Leaving Tracks

by Victoria Escobar

  Her voice brought to mind great magnolia trees and tea on the veranda. Its warmth and slow drawl rolled over me in a creeping caress that was in its way pleasant and comfortable. I wondered if she knew how dangerous her smooth voice was. I also wondered if she knew that her accent was stronger and richer than Hadley’s.

  “We got end tables here,” Wesley set them next to the truck as Thierry handed them down. “They’re light enough for you ladies and stacks of cushions.”

  Morgaine rolled her eyes even as Glory jumped on it and picked up and end table. “Rhett,” Morgaine started, “Glory will be going to school with you. I and Avala would appreciate it if you could be nice.”

  “I’m always nice.” Rhett said to her and winked as he passed by with a chair.

  “In a pig’s eye.” I muttered taking the other chair from Wesley and following my brother inside.

  I could instantly feel the difference when I stepped into the mostly empty space. The overbearing masculinity was gone and in its place was a clean, welcoming feeling. The feeling was probably promoted by the trio of candles burning on the fireplace mantle.

  “Hadley?” I set the chair down, ignored my brother sitting in the chair he’d sat down and cautiously stepped into the hallway.

  I stuck my head into the first door only to find a simply made up spare room in mint and blue colors. The next door was on the opposite side and since it hung open I could see the bathroom tiles–a simple white sparkling against the equally brilliant rubbed bronze accents. The claw foot tub looked brand new and the water droplets indicated freshly scrubbed. Still, there was no Hadley so I moved to the door at the very end of the hall.

  Hadley was sitting on a bed unlike any bed I’d ever seen before. The platform bed wouldn’t have been unusual if it hadn’t been suspended above the ground from two thick braided ropes that looped through very sturdy, industrial looking O-rings in a boxed u-shape. The ropes look like they knotted under the frame and the excess was left fraying for decoration. An antique quilt covered the mattress and fat pillows were scattered about.

  Avala looked up from the clothes she was folding into a dresser. She nodded to me and went back to her task. From the empty boxes scattered around her, she was a woman on a mission.

  Hadley looked up from the clothes she was putting on hangers and smiled slowly. “North. Hi.”

  “Hi. We’re bringing in the furniture, and I realized we don’t actually know how you want this set up. If you want, I can stay after it’s all in and move it around for you.”

  Hadley’s brows drew together for a moment then smoothed out. “Sure, I don’t see why not. It’d be a big help. Then maybe Avala and Morgaine would go to work instead of harass me.”

  “You fold clothes like a two year old.” Avala spoke smoothly and without judgment, though there might have been some humor in the infliction of the words.

  “Which is another way of saying they’re not folded at all?” I asked.

  Hadley huffed. “They are folded. Just simply.”

  “Sure, I fold simply too.” I grinned at her, “I better go help my brothers before one of them comes looking for me.”

  Wesley and Rhett had already brought up the fainting couch and were trying to maneuver the sofa through the door without knocking anything or anyone off the narrow landing. I went in for the assist and it took the three of us and Glory’s commentary to wiggle the sofa through the narrow space.

  Glory went to work on arranging the cushions and decorative pillows as soon as it was set down. Rhett sat in a chair and watched Glory for a moment. I shook my head and started out with Wesley to get the coffee table but stopped on the landing to make sure Rhett played nice.

  “Morgaine says you’ll be going to school with me,” Rhett said in a pleasant tone.

  “Yeah, for now. I’m going to graduate this year and enroll in college for veterinary medicine. What about you?” Glory replied. I heard the cushions rustle as she sat.

  “I breed and train horses. Work horses, Paints and Palominos mostly. I’ll be going to college for Equine Studies.” Rhett answered. “I graduate next year. How old are you?”

  “I took horseback riding lessons for a while. It was fun.” Glory answered in an absent tone, and I heard the cushions rustle again. Either she had stood and changed them around or she changed chairs. “Perfect. Seventeen this year.”

