“I went to see Maggie, to ask for her help.” He didn’t change expression. “But I guess you knew that.”
“Uh-huh. Learned it from an unlikely source. Dustu told me.”
“Dustu?” I couldn’t hide my surprise. I didn’t think the two of them ever spoke.
He frowned. “Yeah. I had to get the news wherever I could get it, since you never came home.”
“Sorry.”
We walked a few more quiet steps before he nodded, forgiving me—at least for now. “So what happened when you got here?”
“Maggie saw my dream with me, and she told Andrew a man was coming to kill me.”
“She saw your . . .” He puffed a breath through his lips and shook his head slightly. “I’m not even going to ask how that works. But then they assumed—”
“Sorry.” I bit my lip again and stepped ahead of him on the narrow path. I heard the slightly uneven pattern of his limp as he followed me. “I never thought he’d come after you like that. He was . . . expecting someone else. But I’m very glad to see you, Jesse, even though you look like you’ve had better days.”
“Are you?”
I glanced back at him, surprised at the vulnerability of the question. I was more than glad. Being with Jesse made me happy. Just talking to him eased my fears. I felt safe again. Nothing bad could happen to me if Jesse was there. “Yes. Of course. Why?”
“Well, you kind of ran off the other day. Remember that? Remember telling me to get lost and you’d be back in a bit?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“That’s what I heard.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
A few more steps of silence, but this time the tension between us was edged with his anger and my embarrassment.
“I told you I’d come back. You didn’t have to come for me.”
“I figured you meant in a couple of hours, not days. I got worried is all.”
Prickles of pleasant heat rose up my neck and filled my cheeks. “I’m sorry, Jesse. I am glad you’re here. Thank you.”
As the trees parted, he stepped up beside me and shrugged good-naturedly. “Hey, I hadn’t had a fight in a couple of days. It’s good to keep in practice.”
Just like that, the tension was gone. He unhooked his arm and reached for my hand, and I gave it to him, clutching his gift of flowers in the other one.
“Can you tell me now?” he asked. “What’s going on? About your dreams and all that?”
“I can try, but you can’t interrupt. Want to sit down?”
He shook his head. “Seems to me, you think better when you’re walking.”
I was surprised to hear that, mostly because it was true. I’d always felt easier dealing with questions when I was on the move. I suppose it could have frightened me, finding out he’d been studying me that way, but it had the opposite effect. I liked knowing he’d cared enough to watch. And that made it easier to speak about things I’d never said out loud to anyone else.
“I’m not great at dreaming. Not like my sister. She sees what will happen, and she can even make things happen. She can read people’s minds and communicate with animals. I can’t do that. But I do see things. I get caught up in a dream without meaning to. I might be sleeping, or just sitting, but it’ll come and show me things I don’t want to see. My problem is, I don’t have the courage to stick with a dream long enough to see the ending. I never see what’s going to happen, because I’m too scared.”
“Most folks are like that, aren’t we?”
I shrugged. “I guess. But most folks don’t get told important things in their dreams. Things I should pay attention to, you know?”
He nodded, looking as if he were taking it all in, and I was relieved to see it. Maybe explaining this wouldn’t be so difficult after all.
“All right. I think I’m with you so far,” he said. “So what happened the last time? You know, when you ran off on me?”
I blushed, remembering. “I am sorry about that. Really I am. But when you and I . . . when we . . .”
“It’s okay, Adelaide,” he said, smiling. “You don’t have to say it out loud. I remember what we were doing.”
“Okay. Well, something happened—”
“Sure did!”
“Are you going to let me explain?”
He slapped his palm over his mouth and nodded for me to go on.
He was a beautiful man. I could see that through his bruises and cuts, when I ignored the deep circles under his eyes that told me he hadn’t slept for a while. And when he smiled like that, when his eyes danced for me, I felt completely undone. He loved me. His torn shirt was filthy, his golden hair ratty with dirt and leaves. This beautiful, wild creature was mine if I chose to accept him. My heart skipped, and I tried to hide the pleasure that thought brought me.
