There were eighteen sets of eyes staring at her, nineteen if you counted Mrs. David, who was new that year and didn’t know any better.
“She ain’t neither,” Bobby said, his shaved head dipping up and down like a fuzzy potato. “My mama told me she’s got a dead brother buried in the cemetery across from our house.”
As Mrs. David sputtered an inaudible response, Caroline glowered over at Bobby. She’d hated him right then. She didn’t care that his mama was probably drunk when she said it or that his daddy dug those graves for the house they lived in with no running water and a damn dirt floor, or that the whole reason Bobby was practically bald was because the Boyd kids kept lice, even after his drunk mama shaved their heads—even the girls. All of this she knew because her daddy, her doctor daddy with the dead son, still made house calls.
Caroline stood up, clenching and unclenching her fists. “I’m going to send my brother to haunt you, Bobby Boyd!” she’d screamed. “I’m going to send him to kill you in your sleep!”
She’d spent the next hour in the bathroom, hot tears streaming down her face, trying to figure out if there really was a way to make her brother rise up, a bony white skeleton, and seek revenge on Bobby. By the time Mrs. David found her, Caroline had already made a mental note to check out that book about voodoo she’d seen at the library the week before.
During recess, the teachers whispered and stared over at Caroline, too busy to notice Ava Dawn corner Bobby behind the tornado slide and sock him right in the nose. He bled all the way to the nurse’s office.
“He won’t never say another word about Jeremy,” Ava Dawn assured her. “Ever.” She draped an arm around Caroline’s shoulder.
Caroline always had something to say, something that would make the other kids bite their tongues and run off, but Ava Dawn was the muscle, the enforcer. If there was a scrape Caroline couldn’t talk herself out of, or more likely, had talked herself into, Ava Dawn would appear tan and strong to fix whatever problem her cousin and best friend had created. It made sense to Caroline why Ava Dawn would later pick Roy from all the other men she could have had to marry, even though by the time they were eighteen she’d outgrown her penchant for fighting. Roy solved things in a way Ava Dawn could understand, and that was a bond difficult to break.
Most of the townspeople of Cold River, even Roy, were just a little bit more forgiving of Caroline because of her brother’s death. Jeremy O’Conner, who would have been eighteen years older than Caroline, died in a car accident two years before she was born. It wasn’t a remarkable story. Her brother’s life had been cut short on a dark night in February when he hit a patch of black ice coming home from the movies and wrapped his little Ford Ranger around a tree. He was dead before morning, dead before anybody found him, crushed between the steering wheel and the seat. If he’d been driving his bigger truck, the one Caroline now owned, he probably would have lived. That was why, even though the old truck sounded like an angry banshee when started, Caroline continued driving it. She somehow felt safe in it; it felt like Jeremy was watching over her.
Her parents didn’t like to talk about it, and gave her very little information about her brother. When Caroline asked, her mother went to baking, and her father became not her father, but the doctor he was at the clinic, explaining everything in a sterile voice with words she couldn’t comprehend. It hadn’t been until after that awful day during circle time that Caroline had sought to find out more than her parents were willing to tell. It was all there, inside that room in the white house that her parents kept locked. Everything about Jeremy she could have wanted to know. He’d played baseball and won awards for mathematics. He’d had lots of friends and girlfriends, Caroline knew, from his affable smile and from the way his eyes crinkled, blue like their mother’s. Jeremy had been tall, with no visible freckles that she could see, and with a mop of thick, dark hair, a magical gift passed down through the genes of family members Caroline had never met. In the pictures, everyone looked happy, and her parents looked like younger versions of themselves, a blinding sort of youth that died the day Jeremy died, she assumed, because they’d been old since she could remember.
Caroline had lost all track of time, and when her mother found her, she’d expected to be in trouble. Instead, her mother sat down beside her on the floor. She took Caroline’s hand in one of her own and Jeremy’s baseball mitt in the other.
“Mrs. David called me,” her mother said. “She told me what happened.”
