Now she played her piano every afternoon and often wore a complacent smile. But the image of her sister charging out to the barn, dressed only in her nightgown and wrapper to avenge Allie, gave her new insight into the person she always thought of as a child.
Allie had almost quit thinking about the heart-stopping terror of that morning every moment of the day. Almost. There was something familiar about the dummy, more than what it represented, that nagged at her waking hours but she could never put her finger on what it was.
The gruesome thing still visited her dreams, though, sometimes with a pillow-ticking face, sometimes with her mother’s. It would reach out to her with the arms of a skeleton and point a bony finger at her in mute accusation. No matter how she tried, she couldn’t get out of that barn. No matter how loud she called and cried, or how hard she pushed on the door. She was trapped, the door locked from the outside. Just the way it had happened so long ago. In her dream, though, always, always, someone would come to rescue her, a kind, courageous champion who feared nothing and released her into the sunlight, but whose face remained in the shadows. She’d jerk to wakefulness without learning her protector’s identity, shivering in cold perspiration and wishing that someone was with her to chase away the demons that plagued her sleep. To her distress, the someone she imagined usually took the form of Jefferson Hicks.
Though Allie had no direct contact with Jeff, she kept her eye on him and the progress of his work. Once, on his way to the lean-to, he’d turned suddenly, as though he felt her watching him from the kitchen window. He’d stared back at her with a steady, unflinching gaze, like a man who had nothing to be ashamed of. She thought that he looked nearly as haggard as he had when he first came to the farm, and it seemed as if he even wore a wistful, troubled expression on his drawn features. Hearing footsteps that signaled Olivia’s approach, she had jumped away from the window, as guilt-stricken as a child stealing a piece of candy.
At least the kitchen garden, the source of her other great worry, had been planted. She’d stood at her bedroom window upstairs, watching as Jeff sowed the field with the restored seeder. The rows were as straight and orderly as she could have asked, and the under the warm sun of late June, seedlings were beginning to pop up.
Eager for a closer look, one bright afternoon while Olivia was napping and bread dough was rising in the warm kitchen, Allie slipped out the back door to inspect the garden. It gave her the perfect opportunity to learn for herself exactly what work Jeff had done. He was in the front yard, cutting the high, fast-growing grass with a scythe. She saw him from the parlor window, swinging the blade with long, smooth strokes that made her pause to watch, peeping at him from the shelter of the curtains. The muscles in his raw-boned arms swelled with the effort, and when he turned to face the house, she saw that his ill-fitting shirt was completely unbuttoned. Apparently, he still wouldn’t wear the shirt she’d made for him, and now she felt like an idiot for having taken the time to do it. But that thought faded as she looked his torso gleaming with sweat. A breeze came up to catch the loose tails of his shirt, revealing the smooth, hypnotic motion of flesh and rib and sinew. The damp waistband of his jeans hung low on a belly that looked as firm and ridged as her washboard.
Allie’s breathing sped up to keep time with the tireless to-and-fro swing of the scythe while she watched the grass surrender to the blade. Back and forth, rhythmic, powerful. She gripped the curtain in her fist and swallowed. It was not a particularly hot day but she felt restless and edgy in the parlor that had suddenly grown too warm and close. Her high collar seemed too tight, and her hair too heavy at the back of her head. When she realized that she was staring, she tore herself away from the window. Imagine, gawking at that dreadful man who was responsible for her latest round of nightmares! He was beneath contempt, and he certainly did not warrant the kind of attention she’d paid him.
Allie struggled to force her mind back to the task at hand. The task at hand—what was it? Of course, the garden. With a last backward glance at Jeff, she left the parlor and went to the back door. She was reasonably certain that she would be able to avoid him if she circled around the other side of the house.
