Lightning Storm

by Anne McAllister

  Scrambling out of the bed she hurried into Scott’s room where she had left her clothes, calling over her shoulder, ‘I’m glad you’re better then. I’ll just be on my way.’ Hot tears threatened to spill on to the carpet and she blinked them back furiously, swallowing the tight lump in her throat. God, talk about idiots! How could she have been so stupid as to offer herself like that? Her hands shook as she dressed and used Scott’s tiny comb to do a barely passable job on her hair. A glance in the mirror showed her a pale face with smudge rimmed eyes, a face she recognised from the early days after Paul’s death. Quickly she looked away, rolling her robe into a ball and looking about for her nightgown. Damn, she had left it in Jake’s room. Well, she certainly wasn’t going to go back for it. He could just add it to his souvenir collection. Maybe he’d see it and think of her sometime!

  ‘Hang on,’ he said, coming out of his bedroom buttoning up his shirt as she crossed the living room towards the door.

  ‘What?’ She didn’t stop walking.

  He moved to intercept her, nearly knocking over the chair between them. ‘I—I just wanted to say thanks,’ he said in a low voice, his eyes watching his bare toes with all-consuming interest.

  Torey stopped and glared. ‘Thanks?’ Her voice was high and shrill. ‘Thanks for what? Coming to get you? Pouring flour all over you? Sitting up with you? Going to bed with you? Making a fool of myself? Forget it! It’s all part of the service!’

  He lifted his hand to grab her arm but she jerked away, wrenching open the door and bolting down the stairs, leaving him white and ill-tempered in her wake.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Addie asked the moment she set eyes on her granddaughter.

  ‘Nothing.’ Torey swiped a hand across her eyes and headed for her bedroom, face averted.

  ‘Scott’s still sleeping in there,’ Addie’s voice drifted after her.

  Damn. She opened the door quietly, tossed her robe on the dresser and went back to the living room. ‘I’m going out for a walk,’ she told Addie, her eyes busy memorising the roses on the front hallway carpet.

  ‘Long night was it?’ Addie clucked sympathetically.

  ‘Very.’ An understatement if there ever was one.

  ‘How’s Jake?’

  ‘Back to normal.’ That was the truth at least. Torey turned and opened the door, needing to escape any more questions just then. ‘I’ll be back in a while,’ she said, knowing that Addie could hear the break in her voice and not even caring.

  She walked quickly down the pavement to the sand and jumped over the low wall to the beach. What had he said? ‘I married once for the wrong reasons.’ Well, that certainly spelled it out in no uncertain terms. He hadn’t loved Christy by his own admission, and obviously he didn’t love her either. Torey felt her heart tighten as she walked, the loose sand underfoot easier going than the emotional sand she was struggling through. She had been a fool to offer herself to him that way, a fool to think that they might make a good marriage just because she had come to love him. ‘I’d marry you,’ she had said. God, she cringed now at the thought, her cheeks burning with mortification at the remembrance of her fumbling, ill-worded attempt to give him her life and her love and of his abrupt refusal.

  So what was she going to do now? Going back to Addie’s and simply taking up where they’d left off seemed a complete impossibility. She’d never be able to look at him again. If she had felt mortified seven years ago, it was nothing compared to how she felt now. And he had had the nerve to say thank you! Her fingers itched to slap him. She had never met anyone else in her entire life who had had the power to make her want to curl up and die, and Jake Brosnan had done it twice!

  She hadn’t worn her swimsuit but she decided that it didn’t matter. What mattered was forgetting this burning feeling that she’d had ever since he’d leapt out of bed and said, ‘No.’ Heedless of her corduroy shorts and navy T-shirt, she flung herself into the surf, swimming hard against the waves, needing to pit her strength against something elemental and indifferent, something that, if it hurt her, at least did so unintentionally. She swam parallel to the shoreline until she was exhausted. Her breathing came hard and racy, exertion forcing her to take short gasps; but still she ploughed on, wishing for an oblivion she hadn’t wanted since she’d buried Paul.

