Cabin Fever

by Marilyn Pappano

  “Funny. You’re the second person tonight to tell me that.”

  The jealousy he’d forgotten returned with a vengeance, gnawing at his gut and making his voice stiff. “Who was the other?”

  “Just someone I was talking to.”

  “Where?”

  “At the Starlite Lounge. Their menu has only four items—hamburgers, cheeseburgers, fries, and onion rings— but the food’s good, the beer is cold, and all the pretty women in town go there. There’s pool and dancing and live music on weekends. You should drop in sometime.”

  Why, unless she was planning to start spending every Saturday evening there?

  He was debating how to question her further without sounding like the lawyer he was, grilling a hostile witness, but she didn’t wait. “Why did you bother lighting that cigarette if you’re not going to smoke it?”

  He glanced down at the glowing tip radiating heat onto his fingers, then leaned over and dropped it in a gallon coffee can half-filled with dirt. “Satisfied?”

  She made a noncommittal sound.

  “How was opening day?”

  “Excellent. I never expected so many people.”

  “How did the kid work out?”

  “He was excellent, too.” She smiled smugly. “I made a good choice.”

  “Hiring someone who could be there during the day would have been a better choice. How are you going to make deliveries when you’re there alone until Junior gets out of school?”

  “I’ll send Jun—Trey with them when he gets there.”

  “How are you going to load two hundred pounds of feed for a customer?”

  “I’ll manage.”

  “Oh, yeah, I forgot. You’ll flutter your lashes,” he said sourly.

  “Oh, yeah, you forgot. I’m not the lash-fluttering type. I’m just mindless,” she said just as sourly.

  “I didn’t say you were mindless.”

  She made a hmph sound, but didn’t speak.

  A whiff of fragrances—perfume, shampoo, Nolie— drifted to him on the still night air, and he half-wished he still had the burning cigarette to block it out.

  He also half-wished he could pull her into the hammock with him, close enough that he couldn’t smell anything else. But if he did that—if she came along willingly—then he would want to kiss her, and then he would get turned on, and then . . .

  He’d better not go there, or he would get hard without even touching her, and she would probably run away home and lock her windows and doors.

  “Bethlehem’s a nice town,” she remarked.

  “You think so.”

  “I do. You can’t tell me it wasn’t a good place to grow up.”

  He could, if he wanted to lie to her again, which he didn’t. Not this time, at least. “It wasn’t bad. It was clean, safe, lots of stuff to do. Real family-oriented.” And that was his problem. He hadn’t been running away from Bethlehem when he’d left. He’d been escaping his family.

  “So you liked the schools, the activities, the people. Then your trouble must have been with your family.”

  He glared at her. Damn it, she might as well have read his mind. “I thought we’d established the fact that I don’t have a family.” So much for not lying again . . . though it wasn’t completely a lie. Yes, he had blood relatives, but they weren’t a family to him in the real sense of the word.

  “Actually, we haven’t established many facts about you at all. I keep trying, but you’re very good at evasion.”

  “So quit trying.”

  “Then what would we talk about? You already know everything about me. I don’t know anything about you. I still don’t even know your last name.”

  Then don’t talk. Go home. Leave me alone. But he didn’t want to be left alone. And he didn’t know everything about her. He didn’t know how she tasted, or if her skin was as impossibly soft as it looked, or how she looked naked, or how she would feel underneath him in bed. He didn’t know if an attempt to kiss her would frighten her, or if she would kiss him back, or if she wanted him half as much as he was starting to want her.

  He didn’t know any of the important things.

