Happier in
death . . .
Panicky desperation growing in her chest,
Allie clawed at the weed with her bare fingers, trying to dislodge
it, driving earth and grass blades under her nails. She wanted to
run away from this place and this moment, but she had to pull out
the weed. Perspiration beaded at her temples and between her
breasts. Her hair worked loose from its pins and the breeze picked
up the freed tendrils around her shoulders. Suddenly a shadow fell
across her and Lucinda Ford’s headstone.
“
I’ll dig that out if you want, Allie.
It’ll take a shovel.”
Allie’s head snapped up and she found Jeff
Hicks looming over her, holding a burlap sack. Behind his head, the
afternoon sun gave him a blinding halo so that she couldn’t see his
face. “Dig what?”
“
That weed.”
“
N-no, I can manage fine, thank you.”
She couldn’t reveal how unnerving it was to have him so close, how
confusing. “You just go back to your chores,” she ordered in her
best brisk voice. “God knows there’s plenty to do.”
He dropped to a crouch across the grave from
her, his elbow resting loosely on his knee. His black eye had faded
from purple to green and yellow, but it did nothing to detract from
his good looks, damn him. The sleeves of his old shirt were rolled
up and she glanced at his forearms, dusted with hair that sparkled
golden in the sun. The front of the garment still gaped open, and
she couldn’t help but shift her gaze to the expanse of bare chest
and belly just three feet away from her. When he put the sack
between them, though, she stared at it, terrified of what might be
inside.
“
Allie, I need to talk to
you.”
No, no, she didn’t want to talk to him.
Didn’t he realize that she wanted to avoid him? That he shouldn’t
even be on this side of the fence, talking to her across her
mother’s grave? What would her father say? She stuffed the torn
leaves and stem into her apron pocket. “Have you finished the front
yard?”
He nodded. “Listen, the other morning in the
barn—”
“
Well, the fence along the road isn’t
right yet.” She knew it was a lie.
He straightened his shoulders. “That fence is
as even as it was the day it was put in!”
“
It needs fixing. Some of the posts
wobble.”
“
No they don’t. I reset the loose
ones.”
“
They all need painting.”
Jeff let out a gusty sigh. He knew what Allie
was doing, dancing him around like this. She might blame him for
that morning in the barn, but she couldn’t pick his work apart.
He’d be damned before he’d let her. “Those posts have never been
painted. Give me one reason why in hell they need it now.”
“
Because I want you to do it. That’s
the only reason you need. Don’t compound your mounting sins by
adding disobedience to the list.”
“
Disobedience!” he barked. “Allie, I’m
not a boy and I’m not your slave. I’m a grown man, goddamn it, and
I want you to treat me like one!”
She kept up her frantic digging, reminding
him of a dog trying to bury a bone. “You work for me, Mr. Hicks.
Sheriff Mason brought you here to do as I say. And so you shall.”
She looked as starched and self-righteous as a minister’s collar,
and she made it plain that the conversation had ended. But he had
the proof of his innocence in the burlap sack, and he was
determined that she would hear him out.
“
I finally figured out why you’re so
goddamned picky!” he stormed.
A rosy stain spread across her cheeks and
nose. “That’s no great mystery! I pay a fair wage, I expect an
honest job.”
He shook his head, “Oh, no, that isn’t it.
This” —he gestured at the house and the yard—“is the only part of
your life that you can control. The rest of the time your sister
has you dancing to her fiddle.” There. It was out.
Allie looked as indignant as if he’d slapped
her hand. “How dare you say such a thing? Olivia is frail and
sickly—I have to take care of her.”
“
Bullshit! Let’s talk about frail,
sickly Olivia.” He grabbed the sack and pulled out the shirt she
had made for him and a wadded length of fabric. He unfurled the
latter like a bedroll to reveal the gray gingham dress the dummy
had been wearing that morning in the barn. Feathers and bits of the
straw it had been stuffed with still stuck to it here and there.
“Whose dress is this?”
