Matty spent the afternoon sorting out the mess in the shed. With the jumble of broken farm implements mixed up with odds and ends and some items that were whole, it was hard to tell what pieces went where.
His feelings for Catherine weren’t so easily sorted.
He fought off a sneeze yet again as his task disturbed the dust in a cloud. Catherine’s cow mooed its displeasure at him.
It must’ve taken years of collecting to get this much junk accumulated. How did Catherine and Pop find the tools they actually needed?
He finally got the shed emptied, to where he could see the dirt-packed floor. He’d matched up what odds and ends he could and ended up with several hoe heads, a potato planter and malt fork that were in decent shape.
He’d piled the broken implements together. Among them were a scythe, milking stool, washboard, ax, and what might be a turnip chopper.
And then odds and ends were spread across the grass. Wood and metal pieces that he couldn’t match to anything else, plenty enough to trip over if he wasn’t careful.
“What’re you doing, thief?”
The growled words from behind him had Matty whirling. He tried to raise his hands in a defensive posture, but pain ripped across his chest at the movement and he couldn’t get them higher than his waist. He was acutely aware of the gun belt that Catherine still hadn’t returned to him.
It was Pop, standing between the house and barn with a frying pan cocked as if he was ready to bean Matty with it.
Matty was fairly sure he could outrun the old man, but he was more concerned with the wild light in Pop’s eye. “Pop, you all right?”
Pop’s eyes narrowed. “Who are you?”
Mind spinning, Matty eyed the implements on the ground closest to him. He didn’t want to have to defend himself against Pop, but if the older man was so confused that he didn’t recognize Matty, he could be a danger to himself or Catherine if she came upon them suddenly.
“Matty. Remember, I’ve been staying at your place. We went fishing together yesterday.”
“You’re trying to trick me. Whatever you’re thinking to steal, you’d better get offa my land right now. I ain’t got no patience for thieves.”
Matty knew better than to let his guard down; he was frustrated that Pop had surprised him. Things had been peaceful the past several days. Pop hadn’t had any middle-of-the-night episodes and Matty even thought they were on their way to becoming friends after the fishing trip yesterday.
“I don’t want to steal anything,” Matty said, still trying to figure out the best way to placate Pop. There wasn’t anything of value here to steal. “And I can’t…exactly leave.”
Pop’s brow furrowed, his face turning an alarming shade of red. Then he put a hand over his chest and Matty noticed how hard he was breathing.
“Calm down a little. I’m a friend of Catherine’s.” Maybe calling them friends was a stretch, but he was worried about Pop as a gray pallor crept up the man’s face.
“Catherine?” Pop’s expression crumpled in confusion and his shoulders slumped slightly.
Matty still held his hands up in front of him as he stepped toward the older man. “Do you need to sit down?”
“I… I don’t know.”
Matty kept an eye on that cast-iron skillet as he took another two steps until he was within arms’ reach of Pop.
The older man’s eyes flickered and then cleared. “Matty?” The skillet clunked to the ground. It would need to be washed. Later.
Matty exhaled his relief. “You all right?”
“Chest is kinda tight.”
“Why don’t we sit over here?”
Matty guided the older man to the patch of shade thrown by the barn and settled him there. His breathing began to even out, but that sickly gray pallor remained. “You have attacks like that often?”
“Every now and then. Figure my heart’ll go out one of these times.”
“You ever think about having a doc check you over?”
Pop snorted derisively. “Don’t trust any of `em.”
Matty raised an eyebrow. “Yeah.” Because Pop didn’t trust anyone. “My brother’s a doctor. I’d trust him with my life.”
Pop just grunted.
He sat with the older man until Pop’s breathing eased completely and color returned to his face. Did Catherine know he had spells like this? Why wouldn’t she insist on Pop seeing a doctor?
Looking around, he realized the tools were proof that the Pooles hadn’t lived as isolated as he’d imagined.
Had something happened in the past few years that had made Catherine and Pop withdraw even more? Was it as simple as Pop’s forgetfulness and distrust of just about everyone? Or was there more to it, like the situation with Ralph Chesterton? How could they not ask for help?
Matty didn’t know. He hadn’t intended to get involved in the Pooles’ lives, but it had happened anyway. And knowing what Catherine faced out here alone, what kind of man would he be if he just walked away when the time came?
That night, Matty held supper until Pop started to grumble. It was well after dark when Catherine ducked through the door. Her hair was damp, as if she’d washed up in the creek. She gave him a sidelong glance, not looking directly at him.
Pop snored away on his cot in the corner. Matty greeted her with a nod.
“Everything all right? No more run-ins?”
“Fine. Just busy.”
Her clipped words were the complete opposite of the wide, unguarded smile she’d gifted him with this morning. And there was a part of him that missed seeing it again.
