Misplaced Innocence

by Veronica Morneaux

  She started, moving so quickly she nearly dropped the sketchbook, and wondered if Jared had intentionally waited for her to raise the pencil off the page before choosing to speak.

  It took her a moment to regain her composure. “Good morning.” She turned in his direction, but his tousled hair and still sleepy eyes were too much for her and she quickly turned back to studying her fox. She tried not to acknowledge the fact that she had noticed the way his pajama pants settled on his hips and the smallest sliver of skin she had been able to see peek out from beneath an old grey t-shirt.

  His voice was still heavy with sleep, and she wondered if she had somehow made noise to wake him. “You sleep okay?”

  She nodded, focusing on her work and wondering if he would stop distracting her if she pretended she were occupied hard enough.

  But he showed no such consideration. He yawned and said something that could have been, “Good,” followed by a cavalier stretch and a, “Did you want breakfast, or you just going to sit by that old window all day long.”

  She actually couldn’t help but smile, and was glad he had already begun to move toward the kitchen and hadn’t caught her in the act.

  “I guess I could maybe use some breakfast.”

  His response was a single grunt from the vicinity of the stove.

  Charisma folded up the sketchbook, lining her pencils neatly alongside the pad of paper before picking up and following Jared into the kitchen. By the time she made it onto the tiled floor, he had already procured eggs from the refrigerator and was in the process of pulling a large skillet out of one of the oversized cupboards. She watched him crack the eggs as she pulled out a carton of milk from the depths of the refrigerator. In one of the cupboards she found mismatching glasses. She pulled one out that looked like it had been part of a collector’s series from a fast food restaurant. A giant smiling hamburger graced the glass, long since faded. Charisma poured it to the brim with milk. There was nothing like personifying the foods you were about to eat. If that didn’t say something about their society, she wasn’t sure what did.

  She drank the milk while she watched Jared put together what might pass for breakfast. Scrambled eggs, some kind of frozen hash brown he had produced from he freezer before placing in an antique looking microwave over. There was something else sizzling on the stove, but she wasn’t sure what it was, and she wasn’t sure knowing would make her want to eat it. Hadn’t this man ever heard of cereal?

  Charisma didn’t complain when he set the mystery meat and overly scrambled eggs in front of her. After all, she didn’t want him kicking her out of the house any time soon. In actuality, the meal was better tasting than it looked. Either that or she had worked up quite an appetite over night.

  The meal was quiet, but relaxed. Charisma tried not to study Jared as he ate. She tried to ignore the just-rolled-out-of-bed hair and the morning scruff that had appeared along his jaw line.

  Jared, for his part, was wondering how Charisma had managed to put all of her hair into one lopsided mound on the top of her hair. Little strands stuck out in every direction. He imagined it was their way of rebelling against the cruel treatment. She didn’t seem at all concerned with whether or not he approved of this fantastical new hair do, and he actually found that relieving. She dumped another ton of salt onto the scrambled eggs and looked up, caught him staring at one piece of hair that actually seemed to be defying gravity in its quest to avoid the knot of hair. “What?” she mumbled, adding a glare for extra unpleasant emphasis.

  Jared had nothing to say. He didn’t think she would appreciate his current assessment of her hair’s status and so he reverted to his usual grunt.

  Thankfully she let it drop and returned back to her salt encrusted breakfast. Jared could practically taste the salt from his side of the table. He threw another glance at the saltshaker, wondering if there was any salt left in it. He looked at Charisma’s plate of food, salt crystals glistening; there was always the possibility he would never want to use salt again.

  “So,” he finally ventured in an effort to distract himself from her food. “I thought I would head in to town today, see if I can get some real food in here for us.” He thought about adding that it was hard to keep food around when you were cooking for just one, but he didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that he suddenly found himself cooking for two. In fact he didn’t even want Charisma to become aware of the fact that there were two of them.

  He visibly frowned when that though crossed his mind. Like she weren’t already aware there were two of them. He would at least give her the credit of being able to count.

  “I know there’s not a lot to do down there, but if you wanted to come...” he shrugged his shoulders, like he were doing her a favor by giving her a pity invite.

