by Cassia Leo
“Cathy, you can’t just…”
He always got stupid when she was half naked. She had to make him like that again. He couldn’t question things. She unclasped her bra.
“He thinks there’s something between you,” said Heath. “I can see the way he looks at you. He looks at you like he thinks he owns you and—”
She put his hand on her breast.
He stopped talking. He shut his eyes.
She kissed him. “I’m yours, Heath. Yours.”
He let out a shaky breath. He ran his thumb over her nipple.
That was bliss. She sighed.
He rested his forehead against hers. “I couldn’t understand how you could do it. Not after…”
“After we made love?” She peered into his dark, dark eyes. “I didn’t. I’m not with him.”
“Why does he have to take you to school every day? He wants you.”
“Well, I want you.” She pushed aside his shirt, slid a seeking hand under the waist of his jeans until she found him. He hardened at her touch.
He grunted. “Trust me, he thinks—”
“Stop talking about him and make love to me,” she interrupted, and she put her mouth on his.
And finally… he did.
She lay twined in his arms afterwards, both of them breathing hard, and two things were clear to her.
One was that sex did not become phenomenally pleasurable the second time, but that it did hurt less.
And the other was that she was tied to Heath Galloway with unbreakable bonds, stronger than the strongest iron, tougher than the toughest rope.
*
“You got a smoke?” said Saul. He was on the porch of the tenant house.
Heath dug out his pack and tapped a cigarette out. He handed it to Saul. Then he popped one in his mouth.
“That the boss’ sister I saw coming out of here earlier?” said Saul. “She the one making all that noise?”
Heath lit his cigarette. “Yeah.” He handed his lighter to Saul.
Saul shook his head, lighting the smoke. “Boy, you got any idea what you’re doing?”
“Not really.” Heath took a long drag.
Saul laughed. “Yeah, it don’t seem like it, I gotta say.”
“I’m in love with her.” Smoke trickled out with his words.
“Sure you are.”
Heath rubbed his face. He was royally fucked was what it was. He knew there was more to that shit with Eli Linton than Cathy was saying. But goddamn if it seemed to matter when she was kissing him. When she was fucking him.
Saul flicked ash onto the porch. “How ‘bout a hand of cards, boy?”
“Sure,” said Heath. He was starting to turn into a halfway decent poker player if he didn’t say so himself.
*
Cathy awoke to the sound of the phone ringing. She sat up. It was still dark outside.
Someone else would answer it. She lay back down.
The answering machine picked up.
Whoever was calling hung up.
The phone began ringing again.
Fine.
Cathy dragged herself out of bed and went downstairs to answer the phone. “Hello?”
“They took her, Cathy. They took her, and there was so much blood.”
“Matt?” she asked. Her brother’s voice was thick and slurred, as if he was drunk. But he also sounded agonized, as if he’d been crying.
“You got to get to the hospital, Cathy. It’s Fran. Oh god, it’s Fran. I think I killed her.”
And the phone went dead in her hand.
Cathy swallowed. Get to the hospital? Had Matt forgotten she didn’t drive? She needed to get Eli to make good on that promise to take her to the DMV for a license. But that didn’t help her now.
She went back upstairs and threw on some clothes, pulled her hair into a ponytail.
There was only one way she knew of to get to the hospital. But she didn’t think that Matt was going to like it.
She darted out of the farmhouse, running down to the tenant house in the darkness. She was surprised to see that lights were still on downstairs. She knocked on the door.
“Ho there!” called a voice.
She let herself in. The house was full of smoke. She coughed.
“Who’s there?” Heath appeared in the doorway to the living room, shirtless, holding a can of Miller Lite. “Cathy?”
“You’re drinking?”
He raised an eyebrow. “That a problem?”
“Can you drive?” She hugged herself. “I need to go to the hospital. Matt just called. Something happened to Fran. He’s freaking.”
“Shit,” said Heath.
“I know you don’t like her—”
“That doesn’t mean I want her hurt.” He scratched the back of his head. “Let me get a shirt. You got the truck keys?”
“I… I’ll get them. Meet me by the truck?”
He nodded.
“You sure you’re okay to drive?”
“Yeah,” he said.
The drive to the hospital seemed to take a long time. Heath flipped around the radio stations until she made him stop. It didn’t seem like the right time to be listening to music.
But then it was quiet except for the sound of the motor and the wheels on the pavement.
She fingered the edge of her shirt. “You stay up drinking a lot?”
“No,” said Heath. “We work early.”
“What were you doing?”
“They’re teaching me to play poker,” he said.
“Poker.” She was nervous. “But isn’t gambling, you know, messed up? Can’t you get hooked on it, like it’s addictive?”
“Maybe,” said Heath. He shot her a glance. “Why are you asking me this?”
“I don’t know.” She sucked in breath. Matt had sounded really upset. She’d never heard him that upset. Not even after Daddy had died. And she thought—suddenly—of Heath hurling her father down the stairs. She shivered. “Do you ever think about what you’re going to do with your life?”
“Beyond being with you and making you happy, not really. Where is this coming from, Cathy?”
