Twisted River

by Kelsey Gietl

  Her piercing gaze found his. “Was I a mistake?”

  She was so dangerously near. Hold it together, Reuben. “Don’t ask me that. You won’t prefer the answer.” He laid a firm hand on her arm. “Let’s return to the living room before you make fools of us both.”

  “Don’t patronize me, Reuben.” Her fingers tightened around his shirt. “Your answer—was I a mistake?”

  Don’t answer. He could still remember the feel of her body beside him during their singular night together, when he wanted her more than anything in the world. He would have given anything to have her, even forget Mira. Even forget himself.

  He exhaled. “Yes. I imagine you were.”

  Maggie didn’t even hesitate. She pressed her body against him, and Reuben’s brain momentarily short-circuited. Her lips parted, and all he could think was, What about Tena?

  What do you mean, what about Tena? he admonished. What about Hazel?

  Heaven help him; he had a monstrous problem.

  Reuben stripped Maggie’s hands away. “For king’s sake, Maggie, we can’t do this again.”

  “It doesn’t need to mean anything.”

  “But it would. Why do you think we haven’t spoken in five months?”

  “Then why are you here now? Showing up in the night? That could only mean one request.” Pulling her hands free, she ran her palms over his chest. “I’m not asking for anything except one moment to clear our heads. That was our original agreement, remember? One day, nothing more?”

  Reuben held a hand to her lips. The fog was indeed clearing and underneath it ran a familiar rampant stench. “So per standard Maggie, you’re using me to forget about your problems?”

  Maggie rolled her eyes and slapped his hand away. “Confound it, Reuben. You do the same thing to deal with your issues. You admitted it—‘I made my fair share of mistakes.’ So let’s make one more mistake together.”

  “We don’t belong together.”

  “Does it matter?” She waved both hands towards the hallway. “If your brand of medical magic didn’t work, there might be a dead child waiting for me in there. If I can have even one second of freedom of that—well, hate me if you want, but I’m going to take it.”

  The silence that followed couldn’t have been thicker even if it were water from the Dead Sea itself. Incomprehensible, he thought. This conversation was completely unfathomable.

  Reuben shoved past Maggie and cracked his fist on the kitchen table. “Your stepdaughter might be dying, and all you can think of is yourself?” His voice broke along with his heart. “You have a husband who loves you. He wants your baby. You received everything your sister should have and still your soul is black. Well, not with me.”

  Maggie shook her head. “Love is for the weak. My sister can have it for all the good it did her.” China rattled as she moved to pour water into the teacups. “Pretend you weren’t around in my moment of weakness. I promise I’ll never fall so far again.”

  Reuben reached for his father’s silver pocket watch, clutching it with such fervor that the winding knob cut into his palm. Time always changes things, he reminded himself. Except sometimes it didn’t, no matter how many times you wound the knob.

  “All this time and not a thing changed, did it, Maggie?” Releasing the watch, he gently took the tea kettle from her hands and set it on the stove. Try as he might to tilt her attention, she closed her eyes and refused to acknowledge him. “I know you, Maggie. You shared a piece of my heart once. You’re still lying to everyone, but no one more than yourself. You pretend you’re incapable of genuine feeling so you can believe your actions never have consequences.”

  “Reuben,” she whispered. Her eyes scrunched with the strain of holding them closed. “Tell me one thing. Do you remember that girl you met in the cemetery on May Day two years ago?”

  “How could I forget? That was the girl I fell in love with. She told me everyone has a beautiful story to tell.”

  “The stories aren’t real, Reuben. That’s why I told them. Everyone deserves a good story because there are no good stories. Not even mine. No matter what you might believe about Mr. Frye, he’s fooled you.”

  That’s when Reuben finally understood. This was how he would find his freedom. This was how he would unlock the chains.

