Chapter 21 #2
Fern couldn’t picture him laughing maniacally or firing off his revolver all willy-nilly, but the sensational lies weren’t what worried her. People were going to be listening to these reports; they were going to be searching for poor Fern Adair, the judge’s helpless, scarred daughter.
“No one’s gonna recognize you,” Cal said once they’d come into the city. He slowed at an intersection on Michigan Avenue, and in the falling dusk, headlights from oncoming cars brightened the cab.
“What if they recognize you?” she asked.
“So, what if they do? I’m not worried about the cops. You shouldn’t be either.”
“But they’re looking for us.”
Cal glanced at her as they started over the river. “The cops are bought, Fern. They aren’t gonna nab me for this bogus story on the radio. Your parents might have hired some private dick to find you, but…” He shrugged, showing just how little such a thing worried him.
She couldn’t imagine her father would have hired a private detective to find her, but her mother might have. It would be expected, of course. The right thing for a proper mother to do. Though with the way they’d dumped her at Young Acres, she suspected her family wouldn’t look too long or too hard.
They drove into Streeterville, where Cal had said there was a place for Fern to stay.
It was a good place, he’d assured her, and close to the library where he “knew a guy.” But after leaving Hazel’s Motel, where he’d hinted at how big of a problem his feelings for her were, Fern’s mind sank into a rut.
It refused to go any further than the two of them arriving back in Chicago.
Cal would stick to his word. He’d set her up, as he called it, but then what?
He couldn’t have her around Rod. So that left no room for her in Cal’s life.
I should have stayed at Young Acres was a thought that came and went as the sun set, and the city lights intensified. It was a cowardly thought, although thankfully, it was little more than a whisper.
The Roadster drew up alongside the curb in front of a brick foursquare home. The lights were on, the curtains drawn. With the engine off, everything around her seemed louder.
“Come on. I’ll introduce you,” he said, opening his door. She breathed deeply, suddenly anxious. He grabbed her suitcase from the back, then came around and opened her door. He waited, one hand on the window frame, while Fern hesitated.
“What is it?”
“Meeting new people isn’t easy,” she admitted.
He nodded and looked up at the house. “I don’t think you do easy, princess.”
She stared at him, surprised. He hadn’t called her that nickname in a while, and oddly enough, it fluttered through her like a spring breeze. “What do you mean by that?”
Cal held out his hand, and Fern took it, eager to touch him again. She’d spent the last two hours on the far side of the front seat.
“Tell me one time you took the easy way out since the night I showed up to dinner at your house,” he said, shutting the door. He kept her hand in his, her suitcase in the other.
“I…”
She couldn’t. He was right; ever since he’d sat down at her parents’ dinner table and asked for a glass of milk, she’d been reckless and daring at every turn. None of it had been easy.
He tugged her hand, and they walked up to the house’s front stoop. A wooden sign hung on the brick next to the door: Room Rentals. Inquire Within. The voices coming from inside were distinctly male.
Cal knocked, and a few moments later, the sound of a person bustling down a hall toward the front door spiked her pulse. You don’t do easy, Fern.
The door opened, and a solidly built, middle-aged woman with sharp brown eyes appeared, a flour-dusted kitchen towel draped over her shoulder. Her cool expression instantly warmed as she looked up at Cal. She threw out her arms, as if expecting him to fill them. And he did.
“Calvin! Oh, honey, it’s so good to see your ugly mug.
” She planted a kiss on each of his cheeks and then held him back a bit to look him over.
“Where have you been? Why did I have to learn that you’d been shot from the trash they’re printing these days?
They made it sound like you’d been made into a slice of Swiss cheese. ”
“I’m sorry, Helen. I know I should’ve called you up.”
Helen scowled, but another smile quickly overtook it. She grabbed hold of Cal’s cheeks and pinched them. “Oh, you’re my favorite boy, you know that. Come on in.”
