Chapter 8
The first thing Fern smelled was his cologne. She remembered it from the other evening, when she’d been in the White Room and he’d stood up to light her cigarette. The sharp scent made her think of roots and green bark and dark soil. And something more exotic that had her picturing a dense jungle.
Cal sat in the driver’s seat, one hand resting on the steering wheel, the other on his lap. She glanced over but didn’t make eye contact.
“Didn’t think you’d come down from that castle of yours, princess.”
She looked up at the turret, at the warm, welcoming light illuminating the window.
“What do you want?”
Cal held still. He didn’t shift or fidget, and she had the distinct feeling he never reacted hotly to anything. Fern didn’t know whether that was admirable or intimidating.
“We haven’t heard from the judge,” he answered.
A small, piercing pain in her chest made taking her next breath difficult. Her father hadn’t done anything about the photographs?
“They haven’t…I mean, you haven’t sent them to the papers, have you?”
Oh, God. Please. Please, say no.
Cal gave a barely imperceptible shake of his head. But before Fern’s breathing could level out, he added, “He’s got ‘til tomorrow.”
Her vision swam, her head going light. He’d come to warn her, then. Maybe to ask her to push the judge into action. She shook her head.
“If you think I can tell him to do anything, you’re wrong. He doesn’t…” Fern bit her inner cheek, stunned at how painfully the truth pierced her heart. “He doesn’t care.”
“No judge wants pictures of his daughter spread eagle on a bed on the front page of the American.”
Fern choked on a gasp and stared at him. What was she doing sitting here in the front seat of Cal’s car? She’d come of her own free will, expecting what? Tears stung the backs of her eyes as she fumbled for the door latch.
His hand came down on her left arm and tugged her back, away from the door. “Hold on.”
She pried at his fingers. “Let me go!”
He quickly did, hands going up in surrender. “Just wait a minute, all right? Please.”
She sat statue still, her eyes darting between him and the door latch.
“He’s going to do something,” he went on. “The judge. He’s going to do something, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be what my brother wants.”
Fern’s heartbeat began to settle after a few more moments.
“Rod, he can’t see the forest for the trees.” Cal exhaled in exasperation. “There’re more outcomes than the one he’s got in his head, but hell if he’s gonna consider ‘em.”
He shifted in his seat, the sound of rustling cloth against the leather cushion loud in the small space. A new gust of his cologne followed. She breathed it in, momentarily soothed by the image of a lush forest, instead of the reality of the car’s dark interior.
“Have you heard anything?” he asked. Was he worried the photographs hadn’t worked? That his brother would be disappointed?
“I’ve been in my room.” Her eyes drifted toward the turret again. It seemed so far away right then.
Cal let out a long, pent-up breath. He wasn’t happy, and Fern guessed it was because Rodney wouldn’t be happy.
She didn’t see his hand coming across the space between them until his fingers touched her chin. Fern started at the warm, coarse brush of them as he turned her face toward him. She jerked out of his grasp.
“Who gave that to you?” he asked.
She’d forgotten all about her bruised undereye. Remembering it now brought on a swell of inexplicable nausea.
“The judge or your punk brother?” Cal prodded.
Fern bristled. Buchanan would never hit her. Then again, she never imagined her father would have either.
“Was it Francis?” he pushed when she didn’t answer. Fern looked over at him. “He said he talked to you. That you gave him a hard time.” Cal gripped the steering wheel with both hands. “He the one who hit you?”
She finally shook her head to stop him from asking. “My father.”
His fingers loosened on the wheel, and silence filtered into the cab of the Roadster. Outside, gulls croaked and screeched in the night sky, and cars whizzed past.
She expected Cal to offer an apology. Some half-hearted, meaningless thing. Instead, he reached into his coat pocket and extracted a silver case.
“You want a smoke?”
A visceral and immediate memory of hacking on a cloud of stinging smoke came to her. “God, no.”
He huffed a laugh. Fern couldn’t see his face clearly, but she saw the rise of his cheek in profile.
“What, no one here you want to piss off this time by smoking?” He tucked the case away after retrieving a cigarette for himself and propping it between his lips.
“Yes, all right, I wanted to make my mother angry,” she admitted, her own anger rising. She didn’t like being laughed at. “So what if I wanted them all to look at me in shock rather than pity? I’m tired of pity.”
“Then stop pitying yourself,” he said as he capped his lighter.
