The Widow's Watcher

by Eliza Maxwell

  The sound that finally came out was so disconcerting she glanced up to make sure he wasn’t having an attack of some kind.

  He was laughing at her.

  10

  Lars studied the woman seated across the table. She had fire in her, he’d give her that, though it was obvious she’d taken some knocks.

  Her eyes were sunken, her skin pale.

  Once he’d cooled off, he’d been forced to acknowledge, privately at least, that there were things in this world that could drive a person out on that ice.

  He knew that better than most.

  Yet he had a gut feeling sympathy wasn’t what this woman needed, with her hollow eyes and her family vehicle she drove alone.

  Lars had learned the hard way that ignoring his gut was a mistake.

  Despite the fact Jenna Shaw had as much interest in speaking to him as he had in a prostate exam—or maybe because of it—he slid into the opposite side of her booth.

  “What are you going to do now?” he asked again.

  She didn’t meet his eyes but kept her gaze focused on the plate in front of her, where she was pushing around a piece of pie with her fork.

  “What do you care?” She tossed the fork aside without taking a bite.

  Lars leaned back and crossed his arms. “You can pretend you were sightseeing in the middle of a frozen lake all you want, lady, but I know different.”

  She sat back and crossed her arms as well, mirroring him right down to the surly expression.

  “What’s the point having my boy fix that van of yours if you’re just going to take it a few miles down the road and run a hosepipe from the exhaust?” Lars asked, leaning forward and placing his forearms on the table.

  The woman turned her face away and stared out the window. He marveled at how tight her jaw was, the stubborn inflexibility on display.

  “Again. What business is it of yours?” she said.

  “It’s wasteful!”

  Eyes turned in their direction. Gossip would be flying around town before the check was paid. Let them talk.

  Her jaw flexed, but her expression didn’t soften. About as much good as spitting into the wind.

  Lars sighed. “Hand over that pie,” he said. “No point in it going to waste.”

  She pushed the plate across the table, then watched as he reached for her unused fork and cut off a large bite.

  She waited until he was chewing before she spoke. “Cherry pie was my daughter’s favorite.”

  Past tense. Was her daughter’s favorite. The tart sweetness turned to chalk in his mouth.

  “Apple, though. My younger daughter and my husband both preferred apple.”

  Lars had to force himself to finish chewing, then to swallow, his throat suddenly dry and uncooperative.

  He wiped his mouth on a napkin, no longer interested in finishing the pie.

  For a moment, their eyes met, and he caught a glimpse of an abyss.

  He was relieved when she broke away, turning again to the window and the snowy sidewalk and street outside.

  In a voice so low he could barely make it out, she spoke again.

  “My son preferred cake.”

  Lars said nothing. Words had never been a talent of his. People talked too much anyway.

  Jenna Shaw was lost in whatever memories had hold of her. So still she was. Like Midas had brushed against her and turned her to a cold golden statue.

  He could get up and walk away right then, and she wouldn’t bat an eye, wouldn’t even register his absence.

  He fought an urge to do just that. To walk away and leave her there with her half-eaten pie and her past tense.

  Lars pulled his wallet from his back pocket, fished several bills from its worn leather confines, and tossed them on the table.

  “Come with me.” He slid out of the booth and stood.

  He thought maybe she hadn’t heard him, until she mumbled, “Thanks, but I’ll pass.”

  “Yeah?” he asked sharply, pushing down the sympathy that was one step below useless. “You got a pressing engagement somewhere?”

  She whipped her head around, and he took a mean gratification in the fire that flared in her eyes.

  “It wasn’t a request. You don’t think you’re going to bunk at my place rent free, do you? Time to earn your keep, missy.”

  “Do you have to practice being such an asshole, or is it a God-given talent?”

  His lips twitched, but he managed to bite back the laugh. “I could say the same for you, lady. Now come on. Maybe you’ll learn something.”

  Lars nodded to the waitress as he walked toward the exit. He held the door open and looked over his shoulder.

