Part 19 (1/2)

”Only if it was hot as h.e.l.l and dry as the Sahara,, neither of which it's been around here, and even then you'd probably need a bolt of lightning for a starter.” Chelsea sighed. That was pretty much what Judd had said. ”Nolan's been combing through trying to find incriminating evidence, but there's nothing.” Having arranged the smoldering logs to his satisfaction, Hunter took a new one from the nearby basket and deftly laid it on top. ”All you need is gasoline and a match. The barn was tinder.” Smoke immediately curled around the log he'd added. ”People in town think you did it.”

”That figures.”

”Because of the other fires?” He bowed his head. She couldn't see what he was doing. Then he stood, took a swig of the beer, put a 403 8=6MA Denwww hand on his hip. He looked down at the fire he'd built, which was dancing with flames. Quietly and without turning, he said, ”Not because of them. I didn't have anything to do with them, either. But I did set one fire. It was a long time ago.” He continued to stare at the burning logs until one crackled loudly and sparked. Then he sank down on the chair on the far side of the sofa, took another drink, and looked straight at Chelsea. ”I was nine years old and having nightmares. I thought that if I burned it down, they'd end.” She swallowed. ”Burned what down?”

”The shack where I was born.” His eyes remained directed her way, but they had gone distant. ”I spent the first five years of my life there. When she went out, she locked me in the closet. She told me that the bad things wouldn't get me if I was quiet, and that if I made any noise at all until she opened the door again, I'd be eaten alive.”

”My G.o.d,” Chelsea cried. She remembered being terrified of being eaten by the giant in ”Jack and the Beanstalk,” but she'd had Abby to talk her to sleep. ”Why did she do that?”

”She wanted to make sure that if anyone came while she was gone, I wouldn't say a word. I was a secret. No one knew I existed. She wanted to keep it that way.”

”But why?”

”So I wouldn't be taken away. I was all she had. She loved me, she said.

I was her whole world. Besides, she prided herself on fooling the town. They all thought she'd given me away at birth.” So she'd kept him locked up.

Chelsea couldn't imagine anything so sick. She must have had a look of horror on her face, because Hunter said quickly, ”I 404 Ike Pa.s.slaw of Chchwa Kmw hate her. Don't get me wrong. She never hit ”',She never yelled. Within that very confined I , she gave me everything she could.

She MY meals and made my clothes. She brought home from the library and taught me how to She bought cookies and cakes at the bakery. bought fuzzy stuff at the store and made me a . She just didn't let me go anywhere in it.” [email protected]'*Did you want to?” Chelsea asked because it was cible that what he didn't know about, he didn't ”I wanted to all the time. The'books were about s being with kids. I wanted to be like them.

I ted friends. I wanted to see a man. I even wantto go to school. I used to ask her all the time. Beg r. She responded by trying to be that much more me-playmate, father, teacher.” He drew in a ,”deep breath. His mouth was clamped shut, his eyes .3,01led with'remembered anguish, until the pressure _became too great and the words spilled out. ”She to hug me and hug me and tell me everything ”,would be all right, that I'd be happy, that she'd ”never ever leave me, and I felt like jumping out of ”my skin.” He drew in another deep breath, as Ahough to separate himself from the past, but he couldn't. ”I escaped sometimes.” ”Where did you go?” Chelsea asked softly. He looked at his hands, then at the beer bottle, ”,,'then at her. ”Boulderbrook.” ”The farmhouse?” she asked in surprise. ”It was abandoned. I used to play there.”

”Was that when you first heard the voices?”

”They were my friends.” Chelsea caught in a breath. His friends. His imaginary friends. She wanted to cry. 405 [email protected] Dc.u.mWW Hunter stared broodingly at the fire. ”She used to be furious when she found me. She'd lock me in the closet then and leave me there for a good long time. I was terrified.”

”Oh, Hunter.” It was all she could do not to go to him. He turned to her. ”I don't want your pity.

That's not why I'm telling you this. I just want you to know why I burned down the shack. It stood for everything my mother had done to me.

I thought that if it was gone, my past would be gone and I'd be more like everyone else.” It struck Chelsea then that along with the clear, .clean lines of his furnis.h.i.+ngs went little of a personal nature. There were no photographs, no keepsakes. She wondered if they'd burned down, too, or if they'd ever existed. ”Was that what you wanted most-to be like everyone else?”

