Falcon looked up from soldering. “It’s too hot to work. Let’s blow this joint.” He pulled me off the stool by the hand. “Help me unhook the tarp from the van.”
Not one leaf fluttered in the still air. My T-shirt stuck to my skin. And the studio? I’d baked brownies in cooler ovens.
“I know a place where we can cool off,” he said.
We drove in silence. Falcon slowed and turned onto a dirt road. Dust stuck to my skin. Falcon anticipated the ruts and potholes, steering onto the narrow shoulder. He bit his lip in concentration.
“Where does this road go?” I asked.
“To the river. There’s a place where someone created a shallow pool with a dam of boulders. People from the farm bring kids down here for baths and a swim.”
A chain with a no-trespassing sign blocked the road. Falcon pressed the brake pedal to the floor. I held my breath until the van stopped. “Amelia, would you mind unhooking the chain?”
“We do it all the time. No one’s ever given us grief. It’s cool.”
“You’re sure?”
He smiled. “You’re a good girl, Amelia.”
I pulled up hard on the door handle. “All right.”
Falcon pulled his shirt off and waded into the water still wearing his jeans. I followed, until the water touched my knees. He turned toward me, spread his arms, and fell backwards into the water. Wiping the water from his eyes and shivering, he sat up. “Man, that’s refreshment.” His eyelashes were stars around his eyes. “Now it’s your turn.”
“I’m cooler already, really.”
“It’s only cold for a second.”
“I’ll get my clothes wet.”
“You could take them off.”
I scowled at him.
“Then come on.”
I waded into deeper water, raised my arms, and paused.
“Blow out your nose when you hit the water,” he said.
That was too much to remember, so I pinched my nose and fell. The icy water punched my chest. I came out of the water gasping and stood, tugging at my T-shirt to keep it in place. My hair hung over my face as I waded back to shore. “You are such a liar. Cold for a second? I don’t think so.”
“You weren’t even in the water for a second. You have to get used to it.” He smiled that I-know-you-better-than-you-know-yourself smile that laced boots onto the butterflies in my stomach and infuriated me at the same time. “You’re not hot anymore, are you?”
“Not in the least.”
Falcon extended his hands, and I accepted his invitation to be pulled back into the water. I leaned back into the subdued current that combed my hair away from my face as I sat up.
“Better?” he asked.
My T-shirt ballooned around me. Air glubbed to the surface when I wrapped my arms around my middle. “Yes, better. It feels good.”
Holding my face in his hands, Falcon said, “You don’t look me in the eye when you talk. It drives me crazy.”
“I …”
“There you go, looking at the trees instead of me.”
Of course I looked at the trees. Trees. Sky. Sunlight winking off the water. Anything was better than the indifference or disappointment I anticipated in his face. “It’s a bad habit,” I said.
I lowered my head, but Falcon lifted my face to meet his. “That’s better.”
I looked down.
His long, strong fingers cradled my head. “Look me in the eye, Amelia.”
“With one eye or two?”
“Two.”
I raised my eyes to meet his.
“That’s better.” His breath warmed my face. “I predict many a sorry sap will be vanquished by the cool steadiness of your eyes.”
I averted my eyes.
“Come back to me, Amelia.”
And so I did. I held his gaze, daring myself not to blink. He pulled me closer with an arm around my waist, his other on the back of my head. My heart pounded wildly. I swallowed down a cough. And then his lips were on mine, warm and abstemious, as if he tasted something unknown. A bud of warmth blossomed in my gut. He released me to slip under the water and resurface out of reach.
“We should probably get going,” he said. “I’m scheduled to cook at the farm tonight.”
Riding in the van, Falcon spoke, eyes on the road. “Where do you want me to drop you off?”
He regretted the kiss.
I didn’t.
* * *
“QUERIDA, YOU’RE NOT eating.”
Falcon’s kiss had awakened something within me I couldn’t name. The taste of his lips soured my stomach for food but made me ravenous for his touch, which terrified me. What was this recklessness? I pushed macaroni and cheese around my plate, dreaming of excuses for appearing at New Morning farm long after the workday had ended. The faces of Sasha and her three cherubic children flashed before me. My face burned with shame.
“You’re flushed. Do you have a fever?” Mom asked.
I blotted the sweat from my forehead and lip. “I can’t seem to cool down.”