“All right,” I said, forcing my mind back to the present. “Something happened between you and me that brought back my dreams. And whatever it was, it made them even stronger.”
“What’d you see?”
“Two different things, but they’re tied together somehow.” I ducked under a branch, focusing on the ragged deer path. I didn’t want to watch his reaction. “The first part is that you weren’t moving. You were lying on your stomach on the ground, and your face was bleeding. Your eyes were closed, and I couldn’t tell if you were breathing.” I looked sideways at him. “Oh, Jesse, it broke my heart, seeing you like that.”
“Go on,” he said, suddenly serious. “What was the second part?”
I swallowed. This was where it would get a little harder for him to believe. “I saw a man, Jesse, and he looked a lot like you but older. He was very strong, and he grabbed my throat, backing me into a tree, and he ripped at me, and—”
His hand squeezed mine before I could give in to the panic. “That’s why you were going on about my father.”
“Yeah,” I managed. “There was something so familiar about him, I almost thought it was you at first. And the idea that you might do that, that you could—”
He interrupted without giving those dark thoughts the time of day. “Listen. Maybe it was him. If your dreams really can do that, see folks, it could have been my father. Thomas Black hates me. He always has, but even more now since I foiled whatever plans he had at the powwow. And yeah, he’d be glad to see me dead. But you don’t need to worry. He ain’t as quick as I am, and I know all his tricks. As long as I’m around, you have nothing to worry about. You’re safe.” Any hint of hardness left his eyes when he told me, “I’ll tell you that forever, Adelaide. I’ll always keep you safe.”
“But in the dream you couldn’t. I was by myself. And you—”
“Was there anything else to the dream? Anything more?”
I sighed, defeated. The courage I’d felt before abandoned me. I couldn’t tell him about the other part of the dream. I couldn’t. So I lied. “I don’t know. That’s when I escaped from it. But you have to understand, Jesse, that there is nothing I fear more than a man—I mean a man who is intent on—”
“It’s okay, Adelaide. You don’t have to explain,” he said, squeezing my hand again. I was mildly surprised to discover it had started shaking again. He stopped walking and tugged my arm so I came around to face him. Then he took my other hand, and the look he gave me was nothing like what I’d expected. I had thought to see maybe indifference, disbelief surely, but not this sober expression. His eyes caught mine and held on.
“I will not let anyone harm you ever again. You have to believe that. And Adelaide?”
“Yes?”
“I love you. You know that’s true. But I won’t rush you. I won’t demand more than you’re ready to give. I can’t deny I want to touch you and hold you and love you ’til you can’t stand the sight of me, but I can wait. I’ll never do anything to scare you off, I promise. You’ve got me . . .” He hesitat
ed, his eyes searching mine, then he let his breath out, and his shoulders dropped. “You’re too important to me.”
Something in my heart released. My blood sang through my veins as if it had just been freed. No one had ever looked at me that way before, talked to me with so much truth in their eyes. Even my sisters had been careful with my feelings, guarding their words when they wanted to tell me anything. And here stood Jesse, rough, straightforward, holding his heart out there for me to accept . . . or crush.
I was filled with a longing like I’d never felt before. A need, really, to let Jesse fold me into his arms, guard me with his body, protect me with his life. As if I could step off the highest mountain and just float through the air without a care, because I’d be safe knowing he was waiting to catch me.
Then a cold fist grabbed my heart, stifling everything. The truth of it was that I couldn’t allow myself to love him. And I couldn’t let him love me, either. Because I wasn’t what he thought. I wasn’t the perfect, quiet little mouse he thought me to be, all white and clean and innocent. All that was gone. They’d taken it. They’d ruined me, and I would never be good enough for Jesse’s love. So I chose to crush us both.
I shook my head. “You don’t know me, Jesse. Not really.”
