She studied both Jeff and his shirt with an
appraising stare. “Hmm, it looks very nice, like you put in a lot
of work on it. Maybe even days.”
“
Heavens, no, it didn’t take that
long.” Althea added to Jeff, “I had years of practice making shirts
for my father.”
“
It fits just right,” he said, feeling
like a fly under a magnifying glass.
“
Yes,” Althea agreed with a faint
smile, “it does.”
She returned the topic of conversation to the
garden, and Jeff was satisfied. No personal questions came up, and
he asked none, either. The food was good and as Allie had pointed
out, having dinner in the house was less lonely than eating from a
tray in the lean-to.
The one thing he would have changed, though,
was Olivia’s presence.
They made an awkward triumvirate, the three
of them, with Allie sitting across the table from him, and her
sister at the end. He felt Olivia’s eyes on him through most of the
meal, and she had her sister hopping up and down, waiting on her as
if she were a queen.
Her tea had grown cold. Would Althea bring
more hot water?
Was there another piece of meat in the
roasting pot that wasn’t quite so fatty?
The breeze was blowing dust through the open
window behind Althea and it was falling into Olivia’s dinner. Would
she mind closing it?
This last time Jeff got up. He wasn’t sure
what Olivia’s game was—the wind wasn’t even wafting the curtains,
and the ground outside had barely dried from the spring rains. But
he thought Althea ought to have the chance to finish her meal. It
was probably already cold, as it was. “I’ll get it, Allie. You go
ahead and enjoy your dinner.” He nodded to Olivia. “You, too,
ma’am.”
Olivia giggled a bit nervously, her hazel
eyes darting between her sister and Jeff. “Allie! Why, I’ve never
heard anyone outside the family call you something so personal.
Isn’t it—clever? A person would almost think you two have spent
some time together.”
Althea, who had been watching Jeff’s
shoulders flex as he pushed down on the window frame, snapped her
attention back to the cold food on her plate. She wished he hadn’t
called her by that name, especially in front of her sister. “Won’t
you try to eat something? You’re just picking at your dinner.”
Olivia put her hand to her throat, as though
something were caught in it, and her delicate features faded to
paper-white. “I-I guess I’m not really very hungry. I’ll just try
to finish my tea.” She reached for her cup with a hand that
shook.
A chill rolled over Althea, a sudden sense of
dread that made her think of being trapped on a railroad tie with
the train approaching.
Jeff, obviously unaware, returned to the
table and took up his fork again.
Olivia leaned back in her chair and began
rubbing her temples with her fingertips.
Not again, Althea thought desperately, not
now. “Olivia? Are you all right?”
Her sister’s hazel eyes welled up and her
voice shook. “No, I’m not. I don’t think I want—
Jeff looked up, and as soon as his gaze
connected with Olivia’s, her eyes rolled back and closed. A deep
wail, rising from the depths of torment, worked its way up her
throat and escaped her with a sound that would have brought chills
to the dead.
“
Jesus Christ
. . . ”
“
Olivia!” Althea sprang from her chair,
her napkin tumbling down her lap, and she hurried to Olivia’s
side.
With her arms extended rigidly on the table,
her sister gripped bunches of the tablecloth in her fists, then
snapped both hands to her chest with maniacal strength. The plates
and serving dishes flew from the tabletop, landing on the floor and
in Olivia’s lap. A river of warm gravy drizzled over Althea’s arm
as she tried to grasp her sister’s flailing wrists. Olivia’s body
stiffened and she rose from her sitting position so that only her
shoulders and thighs rested against chair, as though she were a
wooden plank that had been leaned against it.
All the while she kept up that blood-curdling
wail.
His shirt covered with the contents of his
plate, Jeff dropped his fork and with some trepidation, approached
Olivia from the other side to help Allie control her. His boots
crunched on broken glass and china. He felt as if he were putting
his hands into the spinning blades of a windmill during a
hurricane. This seemed a hell of a lot more dangerous than breaking
up a saloon brawl, even when the brawlers had been armed.
