by Alison Kent
Faith had been the one grumbling, but mostly to herself, and all about Suzanne and Leroy Jayne thinking this was any place, any way to raise a child.
Granted, Casper had left Crow Hill over fifteen years ago, and would never have seen the disrepair his mother had allowed the house to fall into. The trash was hers. The ridiculously thick layers of dirt were hers.
The rest Faith blamed on time, vermin, and the sun, wind, and rain making their way through broken windows and damaged shingles, eroding the plaster and hardwood and having no more respect for man’s handiwork than they did God’s.
Still, it broke her heart to see things she could tell Casper would rather she not, especially when he left her wondering why. When Clay had asked what Casper wanted done with a box of old VHS westerns and a suitcase of mismatched shoes and paycheck stubs from Bokeem’s, he’d waved the boy toward the Dumpsters outside.
But when she’d asked about a small wooden jewelry box with nothing but small gold cuff links and a matching tie tack inside, he’d taken it from her hand and left the room.
She didn’t have it in her to separate what this house was revealing about who he’d once been and the man he was now in her bed. It was stupid because he didn’t live here anymore, and he’d lived the biggest part of his life elsewhere.
But her own teenage years had defined so much of who she’d become; she couldn’t help but think living here had done the same to him. Had sent him looking for who he was on the backs of bulls, in the beds of buckle bunnies, down the long roads he’d traveled alone, quiet roads leading to the next bull, the next bunny, the next bed.
She feared he wasn’t done looking. That she’d stepped into the middle of his search.
She needed to get out of his way. She didn’t want to stifle him, or make things worse. She didn’t know why, but she thought she might be making things worse. As if each step he made forward was followed by two back to where he’d been before she’d pried past his secrets into the part of him he held close.
It was getting to be too much, the possibility that she would damage him further, that his opening up to her was going to backfire. An explosion like that would blow this construction project off track when the wheels were finally in motion. She needed the house done, but not because of the party.
Guaranteeing Casper a place of his own, a place to call home and a reason to stay in Crow Hill, meant she wouldn’t have to worry about him bailing on his part of the ranch if things between the two of them went south. Because if he did that, it left Dax and Boone to juggle what the three of them could barely keep in the air.
Those working conditions might just be enough to convince Boone the grass did indeed look greener on the ranch where he’d worked in New Mexico. And if Boone left, their parents’ grief would kill her. They’d been in her corner through everything, but that didn’t absolve her of causing them so much pain. She couldn’t let that happen again.
Massey Construction would be arriving the day after tomorrow. Trucks and trucks of them, she imagined, considering the bonus tacked onto the end of the contract her attorney in Luling had whipped up. She needed to finish these last few rooms and let them have it. And yet here she stood, staring out the window while Clay tossed sticks from the yard for Kevin to fetch, thinking about Casper as a father. About herself as a mother…
Enough. She turned from the window, setting down the bucket to look around the room. The crew had cleaned away what trash had been in here, and hauled away what furniture had remained after Suzanne bailed. Judging by the marks left on the floor, there hadn’t been much. The four grooves dug in a rectangle near the door would’ve been a dresser, the long gouges scraped in the room’s far corner made by the legs of a bed.
Frowning, she walked closer. A panel had been cut into the wall at what would’ve been the head of the narrow twin frame, just about pillow high. Facing the wall, she dropped to sit cross-legged in the corner and used the dustpan’s handle to pry away the part of the wall that had been damaged a long time ago.
The plaster fell inward rather than out, crumbling almost to dust and revealing a small sheaf of papers tucked between the wall studs. She pulled them out, opened the stack, and spread it out on her knee. She thought at first she’d stumbled onto old homework assignments, or school projects Casper had for some reason hidden away.
But then she looked closer, read the words, saw the images scratched deep with the point of a pencil. Sketches of a woman’s face, of a man’s, both more caricatures than portraits, both exaggerated and grotesque. Both surrounded by blood spatters, by hatchets and knives and screwdrivers dripping red.
Her heart began to thunder. Her nape grew clammy, her chest suffocatingly heavy. She looked at the next sheet, scanned the tightly printed letters, so controlled, so perfectly sized, seeing over and over again words that stabbed and gutted her, that tore into her with claws and needles until her skin and the flesh beneath burned.
Hate. Death. Screams.
Bitch. Cunt.
Torture. Maim. Dismember.
Kill. Ruin.
Casper had written these words. Had lived and breathed and suffered these words. Had committed them to paper because they were in his head. Breeding. Growing tendrils that dug deeper the longer he’d stayed.
God in heaven, what had gone on in this house?
“What’re you doing in here?”
Faith jumped, her hand flying to her throat, then to her eyes to dry them. “Casper. You scared me.”
“What’re you doing in here?” he asked again from behind her, his tone level, but the words clipped, less question than accusation.
She quickly stuffed the papers she’d found beneath her crossed legs, spun just enough to see him, and glared at him as if the answer was obvious. “Same thing we’ve been doing in every room since we took on this project.”
