Sweet Everlasting (28 page)

Tyler couldn’t think of any words. He laid his hand on the back of her neck and held it there.

“When I woke up, I could barely move. Everything hurt—the back of my head from where he’d slammed it on the floor, and the bite on my shoulder, all covered with dried blood. My throat—I couldn’t swallow at all, and it was even hard to breathe. And—where he’d raped me. That pain seemed the worst, because I felt so ashamed.”

She dropped her head to her bent knees just for a second, then sat up, drawing a deep breath. “I tried to get up and cover myself, but I was too sick and dizzy. So I just stayed in a ball in front of the cold stove, drifting in and out of some kind of dream. The next thing I remember, it was getting light out, and Artemis was crying and praying out loud in his room. I was hot—I had a fever. I tried to get up again, but I fell, and he heard me. He came in and covered me up with a blanket, blubbering and carrying on like a crazy man.

“I was really sick, and neither of us knew what was wrong with me. It was two days before we figured out that I couldn’t speak. By then he’d prayed himself into a frenzy. I remember when it happened, when he found out I was mute. He dropped down on his knees right there beside my bed and started praising God, thanking Him for saving him.”

“Because you couldn’t tell anyone who hurt you,” Ty guessed.

“That’s what he thought. He said the Lord had used me as an instrument to wrest his soul back from the devil. He swore he’d spend the rest of his life in prayer and acts of contrition, and dedicate himself to God for saving him from earthly retribution for his sins.

“I only understood part of it—the part that attributed his salvation to me not being able to talk. Right after that I got even sicker. I had tetanus, although we didn’t know what it was then. It was just like you said, Ty, that day in the cabin with Artemis after he hurt his foot. The pain and the rigidity, the exhaustion—everything you said. It was horrible.”

“Ah, Carrie.” He started a gentle massage up and down the back of her neck, trying to ease the tension.

“It lasted for two weeks. I think I almost died. After it was over, a doctor came—Artemis was too scared to call one before, for fear of what I might do. But when the doctor asked me what happened, who hurt me and everything, I didn’t tell. I truly
couldn’t
speak—he’d hurt something inside my throat, you know, when he choked me—and I really believed his—his—reformation was a
miracle.
I thought for some reason God had sacrificed my tongue for Artemis’s sake. So I didn’t tell. And I felt safe then, because he’d thrown all his liquor bottles away and gotten very pious.”

She splashed water on her face, rubbing her eyes. “But the doctor was suspicious anyway, because he knew—everybody in town knew what Artemis was like. He couldn’t prove anything, though. Once the deputy sheriff came and asked me a lot of questions, but I wouldn’t answer. It was right after that that Artemis decided we should move away from Spaulding. So we packed everything up in the wagon and came north. He bought the cabin on Dreamy and got work in the sawmill in Wayne’s Crossing.”

“How long did the muteness last?” He was squeezing a sponge full of water down her back over and over, to keep her warm.

“About two months. Exactly as long as he stayed sober. One day I found out by accident that I could talk, and that night he didn’t come home. When he came back the next morning, still half drunk and stinking of alcohol, I didn’t say a word. It was so
clear
to me that there was a connection.” She twisted around, looking at Ty for the first time. “Even now, you know, I’m not
sure
it was a coincidence. It seems too strange for it to be pure chance. Don’t you think?” When he didn’t respond, she faced forward again. “Well. I thought so, but I was only thirteen. Anyway, from that day on, I pretended. And it worked—he never touched me. He didn’t keep liquor in the house, and whenever the urge came on him he always went away, to town or to a friend’s house, or just in the woods by himself. He had to fight his lustful thoughts, and me not speaking kept reminding him that once God had granted him a miracle.”

“Until yesterday,” Ty said grimly.

“It—was starting before that,” she admitted. “He was drinking at home the day he hurt Shadow.” She twisted around again, smiling. “The first day we met.” He didn’t smile back. “And—other times, lately. I’d stay out of the house when it happened. One night I slept in the woods.”

She leaned forward abruptly and pulled the chain on the plug. “I think I’m turning into a prune,” she laughed, grasping the sides of the tub and climbing to her feet.

“How much longer would you have kept it up, Carrie?”

She heard the anger in his voice and stepped out of the tub carefully, not answering.

