“That’s because we didn’t finish,” Katherine said. “All Adrian wanted to do was play, so I decided we might as well come on out here. I’ll finish the dishes later.”
Karin looked at Adrian and laughed. “Why, I swan, Adrian, I do believe you’ve got a bit of the tease in you.”
“I do,” he said happily, “at times.”
The conversation settled in like an old hen setting on her twentieth batch of eggs, turning as it often did to stories of their childhood and times long past. But after a while the laughter died away and things grew quiet once again. “Well,” Katherine said, rising to her feet and leaving Adrian sitting on the porch steps alone, his back to Alex and Karin in the porch swing. “I best be getting those dishes finished.”
“What’s your hurry?” Adrian asked, swiveling around and looking up at her. “I kinda like sitting on the steps with you Don’t you want to visit a while longer?”
“No, I hate teary goodbyes.”
“This one isn’t teary,” he said, coming to his feet and holding open his arms. “Come tell me goodbye.”
“It’ll be teary if I stay, and I hate goodbyes,” she said, then flinging her arms around his neck she kissed him on the cheek and said, “Take care of yourself, Adrian.”
“I will,” he said, but Katherine had already turned away.
“You too,” she said, giving Alex a quick peck on the cheek. Alex nodded.
Katherine disappeared inside the house, knowing the only way she was going to avoid crying was to lose herself in the mess in the kitchen, which she did, all the while trying to keep her thoughts of a positive nature. Soon the dishes were washed and dried, the floor swept, the new cloth put on the table. With a satisfied sigh, Katherine looked around the neat kitchen and gave a sigh of approval, her hands going behind her to untie her apron.
“Hello, sweet Katherine.”
Katherine jumped, just as she felt warm hands cover over hers to take the apron ties and give them a yank. She turned to see Alex pull it from her waist. She took the apron from him and folded it, placing it on the cabinet. The house was strangely quiet. “I wanted to say goodbye,” he said.
“I thought we already had.”
He nodded. “We did, but I didn’t think it was the right kind of goodbye between friends of such long standing.” Katherine stared at him in silence, desperate to commit to memory every dear and beloved feature of his face, the exact way the lamplight gleamed on his dark brown hair that looked so black right now, the light, mesmerizing color of those lazy blue eyes. “I’ll miss you,” he said softly.
“I’ll miss you, too,” she said, just as softly.
“Will you?” he asked. “Will you really?”
She looked put out. “What a thing to ask. Of course I will. I’ll miss all those pointers I got on fishing, and the help I’ve had with Clovis. I’ll miss mopping those muddy tracks from the kitchen floor and washing all those extra plates at supper.”
“I’d like to think you’d miss more than that.”
Katherine felt her face heat with embarrassment. Surely to God he didn’t know how she felt. She spoke quickly to hide her discomfort at being forced to speak like this when all she wanted to do was fling herself into his strong arms and have him hold her until they were both too weak to stand. “Oh Alex, you will have forgotten me long before you reach California.”
“I seriously doubt that,” he said. “One never forgets his friends.”
“No,” she said softly. “One doesn’t.”
“Well, I guess I’d better be going.”
“Yes, I guess you better.”
“Damn, but this is harder than I thought,” he said, looking away.
“Did you get everything smoothed out between you and Karin?”
“No, not really. She said she wasn’t angry anymore over my going, but she wasn’t going to make any promises about waiting.”
“She didn’t mean it.”
“I’m not too sure.”
“She just hates to see you go. She’ll understand better after you leave. Women don’t always mean what they say, you know.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“l am.”
“I’ll write to you,” he said, taking her hands in his.
She felt terribly shy. “I’d like that.”
He drew her against him, his arms loose around her, indicating his affection. “Would you write me back?”
“If you stay in one place long enough for my letters to catch up with you,” she replied.
“I can’t promise that,” he said, “but I don’t want you to forget me.”
“I could sooner forget myself,” she said.
“So could I,” he said, and strangely felt that it was true.