Allie made a strangled noise. “Wh-what—”
The color drained from her face but Jeff knew
he must plunge ahead. Being guilty of his own bad deed gave him
enough sleepless nights—he refused to carry the blame for this one
too. “Is this Olivia’s dress?”
She didn’t answer right away. The breeze
sighing through the trees seemed almost deafening while he waited
for her response. “No,” she whispered, finally. Her mouth looked
soft and vulnerable. “It was my mother’s.”
As he suspected. “Do you know where it’s been
all these years?”
“
In a trunk in the attic. All of Mama’s
things are up there. My father couldn’t bear to look at them after
she— He made me take them up there.”
Jeff’s suspicions were nearly confirmed. Just
one more piece to the puzzle— “So then, what do you know about
this?” He opened the chambray work shirt and displayed its collar
and yoke, lined with the same gray gingham.
Allie’s gaze switched back and forth between
the shirt and the dress, obviously trying to comprehend what they
showed her. She stretched out a shaking hand to touch the shirt,
then with drew it, pressing it to her mouth. “Oh, dear God.”
“
You made this shirt,
right?”
She touched the garment again, plainly
rattled. “I-I didn’t have enough chambray to finish— I used a
couple of scraps I found in the trunk—”
“
Did you hang that dummy in the barn,
Allie?”
“
Of course not! God in heaven, why
would I do something like that?”
“
A good question. Here’s another one—if
you didn’t do it, and I didn’t do it, who does that
leave?”
She looked up at him with such profound
bewilderment and hurt in her eyes, for the space of a heartbeat he
wished he could take back all of this. What did it matter if he had
another black deed against his name? Compared to his real crime,
this would be nothing. But then he realized that this went beyond
clearing himself. Allie had the right to know the truth.
Still on her knees, she backed away from him
a pace or two, grinding the turf into her skirt. “No, it can’t be.
I don’t believe it.”
He reached out to take her wrist, trying to
soften the blow of his words. She didn’t shake him off, but stayed
there on her knees, as rigid as a statue. “Allie, honey, you know
it’s true. Olivia put that thing in the barn, and then arranged for
me to show it to you, telling me you’d love to see the swallow’s
nest. She even told me to have you close your eyes before I took
you in there so I wouldn’t give away the ‘surprise’. She knew you
wouldn’t go in there any other way.” He went on to repeat the
events leading up to that God-awful morning.
“
She probably forgot that I won’t go in
there. I’m sure she did.”
“
She didn’t forget.”
Allie regarded him and pressed her mouth into
a tight line. “She must have.”
He shook his head. “She can’t have forgotten
if she made the dummy. And it looks like she did—she’s the only one
besides you who knows where to find your mother’s dresses.”
“
Maybe she just wanted to scare you,
and she didn’t remember that I won’t go in—there.”
“
How long has it been since you were
last in the barn?” He asked gently, but the question felt like a
saber slicing through her.
“
Not since my father— ” Even after all
these years, she shrank from the memory. Those black nights, alone
in the darkness, the musty smell of hay and
dampness . . . she shuddered. “Not for
years.”
Lightly, he reached out and gripped her upper
arms. She felt his warmth through her thin sleeves. “Do you think
Olivia would forget something like that?”
She pulled away from his hands. “Yes!” She
couldn’t endure the thought of any other reason.
But Jeff wasn’t pushed away so easily. “Not
likely.”
“
Oh, sweet Jesus,” she moaned, her
breath coming in short bursts. Of course he was right. She knew he
was right and it all fit together to make sense. Whatever kind of
man Jeff might be, whatever sins he had committed in his life, he
was not really a cruel person. She had sensed that all along. This
dress was what had made the dummy seem even more familiar than the
memory, and had nagged at the back of her mind. Contrition swamped
Allie. She’d said harsh things to him that morning, and accused him
of a terrible deed. “Jeff, I’m sorry. I apologize for Olivia, and
I’m sorry I didn’t believe you that morning.”
His eyes looked as deep as a mountain lake.
“Don’t apologize for your sister. She isn’t a child, Allie.”
