by Lily Cahill
The slap came on so strong and fast that she almost didn’t realize it’d happened until the sting of her cheek forced tears into her eyes. She cradled her face, wincing from the pain and the sudden knowledge that everyone around them had gone completely silent.
“Are you out of your mind, girl?” Edward shook her. “You think I have money to throw away because you can’t take care of your things?”
Ruth swallowed, her dry throat clicking. She wondered if everyone in the store could hear it. “No, sir.”
“That’s right! If you want new clothes so badly, you should just go through the church donation box.” He sneered. “And you’re lucky I let you do that. Those clothes are supposed to go to the needy. Someone’s going to go without because of your selfishness.”
The sting in her cheek began to fade, but the pain of the humiliation was still burning strong. She felt like the room had to be a hundred degrees.
“Excuse me, sir,” said a hard voice behind Ruth. It was Dr. Porter.
He had stayed!
And he had seen everything.
Ruth wished the heat would melt her so that she could escape this. She wanted to turn around, push Dr. Porter away, tell him to go—but her father was staring through narrowed eyes, his gaze shifting back and forth between them.
Please stop, she thought desperately.
No one heard her.
“You can’t talk to your daughter that way,” Dr. Porter continued, sounding tight-lipped and angry. She didn’t dare look at him. “She is an adult, and she deserves resp—”
Edward scoffed. “I am fairly certain that how I speak to my own daughter is none of your business.” He grabbed Ruth by the wrist and yanked her toward him. She felt the shock go the whole way up her arm. “Come on, Ruth, we’re leaving.”
He dragged her toward the door, his fingers squeezing her wrist bloodless. She looked over her shoulder at Dr. Porter just before the door slammed behind them.
Her father pulled her along through town. Ruth could feel the stares and glances from neighbors as they passed. He was usually so careful to never show this side of himself outside the four walls of their trailer.
He had told her over and over again, ever since she was a little girl, that if she could only learn to be good, he wouldn’t have to correct her. It had been twenty-two years, and Ruth found she was still learning.
As they approached the bridge, Edward abruptly let her wrist drop. The blood flowed through her veins unhindered, and she winced, cradling her arm to her chest. She quashed the instinct inside of her that insisted she defend herself. She felt torn in half. The pain in her wrist and cheek warred against the memories of worse punishments.
She hadn’t been dutiful enough, had been careless with the things her father bought for her. She’d brought this on herself.
Hadn’t she?
There were bright red fingerprints on her skin. They’d be black by tomorrow, she knew, and she tried to remember where she’d hidden the arnica cream at home.
“I’m sorry,” she said, unprompted. Sometimes, when she apologized without him forcing her to do so, she managed to garner some goodwill. “I shouldn’t have been so thoughtless with my dresses.”
“You think this is just about the dresses?” he whispered harshly, closing in tight. He leaned down so they were practically nose-to-nose. She could smell his sour breath as it wafted against her face. “You are just like your mother. I saw you in there.”
Ruth shrunk away from him. Her mouth pulled into a bemused frown. “But I—I don’t understand ….”
“You think you can just leave me, too? I created you, I raised you.” He grabbed a fistful of her long, brown hair, and she cried out. “Don’t you forget that, next time.”
She tried not to let her confusion show on her face, and instead said, “I won’t, sir. I promise.”
He abruptly let her drop and turned on his heel, stalking across the bridge. She could hear him muttering to himself as he went, calling her vile names. Tears pressed up against the backs of her eyes, and she blinked against them stubbornly, staring down at the ground as she willed them away. She could not cry when he was still so close. Things would only be worse if he saw that.
Ruth let out a shaky breath as he rounded the bend toward Schmidt Park. Besides the bruise forming on her arm, she’d escaped this ordeal practically unscathed—even her cheek didn’t hurt anymore. So why did she still feel like crying?
Heat bloomed on her face. Dr. Porter had seen everything that had happened. Worse, he had tried to intervene. If he hadn’t seen the extreme differences between them before, he certainly would now.
