“I won’t,” she agreed, allowing him to push her along. “Is it far?”
“Nope, in fact we’re here. But don’t look until I say so.”
Jeff reached over Allie’s shoulder and pushed open the newly-greased barn door, which slid almost silently on its wheels. Then, still behind her, he directed her inside and positioned her at the best place to view the birds’ nest. His eyes were still adjusting to the interior gloom and he hoped he’d stood her at the right place.
“Jesus Christ!”
Allie’s eyes snapped open when she heard Jeff’s exclamation and the timbre of his voice. She saw a beam and a high, dark, cavernous space above it. The smell here was so familiar—old straw and mustiness. She whipped her head around and saw the walls, the rafters, the stalls, darkness . . . darkness.
The barn! She was in the barn. The place that she didn’t even like to look at from her kitchen window.
Suddenly she felt seven years old again. This was the spot—the very same spot where she’d stood all those years ago. And, oh, God, her mother. She was up there, just as before, swinging ever so slowly back and forth, like the sluggish pendulum on a case clock that needed rewinding. Shock gripped her throat with a tight iron fist. Her lungs struggled for air but only a puff slipped through. Chills raced over her scalp and body, making the base of every hair stand erect.
The horror that had intruded upon her sleep so often over the years had come to vivid life, only this time she was awake and it was broad daylight. Not a nightmare. It was real again—just like before—her mother, hanging by her neck from a length of rope thrown over a beam, turning slowly at the end of the tether, her head resting on her shoulder, her face the color of an eggplant.
It couldn’t be! How could it happen again?
It was Althea’s fault. Your fault, girl! You hear me? All your fault!
Allie’s hands flew to her mouth and her heart began pounding in her chest like a sledgehammer on granite. Her breath shortened to suffocated gasps.
She wanted to run but her feet were fixed in place.
She wanted to scream but no sound issued from her open mouth.
“Jesus Christ!” Jeff snapped out again as he looked up at the dangling figure. “What in hell—”
Allie gaped at him, consumed by the panic sluicing through her veins like icy water. “Oh, God! Dear God!” she finally managed to squeak out, her wind coming in panting whistles. Then she filled both lungs. “Mama!” she screamed.
Jeff clutched her arm again. “Allie, no—”
“Mama!”
“Allie, honey, it’s not your mother! Look, see?” He grabbed the apron on the form and turned it toward her. The face, she realized, wasn’t purple, but blue-and-white striped, like a pillow tick.
“No!” She backed away.
“Allie, it’s just a dummy, not a real person! Not your mother!”
A dummy—a dummy! His voice seemed to come to her from far off, the words making no sense. No, no, no! The barn began to spin around her. The walls leaned inward. The very air seemed to pulsate—or was that her heart pounding? A joke. A heartless joke. He thought this was funny? There goes Althea, one of those crazy Ford sisters. You know what they say about them. People talking and snickering behind cupped hands as she walked along the street in town. Their laughter had always filled her with rage that she dared not express. But it erupted within her now.
“How could you?” She tore her arm from his grip. “How could you be so cruel?” She found enough locomotion in her rubbery legs to run for the door, but Jeff was right behind her and closed his hand on the back of her skirt.
“Allie! I don’t know anything about this!”
“Althea! Althea, what’s wrong?” Suddenly, Olivia was in the barn too, dressed in only her nightgown and frilly wrapper, her feet bare. She looked up at the effigy. “Dear God above! You horrible man! You did this!” she accused Jeff.
“The hell I did!”
“Let me go!” Allie wailed, trying to free her skirt from his bunched fist. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders and in her face, further obscuring her vision.
He uttered some obscenity, and then stretched out one hand to yank viciously on the dummy. Its pillow-tick head came off, releasing a blizzard of feathers, and Allie screamed again. The rest of the body fell to the barn floor in a heap of more feathers and the old dress it wore, leaving the noose swinging from the rafter.