In spite of the surprise upon the lovely face turned toward him, in spite of his awareness that the full, pointed breasts pressing against his chest were curiously disturbing, he had no thought to kiss her. He had never kissed her except in friendship before, and in truth, he did not want to kiss her any other way now. Before Katherine could say anything more, or even begin to guess his intent, his hands came out to clutch her upper arms pulling her more firmly against him at the same time his mouth descended. He had intended to kiss her on the mouth, but a quick, chaste kiss, nothing more. Yet, Katherine was so completely astounded that the mouth he had always found so perfectly shaped dropped open in astonishment. As his lips touched hers, he realized instantly what had happened and jerked back as if his lips had touched live coals. But as soon as he had pulled back, he groaned, finding that the mouth he had touched moments ago was too sweet, too tempting to stay away from.
Before she could exhale the next breath, his mouth trapped it where it was, his lips moving warmly and firmly over hers, tasting and tempting her with lips that awakened a response in her without speaking a word. She fought a grinding battle to maintain her dignity, the integrity of her soul. No matter that she had for so long used her will to press and squeeze to lifelessness her desire, for her discipline rebelled against its training, and she managed, by what had to be a hairsbreadth, to control herself, in order to remain perfectly still and as unresponsive as one so desperately in love could. But there was too much held back for too long, and suddenly it didn’t matter. Her resistance softened and her body melted against him, warm and fluid, molding to his body while his arms held her so powerfully. Concurrently he began to fully realize that this exquisite being he held in his arms was not Karin. Not Karin, but Katherine. Katherine, too much his friend to ever be his lover. Katherine, too foreign to be so well known. Katherine, unwelcome and unknown. For Katherine could never make time cease to beat until it began to surge and swell, bursting like a flood upon his soul. Then his mind reeled and slipped backward, spinning with blinding color until it was consumed by darkness and the brilliance faded like a candle that had gone out. This was not Karin. He did not love this woman. But why was reality so desolate? How could something that had, for the twinkling of an eye, felt so right suddenly transform before his eyes into something so very wrong? He broke the kiss, yet found he was still clinging to the memory like a dying man in a desert crawls toward a mirage he can ik-vit reach. He looked down into her face, staring blankly, unable to understand the pain, until he realized dumbly, that he had been slapped.
Katherine reared back. Stunned and hurt and feeling such outrage, she shoved him away from her, her voice quivering, her eyes crystalline with unshed tears. “You had no right,” she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, as if by so doing she could remove the insult, the agony of being kissed by the man she loved above everything, knowing how he felt about her sister. It wasn’t the kiss. It was the mockery of it. “You mock me,” said Katherine, “and I’ll hate you forever for doing that.”
“Yes,” he said sadly, “you probably will.” His hand came up, absently rubbing the burning imprint of her hand upon his cheek.
She should be crying now, the tears flowing freely, an anguished sound coming from her throat. But he knew the tears that shimmered in her eyes would remain as they were, controlled and held at bay. She was strange, this sister of the woman he loved, for unlike Karin, she did not share her grief; she preferred to be alone with her pain.
He hated himself at that moment. Stupid, selfish fool! You should have known what this would do to her. And for what? To satisfy your own curiosity? To make yourself feel more of a man in the face of Karin’s rejection?
“Just tell me one thing, Alex. Why? Why did you do that?”
He looked at her strangely and shook his head. “I’m not sure,” he said, sounding as if he were as amazed at what happened as she. “Honest to God, Kath, I don’t know.”
“But I do. She won’t forgive you for going. She won’t give her word that she will wait. And that bites like vinegar, doesn’t it?”
“I shouldn’t have kissed you,” he said. “I know that. All I can say is that I’m…”
“Don’t say it,” she said sharply. “It isn’t the kiss. I could forgive you for that. But you used me, Alex, like a spurned husband would seek the consolation of a whore. And that hurts.” She turned away, her back toward him. “I’m not sure I can ever forgive you for that,” she said softly. “Only time holds the answer.” She heard him as he turned and stumbled away, but she did not see the look on his face, the look of a man who has just awakened from a long, long sleep.
