“Wait. There’s something I wanted to ask you.”
He turned around.
“Can you come by later? For dinner?”
He frowned.
“Make it after dark. They won’t know. You can tap on the window out back—”
“Sorry, Libby. But I don’t want anything to do with all this.”
She must have looked pretty miserable. She certainly felt pretty miserable. But then, instead of walking away, he suddenly made a counteroffer.
“Can you sneak out?”
She considered it. She’d failed to pull it off this afternoon. But if Gina wasn’t around, tonight—
“I could try.”
“Then why don’t you come to my place?”
“I don’t know the way—not through the woods.”
“I’ll meet you right here.”
“Okay. I’ll bring the food. Thai okay?”
“You cook Thai?”
“No. One of my devotees is making an offering.”
“You’re kidding me.” He laughed. Had she ever heard him laugh? It was nice.
“It will have to be after dark, if I’m going to get away without them seeing.”
The days were long. The sun wasn’t even setting until well after eight.
“Say about ten o’clock?”
“Sounds good.”
30
At least one thing went right. When she got back to her place and checked her mail, the lab results on her horsetail brew were finally back.
No trace of anything prohibited.
She checked the data three times just to make sure. Kind of silly to be so nervous. After all, she’d made a living once looking at lab results. But she wasn’t quite ready to trust it, that something was actually breaking in her favor.
And there it was, in black and white.
Which meant that now, chances were excellent that her farm would get its certification.
Maybe things were changing for the better. Maybe, maybe. Finally.
♦ ♦ ♦
Carla was late. It was nearly 9:00 when she finally delivered the food.
Libby invited her in—she couldn’t bring herself to leave the woman on the stoop as she took the food.
“How much do I owe you?”
“Oh, nothing. We took up a collection,” she said.
Libby set the bag of food on her counter. “Okay,” she said. “I guess that’s okay.”
Carla looked at her expectantly. “What’s next?”
“Well. Uh. I have some things to do. To prepare. Then I’ll . . . you know. Take the food up back.”
“So they really do eat Thai food? Some of the guys were saying . . .”
Best not to answer at all. . . she really didn’t want to lie outright. So she busied herself taking the to-go boxes out of the bag and setting them on the counter. “This is perfect,” she said instead, as she folded the bag. “Thank you so much.”
Then she walked to the door and Carla followed. “I’ll, um, let you know, tomorrow. If I see them.”
“When are you going?”
Again with the direct questions. “I’m not exactly sure.”
“They wanted me to ask you.”
Libby held the door open and saw that “they” had gathered at the foot of the front steps.
“Are you going to use Kip’s altar?” Carla asked as Libby let the screen swing shut behind her.
“I might. I’ll figure that out . . . later.”
“Okay.”
“Uh, everyone.” Libby looked at the circle of faces lit by the porch light. “Sometimes, you know, it’s helpful if I have a little privacy. Please?”
“Hear that, guys?” one of them said. “We need to keep our distance. We’ll keep at a distance, okay, ma’am?”
Not exactly what she had in mind.
She shut the door and hit the porch light switch, then went to the living room window and carefully lifted a corner of the bedspread. She could see campers silhouetted by the bonfire, and then, as she watched, the group that had been at her door strolled over to join the others.
She let the bedspread drop, shut off the light in the kitchen, went upstairs and pulled her backpack off the hook in her closet.
She’d have loved to leave right that minute. Get out of there, even if it meant she’d beat Dean to their meeting spot. But the campers might be watching for her. She needed to be patient. If she waited a bit, surely they’d let down their guard.
Plus she was grubby from working. She stopped into her bathroom and glanced at herself in the mirror. A dirt smear was streaked across her left cheek. Hopefully she’d applied that touch of grimy rouge after she’d talked to Dean, not before.
Time for a shower.
Then after she was dressed again, back downstairs to peek outside. One of the campers had brought out a guitar and she could hear the strumming, faintly, through the window.
She packed the food into the backpack and tiptoed to her dining room escape hatch.
♦ ♦ ♦
It was dark. Darker than she’d expected it to be, only a quarter moon, and of course she didn’t dare switch on her flashlight, and of course she’d turned off the lights in the rooms on the back side of the house—to avoid accidentally illuminating her escape.
She hadn’t expected it to be quite that dark.
She leaned up against the house, listening, hugging her backpack to her chest, waiting for her eyes to adjust, and suddenly smelled the coconut and curry boxed up inside and realized she was ravenous. When had she last eaten? Lunch time?
Argh.
She could hear the guitar more clearly now, and talking, rising once in awhile as the conversation became animated and broken by a burst of laughter.
She stepped away from the house and strode swiftly across the lawn.
The brushy hedgerow between her lawn and her field was tricky in the dark. She slung the backpack into position so her hands would be free and felt her way with her feet. Then reached the field. It was a shadow overlain with shadows, and the woods to her right were beyond shadows, pitch black. She stepped cautiously over the little ditch. A tangled mat of bedstraw was growing along the ditch’s edge, and she lifted her feet high so she wouldn’t trip. The bedstraw was in bloom and smelled spicy and fragrant, and she noticed now, beyond the sounds of the campers, the faint hum of traffic on 390, way down at the bottom of the valley. And the trilling of the field crickets, but only the ones that weren’t near her—if she got close to one, it fell silent, so that she walked in a little pocket of silence.