  She wanted to cry, and maybe she did. The tears and salt water were indistinguishable. But no relief came, no feeling of having washed away her troubles, only a mindless exhaustion that brought her up short. She was much too far out, the people on the beach were no bigger than sand fleas. No matter how she felt, the oblivion she sought wasn’t the permanent sort. Get hold of yourself, she chastised herself firmly and turned shoreward. He’s only a man.

  Yes, she thought glumly, spitting out a mouthful of salt water, but he happens to be the man I love. The man who doesn’t love you, a tiny inner voice taunted. But he does, she thought with a glimmer of insight. I know he does.

  It was her first positive thought since she’d made her proposal of marriage, and it startled her so much she stopped stroking and promptly sank. Battling her way to the surface and shaking water from her eyes, she said it experimentally. ‘He loves me.’ The words felt strange. Foreign. ‘He does,’ she said with more conviction, tossing a strand of seaweed aside. Those were not only needs he had shown her last night. He had wanted her, yes, but there had been more to it than that. There had been a giving and a taking, sharing, loving. What had happened was not just the satisfaction of biological needs. It was a communing of spirits. Of souls.

  Then why had he said no? Well, she admitted, it had been an awkward proposal. She hadn’t had much experience at that sort of thing. And he had been half asleep. Maybe he needed time to think it over, to see how sensible and right their marriage would be.

  Dream on, she chided herself sarcastically. But what was wrong with that? A little dreaming, a little perseverance might be just what she needed now. True, her first inclination had been to turn tail and run back to Galena. But now she knew she couldn’t do that. She might be a fool for waiting, but who knew, maybe Jake Brosnan was one of the new breed of men, the ones who, like women, knew they had the prerogative to change their minds.

  ‘I was afraid you were haring off back east,’ Addie remarked when she came back.

  ‘Why?’ Torey looked up from where she was blow-drying her hair and met her grandmother’s eyes.

  ‘Because Jake’s out there packing his truck looking like the God of Thunder himself. He says they’re leaving for a spell. Going camping. I thought it might have something to do with you.’ She looked at Torey as though she expected her granddaughter to explain.

  Torey shrugged, feeling as though her horse had just been shot from beneath her. ‘It might,’ she said and set the drier down on the counter, went into her bedroom and closed the door. It was one thing for her to stand her ground and hope that Jake would come to his senses. It was another to realise that, even if she stood still, Jake might be the one to run. And what could she do about that? Nothing. Except hurt.

  Her eyes lifted and she saw him thunder down the stairs carrying a sleeping bag and a box of kitchen gear. Oh Jake. Tears welled in her eyes and angrily she wiped them away.

  ‘Addie tapped lightly on the door. ‘Going out to say goodbye?’

  ‘No.’ There was just so much rejection she could take. ‘I think I’ll take a nap,’ she said, grateful that her grandmother couldn’t see her red-rimmed eyes through the door. ‘I—I didn’t sleep much last night.’

  But she lay cocooned not in slumber but in pain. Her ears heard every trip Jake made up and down the stairs; they heard Scott’s high-pitched laugh and Jake’s lower, gruffer tones. She twisted on the bed, covering her ears with the pillow, swallowing the ache in her throat. When the knock on the door came, it was so faint she nearly didn’t hear.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked finally, sitting up and hastily drying her eyes. Didn’t Addie ever give up?

  ‘It’s me.’ Jake’s voice was
low and hesitant. ‘I—I came to say goodbye.’

  She rubbed the pillowcase over her face. ‘Goodbye.’

  The doorknob turned. She stared at it in panic. ‘Torey?’ He looked round the edge of the door, his deep-set eyes barely meeting hers before sliding away to stare instead at the picture of Paul.

  ‘I said, goodbye.’ It came out curt, almost angry. Good, she thought. I am angry.

  Jake shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. ‘I want to talk to you.’ He shifted from one burgundy and grey running shoe to another and made fists with his hands, tautening the fabric of his jeans. She wished he hadn’t—she didn’t need any reminders of the shape of his body or the power of his lean, muscled thighs. ‘I didn’t mean for things to turn out like this,’ he muttered at his toes. ‘I do appreciate your offer. Er, I’m sorry.’

  ‘I am too.’ Her voice was cold, flat. He couldn’t know how much she was hurting as she said it. She twisted the pillowcase in her hands. ‘Thank you for coming.’ She felt like the day she had listened to friends of Paul’s come to offer their sympathies. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, she could say. ‘Don’t let me keep you, Jake,’ she said finally, her eyes going pointedly to the door.