“Well, what would it be like, Heath? I mean, if we had the life you envision? Would you go out all night and play poker with the guys? Get drunk? Come home and slap me around?”
“I would never hurt you.” He reached for her. “Are you okay? What’s going on?”
“Somebody’s got to be practical, Heath. You can’t stay on this farm. You have to go back to school. You have to do something with yourself.”
“I don’t want to go back to school,” said Heath. “I was no good at it anyway. I cut class all the time. I failed all my tests. It didn’t matter.”
“But now you’re trapped. You’re stuck on the farm, and you can’t get out.”
“I like the farm,” he said.
“Maybe I don’t,” she said. “Maybe I want to get away. Far, far away. Maybe I want to live in an apartment on the fifteenth floor of a building in Manhattan, and I want to take the subway to work, and I never want to come back here.”
He didn’t say anything.
God. Why had she blurted it all out like that? That wasn’t how it was supposed to work. She was supposed to wait, wait until she had it all set up, until she had the money.
She squeezed her eyes shut. Stupid. She was so stupid. She was always ruining everything.
“Okay,” said Heath.
“Okay?”
He nodded, looking sidelong at her, his expression confused. “Okay.”
She gazed at him, at his luminous black eyes. She drowned in them. “But you like the farm. Would you come to the city if I wanted it?”
“Sure,” he said. He put a hand on her knee and rubbed it. “Why don’t you take it easy, huh? I think you’re worried about Fran. We can talk about this another time.”
But she was too stunned. “You were so mad at Matt for trying to sell the farm. I thought you loved it.”
“I love you
way more than the farm. If you don’t want to be there, I don’t want to be there either.”
She sank into her seat, relieved and anxious all at the same time.
*
Matt met Cathy in the lobby. He was holding Gage, and both he and the baby were sobbing. Matt thrust the child into her arms.
Cathy tried to calm the baby down. “Shh, shh.” She rocked him.
“He knows,” said Matt, his face crumpling. “He can tell she’s gone.”
“Matt, what’s going on?” said Cathy. “What happened?”
“I lost control,” said Matt. “I shouldn’t have had that last beer. I thought it would be okay. Just one more drink. But I was shaky, and I was having trouble with the car. The steering wheel was so hard to turn.”
The pieces were all coming together for Cathy. “You wrecked the car?”
“She’s dead, Cathy,” said Matt. “She’s dead.”
***
2013
The crawlspace above the front door was dank and dirty, and she barely fit in there with Gage, whose hand was clapped over her mouth. He held her tight against him, her back to his front. She could feel his breath on her neck.
She could smell him. He smelled like sweat and dirt and motor oil. She should have been repulsed by it. But for some reason, something about it was pleasant, just like there was something nice about the contours of Gage’s body against hers.
She was appalled by her enjoyment of it.
It was some kind of Stockholm syndrome or something. Or maybe she’d been in this farmhouse for so long that the craziness had worn off on her.
Gage was hiding her in here so that the police couldn’t find her.
They were here. Searching the house.
She could hear their steps as they wandered through the rooms, muffled laughter and voices from far away.
And Gage gripped her, held her tightly, and she was enveloped in his smell.
She shut her eyes.
Everything was too horrible for words.
The sound of a door opening. Close by.
The police were coming into the room. She was inside this crawlspace, only a thin wall between her and the police. Not that they’d see the opening. It looked like a panel of wood like all the others on the wall.
“Sorry again about this, Mr. Galloway,” a voice was saying. The man had a thick accent. “You know how those city folk are. We got to check everything out. He even tried to come down here with us, but we kept him out.”
He? Was that her father?
Thera struggled in Gage’s arms. She needed to make noise. She needed to let the police know she was there.
“I thank you for that,” said Heath’s voice. “Eli Linton and I have a bad history. I have to say I’m horrified to think that he’d accuse me of kidnapping, however. Especially when it was him who tried to keep my own son from me all those years ago.”
Kept his son? What was he even talking about? Did it matter?
Thera elbowed Gage in the ribs.
Gage made a soft sound of irritation. His grip on her loosened a little bit.
“Did he now?”
“Yes,” said Heath. “He tried to take Linton from me. I had to get the law involved. It was quite terrible. Especially after I’d been through so much, losing the boy’s mother to suicide and everything.” Heath managed to sound truly sad about it.
Thera hated him. She wrenched her arm free of Gage.
“What a nutcase. Well, Mr. Galloway, I assure you that we’ll take his accusations with a grain of salt from now on. Everyone in town knows what a great man you are. All the money you donate to causes. And taking in the son of poor Matt Earnshaw.”
“Stepson,” said Heath. “Gage has no living relatives.”
Cathy banged her hand against the wall of the crawlspace.
Gage wrapped his arm around her again, pinning her hand against her. He swore softly under his breath.
“What was that?”
“What was what?” said Heath.
“I heard something. In the walls.”
“Oh, well, we have a bit of a rodent infestation, I’m sorry to say,” said Heath. “These old houses, it’s hard to find every little nook or cranny they can get in.”
