Hold Me Close

by Rosalind James

  Into Eli’s room, then. His clothes, his books, all still there, arranged with the tidiness Alan required. Every shirt folded perfectly and put into the drawer with precision. Everything he’d bought both of them, all the thousands of dollars he’d spent. And her sitting there, always so quiet, making him think he could trust her, when every bit of it was a lie. Putting him off the track while she plotted her betrayal.

  Books, toys, clothes, all of it went on the bed, and then he pulled off the stupid Western blanket the kid had loved, bundled everything up, carried the whole thing to the front door, threw it in the trunk, and went back for Kayla’s belongings.

  Once he had the car loaded, he put his foot down. He only slowed once he got to Fort Boise and onto a side road. Then he was bumping off onto a spur, driving all the way to the end.

  Nobody around, not on a late Sunday afternoon in mid-August with the temperature hovering close to 100. He ran around to pull everything from the trunk and hauled it a good distance from the car into a barren area. A wasteland, because that was where garbage belonged.

  A splash of charcoal starter, a match, and that was all it took. He stood for a moment and watched the flames take hold. They got Eli’s Harry Potter books first. The pages blackened, curled, then burst into flame and burned merrily. Destroyed.

  Let the little bastard think about that. Let him wake up tomorrow without his cowboy blanket, his cowboy boots, all his favorite things. Let him know, somewhere in the back of his creepy, silent little mind, that it was all gone. Not that it mattered, because he wasn’t going to be needing those things anyway. Not anymore.

  Time to go, before somebody noticed. He wasn’t going to have the satisfaction of watching it all burn, but that was all right, too.

  The car fishtailed a little as he turned out of the spur, then a glance in the rearview mirror rewarded him with a satisfactory column of wispy black, rising above the parched ground.

  Kayla and Eli. Up in smoke.

  REAPING THE HARVEST

  Luke pulled into the driveway, swung himself out of his rig, and headed around to the back porch. He couldn’t be bothered with keys tonight.

  Daisy came running to meet him the moment he got inside, and he gave her a quick pat, pulled her food bag down from the shelf, and poured some into her bowl.

  A few gulps, and it was gone. “Yeah, girl.” He unlaced his dusty work boots and pulled them off along with his socks, wiggling his toes with relief against the cool tile. He’d put those boots on at five thirty this morning. “Sorry I’m late, but, hey, I haven’t had dinner yet, either.” He was starved, but a shower came first. He climbed the stairs to the bathroom, pulling his grungy T-shirt over his head along the way.

  He hadn’t planned to spend his weekend in the cab of a combine, but when his brother, Cal, had called on Friday to tell him that the hired man had come down with a stomach bug, Luke hadn’t had a choice. The wheat had to get harvested, because the forecast said they could get rain next week, and the alternative was his dad climbing up there for fourteen hours straight. No choice at all.

  He made it to the bathroom, stripped off his jeans and underwear, and started feeling better. Shower, dinner, bed, in that order. Tomorrow, the hired man would be back in the cab, and Luke would be at his desk. The world as it should be.

  The doorbell rang, and Daisy barked.

  Well, damn. At, what, nine o’clock on a Sunday night? Tough. He wasn’t expecting anybody, and he didn’t want to see anybody. He shoved his dirty clothes into the laundry hamper and turned on the taps to the shower. It wouldn’t be his family, because he’d seen his family all day long. His dad driving the truck, his mom bringing out popsicles and cookies in the middle of the afternoon. And, of course, his brother.

  Luke liked Cal fine—as long as he wasn’t working with him. If he’d wanted a reminder of why he’d chosen to leave the farm, though, he seemed to get one every summer, one way or another. If there were two bossier men alive than his dad and his older brother, he didn’t know who they’d be.

  There was that doorbell again. And again. Somebody was knocking, now, too, and Daisy had left the bathroom, run down the stairs, and was barking some more. And, again, he had no choice. He turned off the shower, pulled his dirty jeans back on, not bothering with anything else, and headed downstairs himself.