  He exhaled heavily, swung his left foot to the floor next to her feet, then sat up and faced her. “As far as I know, my mother, father, and sister live in Bethlehem. To say we aren’t close would be a gross understatement. Growing up, I couldn’t wait to get out and they couldn’t wait for me to get out. When I graduated from l”—he broke off, then made a substitution for law school—“college, I invited them to come, though I hadn’t seen them in years. Only my sister showed up. When I got married, I invited them to the wedding. That time, not even my sister came. Every time I tried to arrange a visit to bring Fiona here to meet them, I was told it wasn’t a good time, until I gave up trying. I haven’t been in touch with any of them since then.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Of course you are.” He didn’t mean it as harshly as it sounded. She was the one who valued family. He didn’t doubt that she really was sorry about his. Of course, being sorry didn’t mean she was willing to let the subject drop.

  “Feeling the way you do, why did you come back here?”

  He rolled out of the hammock and settled on the floor, facing her. “I didn’t have a lot of choices.”

  “You had a whole world full of them. Remember, I know how much your rent is. You could spend that same amount of money virtually anywhere else in the country, with the added advantage that you wouldn’t have to hide out to avoid seeing anyone you knew. So why Bethlehem?”

  Because he’d already offered the only answer he had, he shrugged. “You tell me.”

  For a long time, she sat still and thoughtful, studying him as if she could find answers to all her questions if she just looked long enough. Finally she rested her chin on her knees. “Maybe you came back because you have unfinished business here.”

  “I finished with this town and everyone in it sixteen years ago.”

  “Maybe you need to resolve things with your family. To convince yourself that the break wasn’t your fault, that you’ve done all a reasonable adult could be expected to do.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “Then why didn’t you settle in California, Louisiana, or Missouri? Why didn’t you head west to Montana or south to Florida? Why settle for this kind of existence?”

  “This kind of existence? You make it sound as if I’m living under a bridge and eating out of garbage cans. I wanted to be left alone. I didn’t want to bother with people or neighbors or questions. Bethlehem was convenient. That’s all.” He shrugged to ease the tension knotting the muscles in his shoulders. “You know, you can go home now.”

  He half-expected her to ignore him. Instead, she stood up, smoothed her dress, then pushed her hands into her pockets. Without so much as a screw you, she walked a dozen feet, then turned back. “I think you’re kidding yourself, Chase. I don’t believe for a minute that you came back here because it was convenient. But if you want to pretend to believe that, go ahead.”

  Then she strolled back to her cabin, a pale figure in the moonlight. A lush figure, yes, but womanly. Desirable.

  But she was still wrong. He hadn’t had any ulterior motives when he’d moved here. He didn’t have the slightest need to resolve anything with his family. He just hadn’t had the energy to find someplace new. An unexpected and nasty divorce, a criminal trial, a wrongful conviction, and twenty-two months in prison could sap the initiative right out of a guy. He’d been lucky he’d made it here. He could have just walked in front of a bus in Boston.

  No matter how much she wanted to believe differently, she was wrong.

  He was convinced of it.

  So, when he stood up long after she’d disappeared inside, why did he head for his truck instead of his bed? And when he reached the end of the dirt road, why did he turn right, toward Bethlehem, instead of the other way?

  About the time he passed the feed store, he took his foot off the gas pedal, and the
SUV began slowing. This was stupid. He had nothing to prove by going into town and no one to prove it to. He didn’t care how the town had changed in the past sixteen years. None of the old places that had meant anything to him back then mattered now.

  Still, he passed up a half-dozen chances to turn around.

  This late on Saturday night, there wasn’t a lot of traffic—but, hell, at five P.M. on a Friday afternoon before a weekend holiday, there wasn’t a lot of traffic. He drove Main Street from one end of town to the other, then turned onto a side street. An awful lot hadn’t changed at all. The old houses still looked the same—some of them grand, some not, all of them well cared for. Even the majority of businesses downtown had been around a long time—Harry’s, the bank, the bakery, the clothing stores, the movie theater. What had once been Herbert Thomas’s law office was now occupied by his nephew, Alex Thomas, and the sign outside Dr. Hawkins’s dental clinic now read Hawkins and Hawkins.

  Chase would recognize these streets in his sleep.