“This heat, it will kill us all. Russell opened boxes of fans and set them around the store, but they only pushed the hot air around. He says August is monsoon season, whatever that means.”
“The rainy season,” I said, slipping macaroni noodles onto the tines of the fork.
“There isn’t a cloud in the sky.”
“In order for precipitation to occur, cool air must meet—”
“Yes, well, I think you better get in the shower. You smell like a dead fish. I can’t believe you swam in the river alone. You could have drowned.” Mom pushed away from the table. “Mrs. Clancy says this kind of weather always brings business. I believe it. This heat sucks the life right out of me.”
Mom wore her hair curled softly at her shoulders and pulled away from her face with a headband—no teasing of her hair to spectacular heights or scent trail of White Rain in her wake. She wore a red and white gingham blouse tucked into a flared navy skirt with red espadrilles.
“What are you dressed for?” I asked.
“Dressed for?” She smoothed her skirt. “The skirt isn’t too short, is it?”
She looked like Schoolteacher Barbie. “It’s a new look for you. It’s nice. Are you going somewhere?”
“Mr. Moberly and I are going to the movies. He’ll be by to pick me up in twenty minutes. I can answer the phone for you, if you get in the shower and don’t dilly-dally.”
“So are you and Mr. Moberly dating?”
“What? Me and Charles? Absolutely not. He’s just a friend. I promised no men until we got to California, and I meant it. Bruce was a huge mistake. Now, go take a shower.”
I stood under the spray of water, remembering the way Falcon cradled the back of my head and the strength of his arm around my waist. I touched my fingers to my lips and they parted, just as they had at his insistence. Mom knocked at the door.
“What’s taking you so long?”
“I’ll be right out,” I said, pouring Prell into my hand and working up lather in my hair. “I’m almost done.”
My hair was still wet when a call came in. “This is Nurse Laurie Anne from Alpenglow Rest Home. We need a pick-up. Mr. Kiddoo in room three-oh-nine has expired. His family has been notified and his personal affects cataloged and packed. He’s ready for you.” The line went silent.
“Hello?”
Laurie Anne sniffed into the phone. “I promised myself I wouldn’t cry, but I … I’m so sorry. It’s just that Mr. Kiddoo was a favorite of mine. He wrote poems for my daughter. If I told him a story about Cindy’s kitten, he wrote a poem about Fluffy. In fact, he wrote poems about her selling Girl Scout cookies door to door and how she gave the cookies away because people said they couldn’t afford them. That was during the strike, you know. Why, he wrote a poem about her new tennis shoes, for goodness’ sake, and the first time she jumped into the deep end of the pool.” She blew her nose. “Excuse me. This is terribly difficult. I don’t know how I’m going to tell Cindy. She loved that old man.”
For all of the Scriptures I’d memorized and Bible studies I’d attended, not one word of comfort came to mind. I finally told her how sorry I was and that H would be there in a jiff to pick up Mr. Kiddoo. That seemed to satisfy her.
“Thank you. Thank you for listening. It’s just that the other aides haven’t been here long enough to know Mr. Kiddoo like I do … did.”
H was all business when I called. “Sure thing. I’ll leave right now.” He came to the funeral home and backed the hearse out of the garage without coming to the kitchen door as he usually had. Watching the headlights back down the driveway created an ache under my heart.
You’ve got to be kidding. You’re just a little frazzled is all. Your mother left the house looking like Barbie, and the best-looking guy in Clearwater County just kissed you. Stay calm!
Calm? Me?
The silence of the drive home from the river with Falcon had crushed me. I saw without seeing, reliving the kiss and the suddenness of Falcon’s retreat, caught in a swirl of heat and cold that rattled my bones. I needed a diversion, so I counted off the minutes on the clock, trying to estimate when H would return to the funeral home with Mr. Kiddoo. If he stopped to chat with Laurie Anne for just a minute, I had more than enough time to bake a batch of brownies.
H stood at the kitchen door, backlit from the light over the garage door. It had only been two weeks since the day he’d dropped me off at New Morning farm. His shoulders were square and hard, his stomach flat, his waist as narrow as a hornet. He bent over a clipboard, filling in blanks and noting the time he had retrieved Mr. Kiddoo.
“I just took some brownies out of the oven,” I said.