Allie’s hair flew loose from its pins and
ribbon, and long, dark-red strands hung next to her pale, set face
while she struggled with her sister’s considerable strength. Olivia
anchored her hand on Allie’s sleeve and hung on with the strength
of the insane, twice nearly pulling her off her feet.
Jeff grabbed Olivia’s arm and tried to
untangle her hand. At his touch, Olivia’s eyes flew open and she
snarled, “No! Don’t you touch me! ” She pulled against his hold on
her arm and tried to shake him off. When that didn’t work, she
began pounding her heels on the floor, and finally with a look of
lucid, calculating rage in her eyes, she bent down and sank her
teeth into his index finger.
“
Ow, goddamn it!” he snapped. He jerked
his hand away and clamped it between his arm and his ribs. Never in
all his life had he wanted so badly to turn a grown person over his
knee and paddle her backside.
“
Make him go away!” Olivia screamed
between the breathless sobs that had overtaken her. With the
dripping tablecloth drawn up to her shoulders like a blanket and
her flaxen hair tangled around her shoulders, she buried her face,
now crimson with exertion, against Allie’s breasts.
Althea’s right shoulder was covered with
blackberry jam, but she rocked her and crooned to her as if the
woman were a five-year-old child. “It’s all right, Olivia, it’s all
right.”
“
No! Make him go away!” she demanded
and slid her gaze to Jeff. She pointed at him as though he were the
devil himself. “I don’t want him in here!”
Allie looked over her sister’s head at Jeff
and sent him a helpless, apologetic expression, one that he had no
trouble reading. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and nodded toward the
back door. “Please.”
Jeff glanced down at his new shirt,
splattered with peas and gravy, and at Allie’s distraught face.
Then he fixed the sobbing, hysterical woman in Allie’s arms with a
steady, unflinching look. She merely went on howling, and hid her
face against her sister’s bodice.
Tossing his napkin on the table, Jeff walked
through the kitchen and out the back door. As his footsteps fell
heavily on the porch stairs and he crossed the yard to the lean-to,
he could still hear Olivia Ford’s shrill wailing.
The prospect of eating his future meals from
a tray in the yard was no longer a lonely one. After tonight, it
struck him as a wish come true.
~~*~*~*~~
It was well past ten o’clock when Althea
stepped out to the back porch and lowered herself into the rocking
chair. She felt stiff and old. Her joints creaked audibly, like
groaning hinges in need of oiling.
The hush and peace of nightfall surrounded
her, enfolded her. The air smelled fresh and from the darkness came
soft, familiar sounds of crickets and frogs down at the creek.
Leaning her head against the high-backed rocker, she looked at the
stars overhead. How much easier their existence must be. They
simply lay on their bed of black velvet sky and sparkled. They had
no worries about planting or hired hands or lifelong
responsibilities.
Olivia was upstairs, bathed, combed, and
tucked into bed. The convulsion had sapped her of all her strength,
and once it passed she became her same docile self, apparently with
little memory of what had happened.
Althea remembered, though. After she’d seen
to Olivia, she returned to the dining room and was stunned by the
full extent of the damage done. It looked as if a terrible battle
had been waged there. Broken dishes and glasses littered the floor.
The remains of the roast had skidded under the table, leaving a
wide, greasy trail on the hardwood. Gravy, water, and jam glued the
surviving dishes to the tabletop, and mashed peas formed dime-size
green dots on everything they’d touched. Her needlepoint chair
seats might never come completely clean.
It had taken her two hours of careful
mopping, sweeping, and scrubbing on her hands and knees to clean it
up. In the middle of it all, her burned palm had begun to sting
unbearably, screaming with pain whenever she tried to use it.
Working with just one hand had slowed things considerably. As it
was, a blackberry jam stain on the wall would probably remain until
it was painted over. Althea’s pale pink dress bore a similar stain
on the shoulder and sleeve, and now lay at the bottom of a heap of
laundry that must be done tomorrow. The dress would probably be a
loss, though.
She closed her eyes and set the chair in
motion, rocking slowly. At least Olivia hadn’t wet herself this
time. That was generally the way her convulsions ended, with
everything soaked in an astounding quantity of urine.
