"Again, maybe. It could be good or it could be the most boring, dead-end thing in the world. All I know for sure is it won't lead to me being anyone's chief of staff and I probably won't work on another major campaign if I wander down the nonpartisan rabbit hole but—" she held up her hands—"I'm not headed in that direction anymore, am I? It's been two months. There have been other scandals. My hot-mic moment isn't a relevant news story anymore. I'm not getting any calls because no one wants to call me."
"You've gotten plenty of calls. You've rejected them all."
"Yeah but that was different," she replied. "It was media and political privateering."
"You're allowed to be excited," I repeated. "And you don't have to view this as a last resort."
"That remains to be seen." She glanced up the street. "What's the deal with this town and Halloween? There was the Spooky Stroll at the elementary school last weekend and the jack-o'-lantern gallery in the town center, plus the two thousand pumpkins or so on the lawn outside the town hall. And all of that is on top of the actual event. That's a lot, right?"
Okay. Moving right along and away from Jasper and her next steps.
"Even though Salem gets all the attention, this whole region is witchy and haunted as hell. Gotta lean into it."
"Fair enough."
After a family dressed as the feelings from Inside Out headed back up the street, Jasper turned to me with a strange smile. "I bet you and your siblings had some precious group costumes when you were kids."
"My mother always tried to make that happen but there was only one time when we were old enough to know what was going on and still allowed it." I took a sip from my bottle. I didn't care much for Kahlua or vodka but tradition was tradition, and I honored that shit. "For reasons I still don't understand, she made vegetable costumes for us. Magnolia was a green cabbage, Ash was a beet, and I was a purple onion."
"Bless her earthy-crunchy heart," Jasper said, laughing. "That is just preciously bizarre."
"What about you? Any wild costumes?"
The brightness in her smile dimmed by a million watts and she turned her gaze to the street. "There's only one Halloween I remember as a kid. It was when we were living in Japan."
"You…lived in Japan."
"I was born there." She didn't look at me as she said this. "My father was stationed at Misawa and we lived there, on Honshu, until I was five. He was in the Air Force." She twisted the cap on her bottle—open, closed, open, closed. "Halloween in Japan isn't anything like it is here. Or it wasn't when I was there thirty years ago. The base still had some fun with it though and we did a family costume that everyone loved. I've tried to remember what it was but I keep coming up empty. I just know it was great and that was a good year for us."
Several things were true at once. Jasper had never spoken at any length about her family before. She sounded deeply sad, almost mournful. And the finality in her voice made it clear that this one happy Halloween was an endpoint of sorts.
I didn't know what to say. Part of me wished a horde of kids would come bombing down the street and break this melancholy with their shrieks and excitement. The other part of me knew Jasper had shared a lot of personal things with me over the last two months but not a word on her family which meant this was a fine opportunity for me to listen if she wanted to share.
"That's one of the only times I remember being with him," she continued. "That Halloween on base."
I reached over, took her gloved hand in mine.
"We moved to Louisiana after he was discharged, and then to his family's land in Georgia. They'd been selling off pieces of the old plantation for decades but there was still enough for us to live on one side and never see the relatives living on the other. It was good for a little while. Until it wasn't."
I gave her hand a squeeze but I wanted to scoop her out of that chair and gather her up in my arms because the next portion of this story was going to be rough. Whatever it was, was going to hurt and I couldn't just sit here while she shared that hurt. I could have her wrapped up like a burrito and perched on my lap in one minute. I'd do it too—the second she gave me the signal.
Not that Jasper was one for broadcasting all her signals but I had a good idea after two months of close study. Enough to know she didn't want me swooping in just yet.
"He ended his life that summer. I didn't understand but there was no time to deal with it because my father's family blamed my mom for his death and said all kinds of horrendous things about suicide. They made her pay them the full amount of his pension for us to continue living in the little one-room cabin that had neither kitchen nor heating. Of course, that request was bananas and she shouldn't have agreed to it but no one makes good choices when their world has fallen apart. They just don't. That's how we ended up living in that cabin with no money and nowhere to go, and I don't remember celebrating Halloween again after that."
Okay, I didn't care if she gave me the signal or not, I needed to hug this girl until the broken pieces fit back together again. I threw off my blanket and shifted toward her but Jasper held up a hand.
"No. Please, don't. Thank you. I'm fine right here. By myself."
It was almost the same thing she'd said to me when I told her she couldn't stay in Midge's cottage. She'd told me she'd seen worse. Fuck, I hadn't believed her. How could anyone believe there was worse than a house previously occupied by bats?
I hated this. All of it.
"Did it get better?" I asked.
She bobbed her head as she resumed opening and closing her bottle. "Yeah. Things always get better if you wait long enough. Eventually, my mom found work with an international airline. She'd learned Japanese while we were overseas and…yeah. That helped. But it meant I had to stay with my father's family—god, I get so angry when I think about them—and they were the worst. Old-fashioned in a horse-and-buggy sort of way but only when it suited them, you know? They loved diesel trucks and big TVs but were conveniently suspicious of pop music and anything with bright colors."
