by K. A. Tucker
“People think I’m just some stupid money-grubbing wife, that I don’t know what he’s doing. Or that I should just look the other way and go shopping.” A bitter chuckle escapes her lips. “I don’t even like shopping. I’d take a husband who loved me over all the money in the world.”
I hardly know her, but I believe that she’s telling the truth. “And what’d he say about it?”
She pauses. “Nothing. I haven’t mentioned it.”
“Are you going to?”
I almost miss her head shake, it’s so slight. But then she touches her cheek, her eyes drifting.
And it clicks.
“You’re afraid of what he’ll do.”
“Viktor doesn’t take well to accusations.”
Has she made that mistake before and learned her lesson? Do I want to know? I chew on that question until the words crumble in my mouth. “If he’s screwing around on his beautiful, young wife, I’d hate to see what life’s going to be like for you down the road.”
There’s a pause and then she asks, so faintly I almost miss it, “You think I’m beautiful?” Somehow I can tell it’s not a fishing expedition; somehow, she hasn’t figured out that she is.
I keep my head down, quietly taking notes in my notebook.
After a while, when Alex doesn’t say anything else, I hazard a glance over my shoulder to find her sitting cross-legged in the folding chair with her textbook in hand, watching me. Her eyes drop to her lap instantly.
“How did you and Viktor meet?”
“My mother owned a small cleaning business. I worked for her, scrubbing strangers’ toilets and washing floors, before and after school and on weekends, long before I was legally old enough to do so. Viktor was a client; he has a condo in Seattle. I was seventeen when I met him.” A sad smile curls her lips as she reminisces. “I was terrified of him at first. Sometimes, I’d prepare meals and leave them in the fridge. I love to cook and he’d leave me extra cash for having dinner ready for him. Then, he started leaving roses for me every week, with the cash. One day, he offered to treat me to dinner and I said yes. He was kind and handsome and made all kinds of promises about taking care of me, paying for me to go to college. He said I’d have nothing to worry about.” She shrugs. “I was naïve, and I had too many memories of waking up cold and hungry because we couldn’t pay the bills. The last thing I wanted to do was follow in my mother’s footsteps, working my fingers to the bone and collapsing in bed from exhaustion every night. I wanted more for my life and he was offering it. So, I took it. We got married just after my eighteenth birthday.” Her chin dips down as she focuses on a spot on the ground, her voice soft and mocking as she admits, “He seemed like Prince Charming and I felt like Cinderella.”
“And now?”
“And now . . .” The two simple words crackle over her rising emotion. She pauses, her chest puffing out with a deep, slow breath that she releases with her eyes closed. “Now I don’t believe in fairy tales. Or at least, not in the happily-ever-afters that Disney brainwashed us all with.”
I open my mouth, the urge to tell her that the night at The Cellar wasn’t the first place we met overwhelming. But I rein it back as a new thought springs to my mind. Maybe she doesn’t want to remember that night. Maybe she regrets that night. Maybe she’d be too embarrassed to sit out here with me. That would suck, because I’m enjoying getting to know her, as depressing as the topic of her marriage is.
When her eyes lift, there’s a hopelessness in them that she’s kept firmly veiled until now. She stares at me, through me, beyond me to somewhere I can’t reach. But I hold her gaze, trying to follow.
In slow motion, she shuts her book. “Neither of us is going to get any work done. I should get going.” At the door she stops. “Good night, Jesse.” The tone of her voice is so soft, so sad, and yet so unbelievably sexy, I can’t even form the simple words to answer her.
Thirty minutes later, struggling to focus because every slight noise has my eyes darting to the door, I finally pack up and leave.
FOURTEEN
Jane Doe
now
A stranger stands before me in the dark, only the outline of his jaw visible. He is faceless, nameless. And yet I know that I know him.
I reach up, my fingers gliding over his masculine features, reading them like a blind woman. Regardless of what my eyes cannot confirm, I know that he is beautiful. I find his lips, soft and parted. I marvel at the feeling of air drawing through them, at the quickening of his breath.