  He drove past the schools he’d attended from kindergarten on, past the stadium where he’d played football— until he’d gotten kicked off the team for disciplinary problems—and, next door, the field where he’d played baseball not very well for a season or two. He went by the church they’d attended, still every bit as solid and permanent as he remembered. And why shouldn’t it be? It had stood in the same spot for more than two hundred years.

  He also looked up the Starlite Lounge, stopping alongside the curb fifty feet away. It might be late for most of the town, but the bar wouldn’t close for three or four hours more. The parking lot was filled with cars, and loud music drifted out each time the doors opened. He’d been too young to go there before he’d moved away. He was certainly old enough now, but couldn’t find the appeal in it. The kind of woman he was likely to develop an interest in wasn’t likely to hang out in a place like this . . . though it was exactly where Nolie had spent her evening.

  With whom? Had she danced? Had a drink? Turned down any invitations?

  He was relatively sure she hadn’t been drinking. Not having had a beer in more than twenty-four hours—a long time for him lately—he would have smelled it on her. The rest he didn’t know about. He wished he did.

  Headlights flashed in his rearview mirror. He watched as a police car passed, then pulled into the street, intending to head home. He’d seen enough.

  But on the way home was City Park, now home to a swimming pool in addition to the playground equipment and the ice rink he remembered. And across the street from City Park was an old brick house. . . .

  Refusing to consider his actions, he pulled into one of the park’s parking lots, shut off the engine, and walked to the swing set that faced the house. He’d spent a lot of time on these swings when he was a kid. He’d learned to skate at the ice rink, had picnics under the trees, and jumped his bike off a mound of dirt that had later been turned into a ball field, breaking his arm in the process. If it had been his sister, she probably would have gotten her favorite dinner and ice cream, plus a toy to cheer her up. He’d gotten grounded for two weeks.

  Sitting on a swing seat, he stared at the house. It was two stories, square, built of dark brick and roofed with green tile. Around back, a detached garage with a long-unused apartment above was just visible at the edge of the property. Up front, the two upstairs windows on the right had been his room, the two on the left his sister’s.

  He wondered how long it had taken them, once he’d moved out, to erase any sign of his existence from his room. Probably no more than a few days.

  “Isn’t it a lovely evening?”

  Startled, he jerked his gaze around to see Nolie’s friend Sophy standing at the other end of the swing set. Smiling politely, she straddled the seat and faced him, chain at her back. “First time you’ve seen the house?” she asked.

  He glanced from her to the house, then back again. “What are you talking about?”

  “Your old family home. Is this the first time you’ve seen it since you came back?”

  “How did you know—?”

  The look she gave him was chiding. “Some people think they know everything. They annoy those of us who really do.” Unexpectedly, she extended her hand. “Sophy Jones.”

  He offered neither his hand nor his name.

  “It takes more than unfriendliness to offend me.” Pivoting around, she planted her feet in the dirt, gave a great push, then stretched her legs straight out and reached into the sky. Dressed in baggy shorts and a too-large shirt, with her blond curls and big eyes, she looked about twelve. Well, okay, twenty-two, but not a day older. Too young for him to have known from before.

  “They still live there, you know,” she said as she pumped the swing higher. “Your parents, I mean. Your sister has a place of her own, of course.”

  “Do you think I care where they live?”

  “Isn’t that why you’re here?”

  “No.”

  He was about to stand up, but before his brain had even formed the command, she said, “Oh, sit down, Chase. Don’t get all hostile. It’s perfectly natural to wonder about your parents when you haven’t seen them in half a lifetime.”

  “I don’t wonder about them at all.”

  She looked sideways at him in a way that reminded him of Nolie’s long, searching gaze. “Then why are you here?”

  “You translate visiting a place where I used to play into curiosity about people who aren’t a part of my life and haven’t been—by their own choice—for years?” He shook his head disgustedly. “You’re jumping to some pretty big conclusions there.”

  “You’re sitting on a swing staring at the house where you grew up, where your parents still live, and you expect me to believe it’s got nothing to do with them?”