"Bright…colors," I repeated.
"Not really but at the same time, yeah. Totally. Anything neon was out of the question for them. The basic primary colors were the only ones anyone needed. Everything else was some kind of devilry. Obviously, it had nothing to do with actual colors but what color represented. They didn't want to hear about new things or variations. Differences were a waste of their time. Same with mental health. They just didn't buy into it. There was no such thing as depression or PTSD. Those were new inventions and if they were new, that meant they didn't exist before. If they didn't exist before, they couldn't be real, you know?"
"I think I follow you," I said.
"They liked their fire and brimstone, their traditional gender roles. It took me forever to figure it out but eventually I realized they blamed my mom for the suicide because she didn't pledge allegiance to the typical housewife routine. She also owned more than a few hot pink items of clothing and pushed my father to get treatment for his depression, all of which added up to her being the problem, not the disease."
"I am so sorry."
She shook her head in a way that said it's fucked-up, right? But then she said, "It's fine." It wasn't fine. "I ended up living with my aunts and uncles, and their kids, in the main house when my mother started regularly flying on international flights. It was a giant old plantation house but it was in the worst shape. Everything was falling apart. It hadn't been maintained or updated but they were fierce about that place. Like their heritage was baked right into the walls and I guess it was, when you really think about it. But it's not Georgia or the South. That sort of thing is baked in everywhere. It's here just as much as it is on the pecan plantation where I grew up."
I didn't know what to say to that. I didn't know what to say about any of this but I definitely wanted to break something. At the minimum, chop the shit out of some wood. And I wanted my mother to fawn over Jasper some more. I wanted her to have the oppressively loving family experience she'd lo
st as a kid.
"My mom was gone four nights out of the week, and staying alone in the cabin was only a slight improvement over staying with people who wanted to groom me to serve the needs of men."
"Jasper—" I didn't know what I was going to say next but I couldn't say nothing. I wanted to haul off and find the people who put her through that—while she was grieving the loss of her father—and teach them a lesson or two. What the actual fuck was wrong with people? What the actual fuck.
"It's fine. It is." She patted my hand like I was the one in need of comfort. "They were terrible people but they never hurt me. Not in any way that left marks." She shot a rueful grin at her bottle. "They were never more than an errant thought or one too many belts of moonshine away from it but I learned quick enough to stay quiet and stay out of the way. They didn't like listening to me anyway. My uncles did this thing where they ignored everything I said. Every single word. It made me so mad but there was nothing I could do. After high school, I left."
That was why she'd come here instead of going home to Georgia. Why she was alone. Why she had no one to lean on during this time. Why she didn't need anyone's help, ever, thank you kindly.
But— "How were you related to Midge?"
Jasper opened her bottle and took a deep drink. With a laugh, she said, "I'm not, not in any blood-relation sense, but she was still my aunt. My mom's family moved around a lot when she was a kid—it was the army for her—and she had Midge for a teacher the one year she lived in this area."
"Your mother was one of Midge's high school students," I said slowly. "Wow. I can't believe that."
"Mmhmm. Eleventh grade United States history. They stayed in touch when my mother's family moved. Midge told my mom she liked getting letters from all over the world."
"She really loved her mail," I murmured.
"Oh, I know. I remember." Jasper giggled. "When we lived in Japan, we'd send her letters and packages with all kinds of local stuff. My mother would write little notes translating everything and explaining it. Midge would send us packages from the States. It was always such a special day when a box from Aunt Midge arrived."
"And you visited her in the summers?"
"Mmhmm." She busied herself settling the blanket around her legs again. "My mother knew the Cleary house was the least healthy place on the planet, especially when I wasn't in school all day, so she started flying me up here as soon as school let out." She glanced at the street, forced one of those fake smiles into place. "Where are all the kiddos? I thought you said we'd be mobbed."
I lifted a shoulder. "It's different every year."
"We are going to have a ton of leftover candy at this rate."
She pawed at the contents of the bowl like she didn't just crack open a case of major childhood traumas and pour them out into the street. Again, I didn't know what to say but silence wasn't an option, any more than staying in this chair while she mused about candy surpluses was an option.
"All right." I stood and edged the bowl away with the side of my boot. "That's enough. Come here."
I held my hands out to Jasper but she only blinked at me. "Where is it I'm going?"
I gestured to my chest. "Right here."
She gave me a cool up-and-down study. "And why am I doing that?"
"Because I want to hold you, and if you'd stop acting like you don't need anyone for just a minute, you might decide you want to be held."
She folded the blanket and fiddled with her drink. "I don't want to need anyone or anything. That isn't a place I like being."
"I know." I took the bottle from her hands, set it down. "But I'm standing here, needing you. Do you really want to say no?" I snapped my suspenders. "To a lumberjack?"
"Are you trying to seduce me into thinking I should need you? Or anyone else?"
I hooked my thumbs under the suspenders again. "Is it working?"
With a husky laugh, Jasper pushed to her feet and stepped into my arms. "Okay. Fine. You got me. For now."
Wasn't that the truth.
