There was nothing sweeter than morning’s fresh air, with the green blanket of leaves overhead dripping spots of dew on the ground. Abby took a moment to close her eyes and breathe deep. When she opened her eyes, the morning’s sunlight cast sparkling rays through the branches and across her canvas. Painting. It was her other escape, here in the solitude of the forest and in the shadow of the cabins. She dotted the canvas with her brush, taking a sweep across its middle, splitting the sky from the earth. Her paintings were always landscape paintings, with different-colored skies—some sunsets, some blue, and some sunrises. Trees splitting and bordering the canvas. A river. Home. But always in the distance, she painted shadows of new lands. Hints of hope, of future, of something that was just always out of reach.
Harold skittered up to her feet and chattered, a nut held between his front paws. Abby smiled down at the squirrel, but hints of the sadness embraced her heart.
“Be safe, little one,” she whispered, and Harold scampered into the forest. Could she always shut the wild creature in the cabin, refusing to let him find his way? There was something symbolic about the broken little squirrel. Broken like her spirit. But unlike her, Harold was finding his way somehow.
Abby dabbed at the canvas as a whiff of coffee greeted her senses. She heard footsteps behind her. Papa often enjoyed venturing into the morning with his coffee, before the day had fully begun.
“I know it’s similar to my painting last week,” she acknowledged. Papa didn’t respond. Abby continued with another few taps to the canvas. “I can’t seem to break out of these landscapes. It’s as if I’m trapped here.”
“Imprisoned in the woods? Or in your grief?”
The voice was not her father’s. It rippled through her and stirred emotions she didn’t welcome. She spun on her stool, paintbrush held midair, and locked eyes with Charles. For a long moment, it was as if the span between them magnetized and they came together. Spirits colliding in unlikely camaraderie. But just as quickly, Abby gave her head a slight shake and the distance returned. She was in her chair. Charles stood a few yards away, hand wrapped around his coffee cup, suspenders stretched over broad shoulders. The only difference was how different they truly were.
Or were they?
He dipped his head to take a chug of his coffee, but his dark eyes were raised over the rim of his cup. Unspoken words. A challenge? As if he dared her to be honest, as she had been with Jonathon, as she had not been with her father. For a moment, she wondered if somehow he’d overheard her conversation with Jonathon. The expression on his face was a challenge.
Yes. I’m angry. I’m bitter at people like you who hold my future, my mother’s future, in your rich hands and ignore the world of pain that swirls around you.
Charles didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He couldn’t have read her thoughts. But yet, it seemed as if he had. He reached over and rested his coffee on the workbench. She noted the bruised eye as he once again connected with her. This time he closed the distance between them, and crouched before her as she rested in her chair.
“Abby.” The muttered name stirred her frayed emotions. She froze as his hand rose with hesitancy, laden with intent. Her eyes closed as his palm rested against her face. “You’re not alone.” His words rifled through her, and before she could even breathe, or process, or feel, Charles was leaning forward, his lips touching hers. Featherlight and then intense. His fingers curled into her hair and she leaned into him.
What were they sharing? This man who rankled every part of her, this man she’d only known for a few days? Whose only intent was to charm—and yet, as his mouth caressed her, she felt—no she knew—there was something deeper. Something more. The chasm that kept them separated by miles, bridged as the unspoken bonding of their souls brought an unspoken understanding …
There was grief in his kiss.
And she tasted the salt of her own tears.
He sensed her withdraw only moments before her palms shoved against his shoulders. Charles fell backward, the taste of her and her tears still on his mouth.
“Abby …”
“No.” She shook her head, her fingertips pressed against her mouth. “That shouldn’t have happened.” She swiped at the renegade tears, her face pale.
Charles knew the pain he’d awakened. Pain that he experienced every day. He’d known since yesterday, overhearing her conversation with Jonathon, and by talking to Mr. Nessling, that she needed to release it. Maybe he couldn’t be free of his, but she couldn’t carry this bitterness that convinced her something could have been done. There was part of him that wanted to prove to her that people like Jonathon—like him—wouldn’t have flippantly dismissed her mother’s illness. Charles didn’t know why it was important to him that she knew that, but it was.
