Misplaced Innocence

by Veronica Morneaux

The eyebrow quirked back up, and Jared knew Bill was waiting for him to continue the story, to fill him in on what minimal sordid details there actually were.

  Jared didn’t oblige. “Well, I just wanted to let you know everything was fine. Charisma said she’s fine, and she didn’t mean to worry you, but she hasn’t been feeling well,” at least that was the conclusion Jared had come to. After all, her behavior didn’t make any sense if she were feeling on top of her game. Maybe it was some sort of degenerative brain disease. That seemed plausible. What had at first seemed like a bizarre quirkiness had begun to trouble him, and he wondered if it were more serious. “Anyway, she says thanks for the groceries and she’ll be in a few days to say hi and buy the rest of what she needs.”

  Bill harrumphed in Jared’s direction and returned to his paper, clearly disappointed with the very un-sordid details.

  “I’ll let her know you said that,” Jared said as he walked out the door to the store, immediately regretting it because it gave away that he was going to see Charisma again, soon. He ignored Bill’s renewed attempts at conversation and walked toward the hardware store. Or, what passed for the hardware store in Carlton.

  A bell rigged to the top of the door rang as he pushed his way into the store. Paint, tools, hoses… the walls were lined with shelves full of knick-knacks and do-it-yourself projects. Pretty much anything that anyone did in Carlton was a do-it-yourself project. He sifted through the different dead bolts and locks until he found something suitable for Charisma’s door. He told himself it was the least he could do for her, since he had scared her so badly the night before, and tried to ignore the fact that she had seemed more or less capable of fending for herself when she had been swinging that pot around. It was easier for him to think about why he was lock shopping, if he felt he owed her something. He left it at that and purchased a myriad of locking devices. Just in case she had a preference. Now that she knew he was coming ahead of time, she could meet him at the door with anything.

  Jared’s cell phone rang as he was driving back down the road toward Charisma’s. The little screen flashed with the Doorman’s number, and for the slightest moment Jared thought about not answering the phone. He held it in his hand while it rang, debating whether he should bother being concerned about the horses when he already knew there was nothing wrong with them. In the end, though, he answered the phone – just in case – and got roped into another unnecessary visit. He continued on past Charisma’s house and headed toward the Doorman farm.

  Jenny was waiting by the mailbox, her jeans too tight for his own good and her pretty blonde hair loose and falling down her back in gentle waves. She had that expectant look on her face, her mouth pursed into a pink pout, and Jared took as much time as he possibly could to get out of the car without looking like he was intentionally stalling.

  Unfortunately, Jenny didn’t seem to think anything of him sitting in the car rooting through the console looking for some imaginary object, and when he looked up she was right outside his driver-side window, the same expectant look on her face. Jared sighed and tried to smile. He might as well get the torture over now. It was going to have to happen eventually. He couldn’t hide in his car forever – even if he wanted to.

  “Hey, Jenny,” he said as the car door swung open.

  “Hi there, Jared.” She looked up at him, her blue eyes big and round and despite his best intentions, he had a hard time tearing his own eyes away. That was exactly what Bill had been talking about. Those big blue eyes just seemed to swallow him up, whether or not they had his permission. She slipped her hands in the pockets of her jeans and drew Jared’s eyes away from her face and to the flair of her hips, quite prominently displayed in the blue jeans. It seemed Jenny’s big blue eyes weren’t the only thing that could swallow a man up if he wasn’t careful. Or sometimes, even if he was.

  Jared forced himself to swallow and look away, suddenly exceptionally interested in his wrist watch. “I was just down the road.” Jared had the sudden impulse to say he was with Charisma. At this point he was willing to say anything if it would mean he could stop coming to the farm every damn day and having to watch Jenny and find himself inexplicably studying the shape of her pout, the intensity of her eyes, the long legs and shapely curves tightly wrapped in cottons. But when he opened his mouth to say he’d been spending the day with Charisma, he couldn’t bring himself to do so. Instead he settled on a weak, “what did you say the problem was?”