  Charisma turned her attention away from her food to glance toward the dining room’s big window. She hesitated before turning back to Jared. “I don’t know. I think the less times I leave the house the less likely I’ll be traced back here, you know? It’s hard enough with Scruffy...” Letting the dog in and out certainly left a red flag for anyone who might happen to see the black shape in the front yard, but somehow even parting with her on a temporary basis seemed difficult. Charisma couldn’t imagine having to spend the entire night alone in her room, even if Scruffy had failed to be the most aggressive attack dog.

  Across the table from her, Jared clenched his jaw. Her words were a cruel reminder of the predicament she was in. And she was absolutely right. The more hidden she stayed, the more likely she’d be able to avoid discovery. She would effectively become a prisoner in his home. The memory of her staring out the window was suddenly a poignant one, and he wondered how much of her time she had spent looking out because she could not be out.

  There was an uncomfortable silence, and Jared wondered if she could tell what he had been thinking, wondered if maybe she had been thinking the same thing. “Okay. That sounds like a solid plan,” he finally managed. “Why don’t you make a list of the things you need then, and I’ll pick up for you what I can.”

  Charisma nodded. He waited for her to return to her plate, but she seemed to have become disinterested in her food, and now pushed the remaining eggs through pillows of salt with her fork.

  He finally took pity on the cold food and stood to collect her plate. Before he had finished rinsing the dishes she had disappeared from the kitchen. She wasn’t at her spot by the window, and Jared had the distinct feeling he had reminded her of something she didn’t need a reminder for.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Not long after the abruptly ended meal, Jared made his escape from the oppressive and quiet house, thankful he was able to leave and momentarily feeling guilt over the fact that Charisma couldn’t.

  Outside the sun was bright; the ground radiated an intense heat. By the time he made it to his car, a fine layer of sweat had already bristled his brow. He shaded his eyes against the glare of the sun; it would be a blistering day before long.

  He hadn’t created a concrete plan outside of getting away from the scratch of Charisma’s pencil on paper and the lines that furrowed her brow and the sudden new, uncomfortable silence that permeated the house. Jared grabbed his sunglasses from their dashboard compartment. Just another one of his ex-wife’s over-the-top gifts she’d given during their last year together. Helped ease her mind over her illicit affair, he imagined darkly. He kept them because of their convenience. Or out of spite. He wasn’t ready to pin down the exact reason why. He slipped them on and let the engine rumble awake, throwing the car into reverse. He waited for the wave of anger and bitterness to sweep through him, but it didn’t. Through the curtain he could make out Charisma’s dim silhouette, so faint it would be unnoticeable to anyone who wasn’t looking. He fingered the hard plastic of the frames. Maybe it was time he looked into a new pair.

  ~*~

  Charisma waited for the door to swing closed. She was torn somewhere between relief that Jared had finally spared her a few minutes
away from the anxiety he had so carelessly revisited upon her, and dread over the time she would be forced to spend alone. When the echo of the car’s engine had faded, she tossed the pencil and the sketchpad to the side.

  She pulled one hand through her hair and peeked out the window. The sun was already high overhead, the air disfigured by the heat waves. It would be another too-long day that involved nothing more than pacing and finding ways to make the hours go by more quickly. Charisma was positive they would creep by, molasses melted into nothing but a mass of slow moving minutes.

  ~*~

  Darkness was beginning to settle when Charisma let Scruffy out. She had been trying to wait until Jared got home for the night, but he didn’t seem to be in an accommodating mood, and Scruffy couldn’t wait any longer.

  “Come here, Scruff,” she said as she pulled the door open carefully, leaving just enough space for Scruffy to slip through and out into the evening coolness. In the rapidly approaching darkness, Scruffy blurred into the background almost instantly – a dark mass moving against a black landscape. Charisma waited, listening to the comforting jingle of her collar. It came to an abrupt stop and after a moment, Charisma called out hesitantly for her dog, her voice little more than a whisper.