Like a cord severed by a swinging axe, our connection breaks, leaving me cocooned in cold dread.
“No one will ever touch you again,” he hisses.
That voice belongs to another faceless figure hovering over me.
And I know I am about to experience pain like I have never felt before.
I bolt upright in bed, the whispered promise swirling around me like a suffocating smoke, making me gasp and cough and claw at my throat for air. I will myself to breathe in and out as my surroundings come into focus, my heart hammering against my chest. What was that? Just a bad dream?
Or . . . was that a memory?
Because I can’t deal with any more memories like that.
I fold my arms around my stomach and clutch myself until my breathing calms, rocking back and forth, the creaky springs in the mattress producing a rhythmic sound that slices through the night’s silence.
Sliding out of bed, I pad over to the woodstove, pulling my pajamas tight to ward off the cold. The fire that Sheriff Gabe helped me light earlier now burns low. I chuck two more logs in and then head to the kitchen for a glass of water, my eyes drifting toward the window and a spotlight shining from the front of the Welleses’ garage. I peer out and see a lean but solid frame pass through it, several pieces of wood cradled within his arms. It’s Jesse and he’s heading toward the property line. He throws a leg over the rickety old fence.
Definitely more than a pinky toe. Ginny would be freaking out.
He disappears from view just below my window. Only for a few seconds, though, and then he reappears empty-handed. Climbing back over, he collects more wood from the neatly stacked pile against their garage before repeating the trek.
Sheriff Gabe warned that nights would be cold for another two months and I could use whatever I need from their stock. I figured I’d be the one collecting tomorrow. I definitely didn’t think that meant his son would be doing it for me at . . . A glance at the clock shows me that it’s after three in the morning! I ease myself up onto the counter, curling my good leg under me to get comfortable, while my injured one hangs free.
And I watch Jesse Welles, the boy who somehow earned Ginny’s wrath, bring me my firewood in the middle of the night.
“One of these days I’m going to learn how to ride you . . . Felix,” I murmur, curling the massive horse’s crimped brown mane of fur around my fingers. And then I start giggling.
“I know. Ginny’s a bit eccentric, isn’t she?” Amber says, running a brush against the black horse’s mane as it drinks from the stream that runs through the corral, just behind the barn.
“If she had her way, I’d be named Felix, too.” Meredith wasn’t kidding about Ginny’s peculiarities. It isn’t enough that her cat and her dog are both named Felix. When I heard the barn doors rattle open this morning at precisely eight a.m., I rushed down to see how I could help. I found Ginny at the far end, standing in front of a stall, wearing rubber boots and a stern frown, a pitchfork in her hand. It took some convincing her that my limpy leg, as she called it, wouldn’t hinder my ability to “muck the stalls.” Then she had to teach me what “mucking the stalls” meant.
Nothing about these horses—the smell of their stable, the sound of the millet filling their trough, the sheer size of them as I stand next to them—feels second nature to me. I have to assume that I don’t have a lot of experience with these sorts of animals. I do know that I was exhausted after cleaning out just one stall. If all sixteen stables were fille
d . . .
It was while changing out the buckets for fresh water that I noted the horseshoe hanging above the stable door. And the name “Felix” etched into it. Stifling my laugh, because Ginny was busy in the black-and-white horse’s stall, I glanced over to see a matching “Felix” above that one, too.
Sure enough, both horses are named Felix.
“I can teach you how to ride if you want,” Amber offers, reaching over to slap the brown-and-white Felix’s side. “This one’s more tolerant of riders.” He answers by nuzzling against her neck, making her giggle.
“Was the barn ever full?”
“Yeah. It was really something to watch. The horses would run laps around the corral.” She waves her hand, tracing an imaginary path in the air. “Ginny’s father, Mr. Fitzgerald, loved horses. When I was eight, he convinced my parents to get me my own. He let me stable her here for free. I named her Pegasus.”