  “Maggie, I see Mr. Frye far more than is healthy given our relationship to you. I try to avoid him, but for a large city, St. Louis is terribly compact. The infernal man just won’t go away. He attends half the funerals I write obituaries for, and I overhear him as he socializes. He tells everyone about you. He doesn’t try to hide it. He tells them about the baby you’re having together, and he’s proud. He’s proud, and I’m jealous.”

  Her eyes popped open, and he shook his head before she could speak. “No, not jealous because I want you to myself. Jealous because you never felt that way about me. Because I still don’t believe why anyone ever should. Angry because he gets to be a father to the kid I could have had.” Reuben sighed. “I was wrong. When I told you that he wasn’t the right man for you, I was wrong.”

  He gestured out the kitchen window where the navy sky lay adorned with its glowing orb and her most favored gemstones. “Maggie, that man thinks the moon and the stars of you.”

  Maggie’s eyes took in the sky while her right fingers slid to the absence on her left hand. “Even if that were true, the problem is that the moon and the stars are both beautiful, and yet completely unobtainable. What good is loving something if it’s impossible to hold onto?”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Molly’s fever fell two degrees by the second night and another degree on the third day, all thanks to Reuben’s continued presence. When he first suggested staying in Henry’s room, Maggie argued like the dickens but eventually relented when she realized there was no other sane option. For three days, Reuben somehow managed to trudge through the snow-packed streets to the newspaper then returned to help her fix dinner. In between caring for Molly and inventing games with Isa, he took charge of the housework, and the house hadn’t been so organized since the night Hugo left town.

  On the fourth night, Maggie laid awake while her fingers followed the tiny footprints marching across her stomach and nearly screamed when a figure appeared at her bed well after two o’clock in the morning.

  “Heavens, you gave me a fright, you oaf.”

  “I can’t sleep either,” Reuben whispered, even as he rubbed his eyes. Through the glint of moonlight between the window curtains, she could decipher his outline clothed in Hugo’s pajamas. The pants held several inches above the floor. Underneath all his usual business attire, he was still the same boy from the cemetery, the one she laid beside on the Höllenfeuer and possibly made a baby with. The man she might have loved if those stars he spoke of aligned another way.

  When she offered her hand, he grasped it without hesitation. She pulled it down to where a little unborn foot pressed against his palm. He inhaled sharply as though it physically pained him to touch her, but then splayed both his hands upon her stomach, the thin nightgown seemingly invisible between their skin.

  “That’s the baby,” he whispered with such emotion, Maggie felt her own begin to swell. As his eyes locked onto the ripples beneath her skin, he sighed. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”

  “What did I ever do to convince you that you should?”

  Even in the near darkness, his eyes locked onto hers. “It’s mine, isn’t it?”

  “I couldn’t say for certain. But of the three possibilities, I want to believe it’s yours. You’re the only one who would make a good father.”

  “Hugo is a good father.” Reuben continued to watch the tiny movements for another several minutes, and Maggie wished she could read all the intentions beneath his words. He sat beside her on the bed, quiet as the night. What would he do once the baby arrived and they knew the paternity for certain? Tonight he was playing the hero, sacrificing himself on the altar of Hugo Frye, but what about when he held the child in his arms? I
f it was his, would he still choose to be so noble?

  “Reuben, why did you really come here the other night?”

  “I think you should find peace with Tena.”

  “This is her fight. She needs to come to me.”

  “You’re both being impossible, you know.”

  “Aren’t we always?”

  “Yes. It’s a wonder I associate with either of you anymore.”

  “You probably shouldn’t. Why don’t you find yourself a nice lady and settle down?”

  Reuben sank into silence. The baby jumped again under his fingers, and he laid his hands in his lap. “I’ve actually been seeing someone ... in a way.”

  “In a way?”

  “It’s become a delicate situation. Complicated, really. Still, she’s sweet, clever, a brilliant dancer, overall a real fine girl. I do care about her. There just doesn’t feel like there’s enough substance beneath it, at least not on my part.”

  “Give it a chance. She may surprise you.”

  “Perhaps ... women do surprise me often.”