  “I don’t give a damn what you be—”

  When her swing came forward and reached its highest point, she jumped from the seat—a good way to sprain an ankle, he’d learned when he was seven. But Sophy landed with much more grace than he’d managed. Like some damn gymnast or something, she landed on her feet and stuck. Grinning, she shoved her hands into her back pockets. “What I believe doesn’t matter. What you think you believe really doesn’t matter, either. You had a reason for returning to Bethlehem, and it had nothing to do with no other options or convenience or energy or initiative. You came here”—she gestured wide to indicate the town— “for a purpose, just as you came here”—this time she pointed at the swings—“for a purpose. The sooner you admit it, the sooner you can fulfill it.”

  Chase’s jaw tightened till his teeth ached, as her words echoed in his head . . . it had nothing to do with no other options or convenience or energy or initiative. Damn Nolie. What had she done? Oh, so casually sauntered home, then rushed inside to call Sophy and repeat everything to her? Why the hell would she do that, and who the hell was Sophy to care?

  “Nolie didn’t tell me anything,” she said, making his head whip around so fast his neck ached. “In fact, I haven’t seen her since that day at the feed store. If you think back, you’ll remember that the only excuses you gave her this evening were no-other-options and convenience. The energy and initiative bit came after she was gone.”

  He stared angrily at her, about to unleash his temper, when the porch light coming on across the street momentarily distracted him. The front door opened, and a small yippy dog, the kind his mother had always preferred, ran into the yard, did his business, then dashed back to the house. The door closed again without his catching a glimpse of even the hand that closed it. He turned back to Sophy. “Who the hell are y—”

  She was gone. The swing swayed slightly, as if touched by a breeze, but there was no sign of her. Not in the park, not on the street, not as far as he could see. She was damn quick on her feet, he told himself, and quiet, too. But she was as wrong as Nolie had been. About everything . . . except one thing.

  He hadn’t said anything to Nolie about energy and initiative—hadn’t said it at all.
They’d just been thoughts in his mind.

  So how in sweet hell had Sophy Jones known about them?

  Chapter Eight

  “AMA?”

  Nolie didn’t look up from the sink, where she was peeling potatoes. “Yes, babe?”

  “Is that man coming over for dinner again?” “That man?”

  “You know. Him.” Taking a moment from her coloring, Micahlyn waved in the direction of the other cabin with a hot-pink crayon.

  “No, hon, he’s not.” Nolie hadn’t seen Chase since he’d told her to go home Saturday night. It seemed like forever, but in reality had been only three and a half days . . . not that she was counting. She didn’t care. Her friendly nature only went so far. If he wanted to live over there like a hermit, drink, smoke, and not bathe, fine. He was welcome to his privacy—to his loneliness.

  “He’s not really the bogeyman, is he?” Micahlyn asked.

  Nolie’s smile was strained. “No, babe, he isn’t.”

  “I didn’t think so. Deontae, at day care, says the real bogeyman is green and slimy and lives in a cave way up the mountains. He’s seen him before, so he knows.”

  “Sweetheart, there’s no such thing as a real bogeyman.”

  “Uh-huh. Deontae says.”

  Nolie rinsed the last potato, sliced it into a pan of water, and set it on the stove to boil. Her favorite way to eat potatoes was baked and slathered in butter and sour cream— not exactly allowed on this diet she’d started Monday. Her second favorite was to boil them until soft, drain, and add milk and Velveeta cheese. Also not diet food. In fact, in only three days, she’d figured out that very few of her favorite dishes could find a place on any weight-reduction diet. Tonight she planned to mash Micahlyn’s potatoes with milk and butter, and have hers simply boiled. Yum. Or did she mean yuck?

  She was pouring frozen peas into a bowl to microwave when the phone rang. For just one instant, she wondered if it might be Chase—but how could it be? Presumably, he didn’t have a phone, and if he wanted to talk to her, he would simply walk over and knock at the door.