The Fire of Home (A Powell Springs Novel) (3 page)

She supposed there was no way to sugarcoat it. “Amy has come back.”

He stared at her, obviously as dumbstruck by the news as she had been. “Where is she?” He looked around, as wary as if Jess were hiding a rattlesnake somewhere in an examination room or her office.

“Not
here
, for heaven’s sake,” Jess said. “I saw her.” She told him about the brief meeting.

“Oh, damn it to hell.” He yanked off his hat and beat it against his thigh. Flecks of straw flew. “If I have to speak to her or that weasely, pissant Adam Jacobsen—”

“If you don’t mind, this is a medical office, you know, not a corral,” Jess reminded him, gesturing at the dust. “Anyway, she’s alone. For now.”

Granny Mae added, “Tilly said she looked as scraggly as a hen locked out of the coop in the rain, hauling a battered old suitcase down the street.”

“She does,” Jessica agreed. She went on to tell him about Amy’s inheritance.

“Did you know about this?” he asked.

She shifted the baby on her lap, who held out chubby arms to her father. “Me? No, I haven’t heard from her since she left.”

Already anticipating misery, he groaned, “Oh, God, I suppose I’ll have to sit at the same dinner table with her and pretend that everything is nicey-nice and—”

“No, you won’t! Let’s not borrow trouble.”

“We never have to borrow it. It volunteers,” Cole grumbled. He took Margaux from Jess, and motioned her and Granny toward the door. “I should have known it was too good to last. Well, come on, let’s all go home and enjoy the peace while we can.”

CHAPTER THREE

After Amy introduced herself to Deirdre and explained that she intended to keep the boardinghouse in operation, she dragged her bag up the back stairs and chose the bedroom that doubled as a sewing room. It was the same one sh
e’d
occupied when sh
e’d
lived in this house before. The walls were papered with a pattern of tiny pink rosebuds, and lace curtains made the room feminine and almost sweet. It had always reminded her of her girlhood bedroom, when life had been simpler and she hadn’t yet been scuffed and dented by mistakes and circumstances.

She hoisted her suitcase to the bed and opened it. Although it held no more than it had when sh
e’d
packed it, it seemed twice as heavy. At least she had enough money to buy some proper underwear, and fabric to make a dress or two.

Beneath it all, she saw the item sh
e’d
found beneath the loose floorboard in the closet in Portland, something that Adam might be desperate enough to kill for. As long as it was in her possession, it would both protect her and put her in danger. She needed to find a safe place to hide it, but for the time being, she put it in a dresser drawer, beneath some lengths of fabric that had belonged to Mrs. Donaldson.

The enticing aroma of cooking floated up to the second floor and she remembered that sh
e’d
eaten nothing but a stale cheese sandwich since leaving Portland. Quickly, she chose the only long-sleeved blouse of the three she owned and took off the one sh
e’d
been wearing for two days. In the full-length mirror, she caught a glimpse of four finger-shaped purple bruises on her upper arm and wrist. No wonder it ached. Lightly, she ran her dishwasher’s chapped hand over the marks and was horrified to feel her eyes sting with tears. Sh
e’d
forced herself to learn not to cry. Her tears had only fueled Adam’s twisted pleasure in knowing he could break her spirit and make her cower. She swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand and did her best to fix her hair. After putting on clean stockings, she pulled her wet shoes back on. A longer look in the mirror, though, revealed a glaring bruise right next to the hollow of her throat, exactly the size and shape of Adam’s thumb. She hadn’t noticed it until now.

At least for the time being she felt safe—the first time in four years.

She closed the collar of her blouse and pinned it in place with a cheap glass brooch to hide the angry, plum-colored mark, then went downstairs to meet her boarders.

Whit had gone home a bit early to surprise his wife, Em, with her birthday gift, so Bax closed the office and then went home himself. Powell Springs was a pretty quiet town, and if trouble should come up, everyone knew how to reach him or Whit. He went around to the back door of the house, a habit h
e’d
learned in childhood, when his mother had had six boys, often muddy, always dirty. He scraped the dirt off his boots on a clever gadget someone had constructed out of scrub brushes and screwed to a thin square of iron to keep it upright. It worked better than plain metal boot scrapers.

