The Stills

by Jess Montgomery

  He looks from the cigarette to her. “You mind?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Some ladies don’t like the sight or smell of cigarettes.”

  Lily sighs—there it is. Assumptions about what she does, or doesn’t, like, simply based on her being “the fairer sex.” Of course she’d dealt with that with Daniel in myriad small ways—he would have been shocked at her and Marvena hunting the Thanksgiving turkey, even though he knew her daddy had taught her to hunt, and that she liked hunting.

  But now, nearly three years since his death, and almost as long as sheriff, Lily has no patience for pretending she’s anything other than what she is. She’ll have no patience with such with Benjamin.…

  She dismisses the thought with a reflexive shrug, and winces from a jolt of pain.

  “I had a buddy dislocate his shoulder like that. In the war. Fell to the ground at a funny angle. Howled like he’d been shot. Medic got it back in place, told him to rest up—”

  “I don’t have time for a sinking spell while someone fetches my smelling salts.”

  Benjamin looks annoyed. Good. She is starting to think he would accept any snotty thing she said, and while she didn’t want to be courted by a man who made assumptions about what a woman might or might not want, she also didn’t want to be courted by a man who could be pushed around—

  Lily catches herself. What is she thinking? He is not courting her. She does not want to be courted.

  Benjamin gently touches her arm. “In all seriousness, do you need to sit down? An injury like that, doesn’t that hurt like h—”

  He stops short, turns red, and Lily catches herself about to roll her eyes.

  “Hurt like hell?” Lily says. Benjamin looks shocked, but then grins. She can’t help but smile—pleased that he at least doesn’t care if she curses now and again. “Yes, it does.” The aspirin had barely touched the pain. She looks around again, then spots a branch, about the right thickness and length for a walking stick.

  Lily steps over to it, picks it up, pokes it a few times in the snow. Yes, this will do.

  She glances at Benjamin studying her, but not in a pitying way. He’s not insisting on playing savior to her or on casting her as a damsel in distress.

  For that, she lets her heart relent a little. “You handle the woods better than I reckoned you would.”

  “Learned from Daniel. Funny—these woods look so much like the woods in France,” Benjamin says. His gaze is distant as he stares down at the simple church in the snowy clearing. Is he seeing his fallen mates in the Meuse–Argonne offensive—her brother, others—twisted and bloody and lifeless, on and around the rocks and brush of the forest? It’s odd to think—a forest a half a world away, but looking like this one in remote Appalachia—and memories a decade old, but as if in this moment.

  “I guess they would. Daniel didn’t talk much about the war.” Sometimes, though, he’d cry out in his sleep and she’d carefully wake him up, try to comfort him. But he never shared details of the war. None of the men who survived to return home to Bronwyn County did. She reckoned that was true of soldiers no matter where home was.

  Benjamin’s gaze retreats from the past, and he focuses on her. “Daniel didn’t talk much, at all, was my experience. Except, sometimes, about you. Less often, about boxing.” Lily’s heart pangs, thinking of Daniel. “Though he said I talked too much.” Benjamin lifts an eyebrow. “And could be too pushy.”

  Her husband and this man had spent only a few months together as soldiers, and yet they’d found a lifetime friendship. Perhaps horrors do that—bind people. That had been the case for her and Marvena. They’d get past their current tiff.

  Lily clears her throat, changes the subject. “Why’d you follow us up here?”

  “Daniel and Roger and other guys from the country gave me plenty of teasing about being from a city. Guess I’m still a little sore.” A smile tweaks the corners of his mouth.

  “Do you ever miss the city?”

  “Sometimes,” Benjamin says. “My brothers are all still in Cleveland.”

  “But you didn’t go home for Thanksgiving.”

  “I got a better offer,” he says.

  “Mama can be awfully persuasive.”

  “Sure—but it wasn’t just the prospect of your mama’s cooking that brought me to your Thanksgiving table,” Benjamin says. “And I followed you today because I figured the sheriff might need me to drive more than just today, at least until her automobile is repaired. So I thought I should prove my mettle.”

  “You aiming to be deputized? There’s little pay in it.”

