Damon (7 page)

Again, I could only shrug. They knew a lot more than I did.

“Because he doesn’t want anyone to know his dad’s a dadblame murderer,” Chester answered. “That boy was all wrong from the day he was born. We talked about it.”

Bella nodded. “We sure did. He just had a way about him. Frightened me even as a small boy.”

“Damon?” I asked, now fairly certain I didn’t want to go away on a trip with him.

“No, no,” Bella said. “His father. Richard. We all called him Little Ricky, like on
Lucy
. And oh, that would make him so mad. He always thought everyone was out to get him. Always thought we were laughing at him. Making fun of him. From when he was a little boy, he was just strange. Of course, what Beverly did sure didn’t help. Shot herself in the kitchen. My lord. Almost as a bad as—”

Chester cleared his throat loudly and sent Bella a stern glance.

Bella sat back and clasped her hands in her lap.

I could see they were about to clam up. “Who shot herself?”

“Elliot’s wife, dear,” Bella whispered, reaching over to give me a pat on the knee. “Little Ricky’s mother. When he was only about five or six years old. Same as what happened to young David. That family has had far more than their share.”

“So, Damon’s real name is David?” I asked.

“David Jenkins,” Bella said with certainty, and I had to believe her.

Chester was right. I knew almost nothing about him and running off with him for a week probably wasn’t such a good idea.

“So,” Chester said, clearing his throat again. “Maggie, here, thinks she wants to go spend a week off on some vacation with this
Damon
. What do you think about that?”

“Oh,” Bella said, now frowning at me. “I don’t know.”

I sat down, overwhelmed by all I’d just learned. “So, Damon is really David, and his dad is in a psychiatric hospital for murdering his wife?”

“I’d say it’s more of a prison,” Chester said.

“Probably is,” Bella agreed. “I don’t see how they can ever let him out. Not after what he did.”

“That’s weird,” I said, wondering how long I could keep them talking about the past. “That Damon’s dad and my mom…. We found a picture of all of y’all. Grampa Harvey isn’t in it. Knoxville, 1959.”

They both shook their heads as if they couldn’t remember.

“You’re all dressed up and acting weird. Like you’re upset or something. Damon’s granddad is touching Gram. Almost like they’re a couple.”

The front door jingled, even though it was now after six. Bella got up to take care of it, grumbling that she’d forgotten to turn the sign and lock the door.

Chester leaned forward and lifted a paper, squinting at it.

“Were they?” I asked. I couldn’t be carrying on with Damon if we were related. If we were cousins. I was getting a queasy feeling just thinking about it.

“Where they what?”

“Elliot and Gram. Were they doing something? Did they date? Maybe before she married Grampa Harvey?”

Chester only glanced at me. “Liz and Elliot? No, of course not.” He sat back and made a tsk sound. “I know what that picture is. Your gram’s little boy died. That must have been his funeral. Before we all moved out here. He was only a week or two old, born sickly. Never left the hospital. We thought she’d never get over it. That was a real bad day.” He dropped the paper he was pretending to study. “You say you have a picture of that day?”

“It was at Corky’s. Framed on the wall. Damon took it.”

I sat back, crossed my arms, and decided to make peace with the fact that I was spilling secrets like a tortured spy.

“Damn Corky,” Chester mumbled and picked up the paper again. “He never had any sense.”

“So, where was Grampa Harvey? In the picture? Why wasn’t he the one holding Grammy’s arm?”

Chester took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. I could tell I was wearing him out, making him remember things he probably didn’t want to remember. But I felt I needed to know. All my future actions were hinged on knowing the truth. It seemed far too coincidental that both Damon’s father and my mother were crazy. That we both had grandparents who had committed suicide.

They didn’t think I knew the truth about Grampa Harvey. But I did. I’d overheard Gram and Aunt Cynthia talking about it years ago.

“Your granddad was in the hospital that day. He took it worse than Liz. He just couldn’t face up to a funeral so he made himself sick. That’s what he did whenever anything bad happened. He made himself sick so he wouldn’t have to deal with it. It was just his way.”