Allie brushed at the down that stuck to her clothing, beating at it as if it were fire. Out. Please, God. She had to get out. Only a few feet away, sunlight beckoned. Just a few more steps. She’d be safe out there. Separated from the barn and this monstrosity, separated from the screaming and the chaos and the horror.
Your fault, girl! You killed your mama, God damn you to hell. You killed your mama. I don’t ask much of you, and just look what you’ve done! Off lollygagging when I told you to watch after her. You look at her now, damn you! See the fruit of your laziness and remember it well. I pray it haunts you all the days of your life. All your doing! You murdered my wife, robbed your sister of a mother—
Jeff’s hands had latched onto her skirt like demon claws, pulling her back into a nightmare she’d spent her whole life trying to escape.
“Allie, it’s all right.” His voice seemed to come to her from far so away. “Allie? Allie, honey, look—it’s down now. It’s not real.”
“Let go of my sister! What have you done to her?” Olivia’s shrill voice was distant as well. “Althea, I told you he’d give us nothing but trouble! How could you bring my sister out here to the barn when she’s terrified—”
Unable to see clearly in her panic, Althea flailed frantically with her fists, trying to knock Jeff away, trying to free herself. Her right hand connected with his face somewhere, but still he wouldn’t release her.
“Damn it! Stop it, Althea, right now! Do you hear me?”
The next instant, she felt like a child’s top spinning on a freshly waxed floor. She fell against something rock solid. His chest. Relentless, hard arms clamped around her. A broad hand cradled the back of her head, strong, calloused fingers locking over her hair to hold her. Jeff. She struggled to get out of his embrace but even though terror doubled her strength, it was no match for his. “Let me go! I have to get out of here!”
“Everything is all right, Allie. It’s all right.”
Her head began to swim then, and black spots appeared in her field of vision. She was going to die—her pounding heart had burst and she was dying.
Blackness washed over her and engulfed her like a wave, pulling her down with it.
~~*~*~*~~
Jeff could remember only one other time when he’d been as scared as he was now. That night in Wickwire’s, facing an angry, hurting boy with a loaded gun in his hand.
Trembling himself, he’d carried Allie’s limp body outside and now she lay half in his arms and half in the dew-damp grass where he’d put her down. Olivia had followed, and she stood over them, raining accusations upon him like a she-devil spitting fire, her nightclothes flapping around her in a stiff morning breeze. All traces of her childlike facade were missing. But if she pitched a fit now, as far as Jeff was concerned she could twitch herself to death before he’d leave Allie’s side.
Allie’s face was drained of all color and her eyes remained closed. She lay so still, so silent, at first he thought she was dead. She sure looked it. Then he saw a vein throbbing along the column of her pale throat, and his heart slowed from a runaway gallop to a fast canter.
Jeff had practically no experience with fainting women. Oh, he knew that some females pretended to get giddy and would fall into the most convenient chair while fanning themselves with a hanky. Olivia Ford was probably that type. But that wasn’t what had happened with Allie. She’d fainted away and would have fallen hard if hadn’t been holding her.
Not that it had been easy to maintain his grip. She’d thrashed around like a wet bobcat in a pillowcase. His left eye throbbed and
he realized that it was beginning to swell, the result of being hit with one of Allie’s flying fists. He’d probably have a first-rate shiner before long.
He couldn’t blame her, though. The sight of that dummy hanging from the rafter had unnerved him too, and he wasn’t dragging around the kind of memories that Allie probably had stored in her mind.
Who the hell had hung that gruesome effigy in the barn? And when could they have done it? He was always nearby, patching the house or working in the field. At the moment, the wild-haired sister standing over him was his chief suspect.
But Allie believed he was guilty, and it would be hard for him to prove otherwise with Olivia screeching her lies. If only he’d bothered to look in there this morning before subjecting Allie to a living nightmare.
