Wild in the Field (7 page)

Sean sighed, then offered the ultimate sacrifice. “We won't have any farting or burping contests. In fact, we'll do our best not to act normal at all.” Then he noticed the dog. “Hey, Darby's looking really good.”

“He's been answering to the name Killer for several days now.”

“Whatever. Look, you could think of the movie like our chance to thank you for saving Darby's life. Isn't that a good reason? And you like McDonald's, don't you? You don't do that tofu thing like your sister?”

“Oh, man.” She could feel her resolve slip a notch. She hadn't considered the one gigantic benefit to leaving home—the chance to escape yet another healthful, herb-laden, vegetable-chocked, leafy dinner. She imagined a French fry. Heaped with salt and ketchup. Then sighed. “Damn. But no. And I really mean no. See, my sister cooks. So I can't just take off when she's already gone to the trouble of making dinner—”

“Oh, she said it was okay. In fact, she called Dad. That was how we knew you could go. She told Dad she was gonna have a makeup party. Or a makeover party. Whatever. Like that. Something for women. And we knew you wouldn't want to have anything to do with that crud, would you, Camille?”

Again, Camille wanted to pinch the bridge of her nose. She didn't give a damn about her appearance. That was the truth. The total truth. But it was starting to grate—just a wee bit—that the boys seemed so sure she didn't care if she were the ugliest female troll to ever walk under a bridge.

She opened her mouth to answer them, yet somehow
at that instant met Pete's eyes. From the distance across the field, it wasn't as if she could really see him, but she felt him looking at her. Felt the flush of warmth from his looking at her…and the flush of memories from the last time she'd ended up in his arms.

“Come on, Cam, come on, come on—”

“All
right
.” Their nagging was so relentless that she couldn't think, couldn't keep it together enough to hold firm. And then suddenly the boys were whooping around her, pulling her arms, and then she was boosted into the back of the truck with the pair of them. Killer promptly started a holy howling.

Pete swore, stopped the truck, got out, and lifted the dog into the back of the truck. Camille, openmouthed, watched the dog submit to being carried and then riding in the truck bed as if this were the best thing that had happened to him in a week of Sundays. Pete drove to her backyard and dropped Killer off in the fenced-in area. The dog started the holy howling thing again.

“Quit it. I'm bringing her back in a couple hours,” Pete promised the dog.

“I hate to hear him cry. We could have brought him,” Sean said.

“To dinner?”

“He could have had a hamburger.”

“And then been stuck in the truck for two hours while we watched a movie?”

Sean, having lost that argument, charged into another one. He'd pinned down the horse he wanted. It was a Morgan. Morgans could work or race or do whatever they wanted. Morgans were beautiful. And perfect for the family.

Camille listened to Sean's nagging and Pete's quiet, persistent answers, which saved her having to make
any conversation. But she was as aware of Pete as if they were alone. His eyes kept meeting hers in the rearview mirror.

He seemed to be communicating something with his eyes, but she didn't know what. Why had he wanted her to come with him and the boys? And sure, Violet must have called him—otherwise how would he have come up with this harebrained scheme to get her off the farm? But why would he want a woman as goofy and misplaced as she was these days around his two sons?

Naturally, she figured sex was part of the equation. After that last set of kisses, she'd have to be in a coma not to recognize the hormones running amok between them. But it was one thing for her to have a lust attack—she was already bonkers, for heaven's sake. Pete had no motivation in the universe to sleep with a woman who'd turned mean as a rattlesnake and was neurotic besides.

The problem was so confusing that she gave up and sat back. In spite of herself, she almost started to relax. She even started to feel…silly…how stubbornly she'd hermited herself on the farm. No, she didn't want to be about people. She didn't need or want people in her life. Ever again.

But the drive into town was as familiar as her own heartbeat. She'd forgotten how the narrow road twisted around hills, curved into valleys. They passed Firefly Hollow—where every teenager in the county made out. And after that came old man Swisher's pond—there were lots of ponds in the area, but Swisher's had a big old cotton tree with a limb just perfect for swinging into the water.

