She’s just an old friend getting to know you again. “I like it.”
“You seem really good at it,” Stephanie said. “I saw your photo in the trophy case.”
Jess kept staring down at the rock. She wouldn’t, couldn’t, look at her. She didn’t know why, but this was the first time that the prospect of looking at another human being frightened her beyond measure.
“And you’re so modest.” Stephanie laughed. “Look at you. Most people are always braggin’ about what they’re good at. Not you.”
When Jess dared to look up, she saw Stephanie gazing at her with certain fascination and a tenderness she’d never seen directed at her before. Her feelings were mixed up, churning. She wanted to be closer to her and run a million miles away at the same time. Something in her blushing cheeks and inability to speak must have let Stephanie know. With her pounding heart and shaking hands, Jess knew the box of secret feelings was spilling out into the wide open. She wouldn’t be able to hide anymore, which had always been her worst fear, until now, when Stephanie moved closer.
“I…” Jess squirmed, her heart doing flip-flops inside her chest. She had to make whatever this was stop.
Stephanie placed two fingers under Jess’s chin and drew her face closer. Realizing what was about to happen, Jess felt more scared than she’d ever been in her life. She held her breath as Stephanie laid a soft, slow kiss on her lips. The moment their lips touched, all of Jess’s senses caught fire, and she was suddenly flying. Her feelings were like fragments of exploding light, all the wonder and terror converging in this single moment. The startling nearness of her, the softness of her lips and face, so different from kissing a boy.
Though Jess had had a first kiss before, she would always consider this her first. The first real kiss. Before now, she’d gone through the motions of what she thought a kiss should be, whose lips should be where. It was as though she’d been a spectator judging a dance, on the outside looking in, trying to get the steps just right. Now she was part of the dance. Finally she understood what a kiss could mean and how much more it meant with Stephanie.
Jess reached her hands to Stephanie’s face, feeling the smoothness of her cheeks, gliding her shaking fingers tentatively down to her jawline. Stephanie closed her eyes, inviting her in. Her silent permission gave Jess the courage to unlock the box in her mind where all her forbidden thoughts and feelings could take flight among the trees. She’d have no secrets from Stephanie now. The forest fell silent for a second, or an eternity—time didn’t matter.
A melting softness, a terrifying comfort. Jess felt flashes of emotions and sensations that didn’t seem to go together, yet were somehow wrapped around her, Stephanie’s arms encircling her waist in a way that girls never do, forbidden, but more right, more natural, than anything she’d known.
Jess had been starved for something she didn’t fully understand, and Stephanie seemed to answer her silent wishes and questions. As Stephanie’s lips left hers momentarily, Jess ached at the gentleness of those lips on her neck; she felt like she wanted to be devoured. For so long, she’d imagined what it would be like to be closer to her somehow, though she wasn’t sure what exactly that meant. Stephanie kissed her lips again, this time her mouth asking for more, to which Jess replied, because somehow, nothing felt like it was enough.
When they pulled away, Stephanie, still holding her, said, “No one needs to know,” as if she sensed her fear. “No one but the river.”
“I hear that river talks.” Jess always found humor as a sort of parachute that could save her whenever she felt uncomfortable or scared.
Stephanie had to have known how much fear was welling up inside Jess in the next few moments. She hadn’t made eye contact since their kiss.
Jess was holding one of Stephanie’s soft, slender hands, noting the contrast to a boy’s hand and feeling her fingers laced through her own. She was marveling at how good it felt—how good she felt—when it all became too much. She didn’t know what to do with so much beauty and Stephanie’s gaze mirroring everything she was feeling but didn’t have words for. Jess needed to escape the intensity of this discovery and especially the weight of those hypnotic gray eyes, fixed on her.
“I gotta get back,” Jess said under her breath.
“Wait!”
Jess had already scooted herself down the face of the rock and was hobbling through the woods, trying to ignore the ache in her ankle. Never mind that she wasn’t sure where she was going. Or whether there were bears. Being eaten by a bear was the least of her worries now. All she could think of was what had happened and what did it mean…
“Jess!” She was vaguely aware of Stephanie chasing her through the trees.
She ran until she reached the break that opened out onto the country road that had once led up to Stephanie’s house. She stood there hunched over, breathless, heart bursting. She raised her face to the sky, absorbing the warmth of the sun. How oddly gentle it felt. If she was such a sinner, it should have scorched her right there.
How could the clouds still be floating, the birds still chattering in the distance? Didn’t they know the world had ended? Or at least that it had changed forever? How could things be staying the same when everything she knew had been turned upside down?
Chapter Thirty-Three
“You have a chance to cool down?” Dan asked.
He’d come back too soon actually. Carolyn felt guilty for wishing that he’d stayed away all day. “I’m fine,” she replied a little curtly.
“Maybe next meeting you’ll see things in a new light,” he said, searching through a brown paper bag to grab what he’d purchased at the hardware store. The crackling of the bag made her feel as though she were coming out of her skin.
“I quit the club, Dan.”
The crackling stopped, but he didn’t look at her. “I thought you said you were done with it in a fit of anger.”
“I believe I sent a clear message when I left and took my cornbread with me.”