“It’s no one’s fault, Abby,” he stated as he stood.
She whirled toward her painting. Her brush attacked the canvas in broad, erratic sweeps. Charles could see the tears that raced down her face, unwanted and invading her self-imposed guard over her heart. She spun to face him, paintbrush in midair once again.
“Stop interfering. You’re here for an experience, but not with me! I’m not a plaything!”
Charles tugged a tin from his pocket and flipped it open, fumbling for a toothpick. Anything to keep his hands busy. She thought him a playboy, someone who toyed with a woman’s heart and then tossed it aside when another pretty face made her appearance. Fine. Maybe she was right. He stuck a toothpick between his teeth and bit down. But not today. Not with her. She was … fragile. He understood Abby in ways he’d never empathized with a woman before.
She stalked toward him, the paintbrush dripping paint down its shaft and onto her fingers. “I want you to go home.”
Charles blinked.
“Go home,” she repeated. “Even if you tell all of Milwaukee what a horrible place we have and how pathetic our backwoods fishing and expeditions are. Ruin us if you must, but don’t ever do that again!”
Her brush connected with his chest, leaving a swath of blue paint across his shirt. Charles grabbed her wrists before she could transfer her angst further.
“Abby, stop. That wasn’t what I meant by that kiss.”
She pulled against him, her eyes wide, like a frightened woodland creature. “Then what was your intention? Besides making me act like some wanton woman and taking advantage of me?”
What was his intention, indeed? He adjusted his grip on her wrists as she struggled. Maybe there was no intention other than some need to connect with her, to be a part of her, to share that horrific loss they both felt, but neither could forgive.
Abby stopped fighting his grip. Her eyes were huge in her pasty white face, with tears brimming. “I wish you would go home.”
“Stop it, Abby. Your mother dying wasn’t my fault!” He barked out the proclamation without further thought. “It wasn’t Jonathon’s fault! All the money in the world couldn’t have saved her.”
Abby tore herself from his restraints and her hand connected with his face before he could duck. The sting of her slap echoed with the sound of it. A bird fluttered from the bushes. They stared at each other. Abby’s chest rose and fell with agitated breaths. Her eyes had dried, and anger emanated from every pore.
“How dare you!”
“I dare because I know what it’s like to carry unresolved burdens.” Charles rubbed his face where her hand had most assuredly left a red stain. He bent until he could feel her breath on his face. Their eyes were locked in a silent combat, daring the other to outdo their own personal grief. “Death doesn’t belong to you.”
Abby’s eyes widened. Ginger pools of angst. “I never said it did.”
Charles pointed back toward her cabin but never unlocked his eyes from her face. “What if your father did have the monetary resources offered them to get medical treatment for your mother? What if they chose, together, to decline it?”
She shook her head, blond tendrils of hair brushing her forehead.
“Because,” Charles continued, uncaring now whether he hurt her worse or saved her. She needed to know and apparently no one had the courage—or maybe idiocy—to tell her. “Your mother didn’t want to leave home. She wanted to die at home.”
“Stop,” Abby whispered.
“Jonathon’s father offered to pay, Abby. Your mother refused.”
“You don’t know this.” Abby shook her head, her arms crossing over her chest.
“I do. Your father told me yesterday.” Charles watched as color leaked from Abby’s face. “When we overheard you and Jonathon. When you blamed people like me for not caring.”
He was angry now. Angry that she would label him shallow, uncaring, and soulless. She didn’t see inside of him any more than she’d allowed her father to see inside of her. It was easy to draw conclusions about someone when you couldn’t get into their soul.
“I care, Abigail Nessling.” Charles backed away a step. He could almost forget that he’d kissed her. To make her release that pent-up emotion that he shared. Now, he regretted it. He couldn’t forget her kiss, the feel of her, and it made him furious. Furious that he’d allow it to affect him. The reverse had happened. The kiss had opened him up as well, and now, two bitter and sorrow-filled persons held themselves in a standoff.
But this standoff was different. They both blamed him. Abby because he represented the one hope she had believed was withheld from her when her mother died, and he, because he knew the truth of that day. The day his brother died. The day Charles killed him.