He’d been so kind to her. She thought of the way his blue eyes had lit up when she had asked him to stay, and remembered the compliment he’d paid her. She’d very rarely talked to men—the only man she’d been allowed to socialize with outside her father was Arnold Johnson.
She’d liked it. But now that he’d seen how much Ruth’s father had to correct her, Dr. Porter was not likely to speak to her ever again. For some reason, that made the tears burn hot against her eyelids.
It was embarrassing, to be so helpless, but it was more than that—it was frustrating. For a moment, the blood inside of her coursed fierce and hot. She felt that same all-consuming heat that had bothered her all morning, and then—
Before her eyes, her hands were immersed in flames. She gasped, shocked into stillness as she watched the flames lick at her fingers, until suddenly the fire turned unfriendly. A lick of flame flicked toward her face, as if in invitation. She cried out and rushed down the grass toward the river, stooping to plunge her hands into the water. She drew them out slowly, shaking with a rush of adrenaline and fear. But her skin, though pinker than usual, and sensitive, was not seriously burned.
She shook her hands dry and stood. This had to stop happening. She had to control it.
She had to be better, to live more fully in the image of God. That’s what her father would tell her to do. This was a punishment, and only self-mortification was the cure. She looked up and saw her father growing tinier and tinier in the distance. She took off running after him.
CHAPTER TWO
Henry
Henry was ready to chase after the Bakers the moment the door closed behind them. He didn’t know Ruth very well, but he knew enough to realize that her relationship with her father was by no definition healthy. The man had slapped his daughter, for God’s sake.
He had taken a vow to do no harm. He figured preventing harm was probably in his bailiwick.
His presence near Ruth had obviously set her father off. Henry wondered if the spooky old Preacher had read his mind. Had Edward Baker been able to see what Henry had himself briefly sensed? It was just a short moment—hardly even a moment, really … but there was something about Ruth that made their brief exchange feel like a possibility, a prelude to more.
He couldn’t let her be slapped because of him. He had to fix this.
He’d only made it a step or two toward the door before a girl stepped out from between the aisles. She placed her hands on his chest and dug in her heels to make him stop.
“You can’t,” the girl hissed. People were staring at them, so she dropped her voice and her hands. “You’ll just make things worse for her if you go after her now.”
“Not if I get her away from him.” He tried to slip past her and she blocked his movement. “We can’t just let him treat her like that.”
“Look around you. Everyone else is.”
Henry straightened and looked around the store. The shoppers who lingered on were already turning back to their purchases, perusing the items and asking Mr. Powell behind the counter questions about what he had in stock this week. He blinked. How was this possible? They had all just watched as a young woman was violently dragged out of the store.
He looked down at the girl. The disbelief must have been plain on his face, because she reached out and patted his arm. “Sometimes it’s easier to pretend than i
t is to be honest about something awful,” she told him.
Anger burned deep in his belly. Maybe it was because he had lived away from Independence Falls for the past few years, studying medicine in Denver. Maybe he’d lost his sense of the small town mentality. He couldn’t pretend that what he’d just witnessed was all right. Moreover, he wouldn’t.
Henry shrugged away from the girl’s blunt comfort and turned back to the fabrics, considering. He didn’t know much about fashion—he could name all 206 bones in the human body, but how to clothe those bones was beyond him. He plucked up the purple fabric Ruth had been looking at and tucked it under his arm. The colors and patterns swam before him, and he hesitated, hand hovering over a pale orange that looked to be the same kind of fabric as the purple.
“No,” came the girl, suddenly by his side. She slapped his hand away and picked up a light, pretty blue, thrusting it into his arms instead. “Oh, and this one,” she added, tossing in a deep red for good measure. “Do you know how much you need to buy in order for her to be able to make an outfit?”
Henry stared in confusion at the growing pile of cloth in front of him. “Um,” he said. “No?”
