Chapter 11 – GLENNA
GLENNA
W hen I wake up, it’s just before sunrise.
The room is gray. Cash’s arm is thrown across my chest. We’re both naked, and yeah, we’re lying on top of an unzipped camo sleeping bag.
The mattress is on the floor. There’s no other furniture in the room and no curtains in the window. It smells like sex and drywall.
It’d be cold if Cash wasn’t a furnace.
He’s sprawled on his stomach, taking up most of the bed, and I’m huddled against his left thigh.
I’m really sticky. And sore. There’s a clump of hair on the back of my head that seems to have worked itself into a beaver tail.
I don’t want to move because I don’t want to wake him up.
There’s no way I can face him.
There’s no way I did the things I did with him last night. All night long. Over and over.
Except I did.
And underneath the panic, I’m purring. My nose is shoved between his ribs, and I love how he smells—warm and sleepy and sweaty and like the things we did together.
It wasn’t ever like this with Toby.
And it feels wrong to think about Toby while I’m tucked against Cash, so even though my muscles complain, I carefully maneuver out from under Cash’s arm and swing my legs over the side of the mattress.
The hardwood floor is ice cold. My toes curl. If I’m getting up, I need clothes. There’s no heat in here.
Cash’s Henley is the first thing I find, so I pull it on. I find my own socks. I’m not being loud, but I’m still surprised when Cash doesn’t stir. He hasn’t moved, and he’s still snoring softly.
Actually, he does seem like the kind of guy who wakes for nothing.
I wander out of the bedroom, scrubbing my eyes. In daylight, I can see details. He hasn’t put the grates on the vents yet or plates on the electrical outlets. There aren’t any curtain rods or molding or light bulbs in the fixtures.
I can’t make coffee, so I get nosy and poke around the place. The lantern is sitting on the living room floor, still on. I click it off. I can see the fireplace now in its full glory and the bare rafters overhead. It’s going to be a fantastic room.
There’s a bay window with a view of the valley, the woods changing with the slope of the mountain. It’s magnificent, the wind skimming the pine needles, and further down, the orange and red and yellow leaves like an invisible hand.
Cash has tacked what looks like three wallpaper swatches to the unpainted drywall. Mackerels that look like an abstract painting from a distance. A toile with hunting dogs in a marsh amongst cattails. And a pine tree pattern that looks like something from Bob Ross.
There’s no way I could pick a favorite. They’re all equally awful.
I check out the other bedroom. It’s smaller, empty except for construction supplies laid on a piece of plywood set across two sawhorses. Beside the entrance hall, there’s a narrow stair that probably leads to an attic loft, but I don’t venture up. That would feel too much like snooping.
I stick my head in the kitchen. There aren’t any appliances, but there’s a card table and folding chairs. I peek out the back door. There’s a generator powering a freezer on the back porch and a picnic table. Granger is lounging in front of his igloo.
I should find some pants and go check on him. Give him breakfast.
Buy some time to process what in the hell just happened.
The most amazing sex of my life.
With Cash Wall.
What does it mean?
My stomach flips and flops. I don’t want to think about it.
Is this a rebound? Was it great sex because it wasn’t with Toby?
Do I like Cash?
Do I—more than like him?
Nope. Nope, nope, nope. That’s terrifying. Not going there.
I pad back to the master bedroom. Cash is still zonked out. I find my jeans and grab my shoes, venturing back to the kitchen to put them on. Granger must have read my mind. He’s snuffling at the back door now, yipping, his breath puffing clouds in the frigid air.
“Just a second, boy.” I tie my shoe and let him in.
He makes a beeline straight past me toward the living room. Does he think the fireplace is on? From the soot and the hint of smoke in the room, it’s functional. Poor dog. I bet he wants to warm his paws.
I follow. I haven’t started a fire before, but maybe it’s the kind of fireplace where you push a button. Or there’s a remote. The Walls had that kind.
Granger does seem disappointed. He sniffs the hearth and then circles the room twice to make sure he’s not missing anything. When he passes a stack of piled material, he steps on the old sheet covering it, and it falls.
Oh.
It isn’t a pile of construction material.
It’s several stacks of framed photographs.
The first I see is a closeup of a ruffed grouse. My photograph of a ruffed grouse.
I go to my knees on the cold, hard floor. The picture is in the same frame as when I sold it two years ago to Ernst Fowler’s wife.
There are more. Dozens. The kingfisher that I sold to Miriam Dutterer. The hemlock grove that I sold to Pandy Bullard. The great horned owl that I sold to Logan Rolf for his mother.
I knew that story was bullshit. Logan Rolf is not the type to buy a Mother’s Day present in March.
My stomach and my heart sink. Everything inside me sinks.