Chester let out a hard breath and dropped a fist to the desk. “Enough of this. I’d rather you get to know David, or Damon, or whatever he wants to call himself, a little better before you go running off with him. He’s got some bad stuff in his past and we don’t know yet how he’s dealing with it. I’m not getting a call saying you’re in the same shape as his mom. That’s all I’ve got to say about it. You’re not leaving town with that boy. I want you back in here tomorrow morning safe and sound.”

I gestured to the mess on his desk. “Is there anything I can do to help with all this?”

“No, there’s no speeding this up. The surgery takes as long as it takes. You can help Bella close up. I’ll be staying late.”

He put his glasses back on and focused on his taxes. His way of telling me to leave him alone.

So, I did.

Chester wasn’t my father, or my grandfather, but still, I wasn’t about to disobey him. He and his group, made up of my grandparents, Corky and Mrs. Jarvis, had always been like a family. I didn’t know the details about what had happened in Knoxville, but I did know they’d all decided to up and move to Polar at the same time, together. And of that group, it had always been accepted that Chester was the patriarch. The leader. The one with the final word. I’d been raised to believe that and I couldn’t turn my back on that belief now.

I was disappointed, but just scared enough to feel relieved I’d talked to Chester and Bella, the only two people left on Earth I trusted with my life, and my safety.

I helped Bella close up, then headed home, a little worried about leaving Damon alone with my mother, now that I knew what I knew about him, his father, his grandmother, and his life in general.

He’d confessed to having done something to get himself thrown into a ‘place.’ He hadn’t admitted what he’d done, but it had to have been something bad, odd, or at least illegal. I intended to find out more about this man living in my house.

And until then, I wasn’t going anywhere with him.

***

As always, I entered the house holding my breath until I could take a good look around.

Everything seemed all right, except that I couldn’t find anyone. Damon’s car was parked out front, but he wasn’t in the house… and neither was Mama!

I ran out the back door and stopped abruptly when I saw her sitting in the gazebo, painting one of her pictures. Damon was high up on a ladder, scraping paint off the siding.

The scene before me was so calm and logical for a moment I couldn’t grasp the meaning. Then I realized that Mama was sitting outside enjoying a pretty evening, content with her picture, and Damon was working on the house just as he’d promised he would.

Everything was just fine.

“Hey!” Damon called when he saw me. He headed down the ladder.

“Magic,” Mama called, “come look at my tiger.”

I stopped to give Damon the kiss he wanted, then went to look at Mama’s picture.

That was when I realized what had actually been bothering me since lunch. And it had nothing, really, to do with the lies he’d told or his father being a murderer.

I felt married.

Damon had a way of making me feel trapped, and after knowing him for only two days. What would life with him be like in a year?

I looked at him and noticed that his chin seemed a little too ridged, and his nose was too long. His eyes were angled way too far outward. Plus, he had a bad habit of licking his bottom lip excessively. Watching him do it was almost sickening.

Jaynie had been right. I couldn’t see this one lasting as long as a month.

CHAPTER FIVE

After supper, we left Mama cozy in her chair in the living room watching TV and went into Gram’s old bedroom - Damon’s room now, which bugged me a little. I could barely remember the last time I’d seen this room look like a bedroom, or seem so large. He must have spent a good two hours cleaning.

He had the bed made with one of Grammy’s old quilts. I wasn’t particularly happy about that, either. I kept her quilts in a cedar chest so they wouldn’t suffer from wear and moths. She had made every one of them herself and very little of her things had survived Mama’s rampages. I often thought, at least I have her quilts.

Damon lifted a bottle of wine from a sack under the bed as covertly as if he’d scored some drugs. “Shut the door,” he whispered.

I did, then walked wide of the bed. The feeling that I was making a mistake with him hadn’t faded, and I felt uncomfortable being alone with him.

“Come over here,” he said.

He sat on the bed, holding a boot box in his lap. I sat on the bed, putting my crossed legs between us. “What’s that?”

Damon took a deep breath as if struggling with his patience. “I’ll tell you what’s in the box if you’ll tell me what’s going on.” His tone was serious.

“What do you mean?”