“Forever?”

There was a dry towel on a hook by the door. She reached for it, but Tyler shot up and snatched it out of her hands. “Answer me, how long? Forever? The rest of your damn life? “

“I don’t know.”

He pulled her against him and hugged her too hard, until the fury and distress snarling inside him collapsed under a wave of inexpressible tenderness. They leaned against each other, swaying, soothing each other with their hands. After a long moment, he said, “You can’t stay there anymore.”

“No, I know.”

“What will you do?”

She moved her shoulders. “Something. I can’t think.” She didn’t say it, but she’d thought many times before now that there wasn’t much an unlearned mountain girl with no skills but bird-watching could do to earn a living.

He didn’t say it, but he was thinking he would support her in any way she would let him, for as long as she needed help. Tilting her chin, he touched her lips with his, as gently as he’d ever kissed a woman. Her hands crept to his face, and she held him in the tender, cherishing way she had that always undid him. But fragments of her dreadful story haunted his mind; it was too easy to see Carrie at thirteen, screaming in fear, locked in a hopeless struggle with her drunken, loutish stepfather. His own hands on her hardened, then relaxed.

He still had the towel, and he slid it down the lean length of her spine to her buttocks, stroking them through the soft cotton in a way meant to soothe but also to excite. Beads of water still glistened on the warm, flushed-pink skin of her breasts and her abdomen. He blotted her dry, teasing her nipples with a gentle, ruthless friction, relishing the sharp sound of her breath catching in her throat. The stool was behind him; he sat down, dragging her close, rubbing her hips, her flanks, her long, sleek calves. And then the pretense that he was drying her fell away with the towel.

Her uncertain laugh turned into a gasp when he buried his nose in her damp pubic hair and blew on her. He moved his mouth to her navel and sucked on it delicately, while Carrie’s fingers in his hair clenched and pulled. Cupping her lush pelvis, he kneaded her softly, urgently, while his other hand clasped one warm buttock to hold her still. The need to arouse her was a compulsion now; a mute dread consumed him that if he didn’t try to erase the brutal legacy from her mind and her body now, this moment, while the vicious story still corrupted the very air between them, then something irretrievable would be lost, something vital not only to Carrie but to himself. To both of them, equally. His big hands spanned her hips; he spread them across her belly. Using his thumbs, he opened her, and pressed his mouth to the warm, pulsing core of her.

Carrie lost her frantic grip on his shoulders when he sank to the floor on one knee. Grabbing for the wall behind him, she braced against it, stiff-armed. What was this? What could it be?
It’s all good between us, Carrie.
He’d said that.
All good.

Yes. Oh, God.

“Ty?” she gasped. But the edge rushed up before she could say anything else, and she tumbled over it headlong. She heard her own voice making the most extraordinary sounds, like singing in harmony with her body while it flew off on another wild journey. When it was over, she could barely stand. Ty had to support her, her head lolling against his shoulder, her legs shaking.

“What on earth?” she quavered in a faint voice, not really expecting an answer. What could possibly explain
that
?

He scooped her up in his arms. “There’s more,” he promised, smiling down at her and looking proud as a peacock.

She wrapped weak arms around his neck. “I doubt it,” she said frankly.

Slowly his smile faded. “I’ll make you forget him, Carrie. Never think of him again. Never.” Impossible, of course; he knew it as he said it.

But halfway to the bedroom, he had to laugh when she bit his ear and asked in a husky murmur, “Forget who?”

A
SOUND WOKE
C
ARRIE.
She sat up in bed, confused for a second. Then she saw Tyler standing in front of his bureau, tying his tie, and everything came back to her. Gray light shimmering around the curtain told her it was morning, so wishing it would never come hadn’t done any good. She put her hand on the rumpled sheet beside her and stroked the empty, still-warm space where he’d lain.
Good-bye,
she told it.
Good-bye,
she said to his straight, strong back.

He turned.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“About eight-fifteen.” He came toward her; pulling his suspenders over his shoulders. “Good morning, sleepyhead. “

“So late!” She sat up straight, stunned. She couldn’t remember sleeping this late in her whole life. She started to get up, but Ty sat on the edge of the bed and pulled the covers back over her legs. Her naked legs. He kept his hands on her waist and his eyes on her breasts and said, “Yes, it’s very late. But I want you to stay in bed today, Carrie.”