“Looks to me like you’re sitting on your ass doing nothing,” he said, twisting his mouth to the side.
“And what if I am? Do I not deserve the occasional break?”
“C’mon.” He gestured, the motion lighthearted, his expression anything but. “This room’s not important. It can wait.”
“Wait for what? When I have more free time, because that’s never going to happen. We’re out of here tomorrow and Massey’s crew takes over.”
“Then spend what you do have somewhere that matters.”
“Casper, every room in the house is going to have to be cleared sooner or later. And all of it before the construction guys get started. I can go through this one and mark it off my list just as easily as I can any other.”
“Leave it,” he said, more insistent this time. “Clay can do it when he’s done cleaning up the shit hole he’s made of the parlor.”
Clay who was romping in the backyard with his dog instead of working. “Clay’s got a list of chores longer than he is tall. You can’t expect him—”
“Jesus H. Christ, Faith. For once, just do what I say.”
She stopped, blinked, looked around. What was this room to him? It was tiny, a speck on the whole of the monstrous house. And the house was revealing itself to be exactly that. Monstrous.
“Now,” he snapped. “Get your ass out here before I pull the door shut and leave you inside.”
But she didn’t take kindly to threats. “I’ll just pull it open when I’m done here.”
“You can try, but it won’t do you any good.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s no knob on this side,” he barked at her before pushing up his hat and rubbing at his eyes. “Are you coming, or not?”
His words sucked what air was left from the room. “How did you know there was no knob on this side?”
“How do you think I knew?”
“This was your room,” she said, looking around rather than waiting for him to confirm it. That he’d slept in here, spent time in here, holed up in here to escape the even worse things he would’ve had to deal with if he’d gone downstairs.
“And now that you’ve seen it, you can go.”
“Fine,” she said, folding the papers against the dustpan as she got to her feet. And she might have done just that, respected his wishes to keep the horror of his past private, but then she saw the balls of newspaper stuffed in the holes in the wall behind the door, the holes in the ceiling, one or two in the floor in the same corner.
He followed her gaze, shook his head as if surrendering the last shred of his privacy. “Those were to keep out the spiders.”
“Spiders?”
“They had a thing for this room. Came in off the tree, I guess. Down from the attic. I used to wake up with three or four on my pillow.”
Tears welled in her eyes, and the papers she’d tried so hard to hide fluttered to the floor. She watched him watch them, saw the flush of red in his cheeks—shame, embarrassment, resentment—as he realized what she’d found. What she hadn’t wanted him to know she’d learned.
He cocked a shoulder against the doorjamb, his lip curled upward. “Happy now?”
No, she wasn’t happy now. Why would he think this discovery would make her anything but impossibly sad? “I’m sorry. I saw the wall. Where it had been sliced. I was curious…”
She didn’t know what else to say. She didn’t know how to face him, dropping her gaze to the papers spread out on the floor like a map of his life.
“Are you sorry for being nosy?” he asked as he bent to gather them. “Or sorry you had to find out who I really am?”
“This isn’t who you are,” she said, her voice breaking.
He laughed as he crossed the room to his hiding place. He stuck a hand deeper into the hole, came out with a box of matches. He struck one, appearing as surprised as she was when it lit. “Good to see some things around here still work.”
And then he waved the flame beneath the corner of the pages, holding the burning sheaf until the fast-growing blaze reached his fingers. Then he dropped the ball of fire and walked from the room, leaving her to stomp out what remained of the glowing sparks.
As if he really didn’t care if the whole house went up in an inferno around them.
TWENTY-TWO
WHEN CASPER PULLED up in front of the house a week into the renovation, Faith was already parked there, sitting in her car and talking on her cell. He saw this as he walked to her door, and got a single raised finger telling him to give her a minute alone. He supposed it was better than a middle finger telling him to fuck off.
It was Labor Day and the bank was closed, so it made sense she had the day free. Massey’s construction crew didn’t and was laboring away, hammers pounding, saws buzzing, old wood and plaster rending, shingles raining down. At this rate they’d easily earn their early completion bonus, making Faith and her party happy.
He hadn’t seen her since a week ago Saturday when she’d discovered the papers he should’ve burned a long time ago. Obviously, she’d snuffed the fire he’d walked out on before any damage was done. He and Clay had worked the next day alone, and he’d had to force himself to climb the service stairs to that room.
The ashes were still there, the floor around them black. He’d left the mess where it had fallen. It had been too late to clean it up then. It had always been too late to sweep away anything that had happened there.
He’d missed her in ways that surprised him. Hard to admit, especially when it wasn’t the lack of sex burning a hole in his gut. He’d missed her. Her mouth. Her attitude. The way she had of making him take a step back before saying something he’d regret. The way she had of making him face the words that came tumbling out of his mouth anyway.
There’d been a whole lot of tumbling going on, and he actually hated himself less than he thought he would for putting his shit out there. Goddamn but he’d been putting his shit out there. He figured the papers she’d found were the last straw. He’d scared her off. He knew it. She would’ve been in touch otherwise. He wasn’t sure he had an excuse for not calling her.