He looked down at her as she lay in his arms, watching her the way a man might study an angel who’d suddenly tumbled into his embrace, her wing broken. He was worried, yet captivated. She was a beautiful, delicate woman, but strong, he thought, like finely tempered steel. Her dark lashes threw shadows on her cheeks which were just now regaining the merest tint of pink. The angle of her body in his arms gave him a direct view down the front of her dress where the fabric gaped away from her bosom. He didn’t mean to look—it was a lowdown thing to do, especially given her helpless unconsciousness. He dragged his gaze away, only to find it straying back to the soft, white flesh no more than a foot from the end of his nose. Well, damn it, he was only a man, and not a good one at that, by anyone’s reckoning. And women had been a rarity in his life since Sally left.
Finally, after what seemed like a lifetime, Allie’s eyes fluttered open. He saw her confusion in them, along with a terror that was a tangible thing.
“What—what—” When her gaze focused on him, she sent him a hurt, accusing look. Then more vigorously, “Where are we?”
She struggled to sit up, but Jeff held her fast, savoring the feel of her in his arms. The wet grass was soaking through his jeans but he didn’t care. “Hold on, now. We’re outside. But give yourself a minute—you won’t have your pins back under you yet.”
“Let me go. I don’t need your help.” She tried again to sit up but he wouldn’t release her. Olivia grabbed Allie’s arm and tried to pull her to her feet, but Jeff held on just as hard.
“Take your hands off her, you wicked, wicked man,” Olivia demanded. Allie tried to get up again but she fell back, too weak to fight Jeff.
He felt as if he were wading through a mist, trying to make himself heard. “Allie, you’ve got to believe me—I swear to God I didn’t hang that thing in the barn.”
She turned her face away and her voice, sounding tired and old, sent chills down his arms and back. “No? Then why did you take me in there? Who else but you has been around here? Olivia?” Again Jeff clutched at the possibility of her sister’s involvement, but Allie’s next words stopped him in his tracks. “What have I done to you to deserve such a heartless trick? Did you get a good laugh from it?”
Stung, he pulled back. “God, Allie, no! I didn’t know that thing was in there—it wasn’t yesterday. I just wanted to show you the nest of barn swallows.” He looked at Olivia and stared. “Your sister said you’d love to see it.”
Olivia clutched her wrapper to herself and pointed an accusing finger at Jeff. “He’s lying, Althea! Why would I tell him to take you into the barn when I know better? I said no such thing. I barely spoke with him at all.”
If Jeff needed an answer to his puzzle over Olivia’s sanity, he had it now, and in spades. There was nothing wrong with her mind. She was simply a manipulative and possessive bitch. And she had trapped him very neatly in this scheme, her obvious motive to be rid of him because she saw him as a threat.
Allie cried, “I never go into the b-barn. Never!”
No matter which way he turned, thanks to Olivia, he’d hurt her. Not purposely, but clearly she believed that he had, and almost had him convinced of it, too. He felt about two feet tall. “Well, hell, I didn’t know that. And no one told me.”
Olivia made a noise of disgusted impatience. “Oh, nearly everyone in Decker Prairie knows, Althea.”
Jeff ignored the remark. He hadn’t encountered a smoother liar in all his life. “Anyway, Allie, I just wanted to show you those birds. I found that nest of barn swallows in there and I thought you’d like to see them.” He felt like a kid, trying to explain an intended good deed that had turned into a disastrous blunder.
She turned her head to look at him again. “Birds?”
“Yeah, I remembered that you liked to feed the ones in the orchard. You like birds, don’t you?” He hadn’t gotten that wrong, had he?
“Yes, but I wouldn’t go into the barn to look at them. Anyway, I didn’t see anything except that—that— And if you didn’t put it there, who did?”
“If I knew we wouldn’t be sitting here talking about it. I’d be kicking that bastard’s ass all the way to the county line.” Allie said nothing, but the hurt he saw written on her face hit him like a punch in the stomach. “I guess you don’t have any reason to believe me. But I’m telling you the truth.”
“Don’t listen to him, Althea!” her sister harangued, towering over them like one of the Furies calling down the wind. “After what he did, you should order him off the property now, this minute!” She narrowed her eyes. “Whatever would Daddy say?”
Allie felt pummeled by the events and the quarrelsome voices yammering around her. “Olivia, please, just go back into the house. There’s no point in both of us being upset.”