  He swung the front door open, and it was Kayla. Kayla and Eli, despite the hour.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked in alarm. “Come in.”

  “No,” Kayla said, her voice a little shaky. “We aren’t staying. I’m sorry it’s late, but we’ve been waiting all weekend for you to get home. Eli has something to tell you.”

  She looked down at her son, an expression tougher than anything he’d seen yet on her pretty little face. “Go.”

  “Um . . .” That was Eli, in too-short baseball pajamas that stopped north of his skinny ankles, with his tennis shoes shoved onto bare feet. He held out the twenty-five dollars that Luke had left for him on Friday. “I came to tell you that I can’t do the job. And to give you back your money. I’ll still play with Daisy,” he hastened to add. “Just . . . you don’t have to pay me.”

  Luke made no move to take the bills. He stared between Eli, who was looking at him beseechingly, and Kayla, who was biting her lower lip with little white teeth, her arms wrapped around herself. Kayla, in a pale-green, flower-printed dress that dipped in a V below her collarbones, nipped in at her waist, and buttoned down the front to a spot that still showed some slim thigh.

  “Sorry,” he said, forcing his gaze back to Eli again. “I must be slow. If you’re willing to do the job, why shouldn’t I pay you?”

  “I should have . . .” He was looking down now. “I should have asked my mom. I . . forgot.”

  “Ah. I did tell you to ask her, didn’t I?” he said gently. “In fact, I asked you, and you told me you had.”

  “Yeah.” It was barely more than a whisper. “I didn’t.”

  “Probably a reason for that.”

  “I thought . . .” He could see the boy’s throat working as he swallowed. “The money would be good. I thought it would help.”

  “Yeah. But, you know,” he said, because he thought he knew what was going on here, “that wasn’t the reason I asked you to do it. I asked because you liked Daisy already, and I thought you’d be good at the job.” He looked at Kayla. “Maybe we could talk alone.”

  “No,” she said. “No. We’re not staying. If you’ve got something to say, say it.”

  He sighed. “All right. Well, yeah. That’s generally why I hire people, because I think they’ll be good at the job, and because they want it. And the reason I keep them on is that they are good at the job, and they do what they say they’ll do. Which Eli has. Maybe you could explain to me what the problem is, and we could see if we can work it out. Because Daisy needs a dogwalker, and Eli wants a job, and I hate doing extra work once I’ve found a solution.”

  “Well, that’s too bad for you,” Kayla said, keeping her voice steady with what Luke could tell was an effort, “but I’m Eli’s mother, and I’m part of this deal.”

  “Yes. You are. That’s why I’m saying, let’s talk.”

  She looked at Eli. “Run on back home and go to bed. Let me talk to Luke alone.” She put out a hand. “Give me the money.”

  Eli handed it over, but hesitated. “I can stay. If you want.”

  “I’m fine, sweetie.” When Eli still stood looking doubtfully at Luke, she put an arm around the boy and said, “I’m fine. I promise. Nothing’s going to happen to me. You go on to bed. It’s late. I’ll be right there.”

  Eli looked at Luke again and said, still quietly, “If you hurt my mom, I’m not going to play with Daisy anymore.”

  And then he turned, walked down the steps, and disappeared around the side of the house, and Luke was left standing there, feeling like he’d just taken a
punch to the gut.

  Why had she been so impulsive? Kayla wondered in despair. She’d waited all weekend for the chance to talk to Luke, to have Eli give him back his money. As soon as she’d finally seen a light in his window tonight, she’d charged on up there with Eli. She hadn’t been able to wait another minute, but now, she wished she had.

  Right now, he was standing in the doorway looking down at her, tall and broad-shouldered, a pair of dusty Wranglers slung low on his lean hips. The rest of him not as brown as she remembered, because he wasn’t spending his summers at the pool anymore. But so much more muscular.

