The Strings That Hold Us Together

by Kendra Mase

  One at a time, they nodded. Jack went back to his position that he was in last night, under Jace’s one arm while Jed took the other. They were right, the walk back felt a lot longer than it did when they went searching for them last night.

  Katherine kept her eyes on Jack most of the way there, otherwise looking over the large expanse of property. Trees and fields extended out from their footsteps as they trudged their way back to the large farmhouse.

  The back screen door opened, Jack and Jed stepped through with Jace first.

  A woman inside that wasn’t Jack’s mother stood up immediately at the sight of them. Her eyes immediately found Jed’s, her husband’s.

  He was somehow still gleeful in delight toward his brother’s whining since they got in eyeshot of the house.

  “Oh my god, what happened?” Leann exclaimed. Her eyes caught on Jace’s leg.

  Jack grunted as he set his brother down on the uneven kitchen chair.

  Jed let go and moved to Leann. He gave her a quick kiss, careful not to squish the baby clinging to her chest. “What are you doing here so early?”

  “I’m helping Emily get the food and things together for the party later.”

  “The kids?” Jed asked.

  Katherine twisted her neck around to see if Jack said anything, but his mouth remained closed as a loud wall of screaming children ran into the hall.

  Jack swooped the one toddler up into his arms without question.

  With a wide smile, the little boy buried his face into Jack’s neck as he gestured to be picked up. Jack looked like he had won the lottery.

  Leann’s eyes widened too as they landed on Jack. She nearly sprung forward to wrap a hand around his wide shoulders. “Now, do my eyes deceive me? Is it really Jack Carver back from the dead?”

  “You know that I never died, nor rose,” Jack replied blandly. He gave her a warm squeeze. At the gesture, the small boy squirmed to be let back down to the ground. The moment his tiny feet touched the scratched hardwood, he was back to running toward the front of the house.

  No one looked concerned about where he might end up.

  “Might as well have,” Leann proclaimed. “You said you were coming, and I still wasn’t sure you’d be here.”

  “Well, here I am.”

  Leann’s dark caramel eyes flicked toward Katherine. “And this is…”

  “That’s Kit, baby,” Jed filled in. “She’s Jack’s girl.”

  Jack’s mouth parted, but he only blinked, unsure what to say.

  So did Katherine.

  His sister-in-law only widened her eyes in delight. “You’re the one he told me about. It is so great to meet you. After Jack practically left his sweetheart at the altar way back when, we worried that he was never going to find someone steady,” Leann chattered.

  Jack’s voice finally found itself, tense. “Leann.”

  “Oh.” Katherine’s face turned away so not to look back at Jack. “Me and—we’re not exactly—”

  Leann was having none of it, adjusting her baby a little higher into the crook of her elbow. She gave an easy nod. Right.

  Katherine felt her shoulders try to melt into the rest of her body.

  “Kit here sewed up Jace last night when the two of them found him on their way to the campsite.”

  Leann turned back to her with another renewed look of intrigue.

  A gasp sounded from the other doorway.

  Brian put up a hand to Jack’s mom as she stared at her youngest son, covered in blood and dirt from the knee down. “Emily, it is not as bad as it looks.”

  “It totally is,” Jace countered.

  “What happened?”

  “The boy fell is all,” Brian explained, lifting a hand toward the back of his head.

  “On what? An ax?”

  “A rock actually,” Jed said.

  “Much less cinematic,” added Jeremy.

  “Well, you couldn’t have taken him to Roberts?” Emily conceded, kneeling down to look at the wound.

  “He’s not getting back in town till tonight.”

  Roberts? Katherine mouthed.

  Leann noticed first, mouthing back the answer. Town doctor.

  Katherine didn’t even know such things existed anymore.

  “It all worked out since Kit was there.”

  Emily’s eyes flew to hers. “You did this?”

  With a shrug, Katherine crossed her arms. It felt like a dream now.