The tip of his cigarette glowed, and her chest felt the same kind of red-hot burn. “You don’t know how I feel about anything. You don’t know me.”
“I know you hide up there like a leper.” He gestured with his cigarette toward the turret.
“God, now you’re sounding like my mother. Put on a dress, and you’d probably turn into her.”
He finished exhaling a cloud of smoke. It was fast ruining the scent of his cologne. “Just don’t make me wear heels.”
Fern gaped at him, a retort lost on her tongue. That cheek lifted again, and with her eyes adjusting, she could now see his mouth had curved into a smile. She hadn’t expected a joke or a smile. Not from him.
She fought a grin herself. Tossing around jokes with him wasn’t right. This man had removed her clothes, taken photographs of her while she was unconscious. He’d used her and dragged her into a situation she didn’t want any part of.
Her half-smile faded, and so did his. He tapped the steering wheel as he smoked, his head turning just enough so he could glance in the rearview mirror.
“You want to go for a ride?” he asked.
Fern stared at him. “What?”
“A ride,” he repeated, and when she continued to stare, mute, he must have read her panicked thoughts. “Not to Rodney. Just around.”
He wanted to ride around in his car. Disturbingly, her gut reaction wasn’t to say no, though it should have been.
“Why should I trust you?”
He could be planning to take her somewhere else. Maybe Rodney was waiting for them. She didn’t quite believe that, but how could she trust her own instincts anymore? She’d been wrong about so much already.
Cal rolled down his window a crack and let out some of the smoke. “I don’t know. Maybe you shouldn’t.”
That didn’t relax her in any way, but at least it was honest.
“I’m not going to hurt you, Fern. You want to go for a ride or not?”
Her mouth went dry, and her body turned shivery when she realized she was going to say yes.
“Just for a little while,” she answered.
Cal held still. Surprised maybe. He tossed the cigarette out the window before turning on the engine.
The car came to life, the slight odor of gasoline coming into the cab to mingle with smoke and the scent of his cologne.
He pulled away from the curb, turned around in another driveway, and drove northeast, toward South Lakeshore Drive.
The moon hung somewhere behind a heavy banking of clouds. There was nothing but blackness over the lake and the revolving beam of light from the harbor lighthouse.
“Where are we going?” she asked, turning away from the window.
“Up to the Pier.”
The Pier was past the Loop, in Streeterville. She’d never been there, though she’d driven past it with her parents a few times. During the war, the Army and Navy had appropriated it, but now it was just a place for people to go and have fun.
“What are we going to do there?”
Cal glanced over. Fern could see him a little better now with the headlights on and other car headlights shining past.
“There’s a guy who makes these pretzels I like.”
Pretzels. He was taking her to a pretzel vendor at the Pier. A bubble of panic rose in her chest.
“I can’t.”
He lifted his hands from the steering wheel for a second. A gesture of confusion. “What, you don’t like pretzels?”
“I like pretzels just fine, but…the Pier will be crowded.”
Especially in the summer. It didn’t matter that a rainstorm could be blowing in off the lake soon; the Pier would probably be jammed with people.
There was a theater there, and restaurants and a dance hall, a promenade for lovers to stroll, and a tram that trundled people all the way out to the end if they didn’t want to walk.
Fern had read all about it, and when Buchanan had been a little younger, he’d said it was one of his favorite places to meet friends.
Cal drove on, making no reply. Whether he was angry or annoyed or trying to think of a new destination now, she didn’t know. She knew nothing about him that wasn’t skin-deep. That should have frightened her.
“He ever do that before?” he asked.
Fern didn’t understand the question; her mind was still on the Pier and soft pretzels, and her incomprehensible decision to go for a ride with him.
“What?”
“Your pop. He smack you around a lot?”
Oh. An image of her father came unbidden, his nostrils flaring as he glared down at her, where she’d landed on the carpet, her cheek and nose smarting from the crack of his hand.
“No.”
Fern supposed there were plenty of girls out there getting slapped by their parents on a regular basis, but she’d never really thought about it until right then.
“The pictures made him angry,” she said needlessly.
“That was the point,” he said with all the finesse of a meat tenderizer. “But I’m sure that doesn’t make your eye feel any better.”
Neither had Cal’s reply. Fern stared through the windshield at the road as it came at them. “Just so long as you and Rodney get what you want, right?”
“I don’t want to talk about Rod’s plans.”
“Then you shouldn’t have brought up my black eye.”
“I just wanted to know if your old man likes to use you as a punching bag.”