“You should. Because I was going to her. For sex.”
Shelby’s heart twisted painfully at his words, but this was not a revelation, and she was determined not to let him bait her. “That’s not my business.”
“I just think you should know,” he said coldly.
“Because it’s bothering you?”
“Because it’s who I am. Because it’s what I’ve been doing for years.”
“And now that I know? What are you expecting me to do?”
“Nothing. I’m not expecting anything. Except to be left alone.”
“To wallow in self-pity?”
“What?”
“Is this about Marcia, Dawson, or is it about you?”
Dawson slapped his hand hard against something solid, and the sound made Shelby startle. Beside her, the baby in the bassinette began to whimper.
“Have you even reached out to Cassie or your other friends in the last two days? You’re so self-absorbed with your own guilt about who you are, you’re not even thinking about anyone else.”
“How the hell do you think you have any idea what I’m thinking about?” Dawson’s voice was closer now, and the anger it directed at her made Shelby feel weak with fear. Beside her, the baby began to wail. She turned toward it reflexively, and Dawson stomped out of the room.
Shelby sat quietly on the couch, holding the baby against her shoulder until it went back to sleep. Dawson might say he loved her and he couldn’t turn it off, but something had changed. He had been on his way to have sex with Marcia Boardman. And now he was telling her things meant to drive her away.
She placed the baby back in the bassinette, then pushed herself from the couch. It was time she left this house for good, before she became even more painfully attached to its occupants. The smell and feel of the baby had aroused all of her maternal instincts, and she needed to end that potentially hazardous relationship before it began.
She walked into the kitchen, feeling along the wall for the phone. She was ready to go home.
In the living room, the baby began to cry once more. Shelby closed her mind to the sound and concentrated on dialing her home number. That was Dawson’s child. Dawson’s and Cassie’s and Miriam’s. It was not hers. It would never be hers.
Miriam had gone to the basement to check on her laundry, then back up to the kitchen where she was making bread. In the living room, Sonny and Shelby were having a heated conversation about Marcia Boardman. She remained in the kitchen and was there, kneading bread dough at the table, when Shelby came in to use the phone. In the living room, the baby had begun crying again, but Shelby made no move toward her. Instead, she faced the wall with a look of determination on her face and slowly dialed the phone.
“Shane? Hi, it’s me. She’s okay. She’s sleeping … well, actually she’s crying. She was sleeping. I fed her and held her for a while. Shane, I need to come home. No, I mean for good.”
Miriam looked up in surprise.
“Things have changed, and I can’t stay. I don’t want to stay. It’s better if I break it off now.”
Miriam stopped kneading the dough and threw a towel over it, then wiped her floury hands on the front of her apron. In the living room, Beth’s crying had become a full-fledged wail. She turned from the table and headed across the kitchen, moving past Shelby as she entered the living room to pick up the crying baby.
“I know, but that’s okay,” Shelby was saying as Miriam returned to the kitchen with Beth on one arm. “I’ll be fine. It’s temporary anyway. We can talk more later. Bye.”
Miriam stopped and rested her hand on Shelby’s arm as the latter hung up the phone. “What are you doing?”
Color rose in the girl’s cheeks. “I’m moving out, Miriam. It’s time.”
“Why? Because of something Sonny said? He’s not himself right now. Don’t take too much to heart.”
Shelby shook her head. “It’s time I move on. I can’t afford to get attached to the baby.”
“Why not? I thought you and Sonny were making progress, getting to know each other.”
“ He’s not the same person he was. This whole thing has changed him.”
“In your eyes?”
“In his own eyes. He’s pushing me away.”
Miriam tightened her grip on Shelby’s arm. “And you’re just going to let him do that? I thought you were more of a fighter.”
“I can’t afford to make another mistake, Miriam!” Shelby said, her eyes wide. “I can’t fall in love with this baby and then find out things aren’t going to work! It’s hard enough leaving now.”
“So you’re just taking the easy way out.”
“There’s nothing easy about it!” Shelby angrily dabbed at the tears that were now running down her cheeks.
“Do you love my son?” Miriam asked quietly.
“It doesn’t make any difference, Miriam.”
“I think it could make a big difference, Shelby. He needs you. He loves you. Yes, he’s got a lot he needs to straighten out in his own head right now. And for that he’s going to need some time and some patience on your part.”
Shelby turned away from Miriam. “Then he can come and find me when he’s ready. But I’m not staying here in the meantime. ”
“Will you be at your house?”
“For a few days. And then I’m moving back to Boston.”
“Why?”
Shelby breathed a loud sigh. “Shane’s coming in less than an hour, Miriam. I need to go pull my things together.”
Grant spent most of Monday afternoon with Shane, unburdening his soul about all that was bothering him. He described the scene outside Marcia’s trailer, the impact of hearing the shot with which Teddy ended his own life, and the guilt he felt over his part in leading Teddy to that final act of despair. Shane listened patiently to all of Grant’s angst over his perceived contribution to Marcia’s death and his struggle with how much of an explanation he owed Cassie. Shane had his own history of keeping personal issues to himself, and he considered discretion to be the more prudent course unless confronted with a direct question.