  But Scruffy didn’t make her usual rapid reappearance, and Charisma called again, this time just a little louder than before. Instead of a warm wet nose pressed to her hand, Charisma heard an explosion of noise as Scruffy burst into a flurry of barking and the sound of ground brush as she tore across the yard. “Scruffy!” Charisma leapt out of the house and into the yard. “Scruffy,” she yelled again, heading in the direction she thought the barking was coming from. She cursed herself for not putting on her shoes, for letting Scruffy out without a leash. She cursed Jared for not being home, for not having an outside light, for not having a fenced-in yard. She tried not to listen to the nagging bit of reason that said it was miles between them and the nearest neighbor and that there was no reason for a fence. And there wouldn’t be a reason for a fence, except now she was prowling around in the dark, looking for a dog that had stopped barking and wondering what it was that had caused the whole racket in the first place. Or who.

  Charisma stumbled through the harsh landscape, her feet catching in stubborn root systems, sharp rocks slicing up into the soft skin of her feet. She cried out but didn’t stop.

  “Scruffy!” She called again, listening for the familiar sound of her collar, the loll of her tongue as she panted, the soft thud of her gait as she ran toward her. But there was nothing beyond the dim gloom in front of her. The sun had set and the land around her was cast in an eerie silence that seemed to echo the sound of Charisma’s heart.

  Brush scratched her bare legs. She had to stop running. The house was barely a blur in the distance. In fact, she noticed when she turned to look, there were several blurs that could have been the house and she wasn’t sure which one was Jared’s.

  Something sank inside her. She didn’t know where her dog was, where she was, and she wasn’t sure she could get back to the house. The gloom had become a heavy inkyness, but she couldn’t bear to turn back, to simply hope that Scruffy would return unscathed, so she kept moving forward.

  And then she wasn’t moving forward at all. The ground was slipping out from beneath her feet and she was falling down, stone and debris scraping the backs of her thighs, the breadth of her shoulders. One hand reached out fruitlessly for purchase, cracking against a hard surface. And then, in one final tumble, she connected with flat ground, her head colliding with a large piece of rock.

  Charisma lay in the dark, one hand caught beneath her hair, loosened from its ponytail and plastered to the sides of her face, the other stretched out to her side, a small wet trickle of warm blood seeping into the ground. Then there was the welcomed darkness she didn’t have the strength to fight.

  ~*~

  The house was quiet when Jared walked in. The door swung open easily, and Jared’s mouth pursed into a thin line. If there was one thing he was willing to testify to, it was that Charisma didn’t take her security measures lightly. There was no glow from the television or soft whoofs of snores from Scruffy. He thought for a moment that maybe Charisma had gone to bed early, that Scruffy had padded away into the bedroom. He let his eyes adjust to the gloom, but the angles of her body did not materialize on the couch. He slipped down the hall. Jared turned the knob to her room as quietly as he could. The blinds were drawn and no light seeped into the room. The quilt was tucked into place, crisp and untouched as if Charisma had made the bed just a few minutes ago. A panic welled up inside of him. He forced himself to take two, three, deep breaths, moving quickly now through the house, turning on lights in every room, no longer caring if he woke a sleeping Charisma. When every room had been searched, every closet door flung open and the clothing rifled through, Jared made his way back into the kitchen. By the front door he noticed for the first time Charisma’s old grey tennis shoes, well past their prime, and embedded with Arizona dirt.

  Underneath the kitchen sink, next to the toolbox his father had given him and a more empty than full container of Drain-O was a large yellow flashlight that he flipped on before stepping outside and into the cool evening air.

  This far from the city there was nothing but a heavy sense of earth. There were the gentle sounds of bugs, the periodic rustle of brush by some animal or the faintest of breezes. It was dark; the flashlight barely made a dent in the emptiness the lack of light created. They hadn’t seen rain in days. There were no damp spots, no ridged footprints to indicate where she had been. He spent a few futile minutes searching for broken plants, harking back to his inner boy scout and afternoons spent searching for lost cattle. Then he just started a wide sweep, moving away from the house. The flashlight beam skittered across the ground, searching for its quarry, once catching a small rabbit by surprise.