  “Well, I don’t know, really.” She turned her eyes back on him, and if Jared weren’t completely convinced she didn’t have the mental capacity to do so, he would have suspected that this entire eye-mouth-body business was completely intentional. “The foal seems alright. Except he’s been squinting a lot.”

  Jared had the sudden impulse to throw his hands up in the air. “Okay. Well, why don’t you take me to him, and we’ll see if we can find out what the problem is?”

  “Sounds good to me,” she said, and started off, and Jared was forced to follow along behind her, studying the sway of her body as she moved. He was going to have to start ignoring the phone calls.

  The dark foal was playing in the field with his mother, running around and then sidling up to the mare before returning to his romping. When he flopped down like an oversized dog Jared and Jenny made their way out into the middle of the field.

  The mare nickered, a sound caught somewhere between greeting and warning, and the foal opened one large dark eye. By now, both horses were quite familiar with Jared. He had run his hands over every bone in the foal’s body and had assured the anxious mare with countless words. Now, they accepted his presence with little more than a grunt of acknowledgement.

  “This is what I was talking about,” Jenny said as the foal’s eye slid closed again, heavy-lidded and barely open, long dark eyelashes spiking out. He looked like any healthy baby who’d just exhausted himself. Jared looked up toward the sun, squinting his own eyes and raising his hand to his forehead.

  “Well, Jenny,” Jared said, not bothering to kneel beside the animal and disturb it any more than necessary. “I think he’s just fine. It’s kind of bright out here and I think he’s just resting.”

  “You’re sure, now?” Jenny asked, beginning to worry her bottom lip so he could see glimpses of even, white teeth flash in the sunlight. “I would just hate for there to be something wrong with him. He’s so sweet.” For extra emphasis she scuffed the pasture with her boot, sending up a small puff of dust.

  “I’d be willing to bet on it.” He wanted to smile and tell her she could call again if she was concerned about anything, like he would do for any good anxious owner, but he knew that Jenny would abuse the privilege, so he didn’t. And, he discovered, he got a perverse sort of pleasure out of it, too. “Don’t worry about the visit fee, it wasn’t really out of my way and I didn’t need to do anything for the horses.” He forced himself to smile. “I’ll think of it more as a pleasant interlude in my day.”

  She smiled. A million-watt smile, and Jared knew he’d said the wrong thing. Despite his very best effort he’d somehow managed to make it sound like he liked coming here on these nonsense errands. She seemed to be about to speak again, so Jared quickly started to talk. He knew what was coming next, it would be all, ‘well, you’re already here … I just made a fresh pie … actually I made three, apple, blueberry, and pecan, because I know those are just your favorite and you never have any homemade cooking anymore since …’ and she would just let the words kind of drag on into nothing, her voice would be heavy and sweet and her eyes would be big and entrapping and the next thing he knew he would be saying yes before he could put two thoughts together. It had taken him a while, but he was finally catching on to how things worked. “I have another appointment so I’m going to have to be leaving; sorry I can’t stay.”

  If there had been even a hint of disappointment it ruptured quickly into another million-watt smile when he said he couldn’t stay but would have really liked to. Not for the first time,
Jared wished he had it in him to be utterly cruel and destructive so he could run around breaking all these young things’ pretty little hearts and never feel one iota of remorse about it. But, he knew that wasn’t the case, and so he just continued to stumble along, putting one foot in his mouth after the other.

  He made his escape to his car as quickly as possible, waving jerkily at Jenny, an obligatory response to her wave as she stood by the mailbox, waving gaily like he hadn’t just completely blown her off. Of course, he hadn’t really. At least, not to anyone except himself.