Thera tried to thrash, tried to get free again, but Gage held onto her so tightly she could hardly breathe.
“Right. Rodents.”
And the door closed.
No. Thera felt tears spring to her eyes. She was never going to get out of here, was she?
***
1993
Matt was drunk at Fran’s viewing, drunker than Cathy had ever seen him. He spent all his time standing byFran’s casket, sometimes bent over her body, weeping loudly, sometimes holding onto it for dear life. If he did let go, he was so drunk that he stumbled.
Cathy had to watch Gage the entire time. The baby was far too young to have any idea what was going on, but he cried too, piteously, and nothing Cathy did could make him quieter. Eventually, both Gage and Matt cried themselves out. Gage fell asleep in her arms, and Matt collapsed in a chair next to the casket, where he snored loudly.
Cathy supposed she would have been embarrassed if many people had shown up to the viewing, but it was a sparse crowd, only a few of Fran’s old friends and some neighbors.
The funeral the following day was even less well attended.
The pews of the church were mostly empty, but Cathy was surprised when she looked back and saw Eli Linton and his sister arrive. They were both dressed in black, and their clothes were so nice that they made Cathy feel self-conscious. She didn’t own a black dress, and so she’d been forced to wear the next best thing—a navy blue polka dot number. It was a little bit too small for her because she hadn’t worn it in years, and she couldn’t help but feel like it wasn’t somber enough. The polka dots seemed too festive.
Matt was even drunker than he had been at the viewing. Cathy had been frightened to have him behind the wheel of the car before they left. She’d tried to convince him to let Heath drive them, but Matt was adamant that Heath shouldn’t come anywhere near the funeral. Matt had thrust the keys into her hand. Which was sort of all right. She could drive. She’d been driving old, farm-use vehicles all over the property since she was twelve or thirteen. But if they’d gotten pulled over, she knew she would have been in trouble. Luckily, that didn’t happen.
The pastor droned on about Fran from the pulpit. He said she’d been a loving, Christian woman, and that she was looking down on everyone from her place with the angels.
Cathy couldn’t help rolling her eyes. The pastor had never even met Fran. He didn’t know anything about her.
He continued on with his sermon, talking about the fires of hell, and how he just knew that Fran wished each and every one of them would come to know Jesus as their personal savior.
Cathy hoped it would all be over soon.
And eventually, it was. They got into the procession and followed the hearse out to the graveyard. Fran was being buried in the family plot, because Matt insisted that she was like family to him. Cathy didn’t care one way or another. She thought that maybe everyone should be cremated instead of taking up all this space. If all the people who ever lived on earth got buried, how long would it take before there wasn’t any room to bury anyone?
She held Gage while the casket was lowered and patted Matt on the back while he cried some more. She’d never seen her brother cry this much.
After everything was over, Eli and Isabella came over to her.
Cathy wasn’t sure what to say to them. She supposedly had a relationship with Eli, but it was tough to be sure how to act in a situation like this. She bounced Gage on her hip and tried to smile at them.
Eli touched her shoulder. He looked like he was going to say something, but then he closed his mouth.
Isabella threw her arms around Cathy, however. “You poor thing. First your father, now this. It’s awful. And Fran was so young. And your brother is so sad. This is probably
the worst thing that I’ve ever seen happen to someone. The absolute worst.”
Cathy looked at her toes. “We’ll be all right.”
“And this must be her baby,” said Isabella. “Little motherless thing.” She stroked the top of his head. “You poor, poor little guy.”
There was a light touch on Cathy’s shoulder. She turned to see Mrs. Dean, her neighbor from down the road. “Cathy, would you like to go off with your friends for a little while?” said Mrs. Dean.
“Oh,” said Cathy. “I have to stay with Matt. He probably won’t be able to drive home. And he can’t look after Gage.”
Mrs. Dean plucked the baby out of Cathy’s arms. “I think I can handle getting him home. You run along now. You’re too young to be dealing with all of this.”
Cathy was surprised. “Well, if you say so.”
“I do,” said Mrs. Dean. “Off with you.”
Cathy gave her the keys to the car. Then she turned back to Eli and Isabella. “Would you guys mind hanging out with me?”
“Mind?” said Eli. “You crazy?”
Isabella took her by the hand. “Come on, we’ll do whatever you want. We’ll take your mind off of it if you don’t want to talk about it. We’ll listen if you want to tell us everything. We’ll help you find angry music to fit your mood.”
Cathy couldn’t help but smile at Isabella.
“Our parents are out of town,” said Eli. “We’ll have the place to ourselves.”
*
Eli lay on the couch, staring up at the ceiling. His blue eyes matched the blue of his parents’ sofa. “You ever think about death?”
“Well, yeah.” Cathy was across the room from him, on a blue easy chair. It was overstuffed and comfortable. “I mean, I guess I do. Or whatever.”
“I don’t,” said Eli. “Not usually, anyway.”
Cathy hugged her knees to her chest.
“But then stuff happens, like this funeral and I’m forced to face it. You know?”