  “Charisma!” He called, his voice loud, almost deafening when there was nothing else around to absorb it. He called her again. Every few steps he would try her name. It settled in his mouth, it was heavy and it held all the memories of their brief time together. He called her until he was hoarse. He knew this piece of property like he knew the back of his hand. He had spent his childhood here, conquering imaginary villages and stealing imaginary ponies. He veered to the right. There was the old Saguaro. A hundred paces ahead would be the riverbed, long since dried up and nothing more than a scattering of smooth stones that echoed that water that had once been there. From where he stood the flashlight caught the edge of the riverbank. “Charisma!” He called once more. He wasn’t sure where she had gone, how far she could have gotten out in the dark in a place she’d never been. He wasn’t even sure she was out here at all. It was entirely possible that she hadn’t left the house on her own accord. Why would she leave without her shoes? What if someone had taken her? Where the hell was her useless dog? Jared pushed all of that from his mind. If he started thinking about that now he’d be no good for the rest of the search.

  He slid to a stop. In front of him was the low gravel of a growl. It settled deep in the back of the animal’s throat, a twisted angry sound. Jared hadn’t seen a coyote out here since the water had dried up. They used to be something to worry about. The new cattle, still fresh with the dew of birth were watched like hawks. Rough and tumble shepherds spent nights out with the herd, waiting for the errant scent of the predator. And here he had nothing. He’d left the house with only his flashlight, as though he didn’t know the way the landscape here could be, as if he hadn’t spent most of life out here. He cursed the way New York had altered his natural state of being. He cursed the way the thought of Charisma out alone in the darkness had made him totally forget logical protocol.

  He stood so still he could hear the air vibrate around him with minuscule night sounds. He slipped the beam of the flashlight up through the air, hoping the light would be enough to scare away a feral animal. The beam sliced through the darkness and fell on a pair of eyes near the river
bank edge.

  It took him just a moment to realize that the eyes staring boldly into the light didn’t belong to a coyote at all, but to Scruffy. Her coat was covered in a thick layer of dust, her maw was twisted upward into a dog grimace.

  “Jesus, Scruffy. You almost got me.” Jared crouched down and held his hands out toward the black shape. “Come here, girl,” His voice was soothing, friendly. He hoped it would remind the animal of their pre-existing relationship.

  Jared expected Scruffy to barrel toward him, that look of dog exuberance he’d come to know so well emblazoned on her face. But she didn’t. Scruffy hesitated a moment and then started to slink toward him. When she was close enough to reach, Jared leaned toward her, his hand barely coming in contact with her wiry fur before she was scuttling backward, her long limbs gangly and deft at the same time. With the solid body of the dog sliding out of his grasp, Jared pitched forward, his hands hitting the long-thirsty ground, an angry puff of dust hitting his face and burning his eyes.

  “Dammit, Scruffy, thanks a lot.” Jared stood, bringing his arm across his face to remove what grime he could. He took another step toward Scruffy, who crouched and began to bark, the sound cutting through the darkness. Another step closer and Scruffy was turning on her heels and sliding down the embankment on her haunches. Jared was in hot pursuit, swearing under his breath at the vague shape as he stumbled, significantly less gracefully than Scruffy had just done, down the edge of the riverbank and into the flat, scarred space below. The flashlight bit through the darkness, lighting on surreal shapes and creating a foreign scenery even in this familiar place.

  When the beam of light finally fell on Scruffy again, Jared no longer cared whether or not he found the dog. Charisma was sprawled out on the hard ground, her long legs more pale than usual in the less-than-adequate light of the Maglight. Angry welts marred the lengths of her calves and a thin trail of blood ran along the tender arch of her right foot. Jared covered the remaining ground that separated him from Charisma faster than he thought possible. He hit the ground hard beside her, his knees throbbing dully from the impact. His voice was hoarse when he said her name, his fingers searching out a pulse and the reassuring rush of breath against his skin. His hands moved carefully, but quickly over her body, looking for heat, looking for protruding bones, looking for strange angles, wishing she were something he was more familiar with, like a horse, or a cow. Maybe even a goat. But instead she was very much a woman, her shorts twisted and exposing more leg than they should, her skin soft and warm. He traced the small stream of blood that ran down her face to a wound toward the top of her head. He dragged the cuff of his shirt across the slope of her cheek in the hopes of wiping away some of the blood and grime. He ran his hands along the back of her head, up underneath her neck. He pushed her hair back from her face and tried to ignore the silky feel of the dark strands against his skin.