  “I’m a civic-minded fellow. And, well, I like the notion of following you around.”

  Lily feels heat rise in her cheeks. What can she say to this? That, yes, she feels a pull toward him, too, but she’s not ready? Certainly not while in the thick of searching for a missing revenuer, dealing with the reemergence of Luther and Elias, with sussing out George Vogel’s alleged plans, with the impending visit from Mabel Walker Willebrandt.

  “Yoo-hoo!” Marvena calls up the hill from the church door.

  Though she’d just been waiting impatiently for Marvena, Lily’s heart falls. She glances back at Benjamin, sees he’s not going to follow, after all, unless she shows him it’s fine. Well. There’s no need for him to wait out in the cold. At least there will be some warmth in the church. She gives a quick jut of her chin: C’mon, then.

  CHAPTER 16

  FIONA

  Friday, November 25, 1927

  2:00 p.m.

  Fiona had meant to ride in silence alongside Abe all the way out to Lily’s.

  But the silence has become suffocating.

  “How’s your stomach?” Fiona asks.

  Somehow, what she’d meant as an amiable inquiry—a follow-up to his claim back at Dr. Goshen’s office just as she exited the examination room—comes out as sarcasm.

  Abe cuts a hateful look toward her just as they come upon a hairpin curve. The automobile sways, nearly careening into a ditch. Abe straightens the wheel just in time but then pushes the Model T to go faster, so fast that at the top of the next rise it feels as though the vehicle is airborne. She grabs for the dashboard to brace herself.

  Fiona starts to cry out, but as the automobile lands with a thud on the other side of the rise, she catches her tongue between her teeth. Wetness and the taste of iron fill the front of her mouth. Blood.

  The bag of candies she’d been holding flies to the floor, and the peppermints and taffies tumble out.

  Abe slams on the brakes, and the Model T skids again, stopping perpendicular to a sharp drop-off. Another few feet of skidding and they’d have plunged into brush and tree and vine.

  For a long moment, Fiona stares into the snowy woods, a tangle of frosted limbs, dark and white lace that follows no pattern.

  Fiona swallows blood and spit. Presses her tongue to the tender spot on her lip. Turns toward Abe, expecting to catch him grinning at her distress, but he’s glaring at the scattered candies, as if affronted—his perpetual expression, it seems. That’s how he looked at her when she’d come out of the examination room, and then at the older woman—Mrs. Cooper, Hildy’s mother—who sighed as he jumped up and growled that he had to see the doctor next due to a sudden stomachache. But Mrs. Cooper hadn’t dared protest—nor had Dr. and Mrs. Goshen—as Abe rushed into the room.

  As soon as the examination room’s door shut, though, Mrs. Cooper had given Fiona a frosty look and sighed anew. Well, damned if she was going to wait under the judgmental glare of Hildy’s mother. Besides, this was a chance to act on the plan that had been brewing at the back of Fiona’s mind.

  And so Fiona had given Mrs. Cooper a curt nod and hurried on to Douglas Grocers, smiled at her plan as she crossed the street. Oh sure, she cares about saving people in her old hometown—even if it’s inhabited by busybodies like Mrs. Cooper. But she can’t help but feel glee that forewarning Lily about the tainted alcohol will make her look good later. />
  By the time she reached the grocery and the bell tinkled over the door as she opened it, she nearly ran into a housewife exiting the store, so wrapped up she’d become in imagining herself at some later date, teary and wide-eyed, testifying at George’s trial, Oh, I just couldn’t let people I’d known my whole life be hurt by my husband’s plans.…

  At the store she’d purchased the candies—a gift for Lily’s children. Abe was waiting for her when she came back out, standing by the automobile parked right in front of the store, his arms crossed. Still glaring from under the brim of his fedora.

  Now she takes in his disappointed assessment of the candies. Had he suspected she’d be so foolish as to write a note to Lily while in the grocery and tuck it in the bag? Of course she wouldn’t.

  Abe grabs the empty bag from her lap, stares inside. No, she hadn’t somehow written a note inside the bag, either.

