16. 1960
Jasper received a paycheck every Friday afternoon at three o’clock on the dot. By three thirty, he’d already spent half of it.
“Same as usual?” asked the cheerful blond behind the counter at the city hall office. She served as the bank teller, wire transfer operator, and postmistress all in one, which meant she held most of the town’s secrets in the palm of her well-manicured hand. “Forty in cash and forty to Aberdeen?”
“Yes, please,” Jasper said, his attention only partially on the transaction. It was taking every ounce of his self-control not to pull the copy of The Haunting of Hill House out of his pocket and find where he and Catherine had left off. They were supposed to meet tomorrow night at their usual spot down by the river, but he was itching to hear her thoughts on the passage he’d highlighted yesterday.
The book was scary as hell, and he’d lost hours of sleep to tossing and turning as he tried to shut out the images it evoked, but that was nothing new for him. Jasper had been scared almost every day of his life—of how brightly the sun shone in this part of the state, of the people who smiled and waved and went about their business as though life held nothing but joy, of beautifully laughing girls who made him feel things he thought he’d taught himself to suppress.
“Earth to Jasper,” the blond said as she slid four crisp ten-dollar bills across the counter.
“What? Oh. Sorry.” He took the money and shoved it into his wallet. “I wasn’t paying attention.”
“No kidding,” she said, but with a smile he assumed was meant to reassure him. “I was just saying that your family must really appreciate everything you do for them. My only brother doesn’t care what becomes of us. He left to work in the stockyards in Spokane a few years ago and never looked back. We don’t even get a Christmas card.”
“Oh,” Jasper said, feeling his cheeks grow warm. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d sent a Christmas card, either. Was that a thing you were supposed to do? When you already sent every available penny home? “That’s…unfortunate.”
The blond—Samantha, he thought her name might be—lifted her brows in a perfect arch. She also slid the receipt for the wire transfer across the counter. “You must get lonely without your family to take care of you,” she said with a pointed look down at the receipt. Jasper followed the line of her gaze to find that she’d scrawled a six-digit number across the top. “If you ever want to talk about it, you can give me a call.”
“Oh. Um. Thanks.” He fought the urge to crumple the receipt into a ball and throw it in the nearest garbage. He was no master of the social graces, but even he knew an insult like that would be hard for her to swallow. “I’ll do that.”
“You won’t, but I figure it can’t hurt to try.” She winked. “See you next week.”
Jasper mumbled something even he couldn’t interpret and ducked his head as he left the city hall. Across the street, he could just make out the beige brickwork of the tiny library, but he didn’t direct his steps toward it. There was no point. He already had the book in hand, and Catherine wasn’t on shift right now anyway.
Once upon a time, the library had been his happy place, his sanctuary. He’d been able to duck in there any time of day, grab a book off the shelf, and walk away without anyone engaging him in discussion, conversation, or—worst of all—banter. Now, every time he entered those hallowed walls, he became acutely aware of his every breath.
In and out:Lonnie would be watching him with a mischievous twinkle in her eye.
Out and in:Mrs. Peters would step in the way whenever he tried to scrawl a note in the book’s margin without getting caught.
In and in and in:There she’d be. Catherine. His Catherine, her head bent over a book, the wisps of her hair trailing over flushed, softly rounded cheeks.
She always knew when he came into the library, though she never gave any indication of her awareness other than a brief flutter of her eyelashes. Jasper knew because he felt it, too. Anytime they stood in a room together, the air shifted to make space for them. It had no other choice—the world wasn’t designed to hold them in close proximity for long. Like a chemical reaction, they were unstable, combustible, and, most dangerous of all, explosive.
Unable to wait another second, he ducked into an alleyway and pulled out the book, hoping no one would walk by and see him. The streets of Colville were annoyingly wide, built to accommodate the sixteen-horse logging carts that used to clog the throughways. The extra space was nice in the winter or for the annual parade that wound up and down Main Street, but terrible when a man wanted a little privacy—and privacy was the one thing Jasper wanted most in the world.
At least, it used to be.
His fingers fumbled as he searched for the correct page. As soon as he saw his own illegible scrawl followed by Catherine’s pretty, sloped writing, he felt the air leave his lungs.