He stared at me, his head tilted a little to one side. He hesitated, then asked, “Are you ever gonna tell me what happened to you?”
I shook my head and his mouth opened a bit, as if I’d stopped him mid-word. Then he shut it and frowned, his expression not angry, but probing. He wanted to know, and I’d told both Maggie and myself that I would tell him. But I couldn’t. The wall held me up, kept me alive. The wall I’d built in my head was the only thing that kept me from losing my mind.
I stepped away. “You really don’t know me.”
He was quiet, blinking slowly as thoughts raced behind his beautiful eyes. “I think I do,” he said quietly. “But I’d like to know more.”
I shook my head, but he only nodded. “We can keep walking if you want. I know it helps you think. But Adelaide, I get the feeling you need to get whatever this is out of you. I think if you talk about it, you might not be so scared anymore.”
“I want to be brave, Jesse,” I whispered, staring into his eyes. “I have always wanted to be brave. But I never had to be that way. I was always in Maggie’s shadow, and it was safe there.” I looked into the trees. “At least it was until that day. And now she’s here with Andrew. Gone.”
“I’m not, though,” he said and used his thumb to brush a stray tear off my cheek. “You’re safe with me.”
“I can’t.”
“You can.” He held my hands between us. “Adelaide, I want to be the one you trust.”
He wasn’t going to give up. Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe if I told him, if I showed him the truth, I could help him get away from me. Instead of walking, I sank down until I sat on the path, all the wind sucked from my sails. If I could let it out, tell him the entire story, at least then he’d understand why he could never love me. I was dirty and damaged with a history no one could possibly look past. I knew well that I wasn’t good enough for any man to marry, let alone him.
“I haven’t thought about this in a very long time,” I told him. He sat quietly beside me, backing up so he leaned against a tree. He didn’t seem to be in pain, but he looked more comfortable now that he was sitting. “It’s like I can’t think about it. If I do, it takes over. Maggie says I need to move on, try to forget, but it’s like an itch that won’t go away. If I scratch it, let myself see what happened, it only gets worse.”
“But if you ignore it, it might kill you.”
I smiled vaguely. “Yeah, maybe.”
“Nah. It won’t kill you,” he assured me. “It’s stuck in your brain, though. Let me help you.”
“You’ll hate me when you hear it.”
He shrugged lightly, his gaze confident. “Not possible.”
I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and let myself fall back into the nightmare.
CHAPTER 32
From Behind the Wall
We had gone weeks without rain. Our mouths and eyes burned constantly, dry as the fragile blades of grass that scratched the door frame of our sagging little house. The sun attacked our bedroom as if it were a beast, sinking hungry rays into the worm-eaten wood of the walls, licking our skin until it shone. Maggie, Ruth, and I shared a bed, making the heat even more difficult to bear. I slept each night with my head pressed to Ruth’s, breathing the essence of her sweat. She was ten, five years younger than I, and while her body was still young enough to be called that of a child, it had begun to seep the musk of a woman.
Maggie always woke with a different expression on her face. Sometimes she appeared distracted, as if trying to remember what she had just seen. Sometimes she awoke with what I can only describe as the most wonderful halo around her. I could actually see the colours, the ethereal shimmering, breathing along with her. Those were the best mornings. The air around her seemed to glow like the sun when they came, like it was thick with something delicious. And when she’d reach over and touch me, or when she’d hug me, still warm from sleep, I could almost share whatever she’d dreamed. Not the visions, of course. Just the feel of them. It was beautiful.
But on that morning Maggie woke with terror carved into her face, and her sweat-soaked hair stuck to her cheeks. No colour brightened her face, nor the air around her. In fact, the air in our room was still as death. Wet with the kind of viscous slime an earthworm oozes as it burrows through the earth. Cold, even, though it was the hottest summer anyone could remember. As if our room had become a tomb. She clung to our faded yellow walls with fingers like claws, beads of sweat rolling down her cheeks. She stared at me and tried to speak, but nothing passed through her lips save a trembling breath.