  She’d assumed he’d be with her at the store, for one thing, and had only hoped to get an extra candy bag to write on later. But without Abe there, it was easy to chat amiably with Mr. Merle Douglas, the grocery owner, while he scooped the pieces she’d selected into one of the bags. While he looked down, she snagged an extra bag from the counter.

  Merle had looked up almost in time to catch her doing so—almost, but not quite. Then he’d said the oddest thing: Do you ever see Hildy Cooper?

  Not of late.

  Well, if you do, could you tell her I didn’t get rid of the penny candy?

  Fiona of yore would have been fascinated by that question, would have dug around for possible gossip. She vaguely recollected hearing, on her last visit to town with George more than a year ago, that Mr. Douglas had been courting Hildy. But the Fiona of now pushed aside the distraction.

  Still, she took advantage of the moment. Sure, she’d said. Then smiled. If you don’t mind checking for me for aspirin? I couldn’t find it earlier!

  She’d walked right past it and didn’t need more, but her promise to pass along a silly message was enough to send him scurrying off. He was gone long enough for her to grab the pencil he’d been using to tabulate the candy, write her note on the extra bag, return the pencil, and fold the note and tuck it in the front of her dress.

  As with George trusting her and her aunt at the bank, writing a note to Lily worked out more easily than she hoped. Still, once at Lily’s farmhouse, Fiona was certain Abe would not let her out of his sight to talk privately with the sheriff. Somehow, she’d have to find a quick and clever way to pass on the note.

  Now Abe tosses the bag back into her lap, then grabs Fiona’s arm so tightly that even through her coat sleeve it feels like the sudden bite of a clamp. “Why do you want to see her?”

  Fiona forces her breath to remain steady. “I’ve told you.”

  “If you think you’ll be able to tell her about our plans for the farm … betray George…”

  “Why would I do that?” Such a good actress she’s become.

  “Now that he has turned over his property to your name? You think I don’t see the hurt and anger on your face when he comes back with some other woman’s perfume on his clothing? And it will only get worse when you’re distracted with mothering—you must know that.”

  He laughs as he stares at her. Oh, of course. He expects her to well up, maybe start crying. At least look hurt.

  She doesn’t look away as confusion fogs Abe’s expression at her indifference. She takes a moment to study him, the angles of his bony forehead, sharply turned nose—broken and reset from various altercations—hollowed cheeks, thin lips, jutting chin. Yet somehow, even with all the arrowed lines of his face cruelly gouging one another, there is more softness in his features than in the corpulent, fleshy face of her husband.

  She focuses on his deep-set, weary eyes. Usually, she thinks of them as empty, reflecting only whatever George wants to see in them. Abe—George’s perfect made man. Abe—George’s loyal enforcer.

  Now she sees something else—fear. Not of George.

  Of her.

  Because she’s managed to shake George’s faith in him?

  Or because she is not backing down, not trembling before him as everyone—except George, of course—always does?

  This prospect—that she could frighten Abe Miller—first thrills her.

  Then it triggers an impulsive plan, as she considers how fear clouds judgment, as does weariness, and Abe is suffering from both—otherwise, he’d know that as hard as he’s pinching her upper arm, she’ll have a bruise by this afternoon. And he’d know that George would not like him hurting his wife—not without it being an order, not when she’s pregnant.

  Fiona twists her arm, which of course makes Abe grasp harder.

  She snaps, “Let go of me now!”

  Abe tightens his grip. Yes, the bruise will be ugly and mottled by suppertime. So be it; she’ll recover. And so Fiona gives him a pinch-lipped sneer.

  Abe jerks her toward him, so close that she smells his sour breath, his cologne meant to mask body odor. No running water at the farmhouse, and when would he have had time to bathe anyway? But Abe’s slipping fastidiousness speaks to his distress.

  “You’re lying. And you’re lying about why you want to see Lily. I’m taking you back—”

  She grins wildly, so he can see the blood coating the inside of her lower lip—such a shocking, grotesque grin that it’s Abe’s turn to gasp.

  Fiona chuckles, the sound throaty, like she’s gargling her own blood. “If you do, I’ll tell George that my mouth got hurt because you hit me.”

