Hideaway Home

by Hannah Alexander

  “The sooner someone gets out there, the less likely it will be for the intruder to escape,” Edith said.

  “That intruder’s long gone, Edith, you know that. It would’ve taken some time for the cat to be affected by the gas, and no one’s stupid enough to hang around that long. Nobody knew we were going out there.”

  “Someone at least needs to go inside and check to make sure the whole house doesn’t explode with all that gas,” Edith said.

  “The doors are open.”

  “You should at least tell Red.”

  “Not yet.” Bertie reached the corral fence and handed Edith the rifle, then climbed into the corral. The stable was still empty, which meant Red wasn’t back yet. “First of all, I don’t know who’s doing this, and so we really don’t know who we can trust.”

  “You can trust Red. You know that.”

  “And what’s he going to do? Ride out to the house just to find that no one’s out there? After the funeral tomorrow, I’ll tell Red all about it, but I can’t risk having him hear about it, and deciding to drag me right back to the train station at Hollister.”

  “You don’t have to let him do it.”

  “I don’t want a big brawl the day before Dad’s funeral.” Bertie glanced around the stable.

  “What are you looking for?” Edith asked.

  “Someplace to hide this rifle.”

  Edith glanced toward the house. “Someone might have already seen us with it.”

  “I’ve been trying to keep it out of sight.” She reached for it, and Edith handed it to her then climbed the fence after her. “Edith, I didn’t want to drag you here in the first place. It’s proving to be too dangerous.”

  “You didn’t drag me, I came of my own free will, and I’m not going back without you. My main focus is my best friend, who needs me right now.”

  “Well, then,” Bertie said, carrying the weapon into the shadows of the stable, “your best friend wants to know if you’re any good with a hunting rifle.”

  “I sure am.”

  “You are? I thought you were a city girl.”

  “My husband wasn’t. Harper grew up in rural Alabama, and he knew how to shoot practically before he could tie his shoes. He taught me how to handle a rifle before we got married, and I was good.” She frowned at Bertie, the strong lines of high cheekbones and firm jaw tense with seriousness. “Whom do you want me to shoot?”

  “I told you, I don’t know yet. I hope nobody, but if we have to shoot to protect ourselves, can you do it?”

  “I guess we’ll see, won’t we?”

  Arielle raised a slender finger and pointed it toward the cane Red had leaned against the table. “Now, suppose you tell me about this injury of yours. I have a cousin in Baltimore who is one of the finest surgeons in Maryland. What can we do to get you healed?”

  He shook his head. “Already seen too many docs. The Army surgeon says I should be fine.”

  “But you obviously are not fine.”

  “One doc tried to tell me it was all in my head.”

  “Psychosomatic?”

  “He didn’t say I was psycho, he said I was imagining pain that wasn’t there.”

  Her lips pressed together with disapproval. “I don’t agree. I think the Army may need some new surgeons who can do their jobs correctly without blaming it on your mental acuity.”

  He nodded. “I appreciate that, Mrs. Potts, but I don’t think there’s gonna be any more healing.”

  “I’ve noticed you and Bertie seem to be avoiding each other this afternoon.”

  Red tried not to scowl. “Lots of folks want to see her, and I’ve got things to do.”

  Arielle shook her head at him. “Don’t forget whom you’re talking to, Mr. Meyer. I’ve known you since you were a baby, and there’s something wrong. I know the war has changed you, but you haven’t been yourself at all today.”

  “She just got here today, and we haven’t seen each other in a year. Give it time.”

  Arielle leaned forward and rested a soft hand on Red’s arm. “Young man, you’ve fought in the war for three years, with very little leave. If I had been separated from Gerald for three years when we were courting, no one would have been able to keep me away from him—or him from me. Don’t tell me there’s nothing wrong.”

  Red shrugged. “War changes things, Mrs. Potts.”

  “It certainly does. You seem to have forgotten that I prefer to be called by my first name by those whom I perceive to be my friends. Do you suddenly have a problem with that?”