  He had never been happier to pull up to the dilapidated farm house. He found this oddly compelling, since a little more than twelve hours earlier he had wanted to be anywhere else except crouched on the ugly linoleum floor clutching the back of his head. Well, Jenny Doorman had a way of putting things into perspective for a man. At least he’d gotten a free breakfast and emerged commitment-free from Charisma’s. Every time he looked at Jenny he felt like he was promising her five more years and a ring. He had no intentions of ever giving that to anyone again, certainly not Jenny Doorman. He would be crying himself to sleep every night. Especially if she kept up these panicky phone calls about nothing. Of course, he highly suspected such phone calls would stop if he were somehow committed to her. He tried not to think about that too much, because then having a relationship with Jenny would begin to have some kind of merit, and he really didn’t want to think about that at all. He grabbed the bag of locks from the front seat and headed toward the door.

  He was surprised to find it locked. After all, he’d lived in Carlton for … well, for too many years really, which was why he didn’t like thinking about how he had somehow managed to find himself back there again when he had tried for so long to get away. Some things, he was learning, didn’t really happen the way they were supposed to, no matter how much planning went into it or how inevitable a happy ending seemed. But, Jared couldn’t remember the last time there had been a break-in in Carlton. In fact, usually neighbors would come by and leave things for each other. Charisma had lived in Carlton long enough to know that. Heck, anyone who lived in Carlton for more than a week knew that. It wasn’t as if it were a big secret.

  Jared knocked on the door. No one appeared initially, but he opted not to start picking the lock again. It might take him a while to learn the ropes, but once he did, he didn’t make the same mistake twice.

  The door swung open, and there was Charisma, smiling brightly and looking overly relieved that he was at the door. “I brought some locks,” he said lamely, thrusting out the plastic bag in her direction.

  She took the bag from him and moved back inside, waiting for Jared to follow her. Scruffy greeted him with a wag of her tail and a lick to his hand as Charisma emptied the plastic bag on the kitchen table. Jared watched, fascinated. She was rooting through the locks like she had just emptied a Christmas stocking, holding each one up to the light and studying it.

  “I don’t know anything about locks,” she finally said after looking at one in particular for a few minutes.

  “Oh?” Jared asked. The way she had been twisting them in her hands and holding their heft anyone would have thought she was a professional locksmith.

  “Not a thing. I thought the one I had was just fine.”

  There was a pause, then another ‘Oh?’ this one drawn out. He watched her continue to sort through the locks. Anyone who thought that lock had been a fine lock really didn’t know anything about locks. But, again, this was Carlton and really, the last thing on anyone’s mind when they were building was what kind of lock would be really effective against any intruders. Most of the time they were worrying about what color they would paint the outside, or whether they wanted wall-paper or paint. Everything else was an afterthought; especially what kind of lock would go on the front door.

  She finally stopped sorting through the locks, turning them this way and that in the light as if they were some sort of precious stone, and looked up at Jared. “Well, you seem to know what you’re doing here, so why don’t you just choose which one you think is best. Or ones. We can put them all up, if you want. Whatever you think is best.” She flashed another huge smile. “While you do that I’ll just go get the mail and take a shower.”

  She walked away as if that were a perfectly normal thing to say. Had it been Jenny, Jared wouldn’t have doubted it was an invitation. Well, except for the mail thing. He wasn’t sure even Jenny would ever say anything like that. And that was saying a lot.

  He was sorting through the locks himself, deciding which lock would work best on the door and whether or not he should just line them up one after the other along the doorframe – that would stop anyone, especially him, from ever thinking that picking the lock was a good idea – when she walked back into the house and hurried to the bathroom, her mail clutched to he body. Maybe all the locks were a good idea after all. It seemed like something Charisma would definitely approve of. Certainly, any person who horded her mail and ran to the bathroom to read it, probably would love the idea of endless locks on the door. He could hear the click of the lock on the bathroom door and the sound of the water running. Hell, maybe she even read her mail in the shower. He sighed, grabbed the bag of locks and headed toward the door.

  ~*~

  The hot water hit the tile floor of the shower, drops of water bouncing up and splattering across the bathroom floor. Charisma sat on the edge of the toilet seat, watching steam fill the small bathroom, hiding the ugly turquoise of the tile, as she sorted through the new mail.