As she walked along the path between the house and the fields, she heard the birds twittering in the orchard but it was the grounds that held her attention. Although a lot of work had yet to be done, here and there the farm was actually beginning to look better. True, shrubbery and blackberry brambles grew wild over the spring house and toolshed, and the house still needed painting. But the shutters, which had bracketed the windows at precarious angles, were now straight and secure again. The woven wire fence that ran along one side of the road, the one that had become as bowed as a canvas sail in a hard wind, now stood upright and taut. The bushes growing around the house had been trimmed so that Allie no longer had to stand on tiptoe to see out windows. They hadn’t merely been hacked down, either. Jeff had followed the natural line of the plants so that they really looked nice. She was a capable woman, but these were tasks that she could not have accomplished alone.
When she reached the field, she breathed in the scent of newly-turned earth as she inspected each row. Spinach and cabbage were already sending tender green shoots toward the summer sun, a fact for which Allie was profoundly glad. They’d gotten a late start but now she had real hope that there would be a decent harvest to can in the fall. She walked between the rows that bore onions and garlic, stooping to pluck the occasional weed as went. When she reached the top edge of the field she found an orderly line of plants that bore no resemblance to any vegetable she was familiar with. As she examined them more closely, she saw a rich purple bloom emerging from the dark green foliage. She reached down to touch its velvety petals.
Violets. They grew wild all over the farm. Jeff had transplanted violets and put them here. Violets, with their soft, velvety petals and delicate hue, had stolen her attention that day so many years ago.
Allie lifted her head and looked across the field again. She could find no fault in Jeff’s work, but she found plenty in the man. What kind of person would plant a border of violets in a garden just for their beauty, and then arrange to scare ten years off a woman’s life? It didn’t make any sense.
She chided herself for asking the question, but despite every common-sense reason her mind could conceive, it lurked in her heart. She gripped her arms as if the summer breeze had turned suddenly chill. In time, the horror of that morning would probably fade a bit, but she felt as if the hurt never would.
Walking back along the path, she reached the low fence that enclosed her parents graves. As she passed, she spied a bright yellow dandelion in full bloom right in front of her mother’s headstone. Its foliage spread wide and audacious on the otherwise manicured spot. Hurrying inside the enclosure, she dropped to her knees to get a firm grip on the weed. Dandelions had long roots and if she couldn’t get the whole of this one, the plant would keep coming back. But she succeeded in only stripping off the leaves and breaking the stem of the flower, staining her hand green in the bargain. The thing was securely fixed, almost as if something held its other end in a tug of war. She glanced up at the headstone.
Happier in death . . .
Panicky desperation growing in her chest, Allie clawed at the weed with her bare fingers, trying to dislodge it, driving earth and grass blades under her nails. She wanted to run away from this place and this moment, but she had to pull out the weed. Perspiration beaded at her temples and between her breasts. Her hair worked loose from its pins and the breeze picked up the freed tendrils around her shoulders. Suddenly a shadow fell across her and Lucinda Ford’s headstone.
“I’ll dig that out if you want, Allie. It’ll take a shovel.”
Allie’s head snapped up and she found Jeff Hicks looming over her, holding a burlap sack. Behind his head, the afternoon sun gave him a blinding halo so that she couldn’t see his face. “Dig what?”
“That weed.”
“N-no, I can manage fine, thank
you.” She couldn’t reveal how unnerving it was to have him so close, how confusing. “You just go back to your chores,” she ordered in her best brisk voice. “God knows there’s plenty to do.”
He dropped to a crouch across the grave from her, his elbow resting loosely on his knee. His black eye had faded from purple to green and yellow, but it did nothing to detract from his good looks, damn him. The sleeves of his old shirt were rolled up and she glanced at his forearms, dusted with hair that sparkled golden in the sun. The front of the garment still gaped open, and she couldn’t help but shift her gaze to the expanse of bare chest and belly just three feet away from her. When he put the sack between them, though, she stared at it, terrified of what might be inside.
“Allie, I need to talk to you.”
