by E V Lind
“Pot’s boiling.”
Ryan’s laconic comment penetrated the fog that gripped her and she moved quickly to shift it off the stove, burning her hand in the process. She must have made some sound because Ryan was there in an instant, using an old pot mitt to lift the saucepan away from the heat before transferring his attention to her.
She didn’t protest as he took her arm and led her to the kitchen sink where he ran cold water on the burn. But when she felt his strong, masculine and solid presence so close beside her, the all too familiar fear began to batter at the edges of her mind, like a bird trapped behind a sheet of glass. She tried to pull away.
“I’m okay, I can do it.”
“Sure you can,” he answered, but he didn’t let her go.
“What is it with you?” she demanded, suddenly angry.
“Huh?”
“Have you got some white knight complex that you feel you always need to rescue me? Be my keeper?”
Her words must have struck a nerve because he let her go instantly. Beth regretted her sharpness, found herself, oddly, missing his firm but gentle touch.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have snapped. I just felt—”
“Hemmed in? And you don’t like that, do you?” Ryan stepped a clear yard away from her, his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “What’s your story, Beth? Who did that to you? Who made you so afraid?”
He pointed to her face and automatically she ducked her head, making her hair fall forward as if she could make the old injury unseeable. She turned off the faucet and grabbed a towel and dried her hand gingerly.
“Beth?” he prompted.
“I’ll slice some bread to go with the soup.”
His sigh was one of frustration and acceptance. “No, I’ll slice the bread. You’ll probably just cut your finger off or something.”
Ryan’s tone was so resigned and his voice so unspeakably dire, Beth couldn’t help but laugh. It bubbled up from deep inside her—so unexpected that she pressed her fingers to her lips, as if she could somehow diminish the sound of it. Ryan looked at her—initially puzzled as though he couldn’t quite figure out who this crazy woman, cackling like a dried-up barn-hen, really was. But then his lips curved in a smile and his rich chuckle joined in.
And, just like that, the tension between them dissolved as if it was nothing. Beth felt strangely weak, yet empowered at the same time, when their laughter finally subsided.
“Okay,” she said, when she caught her breath. “You slice the bread. I’ll pour the soup.”
She gestured to the old-fashioned, wooden bread box at the end of the kitchen counter top and went to grab a couple of bowls from the sideboard. In no time they were both seated at the kitchen table. The silence stretched before them as if neither of them were quite sure what to say or where to go next. Outside, the wind hurled rain at the house in violent sheets.
“Gonna be a storm tonight,” Ryan commented, dipping his spoon into his steaming bowl.
“Sounds like there’s a storm now.”
“This is nothing. It’ll get worse before it gets better. You going to be all right here by yourself?”
“Why? Should I be worried? The house has stood this long, hasn’t it?”
“Over a hundred years, but the power is likely to go out. Have you got enough wood upstairs?”
Beth very carefully and deliberately set her spoon down. “You’re doing it again.”
“What?”
“The white knight thing.”
It was his turn to ignore her and he picked up a slice of bread and tore a bit off with his teeth. Beth watched him. Waited. Eventually he swallowed and she found herself having to look away. The crumb on the edge of his lip, the movement of his throat as he swallowed, they were doing things to her. Things she had no right feeling.
“So?” Ryan said suddenly, making her jump.
“So, it’s annoying,” she answered, willing her heart rate to return to normal.
“I’m just looking out for you.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. The movement oddly eloquent.
“You don’t need to.”
“I promised Ma,” he said with finality, and reached for another slice of bread, indicating that for him, at least, the subject was closed. “How come you went to see Aggie today? Didn’t you go yesterday?”
“Do you have a problem with that?”
“Nope, should I?”
“Of course not!”
“How was she?”
Beth thought for a moment before answering. “Vague, lost, sad.”
“Yeah, situation normal then.”
“Wow, that’s a bit harsh.”
“Not really, not when you’ve known her your whole life. Did she ask you to find Lizzie?”