  “No, Arielle.” How could he have forgotten her habit of opening his life up like a book, reading and discussing whatever page she chose to light on?

  She smiled at him. The smile was warm and kind, and he decided he really didn’t mind having this lady with a good heart turning a few pages in his life’s book.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Streaks of red, blue and white lights raced across the night sky and a deafening firestorm exploded in the blackness in front of Red. He dove for cover, smelling the stink of the explosive, tasting the grit of wet earth as he landed face-first in the bottom of the foxhole. Mud filled his nose and ears, blinding and choking him.

  He reached out to feel for the side of the foxhole, and he felt something else. Something soft and cold.

  It was human flesh, stiff with death.

  He jerked away, dashing the mud from his eyes. Another streak of light flashed past him. He looked down at the body and saw Joseph Moennig imprisoned in the thick, black mud.

  Red cried out and scrambled backward, only to fall against another body. Bertie’s lifeless eyes stared past him.

  Screaming, Red lost his footing and fell…and kept falling.

  The mud wasn’t soft and deep this time, but hard, flat, painful. He opened his eyes to darkness, and he froze, his breath loud in his ears, sweat dripping down his face. He waited until the square of his bedroom window took shape in the blackness of the wall. His leg hurt, and so did his shoulder and hip where he’d hit the floor. He’d fallen out of bed.

  He swallowed to keep from throwing up, and stared out the window at the fading stars in the early morning sky. Why couldn’t the dream disappear, like the mist that rose from the river?

  The dreams were getting worse instead of better. How much longer would they haunt him like this?

  He hoped he hadn’t disturbed any guests. If he kept having these nightmares, he’d end up sleeping with the horse in the stable.

  In fact, that might not be such a bad idea. At least if he was watching Seymour, no one could turn the horse out of the corral again without getting caught.

  Someone knocked at his door, and he groaned. He’d been heard. His mother had moved his bedroom to the first floor of the house, in spite of his protests that he and his cane would be fine upstairs. She’d insisted that she wasn’t worried about him and his cane, what she was worried about had something to do with a handsome, single man sleeping too close to his future bride. Folks would talk.

  Red had warned his mother time and time again not to get her hopes up about a wedding, but would she listen to him? Nope. She still treated him like he was her rambunctious little boy. Not only did he want to protect her from disappointment, but he wanted to protect himself, as well.

  Everything had changed. She’d have to get that through her skull.

  The knock came again, and his door handle jiggled. “Red, you okay in there?”

  He squeezed his eyes shut. It wasn’t Ma outside that door, it was Bertie, and though relief washed through him afresh—proof stood right outside the door that his dream was nothing more than that—he knew he had to keep his defenses up.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Just a dream.” One of the worst nightmares yet. He needed time to get over it. What he didn’t need was Bertie asking questions he didn’t know how to answer, when he wasn’t thinkin’ straight.

  “You fall or something in that dream?”

  He grunted. A fella couldn’t even ma
ke a little noise without somebody running to check on him. A person would think he was a cripple or something.

  He scrambled to his feet, reached for his robe, then his cane, and was halfway to the door when the handle jiggled again.

  “Red?”

  He couldn’t tie the belt of his robe while handling the cane, so he didn’t tie it. His pajamas were decent. Yanking the door open with his free hand, he braced himself for the sight of her. She held a lit candle in her right hand. She held more than that, though. She held the power to convince him to do things he knew he shouldn’t.

  “Woman, you’re not my nurse. Do you think I’m an invalid?”

  She caught her breath and took a step backward, the candle fluttering, and he felt all kinds of a heel.

  She recovered quickly enough. Her eyes flashed. “Not physically,” she snapped. “You might be a little soft in the brain sometimes. I heard a thump, and it scared me. For all I knew, somebody’d hurled another brick at the house.”

