Authors: Kat Attalla
As she read the comics, she heard her father’s voice coming from the study. She attempted to find the humor in the antics of Charlie Brown so as not to eavesdrop. Her father, slightly deaf in one ear, overcompensated by speaking in a loud, blustering voice.
“Barely eats enough to keep a bird alive. Doesn’t want to see her friends. We don’t know what to do anymore.”
She rolled her eyes back and sighed. Another one of the neighbors calling to ask about poor little Lilly.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have … I didn’t know … I couldn’t just leave her there in New York, could I? Might be nice for her to see a friendly face.”
Great!
Why not invite every person I’ve ever known in my life, Dad?
He meant well, but the curious stares from her high school friends wore on her nerves. They all wanted to ask about her ordeal, but instead they made polite small talk as if nothing had happened. The story ran for several days in
The Daily Register,
but they didn’t want facts. They wanted the dirt. Did she know? Was she involved with her boss? Had she seduced a federal agent?
“Any day would be fine. She’s always here. Doesn’t venture out anywhere.” Lilly shook her head. He made her sound pathetic. Perhaps she was. With a new determination, she threw down the comics and picked up the classified ads.
Getting back to work would be a good way to take her mind off her problems and get her well-meaning parents off her back.
John came into the room and stopped short when he saw Lilly sitting in the chair. “Oh. Lilly. How are you feeling today?”
She smiled. Her father’s blond hair was sprinkled with gray, and the lines in his face had deepened. She hadn’t noticed before. Her prolonged disappearance had been a strain for him too, and she raised a brave front to ease his mind.
“I’m feeling much better. Who was that on the phone?”
He ignored her question and reached for the sports section on the paper. “There are a couple of good football games on today.”
“Dad?”
He glanced up. “What?”
“Who was on the phone?”
“Oh, that.” He shrugged. “One of my suppliers.”
Her father never lied and particularly not on the Sabbath. She noticed his crossed fingers along the edge of the paper.
“On Sunday?” she asked.
“Yeah. Just because the Lord rests don’t mean the corn does.”
She would just have to wait and see which one of her curious friends showed up in the next few days. For now, she rifled through the want ads searching for a job. She scanned page after page of boring positions. She hadn’t struggled through four years of college to be a secretary to some bank clerk. Frustration washed over her, and she reacted by childishly tearing the paper in half.
“Are you still angry with me, Lilly?”
“What?” she squeaked out. “Why would you think I’d be angry with you?”
“I thought I was doing the right thing … I didn’t realize....” He slumped forward and forced a sad smile. “Would you have been happier if you had stayed in New York?”
Happier? Would she be happy anywhere, she wondered? Iowa, New York, Morocco…. What was the difference without Jack? “It doesn’t really matter either way, Dad. I couldn’t have stayed. I had no money or job.”
“Then you’re not angry?”
“Of course not. Actually, I’m happy to be home.”
John slouched back into his chair and busied himself in the sports section. His soft laughter floated from behind the out-stretched newspaper. “At least when I lie, I cross my fingers.”
* * * *
Lilly lay on the ground at the bottom of the silo and yelled up into the hallowed walls. Very soon it would be full again, and the silly game she played with her sister would be a memory for another year.
“Hello … hello … hello....” Lilly’s echo faded away.
“Lilly? Lilly … Lilly,” Nadine said, turning to see her older sister’s face. “What, Squirt … squirt … squirt.”
The game lost its appeal when she saw the serious expression on the twelve-year-old’s face. She slid herself out and gave Nadine a pull.
“What’s his name?” Nadine asked.
“Whose?”
“The man who makes you cry every night. What’s his name?”
Lilly looped her arm through Nadine’s and headed towards the barn. “He doesn’t make me cry. I just do.”
Nadine gazed at her with all the perception an adolescent was capable of mustering. She’d just begun to discover boys, and Lilly’s erratic behavior of the past few days seemed to make her sister rethink the wisdom. “Does it always hurt?”
Only if he doesn’t love you, her heart cried. “No. And his name is Jack.”
Lilly picked up a pail and filled it with alfalfa to feed the cow. Bell, long past her milking days, stayed on the farm as the family pet.
“I’ll feed her, Lilly.”
Nadine followed Lilly around like a mother hen. She was a twenty-five-year-old woman, and the time had come to take charge of her life again. “You collect the eggs. I can handle this myself.”
“But Mom said….”
“We won’t tell her.” Lilly gave her a wink and sent her on her way. How much of a strain would it be on her fragile emotions to muck out a stall and feed one animal?
She poured the food on the floor for Bell and took a broom to sweep. “You sure can make a mess, old girl.”
Lilly laughed at the hypocrisy. She’d done her share of screwing up.
She leaned the broom against the wall and sat on the small stool to take a rest. Raking out the old straw was her least favorite job, and she procrastinated until she found an excuse. After all, the pitchfork was all the way at the other side of the room.
The old barn door creaked opened. “Quit checking up on me, you runt.”
Nadine didn’t answer, most likely because she didn’t want to admit to being caught.
“At least make yourself useful and bring me the pitchfork.”
She rested her head against the support beam and waited for her sister to arrive. She knew Nadine wanted to be clever and give her a small fright, so she closed her eyes and played along.
“I guess no one’s here after all, Bell.” She waited until she heard the footsteps stop on the other side of the cow. At that precise second, Lilly sprung to her feet shouting, “Boo,” and got the fright of her life.
Her startled cry frightened the cow, which in turn stepped on her foot. She hobbled backwards to regain her balance, and her other foot landed in something squashy and foul smelling. Lord, she hadn’t done that in fifteen years. She felt like an idiot.
