The Fire of Home (A Powell Springs Novel) (16 page)

Whit laughed and took a long swallow. “Hell, no, it won’t work! But at least they’ll remember that we’re watching them.”

“We can’t take on all of them—there aren’t enough of us to go around.”

“I won’t bring in the feds. They make more trouble than they solve. Besides, I don’t want them to shut down Tilly, or give me grief for not doing it myself. I know he sometimes cuts good whiskey with water or bad-tasting stuff like Worcestershire sauce or angostura bitters he gets from the druggist. If a customer is giving him a hard time, he has a special bottle dosed with cod liver oil that will give the man a chance to ponder his rude behavior later in the outhouse.” Bax laughed at that. “But he’s never hurt anyone, and now after Winks, he’s got the fear of God in him. He’s not buying from anyone he doesn’t know, or taking any bottles that aren’t sealed. Tilly isn’t our problem.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

When Bax unlocked the back door and walked into the kitchen the next evening he smelled dinner, and Amy was standing at the stove stirring a pot of something. Sh
e’d
filled out a bit since sh
e’d
first arrived, and her small frame bore more fully rounded curves. The picture, like a still life painting, made him imagine a mellow evening and coming in from a day’s hard work to find the precious gift of a woman who loved him, despite his past. Despite everything.

But she jumped when she saw him and gave him an odd look. The frightened, wary face sh
e’d
worn when she arrived was back. And this time it seemed to be directed at him. “We’ll be eating in a few minutes.” The food smelled great—he hoped it was more than sh
e’d
served last night. Sh
e’d
split a chicken four ways and everyone got one piece. H
e’d
seen a few dog scraps left over in the roasting pan, but they disappeared right after dinner.

As if the announcement summoned him, Tom came bounding down the back stairs to the kitchen. “Is Deirdre—I mean Mrs. Gifford going to eat with us?”

Amy smiled at him. “It’s all right, Tom. You can call her Deirdre. We’ve become pretty informal around here.” Her gaze cut to Bax and back again. “She’s lying down right now. She can’t seem to get over her chest cold. I’ll take her something myself.” She gave Bax another strange glance, not smiling now.

Bax sat in his chair in the dining room, baffled by her shifting moods—distracted and nervous, suspicious and worried. Sh
e’d
begun treating him like a leper yesterday. If it was because of that kiss . . . it was
just
a kiss h
e’d
given her and she hadn’t protested. In fact, h
e’d
felt her respond. Could he have been wrong? He dragged himself away from the memory of it to concentrate on the day’s problem.

“Tom, have you noticed anything going on near the mill operation that seems funny?” He went on to explain the sawdust still he and Whit had knocked down that day. “Sometimes bootleggers follow logging camps and set up their operations near mills because they can scavenge the sawdust.”

“I haven’t seen anyone, but I can ask around. I heard about poor old Winks. Tilly was practically bawling into his bar towel.”

Bax nodded. “I didn’t really know him but I get the impression he was kind of like furniture around town. Always there.” He hitched and lowered his brow. “Now he’s not.”

Amy put a soup tureen on the table and a plate piled with slices of homemade bread, then took her place. “I can’t remember a time when Winks wasn’t hanging around someone’s porch or scrounging up odd jobs.”

Bax looked at the thin, pale broth in his soup bowl with its grains of barley, remaining bits of yesterday’s chicken, and a few vegetables, and hoped something more substantial was coming next. But when the soup was gone and the bread eaten, she began clearing the dishes. He and Tom exchanged puzzled looks, but she would not meet either man’s eyes. This was a big change from the meals the
y’d
grown accustomed to—roast, chicken and dumplings, pork chops, served with butter- and cream-rich mashed potatoes, candied yams, spring peas, and big desserts. This put Bax in mind of hospital food—or worse. And for Tom, who worked harder than a rented mule at the sawmill, this was no meal at all.

But if Deirdre was sick, he thought, maybe this was the most Am
y’d
had time for. In the awkward silence that followed, the men pushed out their chairs. He picked up a soup dish and carried it to the kitchen. He found her putting together a tray for Deirdre with the same soup, tea, and toast.

“Are things all right?” he asked, keeping his voice down.

Amy whirled to face him. “Yes, of course,” she said with a quick brightness that sounded forced even to her own ears. What could possibly be wrong? she asked herself, feeling a hysterical laugh trying to work its way up her throat. She was being blackmailed, she had barely enough money to feed them all for one week let alone three more after that (and the men had already noticed the lack), bills that needed to be paid, a vengeful husband in town tracking her every move with a hired thug who had come to her door and would probably come back, and an ex-convict living under her roof. Things were positively
grand
.

“Yo
u’d
tell me if something has happened, wouldn’t you?” he asked. He stood so close to her she felt the heat from his body. Or it seemed like she did.

“Of course. Certainly.” She smiled at him, a broad grin that stretched her cheeks so much they hurt. “Everything is just fine.”

He looked down, searching her face with a close scrutiny that almost paralyzed her. The corner of his mouth dropped and he shook his head. “Nope. I don’t believe that.”

She felt her own lower lip tremble and she clenched her jaw, terrified that sh
e’d
begin crying. “Really, Bax, I have to take this tray to Deirdre before it’s cold.” She had to escape from him before he pried anything out of her. She picked it up and slipped around him to hurry up the stairs.

In the hallway, she heard the sound of Deirdre’s cough through her closed door. She took a deep, steadying breath. Then, carefully balancing the tray against her waist, Amy knocked before turning the knob. She found Deirdre propped on pillows and in her nightgown, looking pale and sweaty. Her red hair contrasted sharply with her ashen face, which seemed to fade into the pillowcase.