“
I can’t understand why she would do
such a thing.”
“
It seems pretty obvious to me. She
wants me out of here.”
“
But Olivia knows we need help to get
the home place fixed up. I’ve told her that so many
times.”
“
It doesn’t matter. I’m guessing she
thinks I somehow threaten her way of life.” He shifted his weight.
“That maybe I’ll steal you away from her.”
“
Steal me away— But that’s
ridiculous!”
Jeff looked at her kneeling there, the
afternoon breeze ruffling wispy copper curls that framed her face
and trailed along her white throat. She had no idea how pretty she
was—like a rosebud that had never been allowed to bloom. Jeff could
only guess at the beauty that would emerge if Allie were given the
chance to blossom. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, I guess
it does sound ridiculous. I don’t have a thing in the world to
offer a woman.” A bitter pang shivered through him. “But someday
another man, a more worthy man, is going to come along who will
want you. I think your sister knows it better than you do.”
Allie shot to her feet so quickly it startled
him, and fairly jumped over the low fence surrounding the graves.
“If Olivia thinks that, I have to do everything in my power to
reassure her.” She glanced back at the house. “It will never
happen! Never. I promised I’d stay with Olivia always. Anyway, I
can’t talk about that, especially not in—in there.” She gestured at
the headstones and plunged into the tall grass and strode toward
the house, stumbling over tussocks as she went.
Jeff stuffed his evidence back into the
burlap sack and stepped over the fence to catch up with her.
“Allie, wait.” He gripped her slim arm and turned her around. “Why
would you make a promise like that? You’re not doing your sister a
favor by letting her get away with this. She has to be made
accountable for her actions, just like everyone else in the world.
What if you weren’t here tomorrow? How do you think she'd manage?
You’re sacrificing your whole life to take care of someone who
should be making a life of her own.”
Allie wrenched her arm from his hand. “You
don’t know what you’re talking about! You don’t know what I did—how
bad I am! Olivia needs me, and what I took from her I can never
make up.” Her face crumpled, mirroring a soul that was perhaps even
more tortured than his own.
Dropping the sack, instinctively Jeff pulled
her into his arms, to somehow shelter her from whatever devils
beset her. “Allie, honey,” he murmured against her ear, “don’t be
so hard on yourself. What could you have done that’s so
terrible?”
“
Don’t do that. Don’t touch me that
way,” she demanded.
“
Why not?”
“
Because I’m afraid.”
“
Afraid?” He released her. “Of
me?”
She took a deep breath. “No! Of myself. Of
how you make me feel and how often I think about you.” She yielded
for a moment then, leaning against him as if she had no strength
left to stand on her own. He closed his arms around her again. “You
don’t know how bad I am,” she repeated, her voice breaking. “I
can’t begin to tell you.”
She was soft and lithe in his embrace, and
faintly fragrant of lavender. The swell of her breasts against him
brought blood pounding to his groin. The effect almost startled
him—hell, except for his dealings with Allie, it had been longer
than he realized since he’d been close to a woman. The wind blew
over the grass in waves, flattening the blades to reveal their
silvery undersides. It tugged at the loose curls around her face
and the afternoon sun caught glints of ruby fire in the strands.
Her lips—he’d kissed them and he knew they were as soft and as
inviting as they looked now. Jeff felt a balm on his own injured
spirit just to touch her. A man might have half a chance to turn
his life around with Allie Ford standing beside him.
“
I don’t think you’re bad,” he murmured
against her hair. “Maybe you’re just tired. You’ve hauled a lot of
responsibility for a long time, I think.” The last few years had
been lousy for him, but of his own making. Despite Allie’s
protests, though, he suspected that her troubles were a legacy
she’d inherited. He took her face between his hands and looked into
her eyes. “If I had my way, if I could change everything that
happened in the years that came before now, I’d do it, and take the
burden off your shoulders.”
She gazed up at him, and her bossy,
self-reliant mask slipped. “You would?” He saw a wistful innocence
that made his heart ache for her.