  Surprisingly, Emily began to laugh. Katherine couldn’t help but smile at the reaction. Loud chortles of laughter came out of her until she reached up to wipe away a tear. “Well, now you’ll definitely have a story to tell Emilie when you get home.”

  That she sure would.

  “Go get a shower and clean yourself up, Jace, and put some disinfectant on that.”

  With a huff, Jace pushed himself back up off the chair and limped away, grabbing on to the wall for support.

  Emily continued to watch his ascent with a shake of her head before turning back to her other boys. They averted their eyes. “I assume after your late night, the rest of you are still prepared to set up for the party later?”

  One by one, they nodded heavy heads, heading back toward the door they just came in.

  “Kit can stay here with us and help,” Leann added, putting a hand on her shoulder the moment Jack’s eyes searched for her across the room.

  They stuck to Katherine for a long moment, as if trying to see if she was okay with the arrangement.

  Emily nodded with a smile. “Brian, will you show Jack where everything is, please?”

  For a long moment, Brian stared at his wife as if they were sharing a silent language. He nodded. “Let’s go.”

  Jack peeked over his shoulder, sharing a few words of his own with Katherine. Less assessing, this time it looked something like, save me.

  Biting her lip not to laugh at the dramatics, Emily had already put an arm around Katherine’s shoulders, leading her to the stairs. “Let’s get you cleaned up before you help us with the food too, shall we?”

  Brought to Emily and Brian’s bathroom off their room, the farmhouse looked like it must’ve been renovated at some point, keeping most of the floors and fixtures, but the rest like the bathroom was designed fresh and new with a large soaking tub in the corner and a walk-in shower. Emily showed her how to adjust the faucet as the water rained down.

  “I’ll leave out some clothes for you to wear when you get out. Holler if you need anything.”

  Katherine nodded. Listening for when the steps retreated behind the closed door, Katherine slowly stripped off each layer of her clothes, seeing all the specks of dirt and muck she accumulated over the past twenty-four hours. She almost wanted to laugh as she looked in the mirror. She did look like she came home from war, however odd.

  The water was warm as it fell against her, and though the soap, though it didn’t smell like the kind she had been using from the farmer’s market, it gently scrubbed away the grime. She let the water smooth down her hair as well, coming back out feeling much fresher and cleaner than when she went in.

  The clothes Jack’s mom left out for her fit decently, nothing falling off her entirely, even if she wasn’t used to wearing jeans, hadn’t in a long time. The tight fabric hugged her thighs as she made her way back down the stairs to the kitchen.

  The radio played gently to the sounds of knives hitting cutting boards.

  Emily waved her knife in a surprisingly unthreatening way when she caught Katherine lingering at the entrance. “Come on in. You can help me and Leann prep a few things for the party till Jack gets back.”

  Katherine gave a small smile toward Leann, moving forward. “You think they’ll be okay?”

  “Brian and Jack?” She rolled her eyes. “They’ll be fine. They aren’t a lot alike, the two of them, but one thing they are is stubborn.”

  Katherine walked toward the counter filled with vegetables. “You’re making the food for your own anniversary party?”
/>
  “Eh, a little here and there. Everyone brings something. So, prepare to eat all you can and dance it back off.” Emily laughed like a songbird and shrugged, glancing at Leann next to her. “I hope everyone has fun. The farms haven’t gotten together in a long while. Once all the kids grow up, it’s harder to make things happen. But now our babies are having babies and it is like the magic starts all over again.”

  Not knowing what to say, Katherine continued to stand, swaying side to side.

  Emily shook her head. “Come, help us.”

  At the command, Katherine pushed up the thick sleeves of her sweater as she was handed a silver bowl. She stared down at its empty contents.

  “Take the corn and shuck the husk away from the cob. Ears in that bowl, husks in the other to dry out.” Leann demonstrated as she spoke, peeling the outer part of the corn away in one swift motion. She handed the next to Katherine.