“I’ve brought you some chicken broth with barley,” she said. This bedroom on the north side of the house was dim, despite the two hours of daylight remaining. It smelled like a sick room, stuffy, the air heavy with vain hope.

“I’m so sorry to make you wait on me like this, Amy. I should be better anytime now.”

“I think yo
u’d
better go see Jessica. This has dragged on long enough and you need a doctor.” She put the tray on the night table next to Deirdre and helped her fluff her pillows to put her in a sitting position. Then she opened one of the windows a couple of inches to let in fresh air.

“But I know I’ll be better soon. I’ve just been overdoing it, I guess. If the cough would only let up, I could get some rest.” As if to emphasize the point, her now-gurgling cough set off again. It took her a moment to regain her breath. “That’s part of the problem. It wakes me up.”

Amy set the tray on Deirdre’s lap. “What about the cough medicine you got from Granny Mae?”

“It’s gone.”

“Then we’ll have to get more for you. Did it really work?”

“Pretty well.”

Amy couldn’t imagine why since it was just a mishmash of black pepper, honey, and some kind of powder, with a whole clove and a scrape of nutmeg thrown in for flavor.

“All right. I’ll see to it tomorrow.”

Deirdre took a sip of broth and put down the spoon. “I could get it myself. I don’t want you to bother.”

“That’s all right. You need to get your strength back.” Amy sat in the chair beside her bed. At one time, she would have had no patience for sitting in a sickroom with a rabbity martyr. But since those days, sh
e’d
taken care of women recovering from childbirth and miscarriages, botched abortions, beatings, and illnesses. Jessica had once tried to tell her what her life had been like in New York, working in the tenements for the public health department. To Amy, it had all sounded melodramatic and highly exaggerated. She knew better now. “Have more soup,” she urged Deirdre. “You won’t get well if you don’t eat.”

Her patient dutifully finished the broth and half a piece of toast, then sagged back against her pillows.

“Tom was asking about you,” Amy said, giving her a teasing smile, hoping to win one back. She stood and took the tray.

“Oh, um, that’s nice.” She offered a faint smile in return and touched a hand to her hair. “I’m glad he can’t see me right now.”

“He seems like a nice man.”

“I think so too,” Deirdre agreed, but the conversation was cut short by her thick, ropy cough. She put her handkerchief to her mouth and it was dotted with rust-colored stains.

Amy turned away. Deirdre needed the medicine
and
a doctor. Tomorrow sh
e’d
get both.

That night, Amy tossed and turned so much in her bed that she untucked all the sheets. The
y’d
wadded themselves up into such a small bundle, she lay huddling at a bottom corner of the mattress hugging her pillows. Finally with a huff she got up. In the dim glow of a veiled half-moon that shone through the window, she remade the bed and sank back into its depths.

For the past two days and nights sh
e’d
asked herself the same question. What on earth had compelled her to give away good money to protect Bax? It was bad enough to have to pay that thug, Milo, to keep him from telling Adam his vulgar lies about an invented relationship between her and Bax. But to keep Bax’s past a secret, too? A past, she realized, that could have been an invention of Milo’s as well. And if it was true—God, what kind of man was he, what had he done to be sentenced to prison? Strangely, she had the feeling that he wouldn’t be happy about the sacrifice sh
e’d
made, but would instead be angry. There was no one else in the house who would inspire that much loyalty in her. Maybe not even another person in her life at this point. Sh
e’d
not heard from Jessica again after the dinner invitation, and she wasn’t sure where to lay the blame for that—on Jess, herself, or Adam. She might learn tomorrow when she went to Jessica’s office to bring her home for Deirdre.

Where
was
Adam, anyway? Sh
e’d
seen him that one time, and now he had an accomplice, an evil toady, spying on her.

Amy sighed and pulled the covers up to her chin with both fists. Despite what she thought Milo might know or could be making up, she knew there was no question that he was watching her. Bax had seen him from a distance, and he knew things he could have learned only by watching them.

And how long was she going to be able to get away with charging her current rate of room and board when the quality of the food had already begun to deteriorate? She had to find a way out of this—somehow. Sh
e’d
hoped sh
e’d
at last escaped Adam’s tyranny, and had come all the way back to Powell Springs, endured the whispering and sidelong glances of her former neighbors, and taken over this boardinghouse for what? Only to live in terror too? To be run off from here again? Some secrets were necessary to keep. Others needed to be quelled by being shared.

On the other side of the wall, she sensed Bax sleeping, struggling with none of the troubles that plagued her.

It must be nice, she thought, to be able rest without carrying the weight of so many problems. She punched her pillow and tried to find that place.

The sun has just cleared the eastern horizon the next morning when Bax came downstairs. Tom followed right behind him. Amy was at the stove again—or still—as if sh
e’d
never left it. She didn’t speak to either of them. Dawn sunlight streamed through the window over the sink.

He couldn’t smell anything that resembled a decent breakfast, and wondered what mouthwatering delight was waiting for them this time. He came up behind Amy to look over her shoulder. He saw a big pot of oatmeal. No eggs cooking, no bacon, no ham or even potatoes. Just coffee perking and biscuits heaped on a plate in the warmer. He glanced at the kitchen table and saw the cream pitcher and the table set for three.

“Take your seat, Bax. Breakfast is ready.” She hadn’t even looked at him. It was as if she had eyes in the back of her head, and she sounded like a schoolteacher.

He did as he was told, and she flopped scoops of mush into everyone’s bowl, then poured coffee and brought the biscuits to the table. They ate in silence, but Bax got a good look at her face. Violet smudges underlined her eyes, and faint diagonal lines led away from them to make her look as if she hadn’t slept in a week. Her hair hung over one shoulder, pulled back with a piece of wrinkled ribbon, and she wore the same dress sh
e’d
had on the day before.