He pulled out a plastic bag of nuts and bolts. “Dang lawnmower,” he muttered under his breath. He reached inside the bag again, still not looking at her. “Well, it may be clear to you, but not to them.”
It was Dan’s not-so-subtle way of suggesting she take some sort of action.
“I’ll be outside working on this,” he told her, taking his purchase with him. Moments later, she heard the door to the shed swing open.
She leaned against the sink, wrought with frustration. He’d once again made her feel like a child who didn’t know enough to do the right thing. How dare he.
* * *
Carolyn swallowed and readied herself for the phone call. Her fingers twisted around miles of yellow cord as she contemplated what she would say. Was this really necessary? Of course it was. Dan had grown up here, knew all the secret handshakes, the ins and outs of social etiquette in Greens Fork. He’d proven it time and time again over the years. It didn’t make sense to her, but she certainly didn’t want to add yet another faux pas to the list someone undoubtedly was keeping on her—like the time she took someone at her word for saying, “Please come and see me,” only to have the woman look at her in horror when she showed up on her doorstep. She clearly did not want Carolyn to see her just then, at least not literally, even if she was bringing her a scrumptious casserole.
Carolyn shrugged off the memory and dialed the number. After two rings, she was tempted to hang up. But she breathed in and out until Abilene’s voice broke the anticipation.
“Yes?” Abilene answered with two syllables that sounded like “Yea-yus?”
“Abilene, hello,” Carolyn began. “It’s Carolyn Aimes.”
“Oh, I’d recognize your voice anywhere, hon.”
“Yes.” Carolyn bristled. The woman just couldn’t help referring to her Yankee upbringing, could she? “I’m calling to make it clear that I won’t be returning to the club.”
Silence.
“I, uh, appreciate all the wonderful recipes and conve
rsation we’ve enjoyed over the years,” Carolyn continued anxiously, “but I think I need to focus my energy elsewhere.”
More silence.
“Hello?” Carolyn hoped the phone had died, but she heard the distinct sound of breath on the other end.
“Well,” Abilene said, a bit flustered, “you don’t beat around the bush, do ya?” There was a slight chuckle.
“I think it’s best,” Carolyn said.
“That’s fine, hon. As one strong woman to another, we have to do what’s in our best interests, don’t we?”
“Well, yes.” She noticed that Abilene’s questions usually had only one answer. Did she plan it that way?
“Take myself, for instance,” Abilene said. “You know that organist we had at the church before Patty Jo?”
“Yes.” Carolyn recalled the wingnut scandal and how Dan had to fire her when word got out about potentially criminal behavior.
“I didn’t like her,” Abilene said simply. “She was a thorn in my backside, had been for months. So I took care of it.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“When you got a thorn in your backside, you take care of it, right? You don’t sit down with it.”
Why did this woman talk in circles? What was she trying to say?
“I don’t understand,” Carolyn said.
“Well, hon, the rumors weren’t true,” Abilene said. “I started ’em.”
Stunned by this revelation, Carolyn froze, staring at the leaves and vines on the kitchen wallpaper, almost feeling as though she’d stepped into some sort of a real jungle. She needed a moment to absorb this. The gossip, the humiliation suffered by that woman…and none of it was true. What other “rumors” had Abilene been responsible for?
“I’m glad to meet another woman who does what she has to do,” Abilene said almost cheerfully. “You have a good day now, y’hear?”
“You too.” But the phone clicked before she could finish. Carolyn stood in the kitchen, the phone still in her hand, wondering what had just happened.
A half hour later, Dan came back inside, smelling of the shed and gasoline. He found Carolyn in the living room looking at an old photo album. Her eyes were dry but swollen, as if she’d been crying.
“How you doin’?” he asked before going upstairs to shower.
“Oh, I don’t know, Dan. I got off the phone with Abilene, and even though she was the epitome of cordiality, I still got the feeling I’d just double-crossed the Godfather.”
Dan’s face was expressionless. “You might as well have,” he said in a tone she wasn’t able to decipher.
“What?” She put the photo album on the coffee table and leaned forward. “What did I do now?”
“You called her? The most influential woman in the congregation? In the whole town?”
She jumped up, not ready to be schooled on how she’d violated yet another of the arcane rules of proper Southern behavior. Calling had seemed the most expeditious way to handle an awkward situation, rather than waiting until church to tell Abilene to her face, a prospect that seemed even more awkward.
He held her shoulders to keep her from leaving. “Now calm down. It’s just…folks around here don’t deal with each other directly. Better for you to tell one of the other women in the club you aren’t comin’ back.That gets the message to Abilene and saves her dignity. You tellin’ Abilene in person is like tellin’ her off.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“She doesn’t know that.”
Whether consciously or not, Carolyn had expected to be treated with some graciousness and deference, especially considering the fact that she was the preacher’s wife. Abilene wasn’t gracious, though, or deferential. As that parting shot about the organist demonstrated, the woman was the devil.
There was a theme here. Don’t tell anyone how you really feel, and for heaven’s sake, if you must say something have the good sense to talk about people behind their back.
Carolyn sighed, half-laughing to herself. “It’s fine.”