  “If you want to ride, I’ve got horses that could always use some extra exercise.” Rhett told her. “How are you graduating this year?”

  “I might take you up on that. Like I said. It was fun but Daddy got pissy that I wouldn’t make a career out of dressage and jump so he cut my lessons. He was always doing some spiteful shit like that.”

  “Glory,” Avala’s voice cut through the room like a knife. “He is still your daddy.”

  “To my everlasting remorse.”

  I took the coffee table from Wesley as he brought it up the stairs. Glory popped up from the sofa when I stepped into the room. “There are dogs that need checked and fed. I’ll be back later to see if Hadley needs anything.”

  Rhett watched her exit and only shook his head. I said nothing. She was different, seemingly a lot different, than what I’ve seen of Hadley. Hopefully, Rhett wouldn’t pry too hard.

  “Thierry says if you don’t want to walk back you better be down by the time he gets all the blankets folded.” Wesley told Rhett and he jumped up and ran down the stairs shouting at his brother to wait.

  Wesley shook his head, “Some things never change.”

  “I told Hadley I’d help her rearrange the furniture.” I informed as I sat in a chair.

  “At least someone remembers their manners.” Wesley nodded approvingly. “Avala! Morgaine is waiting with the truck. Are we going to the Community today or not?”

  “Coming, coming.” Avala hurried out of the back room with Hadley right behind her. She turned to Hadley, “Just go over to the house and open the freezer if you get hungry before I get back. I have some stuff frozen that you can just pop in the microwave.”

  “I promise she won’t starve.” I said seriously and had Avala giving me a once over that made me want to squirm. “Because I love your ma just as much as you love mine, I’m not going to remind you about respect and manners.” Her voice was very near lecturing. “Behave. The both of you.”

  “Come on. I’m sure Hadley knows how to beat a man with a fire poker, but I highly doubt it will come to that.” Wesley took Avala by the arm and led her out. He did shoot me a firm glare before the door closed behind him.

  “Well,” Hadley sat in the opposite chair. “Might as well get you started.”

  Hadley

  It had taken all of ten minutes to get the living room situated to my liking. I thought I’d been pretty amicable about the whole thing, and only fussed when North couldn’t obviously tell the coffee table was crooked.

  “Do you have anything else that needs to come up?” North asked studying the built-ins on either side of the electric fireplace. The thing was actually pumping out a decent amount of heat for a fake but I doubt North noticed the difference.

  “There’s a moving truck out the main door. You should have seen it pulling in. If you want to pull it up to the side door then my books still need to come up, and the rest of my clothes. There’s a surround sound too and a desktop computer. My laptop is over at the house and a duffel bag of clothes but that can stay over there for now.”

  “I’ll get right on it.”

  It wasn’t as stressful as I had anticipated it would be. North took direction well, for the most part, and he didn’t seem overly concerned with the amount of books he had to cart up the stairs. It took him an hour of back and forth to empty the rest of the truck and then he helped unpack.

  “You don’t have any dishes.” He commented when he went for a glass of water. He dipped his head and drank from the spigot instead.

  “Um, I think there may be extra at the house. I didn’t really think of it. I know Avala said some
thing this morning about extra pans.” I answered from where I was putting away books. I had hooked up the surround sound as soon as it was in the apartment and now some jazz number wept through the speakers.

  “I’ve got a little pottery set up over at my place. Dishes are something I’m good at. I can bring you some as a house warming gift.”

  I looked up from my stack of books and tipped my head studying him as he came back into the room to arrange CDs on the opposite built in. I tried to imagine seeing him sit at a pottery wheel. The image just didn’t fit. “I can’t see it.” I said finally.

  “Can’t see what?” He wasn’t looking at me but reading the CDs as he put them up. Some of the music I knew was obscure. But I enjoyed different things. I wondered if he did too with the way he seemed to make mental note of each one he studied.

  “Can’t see you sitting at a pottery wheel sculpting,” I answered. “It doesn’t quite mesh with the farm boy, ice skater imagine I have of you.”