  He sank into silence again, his face turned away in shadow.

  “Reuben?” she asked gently. “Is anything else the matter?”

  “Other than watching a person squirm around inside you that I possibly made? Because, I’ll be honest, that’s kind of taking the cake right now.” He poked her stomach for added emphasis, sending off a new round of frantic movements.

  “For your information, that never stops being peculiar.” Maggie circled her hands over her stomach. “But I meant anything else.”

  “Tena kissed me.”

  “What?” Maggie sputtered, sleep a thing long forgotten. She reached over to turn on the table lamp and slapped his knee in frustration. “Why didn’t you lead with that four days ago?”

  “She thought I was Charles.”

  “How, pray tell, did she confuse you with Charles, whom I hate to mention is no longer alive?”

  “She fell in the lake when we went sledding. It was so cold, she became a bit addled and mistook me for him. You know me, Maggie; you know I’m no stranger to odd hallucinations. And no—” he countered at her look, “—I haven’t had any of my own for a very long time, not since the Höllenfeuer. But sometimes I wish for them back, just to see my sister again. Despite the way she tortured me, I miss seeing her every day.”

  “That wasn’t really her though.” Maggie recalled how Reuben’s eyes glazed over that night on the Höllenfeuer, how he lashed out at a being that wasn’t there. In a fit of madness, he had nearly chosen death in order to escape.

  “I know, but sometimes the worst of someone is better than nothing of them at all.”

  “So, do you love her?” she asked. “Tena, I mean.”

  Reuben ran a hand through his hair and lay back on the pillow, hands behind his head. “How do you know that you love anyone? I thought I loved you, but did I even understand what love was? I don’t think it was that. If it was, how could I go from loving you to loving someone else in so short a time? How could I possibly have a baby with you and walk away?”

  She rolled on her side to face him. They lay only a foot apart, her enormous stomach nearly touching his side, and it surprised her how natural it seemed. “I think you’ve always loved her, haven’t you?”

  Reuben didn’t reply. He just stared at the ceiling, arms folded behind his head, and sighed.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Reuben left Maggie on the 24th of December, six days after he arrived. He still felt uneasy leaving them alone but knew he had overstayed his welcome. Hugo would be home in another few weeks and by then Molly’s health would no longer be in question. When Mr. Frye was good and settled in, Reuben would give that bloomin’ idiot a piece of his mind for leaving his pregnant wife unattended, but for today he would leave it where it lay.

  When he slid into the newsroom with a hearty, “Top o’ the morning, Lee,” Stanley didn’t even look up from his writing. His voice was strangely aloof. “You sound refreshed.”

  “I’m having a splendid morning.” Before he left, Molly had managed an entire meal on her own. Without his visit, she would assuredly be dead, but even with his assistance, her recovery could be considered nothing short of a miracle.

  “’Bout time you’re in high spirits again,” Stanley said. He scratched out an entire line from his article. “You’ve patched everything up with Hazel, then?”

  Reuben paused halfway through emptying his satchel, his mood suddenly soured. He stared at the notepad in his hand and tried to spin an acceptable response to Stanley’s question. All he could come up with was, “Yes.”

  Stanley tapped his pencil against his chin. “Hmm, I do wonder if she would say the same.” He crossed out another two sentences and jotted a note in the margin. “Because I know you haven’t been sleeping at home.”

  Reuben didn’t need to ask how Stanley gleaned that bit of information. He smoothed a blank sheet out on the desktop and tossing his satchel to the floor, silently rummaged in the top drawer for a pencil.

  “Have you been staying here?” Stanley asked.

  “No.”

  “Well, I know you haven’t been home. Hazel finally spilled it to me this morning. Told me you’ve been missing for almost a week. That you’ve barely said two words to her since then. She’s afraid you don’t like her anymore.”

  “Hazel’s nineteen. She worries too much for someone so young.”

