Lonely Souls

by Rosemary Fifield

  “Um-hmm. Quite a bit. Good coffee.”

  “My one claim to fame in the kitchen. So the cat’s barely gone away, and the mouse goes out and gets drunk.”

  Cassie kept her eyes on the table. “Not exactly accurate. I guess we were talking, and the sours tasted good. I just kept drinking without thinking about it.”

  “That’s not good for the baby, is it?”

  “I don’t do it every day,” she answered testily. “Besides, the best thing I could do is lose this baby.”

  Shane sat back in his chair and regarded her with his icy blue eyes. “Then why didn’t you abort it?”

  “People around here don’t just go around aborting babies.”

  “Why not? They seem to be willing to just go around conceiving them.”

  Cassie glared at him. “How would you know? Who are you to judge us anyway?”

  Shane raised one eyebrow in amusement. “Hangovers bring out the lioness in you, don’t they?”

  “I thought you just said I was a mouse.”

  “That wasn’t very nice. I apologize.”

  Cassie took a sip of the hot coffee, keeping her eyes on the table between them. “Me, too. You cleaned up my mess. I have no right to be rude.”

  “So I take it you were out drinking with Dawson. He’s your boyfriend, right?”

  Cassie looked up at him with a frown. “I don’t go out drinking with Sonny.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear that—that he’s not the reason you drove home drunk. You parked practically cross-wise in the driveway, by the way. Because if Sonny’s going to stay here, I’d like to think he’s more responsible than that.”

  “Is he? Going to stay here?”

  “That’s what he told me on Friday. He didn’t tell you?”

  “I haven’t talked to him for a while.”

  “Hmm. I would have thought this was a decision you’d make together.”

  Cassie concentrated on sipping coffee, her eyes avoiding his. Finally she said, “Can I ask what kind of operation Shelby’s having?”

  “Plastic surgery. Some work on her scars.”

  “Oh really? That would be wonderful to get rid of those scars.”

  “Don’t expect too much. They can’t be removed. Just refined somewhat.”

  “That must be painful. Are you going to so see her?”

  Shane shook his head. “She doesn’t want anybody there. Her face will be all swollen. Besides, I can’t stand the hell she goes through after they work on her.” He turned and stared out the window, his face grim.

  “Don’t they give her drugs?”

  “Some. But she got hooked on them once, and she’s afraid it will happen again, so she takes as few as possible.”

  “She’s an incredible person. I don’t think I’d be as strong as she is after all that. I’d probably want to get hooked so I could forget.”

  Shane did not reply, but simply continued to stare out into the yard. Finally he said, “Are you going to stay here after I leave, or are you going home for that week?”

  “My dad’s house? No, I think I’ll stay here. If you don’t mind.”

  Shane turned to look at her. “Will you be okay?”

  “Do you mean will I go out and get drunk every night? Of course, I’ll be okay. This is Chatham, not Boston.”

  “And there’s no crime in Chatham.”

  “Very little. Some vandalism, maybe. DWI. Hardly what I’d call crime.”

  “No burglaries or rapes?”

  Cassie looked away from his piercing eyes. “Nope.”

  He sat quietly watching her for a moment, then slowly rose to his feet. “Well, I’d still feel better if I knew someone was going to be here with you.”

  “Maybe I can get one of my sisters to come and stay with me. You know, I hadn’t thought of that before, but that might be fun.”

  “Good. I wish you would. Now I guess I’d better go out and see how things are coming along in the barn. Don’t worry about dinner. Just take it easy today.”

  Cassie started to nod, but the motion made her head swim. “Thank you,” she said, then took a deep breath to fend off the dizziness and headed back up to bed.

  Chapter Eight

  Dawson stood in the storage shed and looked up at the loft. He could put a bed up there and make the loft his sleeping area. That would leave the entire floor space for living quarters, and at twelve by eighteen feet, that really wasn’t bad. The building could easily be insulated; there was no inside sheathing to be ripped out first. Windows would need to be cut in, at least to the south and east, and the double doors boarded up and replaced with a single door, preferably on the south end. The floor was a poured concrete slab he could cover with carpeting left over from the barn. The hardest part would be cleaning out twenty years’ worth of grease and grime first. If it were summer, he would simply come in and hose the place down, then throw open the doors and let it dry out. Perhaps it wasn’t even reasonable to think of tackling it now. On the other hand, he had no intentions of living in the main house until spring.

  He had found a small woodstove advertised on the bulletin board outside Wyman’s store; with a metal smokestack going through the roof, he wouldn’t need to worry about a chimney. The roof itself, a corrugated metal affair, would need insulating as well, but when he was done it ought to be a pretty cozy little place.

  Blake was standing in the doorway behind him when he turned to leave.

  “So, what do you think?” Dawson asked him. “It’s already got some wiring. Cliff could put a couple boxes in for me and another couple lights.”

