Netta nodded and lifted her eye brows slightly, as if something were bothering her. “I know our presence has been inconvenient for you. I want you to know how much I appreciate your hospitality.”
“Not at all, Netta.” Her concern surprised him. “It’s good you and Bea Dot are here, especially when I’m in town. I don’t know what I would have done without the help in the store. I heard you reading the paper to Mr. Floyd. That’s mighty nice of you to do that.”
Netta smiled and blushed. “We’re happy to do whatever we can.” Then her face lit up with an idea. “Have you thought about hiring a clerk to mind the store for you?”
“To tell you the truth, I haven’t.” He straightened in his chair as he considered the idea. “Of course, the store was only open a week or so before the influenza broke out, and now all of middle Georgia’s topsy-turvy.” He scratched his chin as he thought. A clerk would allow him to keep the store open regularly, even if he was on a mail route or getting supplies in town. “You know, Bea Dot’s been a good clerk, hasn’t she?” He smiled, liking the idea of her working long term at the crossing.
“Yes, and she does enjoy this work,” Netta said with some hesitation in her voice. “But I don’t know what long term decisions she’s made—if any. She hasn’t said whether she plans to return to Savannah.”
Will sighed as he rested his back on the wooden chair’s slats. The thought of Bea Dot’s other life left a lump of clay in his gut. Then a shock of memory jolted him straight in his chair. “Bea Dot got a telegram from Savannah yesterday, and I forgot to give it to her.” Almost knocking his chair over as he rose, he rushed to the storage room and grabbed his coat with the telegram in its pocket. He pushed his fists through the sleeves as he walked back through the store and into the kitchen. “Excuse me, Netta. I’m going to find her.”
#
Bea Dot shivered and pulled her coat collar tight around her neck. Though the afternoon sun still shone overhead, it hardly penetrated the shade of the pine woods. After walking almost an hour, she still couldn’t chase away the chill from her bones. She hefted the burlap bag, half full of pine cones and sticks, over her shoulder. As she plodded over the moist pine straw-covered ground, briars tugged at her skirt and coat hem. She picked up a pine cone here and there, disappointed to find only a few, and most of them soggy from recent rains. The sticks she’d put in the bag poked at her shoulder.
So that she wouldn’t lose her way, she kept the lake’s edge in sight, intending to follow it back to the camp house. She’d walked only a short distance further when she found Will’s grandparents’ abandoned cabin. Her heart ached as she recalled the last time she saw him, and it pounded heavily at the memory of his arms around her. She loosened her grip on her collar as she made her way toward the slightly ajar cabin door.
Pushing it wide open, she peered inside, her eyes adjusting slowly to the darkness. The one-room structure smelled earthy and damp, the air inside slightly cooler than outdoors. She stepped in, treading lightly to avoid tripping. Her foot found an old wooden crate, which she absently shoved aside with her heel. A rustle in the darkness sent a chill up her spine until she remembered the barn owl that had frightened her on her last visit. Smiling at the memory of her girlish screams, she shook off the creepy crawl in her backbone as she turned to exit the cabin.
At a slight tapping, she stopped. Had she really heard it, or did her mind play tricks on her? After a moment of silence, the tapping arose again, slowly, methodically, like a lazy dog’s footsteps. But wouldn’t a dog have barked?
A growl froze her. That was no dog. Where had she heard that noise before? Then a yowl jarred her memory of the bobcat she and Netta watched through the window several nights ago. At a second yowl, Bea Dot turned and stooped, feeling for the crate she’d shoved with her foot. Fortunately, she found it close by and heaved it toward the cat before turning to bolt from the cabin, her skin tingling with the electricity of fear.
As she lunged at the door, she tripped on the cabin’s threshold and fell face down in the pine straw. Pressing her palms into the briars, she pushed herself up, and turned just as the cat leapt through the doorway toward her. It landed on her chest, sinking its claws in her shoulders as it screeched at her with rotten breath. Operating on pure instinct, Bea Dot pulled her knees under the cat and managed to push it off her with her feet. It howled as it hit the cabin’s side, and in the moment it took to right itself, Bea Dot jumped to her feet to flee.