  Red grimaced, partly from a sudden pain in his bad leg, partly because Bertie knew about the brick. Too much stuff happening these days. If she’d stayed in California, she wouldn’t have all this extra worry heaped on those shoulders.

  “You shouldn’t have been told about the brick,” he said, hearing the instinctive gentleness in his own voice. “You’ve got enough on your mind. I’m okay.”

  “No you’re not. You’re hurtin’, I can tell.”

  He looked away, suddenly thinking his breath must be rank enough to water her eyes, and then wondering where that thought came from.

  Still, it was one thing to wake up in the morning with a bunch of battered soldiers who hadn’t washed in maybe two months. It was another thing to face Bertie in the bare morning light before he even had a chance to brush his teeth.

  He couldn’t help noticing she didn’t have any trouble with bad breath or an untied sash. In fact, she looked wide awake with her hair all in place, as well as he could tell in the candlelight.

  “You already up for the day?” he asked.

  She glanced down the hallway, toward the front window that overlooked the road, where the night still held sway, then she shook her head.

  He took a step closer, and thought he saw dark circles under her eyes, the skin of her face pale—too pale. “Mercy, girl, you look like something the cat dragged in.” She needed some sleep. She looked like she hadn’t had any. Was he the reason for that?

  She turned her scowl back on him. This was the old Bertie. The one he’d grown up with, who could fight like a boy when she needed to, and hadn’t been afraid to punch him in the jaw once when he was eight and she was six and he locked her in the outhouse at school.

  “I’m going to gather some comfrey out on the farm today,” she said. “I tried to do it yesterday, but…I got sidetracked.”

  “You went out to the farm yesterday?”

  She hesitated, looking away. “Sure did.”

  “What for?”

  “I wanted to see the house without you breathing over my shoulder and everybody waiting for me in the car.”

  “I thought I made it clear it wasn’t safe—”

  “Yes, you made that crystal clear, Red.”

  He blinked at the sharpness in her voice.

  “What you didn’t make clear was why you didn’t think it was safe,” she said. “You didn’t tell me about the brick, you didn’t explain what all those limbs were doing on the front porch, and you never gave me any reason for why you think Dad was killed. What else didn’t you tell me?”

  He couldn’t hold her gaze.

  “That’s what I thought,” she said, voice softening. “Anyway, comfrey’ll be the best thing for that leg.”

  Something inside him relaxed, some burning pain eased that he hadn’t even realized was there. She’d been thrown for a loop, seein’ him like this yesterday without any warning, but now her nursing instincts were kicking in. She did still care about him.

  As soon as the thought came to his mind, he dashed it away. He had no right to her healing touch. He had no rights at all.

  “No need to do that,” he said.

  “I’ll boil some of it into a tea, and the rest I’ll—”

  “I don’t like comfrey tea.” He hated the stuff. “Your mother made me drink that nasty brew when I broke my arm. I hated it then, too.”

  “It’s not for your enjoyment,” Bertie said. “It’s for you to start feeling better. I’ll sweeten it with honey, and then I’ll make a comfrey-leaf poultice for that leg, and—”

  “No, you won’t.” He wanted to grin, but he kept his face straight with effort. She didn’t need to go gallivanting over the countryside, what with her father’s funeral today. She especially didn’t need to go alone.

  “Sure I will,” she said. “We’ll see if we can’t pick up where the doctors left off.”

  He placed a hand on her shoulder, and then realized this was the first time he’d actually touched her in a year. Her shoulder was so slight…so delicate. She didn’t need to be takin’ care of him, she needed takin’ care of.

  Now that he’d crossed that great, cold gap between them, he didn’t want to let go. He wanted her so much closer.

  And yet, he didn’t have a right to touch her. He didn’t have a right to be giving her hopes about a future together, even if she still wanted that future.

  “Don’t take to meddlin’,” he said, releasing her reluctantly. “And you need to get some sleep.” He wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her hard and long and wipe that look of hurt from her face.