Caroline didn’t say anything. She just looked down at her legs, silently counting the freckles.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Bobby Boyd is stupid,” she’d responded finally. “He can’t come to my birthday party.”
“Not even if he apologized?”
“No,” Caroline said. “He’d probably give us all head lice anyway.”
Maureen O’Conner set the glove back on the floor and lifted Caroline’s chin so that their eyes met. “Bobby Boyd wasn’t trying to be mean, Caroline. He just doesn’t know any better. He hasn’t had anyone to teach him the difference.” Her voice was soft, but firm. “But you have, and you know how badly words can hurt. Don’t you think it would hurt his feelings if you said that to him?”
“I guess,” Caroline mumbled. “It’s not fair.”
“What’s not fair?”
“Bobby’s mama and daddy are awful. Everybody knows.” Caroline felt the tears welling up in her eyes again. “But they get to keep their children, all of them, and they don’t even like them!”
“All the more reason for you to be nice to him.”
“They get to keep Bobby, and his brothers and sisters,” Caroline continued. “They don’t even have to make sure they’re clean and they get to keep them. Mama, I don’t understand why you couldn’t keep Jeremy. He was so good and tall and loved. Why couldn’t you keep him?”
Her mother pulled her close, and Caroline buried her face into her mother’s hair, smothering the tears that were begging to spill out. It was the first time she’d seen her mother cry for Jeremy, the first time Caroline cried for her mother. She cried for the great gaping hole inside of her mother, for the fact that she knew she could never fill it. She cried for the birthdays and Christmases her mother would never have with him, for the phone calls and cards she’d never get. She cried for the parts of Jeremy her mother couldn’t bring herself to pack away, and the sheets on the bed she couldn’t wash because they still smelled like him, even after all this time, even after a decade locked away in this room, and she cried hardest of all for the mother in the pictures smiling brilliantly into the sun, the young mother, the happy mother, the mother who, so much like her brother, Caroline would never know.
CHAPTER 14
CAROLINE SAT SWEATING INSIDE THE BAIT shop, a fan blowing directly on her face. The air conditioner stopped working the day before, and nobody could come out to look at it until the next week. She’d tried fixing it herself, and her father had come out and tried his hand at it, but it was no use. It was miserable outside, and it was worse than miserable inside.
Caroline felt sweat trickle down her neck and begin to pool in her clavicle. “This is ridiculous,” she said to her empty shop. She looked down at herself, wishing she could just strip down naked—she’d discarded her flip-flops and bra long ago, but her jean shorts and tank top still felt cumbersome. She stepped out onto the porch. Smokey was hard at work across the road. When he saw her standing there, he waved from the roof.
It had been a week since the party and her mishap on the dock. Noah hadn’t spoken to her since. She hadn’t even been able to make eye contact with him. He was already there when Caroline arrived in the morning, and he was still working at night when she left. He was making progress, that much was true, but she wondered why he didn’t seem to want to see her. Had he really been that mad at her for swimming alone? Had he overheard her conversation with Reese and thought it was more than it was? Surely he understood how complicated relationship
s, even old ones, could be. After all, he’d been married before.
It wasn’t like she and Reese were ever going to get back together. She’d promised Court, and even if she hadn’t, they never would have lasted. Reese Graham wanted a woman to stay home and iron his clothes while he had a woman somewhere else to iron, well, other things. Caroline would sooner die. But it was making her crazy thinking about Noah every time she looked at the station, which was pretty much any time she walked by a window or went in and out of the bait shop.
“Yoo-hoo, Carolina!” Smokey stood up on the roof and waved to her.
“Hey, Smokey!” Caroline waved back.
“It’s hot out, ain’t it?”
“Sure is!”
Smokey reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief. As he began to mop his face, one of his feet slid out from under him, and he tumbled headfirst down the roof. He landed with a sickening splat onto the dirt.
“Oh, shit!” Caroline rushed down the steps and across the road over to the station. “Smokey, Smokey!”