H patted his hard stomach and shrugged. “Training. Sorry.”
Was his voice deeper? “I could fix you a meatloaf sandwich.”
“That would be good, but just the meatloaf. No bread.”
H leaned against the kitchen counter while I sliced thick slabs of meatloaf onto a plate. “It would only take a minute to warm this up.”
H crossed his arms over his chest. His biceps bulged under his T-shirt and a taunt rope of muscle bulked his forearms. His neck was thicker, his face thinner. Reddish sideburns reached his earlobe.
“Sure,” he said.
I arranged the slabs in a frying pan and adjusted the heat. “Would you like a glass of milk?”
“Skim?”
Yuck. “We drink two percent.”
“That’ll do.”
Evidently, building muscle had robbed blood flow from the part of H’s brain that formed sentences. There was only one way to test my hypothesis. I sat the plate of meatloaf on the table before him. “Tell me about your training.”
He opened his mouth wide for a hunk of meatloaf, chewed briefly, and swallowed. “Feeling good.”
Such a simplistic answer did little to soften my desire to run to Falcon, which would be an incredibly stupid thing to do in light of how he had dismissed me, and did I have to mention Sasha? I pressed H for more information. “I saw you running past the Henry Orchard the other day. How far are you running?”
“Five miles in the morning. Five miles at night.”
“Wow!” Maybe he would get chatty if I padded his ego. “You look great. I’ve never seen a more amazing transformation. You must be feeling good about your chances to make the team. Tell me about the try-out process.”
H lowered his head and covered his mouth for a belch of appreciation. “That was good.”
A full sentence! But anyone could throw together a pronoun and a linking verb. Come on, H, make an effort. “I’ve missed talking to you.”
His head snapped up.
“The windows for the church are almost done,” I said. “I never thanked you for the ride to New Morning. You were right. It is a different place, but people exaggerate. I’ve gotten to know some of the women and found out why they came to Cordial. They have the same concerns as we do about pollution and the economy; they just choose to deal with the threats by becoming self-sufficient. They work really hard. Heck, they even make their own soap.” And to spark a conversational fire in H, I said, “I admire them.”
“Are you one of them?”
“You’d be a fool. Why would anyone want to make their own soap? And they’re self-sufficient all right. They drive themselves down to social services to pick up their food stamps. Just last week, Dad caught a hippie stealing a cook stove. The guy had it tucked under his arm and walked out the door. Did he think my dad was blind or something? And I’m sick to death of smelling that patch-a-hooly juice, as if that could cover their B.O.”
“It’s patchouli oil.”
“That stuff stinks. I know that much.” H popped the last hunk of meatloaf into his mouth. “What bugs me most is how they hate America, but where else in this old world would they have the freedom to be such idiots? Wait until they face a winter in their cute little teepees. They’ll pack up real fast then.”
“Not all the hippies are the same. You know Feather and her family. They—”
“I guess you haven’t heard.”
“What?”
“Feather’s in the Clearwater Hospital. She had another seizure.”
“Will you take me?”
“What about Mr. Kiddoo? Shouldn’t you call Mr. Moberly or something?”
“I’ll leave him a note.”
H frowned.
“He’s at the movies with my mother.”
“No kidding? That’s sort of weird.”
* * *
AT THE HOSPITAL, Butter slept in a plastic chair, leaning against Feather’s bed. Vernon slept in an infant seat at her feet, pursing out his little lips as if nursing in his dreams. I was backing out of the room when Butter’s eyes popped open. The fluorescent lights of the hall mottled Butter’s skin with purple blotches around her eyes. She pulled me to her bosom, squeezing me tight enough to force the air out of my lungs.
“Thank you for coming,” she said repeatedly while H gathered three chairs and lined them along the wall outside Feather’s room.
“I don’t know how long she was lying there,” Butter said, pressing her palms against her eyes. “She didn’t come up from the henhouse for dinner, so I sent the twins down to get her. They came running back, crying and saying that Feather had fallen asleep, and they couldn’t wake her up. I thought the worst. I grabbed Straw’s ax and told the boys to stay with Vernon and Lamb, but they’d already left the cabin to run back to Feather. I didn’t know where Straw was. I carried Lamb on my back. Thank goodness Vernon was strapped in the sling. He’d been so fussy.” She stilled her trembling lips with her fingers. “Amy,” she whispered, “I thought she was dead.”