I nod, remembering seeing that name etched into one of the horseshoes above an empty stable. All of the stables still have names above them, except for one giant one on the end, which Ginny says is for foaling. There are five more Felixes—I know who named those—along with a myriad of others, some names cute like Licorice and others more stately, like Triumph and Retribution.
“What happened to her?”
“She died of colic when I was eighteen. I cried for a week straight. I’ll get another horse one day. When I’m back from traveling. If Ginny’s father had been alive when Pegasus died, he would have convinced me to get another one right away.” She sighs, switching brushes for a round one to begin rubbing the horse’s body in a circular motion. “I was so sad when that man died. He was like a third grandpa to me.”
I copy Amber with a second round brush, running it around Felix the Brown’s midsection. “What was he like?”
“Fat and jolly,” she says with a wistful air. “Ginny’s mom was nice too, but much quieter. I don’t think they knew what to do with Ginny. I used to be afraid of her, growing up. I didn’t understand why she is the way she is. I still don’t, really.”
We groom the horses in silence, until their coats shine and Amber has shown me how to clean their hooves.
Tossing the tools into the wooden box we carried out with us, I reach down to clean my hands in the stream, my fingertips going numb within seconds of being submerged in the cold water. Still, it’s refreshing. I don’t pull them out, watching the current as it flows freely over a bed of smooth stones.
“Water.”
I smile, catching on right away. “Tattoo.” I’m sure she could have guessed that that would be the first word to pop into my head. What neither of us knows—what no one knows—is why I have a tattoo of “water” on my pelvis. Was it an arbitrary choice? It certainly isn’t a common choice, like a bird or a butterfly. So there must be a reason for it. Something important enough to permanently mark myself with a symbol representing it.
That’s what I want to believe, anyway.
“This stream runs off the snow from the mountains. It’ll be bone dry by midsummer.”
I frown. “But it’s, what, six feet wide?”
“Summers get dry around here,” she laughs. “We also have a lake about a half mile back, that way.” Amber points into the wilderness. “You should take a walk out there one day.”
“I will.” My leg can certainly use the exercise. It’s bad enough that I have a giant scar running down the length of my face. I’d really like this limp to go away, and the only way that’s going to happen is by strengthening it.
“We’ll go camping by the lake when it’s warm enough. I haven’t done that in a couple of years, but I miss it. The stars are unreal.”
Have I ever gone camping?
Her eyes roll over the field to our left, covered in pale yellow flowers. “In another month or two, everything will turn brown.”
“It’ll still be beautiful, though.”
“Yeah.” She nods in agreement. “Sisters may be small but it’s a great town, with lots of nice people. Just wait until the summer. We have a big rodeo, and a quilt fair. Lots of tourists come through for the mountains . . . If you drive up there, you’ll see the wildflowers. There are literally hundreds of different kinds.”
I inhale the fresh air, Amber’s words drifting off as my thoughts wander. Will I still be here for all of that? I hope that I am. This place feels like it fits me somehow.
I pull my fingers out of the stream, red from the brief exposure, and stand. “This water is freezing!”
“Yeah, and it doesn’t warm up much. Jesse and I used to swim in it as kids. We’d be blue when we came out, even in the middle of summer.”
Jesse.
“Hey, Ginny doesn’t seem to like your brother much, does she?” I play my curiosity down by picking up a stone and tossing it, creating a small splash.
“You think?” she mutters wryly. “Why? What’d she say?”
“She didn’t. She just called him a ‘bad egg’ and told me to stay away from him.”
“That’s probably not bad advice.” I feel her eyes on me. “When we were in grade school, we still hung out together a lot. Had some of the same friends. But then we got to high school and Jesse started hanging out with trouble. The ‘riffraff,’ my dad called them. The kids who got arrested for drugs, and stealing, and vandalism. Two of them are in jail now.” I look over to see her face twisted in disgust. “Can you imagine how that looked for my dad? Everyone knows our family around here. Some of the stuff that happened . . . I’ve never seen my mom cry like that over anything before.”
“So Jesse did all that stuff too?” The guy who brought me all that wood might also steal from me?