Pete muttered a swearword when he got jammed up
behind a ponytailed farmer on a tractor—making Camille smile. The farmer was slogging along around fifteen miles an hour and showed no inclination to either budge or get off the road—but then this was Vermont. All the hippies who'd paused here in the '60s never left. Likewise, all the homesteaders who'd come here three hundred years ago—like her family, like Pete's—were just as cussedly independent as their ancestors.

They passed red barns and fences, a hillside that had gotten away from a farmer and was already being taken over by red clover and buttercups. Patches of elms and big old sugar maples shaded parts of the road, and then the landscape suddenly burst into sunshine. Off to the left was the tip of a silvery lake; to the right, a red covered bridge, and then there was one last turn into White Hills.

Her heart unexpectedly lightened. It was going to be fine, she thought. She felt Pete's gaze in the rearview mirror—still talking with Sean about Morgan horses—but checking on her. Or checking in with her.

“You okay?” he mouthed.

As if it was his business. “I think you should get Sean a horse,” she said. His son immediately whooped triumphantly, thrilled to have a new ally, and Pete gave her a look that clearly condemned her as a traitor—but it distracted him again.

She didn't want him looking at her. Didn't want to feel that coil of warmth curl up in her belly when he smiled at her, looked at her, tried to
connect
with her.

The town rushed up to grab her attention then, besides. White Hills was named because of the streaks of marble and limestone that looked stark white against the emerald-green countryside. Century-old trees shaded the town. Everything looked exactly as she re
membered—the tall, skinny brick houses with green shutters, the white fences smothered in ivy, the cobblestone streets. At the highest point in town was a white frame church with a sharp white steeple—how corny could you get? Yet Camille had always loved that darn church, loved that stereotypical white steeple, loved the cobblestone streets.

Comforting memories of childhood wrapped her in a feeling of safety. Unlike everywhere else, White Hills had never wanted to grow. Apparently they'd been grudgingly forced to add a McDonald's and a Wal-Mart, but the Wal-Mart was banished from sight, and the fast-food places were allowed on Main Street only if their architecture disguised their nefarious purpose.

“Okay, we've only got twenty minutes before the movie, so we're just going to do a fast carry-out, all right with everyone? And no one's getting anything that's good for them, so don't even try begging me for vegetables and salads.” Pete pulled in, and minutes later doled out the goodies.

Camille, elbowed between the teenagers, guarded her French fries and ketchup with her life, and wolfed down a burger the way she hadn't eaten in months. It was the town. It was all the childhood memories of running down Main Street, owning the world, arguing with her sisters over ice cream, shopping for Christmas and toys and prom dresses, getting kissed by Billy Webster in front of Carcutter's Books, getting her dad's truck stuck in the snow and remembering how she'd been afraid he'd be mad—but he hadn't been. Everything had seemed possible when she was a kid. Nothing could really harm her. She not only owned the world; she grew up believing she could change the world—even if she
had
thrown up outside Ruby's Hair Salon
when she was fourteen and was positive she'd never live it down.

“You're kidding, right?” Simon said. “You hurled? Right on the street?”

“At rush hour, where everyone in town saw me. I was determined to never show my face for the rest of my life, but a couple days later my mom yanked me out of bed and locked me out of the house and told me to go on to school. My mom was okay with some dramatics. But after a while, enough was enough.”

The kids lapped up stories as long as they were either humiliating or gruesome. More surprising to Camille was hearing herself talking at all. Pete parked a couple blocks from the movie theater, which was the closest parking space he could find. So for that short walk, she had the chance to inhale Main Street close up.

Some things had changed, some not. The post office was still located in the General Store, where you could still buy a hoe, a wedding ring and dry powders for headaches—true one-stop shopping. Old Man Riverstern still worked in the window of his silversmithing shop. Adirondack chairs clustered in the porch's shade of the Marble Bridge Café. Most of the lineup had the usual suspects—drugstore, clothing stores, a barber with a red-striped pole. But these days, Camille could see that you could now get your nails done and your behind tattooed…right after you bought food for your horse and ducks at Lamb's Feed Store.

“Damn,” Pete muttered. “Don't tell me that's a smile.”