  “Maybe you could come inside,” he suggested, and she realized she had begun to shiver in the cool night air. She hadn’t picked up a sweater. She’d thought this would only take a minute.

  She wanted to refuse, but another part of her knew that she needed to talk to him for Eli’s sake. And that however much Luke had changed, he wasn’t going to hurt her. “Maybe you could put on a shirt.”

  He glanced down at himself. “Ah. Right.” He stood back, held the door open, and she walked through, much too close to all that bare chest.

  “Have a seat.” He gestured toward the living room. “Give me one second.”

  When he came down the stairs again, still barefoot but tugging a clean blue T-shirt over his flat abdomen, she was sitting on the edge of the couch in his living room. Nothing fancy about it. A plain fabric couch, a leather chair, a big-screen TV. There had never been a woman living here; she’d have put money on it.

  He took a seat in the chair, knees apart, hands clasped between them, looking relaxed and patient despite the fact that he’d obviously been working outdoors today, and had been heading for the shower when they’d showed up. “So,” he said, “I’m here, ready to listen. How about explaining why Eli can’t work for me?”

  “I don’t have to explain anything.” She did her best to hold on to her sense of purpose. “As his mother, I have the right to say whether he works for you or not.”

  “You’re right,” he said calmly. “You do. But you don’t seem like the kind of mother who gets pleasure out of pushing her kid around, which makes me think that you have a good reason. You don’t have to share that reason with me, but I’d sure be grateful if you did. That way, I could be sure I didn’t do it again. Because the last thing I want to do is upset you.”

  Did he have to be so reasonable? And not to be flirting with her one bit anymore? She was feeling foolish, and she didn’t think she was foolish. “I thought,” she said, steeling herself to say it, “that you might be offering him a job as a way to get to know me. As a way to get me obligated to you.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Huh. Well, no. Or maybe yes and no. I really did need somebody to play with Daisy every day, and I saw that Eli was already doing it, so it seemed like a good match. I thought it’d be good for him, too, if you want to know the truth. He seems . . .” He hesitated. “Like things have been hard in his life lately. And a dog can be good for that. A dog is always your friend, no matter what, and I thought he might need a friend.”

  She was choking up. She couldn’t help it. “He . . .” She had to stop and start again. “Maybe.”

  “One other thing,” he said. “With a boy like Eli, a responsible boy . . . If he can help out, he feels stronger. You’d know better than I would, of course, but I think that could be true for him. If he helps you, it makes him feel more powerful. That might matter a lot.”

  I’ve got some money, too, Eli had said. Maybe we can get more things.

  “Even if that’s true,” she said, trying to keep it together, wishing her emotions weren’t written on her face the way she knew they must be. “Even so.”

  “Gotcha. Me. And you.” He smiled a little ruefully. “Now, see, I don’t have a great comeback to that. Because that piece of it—that could be true, partly. But if I did it so I’d look better to you—well, we both saw how that worked out. So we can pretty much wipe that one right out.”

  “I don’t do obligation anymore.” She forced herself to look at him, forced her voice not to shake. “I don’t do desperation.”

  “No. I can see you don’t.” He wasn’t moving. He was just looking at her, his brown eyes meeting hers, and there was no laughter in them now. “So maybe we can leave this between Eli and me. A fair business transaction between two guys who shook on a deal. Nothing to do with one of those guys’ mom, no matter how much I’d like to get to know her better.”

  She laughed a little, the tension still strong, but relief in there, too. “You’re not making this easy.”

  “And, now, see,” he said, his voice nothing but gentle, “that shows you how much I’m messing up here, because that’s all I want to do.” She didn’t answer, and he went on. “What do you think? Willing to let that good boy of yours make a deal with me?”