Olivia couldn’t help it, Althea insisted to
herself, massaging her forehead with her fingertips. It wasn’t
Olivia’s fault, it wasn’t, wasn’t, wasn’t.
If anything, tonight had been her own fault
for having a weak moment, for craving Jeff’s company at dinner.
Poor Olivia. Yes, poor, sick Olivia.
Motherless Olivia.
She had to remind herself of Olivia’s frailty
every time one of her convulsions occurred in order to stamp out
the spark of resentment that flared in her heart. She had given her
most of her life to her sister’s care, and chances were excellent
that the rest of her years would be sacrificed to the same.
When Althea realized where her thoughts had
turned, involuntarily she glanced in the direction of her parents’
graves. The dark night hid their detail, but the moon was bright
enough to reveal the outline of the low fence and the shape of the
headstones. She pressed her fist to her mouth.
No, she hadn’t meant it—she wasn’t
sacrificing her life. It was her duty to care of Olivia; what would
happen to her if Althea failed in that duty?
Don’t let me down again, girl.
No, she wouldn’t—she’d promised on her
father’s deathbed, and even now she knew he must be watching
her . . .
“
How are you, Allie?”
Althea gasped and nearly jumped from her
chair as the tall, rangy form of Jeff Hicks emerged from the
darkness. Lantern light from the kitchen gleamed softly through the
open door and highlighted the angles and planes of his handsome
face.
“
Good lord, you took a year off my life
sneaking up on me like that!” she whispered impatiently. She made a
supreme effort to avoid thinking that it would be one year less
that she’d be bound to her duty.
“
Sorry.” He’d changed his shirt, and
now he wore one of the old ones she’d given him, unbuttoned, with
its sleeves rolled up on his powerful forearms. Althea tried not to
stare at the expanse of bare, muscled flesh revealed by the open
shirt front, but it was nearly impossible. His maleness was not
easy to overlook.
Without waiting to be invited, he pulled up
the stool and sat down next to her. He twirled a long stalk of
grass between his fingers, wagging its seed top like a tiny
mop.
“
What are you doing up at this hour
anyway? Dawn will come early enough, and you’ll need to be out in
that field.” After everything that had happened, the brief kiss
Jeff had given her seemed like a long-ago dream that faded in the
reality of Althea’s life. It was just as well.
In the shadows she saw his shoulders lift in
a shrug. “I couldn’t sleep. It took a long time for my heart to
slow down.” His voice was rich and close, familiar.
“
Oh, well, yes—I imagine that’s true.”
Althea fiddled with a piece of old twine that was tied to the chair
arm. Olivia’s spells were startling—someone who hadn’t seen one
before would be understandably rattled. “I’m sorry about— Well, I’m
sorry I had to ask you to leave. The sooner poor Olivia recovers
from one of her convulsions, the better—for some reason, having a
stranger in the house made her worse. Thank heavens, she seems to
not remember them.”
“
Does she have these fits very
often?”
“
She used to when she was younger, and
then when my father died three years ago. But she’s only had one
other since then.”
“
Yeah? And do you know what caused
it?”
“
It’s not a matter of ‘cause.’ ” No it
couldn’t be. It had been only a coincidence that the last one
happened the day Lane Smithfield had dinner with them. “They just
come over her.”
He shook his head, Althea assumed in pity for
Olivia. “It was more than my being a stranger.” He looked at her,
half of his face hidden in shadow, the other half revealed in the
kitchen lamplight. “I know what upset your sister. And I think you
do too.”
She brought her chair to a stop and stared at
his cleanly hewn profile. “Whatever do you mean?”
“
It was when she heard me call you
Allie. She didn’t like it, and I’ve got the teeth marks on my
finger to show it.”
“
She shouldn’t have—I’m sorry that she
bit you. Anyway, I don’t know why you want to call me Allie. My
name is Althea.”
“
But it doesn’t suit you. Althea sounds
the way the moon looks on a clear winter night. Beautiful, but as
cold and hard as a diamond, and far away. That’s not you. You’re
more like that—” He pointed to the low slung pale-butter orb in the
eastern sky. “Warm and close enough to touch. That’s your moon up
there tonight, Allie, full of promise. And beautiful in the
bargain.”