  She had stood, at least, though she hadn’t moved from the booth. He could read her hesitation, even from a distance. Lars raised one eyebrow at her and tilted his head. A challenge.

  Her face clouded with resentment. A step in the right direction. He watched as she snatched Owen’s coat from the seat and shrugged it on.

  He managed not to crow with victory as she huffed past him out the door, but he couldn’t stop the smirk from spreading once her back was turned.

  11

  “You finally find yourself a girlfriend, Pops?”

  The boy, who looked about ten years old, was sitting on the steps of a squat brick building that butted up against the church on the west end of town. He wore a ragged coat and a grin full of mischief.

  “Isn’t she a little young for you?”

  “Why aren’t you in school?” Lars demanded. Jenna ignored the way the child waggled his brows in her direction. “Don’t you have a test today?”

  “Mama’s sick again,” the boy said with a shrug.

  Lars fumbled with a set of keys and unlocked the heavy door.

  “Well, get in here, then. You can help set up for lunch, then take a plate home to your mom.” He held the door open to a large, dimly lit room. “After that, you get your rear end to school.”

  “What are we having today, Pops?”

  “Filet mignon and poached salmon hors d’oeuvres.” The old man flipped a set of switches along the wall, illuminating an institutional room with eight or ten tables lined up like battered soldiers.

  “What’s that mean?” the boy asked.

  “Soup, Terrence. We’re having soup. It’s a soup kitchen, not five-star gourmet on the Riviera.”

  “Why you got to be that way? You forget to take your fiber this morning or something?” the boy asked.

  “Why don’t you shut your gob and go put the plates and bowls out on the line already? Unless you want me to call the principal, get her down here to drag you back by the ear.”

  “All right, all right. No need to get your shorts in a bunch,” the boy said with a grin. He ran off to what was presumably the kitchen portion of the soup kitchen like he’d done this routine before.

  Lars followed at a slower pace.

  Jenna stood motionless.

  Lars stopped at the doorway to the kitchen and looked back at her.

  “Well?” he asked.

  She had nothing to say. Even Cassie was silent.

  “Look, lady. The way I see it, unless you’re planning to do yourself in today, right now—in which case, I’d ask that you take that mess outside so you don’t traumatize the boy—you get in here and put yourself to use. I got lunch to make.”

  “I . . .”

  Jenna had never felt so much of nothing.

  “I’m no cook,” she managed. Inane words that said nothing of the struggle inside of her. The struggle to move, to care. To be.

  The old man’s sharp eyes studied her.

  “Did I ask if you were a cook? You’ve got ears, don’t you? You can take directions.” Lars shifted his weight and raised one of those damnable eyebrows. “Unless you’re too good to peel potatoes.”

  She straightened her spine and sent him a black look, unsure whether to be grateful for the distraction or give in to resentment that he’d recognized how badly she needed it.
>
  She brushed past him, head held high, and decided she could do both.

  “That’s what I thought,” he mumbled as she passed.

  “Careful, old man,” she said in a hoarse voice. “Murder-suicide has a nice ring to it.”

  But the bastard was laughing at her again.

  12

  Lars Jorgensen wasn’t an easy taskmaster, and Jenna hardly a model student, but she peeled as he demanded. Then she chopped and she stirred and she ladled into bowls.

  His gruff instructions flowed over her all the while, peppered with irrelevant information about the people who began to file into the church building in search of a hot meal.

  “Not a lot of homeless in Raven,” Lars said. “Not like over in Minneapolis or Saint Paul.”

  Jenna hoped he wasn’t expecting a reply. The fog had begun to settle back upon her, and she struggled to get through the tasks at hand.

  Lars didn’t seem to notice.

  “Minnesota in the winter’s a hard place to be without a roof over your head,” he continued as he handed trays to the people who came by the pass-through window that separated the kitchen from the larger room.