Beth looked up in surprise. “Y-yes, she did. Although, sometimes I think she thinks I am Lizzie.”
Ryan gave her a sharp look. His eyes raking her features until Beth felt a blush rise from her chest and up her throat before it filled her cheeks.
“What?” she demanded.
“You do kind of look like her.”
“Don’t fool with me, Ryan.”
“No, it’s true. I hadn’t noticed it before because most of the time I see you, you have your hair down and in the only picture I’ve seen of her she has her hair scraped back, tight.”
“There’s a picture of Lizzie?”
“Up at the big house. It was one taken before my grandfather left for the war. It has the MacDonalds and all the farm workers, together with my family—such as they were then. It’s pretty grainy but,” he paused to study her features again. “Yeah, you have the look of her.”
For some reason the idea made her uncomfortable. Beth pushed her chair back from the table and rose, taking her bowl and plate to the sink. Before she realized it, Ryan was beside her.
“Hey, you didn’t eat much. Shouldn’t you have some more?”
“Don’t you start.”
“Start what?”
“Nagging me about eating. Your mother does quite enough of that. Reminding me that I’m eating for two.”
Ryan Jones paled and his face settled in grim lines. “You’re pregnant?”
Too late, Beth realized her mistake. No-one else but Mary-Ann had guessed about the baby yet, and that’s the way she’d wanted it to stay. Except now, with her own flapping mouth, Ryan knew too.
“Don’t worry,” she said acerbically, “it’s not catching.”
“And Ma knows?” he demanded.
“She guessed a while back. Look, it’s nobody’s business but mine. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Ryan stood there, still as a giant redwood in the forest, his eyes boring into her as if she’d just committed the ultimate betrayal. Whatever his problem was, it wasn’t hers Beth reminded herself.
“Look, I’m tired, it’s been a tough day,” she started.
“Sure. I’ll go. Did Ma give you one of her old phones?”
Beth nodded.
“Make sure it’s charged before you go to bed in case you need to call for help.”
She raised her brows at him.
“Fine,” he snapped. “Look after yourself.”
And then, with a resounding slam of the front door he was gone. She was relieved, she told herself as she heard him rev up the truck and drive away, but as the last of the noise faded she began to wish he hadn’t been in quite such a hurry. The dark outside pressed against the windows with an invisible force and the air inside began to feel colder. It was only because she was tired, Beth rationalized, after all, the fire was still roaring in the range. Even so she felt chilled to the bone.
Whore! Slut!
Beth whirled around. The voice, fierce and filled with vitriol, had sounded as if it had come from right behind her. But of course, there was no one there. She shook her head, as if by doing so she could clear the words that continued to echo inside her head. Aside from Snowball, she was alone here. She would be okay. She had t
o be.
TWENTY-SIX
Riverbend, OR, December 1941
Dear Diary,
Jonathon loved me as only a man can love a woman. Yes, it hurt at first, but only a little, and the way he made me feel afterward far surpasses anything I have ever dreamed of or experienced before in my life. He said we must be careful. That even though we are to be married we cannot risk a babe. Now is not the time. Not with the war.
After we had joined together he held me in his arms for a long time. I could feel that he needed to tell me something. That he knew that I wouldn't like what he had to say. I tried to distract him. To stop him so I wouldn't hear the truth, but he told me anyway. He has enlisted. He goes to training next month. I don't know how I will bear my days until his return but he is adamant that he won't be gone for long. That the tide is turning on this awful, awful war. I want it to be true but deep inside me I know it cannot be. Every man who has left Riverbend so far has done so with a spring in his step and hope in his eyes that he will be the one who makes a difference. That he will return. So far, we have only seen telegrams.
I don't want Jonathon to go but I know he must. His sense of honor demands it. His love for his country and his family demands it. His love for me demands it. All I can do is count the days and keep him safe in my heart. When he kisses me now there is an urgency—a desperation—behind him that wasn't there before. I know it, I recognize it. I feel the same.
