by Gerri Hill
“This is beautiful,/’ Cassie said. “It’s most unusual.”
“I like it. I’ve been working on it for nearly two years. I was more than ready to have it finished.” Luke pointed to the loft. “I’d take you up and show you the bedroom. The view is incredible, but we wouldn’t see much today.” She walked back into the kitchen. “Something to drink?”
“Yes,” Cassie said, walking into the spacious kitchen for the first time.
“Nonalcoholic, I’m afraid.” She opened the refrigerator and peered inside. “I have juiceapple-strawberry. Club soda, a nice sparkling apple cider made right here in Sebastopol, and plain old Coke,” she said, looking at Cassie expectantly.
“How about the nice sparkling apple cider?” Cassie pulled out one of the barstools and sat down, watching Luke as she reached for two wineglasses, her eyes drawn to Luke’s flat stomach as her shirt pulled up. Luke had changed her clothes, too. Gray cotton shorts replacing her jeans. Cassie swallowed and pulled her eyes away, feeling a hot blush on her cheeks as Luke handed her a glass. She took it quickly and shrank back away from her.
“Wineglasses but no wine?” Cassie asked. “You’ll be run out of Sonoma County if anyone finds out,” she said with a smile.
“Yes. A bit like moving to Santa Fe and not liking Mexican food.” Luke paused, as if deciding whether to continue or not. “Not liking it wasn’t my problem,” she said. “Beer, whiskey, wine … I liked it all. Too much. So, I quit.”
“Totally?”
“Totally, yeah. That’s when I started working out. I ended up trading one addiction for another.” Luke’s face broke into a smile. “And it’s become that. I’ve got a small gym out back. Just the basics, but enough to keep me satisfied.”
“How long now?”
“Since I’ve had a drink?”
Cassie nodded.
“I was thirty-two. Six years now, I guess,” she said. She pulled out a stool at the opposite end of the bar, and Cassie’s eyes folŹlowed her. They studied each other for a moment, silently.
“You have the most incredible eyes,” Luke said softly. “Bluest I’ve ever seen.”
Cassie felt her heart catch, then race, sending fire through her body. Her eyes widened as Luke watched her.
“I’m not a … I’m not gay,” she finally stammered.
Luke laughed and snapped her fingers. “Damn! I keep forgetŹting that rule not to compliment straight women.”
Cassie blushed crimson. “I’m sorry. I just thought I should …”
“Warn me? In case I had designs on you?” Luke laughed again, a deep, husky laugh that Cassie found enjoyable, despite her embarrassment. “You’re perfectly safe. Trust me,” Luke said.
“I’m sorry,” Cassie said again, now totally humiliated. “You probably have a … someone … in the city.”
“Actually, no. I’m just not looking.” She got up to stir the pot again and Cassie forced her eyes to remain on her empty wineŹglass. “Usually it just screws up a good friendship,” Luke said. She turned back around to Cassie. “But I thought you were … you know, gay.”
“No, I’m not,” Cassie heard herself say, surprised at the ease that statement came to her.
Luke shrugged and put the lid back on. “A good day for chili,” she said. “Vegetarian, though. I hope you don’t mind.”
Cassie’s lips parted in surprise. She was a vegetarian, too? She shook her head. “No, I don’t mind at all.”
Chapter Seven
Cassie got up to get a second bowl of chili and carried it to the bar. Luke apologized again for not having a dining table.
“It is supposed to go over there,” she said, pointing to an open spot. “But now I’m not sure I want one. I’ve gotten used to having the space.”
“Unless you entertain a lot, I find they’re a waste,” Cassie said. The chili was wonderful, thick and spicy and she dipped the homeŹmade bread into it.
“How long have you lived out here?” Luke asked.
“About six years. Kim, the woman you met at the fair, moved out here when she met Lisa. I came to visit them all the time.” Cassie laughed. “I’m sure Lisa was glad when I finally moved here. I was becoming a permanent fixture in their spare room.”
