Chapter Eight
“You’re telling me that you’ve never heard of the Hidebehind?” Amelia demanded.
Her voice carried through the screen door, out to where Cody was sitting on the porch.
The sun was sinking, but the heat of the day still lingered.
Amelia and the children were sitting inside the open sitting room at the front of the house, while Cody had taken up his customary seat on the porch.
He had taken up a small chunk of firewood and was meant to be whittling, but in reality was mostly just sitting, holding the small knife and piece of wood.
“What’s the Hidebehind?” Cody heard Logan inquire.
“Well, that’s a good question,” Amelia said in that coy way that people do when they want to pull someone in. “Nobody really knows,” she said, lowering her voice. “No one’s actually seen one.”
“How do they know they exist then?” Logan asked.
“Well, they—no, you’ve got a knot there, don’t pull so tightly,” Amelia said.
She’d decided that it was imperative that the children learn some skills that weren’t directly tied to ranch work.
To that end, she had Logan learning how to sew buttons back onto a shirt.
When the boy had objected, Amelia had simply asked him what he’d do if he lost the buttons on a shirt and had no one to replace them, which had ended the argument.
Ruby sighed. “I don’t know if I’m ever going to get this. I don’t think it’s meant to look like that,” she said.
“Let me take a look,” Amelia said.
If Cody tipped his chair back just right, he could see into the house through the screen door.
They were all sitting on the floor, their various crafts scattered about them.
Ruby had decided to try her hand at straw plaiting, intrigued by the idea of crafting her own fashion accessories, so Cody had gathered.
She had a bundle of straw beneath one arm and a bowl of water at her side.
“You’re doing quite well, Ruby,” Amelia reassured her.
“If you get the straw just a little more damp, then you’ll get a more even plait.
That’s right, just a bit of water there.
See how it yields more easily? You’ll be copying fashion plates in no time.
Just think, you’ll be able to have the most fashionable summer hats of any girl in town. ”
“You think so?” Ruby asked hopefully.
“I do,” Amelia reassured her. “My sister and I used to make a bit of pocket money this way. We’d wander the country lanes and plait straw, telling stories the whole time.”
“Is that where you learned about the Hidebehind?” Logan asked.
“No, that was… later,” Amelia replied. Cody frowned at the vagueness of her answer but didn’t say anything. “Now, where was I?”
“No one’s seen the Hidebehind,” Logan reminded her.
“Oh yes,” Amelia said. “Now, the Hidebehind is fond of dense forests full of tall trees, so I expect we’re safe here—that’s the only reason I’m telling you this.
The only way you’ll know one is near is when people start going missing.
This is why you never go alone into the forest. Some say that it detests the smell of alcohol, but I can’t attest to that. ”
Cody cleared his throat in disapproval, hoping the message would be clear.
“But no one’s seen one? No one at all?” Logan asked.
“Not clearly. Some say that it looks like a tall man, only covered in shaggy fur. Others say it looks like a clump of shadows. If you try to look at it directly, it will duck behind a tree and look like nothing more than another tree trunk,” Amelia said, lowering her voice for effect.
“Golly,” Logan breathed, clearly eating it up.
“I didn’t know you had a sister,” Ruby commented. “It would be nice to have an aunt—we’re a little short on female relations.”
“Ah,” Amelia said, and Cody could hear the wince in her voice. “She’s… no longer with us.”
“Oh,” Ruby said. Cody saw her put her plaiting down and look directly at Amelia. “I’m sorry. I know how difficult that is, to lose a family member like that. How long…?”
“Two years,” Amelia answered. “She was my constant companion. It still feels strange not to have her here. I find myself still turning to her to share a joke or ask her advice.”
“I know what you mean,” Ruby agreed. “Sometimes I still start to call for Ma to help me braid my hair or to help me find the soap flakes.”
“That’s exactly it,” Amelia said. “My sister and I used to brush each other’s hair every night before bed.
Sometimes I find myself holding out a brush over my shoulder for her to take, only to realize there’s no one there.
” She paused for a moment, and Cody could hear the pain in the silence. “It’s the little things, isn’t it?”
“What did Ma look like?” Logan asked quietly, all thoughts of monsters gone.
“Well—” Ruby began.
Abruptly, Cody leaped up from his chair and yanked the screen door open, stalking inside.
It was entirely too much to bear: the growing closeness between Amelia and his children, the familial way they were passing time together, and, most damning, the way they were reminiscing about his late wife.
He didn’t want to hear Ruby describing her.
He didn’t want Amelia making sympathetic noises.
In the sitting room, everyone looked up at him with startled expressions. He stood in the doorway for a moment, clutching the screen door latch so hard his knuckles turned white. “Bed,” he said, his voice cracking from disuse. He cleared his throat. “Time for bed,” he grated. “Now.”
“But, Pa—” Logan began. Cody shot him a withering look, and Logan immediately shrank back into himself. Cody immediately regretted that but was too far committed to back down now.
“Come along, then,” Amelia said with great gentleness.
Her velvety voice was such a contrast to Cody’s, both in tone and delivery, that it made him grind his teeth together.
