“Perhaps you would like to show off your superior butterfly catching skills then,” he told her, tossing her the net. She caught it with one hand and threw her bottle of water to him with the other. He tossed it back in the cooler before following her back toward the lake. After chasing several butterflies and catching none, they finally decided that she was no better at butterfly capture than he was at fishing, at least not today.
“All right, well, I guess we better call it a day. I have to get over to the Richmond farm and help Ben out for a bit,” he told her.
“So, you work over there?” she asked as they headed back to the truck.
“No. Ben and I went to school together. It’s his parents’ place and they are getting older, so he’s been helping them out. I’ve just been pitching in here and there. They were out of town for a few days, and we stayed there and did some work around the house that needed to be tended to,” he told her. It was the first time he had not made eye contact while talking to her, and she wondered what it was about his activities at the Richmond farm he was hiding.
“You boys aren’t growing any special crops out on the back forty, are you?” she asked playfully.
“What? Man, no. Old man Richmond would tan our hides like he used to when we were little. He didn’t care if you were his kid or not. He figured he was doing your parents a favor by just taking care of the problem instead of putting it on their plate. That man has given me a whoopin’ many times when I was a boy.” He laughed.
“Wow. I can’t imagine any of my friends’ parents punishing me for something. They would have just sent me home,” she said.
“Good thing you didn’t hang out with the Richmond girls. Five girls and Ben. All of them have moved off and hardly ever visit. It just leaves Ben to take care of things around the place,” Cody said. It was obvious that he thought very highly of him.
“All right, well, let’s get out of here so that you can give Ben a hand,” she told him. On the way home, it occurred to her that he didn’t appear to be doing any work that paid. Though it was none of her business, she asked him what he was planning on doing once he left her aunt’s house.
“I’m looking for a place of my own, but I don’t really want a cramped little apartment somewhere. The closest thing they have to those here anyway are some tiny duplexes Rod Sanders built over by the highway. Damn things are so close to the road that they probably rattle when semi-trucks roll by. I had planned to move back in at my mother’s house and get the property around it ready for crops, maybe put some work into the barn and get a few chickens or goats to start with. That didn’t work out so well,” he told her.
“Right. I’m sorry.
“It’s okay. Things don’t stay a secret long in a small town. Since it happened, I’ve thought about moving, but I have ties to this place that keep me here.” He looked thoughtful as he said it, and Susan knew he had at least one secret that he wasn’t so open and honest about as he seemed to be about everything else, but he wasn’t going to reveal it. “There’s a little rundown place up off the highway that has gone into foreclosure. It’s going on the auction block in a couple of weeks, and I hope to buy it. I’ve got money saved up from my time in the military, and hopefully it will be enough to get it.”
“Sounds like a lot of demanding work,” she told him. “I can appreciate your putting your heart into something you really want, though.”
“Heart and soul. Ben will help me when he can, and I know some other folks that will pitch in. I just hope it works out. Otherwise, I’m going to have to just get a job and wait for something else to pop up, probably move into one of those rattling duplexes in the meantime. I just hate to throw my money away on rent when I could be using it to get my own farm, you know?”
Susan nodded, though, she really didn’t know. Renting was perfectly fine with her. If something went wrong, the landlord fixed it. If she didn’t like the place, she could give notice and move somewhere else without the hassle of trying to sell or rent to someone else. It worked for her, but she understood that there were a lot of people that preferred to own their place, and she could imagine that it was better to purchase a farm than rent one.
Chapter 14
Their laughter as they came in the door of her aunt’s house met with more quizzical looks. She offered to help him unload their things from the truck but he told her he had it, and she sat down at the table with her mom and aunt instead. They looked at her, as if waiting for her to share something about her morning with them.
“We didn’t catch anything – not even a butterfly,” she told them. It wasn’t exactly the kind of dirt they wanted to hear about her outing with Cody, but they also knew it was unlikely that they would get anything more out of her.
“Well, I made some sandwiches for lunch,” Aunt Mary said, getting up and heading off to the kitchen. On her way back, Cody came in with the cooler and emptied the ice out in the sink, rinsing it off and taking it back out with him. He snatched a sandwich from the tray in her hand as she walked back toward the table with it.
“Thanks, Mary. You’re my best girl,” he said, kissing her on the cheek and darting out the front door.
“He sure seems happy this morning,” Susan’s mother said, looking intently at her daughter.
“Sure does,” Mary repeated with a smile.
“Oh, you two! Stop it. Nothing happened between us. We fished and talked. That was it,” Susan told them. “You know that it’s too soon for me to even think about seeing anyone else.”
“What does that mean?” Aunt Mary asked.
“Oh, we haven’t told you about all of that yet,” Susan’s mother said. “Do you mind if I tell her, Susan?” Susan shook her head. She didn’t feel up to telling her Aunt Mary about Paul Brennan, but didn’t mind if her mother did. Staring at her hands, she listened while her mother shared how Paul had tracked her down somehow and wooed her into a relationship solely because she had his fiancées eyes, or at least, part of them.