Luke grinned. “I thought you were going to tell me Kim wasn’t gay either.”
Cassie smiled. “No, Kim is definitely gay. She thinks the whole world is gay, they just don’t know it yet.”
“Meaning you?”
Cassie nodded. She wasn’t about to discuss this with Luke, however. “This chili is delicious,” she said.
“You’ve already said that. Twice. But I can take a hint,” she said. “We’ll change the subject. I saw an adorable little squirrel you did. It’s at the grocery store in town. That’s how I found out your name.”
“Carl had a pet squirrel. Not really a pet. Just tame enough to sit in his hand and eat,” Cassie said. “It just disappeared one day. Carl likes to think that it ran off for some wild sex or something,” Cassie said with a laugh. “Most likely he became dinner for some owl or hawk, though. Anyway, I gave that to him as a remembrance of Chester.”
“I offered him several hundred dollars for it,” Luke said. “But he said it absolutely was not for sale.”
Cassie laughed. “No. He’s become quite attached to it.”
“That’s why I came out to the festival that day. He told me who you were and that you had a lot of little critters for sale.” Luke met her eyes then, and Cassie got warm all over from her stare. “But I fell in love with your eagle. I never even looked at your smaller carvings.”
“I feel something for eagles, I think,” Cassie said. “They’re my favorite subject, by far. So powerful, their stare so intense,” she said quietly. She turned and followed Luke’s gaze to the eagle standing guard by the windows.
“I would love to see the one you’re working on now,” Luke stated. “The one in flight.”
“I’ve finished it,” Cassie said. “Though it will be difficult to part with. I want someone to have it who loves it for what it is. I don’t want someone to just fork over a bunch of money and put it on disŹplay somewhere because it looks good.”
Luke laughed. “All artists are the same. I’ve become that way myself. At first, I would design a home just as ordered, plowing down all the trees and making a nice, flat area to build. But I can’t do that anymore. Homes should blend with the environment and
be a part of the land and add to it, not merely sit upon it as if they’re some sterile structure that doesn’t really belong there.”
“What was the house that Frank Lloyd Wright designed? Falling waterfall something or other?”
Luke stared at her again. “Fallingwater,” she said. “1936, in Pennsylvania. Totally unbelievable. He was the master, of course. But that house is what inspired me to design as I do. In the summer, when the leaves are all out, you can hardly tell there is a house there. It’s built nearly on top of the waterfall, and it appears the water is coming right out of the house.”
Cassie smiled. “You love your work,” she stated.
“Yes. As do you.”
Cassie again felt warm from her stare, and she had to look away. She carried her bowl to the sink, just now noticing how dark it was outside, but the rain had slowed to a steady drizzle.
“I think the storm’s let up,” she said.
“Yes,” Luke said from directly behind her. Cassie jumped, starŹtled. She had not heard Luke get up. Cassie turned, their arms brushing and Cassie’s skin burned where they had touched. She moved away as Luke set her own bowl in the sink.
“I can run you home, if you like. Or you can sleep here, and I’ll take you to get your van in the morning,” she suggested.
“Oh, I couldn’t,” Cassie said quickly. “I’ve imposed enough.”
Luke watched her intently. “You really are scared of me, aren’t you?”
Cassie swallowed. “Of course not,” she lied. But yes, she was afraid. Afraid of Lu
ke, afraid of herself. Afraid that this time, she wouldn’t be able to ignore this attraction? Afraid? How about terrified?
“Okay. Let’s see if we can get you home, then.”
Cassie sighed with relief. The sooner she left her company, the better. Her relief was short-lived, however. The tiny creek they had to cross, normally just flowing at a snail’s pace, was now a raging river out of its banks and Luke’s headlights locked on the rushing water as it flowed across the road, carrying small limbs and branches with it.
“Wow!”