  Stanley finally looked up, expression concerned and lips tight set. “Reuben, Hazel loves you.” He glanced around the crowded newsroom. Harried reporters hid behind piles of paper, save a small contingent joking near the windows while they consumed their morning coffee. Eric Smithson’s usual frustrated phone conversations floated through the crack in his office door. No one paid the two men a bit of mind.

  Even so, Stanley lowered his voice. “Does this have something to do with ... you know, um ... the kiss?”

  Reuben glowered, gripping his pencil just shy of snapping it. “No. The matter is that Christmas is tomorrow, and I’m drowning in a sea of unfinished obits. You should know, Lee; homicides have been up this month too. Being around the Vines’ incessant holiday cheer wasn’t helping my concentration so I went elsewhere.” He returned to his article, jotting down details about the wife, eight children, and fifteen grandchildren that seventy-two-year-old Harold Dentsworth recently left behind. Fifty years and an entire family more than Charles had, he thought miserably.

  “Listen, man,” Stanley said gently. He laid his pencil down. “As your friend, I gotta say something. You’re grumpy at the paper and boot outta here at the end of the day like the building’s on fire. Except you clearly don’t go home, and you don’t return here. Not even on your day off. So where on God’s green Earth are you?”

  “With a friend.”

  “But not with the Kischs?”

  “No, someone else.”

  “Who else? I’ve met all your other friends, and you didn’t stay with any of them.”

  “Lay off, Lee.” Reuben’s hand slipped, his pencil lead driving a thick grey stain across the article. He crumpled the paper up and tossed it towards the already overflowing rubbish bin.

  Stanley snatched Reuben’s notepad before he could start over. “We went to Cave Hall on Friday and for the first time in months, you weren’t with us. You want to know who else wasn’t? Hazel. She stayed home wondering why you stood her up. So what gives, Radford?”

  Reuben leaned in and pressed a finger to Stanley’s desk. “I helped a friend whose child was sick. You don’t know her. And I wish you would call off the guard about it.”

  Stanley’s bushy brows shot up. “Her?”

  “Yes. My friend has a daughter,” Reuben clarified, accidentally stabbing his pencil lead clear through another sheet of paper. He tossed the instrument on the desk and buried his face in his hands. And I might too, he thought. A daughter or a son.

  A deep groan escaped his friend. “You’re gonna lose her, Reuben. You can�
��t have it both ways. Whatever you got going on the side, I beg you, let it go. Because if you don’t, you’ll find yourself every bit a bachelor again. Is that what you want?”

  It was the only time Reuben ever stormed out of the newsroom. Hazel met his eyes as he passed by and he held out a hand to her. “Come with me.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Anywhere. Out to lunch. On the train. To another state. I don’t care. I just want to leave with you.” He cared about Hazel. He knew that much at least. For now, knowing one thing with certainty was enough.

  Hazel’s eyes returned to the typewriter. She continued clacking away at the keys and slid the return back. “I can’t leave now. I need to finish these sheets before five. Christmas is tomorrow. Or perhaps you’ve forgotten with how busy you are.”

  “I’m sorry I’ve been such a cur lately.” Reuben hunched over her desk and his breath blew stray hairs from her face. He stilled her typing with the touch of his hand. “Let’s go shopping. I’ll buy you a Christmas gift you’re worthy of.”

  Ever so slowly, she raised her eyes to meet his. “I don’t want you to buy me anything. As long as you’re at Christmas dinner with Mama and Papa, that’s really all I want.”

  “I thought you were joining me at the Kischs’.”

  “You’re still gonna go there?” she cried. “After what happened?” Her voice dropped to a low whisper. “It’s because of Tena, isn’t it? You said it didn’t mean nothin’.”

  He slammed his hand on her desk, rattling the typewriter keys and causing Luella to jump in her seat. “No, Hazel. How many times do I have to tell you? It didn’t.”

  Her fingers struck against the keys, a series of meaningless letters ruining the article she had nearly finished. “I did this then. I told you I loved you and I frightened you away.”