Mamma senses our closeness. She watches me like a hawk and I've seen her watching him, too. She asks me constantly whether my menses have started or not. I tell her the same thing. That they are as regular as clockwork, as they always have been. I try my hardest not to rouse her anger. I do my share of the work around the house and more. But still, it is not enough. It is never enough. I long for when I will be free of this house, of her.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Ryan tossed and turned in his bed sheets, staring outside at the night sky visible through his uncovered windows now that the storm had ended. So many times during deployment he’d closed his eyes and imagined this view. He’d often wondered if he’d ever see it again. It’s why he couldn’t bring himself to close the drapes any more. Even on cloudy and stormy nights. He had to see what surrounded him when he woke from the nightmares that continued to tear his soul apart.
But the nightmares that plagued him every night weren’t a patch on the nightmare that had become his daytime horror.
Pregnant. He couldn’t fucking believe it.
He’d sworn, never again. He wouldn’t get involved, he wouldn’t care. And yet, it seemed, fate had thrown yet another spoke into his wheel. Ryan rolled over again and punched his pillow into what he hoped would be a better shape but he knew it wasn’t his pillow that was the problem. He was the problem. Him and his predisposition to be the bloody knight in shining armor that Beth had accused him of being. Maybe he should be punching himself.
A chill in the air sent a shiver across his skin. Skin that was still drenched in sweat that he’d earned dreaming about a far warmer climate than where he was now. Winter here could be cold and bleak but it was nothing on the extremes of hot and cold that he’d borne in Afghanistan. Back there, weather had been the least of his problems.
He turned his dream over in his mind. Pulling it apart for probably the ten thousandth time, trying to see where he could have made a difference or how he could have stopped Aliah in her quest. Aliah, whose vulnerability had alerted his every protective instinct. Aliah, who had fed him intel from the local insurgents. Aliah, whom he’d promised to have removed from the remote village where she lived and rehomed safely away from the conflict. Pregnant Aliah.
He could still see her there on the edge of the market place. Still envisage the fervent light of radicalization that shone in her eyes. She had ignored his hand raised in greeting, had merely turned away. That was when he’d seen the bulk around her body was no longer just one of pregnancy, but one of death and destruction. He’d turned, started to yell to his men, but they’d been closer to her than he, and absorbed in the impromptu game of soccer with the village children.
The flash still seared his eyes, the noise still filled his ears and it was as if the pain of shrapnel tearing through his leg and embedding in other parts of his body continued forever.
Ryan groaned out loud and swung his legs over the side of the bed and rose to walk over to the window. Oblivious to his nakedness and the cold that continued to drop through the panes of glass, he stared at the stars in the sky as if doing so could ground him back in the reality that was his life now. The reality that he was home, and none of his men had made it. The reality that inside he was broken on a level that he couldn’t even begin to discuss with his mom. She saw it in him, he knew. She tried so hard to fix it, but this wasn’t something she, or anyone else, could fix.
He’d personally visited every one of his guys’ families to pay his respects once he was back on his feet again. And, yes, there’d been acceptance in their eyes. Anyone whose loved ones made their careers in the armed forces lived with the threat that one day they could be coming home in a lead-lined box. But in their gaze, he’d also seen the questions. The wondering why he’d survived when their loved ones had died.
Tuck’s widow had been the toughest of them all. With their newly delivered son cradled in her arms she’d looked him square in the eyes and asked him, “Why?” Why had he let her husband, the father of their son, his very best mate since kindergarten, die.
And he hadn’t been able to answer her. Hadn’t been able to tell her the truth about how he’d befriended Aliah—believing her to be a victim of a nation that was so entrenched in war and hatred that she’d needed his protection. Ryan made a sound of disgust and turned away from the window and threw himself back onto the bed. What a fucking joke. She’d played him for the fool he was and he’d bear that cross for the rest of his life. And he’d never forgive himself for it.