“Shit,” Cassie murmured. “I didn’t realize it had rained that much.”
Luke turned in her seat and Cassie could see her smile in the soft glow of the lights. “Well, guess I’m stuck with you for the night.”
Cassie clutched her neatly folded shorts and T-shirt to her and watched as Luke carefully turned them around and headed back to her house. Cassie stared straight ahead, not daring to look at this woman whose nearness affected her so.
She sat on the rug beside the fire and watched quietly as Luke stirred the logs, sending sparks up the chimney. The fire gave off a cheery glow, and Cassie found herself relaxing, really relaxing for the first time that day.
“So, a minister, huh? Must have been tough.” Luke laid the poker on the stones and sat down beside Cassie, although not too close to make her uncomfortable, Cassie noted.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Cassie finally replied. “He would have been perfectly at home in the Deep South. He was all fire and brimstone, for sure, and could definitely put the fear of God in you.” She smiled slightly. “That was the problem, although he could never see it,” she said. “I was so afraid of doing something that would send me straight to hell that I never learned what I could do to get me to heaven.”
“What do you mean?”
Cassie leaned back on her elbows and stretched her sock-clad feet out to the warm fire. Kim was the only other person she had ever told about her father, but Luke was looking at her intently, and she found she wanted to talk.
“I was eighteen before he would let me go out on a date. It was my senior prom and I had to beg for that.” She tried to laugh, but it came out as a choked cough. “I don’t know if it was so much that I wanted to go or that I was supposed to go. He agreed only if he could take us and pick us up and if I promised no dancing.”
“Eighteen?”
This time she did laugh. “I was so afraid of boys and what would happen to me if they touched me, kissed me, that I was secretly thankful he was picking us up. You have to understand, from the time I was old enough to remember, he was telling me what they were really after, although he never said what they were after, just that they were after it. I would catch something and become very sick if they kissed me, maybe even die. I would get pregnant if they touched any part of my body. And heaven forbid if I touched them. Blindness would strike me immediately!”
“Jesus,” Luke whispered.
“Yeah. Really.” Cassie took a swallow from her juice before continuing. “Of course, as I got older, I knew those things wouldn’t really happen, but I was terrified nonetheless. I guess that was the reason I had no interest in boys.” She glanced at Luke and smiled. “I was twenty-two before I slept with a guy. And it wasn’t that I wanted to, really. I wasn’t in love with him or anything. In fact, I don’t think I even liked him all that much. But I was tired of being the oldest virgin at school.”
“I see you still have your eyesight.”
“Yes. I came out unscathed. Physically, at least. Emotionally, I felt … empty. I felt nothing,” she said quietly. “I’ve never been able to feel anything,” she added softly.
They were quiet for a moment, then Luke stirred, leaning forŹward to nudge the logs again. Cassie watched her in the warm glow, watched her hands as they lightly gripped the poker. She had a momentary glimpse of those hands touching her, and her chest tightened. She wished she could feel nothing now.
“You haven’t mentioned your mother,” Luke said.
Cassie slid her eyes from Luke to the fire. “She left us when I was five. I know now that she left my father, but at the time, it was me that she left behind.”
“I’m sorry,” Luke said quietly. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“No. I’m okay about it now. I don’t blame her in the least. I left as soon as I could, too.”
“Do you see her?”
Cassie shook her head. “I haven’t seen her since the day she hugged me and walked out. I have no idea where she is.”
“Your father never said?”
“She may have tried to contact me, I don’t know. I would like to think that she did. But her name was never mentioned in our house.” She paused again, then spoke softly. “I remember the first Christmas after she left. Her parents, my grandparents, came to the house. My father sent me to my room, and he wouldn’t let them in. They had presents for me, they said. But he sent them away, and we never talked about it. I never saw them again either.”
“That’s so very sad,” Luke murmured. “But you still see your father?”