He sat on the end of the bed with his back propped against the wall. He’d found and chopped a chunk of pretty oak into pieces and retrieved the pocket knife from the barn. Now he worked at whittling the chunks. He had a few finished rectangles piled next to him on the blanket.
“Your supper’s probably cold.”
She went to the stove and picked up the plate he’d covered for her earlier.
She inhaled deeply. “I’m so hungry, I don’t care if it’s cold.”
She sat cross-legged on the floor, wedging herself between the bed and table, stuffing her mouth even on the way down. He worked to focus on his whittling and not the way the lamplight glinted off her damp hair.
“I finished plowing the field,” she said between bites. “The moon came up, and I was so close that I just stayed with it.”
She must be exhausted. He was used to the draining days spring work required, but how much worse must it be for a woman virtually alone?
“I thought you might be avoiding me.”
After the bolt of attraction that had passed between them on the stream bank this morning, it was a valid guess.
He saw her face flush in the dim light thrown by the lamp and figured his guess was right.
Which did something funny to his insides.
He glanced over at Pop’s figure huddled beneath the blanket. “You notice him having shortness of breath? Going real pale in the face?”
She looked up at him sharply, her fork clanking against her plate, momentarily forgotten. “What happened?”
“He came out to the shed and didn’t recognize me.”
“Was he violent?”
That she asked told him enough to know the answer to his question, but he asked anyway. “He threatened it before he started losing his breath. Has he been violent with you before?”
She looked down, hiding her eyes from him. “Only once. I wasn’t expecting him to be locked in the past, and he surprised me. He was very upset about it afterward.”
“What will you do if he gets worse? Starts losing touch with reality every day?”
She went back to her food, her head down. She shook her head slightly. “I don’t know.”
“Is there no one…a long lost aunt or…”
She shook her head again. “Just the two of us. Before Mama died, it was the three of us.”
He hadn’t known her father had died young.
She went silent so that it was just the scrape of his knife and the clink of her fork.
“Have you tried to talk him into seeing a doctor?” he asked.
“He won’t.”
“But—”
She shook her head again and then raised her wrist to wipe her face. He squinted in the low lamplight. Had he made her cry?
He doubted she would welcome it if he reached for her, but his hand clenched around the wooden piece in his hand with the wanting.
This upset was more the reaction he’d expected this morning after the confrontation with Ralph. How did she keep such a calm manner with so many stressors?
“If—if something ever happens, you can come to my family for help.”
She sniffed once. She set her plate on the table. “What are you making?”
“Dominos. You can play games with them. Like cards.”
“You like games.”
It wasn’t a question but he was happy for the conversation—the most they’d spoken yet. “There’s always something going on in a family as big as mine. My brothers are competitive and I like the challenge of learning new games, new strategies. I’ll teach you if you like.”
She hummed and he took it for assent. “What kinds of things do you like to do? Read?” he asked, remembering the primers he’d found in her hiding spot two days ago.
She was quiet for too long. He lost concentration on the domino and looked up at her.
“I can’t read,” she admitted so softly that he barely heard her. “I never went to school, except for those few days…”
When he and Luella had been so awful to her.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, and again it seemed so inadequate. He’d been so arrogant, and so innocent of the harsh reality that life could be—as it had been to him only short months later.
On the heels of his apology, he wondered again: was their teasing so bad that it had caused such deep scars? Or did something else keep her from returning to the classroom?
She shrugged, and her voice was suspiciously casual when she went on. “We’re a far piece from the schoolhouse anyway. It was too far for a child to walk, and my mama couldn’t drive me every day. It was too much.”
“I could teach you to read.”
He words were out before he’d really thought about them.
Her head jerked up, her eyes sharp in the low light. “Why?”
He dropped the knife and domino. They landed with a soft clack against the other wood chunks on the quilt. “Why do you have to question my motive for every single thing?” He raised one hand to ruffle his fingers through his hair, ignoring the pull of pain across his chest at the action.
She glanced over her shoulder at Pop, still snoring away and oblivious to their conversation. “Maybe because my only interactions with you before this was four days of you torturing me.”
“That’s an exaggeration,” he returned.
“Not by much.”
“Maybe if you got off your homestead and into the real world, you’d find out that I’m someone you can trust.”
She recoiled as if he’d struck her. Her eyes flashed as she reached for the quilt folded on the little stool nearby. “It’s late. Let’s turn in.”
“Catherine—”
She lifted the covering and blew out the lantern, leaving them in darkness. He sighed.
Using Pop’s snoring to orient himself in the darkness, he cupped both hands around the closed pocket knife and dominos and tucked them on the small shelf above his pillow. He lay out flat on the bed, staring up into the blackness overhead.
He hadn’t meant to offend her.
She was like a green broke filly. He didn’t know all the things that spooked her, all the things that made her close off.
And what did it say about him that he wanted to know?