He smelled like soap and tooth powder. “But doesn’t your housekeeper come this morning? Eight-thirty, you said—”

“Yes, but we won’t worry about her. I’ll tell her I slept downstairs and gave you the bed. Or you came up this morning, early—you had to vacate my waiting room sometime, after all. I’ll tell her—”

“But I have to get dressed. I have to go, I can’t stay here.”

“No, I want you to stay. I want you to rest, don’t do anything today.”

“But Mrs. Quick—”

“Mrs. Quick can be damned,” he interrupted mildly. “I’ve got inoculations all day, starting at nine, but I’ll be finished by five or so, and I’ll take you home to get your things then.”

“Oh, Ty, you don’t need to do that. I’ll be all right—Artemis won’t even be there.”

“How do you know?”

“He has a two-day job in Lesterstown starting today, picking apples, and he won’t miss it because it’s double pay.” He’ll be mad, though, she mulled in silence, because I took Petey and he’ll have to walk.

“No,” he said firmly, finally raising his gaze from her naked body to her eyes. “I don’t want you to go there again without me, Carrie. It’s too dangerous.”

“But I wouldn’t stay, I’d just get my clothes and a few things and come back. I can sleep tonight at Eppy’s, and by tomorrow I’ll have figured out what to do with myself.” At least for a few days. Maybe she’d stay in Dr. Stoneman’s empty apartment over the hardware store—Ty had said last night he’d call him on the telephone in Harrisburg if she wanted him to, to make sure it was all right.

“No,” he said again, and she could see he meant it. “You stay here today and be quiet. I’ll take you home tonight, and after that to Eppy’s or anywhere you like.”

She looked up at him through her lashes. “You didn’t care anything about me being ‘quiet’ last night,” she pointed out, in a tone of voice she would not have believed could come out of her mouth. His slow smile made her skin tingle.

“No, you’re right,” he said softly. “And I feel just terrible about it.”

“You do?”

“Terrible.” His kiss took her all the way back down to the pillow. The way they kissed now, with such longing and skillfulness and fast results, was nothing like the way she’d always thought people kissed. All night they’d been doing it, and other things, until she was almost as good at it as he was. She certainly liked it as much, and she felt the same way about it that he’d whispered once in a tender confession that he did: “addicted.”

“It’s late,” she murmured, but taking little nips of his tongue, secretly hoping he wouldn’t stop. He was rubbing her bare stomach, and all of a sudden she wanted him to do everything to her that had completely exhausted her and made her fall fast asleep in his arms about two hours ago.

But he sat up, groaning, and said, “Yes, it’s late, I have to hurry.”

He started to kiss her again, a good-bye peck on the lips, but Carrie slipped past him and sat up, too. “I’m getting up. Where’s my dress? Oh, there”—on the chair where she’d left it. She started to wriggle into her torn shift.

“What are you doing? I thought we just—”

“I want Mrs. Quick to find me downstairs!” she hissed in a stage whisper. He looked amused. “It’s
important,
Ty,” she insisted. “I’m going.”

“Go, then,” he grinned, still watching her from the bed. “She goes home for the day right after lunch. Then you can have the whole house to yourself.”

“My shoes!” she remembered, just in time. She blew him a kiss from the hall and hurried downstairs, feeling guilty and excited, just like a criminal.

Seven minutes later, Mrs. Quick found her on the sofa in the waiting room, rumpled and sleepy-eyed, stretching and yawning in her tattered dress.

“Well, how’re you feeling?” she asked—grudgingly, but her curiosity was even stronger than her disapproval. Carrie signed that she felt pretty good. “What happened to you? It was your pa, wasn’t it, like that boy said? I heard he drinks like a duck. What all did he do to you?” When she realized she wasn’t going to get anything out of Carrie past shrugs and vague gestures, she put her hands on her fat hips and said, “Well, you can’t stay down here any longer, I got to clean and sweep these rooms, and I only got thirty minutes to do it in. So you’ll—”

Had he been listening? At that very second, Ty hollered down the stairs, “Mrs. Quick, ask Miss Wiggins if she’d care to come up and have a cup of tea in the kitchen, will you?”