No, no, she didn’t want to talk to him. Didn’t he realize that she wanted to avoid him? That he shouldn’t even be on this side of the fence, talking to her across her mother’s grave? What would her father say? She stuffed the torn leaves and stem into her apron pocket. “Have you finished the front yard?”
He nodded. “Listen, the other morning in the barn—”
“Well, the fence along the road isn’t right yet.” She knew it was a lie.
He straightened his shoulders. “That fence is as even as it was the day it was put in!”
“It needs fixing. Some of the posts wobble.”
“No they don’t. I reset the loose ones.”
“They all need painting.”
Jeff let out a gusty sigh. He knew what Allie was doing, dancing him around like this. She might blame him for that morning in the barn, but she couldn’t pick his work apart. He’d be damned before he’d let her. “Those posts have never been painted. Give me one reason why in hell they need it now.”
“Because I want you to do it. That’s the only reason you need. Don’t compound your mounting sins by adding disobedience to the list.”
“Disobedience!” he barked. “Allie, I’m not a boy and I’m not your slave. I’m a grown man, goddamn it, and I want you to treat me like one!”
She kept up her frantic digging, reminding him of a dog trying to bury a bone. “You work for me, Mr. Hicks. Sheriff Mason brought you here to do as I say. And so you shall.” She looked as starched and self-righteous as a minister’s collar, and she made it plain that the conversation had ended. But he had the proof of his innocence in the burlap sack, and he was determined that she would hear him out.
“I finally figured out why you’re so goddamned picky!” he stormed.
A rosy stain spread across her cheeks and nose. “That’s no great mystery! I pay a fair wage, I expect an honest job.”
He shook his head, “Oh, no, that isn’t it. This” —he gestured at the house and the yard—“is the only part of your life that you can control. The rest of the time your sister has you dancing to her fiddle.” There. It was out.
Allie looked as indignant as if he’d slapped her hand. “How dare you say such a thing? Olivia is frail and sickly—I have to take care of her.”
“Bullshit! Let’s talk about frail, sickly Olivia.” He grabbed the sack and pulled out the shirt she had made for him and a wadded length of fabric. He unfurled the latter like a bedroll to reveal the gray gingham dress the dummy had been wearing that morning in the barn. Feathers and bits of the straw it had been stuffed with still stuck to it here and there. “Whose dress is this?”
Allie made a strangled noise. “Wh-what—”
The color drained from her face but Jeff knew he must plunge ahead. Being guilty of his own bad deed gave him enough sleepless nights—he refused to carry the blame for this one too. “Is this Olivia’s dress?”
She didn’t answer right away. The breeze sighing through the trees seemed almost deafening while he waited for her response. “No,” she whispered, finally. Her mouth looked soft and vulnerable. “It was my mother’s.”
As he suspected. “Do you know where it’s been all these years?”
“In a trunk in the attic. All of Mama’s things are up there. My father couldn’t bear to look at them after she— He made me take them up there.”
Jeff’s suspicions were nearly confirmed. Just one more piece to the puzzle— “So then, what do you know about this?” He opened the chambray work shirt and displayed its collar and yoke, lined with the same gray gingham.
Allie’s gaze switched back and forth between the shirt and the dress, obviously trying to comprehend what they showed her. She stretched out a shaking hand to touch the shirt, then with drew it, pressing it to her mouth. “Oh, dear God.”
“You made this shirt, right?”
She touched the garment again, plainly rattled. “I-I didn’t have enough chambray to finish— I used a couple of scraps I found in the trunk—”
“Did you hang that dummy in the barn, Allie?”
“Of course not! God in heaven, why would I do something like that?”
“A good question. Here’s another one—if you didn’t do it, and I didn’t do it, who does that leave?”
She looked up at him with such profound bewilderment and hurt in her eyes, for the space of a heartbeat he wished he could take back all of this. What did it matter if he had another black deed against his name? Compared to his real crime, this would be nothing. But then he realized that this went beyond clearing himself. Allie had the right to know the truth.