  He wanted so much more. He wanted things to be different, but they weren’t. They were what they were.

  Ma was right to move his room.

  “I think Ma’s gonna need help with the guests this morning,” he said. “She’s cooking a batch of beans for the funeral dinner, but she wants to bake some cracklin’ cornbread and a heap more things. You know what our funeral dinners are usually like.”

  “I asked her last night if she’d need help, and she said—”

  “You know Ma, never one to ask.”

  Bertie’s eyes narrowed. “You’re trying to distract me, Red Meyer.” But she didn’t sound angry. He could hear the slight lilt in her voice.

  He suppressed another grin. “Why don’t you see about helping her? We’ll talk about comfrey and tea and stuff like that later, after this whole thing is over today.”

  She stood watching him. “You promise?”

  “I said we’ll talk about it.”

  “You will let me try to help you?”

  “Now, Bertie, you know I don’t make promises I might not be able to keep, and I hate comf—”

  She pressed her fingers to his lips, and that soft touch sent a warning shock through him. He jerked away.

  “Don’t press me, woman.” He couldn’t believe the sharpness of his own voice, but he also couldn’t believe how tempted he was, how weak he felt. “Do you know how many doctors told me my leg would be as good as new? I got my hopes up every time, and it never happened.” He slapped his leg. “It’s not fixed, and a few leaves and a swig or two of nasty-tasting tea won’t do any more for me than the doctor’s best penicillin, so don’t start on me.”

  “Red, you’ve seen it work before.”

  “We’ll talk later,” he said, then closed the door and leaned hard on his cane, listening for sounds that would tell him she was leaving.

  For a few seconds there was no movement, and then she walked slowly back to the staircase and up the stairs—the boards creaking with every step.

  He’d have to get the floors fixed around here. Right now, though, he had other things to see about.

  Soon as he could get his heartbeat back under control.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Bertie stepped silently through the bedroom she shared with Edith. She couldn’t even cry, for fear of waking her friend.

  How had it all come to this? Not only didn’t Red want her here, he didn’t wan
t her to be close to him, to try to help him heal.

  He knew she was knowledgeable about the herbs in these parts. Her mother had taught her everything she knew. But he didn’t want to try. Not even for her.

  She felt the sting of that through and through.

  She stepped to the window overlooking the river and stared into the dim gray of the coming dawn. Time to get control of her thoughts. She was tired and overwrought. Edith was a silent sleeper, but the bedroom had only one double bed, and each was accustomed to her own bed.

  Bertie had expected to sleep heavily last night because of her sleeplessness on the train, but her mind had flown from worry to worry, and she’d tried hard not to toss and turn for fear of waking Edith, which had made her more uncomfortable.

  Every time she’d begun to drift off, a new problem would occur to her—how was she going to run the farm all by herself? How could she stand on her own two feet and run anything, if she wasn’t even allowed to go to the farm alone?

  And how could she expect Edith to go with her? Edith didn’t know how to cope with cantankerous bulls, or cows with an overly developed protective streak for their calves.

  Things would look better once she’d had some rest, surely.

  With a quiet sigh, Bertie realized Red was probably more right than she wanted to admit. She wasn’t ready to make any major decisions right now. The shock of Dad’s death was too fresh. She didn’t want to make a move that would turn out to be the wrong one.

  She leaned against the window sill and gazed into the hollow as it grew dove-gray with morning light. Red had let her know how little he wanted her in his life right now. She’d seen the irritation in his eyes when he opened his door to her, and nobody could’ve missed the way he’d reacted to her touch. Like she was poison.

  Why had she even gone to his room? If anyone else found out, she’d be mortified. A young lady did not go to a man’s bedroom. Period.

  But this wasn’t any man, it was Red, and she’d heard him cry out. She’d do it again in a heartbeat.

  “You’ve been standing there half the night,” came Edith’s groggy voice from the bed. “Don’t you think you should try to get some sleep?”