But the cat pounced after Bea Dot had taken only two or three steps. With a deafening feline growl, the animal clung to her back, pushing Bea Dot to the ground. Pain pierced her shoulders.
She squeezed her eyes shut and fisted her hands, pressing the briars further into her skin as she attempted to rise to her hands and knees. All the while she braced for a bite, but instead of bearing the puncture of teeth or claws, she heard a screech as the cat’s weight lifted off her back. Another squawl, this one weaker, was followed by silence, then a thud, and Bea Dot opened her eyes to find Will Dunaway, clutching a bloody knife and stepping over the furry mound.
She pushed herself up to her knees and shakily tried to stand. Will bounded to her side, dropped the knife, and helped her up. “Are you all right?” Panic shook his voice. Without waiting for a reply, he turned her around, checking her back and neck for bite marks. She felt his hand rub her coat where the cat had ripped it.
“Jesus,” he whispered before turning her to face him again. “I’ve got to get you back to the house. It didn’t bite you, did it?”
Still shocked, Bea Dot shook her head, shoulders burning where the cat’s claws dug into her skin through her coat. She opened her shaking hands, revealing the thorns stuck in her palms, but she could hardly pull them out with her entire body quaking so violently.
“No, let me do that,” Will said, pulling a bandana from his back pants pocket. Gently, he pulled out one thorn, then another. Bea Dot winced each time he did so, but when he was finished, he pressed the bandana against one palm and then closed the other hand on top of it, pressing both hands inside his.
Bea Dot stared at the blood underneath his fingernails and in the wrinkles of his knuckles.
“You’re going to be all right,” he said, before pushing a curl away from her face and behind her ear.
As she gazed into his worried green eyes, the shaking subsided a bit, but then her chin quivered, and just as the tears poured down her cheeks, her knees gave way. Will caught her and pulled her to him with one arm around her waist and the other cradling her head as she rested it against his chest. She gripped the back of his coat as she released the shock, the fear, and the relief of his arrival. He held her several minutes, waiting out Bea Dot’s catharsis. She looked up into his eyes and said, “I have never been so glad to see you.”
As if on cue, their mouths found each other, and upon that connection, Bea Dot’s fear and shock gave way to the warmth of his lips against hers. She stood on her toes and reached her arms over his shoulders, crossing them behind his neck. She was aware only of him, of his strong arms around her, his fingers in her hair, his scent of woods and leather and soap, his clean shaven skin, and his pulse throbbing against her finger, which rested just under his jaw. When he pulled away for a quick breath, she reached up further and pulled him to her again, unwilling to part from him just yet. Just as instinctively as the kiss began, it ended with him gazing down at her, letting her commit those irresistible green eyes to memory.
“You have perfect timing,” she said.
He huffed a small, shy laugh and examined his shoes for a second before pulling her to him again.
“I’ve missed you,” he whispered into the top of her head. He kissed her there before checking her hands to see if the bleeding had stopped. He kissed her palm, then picked up his knife, wiped the blood on his pants, and said, “Wait here just a second.”
He walked to the water’s edge and rinsed off his knife and hands, drying them with his bandana. Then he put the knife back in his boot. After returning to her, he took a quick look around before asking, “What were you using to carry your pine cones?”
Pointing to the cabin, Bea Dot said, “A burlap bag. It’s in there.”
Will went inside, stooping just at the door to pick up Bea Dot’s sack. Outside, he held it by its bottom and shook out the soggy sticks and pine cones. Then he stuffed the bobcat in the bag and hefted the load over his shoulder.
“You’re going to keep that thing?” Bea Dot asked, bewildered.
“Dinner,” he replied.
Bea Dot’s jaw dropped as her eyebrows disappeared under her dark curls.
Will chuckled before explaining, “I’m just teasing you. I thought Thaddeus Taylor might want the hide.”
“Oh,” Bea Dot said, exhaling with relief.
“I’ll leave it here if you don’t want me to bring it,” he offered.
“No,” she said. “I don’t mind.”
“Can you walk home?”
“Of course,” she said, and the two set off toward the house.
Home
, he’d said. She liked the sound of that word.