Grant’s nightmares started on Monday night, his first night back in his cabin. The state police had remained tight-lipped about the previous day’s events, leaving only his imagination to fill in the blanks. He obsessed over how Teddy had shot them—to kill or just to wound in order to prolong their suffering? Whom had he shot first? Who had to watch the other one die? Where had he shot them? In the heart? In the head? Had he done it in some horrible way so the other would see the results? Did either of them try to run or to stop him? How did the state police know they were dead if they hadn’t been inside yet? Could someone have been saved if only things had been handled differently? Or did it all happen so fast and so lethally that nothing could have changed the outcome?
His nightmares were gruesome, graphic answers to all those questions, and he woke, over and over, in a cold sweat with his heart pounding. An all-encompassing sense of dread and hopelessness filled him when he finally awoke to daylight. These nightmares weren’t just nocturnal flights of his imagination. They were based on a reality he must continue to confront in daylight as well.
By Tuesday he found himself immersed in a malaise that left him listless and disinterested in life. He forced himself to join Larry in the sugarhouse on Tuesday—Corey and Suzanne had covered for him on Sunday and Monday—but his heart wasn’t in it. He could no longer keep his mind on maintaining the proper sap flow or determining whether the syrup was at the point where it needed to be taken off the pan. Larry suggested he throw wood on the fire instead and let Larry watch the pans, but Grant was too stiff and sore from his fall outside Marcia’s house to keep it up. Larry lost his temper then; after three days basically on his own trying to handle the best sap run of the entire season, he had endured about all he could. Grant didn’t react. Larry was right, of course, and so he tried harder to concentrate on the job at hand, but Larry shut down the fire early and they both went home.
Tuesday
night’s nightmares involved Grant and a faceless predator with a gun. . At one point he was trying to escape from his pursuer through a blood-spattered window that kept getting smaller and smaller as he attempted to climb through it. He awoke breathing hard as though he had been running, and for the longest time he was afraid to close his eyes again. But exhaustion won out, and the nightmares returned.
On Wednesday morning, his beeper woke him from a troubled sleep for a car accident on Highway 13. But the thought of witnessing a potentially bloody accident scene now brought him to the brink of nausea. Where gaping wounds had been something he could handle in the past, he knew that now they would trigger in him an emotional reaction that would do no one any good. His time as an effective first responder for the fast squad had come to an abrupt end. He would resign immediately after Clay Beaumont’s funeral.
Cassie stood at the bedroom window, staring out at the sunny morning, seeing nothing, feeling too much. Her breasts were painfully engorged with milk; the drug they had given her to stop lactation wasn’t working. She had stayed in bed day and night since coming back to her father’s house, and now her head was aching and she needed a shower badly. Still, more than anything, she just wanted to go back to bed. Sleep brought welcome oblivion.
“Cass?” Her sister’s voice came through the door. “Shelby’s on the phone again. What do you want me to tell her?” Poor heartbroken Jeanine had about as much life in her voice as Cassie felt in her tired bones.
Shelby. She had just been thinking about Shelby as the one person to whom she might feel like talking. “Tell her I’ll call her back in about an hour.”
She gathered the supplies for her postpartum needs and a shower and shuffled out through her father’s house to the bathroom down the hall. She was aware of being hungry, another first since leaving the hospital. At the same time, she wasn’t even sure what day it was, and she didn’t particularly care.
She finished in the bathroom and came out feeling refreshed and human for the first time since going into labor. That all seemed so long ago now. But she had the distended abdomen and the gross blood flow to prove it, even if she blessedly had no screaming infant to attend to at all hours. Plus she now would have to endure the painful tenderness in her swollen breasts in order to send the message to her body that there was no baby to feed.
She made herself a cup of instant coffee and a piece of toast, then sat down next to the phone in the living room and dialed the Penfield’s number. She braced herself for the chance that Sonny might answer and hoped that he wouldn’t. To her relief, Miriam answered the phone. But when she asked to speak to Shelby, Miriam told her Shelby had moved back to the Dayton farm.
Cassie called Dayton’s and Shelby answered the phone. “Cassie! It’s so good to hear your voice! How are you doing?”
“I’m doing better. I mean, physically it’s not bad. What’s going on? Why did you move out of Penfield’s?”
“It was time.”
“I didn’t think you wanted to be back in that house.”
“It’s temporary. I’m moving back to Boston soon.”
“Really? I thought you and Sonny …”
“There is no me and Sonny,” Shelby broke in. “Are you up for a visit? In person, I mean. I would love to talk with you. But I understand if you’re not.”
Cassie was taken aback by the need in Shelby’s voice, and it warred with her natural desire to remain in seclusion. “I can’t drive yet. And I don’t think you’d want to come here. It can get pretty rough with my dad sometimes.”