  “We donate the intact husks when we can to the church, after. They make the palms from husks when they run out around Easter time,” Emily explained, still focused on her tiny chopped peppers.

  Katherine imagined Jack and his family, dressed in their Sunday best for church service. She had never been to church before, but nodded to Emily like she knew what it meant. The closest thing Katherine knew to religion was whatever pagan following her aunt Emilie used to run off to one night a month, dressed in drapery cross-stitched with every color.

  Emilie asked her if she would like to come with her a few times when she first got to Ashton, to meet people. She never took her up on the offer.

  “The town, from what Jack told me, seems really close,” Katherine commented softly. She fought to get the end of the husk off and into the metal bowl. It clanged when her elbow connected.

  Heat coated her cheeks.

  “It’s a great group of people.” Emily thankfully did not comment or look at her struggle as they both set to their tasks. “Did your mom ever teach you how to cook?”

  “I’m very good at making tea.”

  Emily laughed.

  The only reason Katherine even knew how to do that was because of Emilie, as well as when she was still in high school. The home economics teacher didn’t have a home to attend of her own, so she ran clubs on cooking and what Katherine was there for each week, sewing.

  Katherine was the only one who showed up for a whole semester. Each day in the overly sterile classroom with baby dolls stacked in the corner, the home studies teacher would make tea on one of the three kitchen stations before showing Katherine how to turn on the sewing machine. They made silly things like pillows or hemmed the many skirts she picked up from the thrift shop she worked at.

  The hot water would boil and sing usually right when they finished instruction, then her teacher would get distracted and prattle about how lovely it was for a student to finally show interest in simple things. She was ultimately determined to make Katherine a good little housewife.

  “My mother left when I was young,” Katherine explained.

  “Ah, that’s right. I’m sorry. I remember Emilie saying something like that when I last talked with her. Feels like a while ago.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” Katherine said. She gave the poor woman a smile. “It’s alright.”

  “I just can’t imagine it. Especially as a little girl, growing up without a mother. I mean my boys, they’re heathens. They could and would fend for themselves, but it’s different, I guess, in my mind.” Emily shrugged. “Once you are done there, would you mind emptying the strainer for me? I swear I make more messes than I clean.”

  Finishing off the rest of the corn, Katherine rinsed her hands before beginning to stack plates. Gently, Katherine stacked them in the cabinet above her head. The ceramic clanged against one another. Coming off her toes, Emily was watching her. So was Leann.

  Both smiled.

  A little while later, caught as the three of them chatted, the back door slid open again. Jack stepped inside, followed by Brian.

  He came up beside her and touched her elbow. “Ready to go get ready for the party?”

  Katherine glanced at the other two women.

  “We are all set to go,” Emily confirmed. “See you two in a bit.”

  “Bye, Kit,” Leann called.

  Katherine gave a small wave as Jack led her back outside. After a minute of walking through the thick grass, noticing all the tables and chairs set up that weren’t there earlier, she looked at Jack.

  “How did it go?”

  “Good.”

  “Yeah?” Katherine gave a hesitant smile.

  “I think anyway.”

  Katherine remained silent, watching Jack’s jaw work as he tried to form a better answer.

  “He forgave me.”

  “Well, that’s good, isn’t it?”

  “Just like that.” Jack shook his head. “He didn’t say it like that, of course, but I expected him to be a lot madder, you know. Maybe that is just how I remember him back then. But there we were walking. I let him walk me halfway around the property in the opposite direction for a good second, thinking that he was going to take me out back somewhere and shoot me. But no. He just kept talking about what kind of man I was and who I wanted to be, and then just said…”

  “What?”

  “That he understood what I did. Why I did it, though he didn’t like my reasons most of the time. Family is family,” Jack said. He blinked once, like he was still trying to decipher this strange code of forgiveness his father laid out for him. “No matter what.”