Each was so bent upon her own despair that escape into darkness was vital, and, containing themselves in that tight, vulnerable, impossible cloak which is fury, they stamped along together, each achingly aware of the other, each determined to be the last to speak.
If you’ve ever wondered why I sometimes find it hard to say the words out loud, it’s this right here: fury and despair, both of them binding me tight. I wish I could offer you a whole heart, but I can’t. Not while those two things still exist within me.
You’re so dramatic sometimes, J, she’d written, and he could almost hear the laugh in her voice as he read the words to himself.
That was the thing he liked best about her—the thing that attracted and repelled him in equal proportions. From the top of her shining brown hair to the tips of her dainty, well-shod feet, Catherine was the poster child for everything bright and beautiful in this world. Her main trials and tribulations were parents who cared too much about her; her biggest worries centered on how far to push the boundaries that chafed her at every turn.
He didn’t want to resent that about her—he didn’t want to resent anything about her—but when you were a man with only forty dollars in his pocket, it was hard to quash those feelings. Thirty of those dollars would go to his weekly room and board, five to the savings bundle he kept hidden in his mattress, and five to everything else.
Five dollars didn’t afford much of a life, even in a backwoods place like this. A book or a night out at the cinema, a new potted plant to brighten up the dingy walls that no amount of decoration could make feel like a home.
He heaved a sigh as he flipped a few of the pages, searching in vain for more writing. Either Catherine had been forced to move quickly, or she was running out of things to say, because he didn’t find anything.
Just those five words: You’re so dramatic sometimes, J.
The worst part was, she wasn’t wrong. He was dramatic. He always had been. For as long as he could remember, he’d always reacted to situations in the worst possible way. He laughed when he should have smiled, cried when he should have sucked it up, curled into a ball when what the situation needed was a stiff upper lip.
I’m sorry, he wrote back. I wish I knew how to turn it off.
He shut the book and dropped it into the library’s return box. With any luck, Catherine would see the message and understand: that he was a man who felt things too much, too quickly; that every day was a struggle to find the balance between what the world expected of him and what his heart demanded of himself.
With his head bent low to the ground, he shuffled along the sidewalk toward his apartment. The forty dollars felt uncomfortable in his pocket, as if it had no right to be in his possession. In many ways, it didn’t. He’d promised his mom a long time ago that he’d send his earnings back to her and his brothers and sisters. It was a promise he’d kept for three long years—first as a sixteen-year-old away from home for the first time, and now as a nineteen-year-old taking on the rigors of a job that regularly ground fully grown men down to skin and bone.
He wasn’t skin and bone—not yet anyway—but every day, he felt himself grinding further and further away. Six hungry mouths to feed would do that to a man.
“Hey. You. Lumberjack boy.”
At the sound of that voice, Jasper kept his gaze fixed on his feet, hoping he could feign ignorance or, at the very least, stupidity.
A pair of booted feet planted themselves in front of him. “It’s Jacob, right? Or…Jeremy? Jerome? I’m sorry. I know it’s something with a J.”
Jasper sighed and glanced up. “Jasper,” he said in the surly voice that had won him so many enemies in his short lifetime.
“That’s right. Jasper.” The man—William McBride—smiled brightly at him. “I’m good with faces but not with names. Mind if I walk with you for a bit?”
Jasper did mind, actually, but he couldn’t think of a way to say so. He tilted his head in a gesture of assent.
“I don’t think we’ve formally met, but I’m William McBride. I work at the radar base.” He said this with all the air of a man conferring a treat on a young schoolboy. “Second Lieutenant McBride? Maybe you’ve heard of me?”
Jasper grunted. “I know who you are.”
“Good. Then you won’t think this next part is odd.”
He already felt that this whole situation was odd, but there was little he could do about it. He slowed his steps to match that of the other man.
“You’re a big reader, right? Spend a lot of time checking out books at the library?”
Jasper’s step faltered. “Who told you that?”
“No one. I just always see you hanging around this part of town, and you always seem to be eyebrows deep in some new book or other. What’s the one you were reading the other day? It had a green cover.” He snapped his fingers as though the answer was incoming. Jasper could have easily enlightened him—it had been Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, and he’d enjoyed every minute of it—but he wasn’t about to encourage conversation. Especially not about his deep, highly abashed love of anything containing a hint of romance.