Only not for long.
“Hey! I think I saw something move.”
“Where? Where?”
Libby froze.
Unbelievable.
They had staked out her field.
She dropped into a crouch, her heart thudding. A flashlight beam switched on and began playing over the ground in front of her.
“Hey, is somebody there? . . . Lisa? Is that you?”
“Maybe it’s one of the fairies,” said the other voice.
“Yeah, well if it is, you hold the torch, cuz I’m going to catch it.”
“Can’t, don’t wanna spill my beer.”
The light danced over the hedgerow to Libby’s left—it was her chance and she knew it. Keeping her back bent so she’d be as low as possible, she made a break in the opposite direction of the flashlight beam—she needed to make it to the stone wall, to Dean’s property. If she could do that, she could hide herself in the trees.
By some miracle, she didn’t trip. By some miracle, she didn’t step on a stick or something that would make a loud noise.
It helped that the two campers on sentry duty were still talking to each other.
She stood behind one of the trees on Dean’s property, struggling to calm her breathing, listening.
“I gotta pee.”
“Not on the gardens, man.”
“I wouldn’t do that. What do you think I am, a rude pisser?”
“
You’ve walked on them, like, twenty five times.”
“I told you to just turn on the light.”
“That would kind of defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it, doofus?”
Doofus didn’t answer, presumably because he was now relieving himself. Hopefully not anywhere Libby would need to step tomorrow.
She moved deeper into the forest, still feeling her way with her feet. This would have been easier before the ice storm. The ground was littered with branches. One caught her left ankle and she started to go down, catching herself at the last minute by grabbing a nearby tree trunk—her fingers touched something slimy and she yanked her hand away, gross, gross, pulled a tissue from her pocket to wipe away whatever-it-was. Stood and listened again. They were still talking, something about one of the other campers, was she hot or not. Libby took another step, and another, angling uphill as she walked. Slowly, slowly . . .
At long last she judged she was far enough in that she could turn on her flashlight without them seeing. She pulled off the backpack and leaned against a tree. She wasn’t in terrible shape—she’d been doing hard physical labor all summer—it was the stress of escaping the sentries that had winded her.
Then suddenly, Dean’s voice, right near her ear. “I see you made it.”
“They’ve posted look-outs,” she whispered.
“So I noticed.”
“Are we going to cut through the woods? In the dark?”
“We’re sure not going down to the road. Want me to carry that?”
She handed him the backpack and he turned and began walking away, into the woods. A branch hit her face and she fell back a half-step, staring into the black. “Dean, wait! I can’t see you.”
“Right here,” he said in a low voice and she heard the faint rustle of forest litter as he came back toward her. “Okay?”
She put her hand out and grabbed onto one of his belt loops. He didn’t object, so that’s how they made their way through the shadows to his cabin. Libby holding on to keep him from moving too fast. To keep from getting lost.
♦ ♦ ♦
“The food’s probably cold,” Libby said as he began unpacking the boxes.
Bo was standing next to him, looking up expectantly. She didn’t blame him. When Dean opened the boxes and the scent wafted out, it smelled divine. Fortunately it didn’t take too long to re-heat it.
♦ ♦ ♦
“I came over there today to look for you,” Dean said. “I wanted to tell you something.”
“Yeah?” They’d finished the food and were sitting on opposite ends of the couch. Dean had opened a bottle of Riesling. It had gone nicely with the Thai food and tasted pretty good afterward, too, and since there was no fire this time he’d lit one of the oil lamps, which cast a dim, warm light from its spot on the bookshelf. She took a sip of wine and noticed the faint bitter smell of the burning lamp oil.
“Here’s the thing,” Dean said. “I think Bo can tell it, when your little people are around.”
Libby lowered her glass. “Really?”
Dean nodded.
“What makes you think so?”
“He acts different. He avoids certain spots.”
“On my land, you mean?”
“It’s hard to tell in the woods, so I don’t know, maybe he does it around here, too. But over on your property, yeah, that’s where I’ve noticed it.”
She looked at Bo. The dog had given up hope on any Thai handouts and was dozing where he’d flopped down on the rug. “So what’s he do, exactly?”
“Well, you were talking to one of them today, right?”
“Yes.”
“Bo circled way around that spot when he headed toward you.”
“Really.”
“And sometimes when we’ve been over that way, when you aren’t there, he’ll start off toward something, a rabbit or something else that’s caught his eye, and then he’ll kind of slow down all of a sudden and . . . I don’t know how else to explain it. He circles.”
“Wow,” she said. “Wow.” She was so happy, all of a sudden, that she felt kind of teary. Which meant only one thing—in the back of her mind she had still wondered if she was a crackpot. A loon. Wasn’t that the most reasonable explanation? “I’m—wow. This is—” She wiped her eyes with her napkin and giggled. “You can’t know what a relief it is, to have you say that.”