Dan’s eyebrows raised. “I’m sure it is.”
“You don’t believe that,” Carolyn said, “but it doesn’t matter. I’ll handle it.”
“You do that.” He nodded, apparently unable to resist a final comment but grateful he wasn’t going to have to intervene, and headed upstairs.
Carolyn would handle it—by doing absolutely nothing. She wasn’t going to apologize for what she was brought up to believe, especially when it came to social etiquette or basic human decency. She also knew that Abilene would be offended no matter how she heard of Carolyn’s departure. The behind-the-back approach may have been more comfortable and preferable to Dan, but it was still not a real option if you didn’t want to make an enemy. That’s why everyone here was so sugary sweet to everyone else, whether they liked them or not. She grabbed the photo album filled with photos of her and her mother at her high school graduation and put it back in a dusty box on the top shelf of the coat closet. She closed the door with a long exhalation, trying to convince herself that she wouldn’t be trapped here for the rest of her life.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“Some athlete you are.” Stephanie’s voice startled Jess.
“Ha ha.” She was still panting, bent over with her palms against her knees.
“How were you planning to get home?” Stephanie asked with a tinge of smartass in her tone.
“I don’t know.” Her voice was tight as she started walking away from her. “Hitchhikin’ sounds good.”
“That’s how people get killed.”
“You sound like my mother,” Jess said.
“She’s a smart woman.”
Jess still struggled to catch her breath. “When we were kids, she told me to stay away from you, remember?”
“Like I said, smart woman.”
Jess watched as Stephanie slapped her hands together, trying to get pinecone goo off her palms.
Please don’t talk about it.
Jess’s head was in a blender; she didn’t know what to think or say. Her biggest concern was trying not to hyperventilate in front of Stephanie. But her nearness, just the vision of her face when she looked at Jess with a knowing smile, as if she could read her mind…Jess’s breath came quickly long after she’d stopped running. Her heart was beating at a pace that might have been dangerous, for all she knew. Harder than it ever had in a basketball game. She tried to breathe normally again. But what had happened was not something that normal people did. How could Stephanie just…how could she…
“I’ll take you back,” Stephanie said. “C’mon.”
Jess spent the whole ride home staring straight ahead, her posture rigid in the passenger seat. There were a million silent questions hovering in the air, but neither of them said a word.
When she parked in Jess’s driveway, Stephanie turned to her. “You have everything?”
Jess lifted her water bottle and slung her backpack over her shoulder. “I’m good. Thanks for picking this up…you know.” As she remembered how she’d left her belongings in the woods, Jess’s face flushed with heat.
“Jess…” Stephanie hung there, on the edge, so many questions in her eyes.
“Don’t…tell anyone.” It was all Jess could manage, but she had to make sure this was something they’d take to their graves. With that, she swung open the door and was gone.
* * *
“A man shall not lie with another man.”
But it doesn’t say anything about women.
Jess turned on her side, lying on her bed and gripping her stomach as she’d done that morning to get out of going to church. Her mother’s decision to cook cabbage soup made it so much easier to lie. To her mother, cabbage could be blamed for any one of many digestive ailments, which was why she rarely made it. All Jess had to do was say in a creaky voice, “I think it was the cabbage,” and her mother gave her a sympathetic, guilty pout.
“I’m so sorry,” Carolyn said, her arm around Jess’s sho
ulders.
“I’ll be fine,” Jess insisted. She didn’t want any doctors getting involved. “It’s just kind of…upset.”
Her father looked concerned, but usually someone had to cough up a lung for him to allow anyone to miss church. When Carolyn reminded him of the potential for cookie-tossing in church, however, he quickly agreed with her to let Jess stay at home.
On their way out Danny mouthed “lucky!” and Jess gave him a faint smile. If he’d known the truth, he’d have blown her cover for sure.
* * *
In the car, Carolyn wrestled with thoughts of Abilene. Maybe she didn’t take the old lady as seriously as she should have. Of course she didn’t. To her, Abilene was closer to a cartoon character than an actual person. That was partially due to Abilene’s own presentation of herself—always bragging about her family and thumbing her nose at others’ family dramas, even though she had an adulterer for a son. She’d never admit to any weakness, anything that might make her more human. The woman was practically a hundred. Surely she had a few aches and pains. But when asked how she was feeling, Abilene was always “fit as a fiddle.” The only sign of her age were the jowls that had begun to sink lower than a bassett hound’s.
A long time ago, Carolyn had heard a couple of women gossiping about Abilene in Rooster’s Food Emporium. Something about how she’d taken out life insurance policies on family members just before they’d mysteriously died.
Carolyn didn’t think much of it, especially because she didn’t know the family members in question and because everyone gossiped in the Food Emporium when they ran into each other—talking about others was a welcome distraction from talking about themselves.
But this morning, as she sat in her usual front seat, alongside Dan, she’d begun to wonder if Abilene wasn’t the head of some type of southern mafia. What if she was really kind to someone right before she ordered them killed?
The breeze whipping through Dan’s open window annoyed her.
“Can’t we put on the air?” she complained, trying to hold her hair in place.
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