  “We have a few folks around, but the town council tries to make sure arrangements are made for the rough months.”

  Jenna slid a vegetable peeler down a carrot, cutting away the outer layer to reveal bright orange beneath. Turn, repeat, with as much precision as she could muster. Lars’s words were background noise.

  “Mostly we’ve got working poor. Families who’ve fallen on hard times for whatever reason.”

  Turn, peel, repeat.

  “Terrence’s mother, she’s a drinker.” The cheeky-faced boy had taken a sandwich and bowl of soup home. “He takes care of himself and his little sister best he can.”

  Jenna gathered the peeled carrots and moved them to the oversized chopping block. The stock pot full of the soup Lars was dishing out had come directly from the refrigerator, then gone onto the stovetop to heat. Jenna was prepping a different soup for a different day, apparently. She didn’t question him.

  Chop, add to the pot, repeat.

  “How are you today, Mr. Jorgensen?” asked a young woman with dark smudges beneath her eyes as she made her way through the line that filed in front of Lars.

  “I’m well, Tess.” The gentleness in the words momentarily pulled Jenna from her stupor. “How’s Jamie doing?”

  The woman smiled. “He’s picked up some work over in Mankato.”

  “That’s good news.” Lars handed her a tray and another to the little boy who stood clinging to her leg.

  The boy, too young to be in school, had his face partially hidden from Jenna. Shy eyes peeked around his mother, seeking out the stranger in his midst, and battered her already defeated senses. Sarah, her lovely, sweet Sarah, had been the same.

  Jenna gasped, pulling her gaze from the reticent child with the hurtful eyes to the cutting board in front of her.

  Is that my blood?

  “Good Lord, woman,” Lars barked, the tenderness gone like a puff of smoke in the wind. Jenna found herself relieved to see it go.

  Lars dug around in a drawer, then moved Jenna toward a sink, where he turned on the faucet so she could hold her hand beneath it. The cut was deep and long, and she watched the red dilute and run in rivulets down her hand, then disappear down the drain.

  Lars was waiting with a bandage, which he applied with quick efficiency.

  “You can serve,” he said, brusque now. “You’re cutting those carrots wrong anyway.”

  He took her by the arm and moved her back to the pass-through window, where there was still a small line of people waiting on their meal.

  “Tray, bowl, ladle, next.” As if she were an imbecile.

  She managed to do as he’d instructed, avoiding eye contact with the blurred faces moving past while he grumbled behind her back.

  “Uniform pieces,” she heard him mutter with disgust. Then something garbled that might have included the words suicidal woman and knife.

  “Stir,” Lars told her when she’d finished serving the people waiting. He placed a long-handled spoon in her hand.

  This time she made no move to do as he demanded.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, the spoon dangling from her fingers.

  “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m cutting potatoes into uniform pieces. Cut them in different sizes, they cook at different times. It’s not rocket science.”

  “Not that. This.” She gestured around the room with the spoon. “Why did you bring me here?”

  He glanced up, then wiped his hands on a rag. If she’d thought he might prevaricate, make up some line about how he needed help making lunch, she was wrong.

  He walked toward her, took her by the arm, and slowly turned her to face the small crowd of people who’d gathered at the tables.

  “What do you see when you look at them?”

  “People. Just more people.” People who weren’t Matt or Cassie or Sarah or Ethan. Jenna had nothing left for strangers.

  Lars gave her a hard stare. “Look closer, lady.”

  “What? What do you want me to say?” she demanded. “Do you want me to feel sorry for them?”

  “Sorry? Do they look like they need your pity? Look at them!”

  “I’m looking!”

  “You’re not seeing. Do you see tears? Sadness?”

  Unwillingly, Jenna looked to the shy boy who’d hidden behind his mother’s leg. He was giggling as an older man played a game with a coin and his nose.

  “What is your point?” she whispered.

  “My point?” Lars shook his head. “My point is, whatever hell you’ve been through, chances are someone in this room has been there too.”