  She nodded once, just a jerk of her head, and he said, “Well. That’s all right, then,” and she realized she was sitting on his couch, taking his time, and she had to get out of there. She stood up, and he did, too, walked her to the door, opened it for her, and said, “I get the feeling that it’s hard for you to believe much right now. But you can believe this. You’ve got a fine boy there, going to grow up to be a real good man, because you’ve done a good job. And if you want my opinion, it’d be good if you let him help you out. That’s what a good man wants to do.”

  She nodded again, stepped off the porch, and he said, “Good night, Kayla,” but she didn’t answer, because she couldn’t. She walked around the house and down the hill, and she had a feeling he watched her all the way to her door. But his eyes on her didn’t feel predatory, and they didn’t feel scary. They didn’t feel like that at all.

  REDNECK RENDEZVOUS

  She didn’t see Luke again all that week. When she walked up the hill to go to work, on her way to another long evening of scrubbing toilets and running the vacuum, his yard would be empty except for Daisy. And when she descended the steep hill again, with the aid of the cheap flashlight she’d bought to light her way, his house would be in darkness. But then, nobody was up at twelve thirty in the morning.

  She knew it was bad to leave Eli alone, but her paycheck would barely cover rent and food. There was nothing left over for a babysitter. She’d been into almost every restaurant in town over the past four weeks, looking for a second job, a few lunch shifts when Eli would be in school. If they had an opening, though, they wanted references, and she couldn’t give them. She couldn’t have them calling The Iron Skillet, because who knew when Alan would think to check on that? So for now, it was cleaning and the baby monitor, and as long as nobody found out that Eli was alone, they would be all right.

  On Thursday, school started. She woke at quarter to seven, fuzzy with fatigue, and, when she came out of the bathroom, put a hand on Eli’s back where he lay, his face buried in his pillow.

  “Sweetie,” she said gently. “Wake up.”

  He rolled over, sat upright, blinking, his hair sticking up a little. “School,” he said.

  “Yep. This is the big day.”

  She made him eggs, because it was the big day, and he ate them without saying much while she packed his lunch. A tuna sandwich, and a peanut butter one. She added an apple to the brown paper bag, folded the top over, and set it next to his backpack.

  He finished his eggs, carried his plate to the sink, and set it in the water, then said, “I’m going to go now.”

  “It’s only seven thirty. School doesn’t start until eight. You can probably wait ten minutes.”

  He shifted from foot to foot. “I don’t want to be late. I’m just going to go now, OK?”

  “All right, if you want to.” She finished washing the frying pan and set it in the dish rack, then wiped her hands on a ragged dishtowel. “I’ll walk you.”

  “It’s OK, Mom. I can go by myself.”

  “I know, but . . . I’d rather
walk you. If that’s all right,” she realized she should say. If she got to choose, he should get to choose some things, too.

  “OK.”

  Her own heart beat a little harder when the big old red-brick building came into view. “It’ll be good,” she told Eli. “New friends.” She adjusted the strap on the backpack they’d found at the thrift store. Not bad; a little worn, maybe, but that was all right. Lots of kids’ backpacks wouldn’t be brand-new, not by fourth grade. Eli had used a marker to black out the name on the back and written his own, and that had made it his.

  “Yeah. Anyway,” he said, as if he were reminding himself, “Cody’s in my class, and I know a few of the other kids, too. And Cody says there’s four square.”

  “You’re great at four square. You’ll be fine, sweetie.”

  “I know. I can go from here, Mom. You can go home.”

  “I’ll walk you all the way. I don’t mind.”

  “Um . . . is it OK if I go by myself?”

  “Oh. Right. Nobody’s mom walks them.”

  “Just kindergartners. And, Mom, don’t kiss me, OK?”

  “All right. Have a good day.”

  “Bye.”

  She had to wrap her arms around herself to keep from reaching out to hug him, and then he was looking both ways, stepping into the street, and running the rest of the way. Down the concrete steps onto the playground, where he was lost in a sea of kids. Finding his own way. Her boy.