“I guess not,” he said. “Are you crying?”
“Kind of.”
“So I see.”
“I’m under a bit of stress.”
He nodded. “They’ve been digging latrines on my property.”
She groaned. Of course they’d knocked on her door, from time to time, calling in to see if they could use her bathroom. Libby, crouched down low against the floor, hiding . . . she’d assumed they’d made trips into town, to the fast food restaurants, maybe.
“I’m so sorry—”
“You need to tell them to leave. You know that, right?”
Libby’s relief had drained away and she felt herself stiffen. “I don’t see how.”
“There are ways.”
“Call the cops?” she said, a touch of sarcasm creeping into her tone.
He looked at her. “That’s always an option. There are others.”
“I don’t want this in the papers. I don’t—the publicity . . .”
“It’s going to make the papers, sooner or later, if you don’t get rid of them. More wine?”
“No, thanks.” She’d been feeling pretty good. But not anymore. “I should probably be getting back.” She glanced at her watch. “Gina and Maisey will be getting home soon.”
“They’re out?”
“They’re at Alex’s.” Libby had been sitting with her right leg tucked under her. It had fallen asleep. She untucked it and put her foot on the floor. She rather wished, now, that she hadn’t mentioned where Gina and Maisey were.
“They’re up to something, aren’t they.” It wasn’t a question, and Libby didn’t answer. He went on anyway. “They’ll take this all away from you, you know. You’re letting your sister control you. And for what?”
“I always have. It keeps the peace.”
“So what?”
“You like peace. Obviously.” He was holed up by himself in the woods, for crying out loud.
“There’s a such thing as standing up for your own happiness,” he answered quietly.
Libby had never liked being lectured. Despite how it may seem, the way she let Gina walk all over her. Yeah, she knew that her situation was a mess. But now who was trying to control her?
So maybe it was the wine, loosening her mouth too much. Maybe she was tired. Or maybe it was safer to turn on Dean than Gina.
Whatever the reason, Libby did something next that she would regret for some time.
She turned mean.
“Stand up for my own happiness?” she said. “You’re one to talk.”
“What?”
“The kids have told me your whole story. Seems that you didn’t exactly stand up for you and your fiancée.”
As soon as she said it, she felt the cruelty of it. This wasn’t her. What was she doing? Why would she say such a thing?
She stole a look at him.
He wasn’t facing her, but she could tell his face had hardened, even in profile.
Her stomach had knotted. “I’m sorry, Dean,” she whispered. “That was a terrible thing to say. Please let me take it back . . .”
He didn’t answer, and she stood up, setting her unfinished wine on the end table. Bo raised his head expectantly. “I should be going.”
He didn’t say a word to her the whole walk back through the woods. Not a word.
She hardly even knew the guy.
But he’d been decent to her. More than once.
And this was how she’d repaid him.
She felt wretched, and it didn’t help to know that she deserved it.
31
She still believed that, sooner or later, it would have all
died down of its own accord.
The campers would have had to leave once the weather turned cold. Word would have spread, eventually, about how uncooperative Libby was.
It would have died down.
Granted, the tent village seemed to grow a little more every week. For every camper who packed up and left, it seemed two new groups would arrive. Their parked cars now stretched down the road a quarter mile from her driveway, in both directions, on both sides of the road. License plates from all over. Connecticut. Maine. Oregon. California. Kentucky. Texas.
Gina, meanwhile, was busy “organizing.” Apparently she’d asked Tyler to design a website. She chattered on about it all the time, about the features Tyler was building. It was going to have a guestbook people could sign, she said, and a form for submitting questions to Libby. Well, to the fairies.
Libby pretended to ignore her sister. She was trying to keep her focus on her priorities. Skin Tones, of course, since that was her only source of income. And her gardens.
She bought a hand tractor. Put it on a credit card, which she hated to do, it maxed her out. But she needed to till some more land and keep her fallow land mown. And it felt good to climb up onto the thing, to feel the vibration of the engine behind her, the power of it, to crane her neck around and see the newly-turned soil behind her.
She still tried to sneak out, sometimes, so she could work without the campers bothering her. She didn’t have much luck with that. There were so many of them, and they were always watching for her. So she did her best to ignore them, too. It wasn’t always easy. When she sowed her newly-plowed land, for instance, 1:3 mix of alfalfa and comfrey, they got all excited because they guessed who had told her what to plant there. Followed her, pestering her with questions, some of them taking notes in little notebooks.
Once in awhile she did get a minute alone. Not too often. One morning she got a chance to tell the little man that the campers wanted to ask him questions. “So, let them ask,” he’d said. He could be a sour one.
“They want me to ask you questions, then tell them what your answers are.”
“Humans always want shortcuts.”
“What should I tell them?”
“It’s up to you.” And he’d walked away.
When Libby Met the Fairies and her Whole Life Went Fae Page 15