”For a while. Because I felt so, different from the others. By the time I was a teenager, that didn't matter. I wanted my own ident.i.ty, so I went my own way.” With barely a breath he said, ”P. S., the shack I burned was on Boulderbrook land.”

”Boulderbrook land?

But I thought Katie Love lived in Cutters Corner.”

”When she was with her husband, she did. Then he left town to go looking for an easier life.”

”Why didn't she go with him?” ”She didn't like [email protected] ”She told you that?” What would a young child understand of affairs of the heart, much less the body? ”She didn't tell me. She used to pace the shack, ranting and raving to no one in particular. it wasn't 406 years later that some of the things she said sense to me.” lapsed into silence.

Setting down his beer, he t to the fireplace and poked at the logs. When was done, he sat on the floor with his back to ”Anyway, she had been wanting to get out of Corner for a while. She was different from the women there. She wanted to move up in the Id. She was a quilter.” .”So Margaret told me.” He flexed one shoulder. When it settled back into e, his whole back seemed stiffer. ”Did Margaret you what they did to her?”

”Vaguely.” ”Well, I'll tell you more,” he said, and turned only ugh to hold Chelsea's eye. ”My mother was an Ist. She had real talent. She used to support us by ng signs for local shopkeepers, but that wasn't t she was best at. She had a feel for color and esign that was totally instinctive, more so than any the other women in town. She taught herself to uilt by buying quilts and taking them apart. She'd into the fabric store in town, buy remnants for '90 pennies, and produce beautiful things. It occurred .,to the local ladies that she could do them some ood, so they invited her to join them. They used er designs to make some of the best quilts they'd , produced. She wasn't one of them exactly, but ey let her think she was. So when her husband she moved out of the Corner. She didn't have uch money, but the shack was cheap, and it was @on Boulderbrook land. The way she saw it, that was the next best thing to living in the farmhouse.” Pus.h.i.+ng himself to his feet, he went to the win Aow, put an elbow on the jamb for a minute, then 407 Zwbam Deffilghy took it off and returned to the fireplace, where he stood facing the flames. ”When she got pregnant, the ladies went berserk. They accused their husbands. They accused their brothers.

They accused traveling salesmen. But Katie Love wasn't saying who the father was, so in the end they could only accuse her.” He walked back to the window and stood staring out into the dark. ”She became a pariah.

She was disinvited to tea, disinvited to library luncheons, disinvited to the Quilters Guild. They wouldn't sell her b.u.t.ternut squash bread at church fairs. They wouldn't give her the time of day. She'd burned her bridges in the Corner and was treated like a leper in town, so she spent her time alone. She went mad. That's what they did to her.” Chelsea couldn't keep her distance any longer. Leaving the sofa, she went to him. She didn't touch, just stood close. ”They were wrong.”

”Wrong or not doesn't matter in this town,” he said with the bitterness she'd heard so often from him. ”They do what they want. That's why you'd better rethink having your baby here. They'll make you miserable.”

”I won't let them.”

”I'm telling you, they will.”

”I'll fight.” He looked down his shoulder at her. ”Why in h.e.l.l would you bother? You have a life somewhere else. You have a family somewhere else.”

”But I like it here.

I want to have my baby here.”

”You're as nuts as she was,” he scoffed, and walked off. He lifted the bottle of beer from the floor and put it to his mouth. Tipping it back, he swallowed once, twice, three times.

”Do you think it's Oliver?” 408 BW russiong Of CJWINW JLMC He didn't pretend not to know what she meant. T, eah, I think it's Oliver. I think most of the town Inks it, too. It had to be someone powerful. herwise why would they have cared?” He turned her with a look of frustration.

”He bought me this ace. Gave it to me when I graduated from the col-that he sent me to. Would he have done either those things if he wasn't my father?” Chelsea wanted to think he might have, that he the very charitable man Margaret so righteousjy claimed, but in her heart she didn't believe it. She .'t think Margaret believed it, either, in her @heart. There was too much venom on her tongue. Hunter put his head back and studied the rafters before turning to Chelsea. ”I want him to admit that he's my father. Is that so much to ask? But he won't. ! prides himself on his position in town. And then there's his family.

They'll scream b.l.o.o.d.y murder. All except Donna. I think Donna knows.”