“He’s been up here twice in the last six years. I don’t go see him. Well, I went one Christmas a few years ago, but that turned into one big ‘Let’s Save Cassandra’ weekend. We talk on the phone occasionally. Briefly. That’s about as much as I can take of his preaching.”
“What about Kim? How did you meet her?”
“I met her in an art class my second year in college. We just hit it off right away. Kim’s been my therapist all these years. She knows all about my father. First hand.”
“What do you mean?”
“When Kim discovered she was … a lesbian, she came to the house, she needed to talk.”
“You still lived at home?”
“I lived at home until that week, yes. She had gotten married six months before. Just to prove to herself that she wasn’t gay, I think. But, it didn’t work out. She came over to tell me that she was leavŹing him, that she couldn’t live a lie anymore, that she was ready to accept what she was. My father was home, listening. He nearly brought the house down with his Bible quotes that day,” she said, managing a laugh. “Kim’s eyes were so big,” Cassie remembered, smiling. “I thought she was going to pass out. He sent her away, forbid me to see her. That was the first time I had ever stood up to him. I moved out that week ‘over his dead body,’ and Kim and I lived together for nearly a year.”
At Luke’s raised eyebrows Cassie laughed. “No. We were just
friends. Always.”
“I take it your father never came to your house,” Luke said.
“No. Never. He assumed I was living in sin. That I had become one of those. And when I moved up here with all these ‘unnatural people, thick as thieves’that’s one of his favorite sayingshe vowed he would never see me again. I think that’s one reason I moved. I was perfectly happy having a long distance relationship with him over the phone. It’s been two years since he was last here.”
Luke was shaking her head and smiling.
“What?”
“We grew up so differently. At opposite ends of the scale, I think.”
“Tell me.”
“You’ll be shocked,” Luke warned.
“No more so than you were hearing about my life.”
Luke sat back down, folded her legs and faced Cassie. “My mother was fifteen and pregnant when she ran away from home. Oklahoma. She made it to Berkeley, got a job as a waitress and lived in a run-down apartment building until I was born. She named me after her grandmother,” Luke said. “But I’m no Lucinda.”
“No, you’re not.”
“My mother was a flower child,” Luke said.
“Flower child?”
“Yes. A real hippie. In the late sixties, early seventies, we lived in a commune of sorts. Grew our own food and lived royally,” she said and laughed. “They were all vegetarians and war protesters. They would load up the vans, kids and all, and go to peace rallies, protest marches
, demonstrations. We hit them all.”
Cassie smiled delightfully. “Go on,” she said.
“Neal, that was my mother’s man, he’s the one that started callŹing me Luke. One day after a rain, I wanted to help in the gardens. I came back home covered head to toe in mud. As he was spraying me off with a hose, he asked what I had done with Lucinda. There
couldn’t possibly be a little girl under all that dirt, he said. I must be her brother, Luke.” Luke shrugged now. “The name stuck. Thankfully.”
“You don’t know who your father is?” Cassie asked.
“No. He was just some farmer’s son that my mother lost her virginity to. She didn’t love him. That’s why she ran away. Her parents wanted her to get married.”
“Have you ever wanted to know?”
“Not really. Neal was all the father I needed. They’re still together, living in sin,” she said lightly.
“They never married?”
“Oh, no. They wouldn’t even consider it.”
Cassie stared at her for a moment, jealous of the freedom Luke seemed to have had as a child. “Does your mother know about you … about your life?”
“Does she know I’m a lesbian? Yes. She’s the one who told me.”
Cassie’s eyes widened. “What do you mean?”
“I was like you. Never went out on dates, never had any interŹest in boys. But there was this one guy who kept asking me out. He was the quarterback, Mr. Popularity, and I was seventeen, thinking that it was time I started noticing them. So, I told my mother that I was going to go out with him. She wanted to know why. I remember looking at her for the longest time, wondering that myself. Then I told her that was what I was supposed to be doing at that age.”