With a frustrated sigh, Bea Dot rolled over in her small bed, knowing she’d be awake to see the sun rise. Though exhausted, her back and shoulders, achy from the bobcat attack and burning from the claw marks, refused to give her a moment’s rest.
But her soreness paled in comparison to her troubling thoughts. How many times in her mind had she relived that kiss? Just the thought of it sent Bea Dot’s heart thumping like a stick on a picket fence. Ben’s sloppy, drunken kisses repulsed her, made her wonder why her friends ever dreamed of marriage. How strange that the one man who had kissed her soberly left her feeling intoxicated. And like whiskey, more of him complicated her already muddled life. She’d certainly opened a crawly can of worms, but good heavens, that kiss might have been worth it.
Could she possibly leave Ben for Will? She’d heard of wives divorcing their husbands, but those women hailed from New York or Chicago. The papers always portrayed them as amoral harlots, selfishly abandoning their families. Divorces were taboo in the South, even in Atlanta. If she moved to Pineview with Will, she’d be an outcast, likely even damaging Netta and Ralph’s reputation.
Of course, in Savannah, news of a divorce from Ben would spread faster than influenza. What’s more, she wouldn’t put it past Ben to spread the truth—or what he believed to be the truth—about her failed pregnancy. If she left Ben, how would the scandal affect Aunt Lavinia and Uncle David?
Sighing, Bea Dot had to agree with Netta’s advice. Although she wished she could ignore her marital strife indefinitely, she couldn’t continue a romantic liaison with Will until she’d settled matters at home.
She shook her head, refusing to get ahead of herself. She and Will had only kissed twice. Their romance was too new for contemplating marriage.
Get some sleep
, she told herself before punching her pillow and lying back down.
Across the room, Netta sighed and rolled over. Within seconds her snoring resumed. Bea Dot rolled her eyes in the darkness. Another reason she’d never get to sleep. Pushing herself to a sitting position, she winced as the scratches on her shoulders tore at her, as if the cat had left its claws inside her skin. She reached behind her and dabbed her fingertips on the sticky lines of her wounds. She must be bleeding again.
Quietly slipping out of her bed, Bea Dot padded out of the bedroom and into the kitchen, where she lit a kerosene lamp before adding more wood to the stove. She put a pot of water on to heat while she found a clean rag and the rest of the bandages.
Netta’s snores rumbled softly in the other room as Bea Dot stood before the stove, waiting for the water to heat, all the while still thinking of Will. He might feel as conflicted as she did. When he had brought her back to the house, he had treated her as he usually did, like Netta Coolidge’s visiting cousin. And knowing Netta’s concerns about her fondness for Will, Bea Dot hoped her own charade was just as convincing. When she’d politely thanked Will for his heroism, she’d had to combat her urge to embrace him one more time. Will had told Netta the story of the bobcat, and he assured her that it had not bitten, only scratched Bea Dot’s shoulders and back. Most of the cuts on her hands and face came from the briars and twigs when she tripped and fell. After the explanation, he’d left Bea Dot’s care to Netta, going outside to sharpen the axe and split logs.
Bea Dot dipped her finger in the water.
Hot, but not boiling
, she thought. Just right. She unbuttoned her nightgown, carefully removing her arms from the sleeves without pulling on her wounds. She stood naked from the waist up as she untied her bandages and then dipped the rag in the warm water. Extending her arm over the opposite shoulder as she had in the bed, she tried to dab the angry claw mark. When she examined the wet rag, it showed a few spots of blood, but she couldn’t tell how much good her process was doing.
“Let me help you.”
Bea Dot flinched at Will’s soft voice behind her and instinctively raised her arms to cover her bare breasts, even though her back was to him. Her first visceral reaction was defensive alarm—her usual stance when Ben approached. Embarrassment warmed her now more than the stove, but to replace her nightgown, she’d have to drop her arms. As his light steps neared, she kept her back to him, listening the same way she’d listened cautiously to the tapping of the bobcat’s claws on the cabin floor. But then Will placed his hands gently on her shoulders and ran them down her arms. He reached around and held his palm up. “Hand me the rag,” he whispered.