Misplaced Innocence (9 page)

“Well, thank you so much for putting in those locks today. I really appreciate it. Everyone here in Carlton is always so helpful.” She smiled up at him, her eyes big and round again, and he couldn’t help but think of Jenny and Mary Anne and exactly how helpful they could be. Of course, they probably wouldn’t be so helpful to Charisma. Especially if they knew he was sitting down to dinner with her instead of them, in the middle of nowhere, for hours on end. Which, he was sure they would know by the end of the week because he knew Bill better than anyone else in the town, and if he hadn’t already been spreading his theories and talking about his latest match-making plan, he certainly would be after today. He sighed. There were some things that never changed in a town like Carlton.

“So, I hear you haven’t been here in Carlton long.”

“No. I just moved out here,” she furrowed her brow and trailed off, as if she were counting down to the day her move to the sleepy little town, “maybe six months ago. Not long at all. It’s why I don’t have a guest room. It’s just me here anyway, so it wasn’t like there was really a rush to unpack everything…” she trailed off suddenly, and blushed. “Anyway, I haven’t been here long and I don’t have a guest room and that’s why you had to sleep on the couch.”

He smiled at her, and wondered if maybe she hadn’t missed some sort of medication. “It was fine, really. Pretty comfortable, considering. So, where’d you move from?” He wanted to ask why, but decided to save that for later. Judging from how she’d leapt into describing why she had no guest room, he probably wouldn’t even have to ask her, she would just start offering up information.

“Oh, you know,” she said lamely, and Jared squinted at her.

“No.”

“Oh,” she blushed an even brighter shade of red, a red almost the same color as the spaghetti sauce she was stirring. “I thought Bill had already told you. You know, he tells everybody everything.” She shrugged.

Jared laughed. “You know Bill pretty well for someone who just moved here six months ago.”

She smiled, but this time the smile didn’t pull at the corner of her mouth and he couldn’t see that sweet little dimple. “You can learn a lot about a person in six months. You would be surprised.” She turned back to the spaghetti as if it needed her undivided attention.

“I suppose,” he watched her, suddenly fascinated as she tried to drop the subject. “So where was it you came here from?”

“Out on the East Coast.”

He waited for her to elaborate. But, she didn’t. “So, which part of the East Coast.”

She smiled again, but the smile stretched tightly across her mouth and didn’t reach her eyes. “New Jersey. Born and raised.”

He raised an eyebrow. Maybe that explained some things. Like her sanity. “And you came all the way out to Carlton, Arizona from New Jersey.”

“It seemed like a good idea. At the time.”

“Famous last words, huh?”

She relaxed a little at that and they chatted as she served the spaghetti, but he couldn’t get her to say anything more about New Jersey or her move to Carlton, or why her face clouded when she talked about them. Instead she started talking about Scruffy and Bill and the spaghetti, all of which Jared was pretty sure he already knew. But instead of letting it go as something someone with limited functioning would choose to discuss, he kept thinking about the fake smile she had given him, so tight it looked painful, etched with something he couldn’t quite name.

~*~

Mary Anne caught him again as he made his way to his car from the grocery store. Her pretty face was twisted into a peevish frown and she looked about as annoyed as a person could look. She held her cat in her arms, and he looked equally annoyed, a perturbed look on his always unattractive face.

“I thought you were planning on coming over for dinner.” She tapped one foot, the sound remarkably loud on the decaying sidewalk.
 

“Oh?” he said, and realized that it was fast becoming his favorite phrase of the week. In fact, he was really starting to hate the sound of that ‘oh,’ but he really didn’t know what else to say. After all, it wasn’t as if he had ever said anything remotely like he was going to come over to have dinner with Mary Anne. If he remembered correctly he had rejected her and hightailed out of there so fast his head had almost spun. Otherwise he would have never made it safely into his car and back to his house. Alone. Without company. With the phones turned off and unplugged so he wouldn’t have to listen to Jenny calling with mysterious ailments or Mary Anne purring invitations he wouldn’t be able to resist.
 