  Rage—complete and all-encompassing—flared inside of her.

  “You don’t know me. You don’t have any idea what I’ve been through,” she whispered, the jagged words sawing through his presumptions.

  Most people would have backed away from the violence in Jenna’s tone. But Lars Jorgensen didn’t know when to quit.

  “No. I don’t know you, and I don’t know your story. And you don’t know them.” He pointed a gnarled, age-spotted finger toward the small crowd. “Tess over there? She nursed her mother through cancer last year. A long, slow, lingering death.”

  Lars gestured again. “Bill, the man sitting with them? He served nearly ten years for manslaughter after he and his buddy wrecked a car when they were teenagers. They were drunk, and his best friend died. Bill was behind the wheel. He’s never been the same.”

  His words were angry bees buzzing around her.

  “Carolyn, the woman in the corner? She has dementia. Her son and his new wife sold the house she’s lived in her entire life from underneath her, but she keeps trying to go back home anyway.”

  “Stop. Stop it.” Jenna fought off the images he was throwing at her.

  He didn’t stop. “My point is that these people, they get up every day. Every single day. They get up and they fight back the urge to give in. They go through the motions, and they laugh and they talk and they eat and they sleep, and they live.”

  Jenna shook her head, her eyes squeezed tight. It wasn’t the same. It wasn’t.

  “This isn’t living.”

  Lars dropped his hand from her arm and took a step backward. His eyes shuttered. Instruction time was over.

  She’d failed his test, without realizing it was being administered.

  “That’s a pompous thing to say.” Lars went back to throwing potatoes in his soup. “A slap in the face to every person who fights their way through the day.”

  The vegetables splashed hot liquid onto the stovetop with a hiss.

  “May as well tell them they should all just chuck it in too.” He set the cutting board back onto the counter with a bang.

  “Well, maybe they should!” The savage finality in the statement shocked even Jenna.

  She didn’t know where the words had come fr
om. She didn’t recognize herself anymore. Her chest was heaving, her knuckles white and tense.

  The old man grew still. His back was to her, but she saw him take a deep breath, knew he was going to turn and hurl more meaningless words in her direction. She was done being lectured. Words wouldn’t change what had happened to her family. They wouldn’t change anything at all.

  Jenna fled before he had the chance to try, running for a door in the back of the kitchen. She didn’t know where it led. Anywhere was better than here, with this man and his accusing eyes.

  The blazing sunlight, coupled with the cold, stole what little breath she had left, and Jenna drew in a frantic gasp.

  She glanced feverishly around. Nothing was familiar in this hard, strange place. She longed for the wooden box she’d left behind at Lars’s cabin. She wanted, needed, to touch it, hold it tight to her hollow middle. To place her forehead against the cool, polished grain.

  She folded into herself and sank to the concrete steps at her feet. On the stoop that led to the back door of a place where others came to find warmth and sustenance, she rocked back and forth with her head tucked between her knees.

  She had no sense of time passing, only the edge she was teetering on.

  Jenna didn’t hear the crunch of feet in the snow, nor see the girl who stood in front of her, watching with a judgmental intensity.

  When the girl spoke, Jenna gave a startled shriek.

  “You’re the lost one.”

  Jenna blinked, her mind valiantly attempting to catch up to what she was seeing, this apparition of a woman-child who’d materialized in front of her.

  Not an apparition. She pushed the notion away as the girl slowly blew a bubble with her pink gum. Jenna struggled to focus. She could almost forgive herself the slip. The girl was a cobbled-together bundle of contradictions.

  Her hair was a dark auburn, done up in the double victory-roll style of the nineteen forties. Her pale-green eyes were thickly lined, coming to points as sharp as her gaze. She wore black-and-white striped leggings and pink snow boots that coordinated with her bubble gum.

  The girl’s cosmetics couldn’t conceal her youth. She was fourteen at most.

  Jenna shook her head. “I’m sorry . . . what?”