“That is so weird. I mean, it’s not like he could see them. The cornea is clear, isn’t it? I mean, the surgery didn’t change your eye color. Were her eyes blue, as well?” Aunt Mary asked, looking toward Susan.
“No, they were brown. Almost the color of my contacts,” Susan said, almost to herself.
It was the first time that it struck Susan that Paul had never seen her natural eye color. Even when they slept over at one another’s place and when they had been in Paris, she always had either her contacts in or her glasses on. Unless he knew anything about the process, he had assumed her eyes were the almost golden-brown color of her contacts. From the pictures she had seen of Miranda, it was very close in color. So close that someone might chalk up any differences to the surgery somehow altering the original shade ever so slightly. He literally thought he was looking into Miranda’s eyes.
“Oh, my God!” Aunt Mary exclaimed even as Susan continued to mull over the fact that she had inadvertently only lent to Paul’s delusions about her similarity to his dead fiancée. “I saw him. He was at the hospital when you had your surgery!” Susan yanked her head up to stare at her Aunt Mary.
“What?” Susan asked.
“When you were in surgery, we were able to watch the procedure through the blinds outside. There was a man there watching along with us. I assumed that he was an intern or a student, though, he was a little older than I would expect. These days, people do go to school later in life sometimes, though. Anyway, he was watching your surgery,” she told them, describing the man she had seen. It was most certainly Paul.
“He was there during the implant?” Susan asked.
“Yes, and afterward. I saw him in the days that followed in the hallway,” she said.
“And you never said anything about this strange man watching her?” Susan’s mother offered.
“Well, no. Like I said, I thought he was supposed to be there. It never occurred to me that some strange man was just lurking about like that,” Aunt Mary finished.
Susan felt numb. Paul had not tracked her down. He knew where to find her all along. Susan was certain that he was the blurry figure she saw right after they took her bandages off, and now another memory was coming back to her. The sad man sitting near her room when she had left the hospital. The nurse had said he recently lost his fiancée and she didn’t know why he was there. It was Paul. He was there to watch her, and he had continued to watch her in the months that followed. How many times had she seen him here and there that she discounted? If he had not been forced to push her out of the way of the bike that day, would he still just be following her around?
“You mean he has been stalking her all this time?” her mother said, looking uneasily at Susan.
“It sounds like it,” Aunt Mary replied. Both women looked at Susan with bewildered expressions, but Susan’s heart and mind raced a thousand miles a minute. She wasn’t sure what she was feeling in that moment. Though she was angry about the way Paul had come into her life, she knew she loved him. Perhaps she hadn’t said those words to him, but it was true, and there was something about the way he talked to her, held her that seemed like so much more than just the need to keep someone who he used to love close to him in the only way he knew how.
“Maybe it started out that he just felt drawn to me because a part of Miranda now belonged to me and he was curious about me, but how far can you take an adoration for a pair of corneas if you no longer feel the connection with their previous owner? Perhaps, Paul was drawn to me because this small part of me was all he had left of his fiancée, but I can’t believe that alone is enough to have made him pursue more,” Susan told them.
“Susan, I don’t want you to get hurt by this man,” her mother said.
“Mom, I’ve already been hurt. The question is, am I willing to push aside that pain in order to find out why he has done this? If the answer is simply that he got caught up in the notion that I had her eyes and he saw her when he looked into these contacts I wear, then perhaps there is nothing for us. What if that isn’t the answer, though? What if the answer is that he saw something more? Maybe he let go of her and wanted to be with me?” Susan told her.
“How could you ever know if you are always a reminder to him?” her mother asked.
“There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about Dan. He was my best friend, and I will love him until the day I take my last breath, but I’ve learned to let him go and move on. I didn’t think I ever could, but then I met Paul, and I began to see that I could have a future with someone else. People die and their loved ones eventually move on,” Susan replied.
“Yes, but you had five years to grieve Dan. You let him go little by little. When did this man have the time to grieve? He launched himself into stalking and pursuing you. That’s not healthy. In a way, it’s almost sick,” Aunt Mary added.
“Perhaps we just all grieve in different ways and we just can’t understand the way another person processed their pain,” Susan offered. She wasn’t sure if she even believed what she was saying, but she was willing to give Paul the benefit of the doubt. He would have to make the first move. If he didn’t, then she felt he was giving her the answers she needed, but if he came to her, she would listen. She would hear him out and consider his side of things. She had to. She loved him, and that much was not in doubt.
“Obviously, I can’t tell you what to do. I am just cautioning you to tread lightly,” her mother told her with a concerned look.
“Thanks, Mom. I’ll be careful.” Susan smiled, biting into one of the sandwiches as she continued to ponder the situation with Paul.
Chapter 15
The rest of the week gave her little time to think with the constant banter between her mother and Aunt Mary about their lives growing up and pretty much everything else under the sun. They ate and shopped, got in a little sight-seeing, and visited other family members and old friends.
