Chapter 22 #2
The previous night, after a rush of Helen’s boarders had popped into the bathroom and then headed off to their rooms, Fern locked herself in and drew a bath.
After two days traveling in a car and running through cornfields in the middle of the night, it had felt glorious to sink into hot water and lather up with her bar of milled soap.
She’d washed her hair and set it in rollers too.
This evening, she only took a quick bath, but while Fern soaked in the small tub, she thought of Cal and worried about him.
Why hadn’t he come? What if he’d been arrested? Or worse.
She closed her eyes, breathed in the scent of the jasmine soap, and tried to silence her thoughts. Still, Helen saw the worry etched between her brows when she emerged from the bathroom.
“If only the more you thought about a man, the faster he’d show up.
But my nephew’s good for his word,” Helen assured her as she made them each a cup of tea before turning in for the night.
“Never has been one to concern himself with a woman before, though.” She peered at Fern over the cup’s silver-painted rim.
“Not like the way I saw him with you last night. You two have an understanding?”
An understanding could mean anything, but Fern thought she knew what Helen was asking. If only she had an answer.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “There are…certain obstacles.”
“Rod,” Helen guessed immediately. At Fern’s nod, she sighed. “Cal’s tried so hard with that boy. We both have. Nothing to be done about him at this point, though. Damage is already done, as they say.”
Fern held her cup, the porcelain warming her hands. Helen seemed open to talking about her nephews for the moment, so Fern asked what she wanted to know. “Why are they so different?”
Helen pursed her lips. “Well, I have my thoughts on that, but it’s a story for Cal to tell you, if he’s so inclined. Though he isn’t usually. I think he’d like to forget it entirely.”
Fern masked her frown by taking a sip of tea. Something must have happened between him and Rod, something personal enough for Helen to feel it wasn’t her place to share it with her.
Helen said goodnight and shuffled off to her room, which was a proper bedroom, next to the front sitting room.
Fern finished her tea and then turned out the kitchen light before closing herself in her storage closet-turned-guest room.
The cot had a metal-framed, trifold design, with a thin mattress supported by wire springs atop it; it looked to be army issue, and only the floral-patterned sheets and colorful quilt made it remotely welcoming.
She stared at the tin ceiling, a streetlight somewhere filtering in through a small window above the top shelf, which held rows of canned vegetables.
It was no use pretending she wasn’t disappointed that Cal hadn’t come.
He’d left her with a blinding kiss the night before, but it was possible he’d returned to the Lion’s Den, Rod, and his life in Lincoln Park, and she’d faded in his mind.
If it were her parents or Buchanan, or any of the other limited people she’d had the chance to meet in her lifetime, Fern would have more easily believed that she could be so quickly forgotten.
How relieved her family had been when she’d finally gone away to Young Acres.
And speaking to her mother today on the telephone, her concern over Fern’s disappearance hadn’t been for her daughter, but for how it would affect the judge’s reputation.
Hearing that had been the final stone falling through her, landing on top of the pile that had been forming in the pit of her stomach for so long.
Her family didn’t want her back. And now that Fern had been out of her turret, she didn’t want to go back. From this point on, she’d be moving forward, as frightening and uncertain as the future might be.
Her mind raced, and sleep wouldn’t come. The sounds of the house settling—shuffling feet upstairs, a creaking board, the low murmur of male voices—seemed amplified in the quiet darkness. A light rapping on glass took her mind a moment to comprehend that it was coming from the kitchen.
Fern sat up, pulled on her robe, and peeped into the darkened kitchen. Cal stood at the back door, visible through the window glass. Her heart swelled with relief and thrill, her hands practically shaking as she unlocked the door and let him in.
He doffed his hat. “I bet you’d like to give me a good smack for leaving you hanging all day. I’m sorry, princess.”
He kept his voice low, a whisper just between them.
“I was a little worried,” she admitted. But now, she could barely recall what that agitation had felt like. With him there, she could breathe easier.
“I couldn’t get away.” He got out of his coat and hung it and his hat on a peg next to the door. Cal ran his hand through his hair. He seemed wound up.
“Is everything all right?” she asked.
He went to a cupboard, took out a glass, and then opened the monitor-top Frigidaire. Cal poured himself a glass of milk and downed it.
“Rod’s got something planned for the Jacky Boys,” he said, still standing next to the refrigerator. “He wants to hit back, hard, for the ambush at Tom’s place.”
Fern’s stomach plummeted. “When?”
“I don’t know.” He pulled out a chair at the table and slid down into it, as though he’d been on his feet all day. “He’s being cagey about it and keeping me out of the loop.”