  Katherine gave a tight nod, looking around the farm. It definitely was, here. One big family. For a while, Katherine barely even knew what that looked like.

  “We talked about other things too.”

  “Yeah?” Katherine nudged him. “You talked about me, didn’t you?”

  He turned, eyes completely focused on her. “You made quite the impression.”

  “You totally talked about me.” She beamed, though she didn’t believe it herself. “Where are we going, anyway? I thought we would be staying in the house.”

  “We’ll be under a roof tonight, don’t worry. We are staying in the barn.”

  “Barn?” She looked up at the looming building in front of her. She assumed it would be larger than it was. Still, she glanced at Jack.

  Jack smirked at her hesitancy. “Where did your sense of adventure go, Kit?”

  “Probably into your brother’s leg.”

  He laughed.

  Unlatching a small door of the building encapsulated in darkness, Katherine stayed back a few steps. The overgrown tendrils of grass tickled her ankles. Jack leaned around the doorframe, and all was light. Jack held the door open until Katherine made her way past them, sealing them in with a large pane of wood, inside what Katherine was not sure she would ever simply describe as a barn.

  Fairy lights of all lengths hung from the rafters of the tall ceiling, swooping around the corners and around the door they entered. The entire barn had been converted into one of the largest studio apartments she had ever seen. A couch curved around the right corner. A wooden counter led back as the kitchen, breaking apart the rooms, including the bed that was piled with puffed comforters tucked neatly into the frame.

  “Wow.”

  Her and Jack’s bags were already sitting on the bed in front of them. The latch gave a hard click as it shut behind them.

  “My older brothers’ humble abode. They decided that the house was too small once they got to high school. This was their summer project.”

  It was amazing. Katherine froze only a few steps into the barn—home. Touching her hand against the edge of the counter, she could imagine herself sitting on the couch, looking out the window as snow fell. It was due any day now. She would make hot chocolate on the hot plate in the small kitchenette. She could imagine herself in that bed right over there, curled up in quilted hexagons.

  Katherine looked back over her shoulder. Jack was leaning against the door, watching her.

 
“What is it?”

  Katherine shrugged. She put her hands out to get a bit of space. She was being stupid, really. “It’s stunning.”

  “The barn?” Jack smiled like it was a sort of crazy notion. “It is nothing really.”

  But it was. A summer project and this place was more of a home to Jack and his brothers, she could feel it, than any home she had lived in before.

  Two days ago, she was sipping tea and listening to college kids curse the world after she tore up a dancer very unprofessionally, and now she had stumbled into another branch of wonderland. Only it was warmer than the sort of wonderland she felt DuCain was when she met Jack with all the colors swirling in his gaze.

  One big wonderland. That was what he was.

  She ran her teeth along her bottom lip before sucking on them.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Jack said softly, as if reminding her.

  “Me too.”

  “And though you look very cute in my mother’s clothes, not to mention the jeans. Shall we get ready for what a Saturday night at the Carver Farm has in store?”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  It would be a lie to say that Jack had never watched a woman get dressed before. He watched them get dressed, undressed, and put on a show while doing it. Watching Kit as she got dressed, however, trumped them all. She put herself together, steady preparedness one layer at a time.

  Each movement was easy to Kit. At some point, she’d gotten rather good at transforming herself into the person Jack always saw her as. She stood tall and simply at ease with herself when she shook her hair in the mirror. A simple black dress slipped over her frame. The sleeves started below her shoulders and framed her collarbones with a frill of lace, and the hem landed just past her knees, easily hiding her garters that Jack eyed from across the room. He remembered the set from their photo shoot the other day.

  Kit carefully attached each brooch Avril entrusted her with to the fabric wrapped around her pelvis.

  And there she was, puckering her lips with the rosy red hue she applied with the pad of her finger.

  Coming up behind her, Jack touched the center of the ribbon she tied around her neck. He adjusted the shape, turning it just so.