Amber shrugs. “I mean, he smoked pot, but not the other stuff. It was just bad enough that he was around it. Stupid teenage boy syndrome. I know he got teased a lot about being the sheriff’s son. People were always nervous around us, thinking we’d rat them out if they did something wrong. It wasn’t as hard on me, though. Probably because I’m a girl.
“Anyway, my dad and Jesse have been butting heads for years, but they haven’t been too bad lately. Jesse’s got problems with being controlled and my dad has problems with not being in control.” Giving Felix the Black a gentle slap on the hind, Amber starts walking toward the house, box of grooming supplies in hand. “I have to get going to work.”
I follow, leaving the horses to graze.
“I think my dad wanted to talk to you about that new ID.”
Yeah, I want to talk to him about that too. “I need to give him a new name before he can finish up the paperwork.”
Amber yanks a flower from the ground, twirling it between her fingertips. “I can’t imagine naming myself. It’d be weird. What were you thinking of?”
“I have no idea. But I should come up with something soon. I’ll be meeting new people, hopefully getting a job. I don’t want it to be as Jane anymore.”
“My mom mentioned something about asking Dakota for a job.”
That art store that takes Ginny’s quilts. “She said Dakota went to school with you?”
“Yeah . . .” Amber hesitates, and I can tell she wants to tell me more.
“What is it?”
“It’s just, she’s nice enough, but . . .” She cringes. “No. I’ll let you form your own opinions. But if she offers you brownies, just say no.”
I frown. “What’s wrong with eating her brownies?”
Amber shakes her head but doesn’t answer that. “Just remember to keep the information about yourself to yourself, okay? She grew up in this town, so knowing everyone else’s business and spreading it is in her blood. Figure out a story about who you are to Ginny and stick to it. God knows the whole town will be buzzing when they learn the Crazy Tree Quilt Lady has someone living with her.”
“So lie?”
“Yes. Pretty much. Otherwise everyone will come up with their own stories about you.” I turn to catch her eyes on the side of my face, on my scar. Amber and Meredith are j
ust about the only two people I’m not self-conscious around. They’ve both seen me at my worst. But the idea of new eyes—so many new eyes—on my face for the first time makes my shoulders tense up.
We’re just passing the barn when a slam cracks the quiet, followed by the low rumble of an engine. An inexplicable warmth flows through me. Somehow I know that’s Jesse’s car. It has to be. Ginny was ranting about how loud it was yesterday. I don’t mind the vibration deep in my chest, though. I actually like the feel of it. It’s somehow . . . comforting.
We round the side of the barn to find Ginny hanging off the edge of her porch with a quilt grasped in her fingers, a scowl on her brow as she glares over at the Welles property. Her lips are moving fast, to no one in particular. Complaining to the mangy dog behind her about Jesse, probably.
The black sports car pulls into view with Jesse in the driver’s seat, his crisp white shirt a stark contrast to his olive complexion and short, ash-brown hair. I can see both Meredith and Gabe in him, though he has certainly acquired his father’s bottomless gaze.
A bottomless gaze that’s settled on me. Even from this distance, I can feel its intensity.
He raises the hand that’s on his steering wheel. It’s not exactly a wave, but it’s as close to a “hello” as he has given me so far.
I instinctively look toward Ginny and find her glaring at me now.
When I turn back, Sheriff Gabe is standing next to Jesse’s car, in his uniform. He slaps the roof of his son’s car and points in the direction of the road. As if he’s kicking him out.
With a flat glare toward his father and one last quick glance my way, Jesse guns the car, his tires kicking up rocks and dirt. The engine tears into the silence as he speeds away, and I watch the rectangular taillights disappear past the house.
“Guess I’ll be seeing ya, brother,” Amber mutters. She reaches out to pinch my elbow. “I’m working an afternoon stretch this week, so you won’t see me much. Text or call if you need anything.” I watch her leave, intentionally avoiding the glower I can feel boring holes into my back from the porch. I didn’t do anything wrong! Maybe if I stand here long enough, Ginny will forget.