  “What about running water?”

  “I can last until spring. It’ll be like camping. A couple plastic jugs and a basin for inside is all I need.”

  “You don’t plan to take any shits?”

  “There are johns and showers in the barn.”

  “What about cooking? You gonna cook here or eat at the house?”

  “I don’t know. If they want to feed me, I guess I’d be stupid not to take them up on it.”

  “Just one big happy family.”

  Dawson frowned at him. “You’re the one who wanted me to take this job.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know.” Blake jerked his head toward the house. “So what’s going on in there this week with just the two of them? I hear she left town on Sunday.”

  “Yeah, she went to Boston until after the new year.”

  “You knew that? Damn you, Sonny, you never tell me anything.”

  “Why would you care?”

  “Don’t you worry about Cassie living there with Freeman?”

  “Cassie can take care of herself.”

  “Yeah, she looks like she did a real good job of taking care of herself.”

  Dawson’s dark eyes narrowed. “You’ve done a real good job so far of staying off my back about Cassie. Don’t start now.”

  “Who’s on your back? I just wouldn’t trust that guy, that’s all.”

  “Listen, Blake. Whatever Cassie gets herself into from now on is her problem, not mine. I’ve washed my hands of her. We’re through.”

  “You don’t say. Does she know that?”

  Dawson frowned at him. “Why don’t you go home and straighten out your own life before you try running mine?”

  Blake reached out and grabbed the front of Dawson’s flannel shirt. “Keep your fuckin’ nose out of my business, Sonny.” His sneering face looked just like Pa’s.

  Dawson swung his arm up and knocked Blake’s hand free with an angry flourish. “And you keep your fucking hands off me,” he snarled, “or I’ll make sure you never touch anyone again!”

  “Big man,” Blake said, but he backed off, knowing he was no match for Dawson when the latter went out of control. He started back toward the barn, then turned around and pointed at Dawson. “Why don’t you try putting some of that manhood where it belongs?” he shouted. “And stop criticizing those of us that do! By the way, I hope you enjoy walking home tonight!” He spun around a
nd stomped angrily into the barn.

  “Goddamn fucking asshole,” Dawson muttered. He closed the doors to the shed and started across the snow-filled yard. Shane was standing outside the open garage doors watching him with his cold unsmiling stare.

  “I think the place will do fine,” Dawson said to him. “I’ll give you a list of materials and you can let me know what you think. I can salvage a lot from the barn project to use.”

  “No problem. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then I’d appreciate it if you kept your family brawls at home.”

  Dawson stared at the man. “You what?”

  “You heard me.”

  Shane’s air of superiority was more than Dawson could take. “Do you want to know what that was all about? I’ll tell you, okay? My brother thinks you’re fucking Cassie.”

  Shane’s cold eyes registered no emotion as they swept Dawson’s angry face. “And what do you think?”

  “I think it’s none of my business or his either, and I told him so.”

  “I thought she was your girl.”

  “Well, she’s not.”

  Shane pulled a pair of gloves from his jacket pocket and concentrated on putting them on. “For your information, I have no intentions of fucking Cassie nor have I fucked Cassie in the past.” He turned his icy eyes on Dawson once more. “Likewise, I expect you to have a similar attitude toward Shelby.”

  “If you’re all that worried about it, why don’t we just cancel this whole thing?”

  “Because I didn’t hire you, Shelby did.”

  Dawson stared at the man he was coming to hate. “Then it seems to me that Shelby could probably also make her own decisions.”

  “About what? Fucking you?” Shane’s upper lip curled as he spoke, and his eyes, on a level with Dawson’s own, now flashed an icy fire. “The woman’s an invalid, Penfield! How’s she going to protect herself from you?”

  “What the hell makes you think she has to?” Dawson shouted. He didn’t care who heard him now; Freeman had gone too far. “You know, that girl in there isn’t carrying my baby! And you know why? Because my pa will fuck anything that’s got a hole and brag about it afterwards! Well, nobody accuses me of being like my old man and gets away with it!”

  For the first time, a flicker of fear ran across Shane’s face. Dawson pointed a finger at him. “If I had a choice right now, I’d quit this job myself. But you’re right. Shelby hired me, not you. And I’ll never hurt her. So back off, Freeman, because I’m not leaving unless she tells me to.”

  Dawson turned on his heel, his heart pounding wildly, his mind racing. He couldn’t believe the things he had just said and done. One of these times, he was going to go too far, and he knew it. It had taken all his self-control not to manhandle Freeman. As he strode past the house he saw movement at the window; Cassie had witnessed the whole thing. He cursed himself now for ever telling her about this job. Why did he continue to worry about her anyway? If only he believed the things he had just said, that he really didn’t care what she did. He was so damned confused.