  “Got to eat. And you need something to eat off of.” North rolled his shoulders. “It relaxes me. My brothers can be, and have been, huge pains in my ass. It’s where I can go and be alone and create whatever I want without them harping. I’ve made decorative bowls, and urns, and lamps. I’ve got molds I’ve made myself as well; I don’t just sit at a wheel but I can. I’ve got a website that Wesley keeps tabs on, because I can never remember to.”

  “If you don’t mind, I think your dishes sound great. If I know Avala, she’ll give me the ugly miss matched plaid and floral ones.”

  “Plaid and floral?”

  “I think it was a phase Ma went through.” I replied easily. “It’s really, really ugly.”

  “I bet.” North looked around. “You don’t have any movies here.”

  “On the computer. I watch from the desktop usually. Dad wouldn’t let me have any of the TVs.”

  “I’m pretty sure we might have an extra.”

  “I think Morgaine mentioned something about having an extra too.”

  “She’s probably going to bring one back from the community. One hand washes the other.” North set the last CD on the shelf. “I think I’m done here, cap. What’s next?”

  I looked around. It was starting to look lived in. It felt better than I thought it would. “Just clothes to fold and hang up, but I have this funny feeling that if I do it, Avala will be over tomorrow to redo it.”

  “I’m not much for folding, but I can hang pretty well.”

  “Why are you doing all this?” I asked sitting back in the chair North had insisted I drag over to the shelves. I doubted he wanted to help me situate my place. Guys, at least all the ones I had known, didn’t do stuff like that. “Being neighborly, even friendly is one thing but this feels above and beyond.” I thanked my father for the rudeness that seemed to come with the question. I wasn’t very trustful of kindness. I’d had so little that to get any outside my sisters felt insincere.

  North walked over to where I sat and picked up some books to shelf them without speaking for a moment. “Originally, I thought I could charm, or finagle you into coaching. And if I wasn’t neighborly and friendly my ma would come back from beyond just to box my ears after my brothers did it.”

  “And now?”

  North shelved more books before answering. “Your face when you offered to let me skate whenever I wanted hurt me almost as much as, I imagine, it hurt you. I could see that it hurt you so badly–like alcohol in an open wound–and yet you offered anyway. I’d still like you to coach, but I’d rather it be your freely made decision than for me to, well, bully you into doing it. I can wait, I’ve waited this long. And when you’re ready, I’m sure you’d be a more effective coach if it were your choice rather than my pleading. So I’m here, being neighborly and friendly because I think you need neighborly and friendly. If you’d rather I leave, I will.” He smiled down at my up turned face then, on I think it was an impulse, ran his fingers lightly over my cheek. “You’re eyes are tired, Hadley. And sad. I can’t really help with the tired, but I’m hoping that friendship, and understanding, can help with the sad.”

  I didn’t swipe his hand away but closed my eyes and let the sensation sink into my skin. No one had ever offered simple friendship. No one had ever touched me so gently or carefully before. Something in my heart stirred, and I refused to examine it. I would just go with the flow. I could do that for now; just take life as it was given. When I opened my eyes I gave him my best smile. “No.” I decided, “You’re fine. You can hang while I fold.”

  I thought about his words as we set my place to rights. With clothes folded and hung, the computer set up, unpacking was rapidly coming to a close. It wouldn’t hurt; I decided to watch an audition. It was a friendly and understanding thing to do wasn’t it? It’d been so long since I had friends, I wasn’t sure anymore.

  I walked down with North intending on food before taking trash bags to the office and training table. “There’s a gym in there.” I gestured down passed the refrigeration door. “The weights will probably be fine, I have no idea on the treadmill or rower or bicycle.”

  “Equipment is usually built to last.” North stated standing in the doorway looking in. “What’s up the other stairs?”