At least it had finally stopped raining. But the ground was sodden and he glanced back to see his boot prints grinding the spring grass into the mud.

On the back porch he washed at the concrete laundry tub with a piece of white soap and tried to make himself presentable enough to sit down at a dinner table. He was still getting used to that, even though h
e’d
lived here for three months. Compared to the last few years, even the simplest meal in this house seemed like Sunday dinner every night of the week. In the evenings, they sat in the dining room instead of at the kitchen table, ate from flowered dishes, and by deliberate example Deirdre Gifford prevented him and the other boarder, Tom Sommers, from leaning over their plates, elbows on the table, and gobbling the food like wild hogs in a logging camp.

When Bax walked into the dining room, he noticed that Tom was in his spot at the table, but another place was set at a spot that was usually empty.

“Mr. Duncan, take your seat,” Deirdre said, balancing serving dishes on a tray. “We have someone new joining us.” She put down a large platter of roast chicken and sweet potatoes, with a bowl of vegetables and a gravy boat. Bax was in his chair and in the middle of tucking his napkin into his shirt collar when Deirdre looked up and inclined her head, making him follow her gaze. In the doorway he saw the same woman h
e’d
talked to on the road that afternoon, the one Whit had identified when sh
e’d
walked past his office window. The napkin, without enough hold to stay put, fell out of his collar into a heap on his plate. She came closer, and when their eyes met the spark of mutual recognition almost jumped across the table like a lightning bolt. Color rose in her pale cheeks and he felt a flush work its way up his neck.

“Mrs. Amy Jacobsen, this is Baxter Duncan, one of your boarders. He’s been Sheriff Gannon’s deputy for what, three or four months now?” She glanced at him for confirmation.

“Yeah, something like that.” He lurched out of his chair to shake her hand, but h
e’d
barely touched it before she snatched it from his grip, as if he were a leper. She didn’t have much to be so uppity about. Hers were not the hands of an idle front parlor lady, or a society wife who visited the poor and sick with baskets of soup and bread. She had done some hard work.

“Mr. Duncan,” she acknowledged, her jaw tight. At least she looked almost as uncomfortable as he felt. That high horse of hers must have pulled up lame.

“It’s just Bax, ma’am.”

Deirdre Gifford said, “And this is Tom Sommers. He works at the sawmill on the east end of town.” To them both she added, “Mrs. Jacobsen owns this house now. Mrs. Donaldson was the owner, but she passed away just before you got here.”

Tom also stood and mumbled a bashful greeting. Though he had the husky build of a woodsman, he was still young enough to blush, and color suffused his face. Then he turned a brief, calf-eyed look on Deirdre, but she seemed not to notice.

Damn it, wasn’t this just a dandy turn of events? Bax simmered. The porcupine on the road was now his landlady.

“Bax and I met briefly this afternoon,” Amy said. She pulled out her chair and sat. “Nothing much will change here except that I’ll be living and working in the house too, and I’ll be collecting the rents now instead of Mr. Parmenter. The rent will stay the same. But I understand that Deirdre has been doing the washing here with the new washing machine. Since there’s a laundry in Powell Springs, that service won’t be included in the price of your room and board. There will be an extra charge, or of course, you can take your wash to Wegner’s Laundry.”

“So in a way, the rent is going up,” Bax said, trying to snag a sweet potato with his fork.

Deirdre passed the platter of chicken to Her Highness while she explained this, and he wondered what other things might change that were supposed to stay the same.

“No, not really. I don’t think it’s asking much.” She took a piece of chicken from the platter, then paused with her hands folded in her lap while she stared at her dish. “I hope you’ll all stay on here. I—I’m grateful to have this home and I appreciate your being here.”