23
Jasper
I paced from the end of Linden's living area to the front door and back again because I had to do something, I had to move. The last time I tried to stop for a minute, I charred a very nice piece of bread and had to mourn that waste as I tossed it in the trash.
Lunch was unnecessary. It was too late now anyway. There was no sense in eating at four in the afternoon, not unless I wanted to be off-kilter the rest of the day.
I laughed out loud at that idea. It was not possible to feel more off-kilter than I did now. Not humanly possible.
I knew I was overreacting. I was sure of it. But I just couldn't stop. I'd tried distracting myself several times. I tried steaming the dress I planned on wearing to Linden's parents' anniversary party next weekend but ended up spilling water all over myself. I tried making a salad to go with dinner but destroyed a tomato in the process. The distractions weren't working.
As I reached the wall of windows at the back of the house, I heard Linden's truck pull into the driveway. A moment later, there was a metallic slam and a moment after that, the front door swung open.
I was still pacing—I really could not stop—when Linden spotted me. His expression shifted from pleasure to curiosity to concern inside a matter of seconds.
"Where's the fire?" he asked, a small box tucked under his arm and a ball cap on his head.
"No fire. I just left the toast in too long."
"Okay." He nodded but gave the kitchen a careful study before glancing back to me. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong," I said automatically.
"Then why are you wearing a hole through my floors?"
I dragged my fingers under the crewneck of my sweater. "It's nothing, really."
"Stand still and say that to me."
I shot him an amused glance before shoving my hands in my pockets. Thank god for skirts with real pockets. "I decided to start on Midge's room today. It seemed like it was time."
He set the box on the countertop, dropped his hat beside it. "Don't tell me you burned that down."
"There was no fire, okay?"
"It smells like there was a fire."
"I burned the toast. A lot," I added. "But no flaming fires."
He shrugged out of his coat and dropped into a chair at the kitchen table. "All right. No fires. What happened in Midge's room?"
I started pacing again. "I figured I'd begin with something small, you know? It's really emotional for me and I don't feel like I can part with any of her things yet but I figured I could make a small dent in her closet since I noticed she had a bunch of old shoeboxes in there. I don't know why she kept them but I decided to open them because I figured she might've stored old bank statements in there or, I don't know, more coupons for stores that don't exist anymore."
He nodded as he flipped open the buttons at his cuffs and it was inconsiderate of him to roll up his sleeves while I recounted today's trauma. Seriously inconsiderate. I loved those forearms. The muscles, the hair, the veins. It was so strange to love veins but I loved his veins. And when he crossed his arms over his chest with his sleeves rolled up? My god. There was no saving my panties from that.
"And…what did you find in those boxes?"
I pressed my hands to my eyes and turned to face the windows because Linden's forearms could not exist in the same world as today's discovery. "Adult products."
"What? I didn't catch that, babe."
"Adult products," I yelled, my back still turned to him.
"What does that mean?"
Since he wasn't making this inference on his own, I said, "I thought it was a box of old broken chains. Like, bracelets or necklaces or something. I dumped it out because it seemed like that would be important. Come to find out, it was a comprehensive and varied collection of nipple clamps."
In the window's reflection, I saw him push to his feet. "What the fuck did you just say?"
A slightly manic laugh stuttered out of me. "You
heard right. A whole box of nipple clamps."
Linden laced his fingers around the back of his neck. "Oh my fucking god."
Nodding, I banded my arms around my torso. "And I figured it was okay, you know, she was a vibrant woman. She was allowed to have an equally vibrant sex life. Who am I to judge any of that? Not my place. Not my business."
"Good for you," he murmured.
"But then I opened the box with the double-ended dildo which didn't take me nearly as long to identify because I have the same one."
"Holy fuck." He rubbed his eyes, asking, "So, what did you do with all that?"
"I shut the closet door, shut the bedroom door, and walked my ass out of there. I have to throw them away, right? What else can I do? They're not recyclable. It's not like I can donate them to needy kinky people."
"Holy fuck," he muttered.
I turned, saying, "Yeah, I know."
"Hey, Peach?" He gestured toward me, an odd frown on his lips. "Some other time, we'll talk more about that dildo, right? The one you have, that is."
"Sorry but I'm not sure I can ever look at it again without thinking about finding one in an old shoebox." I shook that memory out of my head. "And just so you know, they can be very tricky to use well. It's a lot of coordination. You'll feel it in your abs for a week."
"Looking forward to it." With a nod, he walked over to the refrigerator, saying, "Get your coat."
I glanced out the windows. "Isn't it a little late for a walk in the woods? The sun's almost set."
"We're not walking." He held up a bottle of wine—my bottle—and plucked a glass from the cabinet. "We're going out back. We'll start a little bonfire and then I'm going to do my best to get you drunk. You deserve it, babe. After this conversation, I do too."
"Seems like a reasonable solution."
He knocked his knuckles against the box he'd brought in. "One of my stops today was at a dairy farm. They sent me off with a cheese plate."
I reached for my coat, held it to my chest as I studied him. "Do you usually get paid in cheese?"
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