“Shane can pick you up and bring you over here, if you’re comfortable with that.”
Cassie paused. Shelby’s house had become her second home; she would be okay there. “Okay.”
She waited at the front door for Shane, and took the arm he offered to steady her on the icy path to where his van was parked. Being near him still provoked mixed feelings in her—a combination of embarrassment, disappointment, and lingering desire—and she wanted to simultaneously cling to him and hide from him. Now, seated beside him for the ride to the farm, she found herself appreciating his quiet strength; he had given her a gentle smile that silently reassured her they could still be friends. They rode together in amiable silence, taking for granted the other’s unexpressed gratitude, condolences, and understanding.
He helped Cassie out of the van when they reached the farm, then disappeared upstairs in the renovated barn while she went inside the house to find Shelby. The latter was seated in the living room beside a small table laden with coffee cups, pastries, and a pot of hot coffee. The two women hugged gingerly, laughing at their need to respect Cassie’s painfully tender breasts, yet each wiping away tears born of a reunion with undercurrents that were less than joyful.
“Thank you for coming,” Shelby said as she resettled in her chair. “I miss you so much.”
“I miss you, too,” Cassie answered. She sat down in a chair facing Shelby and drew it closer so their knees were almost touching. “Are you okay? What’s going on?”
“I just wanted to make sure that you’re alright.” Shelby looked straight at Cassie with her big gray eyes. “You’ve been through so much, and I am so sorry about Marcia. I really regret never finding the time to meet her.”
Cassie smiled sadly. “I think you would have liked her, Shelby. She was quite the person. And I know what everyone is thinking about her now, and it’s so unfair.” The familiar pressure was building inside her chest, threatening to cut off her air.
“Sonny is filled with anger. He’s ugly as sin right now.”
“I am, too. I’m angry at her. I’m angry at Teddy. And Clay. And God …” Cassie drew a deep breath in an effort to ease the pressure squeezing her windpipe. “She was so damned irresponsible, and she knew that Teddy was a risk.”
“What do you mean?”
“He had the flashbacks and stuff that veterans get after being in a war—what do they call it?”
“Post traumatic stress syndrome?”
“He carried a gun in his truck—a pistol or handgun or something—and she was always afraid he’d use it during one of his flashbacks.” Cassie closed her eyes to hold back the welling tears. “She was always afraid he’d hurt someone else.”
“Why did she marry him, do you think? He was a lot older than her, wasn’t he?”
Cassie nodded. “By about fifteen years. He was the same age as Sonny’s brother Bill. They enlisted together and ended up in Vietnam. But she loved him. She really did. I suppose people won’t believe that now, but it’s true. I think he gave her security and all the other stuff she never got from her father.” Cassie rose from her chair to fill the two coffee cups with coffee and added creamer to Shelby’s before handing it to her.
“So was she just lonely because he was gone so much? Is that why she … took in other guys?”
Cassie studied Shelby’s face for a long moment. She had known Shelby long enough to recognize that her interest in Marcia was sincere and not just voyeurism. And that Shelby truly believed that Cassie had known all along what Marcia was doing. Now she saw an added element—suppressed pain at the fact that Marcia had been having sex with numerous men—and she was forced to acknowledge to herself a fear she had been suppressing for the past two days.
“I never knew about the other men,” Cassie said. “She never told me about them.” Cassie swallowed hard to keep down the lump in her throat. “And now I think I know why.” She forced herself to say the words, even as the visual they inspired played painfully in the space behind her eyes. “Sonny was one of them, wasn’t he?”
Shelby looked startled. “Oh, Cassie, you … I’m sorry! I didn’t know …”
Cassie sat quietly, the ache in her chest intertwined now with a new and rising rage. Marcia and Sonny! For how many years? Each of them had betrayed her for how many years? All well-intentioned, no doubt! And how could she blame them? Marcia had an outrageous figure and she loved showing it off. She had never had a pretty face, but she
was incredibly attractive, not the least of it being her amazing breasts, small waist, and slender hips atop long, shapely legs. Why wouldn’t Sonny choose Marcia for sex? And why wouldn’t she want to go to bed with a good-looking hunk like Sonny?
“It makes you wonder about all of the men you know, now, doesn’t it?” she said angrily. “Even the married ones. But especially the single ones. All of them.” She was thinking of Grant, sitting beside her bed, delivering the terrible news about Marcia and Teddy and Clay. How upset he was, to the point of being barely able to talk.
Shelby sat silently, a stricken look on her face.
“Don’t worry about it, Shelby,” Cassie said. “I would have figured it out sooner or later.” Yet, she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Did Sonny actually admit it?”
Shelby nodded, her eyes trained on the carpet. “He was on his way to have sex with her that day. It could have been Sonny who was killed by Marcia’s husband.”
Lonely Souls Page 37