Without uttering a word in argument, she delivered a perfect rebuke of his behavior.
“Make sure you both take all of your things with you,” she continued.
“I have no wish to step on needles or straw splinters.”
“Yes’m,” Logan and Ruby replied.
Amelia busied herself by dousing almost all the lights in the room, turning down wicks, and snuffing candles.
Cody still stood in the doorway, rooted to the spot as the room gradually became more and more shadowed.
The children finished gathering up their various projects and bid Amelia goodnight.
She returned their salutation easily, affectionately tousling Logan’s hair and smiling warmly at Ruby.
Her eyes still downcast, Amelia lifted a still-burning lantern from a side table.
Without meeting his eyes, she gave a short curtsy that was so brief as to be almost non-existent before climbing slowly up the stairs after the children.
Cody could hear the stairs creaking as she went, her steps slow and measured.
It would be easier if she’d just yell or throw things, Cody thought to himself. He didn’t know how to be in conflict with someone who simply refused to fight.
The silence and near-darkness of the sitting room seemed to stare accusingly at him.
It was hard to believe that just a couple of minutes previously, it had been full of light and laughter.
Guilt hit Cody like a brick in the gut. The truth was that he simply didn’t know how to be around his own children.
After his wife had died giving birth to Logan, he’d vanished into his work and largely left them to their own devices.
With Amelia’s arrival, his shortcomings were plain for him to see. She was kind and gentle with them and spent time with them in a way that he didn’t know how to do. They were all so… so…
Familiar.
“Jealousy is such an ugly thing.”
Cody whipped around, staring out into the dark past the front porch.
His eyes searched the twilight, probing every shadow and rustle of wind through the grass.
There was no one there, but he’d heard the words as clearly as if they’d been spoken from directly behind him.
He’d have known that voice anywhere—he’d longed to hear it for eight years. His wife, Anne.
He couldn’t place the memory at first, but then it came to him: They were freshly betrothed and had gone into Gunnison to have a look at the proposed sites for the new rail depot.
One of the workers had hooted at her, but she had floated on past as if above it all.
Cody, on the other hand, had been ready to land a fist squarely in the man’s face if not for Anne gently taking his arm and serenely guiding him past. She’d said that there was no point in jealousy, not when one is secure, and if one wasn’t, well, that was hardly anyone else’s fault.
Cody chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment as his late wife’s words tumbled around inside his head.
He couldn’t work out how much of his innate animosity to Amelia was the manner in which she was brought to the ranch, her easy relationship with his children, or the fact that her presence felt like a disloyalty to Anne.
I’m not being fair to her, he admitted. He wasn’t entirely resolved to be her friend, but he figured that he did owe her some sort of civility, maybe even an apology.
He released the latch on the screen door, having forgotten entirely that he was still clutching it.
It had become embedded a little in the flesh of his palm, and he winced a little as it came loose.
He flexed his hand to try to work out the soreness.
Silently, he picked up a lone candlestick that was burning low and began his own ascent up the stairs.
Up ahead, he could hear Amelia moving around, bidding the children a last goodnight and closing their doors firmly.
She was focused on her task and didn’t see Cody, who was still a couple of stairs down from the upper floor.
He observed her for a moment, looking at her face in the light of the lamp she carried.
It had an expression of gentleness and fond regard, her eyes gone soft as she gazed at the children one by one.
His first inclination was to suspect that it was an act, a means of engendering affection between herself and the children so that they would entreat him to let her stay on.
He shook his head; he could recognize that he was being unfair.
She hadn’t done anything to suggest anything of the sort.
She closed Logan’s door with a bemused expression at something he’d said.
She sighed quietly, her shoulders slumping a bit.
Her room was next to Ruby’s on the opposite side of the hall.
At the end of the hall, there was another door that was firmly shut.
Amelia hesitated as she reached her own door. She looked to the left of her at the closed door, staring at it for a moment. Cautiously, with a light step, she reached out toward it.
“Don’t!” Cody barked instinctively.
Amelia, clearly taken by surprise, nearly jumped out of her skin and scrambled to press her back against the wall.
She fumbled the lamp and dropped it, glass breaking at her feet.
The flame, at least, mercifully went out.
She spotted Cody, and her eyes narrowed, her mouth dropping open in surprised outrage.
“Mr. Walker?” she hissed. “You gave me such a fright!”
Cody climbed the last two stairs in a single step, striding toward her in great, thundering footsteps. His boots crunched over the glass, but he paid it no mind. He stabbed at the air in her direction with one finger.
“You’re never, ever to go in that room, you hear me? Nothing in there is of your concern. Your remit is solely the keeping of this house and looking after the children, nothing else. Don’t forget your place,” he growled.
“I am perfectly aware of my role,” she shot back in an angry whisper. “Are you?”
Cody had nothing to say to that, particularly as he didn’t want to engage in an argument with her with his children just on the other side of their respective doors. He settled on glowering at her again and gestured at her once more with his finger.
He whirled on the heel of his boot and stalked off to his own room, resisting the urge to slam the door to his own bedroom closed; he didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of knowing how she vexed him.