  Jake pressed his lips into a thin grim line, then bowed his head. ‘G’bye, Torey.’

  The words hovered in the air long after she had heard the truck drive away.

  The first really substantial snowfall came to Galena the night before Thanksgiving. It began as Torey finished helping her father with the milking, and the next morning it was still coming down. Even the weatherman was against her, Torey thought as she opened an eye and stared in dismay at the downy whiteness outside. She had endured a perfect autumn, ignoring leaves of flaming red and burnished gold, disliking crisp blue skies and Indian summer days. Only the bleak cold browns and greys of November touched a responsive chord in her, and now the sparkling snow eliminated even those. She groaned and pulled the scarf over her head.

  If possible she felt worse this Thanksgiving than the one after Paul had died. Death, after all, was irrevocable. You accepted what you couldn’t change and, however sadly, you went on. But Jake—how could she go on and forget Jake when he was still a living, breathing human being, still alive and still—God help her—loved?

  She had tried, of course, to forget him. When she got back to Galena two days after he had left to go camping, she had thrown herself into every cause and job imaginable. She had gone to quilting bees and euchre parties, attended Octoberfests and church festivals, even accepting the occasional invitation from Harlan or Vince though she never let them kiss her goodnight. She also sent out scores of applications for jobs to big east coast cities. Her mother questioned her sanity, but Torey only replied, ‘Last year you said I was vegetating,’ and, as this was true, her mother pursed her lips in disapproval but made no more remarks.

  Addie, of course, didn’t help Torey’s campaign to forget Jake. She wrote weekly to the family as a whole, but always with a postscript for Torey about the people she had met in California. For ‘people’, Torey thought, read ‘Jake’, for most concerned him. Nothing of a strictly personal nature, no testimonials about how gaunt and depressed he was, how much he pined for her to come back. Nothing that gave her that much satisfaction. Just reports on Scott in school, how Jake had finished the dragon book and was now working on another about a family with twelve children, how he had taken Scott to San Francisco. Just enough to whet her appetite, but never enough to make a meal on. The longer she was home, the more Torey was convinced that her grandmother had a sadistic streak.

  What were they doing for Thanksgiving? Torey wondered. Would Addie and Jake share it? She grimaced thinking about the day in store for her here. She did not want to spend a day in the cheerful bosom of her family. It took too many muscles to smile for hours and hours. Maybe by Christmas she would have a job in Philadelphia or Boston. Somewhere far away from Christmas cheer. And a whole continent away from Jake Brosnan.

  She dragged herself out of bed, already hearing her mother working at top speed in the kitchen preparing the turkey for the huge family gathering. Someone was chattering to her which meant that either one brother’s family had arrived from Chicago or the other and his fiancée were there from Texas. Everyone else was going to be so happy and cheerful that she felt like a complete witch. She made an ugly face at herself in the mirror. Stop being so selfish and rotten, she told herself firmly. Do you think Jake is even thinking about you today? Forget Jake, she thought as she tucked in her navy and white gingham shirt and fastened her jeans. Today is not a day to be miserable. Today you should count your blessings.

  Her blessings, in the form of an almost infinite number of relatives and friends, threatened to overwhelm her before the afternoon was over. The noise was unbearable, the joviality suffocating, and the heat from the oven enough to lay her flat out in a faint.

  Her mother seemed all too aware of Torey’s pallor. Even amidst her preparations of a salad for twenty-four she paused five times to inquire how Torey felt. ‘Fine,’ Torey lied with the regularity of an answering machine. But her mother looked at her sad face and deep-set shadowed eyes and shook her head. ‘Open the olives, dear,’ she said, handing Torey the cans, then turned to her sister-in-law, saying, ‘Torey spent the summer in California, Madge.’

  Aunt Madge took that as an excuse to talk about all the times she and Uncle Arnie had gone there, and Torey opened the olives and dumped them into a bowl, letting her aunt’s relentless commentary wash over her. ‘Movie studio,’ Aunt Madge rabbited on. ‘... lines that long. Terrible smog, I told Arnie.’