The girl rolled her eyes. “Typical.” She disappeared around a corner, returning a moment later with a pattern in her hand. She skimmed the instructions on the back, frowning. “I can’t find anything quite like what she wears, since she’s so ….” She made an arm gesture, as if that conveyed her meaning.
Henry frowned. “She’s just a bit modest.”
“Sure,” she said. She winced, rubbing at her head as she flipped the pattern so Henry could read it. She pointed out the yardage instructions. “This is the closest one I could find. You should buy at least that much, maybe a little extra, since she wears everything long.”
With a nod, Henry hefted the load in his arms. “Thanks for this.”
“I’m happy to help Ruth,” she said, shrugging. “She’s one of the few people in this town who is actually kind.”
“I don’t believe we’ve met,” he said, juggling the fabric so he could offer a hand to shake. “I’m Henry Porter.”
She smiled. “I know who you are. My aunt works for you. I’m Briar Steele.”
A pang of surprise hit Henry. The sole nurse at his grandfather’s clinic, Patrice, was the girl’s aunt. Everyone in town called her Briar the Liar.
“You don’t have to worry,” Briar said. “These are good fabrics. She’ll be able to make something nice.”
Henry nodded jerkily. It was just gossip, he reminded himself. And Ruth—it was obvious that her father had been upset about her talking to him. The way she’d been treated was his fault. He wanted to do something nice for her, apologize.
He wanted to talk to her again, to see if that moment he’d experienced had been real or all in his head.
“Well, then. It’s about time someone did something kind for her, isn’t it?” He smiled and heaved his purchases toward the counter, even asking Mr. Powell to wrap them up in white paper. Briar was gone by the time he turned around, and it suddenly occurred to Henry that he had no idea how to get this gift to Ruth without it being obvious.
Also, he wasn’t entirely sure where she lived.
It was possible that he had not thought this plan through very well.
The white packaging crinkled in Henry’s arms as he tried and failed to walk quietly across the bridge. He knew vaguely where Ruth lived, in the way that he had an idea where most of the people of Independence Falls called home. It wasn’t too hard to figure out, for the most part, who lived on which side of the river, or which neighborhood you could find them in at the end of the day.
He was almost certain Ruth lived in Shit Park.
Schmidt Park, he corrected himself, feeling guilty for even thinking the other name. It was cruel, the ways that people found to make others feel inferior. There was nothing wrong with living west of the river, or in one of the trailers leftover from when the military had been setting up the now-abandoned base at the foot of Desolation. He’d been raised in one of the overlarge Victorians nestled in Highledge, the wealthiest neighborhood in town. His mother had inherited the house after his father died. She still lived there, although when he’d moved back to town, he’d purchased his own modest, two-story home in the Aspenwood neighborhood.
Living in Denver, working hard to make rent money and pay for his books and education—it had done him a world of good. He’d grown out of a lot of his snobbery, but old habits were difficult to forget entirely, even when he really wanted to. Schmidt Park wasn’t so bad—he’d seen far more dangerous neighborhoods in Denver. It was just another place to live, really.
Despite that, Henry didn’t exactly want people seeing him with a gift under his arm. It would make people talk, make them wonder, and he didn’t want to cause Ruth any more trouble than he already had. Some stealth was required.
Henry pressed up against the side of one of the trailers and looked around the corner. The coast was clear. He dashed around the side, partway to the next building, when he heard a sound. He pulled up short. The crunch of nearby feet on gravel sent his heart racing, and he dove into a bush. The white papered package was nearly crushed underneath him, but he wrenched it away as he fell. Too late, the paper had a big smudge on it. Just as bad, his hand was bleeding where he’d been cut by one of the thorny branches, and he cursed himself for not having an adhesive. He held his hand out so the wound could clot without getting blood on Ruth’s gift.
Henry sighed in exasperation. He was cut, the present was a mess, and he had leaves in his hair—this wasn’t the sort of gesture he’d been hoping for when he’d bought the fabric and set out.
