rubbed two dirty hands over the whole memory in my mind. The wonderful world that I’d imagined just didn’t exist! You weren’t the person I thought you were—let’s leave it at that. It was all an illusion, and that’s what hurt the most, I think.” After watching him for a moment, she said one last thing, and she would never talk about it with him again. “I won’t be anyone’s whore, Neil. Not for any price. I think too highly of myself for that.”

  It was the wrong thing to say, she could tell. His face slowly flushed and the beautiful features became transformed with rage. Carrie marvelled at the thought that she had once found him attractive. She looked at his anger in quite a detached way and, had she but known it, this merely added fuel to the burning coals in Neil’s mind.

  “You little bitch!” he spat out. “I’ve jeopardised my career, put my whole future on the line for you! You’re responsible for this, damn you! Do you realise what you’ve done?”

  “Oh, Neil,” she said sadly, “I didn’t do this to you. You have to be responsible for your own actions, for your own failures and victories, no one else can be. You started the divorce proceedings on your own, with no advice from me. Neil, I won’t feel guilty for something I had no control over. Good God, I never knew you were married!”

  He took a breath, managing to get his anger under control. His eyes gradually became masked, an unreadable expression coming into them. He looked away. “No hope?” he asked softly.

  Carrie couldn’t help a twinge of…sorrow? pity?

  She didn’t try to analyse her response, but let it die a little death, unmourned. “No, my dear,” she replied. “No hope.”

  There was a silence. Then he said lightly, “I hear there’s a Fourth of July picnic out by the Colorado National Monument tomorrow. If I can’t get a flight into Chicago tomorrow, will you mind if I stick around until the fifth? I have a feeling that the flights are going to be booked.”

  “Neil, you’re welcome to stay as long as it takes to get a flight,” she told him. “Heavens, we couldn’t just kick you out! I’ll just let Emma know to pack a little more food—there’s always too much anyway, heaven knows—and everything will be all set.”

  He nodded. “If you don’t mind, then,” he said politely, “I’ll go and see about getting a flight to Chicago for the day after tomorrow. Excuse me.” With that, he strode off quickly towards the house, leaving her to stare reflectively after him.

  Carrie felt a great uneasiness about the way Neil had been able to mask his emotions so easily in the end. They had obviously been violent, but he had been so different from one instant to the next. She had known that he was adept at hiding his emotions from the public, but she had not realised how adept he was at masking from an individual. It made her think deeply; the anger towards herself was not gone, it was only submerged. She resolved to stay around people until Neil was able to leave; it would be better all around to avoid any more unpleasant scenes.

  Later that morning, she changed and went swimming. She left on a tee-shirt over her swimsuit, for she was embarrassed by the dark, violent-looking bruises on her back and side that were blazing in full, glorious Technicolor. She lowered herself into the pool and cautiously struck out to swim an easy, undemanding crawl to the other side. As she swam, she thought about the next day and all the fun that she associated with the Fourth of July. It was a time when everyone in the community got together for picnics and beer, firecrackers and rocket flares.

  The fireworks were one of the best parts about the Fourth, for the Fruita Fire Department were in charge of them, putting on a brilliant, colourful display. It was held on a wide, open stretch of land near the National Monument. There were picnics in the backs of pick-up trucks, the ground being too hard and rocky to spread
blankets, and they were called tailgate parties. Friends would roam from truck to truck and mingle with first one party and then another. The Metcalfes always took their two pick-ups, and one was exclusively for the transport of beer, while the other held food. The beer was free to whoever would like any, the food being only for the Metcalfes. Carrie remembered a couple of years ago when Ralf had quarreled with a girlfriend that evening. Cliff, Steven, and Jack, the foreman, carried him home in a blanket as an improvised stretcher. He had been drunk and had happily passed out some time during the evening. Her nose reminiscently wrinkled as she remembered how Ralf had stunk of beer. She could smell him yards away!

  In spite of a few indiscretions, though, the Fourth was generally an evening when everyone got together and just had a good time. And, she reminded herself, Gabe would be there this year. That was what she looked forward to the most.

  The morning dawned on the Fourth as nice and as clear as anyone could have wished. Carrie studied the sky with a great deal of satisfaction before scurrying to shower and dress so that she could hurry downstairs and help Emma with the preparation of the food. Emma always fixed a feast for the occasion.

  When she went into the kitchen, Emma peered around several pots that were on the table. “At last!” she grumbled. “I thought I’d have to do the whole thing myself again this year!”

  Carrie laughed at her and went to kiss her cheek. “You always have help, Emma sweetie, and you always complain that nobody helps! What would we do without our traditions?” she asked the ceiling. “What can I do?” This was directed to Emma.

  “Pour yourself a cup of coffee, and after you’ve had that, you can start on some boiled eggs,” Emma ordered, her own broad hands peeling potatoes deftly.

  “Yessir, ma’am, sir.” Carrie saluted smartly and went to do just that. After her first cup, she poured a second and, sipping at it from time to time, started work willingly, digging into the thick of things.