“All right. I admit it. Getting away for a couple hours was a good idea.” She cocked her head at him.
“But I still feel guilty my sister conned you into dragging me along to a family outing.”

“You call going to a movie with two teenagers a family outing? The movie's a comedy. Which means they're going to make rude sounds and laugh themselves half-sick through the entire flick. This is not a treat. This was just a chance to have someone to share the torture.”

She heard the strangest sound come out of her mouth. A horse's bray? A baby's chortle. A strangled gasp? Actually, it just seemed to be a plain old laugh. Rusty and husky, but definitely a laugh.

And Pete promptly rewarded her by brushing a kiss on her forehead—she swore he did!—but no one else seemed to see it, and the next instant he was pushing her inside ahead of him and ordering her to get popcorn for four, heaped with butter, get the deal with the double drinks. The boys didn't help her. What teenagers ever volunteered to help? So she got the order, but popcorn spit out of her arms as she tried to juggle it all—helped by both Sean and Simon stealing handfuls and throwing it in the air to catch it.

“And you thought I asked you because of something to do with your sister.” Pete came through with the tickets, and grabbed one armload, but when he caught a stranger looking at them, he used his free hand to motion to her. “Those are her children, not mine.”

“Hey.”

Inside the dark theater, the previews were already running. It wasn't packed—not on a midweek night—but the comedy cast was big-name popular, especially with teenage boys judging from the bulk of the audience. The boys, without asking or needing permission, charged down to the front row.

“I can't sit that close to the front,” Pete admitted quietly.

“Neither can I. I can't see, can't hear, can't take the crook in the neck either.”

“So just pick your choice of seat and I'll follow behind you.”

It was fine, she told herself again. It was embarrassing, how weird she'd become, how nervous she'd been about being in public again. She chose seats up high, where no one was blocking their view. A fat, dripping cola sat between them; their hands were filled with popcorn. Pete's shoulder brushed hers and she could smell the soap he used, his skin, feel the nearness of him like a voltage charge in her pulse. But it was okay.

She was so sure.

And it was. For ten minutes. Maybe even fifteen.

There was no single moment when that changed. Nothing specific to mark the instant when everything started going wrong. The comedy was the usual—an urban slapstick, a pair of cops without a brain between them, tripping over criminals and apologizing, arresting the innocent, that whole yadda yadda. Almost everyone in the audience got caught in some outright belly laughs. So did she.

Or she thought she was laughing. It was just…she suddenly realized how dark the theater was. Pitch-dark. And one of the movie scenes started out on a quiet suburban street, with rain glistening on trees and making diamonds of the streetlights.

Just like that night.

Exactly like that night when she'd been walking home in her high heels with Robert. Her feet ached and she'd had too much wine but she was still laughing,
laughing, high on marriage and Robert and life and her job and herself.

Camille blinked, willing herself to concentrate on the movie, only suddenly the darkness wasn't friendly but whispering with a thousand menacing shadows. Evil. How could anyone know where it was coming from? She'd seen the three young men walking toward them quite clearly, but it didn't mean anything. They were on a city street; lots of people walked around at all hours. But that night, of course, it did mean something. She saw a glimpse of ugliness in the one boy's eyes—she
saw
, and in that instant realized that she was trapped in a living nightmare. It happened so fast it was all too late, all too late, all too late. Her pulse slammed with panic; her whole body flushed in a cold sweat.

“Cam? Camille, what's wrong?”

She sensed Pete turning toward her, heard his immediate calming whisper, but the memories were firing at her like machine guns. She summoned the most normal voice she could. “Nothing, Pete. I just need to get up for a minute.”

Actually, she needed to get completely out of there. Now. Yesterday. Sooner than yesterday. She crawled over Pete and bolted toward the stairs. She couldn't catch her breath, as if all the air were trapped in her lungs. She heard her heart hammering desperately in her ears, tasted the sick nausea of fear, felt a choking sensation in her throat. She tripped, almost fell on the last stair, and then hurtled on, down the aisle, then into the sudden harsh artificial light, down that hall, then through the heavy metal doors and finally out, out, into the fresh night air.