“What is it?” I whispered, but still no words came.
I turned to Ruth, who blinked like a blue-eyed owl. “Get Mama,” I said.
Ruth rolled to the edge of the bed and set her little pink feet on the floor. She ran from the room, mussed blond curls bouncing down her back. Ruth always ran on her toes. Like a fairy. Ruth was just like a little fairy.
Mama appeared in the doorway, and Maggie wrapped her arms around her, clinging to the old white nightgown as if she was a child, not a grown woman of seventeen. She didn’t cry, only stared without blinking. It was the most frightening thing I’d ever seen.
Breath by breath she came back to life, though she seemed reluctant to drop her hands and step away. It was only when our mother put her hands on Maggie’s shoulders and pressed her a step back from her that my sister was able to stand on her own. Her chest rose and fell as it had in younger days, when she’d chased me up and down the hill outside our home until we both giggled and rolled in the stiff, golden grass. There were no giggles this time, only a silence at last broken by the croak of a raven in the woods beyond our land.
Mama, her fair hair pasted onto her neck in sweaty curls, looked just as terrified. I wasn’t brave, but I was the calm sister, the one to speak reason when the others spun in circles. Perhaps that’s why I was so afraid most of the time. It seemed reasonable to me. Anything unknown should remain unknown, because it posed a possible threat.
“Let me help her, Mama,” I said.
Mama smiled at me through bewildered eyes, and in them I saw my own fear. I had inherited my timid personality from her. How a woman as slight as she survived the bleak South Carolina grasslands, I will never know. Then again, I am still alive, so maybe I do know. We do what we must. We survive, though we would often rather not. It is the way of man and beast to refuse our own deaths, though we’re never really given a choice. I often wonder about that. I wonder if, after the cruelest day of all, might I have chosen otherwise if I’d only been brave enough?
I helped Maggie dress, guiding her arms through the short sleeves, handing her a comb to
slide through the tangles the pillow had tied in her hair when she’d rolled, attempting to escape the dreams. She sat on the side of the bed and stared at the comb for a moment, frowning, like she couldn’t remember what it was for.
“Comb your hair, Maggie. You’ll feel better.”
When she looked at me, her eyes were so sad. As if she carried the worst possible news in them. Maybe if she’d cried, it might have eased their burden. But Maggie rarely cried. In fact, I couldn’t remember ever having seen her cry.
She combed through her dark hair in long, smooth strokes and watched me clean my face and teeth, using the tepid water from the old tin bowl on the table. She braided her hair, then helped me with mine, but her fingers shook while she tied the bow.
In appearance, Maggie was what people called plain, though it never would have been a term I used. She was dark and strong, like our father, God rest his soul. Ruth and I were blond and slight like our mother, though I was never as beautiful as Ruth. No one could have been. People stared at her when we went to town, and she smiled at everyone. She made them smile. Like she cast a spell over anyone she ever saw. I often wonder what she might have become had she been given the chance.
Maggie was seventeen at the time, and I was two years younger. Both she and I had developed the bodies we would carry as women. Hers was always in motion. Like her mind. It was always moving, digging into problems, unwilling to stop until the answer was revealed. She was also our defender, standing up to our father more than once when he came home reeking of whisky. Unafraid, my Maggie.
But on that day, I marveled at the change in my older sister. She startled as if she were a fawn, wild-eyed at any unexpected noise. She eventually settled into whatever she could find to keep her hands and mind busy. Despite the crippling heat, the broom was busy in every corner of the decrepit house, her sewing needle winked in and out of anything needing to be mended, and she wove me a bracelet out of long, dry grass. It was rough work because without rain to soften the ground, the grass splintered when she tried to bend it. When it was done, she sewed a little dress for the shabby, yellow-haired rag doll Ruth carried everywhere.
Somewhere to Dream (Berkley Sensation) Page 21