She stepped out of the way, opening the door wider.
Cal put a hand on Fern’s back and urged her forward.
Helen’s brows raised as she met Fern’s eyes and then assessed her scars.
Rambunctious male voices floated out from the room behind Helen; men sat crowded around a full dinner table, eating supper.
This was a boardinghouse for men? Her throat went dry.
“Helen, this is Fern. Fern, this is my aunt, Helen.”
His aunt? She saw the resemblance now, at least in Helen’s deep brown irises.
“Pleased to meet you,” Fern said.
Helen crossed her arms over her chest, pulling taut the flowered fabric of her housedress. “You don’t look like you’ve been kidnapped to me.”
Fern parted her lips, but Helen shook her head. “I’ve got the radio on all afternoon and evening for those boys as soon as they get back from work, and you can bet that my old ears tune right in whenever I hear mention of my scallywag nephews.”
She winked at Cal. He closed the front door and locked it.
“He didn’t kidnap me,” Fern assured her. “There’s been a misunderstanding.”
“I didn’t believe it anyhow,” Helen replied with a wave of her hand, then started down the hallway again.
“My Calvin, laughing like a maniac?” She waved her arms through the air again, and Fern stole a look up at Cal, biting back a grin.
He was trying to do the same. They followed his aunt into the back of the house.
The melded aroma of garlic, onion, and roast chicken hung heavy in the air inside the stiflingly hot kitchen.
“I take it you’re not just here for a well-overdue visit?” she said from the stove where she was stirring a pot of soup.
“Got a favor to ask you,” Cal said.
She made a mmm-hmmm sound and kept stirring without looking up.
“Can Fern stay here for a few days? A week, tops.”
Fern squirmed. It was too much of an imposition, and something about it being his aunt made it worse.
Helen set the spoon on the counter and turned to them.
Her dyed-black hair, parted in the middle and pulled back into a tight bun, had a white strip at the roots, and there was a coarseness of her hands and face that spoke of hard manual work.
Fern didn’t think she should be asking this woman for any favors.
“I rent rooms to men,” she said, holding Cal’s gaze.
He set Fern’s suitcase on the laminate floor. “I know. But I need her safe, and I trust you.”
I need her safe. Warmth pooled inside her chest, and her next breaths were shallow. That one statement from Cal somehow made her feel more valued than she ever had in her whole life.
Helen’s shrewd gaze settled on Fern, as if she were trying to figure out who this young woman was to her nephew. It was a good question, one Fern certainly wanted to hear the answer to.
A swinging door led into the dining room, where the radio was turned up, and the men she rented rooms to fought to be heard over the ragtime playing.
“I can’t have a young woman upstairs with that rowdy bunch,” she said, hitching her chin toward the noise.
Fern felt sick with guilt. “I’m sorry for the intrusion. I can find somewhere else.”
Cal wrapped his fingers around her wrist, as if to anchor her to the spot. “Helen, I don’t ask you for a lot of favors,” he reminded her quietly.
She sighed. “If it means that much to you, Calvin, I can set up a cot in the storeroom back here.” She gestured to the other side of the kitchen. A quick glance showed a small room of shelving, not much larger than Fern’s closet back home.
Cal let go of her wrist. “That would be just fine, thanks.”
“Yes, thank you,” Fern said, finding her voice. “But if it’s too much of an imposition…”
She couldn’t finish; she had nowhere else to go.
Helen’s irritated expression softened. “A friend of my Calvin is a friend of mine. Don’t give it another thought. Now, the two of you look like you could eat.”
At a service station where they’d fueled up the Roadster, they’d also grabbed a couple of cheese sandwiches. She’d barely tasted hers she’d eaten it so quickly. Fern was still hungry, though, and it smelled as though Helen was a good cook.
“I can’t stay,” Cal said. Fern’s stomach dropped with disappointment, even though she’d known to expect it.