The only time she felt truly at ease seemed to be when she was with Cody. Part of the week was spent just hanging out with him either at the house, down by the stream, or in town. He was very easy to talk to, and even easier to look at, but she didn’t feel drawn to him that way for some reason. Perhaps it was just as she said: her heart remained with Paul. No matter what he had done, she was in love with him, and it hurt to be so far away and not know what he was doing or how he was feeling.
She and Cody had taken over the attic room for a bit while the rest of the household went out to eat dinner. Susan hadn’t really been hungry after snacking all day, and Cody had eaten with Ben. They were flipping through the eclectic stack of books her Aunt Mary had in her reading area and laughing at her penchant for romance novels.
“Do you think she has enough of them on hand?” Cody asked.
“Well, I guess, when you are married to a grumpy old guy like Uncle Tank, you crave a little romance in your life,” she replied.
“Ah, romance. It can be grand. It can be heart wrenching. What about you, Susan? Is there enough romance in your life?” he asked.
“Apparently not. That’s how I ended up on this trip.” Susan sighed.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“I met someone that I thought was wonderful. He made me feel alive like I never have before, and then I found out that it was only because these transplants that I have – they came from his dead fiancée,” she told him.
“What? That’s creepy. I thought they kept those things anonymous?” he said, sitting beside her on the loveseat but leaning in toward her.
“I did, too, but apparently there are ways to find out,” she told him, continuing to tell him the entire story.
“Wow. That is something else. Hey, can I ask you a question? Can I see the dots? I don’t know why I’m so fascinated by it, and I don’t mean to treat you like a freak show. I’d just really like to see them,” he said.
“All right. Hold on,” she said, reaching into her eye and popping out one of her contacts so that he could see beneath it.
“Your eyes are beautiful. Such a gorgeous color. It’s unusual. The dots are hardly noticeable, but I can see them,” he said, hovering only inches from her face. He leaned in closer, as if he was going to kiss her and she panicked.
“No! I mean, I can’t.” she screeched, jumping up from the couch and turning away from him. She popped her contact back in and pulled out the small bottle of special saline she kept in her pocket to make sure it was nice and moist before heading toward the steps to leave the attic.
“Wait, Susan,” Cody called after her, but she was already gone.
She avoided him as much as she could for the rest of the day and most of the next, but by the time evening rolled around, he had decided that she wasn’t going to ignore him anymore. There was a knock on her door as she lay in bed reading.
“Susan, are you in there?” he asked quietly.
“I’m busy, Cody. Sorry,” she said.
She knew she was being harsh, but she just couldn’t deal with her heartbreak and any mixed feelings that might be stirred by a kiss shared with Cody. Even though she and Paul were on the outs, it still felt like she would be betraying him if she were to be anything other than friends with another man.
“Please, Susan. I won’t stay long. I just want to talk to you,” he said.
“Okay, just for a minute,” she told him, pulling the blankets up and over her as he turned the door knob and opened the door to step inside.
“You and I just keep getting off on the wrong foot, I’m afraid. First, the naked thing, and then the kiss thing. I wasn’t trying to kiss you,” he said. “Not that you aren’t an attractive girl. You are beautiful. You just aren’t my type. I was only trying to get a closer look at the dots.”
Susan felt ashamed suddenly. She had just assumed that he was trying to kiss her when his face had come so close to hers and she had been so bent out of sorts about it that she hadn’t given him a chance to explain.
“I’m sorry, Cody. I’ve just been so messed up lately, and I didn’
t want to confuse things more. I thought you were going to kiss me, and I overreacted,” she told him.
“Listen, let me put you at ease. I feel like I can trust you for some reason. You and I seem to have a connection where we can share things without fear of judgment. I think I can confide in you about myself without having to worry what you might to say to someone else about it,” he told her.
“Yes, you can, Cody. I think that you and I have a rare connection, for whatever reasons,” she told him softly. He sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at her as he seemed to mull something over in his mind.
“The bar fight that I got into…it wasn’t because I was angry about my mother’s new boyfriend moving into our place. I mean, don’t get me wrong, that stuck in my crawl like I can’t tell you, but mother made that decision, and I can’t blame him for her poor choices. Anyway, I punched him for something he said,” he told her.
“What did he say, Cody?” she asked, reaching instinctively for his hand.
“He told me that my father probably died from shame over having a fag for a son,” Cody said in almost a whisper. Susan’s eyes widened a little as that sank in a bit.
“You’re gay,” she stated flatly, “and your mother told him.”
“Yes. Mom and Dad found out when I was home on leave from the military several years ago. They walked in on me with someone. We were only kissing, but the fact that it was a guy almost killed them,” he said.
“Ben?” she asked, filling in the final piece of the puzzle.
“Yes, Ben. Ben and I have been lovers since we were in ninth grade. We both dated girls and pretended we were something that we weren’t, rather than accept who we were, but we always knew. We went our separate ways for a while. I joined the military, and Ben went to college, got married and tried to convince himself he was straight. His wife divorced him within six months, and he was back here on the farm with his folks. Then I came home, and we picked up where we left off,” he said.
Dragon of Central Perk (Exiled Dragons Book 11) Page 9