Bax’s brows rose in mild surprise. Maybe there was a different woman beneath that haughty exterior. When she looked up again, he saw the same careworn expression h
e’d
noticed this afternoon, as if someone had kicked her down the road in an old bushel basket to this point in her life. There was probably a pretty face under there somewhere, too. Dr. Jessica, what h
e’d
seen of her anyway, glowed like a buttercup. This one was too pale and thin, but he heard she hadn’t always looked like this. Then she tightened her jaw again, and the softness was gone.

She stretched out an arm to pass the serving dish, and in doing so the collar of her blouse gapped away from her throat. He saw a purple, thumb-shaped bruise that sh
e’d
obviously tried to hide. Her left wrist looked like someone had clamped it in a cruel grip as well. H
e’d
seen a few women in his life with black-and-blue marks wh
o’d
claimed to have walked into doors or fallen down steps. It made him wonder what, or whom, Amy Jacobsen was really running from.

When he realized he was staring, he made a point of paying attention to his dinner and to stop speculating about her. His own circumstances were tenuous enough.

Amy felt Bax Duncan’s curious gaze resting on her, and she struggled to keep from fidgeting in her chair. Self-consciousness about her own dishwasher’s hands had made her pull away from his handshake. His dark hair and smoke-gray eyes were the features sh
e’d
noticed first and remembered most. He was nice-looking—handsome, if she were to be honest with herself, and at least as tall as Cole Braddock. But that didn’t matter to her. She knew all about men now, and she realized they couldn’t be trusted.

What were the chances that sh
e’d
have to cross such close paths with him again after their first meeting? And dear God, he worked for Whit Gannon. If Adam came looking for her here, would the sheriff protect her or consider her to be Adam’s property to be returned to him?

Just the possibility caused a mist of perspiration to bloom on her temples. Maybe he wouldn’t come here, Amy thought. How could he? Around her, the sound of silver on china clinked and the buzz of intermittent small talk hummed between Bax and Deirdre. She was safe here, surely.

When Adam got mad, she was the reason he lost his temper. Everything else that had happened was her fault. Hadn’t he told her that often enough? She
made
him say cruel things and pound her confidence into dust as fine as face powder. Wasn’t that what he always said? He worked so hard (although she wasn’t sure at what), day and night, to achieve something, but that wasn’t enough for her, ungrateful, nagging—

Amy tried to block out the memory. She didn’t suppose that life here would be easy—it would depend upon how long people held grudges and memories. Still, this was her chance to start over, here in this house that had once been a haven to her. Here she could make up for everything sh
e’d
done wrong. As long as people would let her.

At three in the morning, Adam arrived home and looked around the dull cracker box of a house that he and Amy rented in the working-class Portland neighborhood of Slabtown. Feeble light from the one street lamp outside penetrated the clean, wavy window glass. He hadn’t seen her for a day and a half. Because they both came and went at different hours, it wasn’t all that unusual that they might have missed each other. But she was always home at night. He, on the other hand, was often out trying to drum up some donations for his ministry. At least that was what he told Amy, and she finally knew better than to question him.

She was a decent housekeeper, he had to give her that. Everything was neat and in order, but she was nowhere to be found. He detected no scent of cooking or hint of meals eaten. Even the dishrag at the sink was dry. Carrying the oil lamp from the tiny front room to the bedroom, it didn’t look as if a struggle had taken place, so he didn’t think someone had dragged her off.

Now he opened drawers and the closet door to find her clothes missing, along with a single, battered brown suitcase, which she toted from place to place every time they had to move.

All her belongings were gone.

Amy was gone.

He gripped the doorknob on the closet until he heard his finger joints pop. She had
left
him? How did she dare? He thought h
e’d
deflated her overblown opinion of herself over these four years—sh
e’d
barely read a newspaper without his permission, and h
e’d
cured her spendthrift ways by keeping her on a strict budget. H
e’d
even made her turn over the pay she earned washing dishes at a neighborhood café. Now, without even so much as a note, sh
e’d
had the nerve to pack up and escape to who knew where—