She did not move for quite some time. Alex had kissed her. And it wasn’t the kiss of a friend. He had kissed her as a man kisses a woman and she would always have the memory of it to hold private. But how could she hold the kiss separate from the motive that prompted it? She stood in the dim light of the kitchen lamp, feeling strange that things were happening the way they were: no crying, no clinging, no begging him to stay. Nothing but the feeling that all the beauty and life inside her were shrinking. But in spite of that feeling, she knew she would make out all right. Oh, she would constantly be asking herself things about him—what was he doing, how were things going for him—or wondering if he ever thought about her. And there would be times, she knew, when she would even wonder if he was still alive. She felt all thought drain from her mind as she stood silently staring at the door, remembering all the times she had seen his beloved form standing in that same doorway, his arms braced against the jamb, the teasing light in his eyes, that roguish smile upon his face, and she wondered,
Oh, Alex, Alex… Will I ever see you again?
She knew he was gone the moment she opened her eyes the next morning. She blinked, then looked around the familiar room. Everything was the same; the same faded coverlet lay across her bed, the same chipped basin stood in the corner where she washed her hands, the same oil lamp rested on the table in front of the window, absorbing sunlight and throwing rainbows of color on the opposite wall. She threw back the bedcovers and untangled the length of cotton gown that was twisted around her legs. Walking to the window, she drew back the curtain and looked outside. Like her room, everything there looked the same. The sun still shone in a clear blue sky streaked with a few whisps of clouds as thin and delicate as a bridal veil. Over by the barn, Clovis was gnawing on the new boards of a sturdy pen Alex had constructed. Scattered about the yard, hens were busy clucking and scratching, the morning glories on the fence had opened their blooms. Over by the water trough a goose flapped her wings and trumpeted her welcome to the morning. But inside the run-down house, Katherine Simon stood uncertainly before the window—a young woman standing barefoot in a threadbare cotton gown, a cloud of rich mahogany hair falling down past her waist. Alex was gone, and there was nothing to do but turn her mind to getting over it. But it was hard. Not so much because she missed him as a lover, but that she had had to say goodbye to him as a friend. She rested her forehead against the cool pane of glass. She was viewing everything that was dear and familiar about her, but what was she seeing? Nothing but years of emptiness stretching before her like the silent, weed-pocked tracks of a road no longer used.
Chapter Ten
Time passed like a bird overhead, leaving nothing behind but its shadow. Katherine saw this passing as a time for ripening, for not only growing older, but wiser, for she saw it as a journey into her future, a healing of grief and resentment.
The weather grew cooler and autumn arrived, as silent as the signs of approaching decay. Down by the creek the beaver was waddling from place to place busily cutting down trees with his four orange front teeth, and Katherine didn’t mind that because his dams would dot the creek and hold water. Winter came, cold hearted and shaped out of snow. A barn owl with his monkey face took up residence in the barn’s highest rafters, and Katherine invited him to eat his fill of mice. Spring, being spring, came unexpectedly, like a promise kept at the end of a long winter day. The pink-nosed mother possum nursed nine hungry babies in the hollow of a rotted-out log and Katherine put away her recipe for possum stew. At last came lavish summer, breeding rosy fruitfulness in winter’s bed of frozen decay. In the pasture, snowy egrets followed the cows around, and Katherine gathered their lost plumes to refurbish her old straw hat.
Thoughts of Alex were always with her.
Each evening, when words faded and thoughts came alive, an exhausted Katherine would go to her room and find memories of him waiting, a touch of joy borne on the wings of night. She found it strange how her mind gave sanctuary to the merest trifles, like small fish trapped in a net that let the big ones get away. As darkness closed around her, she hugged his memory close, calling back the soft, warm heat of his kiss, and waited for the grace of sleep that came like the peace of a tree, tranquil and silent.
Thoughts of Alex were always with her.
Letters from Alex and Adrian were slow in coming, the news old by the time the first one arrived. But she looked forward to each one and the things they had to tell. Katherine found it difficult to sit quietly over her sewing, stabbing her needle in and out as she listened to Karin read her letter from Alex when all Katherine wanted to do was to yank those yellowed pages from Karin’s hands and savor each word until she knew it by heart. Of course, she had her own letter, for Karin always handed Adrian’s missive to her, and while she enjoyed and learned much from all the interesting things Adrian had to say, his thoughts were just that—thoughts—while the words Alex penned were, to her, the very breath of life.