  ‘Oh heavens, I forgot,’ Torey blurted, thrusting the dish of olives into her aunt’s hand. ‘Dad asked me to muck out the barn.’ She made a dash for the door, shutting it behind her and leaning against it as if all the demons in hell were in pursuit.

  Once the stinging cold had cleared her mind, mucking out the barn didn’t seem like a half bad idea. If nothing else it suited her frame of mind. She slogged through the new fallen snow that clotted about her ankles, ignoring the small cousins pelting each other with snowballs, and slipped into the barn. Just as she did so she saw a late model silver car come round the bend in the gravel road. Just what she didn’t need. It was probably Harlan, come to take her out for a spin in his new car. He had been threatening to buy one for the entire two months she had been home. Just last Monday he had settled on a particular Oldsmobile and had called to ask her out for a ride. She hadn’t gone yet, and she was running out of excuses. Well, she thought with a giggle as she took down the shovel and headed for the biggest mess, he wouldn’t want to take her today. Not when she smelled like this!

  She began to shovel, the sheer physical labour gratifying her, but she was even more pleased when minutes passed and Harlan didn’t appear. She stopped to rest for a moment, leaning on the shovel with her chin on her hands, and wondered where Jake was now. Stop it, she told herself. ‘You’re hopeless,’ she muttered aloud, bending again to the task and hefting a particularly large shovelful of manure and tossing it in the direction of the door. It landed, she noted with consternation, on a pair of Etonic running shoes. Burgundy and grey running shoes. With feet in them. Jake’s.

  Stunned, her eyes ran rapidly up the legs of snug, well-worn blue jeans past a navy down waistcoat and soft red flannel shirt to settle on his lean, tanned face. It was every bit as gaunt and tired looking as she could have wished.

  ‘I was hoping for a better welcome than that,’ he said, a hesitant grin quirking up one corner of his mouth. ‘But I guess it’s the one I deserve.’ He looked nervous and vulnerable with his hands shoved in the pockets of his waistcoat and his head cocked to one side as he watched her with a mixture of emotions as complex as her own.

  ‘Jake?’ It was scarcely more than a whisper. She wanted to throw her arms around him, touch him, squeeze him, proving to herself that he was a real flesh-and-blood man and not the mirage she had been dreaming ab
out for months. But her feet were lead, anchoring her to the soft dirt of the barn floor, and all she could do was stare.

  ‘None other,’ he agreed, the grin gentling into a sad smile as he stepped out of the manure and gingerly shook his feet one at a time. ‘I thought,’ he began slowly as he straightened up and faced her squarely, ‘that you might like to know that you’re not the only one grown-up enough to apologise.’ His blue eyes were pleading, reaching out to her like rays of sun from the smudged, tired planes of his face. ‘I’m sorry I acted like such an ass.’

  ‘You—’

  ‘Let me say it. God knows it’s taken me long enough to get my life straightened out to where I finally felt I could come to you and actually do it.’ He kicked at the dirt, tracing a pattern in it with the toe of his shoe. ‘You were right about letting Christy have a chance to be with Scott. I did a lot of thinking while we were camping. I needed to get things together. I didn’t want to marry you because I needed you for Scott.’

  Torey’s heart, which had leapt for joy at the sight of him, abruptly crashed. He had come to apologise then, nothing more.

  ‘I didn’t expect you to follow my line of thinking on marriage so damned fast,’ he said ruefully, raking fingers through his hair. ‘I didn’t want to ask you to marry me for the wrong reasons. And then,’ he shrugged helplessly, ‘you did it for me.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Torey fumbled, unable to decide if she felt more foolish or confused. What was he trying to say?

  ‘You’re not supposed to apologise, damn it! I am!’ Jake growled, kicking one of the wooden uprights to emphasise his frustration. He glared at her and, since the only thing she could think to do was apologise again, she wisely shut her mouth.

  ‘I didn’t know how to face you that morning,’ he said. ‘I know I made a botch of it, but you gave me the answer to all my problems but for the wrong reasons. I thought you were offering to marry me out of pity. I knew you already had a good marriage to Paul, so I figured maybe you thought that this time you’d just do a good deed—rescue poor old Jake from his folly—’