That was the one thing he never told anyone—not even Catherine. She could poke and prod all she wanted, but he was determined to be a fortress. She’d never let him live it down otherwise.
“Anyway,” William said. “You read a lot.”
“Yes,” Jasper agreed when it appeared some answer was required.
“Would you…? Could you…?” William paused, his steps pausing with him. Jasper had no choice but to do the same. “The thing is, I’m trying to get in good with one of the librarians. Catherine Martin. She’s the daughter of my commanding officer, and the only thing she seems to like is books.”
Jasper had to fight every urge to stalk away from this conversation. He could have easily enlightened this young man about Catherine’s interests. She liked books, yes, but she also liked movies—the gorier and bloodier, the better. She ate a single apple for lunch every day when what she really wanted was a cheeseburger with extra pickles and a dark chocolate milkshake on the side. She loved her mother more than any other person in the world, and even though she was outwardly obedient to her father, her heart yearned to cast off every rule and reprimand in his playbook.
But most important, she longed for a bigger, brighter life than this town had to offer. And since she wasn’t likely to get it, she was taking solace in an affair with a man who had no right to touch any part of her.
“Have you tried reading a few?” Jasper suggested.
To his surprise, the young officer laughed. He flashed a set of white teeth that seemed unnatural in the full light of day. “Of course I have. I’ve read more in the past two months than the rest of my life combined. It doesn’t seem to do any good. She thinks I’m boring.”
Jasper found himself nodding. That sounded exactly like Catherine. She didn’t want the ordinary things in life; she wanted drama and terror, excitement and joy. Everything about her burned bright. It was as if the day she’d moved to their town, the sun had come out from behind a cloud and was threatening to blind them all.
“I was just wondering…” William kicked at the ground. “I dunno. If maybe you’d ever overheard her talking about her favorite books, or have ideas about what I should read to get her attention. I took her out to the drive-in a few weeks ago, but I don’t think she had a good time.”
Jasper started walking again, mostly so he could avoid punching this guy in the face. Catherine had gone out with him in public? No sneaking around, no hiding behind the pages of a book? And he’d wasted it?
“Wait—don’t walk away.” William jogged to keep up, his long, sloping strides easily catching up to Jasper’s. Jasper was in good physical shape—when you worked ten-hour shifts felling trees, you had to be—but he’d never been able to make his movements seem even remotely natural. “Just one book title. That’s all I want. I’ve seen you watching her. I know you could help me if you wanted to.”
“Watching her?” Jasper echoed, his mouth dry.
“Like a dog staring at a bone. Don’t worry. You don’t have to explain yourself to me.” A smirk touched the edges of the young officer’s mouth. “You should be careful how obvious you are, though.”
Jasper’s skills at reading people had never been particularly strong, but even he knew when a man was trying to threaten him.
“She likes scary books,” he said, more for Catherine’s benefit than his own. Not because he thought this bag of wind and hair pomade deserved a chance at her, but because he had the feeling William could make life very uncomfortable for Catherine if he wanted to. “Try The Woman in White or ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’. Or anything by Poe.”
William wrinkled his nose. It made him look like a petulant baby. “Seriously? You’re not just pulling my leg?”
Jasper just managed to refrain from throwing up his hands. He had neither the time nor the energy to continue this conversation. “You asked for my opinion,” he said gruffly. “I gave it. What more do you want?”
He started to walk away then, but the young lieutenant’s voice stopped him before he made it more than a few strides.
“She won’t look twice at a man like you, you know,” William said, and without raising his voice. He didn’t have to. He knew damn well that Jasper was listening to every word. “Do you have any idea who her family is? How well-connected they are?”
He didn’t—not in the way that William was implying—but that didn’t matter. Jasper understood all too well the point he was trying to drive home. Not that Catherine was military royalty who could have any man she wanted, and not that she came from the kind of money that meant she’d never have to worry about the source of her next meal, but that Jasper wasn’t worth the snap of her fingers.
As if he didn’t already know that. As if he didn’t feel it down to his very bones.
“If she won’t look twice at me, then you have nothing to worry about,” Jasper said, his own voice matching the other man’s for pitch and keel. He wouldn’t give anything of himself away—not for free, anyway. A man in his position couldn’t afford it. “Read the books. Don’t read the books. I don’t care what you do, just so long as you leave me the hell out of it.”