Skip Rock Shallows (17 page)

A commotion in the hallway of Mrs. DeWitt’s boardinghouse disturbed Tern Still’s Thursday morning slumber. He groaned and threw an arm across his eyes. Since the storm of day before yesterday, there had been no peace in the house. With one wing closed down, many of the men were double- and triple-bunking. There was a constant coming and going up and down the stairs and in and out the doors. Despite Mrs. DeWitt’s request, he had refused to go halves with his room. All he needed to finish him off was the good Dr. Hamilton sharing his space. That wasn’t about to happen. He thought the doctor was sleeping in the pantry off the hastily repaired kitchen, but he didn’t much care. Since she’d accepted his extra five-dollar bill, Tern didn’t think his landlady did either.

Elbows had been all abuzz at supper last night. The man blathered like a schoolgirl, and for once Tern had been glad of it. If Elbows’s wagging tongue was telling the truth and not just a version of it, Paul Hamilton was leaving on the first train this morning. Tern fumbled on the bedside table for his pocket watch. He flipped the case open—6:30 a.m. Chances were the man had already left for the depot.

He scrubbed his face with his hands before throwing his legs over the side of the bed. Outside the door, he found the usual bucket of hot water waiting. He splashed a quart of it into the china basin and poured the rest into the matching pitcher. He lathered soap and began a shave. In the mirror he saw his face stretched in a rictus. He looked like he’d been dead three days—kind of felt like it too.

The blade of the straight razor swept neat as a scythe in overlapping strips across his cheeks and chin. Finished with his shave, he wet his toothbrush before pouring a bit of tooth powder into the cup of his palm. The familiar rhythm of his morning rituals soothed him.

There was only one clean shirt in his clothes cupboard. The rest were stuffed in the laundry bag, with the arm of one hanging out of the sack. It was his favorite white one—well broken in and softer for the wear. He tugged it free. Man—he’d forgotten about the beet juice stain. He should wash it out; no telling when Mrs. DeWitt’s hired girl would get around to it. He could soak it in the basin, but why not take it with him? He aimed to go to the river for a break from his hectic week.

Dressed, he cut a sliver of soap from a new bar, stuck it in the stained shirt’s pocket, rolled the shirt in a ball, and put it in his saddlebag. Problem solved, he was out the door and to the kitchen for a quick bite.

Lilly stood in the train station and waved until her arm ached. Paul leaned out the window by his seat and waved back until finally distance swallowed him up. He had been unexpectedly blasé about her staying on in Skip Rock for the near future. “You’re just betwixt and between, darling Lilly,” he’d said when she broached the subject. “You’ll get your fill soon enough. Boston will be waiting.” Coward that she was, she hadn’t pressed the issue. Besides, maybe he was right. Maybe she’d feel differently come winter.

She had always loved a depot. The train’s warning whistle, the screech of giant brakes, the smoke and cinders flying, folks arriving and departing—the ladies dressed in their finest and the men hailing porters to load luggage on carts.

“All aboard!”

She heard the call from another track.
All aboard
—those might just be the most exciting words ever. Just for fun, and to prolong the experience, she bought a paper cone of salted peanuts from a vendor to share with Ned. They found an empty bench and sat knee to knee.

“Thanks for bringing us, Ned. It was good of you.”

“Sure, I was glad to do it.”

“I’ve not had a chance to ask you about Paul’s offer to fit you with a prosthetic leg. Have you been thinking about it?” She pinched a hot peanut from the bag.

“Haven’t thought of much else.” Ned rattled the peanuts in the container. “Funny thing—I resented that peg leg . . . until it was gone. Now I miss it in the worst way.” He lifted one of the crutches lying against the bench beside him and then let it go. It fell against the other crutch with a soft thunk. “These things are killers. They slow me down something terrible.”

“Paul’s the best, Ned. He would take good care of you.”

“I reckon you miss him already.” Ned shook peanuts into his palm.

Did she? Miss him? Lilly pondered. Well, not yet. He’d only been gone a moment, and he had seemed so out of place in Skip Rock that she felt relieved to have him gone. She was sure that given a little time, longing for him would overtake her. She twisted the pearl ring on her finger. Yes, she was sure she would miss him soon enough.

A family walked in front of them. A girl clutched her hat to her head in the wake of a departing train. The straw hat was trimmed with a blue silk ribbon. The girl reminded Lilly of herself when she was younger. She liked fashion even then.

“See that girl?”

“The one with the hat?”

“I had a hat like that when I was eleven. My aunt Alice sent it to me to wear on a train trip.” Try as she might, Lilly couldn’t help comparing her own eleven-year-old self with the pretty young girl in the ribbon-bedecked hat. She’d been dressed for a trip to Lexington, the first time her mother had allowed her to travel alone. She remembered it was a hot summer day and she’d gone searching for a dog she thought was in distress, disobeying the instructions she’d been given to stay put. She’d found the dog and the meanest man she ever hoped to meet.

The man, Isa Still, kidnapped her that summer day and kept her locked up in a room made of tin. Even now she could feel the heat of that place; funny how it made her shiver. Mr. Still had a son who had rescued Lilly. She might not be sitting here today if not for that boy.

She popped a peanut into her mouth, savoring the salty taste. She remembered the boy’s odd name, Tern, and his icy-blue eyes.

A tiny frisson of unease tiptoed up her spine. She had heard that name recently . . . and she had looked into those eyes.

“I bet you were pretty as a speckled pup under a red wagon in that hat,” Ned said, leaning back and crossing his arms across his chest. “I wish I’d known you then, Cousin.”