Noah beat her to him by a split second. “What in the hell happened?”
“He fell off the damn roof!” Caroline knelt down in front of Smokey. He was out cold, but he didn’t appear to be bleeding.
“How?”
“I don’t know, he just slipped.”
“He’s breathing, at least,” Noah said, leaning down to inspect Smokey’s face. “Should we call 911? Do they come all the way out here?”
“We could put him in the ground faster than they could get out here,” Caroline replied. “Get me a glass of water.”
“What for?”
“Just get me one, will ya?”
Noah returned a minute later with a glass and handed it to her. Caroline took it and without warning splashed the water onto Smokey’s face.
Smokey bolted upright. “What? Who? Where am I?”
“Works every time,” Caroline said. She handed the glass back to Noah. “Smokey, are you okay? You fell off the roof.”
Smokey looked around dazedly. “I did?”
“You did.”
“Am I alright?”
“Well, I don’t know.” Caroline laughed. “You tell us. Do you hurt anywhere?”
Smokey tried to stand up. He shook his hands and his shoulders. “I’m alright, but my noggin feels like mush.”
“You should probably take the rest of the day off,” Noah said. “Do you want me to drive you to the doctor just to make sure nothing is broken?”
“Nah, ain’t no need.” Smokey rubbed his head. “Ain’t the first time I’ve tumbled off a roof, and I don’t reckon it’ll be the last.”
Caroline looked up at Noah. He looked like he was trying to hold on to his laughter. “Well, let’s not make a habit of falling off of my roof, okay?”
“I’ll do my best, but I can’t make no promises.”
“Why don’t you come inside where it’s cool?” Noah offered. “I’ve got a window unit upstairs where I’m not renovating.”
“Nah, I’m fine. I’m just gonna go have a smoke.”
Smokey wandered off towards his rusty truck, mumbling to himself, leaving Caroline and Noah alone. Noah was looking down at her, his hands shoved down into his pockets. He didn’t say anything, and Caroline felt she might melt between his stare and the sun. “Well,” she said, “I guess I’m going to head back over to the shop.”
“You look hot.”
“What?”
“Hot,” Noah repeated. “You look like you’ve been out in this heat all day.”
“The air conditioner is broken, so . . .”
“Do you want to come inside?”
Yes! Caroline screamed inside of her head. Yes, she wanted to go inside where there was air-conditioning. “That’s alright,” she said instead.
“Oh, come on,” Noah said. He opened the door for her. “You really want to go back over to that sauna?”
“No.” She ducked underneath Noah’s arm and into the station. She saw Yara snoring in the corner, just as she’d seen her the day Noah asked her over to show her the pictures he’d found. In fact, Yara’d been spending all of her time over at Cranwell Station. It was like she lived there now, and Caroline fought a jealousy that she hadn’t expected.
“Come on back this way,” Noah said. He stepped in front of her and motioned for her to follow him. “There’s just one part of this place that’s tolerable right now.”
She followed him all the way to the end of a long hallway and up a flight of stairs. “I always wondered what was up here,” she said. “The windows used to be covered with old newspapers, which seemed odd to me.”
“It’s a little apartment,” Noah replied. He opened the door at the top of the stairs. “It’s not much, but it’s mine, and surprisingly, it’s in better shape than the downstairs.”
Caroline stepped into a one-room studio that had been lost in time. There was a tiny kitchenette with an old refrigerator in one corner. There was a brass bed in another corner, and in the middle there was a box television set on the floor and a couch with clawed feet. She wasn’t sure what era she was in, but it thrilled her. “Look at all this old stuff!”
“My grandfather told me that whoever was running the station lived up here,” Noah said, sitting down on the couch. “So it became kind of a catchall for the things everybody brought in.”
“You live up here?”
“I was staying with my grandfather and aunt,” Noah replied. “But last week I got the electricity turned on, and I moved out here.”
“That explains why you always seem to be here.”