Helen rolled her eyes. “I’m not letting you leave until you’ve finished your supper. Now, go wash up.”
She sounded like a mother chastising an unruly child. To Fern’s surprise, Cal relented. He shrugged out of his jacket, draping it over the back of a chair in the small kitchen, and then went to the washroom, located off the kitchen, next to the storeroom. He closed the door behind him.
“It’s the only bathroom in the house, and my boarders pay an extra five dollars a week to use it. So, get used to the noise,” Helen told her as she set bowls out for them.
“Can I help with anything?” Fern asked. Helen moved efficiently, clearly in command of her kingdom here.
“Bring that pot over and set it on the tile there,” she said. In the center of the table was a blackened square tile, scorched, Fern imagined, by years of hot pots and pans.
Using a pair of equally blackened mitts, she lifted the pot of soup by its handles and brought it over to the table.
The padded mitts had thinned with repeated use, and her fingers were near to burning when she finally set it down on the tile.
Cal emerged from the bathroom as Fern removed the mitts and inspected her fingers. Red, but not blistered.
Cal caught her hand and inspected them himself.
Satisfied that she hadn’t burned her hand more seriously, he dropped a quick kiss onto the tips of her reddened fingers.
The sweet gesture took her breath away, but then he released her and pulled out a chair, as if it had been the most normal thing in the world to have done.
As Fern sat next to Cal at the table, Helen ladled soup into their bowls, seeming to think nothing of the double holsters tucked against her nephew’s ribs.
“Where’s your brother?” Helen asked. The way she said ‘brother’, it was clear Helen was just as cautious with Rodney as everyone else.
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him all day,” Cal answered.
“Does he know you’re here?”
Cal shook his head.
Fern could tell Helen wanted to know more—about her, about Rod—but she stayed quiet as Cal spooned up his soup like a starving man. He just wanted to finish and be gone, and as soon as he was, he got to his feet.
“Thanks, Aunt Helen,” he said, leaning over the table to kiss her on the cheek.
She stood up too, making some excuse about needing to check in on her “crew.”
Cal put his hands in his pockets while Fern stirred what remained in her soup bowl.
“You okay staying here?” he asked.
“Of course,” she replied, confused about why she sounded—and felt—irritated.
“I’ll be back tomorrow.”
She nodded, still stirring her soup. She wasn’t his responsibility. He didn’t need to stick to her like glue.
He stood next to her chair until Fern finally looked up at him.
He offered his hand, and like before, she readily slipped her fingers into his waiting palm.
With a light tug, he helped her to her feet, and then his hands settled around her waist. Cal leaned closer, angling his head to look her in the eye.
He kissed her with a gentle, testing nudge of his lips.
Heat gathered under Fern’s skin everywhere, and without thought, she kissed him in return.
Surely, her kiss was inexperienced, but the way he reacted—pulling her closer, kissing her harder—made her feel powerful.
“I don’t want you to leave,” she whispered against his mouth.
Cal murmured that he wished he could stay, too, but before he could say anything more, the swinging door to the kitchen slammed open with a startling bang. Cal shoved Fern behind him and had his revolver drawn and aimed a millisecond before what had happened permeated her fuzzy brain.
One of Helen’s boarders, holding a large ceramic platter filled with the remains of a roast chicken, stood frozen in the doorway.
The door swung back into him as his eyes popped with fear, staring at Cal’s gun.
Without the use of his hands, he must have kicked the door open—with more force than was necessary.
Cal swore under his breath and holstered his revolver. Helen came in behind the young man, whisking the platter out of his hands and shooing him back into the dining room.
“Sorry, Helen,” Cal muttered.
“Well, maybe now he won’t go kicking in doors,” was all she said as she bustled over to the sink.
Cal grabbed his coat from the back of his seat and pecked Fern’s forehead with a chaste kiss before pushing his arms into the sleeves. And then, in another blink, he’d left the boardinghouse through the back door.