  Abe’s free hand arcs over her, the trajectory of a hard slap.

  “Go ahead. The welt on my face will just prove your abuse. George is already angry enough with you—losing track of Luther. Not knowing why he ran off. How do you suppose he’ll react if he knows you hit his pregnant wife?”

  After a long moment, Abe’s hand floats slowly back down. He releases his grip of her arm. “Whatever game you’re playing, George will see through you sooner or later, and then he’ll—” He stops abruptly, grips the steering wheel so hard that his knuckles whiten as he stares out at the falling snow.

  “What? Have you take care of me, like you did the first Mrs. Vogel—no alimony payments that way!” The rash words shock Fiona even as she says them.

  Her heart races as he turns to look at her. She swallows hard, the iron taste of her own blood sickening. Has she gone too far? But she adds, “That’s what Klara told me yesterday morning. Hinted, anyway.”

  Well, no. But Fiona has no doubt, as Abe’s eyes narrow, that there might be some bit of truth in her wild conjecture. Or at least truth that Abe would be willing to go this far for George.

  Abe lets go of the steering wheel, reaches inside his jacket, tosses her a handkerchief. “Clean yourself up,” he says.

  Fiona notes that it’s one of Abe’s monogrammed handkerchiefs. She dabs blood from inside her lip, then bends down, slowly picks up the wrapped candies, one piece at a time.

  He grunts impatiently and backs up slowly, carefully onto the road, and by the time she’s sitting up he’s heading again toward Lily’s house. And the reassembled bag of candy is in her lap, the bloodied handkerchief folded and tucked in her pocket.

  “Why do you suppose Klara would say such a thing?” Fiona presses.

  Abe remains silent.

  “Do you suppose she was trying to make you look bad to me?”

  She side-eyes Abe, notes his forced concentration on the road. “Foolish, really. You’ve known George the longest.” She points this out to warm Abe to her, at least a tiny bit. Enough to see if, while he’s tired and disheartened about George’s flagging trust, he’ll share anything about Klara that she might be able to use later.

  “Maybe that makes her jealous of you.”

  Still no reaction.

  “Or maybe she’s jealous of me? I’ve seen the way she looks at George—all caring—”

  Abe’s laugh is so harsh that for just a moment Fiona pities Klara. “Sh
e’s old enough to be his mother,” Abe says. “And besides being distant cousins, Klara and his mother were good friends since childhood.”

  “George told me that he and his mother came here from Germany when he was a boy.” All that Fiona has been able to pry out of George is that he was seven when he arrived in America with his mother—he only referred to her, had never referenced his father or Klara’s family—and that they’d settled first in Chicago. That would have been in 1881. “Did Klara come with them?”

  “Yes. Along with George’s father, and Klara and her husband and son.”

  “But then—” Abe stops, his teeth clenching, as if he’s said too much, though he’s barely said anything at all. “What happened to George’s father, and Klara’s husband and son? George, well, he doesn’t talk much about his past—”

  “Ah, but you’ll have a long, long lifetime to get him to,” Abe says wryly. He ventures a glance at her abdomen. “As the mother of the son he’s always wanted.”

  Fiona stares out the window at the thickening snow, not in the least reassured by Abe’s comment. Once this child is born and is found to be healthy and strong, being the mother won’t safeguard her if she doesn’t meekly comply with George’s wishes.

  “So you came into George’s life well after Klara,” she says softly.

  “What?”

  “I’m just saying—Klara’s been in his life the longest. Has a connection to his mother. And I know that George reveres his mother.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So you’ve always been second fiddle to Klara.”

  Abe grunts, pulls out a cigarette and lighter. The automobile weaves as he lets go of the steering wheel long enough to light his cigarette. Fiona forces herself not to grab the dashboard. Mustn’t show fear. She nearly yelps, though, as the Model T again slides on an icy patch, but Abe rights it just at the edge of a ravine. She glances at him. Somehow, he’d managed to tuck his lighter away, and is now smoking as calmly as if he’d lit his cigarette in a parlor.