The footsteps grew closer, and Henry crouched as best he could behind the bush. He was rarely on the west side of the river unless he was making house calls, and since he was not carrying any supplies, it was obvious he wasn’t in Schmidt Park on business. If he drew attention to himself, people would talk, and if they saw him carrying a gift, they would talk even more. That was one thing he had not forgotten about living in a small town. Plus, he was not keen to run into Preacher Baker. He couldn’t count on himself to hold his tongue or his temper, and he didn’t want to do anything that would further endanger Ruth.
He remembered her face as she smiled up at him over the fabric. She seemed fragile, doll-like. She had dark eyes set in a pale face—a kind of old soul look to her. He’d been worried his gaze had lingered too long on her small, pouty mouth. Her hair was long and wild, ranging down her whole back, and she had been drowning in the dress she was wearing—and yet. And yet.
It was not a good time to be thinking about “and yet.”
Suddenly, Preacher Baker passed by, and Henry glared at the man’s back. No man of God was supposed to treat his own daughter like that. He glanced down at the package in his hands, smeared dirt and all, and stood, walking quickly in the direction from which the preacher had come.
It was immediately obvious, once Henry turned the corner, which trailer belonged to the Bakers. The old shack of a church, which was the source of much ridicule on the east side of the river, was set up on a spare plot of land. Its white paint was dirty and flaking away, and there was a large gold cross affixed to the front door. The trailer stood at the front of the property, ramshackle and sagging under the weight of years without upkeep.
Henry glanced around but did not see anyone in the vicinity, so he darted through the unkempt grass toward the front door. He placed the fabric down gently and brought his hand up to knock.
He hesitated. Should he stay and say hello? Apologize for not chasing her down when her father had treated her so roughly? Introduce himself properly?
The thought turned his stomach into a bundle of nerves. What if she thought his gift was strange, or unwarranted? What if she did not accept it? What if she thought he was creepy? He most certainly did not want to be creepy.
It was safer, he thought, to keep things anonymous.
Mustering his
courage, he knocked on the door. Then he turned and ran as far as his legs would carry him, across the dirt road and back behind a neighboring building. He watched from around the corner as the door opened, first an inch, and then the whole way. He smiled as Ruth’s delicate features screwed up in confusion as she stooped down to collect the package in front of her door. When she opened the package and burst into a grin of delight, he could hardly contain himself from whooping.
She looked up and he ducked away from sight, his back pressed against the wall behind him. After waiting a minute, just in case she stayed outside to look for her mysterious benefactor, Henry pushed away from his hiding spot. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets and whistled softly to himself as he made his way home.
Henry very determinedly did not think about his gift to Ruth Baker the rest of the evening. He was still trying not to think of it the next day as he made his way to work. He walked from his home on the edge of Aspenwood into the heart of town, where his grandfather’s practice had sat for more than forty years. The little house stood just outside the square, the bottom floor converted into a doctor’s office that served all of Independence Falls’ citizens.
It had been his grandfather’s idea for Henry to pursue his medical career, with hopes that one day Henry would return and take over the clinic. Dr. Reginald Pinkerton had hoped that by the time Henry completed his medical doctorate, he would be ready to retire.
At least, that’s how he had sold the plan to Henry. Medicine had always interested Henry, even as a young child. The majority of his childhood had been spent roaming the clinic, snatching moments of his grandfather’s time between patients and tormenting the women who worked there. Home had never been a welcoming place after the tragedy of his father’s death had worked a terrible change in his mother. The clinic was Henry’s great escape.
Indeed, Mrs. McClure, who had managed the front desk for most of Henry’s life, was more like a mother than Henry’s actual mother. She had always been the person who had made sure he wasn’t getting into too much trouble, trying to figure out how to use the expensive equipment and worm his way into consultations to give his “professional” opinion. Patrice, the clinic’s sole nurse, had never seemed to find his childhood antics nearly as charming, but she was still a constant friendly presence in Henry’s life. They were both as important to the practice as Dr. Pinkerton himself.