  He walked across the parking lot and started down the long twisting driveway. It would be a long walk home, but it would give him plenty of time to think. He felt in his pockets for his wallet and counted his money as he walked. There was enough for two six-packs from Wyman’s Store. Calming down already, he zipped his jacket and headed for the road below.

  Dawson did not return to work at the Dayton farm until Friday. He hitched a ride in with Skip Wainwright, a quiet guy who asked no questions, and resumed doing the finish work with Blake. The day passed without incident, and he was about to leave with Blake when Cassie stepped out of the front door of the house and called his name. Blake climbed into the truck and sat drumming his fingers on the steering wheel while Dawson walked around the front of the truck to meet her. If she was about to rail on him for his scene with Shane earlier in the week, he was prepared to just turn and walk away.

  She watched him approach without her usual smile, looking somewhat nervous. “Sonny, Shane is leaving tomorrow morning and Jeanine is moving in with me on Sunday to stay the week, but I wondered if maybe we could get together and talk tomorrow night? Like here for supper? I really think we should talk about things, Sonny, and get it over with.”

  Dawson studied her face for a long moment. She was right. They needed to close things out once and for all. “Okay.”

  Her eyes lit up as if she had never expected him to agree. “Really?”

  “Sure.”

  “About six o’clock? Should I pick you up?”

  “I guess so. Would you rather go out?”

  “No. And don’t worry. I just want to talk.”

  “I’m not worried.”

  Cassie picked him up after milking on Saturday and drove them back to the farm. The parking lot was totally empty, no cars or trucks in sight. She parked his truck in the garage where Freeman normally parked, then led him up the ramp and into the dimly lit kitchen. Without the aid of daylight, the room was poorly illuminated and seemed a forbidding place. He left Cassie to attend the beef roast she had put in the oven of the wood-burning kitchen stove and took the liberty of wandering through the house.

  Like the post and beam cape in which he lived, this big old colonial was two rooms deep, but the similarity ended there. Its ridgeline, like that of the ell, was perpendicular to the ridgeline of the barn, putting the gable end of the house toward the road and the front facing the dooryard. It had been built in the big house-little house-back house-barn style, with the summer kitchen section of the ell a distinct small building, one room deep, followed by a longer two-bay back house that attached the summer kitchen and big house to the barn.

  The kitchen was considerably smaller than the one in his house and shared the back, north-facing wall of the house with a bathroom and a bedroom, the latter accessible off a small hall on the far end of the kitchen. The bedroom, with its hospital bed and assorted orthopedic paraphernalia was obviously Shelby’s. The front rooms were divided into a dining room immediately off the kitchen, a small sitting room filled with bookshelves and an impressive stereo system, and the front parlor. A staircase to the second floor sat between the sitting room and the parlor, slightly off-center from the front door.

  All the rooms bore old-fashioned wall paper covering lumpy plaster walls and, in some cases, painted wooden wainscoting, as well. The original twelve over twelve-paned windows were still intact. The floors were mostly linoleum except for the parlor where the hardwood needed refinishing. Dawson was willing to bet there were beautiful wide pine floorboards beneath it all. His heart raced as he looked around. The place was basically untouched, unlike many old houses that had seen a number of owners with different ideas who kept moving walls and changing things. Daytons had owned this house back at least three generations, spanning at least one hundred fifty years. They had walled up fireplaces when heating stoves came into use, and they had painted and papered and laid linoleum, but little else had been changed. Fancy embossed metal ceilings added in the 1920s hung near Dawson’s head. Behind them, beneath the plaster and lath, would be the hand-hewn beams flatlanders so loved to see exposed.

  He followed the stairs to the second floor, pausing at the top to look around. To his left were a large bedroom and a smaller one, to his right two evenly sized rooms. He did not enter any of them but returned to the first floor and wandered back into the kitchen. Cassie had poured them each a glass of white wine.

  “Merry Christmas,” she smiled, holding up her glass. “I imagine this is as close as we’re going to get to spending Christmas together.”

  “Merry Christmas.” Dawson took a drink from his glass, then set it on the kitchen table and pulled out a chair. He sat on it backwards, facing her, his arms resting across the back, his long legs stretched out to either side.

  Cassie looked uneasy as she stood facing him, her brown eyes trained on his face. He wondered what she planned to say next. He had told h
imself to hear her out no matter what, and then to end her waiting and wondering once and for all. Still, he dreaded her next words.

  “What would you rather have,” she asked at last, “broccoli or cauliflower? I can’t decide.”

  Dawson began to smile, and she frowned at him. “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing. Broccoli.”

  She went to the old refrigerator in the corner and pulled a package of frozen broccoli from the small freezer. He watched her open it and drop the contents into a pan of boiling water on the cookstove. She looked very at home in this kitchen; its old-fashioned atmosphere suited her. She had pulled her soft brown hair back from her face with combs and was wearing a loose-fitting Mother Hubbard that gave her a Victorian look. He has always admired her profile, and she seemed especially pretty tonight.