“Yes. I was waiting for you.” She drew her eyebrows together and Jared was fascinated by how a woman that beautiful could look that intimidating.
 

“Well, I’m sorry about that. If I had known you were waiting,” he stressed the sentence. As if he actually believed they had agreed on some time to have dinner together, “I certainly would have called to tell you I couldn’t make it. That I had a previous engagement.” He liked the way that sounded. That just might get him off the hook.

“Really?” Mary Anne asked, her brow smoothing over before one eyebrow arched up, defying gravity with its height. The cat threw in a disgruntled moan for good measure. “That’s funny because I talked to Jenny Doorman just last night and she said she hadn’t heard from you and you didn’t have any plans with her.”

“I see,” he said, but that was really not the truth. He didn’t see anything at all. Was there some sort of conspiracy between Jenny and Mary Anne? Since when had it become everyone’s business what he was doing and when he was doing it and who he was with? Apparently, his appearance back in town had given everyone free range to dictate exactly what his life should be like.

“Well?” she started tapping her foot again and Jared wished he’d had the foresight to be caught on the lawn instead of on the sidewalk.
 

“Well, what?” he asked with restrained exasperation, when it became clear that was all Mary Anne was going to say. Schnookums let out another surly sound and seemed to squint his evil, yellow eyes at him.
 

“Well, aren’t you going to apologize and reschedule?”

It was almost a question, but not really. Jared sighed. Living in this town was going to make him grey way before his time. “I’ll tell you what, Mary Anne. I’ll check my schedule and I’ll get back with you on a time that works for me.”

That seemed to placate her for the moment and she began to stroke the back of the cat’s head, which did little to ease its sour looking expression or stop the horrible growling sounds that were emanating from the back of its little throat. He felt only mildly guilty about the lie. After all, she certainly had no problems lying to him.

~*~

Another week passed without any unwanted pieces of mail. Charisma would hurry out to the mailbox, feeling like a mouse running for cheese while the cat was napping, and snatch the mail from the box, Scruffy bounding at her feet, as if she didn’t realize how important the mission was. Breathless in the kitchen, Charisma would skim through the mail, not even bothering to look at her favorite catalogues and junk mail. When she was finished, she would walk back to the door, rechecking every lock she had just slipped into place. It had gotten to the point where she almost felt like she was being ridiculous. Almost.

She took a deep breath and finally hooked up the phone again. She didn’t want a repeat performance of Jared and the pot. Although, she had taken to depositing cooking ware throughout the house – just in case. She stood back from the phone, and when it became clear it wouldn’t start ringing right away, she exhaled. Charisma pulled her hands through her hair, yanking the strands hard enough that it should have hurt, but it didn’t. Or at least, she didn’t notice if it did hurt. The sound of her breathing echoed in her ears, and seemed to fill the whole room. She shook her head. If she didn’t start getting things under control, she was really going to lose it. She couldn’t live like this, she just couldn’t.
 

Charisma collected Scruffy and a hot cup of tea and moved back to her office. Work was scattered on every surface, half finished drawings and paintings and models posed around the room. Since Jared had put the locks on the door, Charisma had spent nearly every waking hour in the office, working on things she didn’t know if she would ever be able to use, and toying with the idea of trying to write her own children’s book. The big windows she loved were covered, so the only light in the room was artificial. Of course, she hadn’t had any spare curtains loitering around the house, so she had fished around in some of the unpacked boxes until she came across an extra comforter. With a few tacks, some extra nails she found in the tool box, and a wobbly old chair, Charisma jimmied the dark blue, worn comforter so it completely covered the windows. As much as she loved sunlight, the thought of someone standing outside her windows, watching her, especially at night when darkness had settled and emptiness stretched out around her little house and echoed in the sounds of nighttime animals, was just too much. So, out had come the comforter, and she was quite pleased with its presence. In fact, she’d rooted around in those boxes until she had found more blankets and sheets and even a throw rug, and had moved methodically though the house nailing and pinning up material until every one of the windows was covered. It was like living in a cave – a cave with a really bad interior designer, but a cave nonetheless. But, there were no neighbors and no one came to visit, so Charisma really didn’t see a point in trying to make her window curtains any classier than leftovers that were lying around the house. This way she didn’t even need to go into a town and explain why she wanted to order a whole slew of ugly, light blocking curtains. It didn’t hurt that these curtains were immediately available and that anything she ordered would probably take weeks to get there; she couldn’t stand the thought of feeling like a fish in an aquarium until curtains came in the mail. And really, she wasn’t looking for anything to come in the mail at all.