“When I got to the henhouse, Frog and Mule were patting her arms and whispering her name, saying ‘Wake up, Feather. Wake up.’ I can’t remember another time in their whole lives that they whispered anything. I checked her pulse right away. It was strong, thank heaven. I think that’s when I started breathing again.” Butter lowered her voice. “She messed herself. That’s when I knew she’d had another seizure, only worse. She could have aspirated that vomit into her lungs, and we would have lost her.”
Butter covered her face with her hands. Her breaths tremored. I laid my arm across her shaking shoulders and let my own tears fall. Next to me, H sniffed loudly. Butter used a waded tissue to wipe her tears. “Straw had the car. I sent the boys to Henry’s Orchard. They have a phone. I sat with Feather. The chickens clucked softly around us like they knew she was in trouble. Spartacus stood watch at the door. The whole time we waited for the ambulance, I worried about the cost of another visit to the emergency room, and there my daughter, my firstborn, lay in her vomit and urine.”
She pushed her hair away from her face. “This isn’t what I signed up for. It’s one thing for Straw and me to impoverish ourselves to live off the land, but our children deserve medical care, don’t they?”
I nodded, but Butter didn’t need or want my approval.
She spoke faster. “I called my mother. She asked me what I wanted to do. Did I want money? Did I want to bring the children home to Chapel Hill? She was so good about it, and I hadn’t called or written her in over a year.
“I didn’t have an answer for her. Asking for help felt like giving up, but really, that doesn’t matter as much as it used to. Straw won’t like it that I called, but with the hospital bills and the medication and doctor’s visits Feather will need, I can’t see how we can keep the homestead. We were just barely paying the mortgage as it was. It’s crazy. Two people with masters degrees having trouble scraping together a hundred and seventy-five dollars every month.” Butter swiped at her tears. “I have to get myself together, make some decisions, do what’s best for the kids.”
Butter stood, stretched. “My mother did something she’s never done before. She prayed for us right over the phone. She asked God to bless us and provide for our every need. I started bawling, told her I’d denied God, that He wouldn’t be interested in helping us. She says Paul, or was it Peter? I know his name started with a P. Anyway, she says this guy denied Jesus, but God chose him to do amazing things. I don’t know. Maybe we should have thought this through better. I’ve been bone tired since the day we got here. I think I’m too tired to think anymore.”
“I’ll stay with Feather,” I said. “There’s a waiting room down the hall. H and I passed it coming in. There’s a soft couch in there. I don’t think anyone would mind if you rested awhile.”
“Amy—”
“We’ll come get you the moment she wakes up.”
“They said she would sleep for a long time.”
“I’ll sit inside the room, and H will come to get you. She’ll never be alone.”
“Okay then.” She carried Vernon and pulled Lamb along as he clung to the hem of her skirt. She’d only taken a few steps before she stopped and turned back with her brows pressed into a question.
“She’ll never be alone,” I said.
Butter smiled weakly. “Thank you.” Her words were as heavy as stones.
The flicker of the television lit the curtain between Feather and the other patient in the room. H carried a chair to Feather’s bed. I sat and stroked Feather’s hair, but my fingers kept getting stuck, so I stopped.
“Do you want me to call your mom?” asked H. “We might be here for a long time.”
I checked the clock on the wall. “She’s still at the movies.”
“How about Mrs. Clancy?”
I’d broken two cardinal rules visiting Feather in the hospital that night: I’d left the phone unattended at the funeral home and hadn’t notified Charles about Mr. Kiddoo’s demise. She’d understand about Charles being unavailable, but being away from the phone meant missed opportunities to make money.
I started to stand, but H stopped me with a hand to my shoulder. “I’ll call.”
If that wasn’t taking a bullet for a friend, I didn’t know what was.
* * *
FEATHER’S EYELASHES FLUTTERED, and her irises danced under the pale skin of her eyelids. I held my breath, but her breathing never faltered, and she slid back into tranquil sleep. Feather’s roommate shouted at the television when a contestant on The $10,000 Pyramid answered too slowly. I wanted to tell the woman to lower her voice, but who knew what I’d find on the other side of that curtain? Instead, I watched Feather sleep.
Lord. Please, please, please heal her.
I knew in that moment what I had to do.