That’s what was agitating him. Barefoot, Fern took a few steps across the dark kitchen toward him. She thought about turning on the light. Helen’s room was far enough away that she wouldn’t see it. But something about the dark was comforting.
“Is it because of me?” she asked. His brother had seen the flower in her hair and knew that Cal had gone out of his way to pick her up in Zionsville. Rod despised Fern’s brother, and for good reason. Cal did too. But only Rod had extended that revulsion toward Fern.
Cal leaned back in the chair and held his hand out to her, yet again.
Slowly, she lowered herself onto his lap.
He wrapped his arms around her hips, but they didn’t stay there long.
Cal’s hand wandered to the collar of her robe, then the sleeve.
He rubbed the rose-colored silk between his thumb and forefinger, and Fern remembered what she wore underneath: a lightweight, nainsook cotton nightgown.
Cal’s legs shifted as he sat forward, jostling her closer.
He slid his hand up her robe’s sleeve, touching skin.
“I got an interview,” Fern blurted, nearly breathless.
He pulled back, his mouth quirking up into a small grin. “How?”
“I answered some want ads today, and then I dialed up the library.”
He sighed and sat back, his hand slipping from her wrist. “Fern, I’m sorry. I said I’d take you. I just didn’t want to leave Rod, not with him acting secretive.”
“You don’t need to apologize.” She hated to see him deflate like that. It wasn’t like him. Whatever had happened with Rod was weighing on him. “I wanted to do it on my own, and I did.”
His arms tightened around her again, and she thrilled at the rare, full smile showing his teeth. “Look at that. You didn’t need me after all.”
Getting the interview on her own merit did feel good. Better than just good. She felt…proud. Of herself.
“What is it?” he asked, seeing something change in her expression.
“The truth is, I wouldn’t have done it if it hadn’t been for you.” He’d drawn her out of her turret and into the world—the real world. Each time he’d reached his hand out to her, she’d taken it.
Fern’s fingers wove between his, brushing first over his calloused palms, his strong fingers and knuckles. He’d gone quiet, though she could somehow still hear his mind whirring. There was nothing restful about the silence.
“You did it all yourself,” he finally said. There was more he wanted to say, she could feel it, and she kept her lips pinned, waiting for him to speak. His whisper turned husky and thick. “I meant what I said: You don’t need me, Fern. Not the way…not the way I need you.”
Sharp, sudden heat flared in the very center of her chest. Not quite pain, but close to it. Cal’s vulnerability felt nearly too fragile to exist.
“I might not have needed you to call up the library and ask for an interview,” Fern said, “but that doesn’t mean that I don’t need you. That I don’t want you. I do.”
How could she explain what he made her feel inside, even when he just stepped into a room? Or when her eyes would meet his, and she somehow managed to feel both safe and set free? What Fern struggled to understand was how she could possibly make him feel anything similar.
Cal touched her chin, her cheek. The streetlamp outside cast its yellow glow inside the kitchen, lighting up half his face. His eyes, usually so solemn, looked at her with an intensity she didn’t recognize.
“I want you too.”
The air, already warm from the late August night, thickened in her throat. There was nothing in those four words to decode or interpret. Fern knew what he wanted. And what she wanted, even if it did frighten her a little.
“Stay,” she whispered. His palms gripped her waist, heat searing through silk and thin cotton.
“You sure that’s what you want?”
She could say no. Shake her head. Tell him she was scared. But the truth was, she wasn’t afraid of Cal making love to her. She was timid about something else.
“If I can…keep my nightgown on?”
She cringed at the sound of her request, but she wouldn’t take it back. Cal’s brows tensed together.
“You don’t want me to see you?”
A hot flush creeped up her neck when she recalled that Cal had seen the weals on her left arm and shoulder the first night they’d met.
But she also had several ridges of scar tissue along her breast, and her left hip and thigh that he wouldn’t have seen.
Cal was used to her face; these other scars would be new to his gaze.
If he found them unattractive…Fern didn’t know if she could withstand the humiliation of it.
But as his eyes stayed level with hers, she let the tension out of her back and neck. She knew that she’d worried for nothing, even before he spoke.
“You can have it on or off. It’s your choice, but Fern—” His fingertips pressed harder against her waist, holding her tighter. “There’s no part of you I’m not gonna love.”
The words hung, suspended in the space between them, for as long as it took for her to breathe again.
Cal loved her. She kissed him. Fern had never felt more needed or wanted than when he stood up, clutching her in his arms and carrying her to the little storeroom.
Cal closed the door, and she only had to say one more thing: “Off.”