Scuffing her foot against the floor didn’t help. Neither did having an amused audience. She spun around to remove her shoe, tripped over the stool and went tumbling onto a bale of straw. To compound her humiliation, Jack towered above her, pitchfork in hand, like the devil himself, and laughed at her.
“What are you doing here?” she finally got out of her mouth.
He offered her a hand up. “Watching Murphy’s Law in action?”
“Funny,” she sniped and bent down to remove her shoe. The diversionary tactic spared her from having to face him until she collected herself. Why had he come now? Did he want to make sure she hadn’t lost all her marbles before he took off for places unknown again?
“How have you been, Lilly?”
“Great,” she lied. “And you?”
“I’ve been better.” His words held none of his usual sarcasm, and she couldn’t stop herself from looking up. His dark eyes reflected a weariness she hadn’t expected. He rested the pitchfork against the wall and leaned next to it. “You didn’t say goodbye.”
And it only took you a month to realize that?
Chalking her sneaker up to a loss, she tossed it on the floor. “I left you a note.”
“Is that what it was? It read like a standard form letter. You might as well have addressed it ‘To Whom It May Concern’.”
She knew the small card didn’t come close to thanking him. How could she express her feelings without getting sentimental? She didn’t want to choke him with a lot of emotional dribble when they had no future. His lifestyle didn’t allow for long-term relationships. “Well, next time I’ll try to say it with a Hallmark card.”
“There won’t be a next time. I’m taking you back to New York with me. You don’t belong here anymore.”
“Oh, yeah? And who decided that?”
“Your father and I.”
She lowered her head and let out a soft, ironic laugh. Her own father was sick of her. “That was nice of the two of you. Did you also decide how I’m going to pay off my credit card bills while living in New York without a job?”
“They’ve already been paid.”
Lilly sighed heavily. She owed him so much already. “You shouldn’t have done that. I don’t know when I’ll be able to pay you back.”
“I don’t want the money back. Whether you return with me or not, it makes no difference….” He turned his head away and mumbled to the floor, “But I’d like you to come with me. Please.”
Jack Murphy unsure of himself? Who would have thought it possible? He viewed emotions as weaknesses, and he wouldn’t own up to them unless she dragged them out of him.
Sinking his hands into the pockets of his designer jeans, he lifted his shoulders ruefully. Why did he have to look so damned good when she looked like she fell off the hay wagon? She needed a bath. She needed a comb. What she really needed stood ten feet away, waiting for her to admit that fact.
Only, she wasn’t ready to admit it. Not without putting up at least the same amount of struggle as he. If he had said these things to her at the hospital, she would have accepted gladly. The last month of sorrow and loneliness forced her to concentrate on the worst parts of her ordeal in hopes of getting over him. The leering smirks and hushed comments that followed her out the door that day were burned in her memory.
“I’m going to pay you back.”
“Okay.” He held up a hand and counted silently on his fingers. “At a dollar a week, it will only take you a hundred years. Of course, I’ll have to keep you as collateral.”
Jack was letting her make the rules? Now that was a novelty, even if he was trying to be funny. She shook her head. “A dollar a week might be tough. I don’t have a job.”
“Neither do I.”
“They fired you because of me?” She inhaled deeply and suppressed the urge to go flying into his arms. “Maybe you should have kept your pants on, Murphy.”
He tipped his head and accepted the dig in the spirit in which she meant it—spite, pure and simple. “They didn’t fire me. I quit.”
“Why?”
“For one thing, I blew the case. I didn’t figure Stucky for a cold-blooded murderer until it was too late. I was supposed to be protecting you and I almost got you killed.”
“You saved my life.”
“Your left elbow saved your life. That was some shot you gave Stucky.”
A tiny smile of pride tugged at the corner of her mouth. “I wouldn’t have gotten very far if you hadn’t been there.”
“You don’t understand what I did,” he said urgently.
Lilly’s heart ached for him. How could she continue to inflict guilt on him when he was doing such a fine job on his own? “No. You don’t understand. You trusted your friends. That’s not a federal offense. You didn’t get me killed, you kept me alive. So, you screwed up a little when your emotions got involved. That only makes you human.”
“I’m glad you think I’m human, at least.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“I guess that depends on you.” He shrugged indifferently. “I could always join the family business.”
Lilly didn’t know whether to laugh or cry that he would consider doing that for her. “You’d hate it, Jack, and you know it.”
“Yeah, I know. I’ve been up in Boston the past few weeks.”
“How did it go?”
He rolled his eyes. “I wouldn’t say we would ever be the Cleaver family, but we didn’t kill each other, either. But I don’t want to talk about my family right now.”
“Then what should we talk about?”
“You and me and what we’re going to do now. Mustafa said we could work on his boat again until we decided what we wanted to do, but only when I prove that your passport says Lilly Murphy.”
Her jaw dropped. Jack waved his hand in front of her face to keep an annoying fly from entering her mouth. She wouldn’t have noticed if it had.
“Is that your way of asking me to marry you?” she wondered aloud, hoping she hadn’t misread another one of his off-handed remarks.
“Well, I’m not trying to adopt you, so I must be.”
“Why?”
“Why? I would have thought it obvious. I love you.”
She didn’t doubt his words, but he still had some explaining to do. “You love me? Then why didn’t you call me?”
“Your father thought it best if I gave you some space until you were sure of your feelings.”
“My father? Jeez, Jack, I am so sick of the two of you deciding my life for me. Did it ever occur to you to ask me? No. Of course not, because you and my father know better. I should take that pitchfork and stick it in your backside.” She paused and peeked around him. “Of course that would be a waste of a great rear end.” She gazed up and him. “But I digress.”