  “Personal trainer’s apartment. It should be empty as she brought all her own stuff and took it with her when I left.” I rubbed my arms as the chill of the ice hit me. I hadn’t remembered to grab a jacket to go over my sweater. “You can use the gym whenever you’d like as well.”

  “We have one at the house. Not that anyone ever has the energy to use it.” North took off his coat and draped it over my shoulders. “I’ll walk with you over to the house. My blood’s thicker than yours.” He held the door for me and we stepped out together.

  “What time do you usually start in the morning?” I asked oddly comfortable wrapped in the warmth and smell of his jacket.

  “Thierry starts before the sun rises. Four I think.”

  “I take it you don’t?”

  “No. We’ve had that fight, and I’ve won it. I start at seven thirty during the winter and five thirty during the summer. Summers suck. When Rhett’s home, he does the evening chores and I do the morning ones. It keeps everything balanced–I think he gets the easy time. I’d rather the evening chores but I lost that fight. He’s up with the horses anyway, but I get stuck getting dragged out of bed.”

  “That’s good then,” I thought aloud and stepped into the breakfast nook through the French doors with North behind me closing the door firmly.

  “Why is that good?” He stared out the window a moment. “I think it might snow some tonight.”

  I, a little reluctantly, took his coat off and handed it to him. “I have one here.” I moved to the kitchen stove where Avala had decided to leave a pot of soup on warm. “It’s chicken and dumpling. Would you like some?”

  “No, Wesley’s making pot roast tonight.”

  “Okay, do you mind?”

  “I promised Avala you wouldn’t starve,.” North sat at the bar and watched as I ladled soup into a soup cup.

  “I made those.”

  Startled I looked at him. “What?”

  “The soup cups. One of my first slip casts. The mold still works too.”

  I stared at the simple wide rimmed, emerald, oversized cup. It was pretty and functional. “I like it.” I set the soup on the bar, got out the bread then sat next to him. “Well Hell, forgot a drink.”

  Before I could scoot back up North was up and walking towards the fridge. “No matter what season, there’s always some kind of fresh flavored tea.” He opened the fridge and then came back to the bar with two glasses and a pitcher of dark tea with raspberries and what looked like blueberries floating at the top. “We have berry tea today.” He poured the glasses and returned the pitcher to the fridge.

  “Before we run off on a tangent again,” I spooned up some soup and sighed. The lemon zest was enough tang to make me whimper. I loved lemon in chicken soup. “She put a d
ash of lemon in it.”

  “Tangent,” North prompted when I spooned more soup and just savored.

  “Oh, right. Be here, five thirty tomorrow morning, with your skates and music. Short program first. Think of it as an audition. I’ll watch, score, and then deliberate if I want to coach you or if you have the skills worth honing. If you get more than say a fifty on the short, you’ll skate the free program. You’ll get all your scores and their breakdowns before you leave. I’ll let you know Monday, after thorough deliberation and contemplating, if I will coach you.”

  North nearly choked on his tea. I saw it by the way he pounded on his chest. “An audition?”

  “I’ve only ever taught one on one unless it was a class. And when I had more than one person clambering for a coach I held auditions.”

  “Five thirty?”

  “That’s A.M. pal of mine.”

  North sighed. “I was afraid of that.”

  North

  When the alarm went off at five a.m., I could have cried if I hadn’t been concerned with one of my brothers finding out. I might have to mention the ridiculousness of the hour to Hadley.

  I had spent a majority of the night worrying over my routines. The music was set, and I knew, for the most part, what I was going to do. I’d stick to the stuff my mother taught me. I knew that was solid and would probably earn more points with her.

  I rolled out of bed, listened at the door for a moment for my brothers, before dashing across the hall to the bathroom I shared with Rhett. Wesley’s room was at the end of the hall and after our parents died, upon agreement from the others, Thierry had moved his things to the master suite downstairs.

  I wasn’t concerned with Rhett. Rhett had been asleep when I had gotten back from Hadley’s and had only awaken long enough to do his evening chores before going back to sleep. Travel wore hard on my little brother.