“…the woman is so hard
Upon the woman.”
—Tennyson, “The Princess”
Wondering what time of day it was, she glanced out the window and her heart jumped. A police car was turning into the yard. She fumbled on socks and shoes, inept as a toddler, and arranged the covers so the bed was neat. She hung the robe and nightgown inside the closet door. She hated to leave this beautiful, peaceful room. The clean white walls, the shining pine floor, the cheerful blue and yellow bedspread and sunny daffodils. She scanned the room for any other signs she’d been here. The tray. She carried it to Pansy’s room and left it beside the bed. Then she hurried to the window and peeked cautiously out. The police car was still there, the driver talking on the phone.
She didn’t dare risk that he was here on some innocent mission.
She pulled on Britt’s jacket and flew past the bathroom, stuffing toothbrush and hairbrush into her purse. At the top of the stairs, she paused, trying to recall Pansy’s directions. Go out through the back door, you’ll be in the summer kitchen, go through that into the barn and at the back of the barn there’s a path into the woods.
No one should have looked for her here. She was being stalked by bad guys with ESP, unless, while she was in the hospital, they’d implanted a microchip and were tracking her by satellite. A wacko idea that no longer seemed so far fetched.
She inched down the stairs, a watchful eye on the front door. Slunk down the hall, reminding herself of the way her mother’s cat, Fido, moved through the house. Pansy was in the kitchen.
“There’s a cop in the yard,” she said.
Pansy’s hands fluttered in the air. “But how…” She shook her head. “That path leads to a little camp out in the woods. The key is behind a shutter.”
Jenny nodded, opened the back door, and entered the chilly junk room beyond. She fumbled through a jumble of coats, looking for a hat and gloves. Found a hat with fold-down ear flaps. The kind her grandfather and uncles had worn for hunting back before blaze orange. Thick red and black wool with a warm quilted lining. One jacket had a pair of gloves in the pocket. Too big, but better than nothing. She wished she had a nice double barrel shotgun as well.
One hand half-way into a glove, she stopped. If her father wasn’t her father, then her uncles weren’t her uncles, her cousins not her cousins. She stood frozen, feeling the rift like a tear in her soul.
But there was no time to waste on wondering and regret. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky might have allowed their characters hundreds of pages of agonized introspection and political philosophizing, but though her situation had all the drama of a novel, she didn’t have time for a paragraph. She crossed to the next door and went through into the barn.
It was colder there and smelled of old hay. The flyspecked windows were festooned with cobwebs. In the fading light, she saw half the space was occupied by a vintage pickup truck on blocks, the rest with miscellaneous bits of furniture. On a shelf by the door was a flashlight. She checked to see that it worked, then stuck it in her pocket.
She wove her way through the flotsam to the back of the barn, scanning the stacks of junk for a door. There were several old doors leaning against the wall. None that seemed operational. She heard a the slam of a car door.
In the back corner farthest from the house, she found a door, but when she turned the knob, nothing happened. She put her shoulder against it and leaned, pushing harder. Still nothing. Gasping, she reared back and slammed it as hard as she could. With a scream of rusty protest, the door burst open. She fell through, tumbling toward the ground, automatically putting out a hand to break her fall. Then, remembering her broken wrist, she twisted, taking the impact on her shoulder and hip, smothering a stream of expletives in the sleeve of her jacket.
Where the hell was Superman when you needed him? Breaking down doors would give her bruises on her bruises. Cautiously, she raised herself up and looked around. If she inched forward, she could see around the corner of the barn to where Pansy and the policeman stood in the farmyard, talking. The cop was staring curiously in her direction. On hands and knees, her bag slung over her shoulder, she crept behind the shelter of the barn, got to her feet, and headed into the woods.
She’d lost her watch, but thought it must be after five. Another cold day. As she tramped along the soggy path, she thought if this cloud had any silver lining, it was that it wasn’t mosquito season. Darkness was almost complete, her feet were cold and wet, and it felt like she’d walked miles before the rough track ended in an overgrown clearing where a ramshackle little building perched at the edge of a pond so overgrown with vegetation she would have called a swamp.