“It’s probably a good thing you didn’t.” Lilly tossed the remaining nuts to a red squirrel scouting the perimeter of the platform. She was ever so glad for Ned’s company, which kept her rooted in the present. “Can you imagine the trouble we would have gotten in?”

“Do you still have the hat?”

“No, it got lost.”

“Huh,” Ned said in that dismissive way men have. “Can I ask you something, Cuz?”

“Surely.”

“Would Armina step out with me if I was to ask her?”

Lilly balled her fist and lightly punched Ned’s shoulder. “Going to stick your head in the bear’s mouth again, Ned?”

“I kindly like this bear. She’s got enough of a growl about her to keep you on your toes. A spunky woman makes life interesting.”

“Armina’s interesting all right.”

Ned kicked an errant peanut toward the scavenging squirrel. “So should I? Ask her?”

“I think you should bide your time and let Armina do the asking.”

Ned stood and hopped about, picking up his crutches and seating them under his arms. “Sounds like a plan.”

During the ride back to Skip Rock, they both fell quiet. Lilly was thankful for the silence, but should she tell Ned of her suspicion that Joe Repp was not who he purported to be? For she knew, as sure as she knew her own name, that he was Tern Still, the boy who’d rescued her many years ago. But how had he come to be in Skip Rock at the same time as she? Was he following her? Why would he? He’d never been less than a gentleman the few times she’d been in his presence.

“You seem a thousand miles away,” Ned said finally as the wagon passed the turn to the river. “Anything you want to share?”

Lilly was reluctant to tell him what was really only a suspicion. It was easier to let the cat out of the bag than to put it back in. “I’m just woolgathering, Ned. Would you mind to let me off here? What I need is a walk.”

At the river’s edge, Tern shook out his white dress shirt and doused it in the cold water lapping at the sloping bank. The stains didn’t fade much. Looked like it was going to take some labor—didn’t everything? He worked soap into the stains and around the perspiration mark at the neck of the shirt. He couldn’t bear a ring around the collar—a sure sign of slovenliness, as far as he was concerned. He rubbed and scrubbed with poor results. Man—he should have left it to Mrs. DeWitt. He was going to ruin it.

“My goodness, Mr. Repp,” a soft voice from behind him said. “You are a man of many talents.”

Shocked, he nearly pitched headfirst into the river. He didn’t have to turn his face to know the speaker was Lilly. That voice was etched on his heart like a tune on an Edison gramophone cylinder.

“A man’s work is never done,” he said, chagrined.

“And a woman works from sun to sun.”

Still crouched over his laundry, he looked at her over his shoulder. She wore a dress of lavender-blue and a funny little flowered hat perched like a nest in her lovely dark hair. He swallowed hard against the desire to take the combs from her hair and watch it fall.

“You know anything about beet stains?” he asked.

She looked at him oddly, as if he’d spoken in a foreign language. “My mother would say spread the wet shirt to dry in the sun. You could try that.”

“Thank you.” He carried the dripping wet shirt up the bank and draped it over a rock in a patch of sunlight.

“What a beautiful day for doing one’s laundry,” she said.

“I don’t usually. It’s part of room and board, but with all that’s going on . . .”

Mercifully, his words sputtered out. Unfolding from his crouched position, he walked up the bank, keeping his distance but staying in her presence. It was enough for now.

“Are you always this serious, Mr. Repp?”

“It’s just . . . Well, you caught me off guard. I wouldn’t have thought there was another soul between me and town. It’s so peaceful here, you know.”

“Yes, I do.” One finger at a time, Lilly removed short white gloves. “I was actually coming back from the train station. I had Ned drop me off here so I could walk the rest of the way. My mind has been so crowded the last few days that I needed a bit of a break.”

“There’s been a lot going on in Skip Rock; that’s for sure.” With the tip of his boot, Tern kicked at a pebble embedded in the dirt. He couldn’t bear to look at her for longer than a second—he’d for sure give himself away. “So did Dr. Hamilton get off okay?” He hoped his voice sounded as nonchalant as he meant it to be.

“Poor Paul. I nearly got him killed twice over—first the storm and then quicksand, of all things. Whoever thinks they’ll be swallowed up by quicksand?”

“That’s a rough one, all right.”

“We were all so surprised, scurrying around like a bunch of ants, all our plans to bring Mrs. Eldridge safely to the clinic gone horribly awry. Oh, but you should have seen Armina—do you know her? Mrs. Eldridge’s niece? The way she took charge was amazing. She was barking orders like Mr. James does. Funny thing is, all the men obeyed.”

She stared at him in an appraising way as she talked. Her words were chatter, full of nothing, as if she were gentling a wild horse. He was suddenly uncomfortable in her presence.

She knew. He could see it in her eyes. She
knew
.

Tern’s heart dropped. “How did you figure it out?”

“Mr. Still, you had a slight slip of the tongue at the dance. It didn’t register at the moment, but today at the station, it came to me. I want to know why you are here in Skip Rock, Kentucky, of all places. I want to know if you are following me.”

He took a step forward.

She put up her hand to stop him.

“I’ll keep my distance,” he said. “I don’t want to scare you.”

“I am most decidedly not afraid of you, Tern Still,” she said, raising her chin and fixing him with a stare. “Oh, indeed I am not.”

Giving credence to her words, she took a seat on a fallen log. A muskrat clambered down the bank at her back, startled by the human intrusion. He slid into the muddy water and paddled away, using his black, scaled tail as a rudder.