Charisma settled back into her work, and tried not to think about anything at all except the artwork in front of her, and certainly not about being a fish in an aquarium, or the fear that settled deep in her stomach and made her nail ugly material to her windows and religiously lock six locks on the front door.

~*~

Charisma practically staggered into Ross’, stopping to admire the way the new sign looked out front. Much nicer than the mutant apple, even if her opinion was biased. Her hair was pulled back into a lopsided ponytail, oversized, dark sunglasses dwarfed her face. The sun seemed overly bright. Of course, that might have been because Charisma saw very little of the sun these days.

Bill actually put down his paper when Charisma walked in the door. “Hello, there,” he said, “I was just about to give you a call. I was wondering if you thought grocery delivery would become a routine service.” His mouth quirked up, but even from beneath the dark glasses Charisma could tell that he was wondering why her so regular visits to the grocery store had suddenly stopped, why she would go days eating almost nothing just so she didn’t need to leave the house.

“No, of course not.” Charisma pasted a smile on, but she was sure it was far from convincing. She couldn’t bring herself to stand by the counter and chat with Bill, as though nothing had changed, so she hurried through the aisles, the slender handle of the basket biting into her uncovered arm. She moved mechanically, looking to buy food that would last her the longest and take up the least amount of space, so she wouldn’t have to leave her house again. The less she had to be away from the house, the better. Scruffy padded through the aisles behind her in what Charisma was sure was some sort of violation of health codes and hygienic rules, but Bill didn’t say anything. After all, Scruffy had spent hours wandering through the store and the backroom while Charisma had worked on the sign. She piled in the canned goods and jars of peanut butter. By the time she was finished, the basket looked like it was heading over to the Salvation Army for a collection of non-perishable items.

Charisma hefted the groceries up onto the counter, taking time to shake the ache out of her arm. It was deceiving how heavy those little cans could be. Of course, it was also deceiving how many of those little cans would fit into that little basket. But, at least now Charisma would have a steady, if not boring, supply of edibles. She grabbed an extra sack of dog food for good measure. Just in case she grew an indoor vegetable garden and started to live off miniature carrots and never needed to leave the house again. She seriously considered finding a way to order her groceries online, but she highly doubted anyone delivered all the way out to Carlton. Half the time, Charisma wondered where Bill got his groceries from.

Bill eyed the overflowing basket. “Is this all you’ll be having today?”

“Yes, this is it,” she started rooting through her purse. “Oh, you’re out of the canned pineapples.”

“I see,” he said as he pulled out several cans from the menagerie of metal cylinders. “I’ll make sure to put in an extra order. I know how much you like these.” But the look in his eye said he hadn’t realized she’d liked them
that
much. “Is there anything else?”

Charisma shook her head and pulled out crumpled bills from the depth of her purse. Suddenly, using a credit card didn’t appeal to her. The idea of leaving a paper trail that maybe somebody who already knew where she lived could find and maybe pinpoint her exact location and schedule … it was enough to make her head start spinning and it did enough of that without any additional things to worry about. So, Charisma had searched through every pair of pants she owned, every purse and wallet that was tucked away, had dumped Roscoe the piggy bank out and pulled out all the twenties she had slid in when there had a little extra to spare.
 

And here were the fruits of her efforts, crumpled up and shoved into the bottom of her purse, and now they were going to buy her food that, God willing, would last the rest of her life. She took a deep breath and handed the money to Bill. He frowned as he started to count out the money.