  She sifted through the junk mail twice, just to make sure she hadn’t somehow missed it. But there was no empty envelope with a smudged postmark. There was nothing that she wouldn’t have expected to get in the mail a week ago, and for the first time Charisma wondered if maybe she was overreacting to the situation. Maybe she had just made the whole thing up and none of this had ever happened.

  But, she remembered the envelope, opened and on the floor, waiting for her to pick it up. She remembered the tingle that had surged up her spine when she’d heard the lock on the door twisting without her permission. That had been real enough.

  She sighed and tossed the mail into the wastepaper basket before undressing and stepping into the shower. The hot water eased some of the tension out of her shoulders and back, and washed away the past few days.

  She stepped out feeling markedly better, and smelling like vanilla instead of fear and anxiety. She pulled on her faded blue jeans, one of the many spattered with paint and stains, and a dark t-shirt. As long as Jared was here, being productive, and more or less protecting her from her imagination, she was going to sit down and do some painting. A woman had to work, even if she didn’t want to. She sighed, wiping the mirror clean so she could see her reflection and pulled her hair into a less-than-tidy ponytail.

  Scruffy was stretched out on the floor next to the front door. Even from the hall, Charisma could hear Jared cursing under his breath and mumbling beneath the sound of metal scraping on metal. He was hunched down next to the dog, a screwdriver in one hand as he studied his finger. As an afterthought, Charisma brought the box of Band-Aids from the bathroom.

  “Here you go,” she said, tossing the cardboard box to Jared. Between the screwdriver, the dog, and the wounded finger, Jared barely managed to catch the box. He mumbled something that definitely did not sound like a thank you, and went back to the door jam, different pieces of shiny metal scattered around his feet and the dog. Scruffy opened one eye lazily, as if acknowledging Charisma’s presence, but didn’t even bother to raise her head. “I’ll be in my office,” she called over her shoulder as she left the rag-tag pair by the door.

  “That’s the dead animal room, right?” she thought he might have said, but she didn’t turn back to correct him. Instead, she settled into her spot behind the big drafting desk and started laying out her supplies. Already she felt a little more calm, and by the time she had paper in front of her and brush in her hand, everything slipped away and she fe
lt, for the first time in a long time, normal.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Jared leaned back to admire his handy work. Now there was a piece of beauty. One lock after another, different finishes and sizes, lined the front door. He stopped admiring the door and took a minute to admire his hands, band-aids wrapped around multiple fingers and one long scratch across the back of his left hand. He didn’t remember it happening, and he wouldn’t have noticed it except for the trickle of blood that caught his eye. He found himself hoping beyond reason that there were no more doors in the completely sealed house and Charisma wouldn’t ask him to do anything else even remotely connected to a tool box. Apparently, a few years away from Carlton could completely erase all the handyman work he had acquired over the years. It was funny how hired help could really do that to you. That, and a landlord.

  He stood up and stretched. He had been crouched on the floor longer than he’d realized, and there was a sudden sharp pain in his back and a dull ache in his legs. The stretch did little to relieve either hurt. Scruffy stood and stretched, too, shaking off sleep and following Jared as he made his way toward Charisma’s office. “Locks are done,” he said from the doorway, trying not to stare at the dead animals lined up in rows, or notice that some of them were wearing ridiculous outfits and oversized sunglasses.

  Charisma looked up from her paper, putting down a paintbrush to push back a lock of hair that had escaped from her ponytail. She squinted at him, as if bringing him into focus, and he found himself wondering if she wore glasses. Or maybe she squinted at all the boys. What did he know? “Oh that’s just wonderful,” she said, flashing another big smile at him. So big he could see she had a dimple on the left side of her mouth and teeth that were so straight he suspected she might be wearing a retainer. “Was it difficult?”

  “No, not difficult at all,” he said, but felt her eyes traveling over the band-aids on his hands and suddenly wanted to hide them behind his back – an urge he hadn’t had since he was maybe eight and his mother had noticed an entire batch of cookies had somehow disappeared from the counter where they were cooling and his hands had been covered in chocolate smudges. He could almost see the same mixture of disapproval and suppressed laughter in Charisma’s eyes that he had seen in his mother’s.