He’d told himself he’d stopped being that person. The one who bore the weight of everyone else’s safety on his shoulders. After all, hadn’t he failed completely and utterly with his men, not to mention the children they’d been kicking a ball around with. Children who’d been considered collateral damage in a war against the rest of the world and the armed forces that had come to Afghanistan thinking that they could make a difference.
Ryan pulled the covers up over his shoulders. He’d been an idealist. A damned idiot. And now he’d gone and done it again. Appointed himself as Beth’s protector when it was more than clear that she didn’t want protecting by him or anyone else. She was self-sufficient. She didn’t need him and he didn’t want to be needed by her. Especially now he knew some women were capable of destroying themselves and the very life they carried within their body for either their or someone else’s ideals.
He closed his eyes but he knew he wouldn’t sleep again, just as he knew, deep down, that he had no right to view the stars that lit the sky outside his windows. He should have seen everyone home safely. He should have known better.
*
The following Sunday, Beth woke with a sense of dread in her stomach. The sensation stayed with her all morning—unshakeable, dark. She wished she had a shift at the café but Mary-Ann had insisted she have Sundays and Mondays off to rest. But she couldn’t rest. The diaries now filled her waking thoughts as well as her sleeping ones. Tonight, she wouldn’t read them, she promised herself as she looked at her reflection in the mirror and saw her gaunt features staring back at her.
A sudden compulsion sent her to the flour bin in the old wooden kitchen drawer unit. She used tongs to reach for the envelope in the plastic bag that she’d pushed to the bottom. She pulled open the envelope and counted the cash she’d stowed inside. She was quickly accruing a nest egg. Safety money, she reminded herself. Run money. When Mary-Ann had first asked for her details so she could set up an auto payment for Beth’s wages, Beth had baulked and said she didn’t need payment aside from the tips she earned. After all, wasn�
��t she receiving free board at the house?
Mary-Ann had just sighed and at the end of Beth’s first week, her employer had simply passed her an envelope with cash inside and refused to let Beth return it. With her overheads being so minimal, she’d easily saved most of it.
Beth counted the money again before shoving it back in the envelope. She slipped it back inside its plastic bag, and shoved it deep into the flour. If she had to, she could fill the tank in the little Toyota and just drive as far as the gas would take her, then melt into whatever town or city she ended up in. Unconsciously she stroked her gently swelling belly through her nightgown. The urge to just pick up and leave right now was strong, but she had to rationalize that with the fact that here she at least had some support. When the baby came, she’d need it.
Sudden irrational tears filled her eyes, along with a deep wrenching sense of loss. If only her parents hadn’t died, if only she hadn’t been so desperate for love and support that she had seen Dan for what he truly was, if only— She shook her head. It was just hormones, she told herself as she went back upstairs to dress. It had to be hormones, because she knew better than most that bemoaning the past didn’t get a person anywhere but bogged down so deep that you were paralyzed. Incapable of acting for yourself. And she wouldn’t be that person again.
Beth spent the rest of the morning boxing up the few ornaments and pictures in the front parlor. The room was unfriendly and unwelcoming, there were no other words to describe it. Even Snowball had abandoned her to disappear into the garden and Beth didn’t blame her. The few chairs were hard and upright and the only adornment in the room was a large cross that stood on a side table. If Beth didn’t know better she’d have thought the room had been furnished to resemble a basic chapel. It certainly didn’t feel as if it had ever been used to entertain visitors.
She’d thought the activity might help her shake the sense of dread and sorrow she’d woken with, but it continued to cling to her and Beth decided she probably needed to get out of the house. Taping up the last box and shoving it against the wall with the others, she stood up and dusted off her hands. The weather outside was uncharacteristically mild for the first week in October. Maybe she’d head into Riverbend and take a walk along the river front. She’d heard there was a boardwalk on the other side of town. At the very least it would be exercise for her and maybe it would help clear the cobwebs that continued to adhere to her mood.