Still on her knees, she backed away from him a pace or two, grinding the turf into her skirt. “No, it can’t be. I don’t believe it.”
He reached out to take her wrist, trying to soften the blow of his words. She didn’t shake him off, but stayed there on her knees, as rigid as a statue. “Allie, honey, you know it’s true. Olivia put that thing in the barn, and then arranged for me to show it to you, telling me you’d love to see the swallow’s nest. She even told me to have you close your eyes before I took you in there so I wouldn’t give away the ‘surprise’. She knew you wouldn’t go in there any other way.” He went on to repeat the events leading up to that God-awful morning.
“She probably forgot that I won’t go in there. I’m sure she did.”
“She didn’t forget.”
Allie regarded him and pressed her mouth into a tight line. “She must have.”
He shook his head. “She can’t have forgotten if she made the dummy. And it looks like she did—she’s the only one besides you who knows where to find your mother’s dresses.”
“Maybe she just wanted to scare you, and she didn’t remember that I won’t go in—there.”
“How long has it been since you were last in the barn?” He asked gently, but the question felt like a saber slicing through her.
“Not since my father— ” Even after all these years, she shrank from the memory. Those black nights, alone in the darkness, the musty smell of hay and dampness . . . she shuddered. “Not for years.”
Lightly, he reached out and gripped her upper arms. She felt his warmth through her thin sleeves. “Do you think Olivia would forget something like that?”
She pulled away from his hands. “Yes!” She couldn’t endure the thought of any other reason.
But Jeff wasn’t pushed away so easily. “Not likely.”
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” she moaned, her breath coming in short bursts. Of course he was right. She knew he was right and it all fit together to make sense. Whatever kind of man Jeff might be, whatever sins he had committed in his life, he was not really a cruel person. She had sensed that all along. This dress was what had made the dummy seem even more familiar than the memory, and had nagged at the back of her mind. Contrition swamped Allie. She’d said harsh things to him that morning, and accused him of a terrible deed. “Jeff, I’m sorry. I apologize for Olivia, and I’m sorry I didn’t believe you that morning.”
His eyes looked as deep as a mountain lake. “Don’t apologize for your sister. She isn’t a child, Allie.”
“I can’t understand why she would do such a thing.”
“It seems pr
etty obvious to me. She wants me out of here.”
“But Olivia knows we need help to get the home place fixed up. I’ve told her that so many times.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m guessing she thinks I somehow threaten her way of life.” He shifted his weight. “That maybe I’ll steal you away from her.”
“Steal me away— But that’s ridiculous!”
Jeff looked at her kneeling there, the afternoon breeze ruffling wispy copper curls that framed her face and trailed along her white throat. She had no idea how pretty she was—like a rosebud that had never been allowed to bloom. Jeff could only guess at the beauty that would emerge if Allie were given the chance to blossom. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, I guess it does sound ridiculous. I don’t have a thing in the world to offer a woman.” A bitter pang shivered through him. “But someday another man, a more worthy man, is going to come along who will want you. I think your sister knows it better than you do.”
Allie shot to her feet so quickly it startled him, and fairly jumped over the low fence surrounding the graves. “If Olivia thinks that, I have to do everything in my power to reassure her.” She glanced back at the house. “It will never happen! Never. I promised I’d stay with Olivia always. Anyway, I can’t talk about that, especially not in—in there.” She gestured at the headstones and plunged into the tall grass and strode toward the house, stumbling over tussocks as she went.
Jeff stuffed his evidence back into the burlap sack and stepped over the fence to catch up with her. “Allie, wait.” He gripped her slim arm and turned her around. “Why would you make a promise like that? You’re not doing your sister a favor by letting her get away with this. She has to be made accountable for her actions, just like everyone else in the world. What if you weren’t here tomorrow? How do you think she'd manage? You’re sacrificing your whole life to take care of someone who should be making a life of her own.”
Allie's Moon Page 18