“Where else am I gonna go?”
Caroline shrugged. At least she wasn’t sweating anymore. For the first time it occurred to her how she must look. No wonder Noah invited her up. He probably thought she was suffering from heatstroke or something.
“Caroline, your foot is bleeding.” Noah pointed to her big toe on her left foot. “What happened?”
Caroline looked down at her bare feet. Maybe she did have heatstroke, because she hadn’t felt a thing. “I must’ve stubbed it running over to check on Smokey.”
Noah stood up and walked over to the sink. “Where are your shoes?” he asked, wetting a paper towel underneath the sink.
“I took them off,” Caroline replied. She followed him to the sink. “It’s nine hundred degrees in the bait shop. They’d practically melted onto my feet.”
“You’re a mess.”
For a moment, Caroline thought he was going to laugh at her, but instead he reached out and pushed a piece of hair out of her eyes. Before she could stop herself, her hands were around his neck, pulling him down to her, pulling him as close as she could get him to her until he thrust his mouth onto hers.
Noah pushed her back against the refrigerator, pinning her to it with his hips. He let his hands wander past the boundaries of her shirt until there was nothing between his fingertips and her breasts. He let out a moan as he rolled one of her nipples in between his thumb and forefinger.
“Noah!” There were footsteps on the stairs. “Boy, are you up there?”
“Shit,” Noah said, breaking away from her. “It’s my grandfather.”
Jep Cranwell burst into the apartment without knocking. He stopped at the doorway when he realized that Noah wasn’t alone. He hooked his thumbs through the straps in his overalls and said, “I didn’t realize ya had comp’ny.”
Caroline wrapped her arms across her chest, suddenly very aware of the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra. “The air conditioner is out over at the shop,” she offered when Noah didn’t say anything.
Jep squinted over at her. “You Maureen’s girl?”
“I am.” Caroline nodded. She was surprised to hear him call her Maureen’s girl. Most people would ask if she belonged to her dad.
“It’s all them freckles.”
Caroline smiled.
Jep ventured farther into the room. “I just thought my fool-headed grandson might like to kno
w his drunk roofer is takin’ a smoke break instead a doin’ his job.”
“Oh, he’s not drunk,” Caroline replied. “He never drinks when he’s doing a job.”
“Is that right?”
“That’s right,” Noah spoke up. “And he’s doing a great job.”
“Your cousins woulda done a good job, all the same.”
Noah nodded. “We talked about that,” he said.
“Still, it’d be nice if you listened to me,” Jep replied. Then he looked back over at Caroline and said, “About everything.”
Caroline didn’t know what that was supposed to mean. “Well, I guess I better get back over to the shop.”
“I came to tell ya that yer Aunt Hazel is fryin’ up the last of the deer meat tonight, and she wants ya to come for dinner,” Jep said, not even bothering to look at Caroline as she brushed past him and towards the stairs.
“Sounds great,” Noah replied. “Hey, Caroline, do you want to come?”
“I, uh . . .” Caroline trailed off. She wasn’t sure what to say. From the look on Jep Cranwell’s face, he wasn’t exactly thrilled that she’d been invited.
“It’ll be fun,” Noah urged. He grinned over at his grandfather.
Caroline looked from Noah to Jep and back again. It was almost comedic how much they looked alike. She was sure that if she pointed it out right then, however, Jep wouldn’t find it funny. Why didn’t he like her? All she wanted to do was disappear, but Jep was still standing too close to the door for her to make a clean escape.
“Fine,” Jep said at last, as if he’d been defeated in a silent battle. “The girl is welcome to come. Unless,” he sniffed, “she don’t like deer meat.”
“I love deer meat.”
“Great!” Noah clapped his hands together. “We’ll see you later this evening, Gramps.”
Jep was out the door as fast as he came in, and left Noah and Caroline with nothing but an awkward silence hanging over them. “I’m sorry that I put you on the spot right there.”
“It’s okay.”
“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”
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