He glanced at me with a wounded expression. “You don’t like me anymore. I can see it in your eyes.”

I’d been thinking all evening how to bring up the new information I’d learned, but I was worried about his reaction. I didn’t know him very well. Certainly not well enough to predict how he would react if I told him I knew his father had murdered his mother. That his father was in a psychiatric prison of some sort, not just a hospital. That his grandmother had committed suicide. Or even that he’d been lying about his real name.

I decided to play it safe. I didn’t want to end up like his mother.

“I can’t go to Knoxville,” I told him. “Chester said I have to work.”

“Yeah, okay,” he said, frowning at me. “But that’s not it. It’s something else. I can feel it.”

I fell back on the mattress with a groan and stared at the molded ceiling. I’d never noticed that the ceiling in here was different from the rest of the house. The room must have been added on after the original house was built.

Damon’s distorted face blocked my view. He was waiting for an answer.

“It just seems like everything in my life has been turned upside down since you came here.”

“All right,” he said. His face moved away.

“All right?”

“Well, there’s nothing I can do about that,” he said. “Except leave.”

I sat up. “You’re leaving?” Now I couldn’t decide if I wanted him to leave or stay.

“I’m not leaving.” He took his eyes off the box to frown at me. “I’m not a piece of furniture. When I come into your life, there will be complications. I can’t help that. I’m a human being. More or less.”

“More or less?”

He set the box aside, turned to me, and pulled me down on the mattress with him. We lay there on our sides, staring at each other. He brushed my hair out of my eyes, and then kept his hands to himself.

“I’m in your face,” he said gently, “that’s what it is. I barged in.”

“Well….”

Suddenly, lying with him on the bed where I could feel his warmth and energy, I wanted to touch him again. His eyes truly were beautiful. And his lips… when he flicked his bottom lip with his tongue my own lip tingled.

“It’s about this afternoon when I told you how I feel,” he said. “That scared you.”

“Well….”

“It feels like I’m stuck to you now, and you can’t scrape me off. You’re afraid I’m going to ask you to marry me. Or worse, just take over your house and run your life. You think I’m manipulative, and maybe I only said I love you to try to bend you to my will. Or maybe I’m just evil and I’m trying to get you fired, screw up your life and rob you blind before I take off to do it to somebody else.”

Frankly, I hadn’t thought of any of those things. Until now. I sat up, a little alarmed. “Well—”

“I’ll be straight with you,” he interrupted, sitting up. “I’ll show you why I’m here. Then you’ll either trust me or kick me out.”

“Okay. Good.” Yeah, this was what I needed, something solid to focus on. A decision based on physical evidence. Not pesky little emotions that ran crazy like tripped-out mice in a cage.

I sat up and got comfy to listen. He sat cross-legged in front of me, then grabbed me beneath the knees and slid me closer.

“Okay,” he said. “About a year before my granddad died he started acting really suspicious. I knew he was hiding something but I couldn’t find out anything until after he’d died.”

“Really? What did you find out?”

Damon stopped, apparently liking my interest, and smiled at me. He pulled my head closer and gave me a heated kiss, with parted lips, tongues and moisture. A kiss that would have led to much more if he hadn’t pulled back.

He cleared his throat, gave me a wicked half-smile, and continued. “The month before he died he put a box in his trunk and brought it here to Polar. I lost him when some idiot pulling a horse trailer turned right out in front of me. By the time I got around it, Granddad had turned off and I couldn’t find him. When I got home he was already back and the box was gone.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You followed your granddad here? Without him knowing?”

Damon nodded, waiting for my point.

“Why didn’t you just ask him what he was doing?”

“Because he was trying to outfox me.”

I was a little amused. “You really do think you have the right to know everybody’s business, don’t you?”

“This is important,” he told me sternly. “I found the box.”

“You did?” Now I was guilty of being a busybody, but I didn’t care. I was curious. “Where was it?” I nodded to the box on his lap. “Is that it?”

“This? No,” he said. “This is some of the stuff I found down in your cellar. Granddad’s box was in the drugstore.”

“He gave it to Chester?” Now I was anxiously curious. “They said they’d lost touch with your granddad. How did you get it?”