“But—”
“Please. We’ll talk about this—later.”
“Very well, Althea.” Straight-backed and her nose in the air, Olivia flounced off through the wet grass to the back porch.
Allie and Jeff both watched in silence until she slammed the door.
Jeff sat across from her, cross-legged and facing the barn. He gestured in its direction. “Allie, this might not be the time to talk about it but Olivia did tell me to take you in there. She said you’d want to see that bird’s nest.”
Allie gazed at her lap for a moment, so long that Jeff began to fidget. “You might be telling the truth, Mr. Hicks.” She said it with a half-hearted whisper, stealing a glance at him and then looking away again. “But everyone in town knows my mother hung herself. Are you telling me you didn’t?”
“I never said that!” Jeff protested. “I knew. But I swear to you, Allie, I didn’t know she hung herself in the barn!”
With great effort Allie managed to draw herself to her knees, making him think of a wounded doe, caught in the open and frantic to find shelter in the woods. Plainly too weak to run, she struggled to her feet with her shoulders hunched and her arms wrapped around herself, as if waiting for the hunter’s second, and fatal, shot. The image made his heart twist in his chest. Her chin lifted a notch. Even as she made the effort, the wind whipped at her heavy skirts, and she swayed slightly. “How could you not know? I told you never to leave the barn door open. That day I made you come down from the roof to close it—” She lifted a hand to her throat, her eyes shining with tears. “Why else would I have done that? Why else would I care? I would have closed it myself.”
Jeff couldn’t think of an argument to that. She had insisted that he climb down from the roof to closed the damned barn door. At the time, he’d thought she was just being a fussy old maid who wanted her own way. He hadn’t known about her mother then, but in retrospect, she’d made her revulsion for the barn very plain. A clear-thinking man would have figured out that she was afraid of something in there, but his only concern had been getting his next drink.
Now he realized that her mother had hung herself from that very rafter. Well, Jeff Hicks didn’t need a house to fall on him before he understood a point—no, sirree, it took a whole damned barn. He kept remembering the look on Allie’s face when she’d found herself in there, how she’d stared at the dummy and then flown into a panic. Her mother. He may not have engineered the pr
ank, but he’d been the one to lead her in there, like a lamb to the slaughter. The realization made him feel sick.
“I won’t ask you to leave because I need your help,” she said hollowly, “and because I want to be fair to you. But I won’t hear you say anything bad about my sister.”
She walked away then, unsteady but clearly determined to get to the safety of her kitchen. Climbing the stairs, she never once looked back at him or the barn.
Jeff watched her go, that gut-punched feeling back on him, stronger than ever.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Over the next few days, Allie maintained her distance from Jeff. She still left his meals on the back porch, but she had no encounters with him. At least he seemed to realize that she wanted nothing to do with him and he stayed away from the house. In fact, sometimes the only evidence of his presence was the empty dishes she collected after he ate.
Her initial anger at him faded to disappointment. Whenever she thought about what he’d done to her, intentional or not, her eyes burned with tears. Not only had he given her the second biggest scare of her life, he had dredged up unbearable memories that she had tried hard to keep in the back of her mind.
Could she have been wrong about the man? The tenderness she’d detected in him, the compassion—if what Olivia told her was true, he’d been very good at deceiving her. Olivia was after her night and day, reminding Allie that she hadn’t trusted him from day one. Allie was not as quick to judge, but she felt like a fool for believing in him, trusting him, falling in love with him. Love—it had crept up and taken her heart, foolish spinster that she was, she thought bitterly. But what did she really know about men or love, anyway? Nothing.
Within an hour of the barn incident, Olivia, who’d stunned Allie with a strength she had never suspected, returned to her girlish, doll-like self. She had been tight-lipped and disapproving when Allie explained that she couldn’t run Jeff off. Her sister had reminded her, in vivid and exacting detail, of the terrible deed Jeff had committed. But they still needed his help, and as she’d told him, there was no one else to ask. When Allie had promised to have as little to do with him as possible, Olivia seemed satisfied.
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