When he’d hit town earlier, he’d dropped off Clay while he’d run to Lasko’s to pick up a load of feed. In all the sorting and packing done the last four weeks, no one had thought to get rid of the food supplies Casper had bought for the boy, and Clay had stored in one of the cabinets built along the parlor’s long front wall.
Casper stood there now, wondering if Faith would come looking for him, or if she’d drive away once she finished her phone call now that he’d arrived. As far as he knew, she hadn’t come here to find him, but then he’d given up his cell to cut down on his costs and was relying on the Daltons’ old answering machine for his messages. Sometimes he even managed to check for them.
He’d most likely get a phone for Clay once the boy started school, and since the semester was already two weeks in, he knew he couldn’t put off making an appointment with Greg any longer. The only reason he’d waited this long was that it was going to kill him to give Clay the bad news he sensed would be swinging their way.
The boy was happy. And he had to admit to feeling the same way because of it. But he couldn’t see either of the two states involved or any court at any level taking emotion into account before the gavel fell and the bars rattled shut.
“I was talking to your mother.”
“What?” He hadn’t heard her come up behind him. He thought he’d been watching for her to leave her car, but seems he’d been somewhere else and missed her. He was doing a lot of that.
Missing her.
She looked good. She’d skipped the business suit and heels, skipped the ratty T-shirts, sneakers, and knee shorts she’d worn while cleaning. Today she had on boots and jeans and an airy sort of top that had him thinking about her four-poster bed. It laced up with a ribbon tied between her breasts, like a corset, but a loose one, hanging just short of her belt and showing a strip of skin.
He liked that strip of skin, her smooth flesh beneath the white fabric. It had him swallowing, thinking about how soft she was, how sweet she tasted. How much he’d missed her.
“I was talking—”
“I heard you the first time,” he snapped.
She tossed her arms out wide in a gesture of aggravation. “Then why did you ask me what I said?”
“Because I couldn’t believe I heard it.”
“Do you want to know what I found out?”
“No,” he said, walking away, stopping, coming back, his hands at his hips. “But you’re going to tell me anyway, so…”
“Your father—”
“—if he was my father—”
“—won the house in a poker game.”
“What?”
“Your father…won the house…in a poker game.” She spoke each word slowly as if he was some kind of idiot.
She knew him well. “Who from?”
“The last name on the deed before Leroy Jayne was Maximus Crow.”
“If I had a chair, I’d sit down,” he said. “Because that is just a shit awful name.”
The look she gave him was pure exasperated Faith. “Now I have to wonder about the relationship between the Jaynes and the Crows.”
“You’d already discovered a Crow built the place.”
“Yes, but I assumed the family had given it up a long time ago,” she said, crossing to the parlor cabinets. “Especially since it had fallen into such disrepair before y’all moved here.”
“Hey, you talked to Suzanne. She knows more than I do.”
“I wish she knew where your father was so I could talk to him.”
He didn’t have anything to say to that. He hadn’t seen or heard from Leroy Jayne in over twenty years. The man could be dead. The man should be dead. And Faith had better not get a burr up her butt to go finding out if he was. He didn’t want her around that man. He didn’t want to have to kill him but he would to keep her safe.
“Casper? Is this stuff Clay’s?”
He glanced down to where she was nudging the toe of her boot through the boy’s things. “Yeah. I brought him by to grab the stuff he forgot. G
uess that’s his being a kid.”
She reached for a book, looked at the title. “That little thief.”
“Hey now,” he said, reaching for her arm. “This house is one big echo chamber. Keep it down or he’ll hear you.”
“I don’t care if he hears me.” She jerked from his grasp and waved the book at him. “Kendall special ordered this title. She told me that it had gone missing off her shelves.”
He rubbed at his forehead. “Then he’ll pay her for it.”
“What else has he stolen?” She dropped the book onto the pile of Clay’s things. “Because I can’t imagine that’s it.”
Of course, she couldn’t, though it would be nice if she’d think about why. “He took food out of the Hellcat Saloon’s Dumpsters. You know, to have something to eat. And a couple of sodas from cases on the back porch. I already told him he’ll need to settle up with Arwen.”
“Good,” she said, still fuming. “You don’t know much about this kid, do you? Beyond seeing him a few times six years ago.”
And here we go. “I know he came looking for me. That’s enough.”
“You could be getting into something you’re not equipped to handle. Christ, for all you know, he could have a juvie record.”
“He doesn’t have a juvie record. Except for the running away from the foster home part.” Though even as he said it he found himself admitting he didn’t know anything of the kind.
“Are you sure, or is that what you’re hoping?” she asked, her voice tempered low, though her tone was fierce and demanding and mad. “Have you talked to an attorney? Has your attorney talked to the New Mexico authorities? Have you done anything about making sure none of this blows up in your face? Or in his?”
Or in Boone’s, she might as well have added. “What I know is that he’s done what he’s had to do to get by. Just like I did.”
“That’s not an answer. That’s an excuse.” She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, opened them, and looked into his. “You need to take care of this. Now.”