She found the hidden key and unlocked the door. She was so cold. Hoping no one would see the smoke in the dark, she lit the woodstove. Then, almost at the end of the first diary, she curled up in a musty chair, wrapped herself in a scratchy gray blanket she found, and clicked on the flashlight. How many people are handed the story of their own illicit conceptions? Get to hear stories that make them want to go whack their mothers upside the head? She buried her head in her hands. Oh no. She didn’t mean that. Someone had done that. Tears trickled down her face. Tears she had no time for.
How many people want to push their way into books and warn their fathers that their mothers are about the betray them? Can you betray someone when you’re not married? Dumb question. Wasn’t that what Drew had just done to her? She was filled with the desire to go back in time and warn Bud Cates—her father by nurture, love, and example, the things that real fathers are—that a seed was about to be planted by her biological father. She saw her father’s face, plain, kindly and serious, with his dorky glasses and his generous smile, and missed him intensely.
The AG set me back on my feet and stared down at me, smiling. “I hear you’ve been working too hard again.”
“Just doing what has to be done,” I said, forcing my tongue to form coherent words.
“You know why they always come to you?” I shook my head, not trusting my voice. “Because you’re the best.”
I raised my eyes to his, looking for mirth or mocking. He looked completely serious. I didn’t know what to say. I can’t handle praise. It throws me off balance. Makes me blush and stammer. “I have to go now. I’m afraid I’ve been drinking and my ride home just ran out on me. And I…”
Buxton was laughing. “Drinking? In a bar? Goodness me. Why don’t you come back in and have another? Kenny and I were about to.”
Drink has always been like truth serum to me. I gave him my best smile. Sort of loose and gooney and filled with delight at being a little drunk and seeing him and getting a compliment about my work. “My nose is numb and I can’t walk straight, sir. Maybe you could call me a cab.”
“Sir? You make me feel a thousand years old.” He put am arm around my waist and turned me around. “Okay, Lila. You’re a cab,” he said, and led me back into the bar. “And please, when we’re not in the office, call me Jim.”
We all had a drink and then they drove me home. That is, Jim drove me home, and Kenny brought my car. Jim was a perfect gentleman. He helped me up the stairs, opened the door for me, put my purse on the counter, and walked me to the bedroom. There he took me by the shoulders and sat me down on the foot of the bed, sitting down beside me and taking my hand.
“This would be the perfect moment to take advantage of you. You’d have the excuse of being drunk and helpless, and I’d be a cad unable to resist an opportunity to sleep with a beautiful young woman. I’m not going to, Lila. If and when we sleep together, something that shouldn’t happen, something maybe we won’t be able to resist, I want you 100% there and a willing, knowing participant. I don’t want a quick and dirty screw we’ll both try to forget.”
He took my chin in his hands and studied my face. “Oh, Lila. You aren’t the only one who’s confused. You make my heart race. You make me breathless. You make me crazy. I want you like I have never wanted another woman. But if I ever do make love to you, make love with you, that’s what it’s going to be: making love. So it will have to be something we talk about seriously, not just fall into.
“I’ve tried staying out of the office. Meetings all over the state. Tried not coming near your office. But how can I? Even if I didn’t need to look at you, I need your advice.”
He dropped his hands. “I want you to know… I’ve never been unfaithful to my wife. But when I’m near you, my resolution is like confetti. It flies away in a million directions and all I can see is your face. All I can think of is you. Your voice. Your smile. That funny tough way you hold up your hand and say, ‘Wait a minute’ when you think we’re not listening. That tender way you have of reaching out and touching someone when you think they need caring for. You’re becoming the soul of the office. Where you are, the air seems to glow. Goddammit, listen to me. I’ve never said things like this to anyone. If I stay here longer, I’ll do something I’ll… we’ll both regret.”
He pulled me to my feet and took off my jacket. Then he knelt down and took off my shoes. He looked up at me with those mesmerizing blue eyes. I wanted to pull him into my arms. Grab him and pull him down on top of me. I forced my arms to stay at my side.
“You’re worn out, Lila. Go to sleep.” Then he walked out without looking back. The entire time he was in my apartment, I never said a single word.
It was the last entry in the first diary. Precious words, especially if she never spoke with her mother again. Jenny bit her lip, tears rolling down her face, as she opened the stove and shoved it in.