What is this? Is it a prank? Some long con?
I flip from frame to frame. The merganser I didn’t want to sell because he was so cute. Who bought him? I don’t remember, but it sure as shit wasn’t Cash Wall.
The black bear I shot on Harrow Ridge, just woken up from hibernation. My whole series of river otters gamboling. Five photos. I was so sad I had to break up the set to sell them.
I don’t understand.
Oh, my God. I pick up a photograph in the very back. It’s in a cheap discount store frame. I remember picking it out with my dad.
It’s a photo of my grandma’s hybrid tea rose, palest pink edged with rosy red. My entry into the Stonecut County Junior Art Show in ninth grade. The picture Cash compared to a vagina in front of the seventy-year-old judge.
All the entries were sold for charity after the show.
It was understood that parents bought the pieces, but when Dad went to pay up, someone had already bought it.
I’ve heard Dad tell the story a hundred times, bragging on me, how I was so talented that some perfect stranger snapped up my work from under his nose.
Cash Wall bought my rose?
My eyes are burning.
Why am I going to cry?
Footsteps sound in the hall. Crap. I dash the beginning of tears from my eyes. The steps pause in the doorway. I rise and turn, rigid with this feeling, whatever it is.
Cash is wearing plaid boxers, low on his waist. My mind reels, but my eyes feast. His body is unbelievable.
Biceps and triceps and abs and pecs and that V that no one knows the name for.
He’s an illustration. If I took his picture now, the early morning light kissing his perfect skin, no one would believe it’s unfiltered.
No one would believe he would be with someone like me.
We don’t make sense.
There’s a tattoo on his chest. It’s a buck’s head wreathed in roses. Pink hybrid tea roses edged in red.
Cash looks down to where I’m staring.
“Yeah. That’s my first kill.”
“Those are my roses.”
He steps into the room, hesitant, his back stiff. Braced.
“These are my pictures.” I gesture at the stacks behind me. “Why do you have them all?”
His face flushes. He drags his fingers through his hair. It’s sticking up at all angles. “I told you. I like your work.”
I’ve got my rose clutched to my chest, but I stoop and grab the owl. “I sold this to Logan Rolf. He said it was for his mother.”
“Oh. Yeah.” He kind of sighs. “People know I collect them. Logan probably needed some cash.”
“You paid for these?”
He tries to smile, but it doesn’t stick. The air between us crackles. “Well, yeah. Folks know they can tack on a finder’s fee.”
“Why?”
He shrugs a shoulder. His entire upper body is flushed red, but he maintains eye contact. I’m the one squirming, staring at my feet.
Granger rubs against Cash’s leg and then flops down at his side.
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you?” His eyes catch mine, bore into me, and I’m unmoored.
“No.” A tear dribbles down my left cheek. I scrub it away.
His face tenses, jaw, brow. “Not after last night? You still don’t?”
“Just explain it.” My voice is high, edged with hysteria. “Why do you have all my pictures?”
Does this mean I suck? Do people only buy my stuff so they can resell it to Cash for a premium? I’m going to throw up.
“‘Cause that’s all I could get.” Cash steps closer. I stiffen. He stops.
“No one really likes my work?” The thought is so huge and awful, it’s bigger than this, whatever this is.
Cash immediately shakes his head. “No, baby. There’s a bunch I can’t get. Mr. Henry won’t sell me your Hawk Mountain photos. I can’t get Barb Renfro or Tycho Anderson to sell either.”
Tycho Anderson lives in the trailers on the Wall property. He won’t sell?
“Which one does Tycho have?”
“Mountain laurel.”
I have tons of mountain laurel. There are a couple hanging up at the coffee shop now.
Shit. That’s beside the point.
“Just— why ?” I force myself to meet his eyes.
“Because I’m crazy about you.”
“You bullied me for years .”
He scrubs the back of his neck. “Yeah.”
“Why?”
“So you’d look at me. So you’d give me the time of day.”
“That’s so immature. So stupid .”
“Yeah.” It’s a full admission.
“So you knew you liked me, and you called me and the people I sat with in the cafeteria “the dregs” for all of high school?”
“Shit. Yeah. I guess I did. I was butthurt because you ignored me.”
“That’s garbage.”
“I’m not arguing.” He folds his arms and his biceps bunch.
“You threw balls at me in gym class.”
“Never hard.”
“You gave me a black eye.”
“That was an accident. I actually didn’t know I did until recently.”
“You prank promposaled me in front of the entire tenth grade, and people still bring it up. To this day .”
He tilts his head and stares at the ceiling, the muscles in his neck tightening. “Goddamn it, Glenna, I was serious.”
“I had a boyfriend.”