”She's never said anything to me.”

”Because of Margaret. Margaret is the bottom Jine. She's the fragile one i'n the family.”

”Margaret? Fragile?”

P, ”She had a breakdown when Donna lost her hearing. ' then Oliver won't do anything to displease her. Telling the world that I'm his son will displease her.”

”Why does he have to tell the world? Why can't ':'he just tell you?”

”Go ask him. And while you're at it, ask him why he did what he did to my mother. He owed her more than she got. I stick around here like a thorn in his side to remind him of that.”

”But how can you live with the anger?”

”I've lived with it so long, the question now is whether I can live without it.” 409 Deansw The pa.s.sions or cbersea KMe ”That's sad, Hunter,” Chelsea said. ”Not sad. I'm doing okay. My life hasn't been all tragic. There were some bright spots when I was little.”

”Like?” He popped the empty beer bottle up and down in his palm. After a minute he went into the kitchen and put the bottle in the sink, and all the while Chelsea watched, wanting to know what he meant. He continued on to a chest at the foot of the bed. It was of the same lacquered pine, with the same clean lines as the rest of the furniture. After raising the lid, he s.h.i.+fted things around inside until he came up with a small bundle. He brought it to Chelsea. ”Like I said, she was talented. We used to play a game, make up our own story, kind of. She used to make sketches of a town, first a church, then a post office, then a library, then a general store. Then we made up people-children, usually- and had them go through little adventures.” He offered her the bundle. It was a collection of drawings held together by a thin blue ribbon that might have easily come from one of Katie Love's quilts. Chelsea took the bundle. She looked up at Hunter. ”Are you sure you want me to see these?” They seemed intensely personal, even more so than all he'd told her because they were material relics, of which he seemed to have precious few. ”She was good. I want you to see,” he said, but Chelsea saw something else then. Hunter loved his mother. Despite all she had put him through, despite all the town had put him through because of her, his mother's work made him proud. 410 Awk the bundle to ihe sofa, set it in her lap, fully untied the ribbon. She was fully preto ooh and ahh regardless of what she found. ted to give something to Hunter. Since he n't allow a hug, expressing admiration for his r's work would have to do. wasn't prepared for extraordinarily delicate gs, done in various shades of ink with what could have sworn was a quill. Nor was she ed to see glimpses of Norwich Notch, but that what Katie had drawn with remarkable accuraeach drawing was on a piece of white paper the of a greeting card, each of a single building, done in a single ink color.

The detail work was unding, from the sixteen tiny panes of gla.s.s in h window of the library, to the lyrical swirls hed in wood at the top of the bandstand on the en, to the initials carved on the front row of kers in the graveyard beside the church. Most markable, though, was the message that came ough. Despite what Norwich Notch had done to le Love, the town was her home. Chelsea went through the bundle of drawings lowly, savoring each one before turning to the ext. She went through again, looking for anything e'd missed the first time, and in the process omething moved her. She didn't know what it was, hether it was the beauty of the drawings or their dhistory or simply the fact that Hunter had shown ”'them to her, but by the time she had them gathered ”together again, she was feeling weepy. Holding the bundle in her lap, she looked up at him. ”They're beautiful,” she said. ”What a treasure.”

He held out his hand. With great care she retied 411 EMIMM Deunshy the ribbon, but she didn't hand the bundle back immediately. She touched it gently, the top drawing, the bottom one, the ribbon. Finally, feeling indeed as though she were relinquis.h.i.+ng a treasure, she handed it over.

Oddly, her tears lingered. She blotted her lower lids, but new tears replaced the old. Having put the drawings back in the chest, Hunter came to stand at the far end of the sofa. ”They weren't supposed to make you sad.”

”I know.” She went to the chair where she'd left her coat and reached into the pocket for a tissue. ”Don't mind me. I'll be fine.” She dabbed at her eyes. ”Maybe I'd better go.” She slipped into the coat.

Remembering the orange juice she'd barely touched, she picked up the gla.s.s and started toward the kitchen. He met her halfway and took the gla.s.s from her. She avoided his eyes and made for the door. Her hand was on the k.n.o.b, when he called on a note of pique, ”What in the h.e.l.l do you want?” She didn't turn. ”What do you mean?” ”With me. From me, what do you want?” She paused. ”Friends.h.i.+p.”