The Girl in the Window (7 page)

“Tony, get me a socket set,” Russ said, from nearly beneath the bed.

Obediently, Tony went off.

It was all happening so fast.

Beth had wanted it gone but…suddenly she felt claustrophobic, almost trapped. It was an effort to remain still. She wanted to escape the room and had to fight the urge to ask them all to leave. To please just go away.

With his shoulder propped against the door jamb, Josh left Russ to it. The older man was clearly in his element, and now he had a chance to boss others around for a while. Josh glanced around the darkened upper hall, then back into the bedroom.

It clearly wasn’t hers by the musty smell of old aftershave and older perfume, and by the furniture and clothing there. Piles of clothing and bedclothes were stacked along the walls.

Down this darkened hallway there was no fresh paint. Not yet.

A door on the other side of the stairs was open, and that did show signs of care. Even from here he could see that the drapes had been replaced and the curtains pushed back.

Light and air filled that room.

Watching Beth, conscious of her growing tension, Josh restrained as smile as he looked from her firmly clasped hands to her feet, one brushing over the other.

He drew her out into the hall, giving her room, standing beside her to put himself between her and them, even though he knew that none of them would so much as harm a hair on her head. By his behavior, even practical Russ seemed to have adopted their shy, pretty little neighbor.

Frowning a little, he looked harder.

“What about this room?” he asked, walking down the hall toward the little doorway.

It seemed forgotten, that door.

A notch had been cut out of it to match the angle of the dormer. Curious, he reached out, turned the knob. It seemed to be stuck, and then the old lock gave way. The door opened.

The tiny room seemed almost haunted, with its deep shadows. Dust motes drifted, small shafts of light filtering past the thick shade to spark them. It seemed sad and shabby, small and cramped.

Behind him there was only silence.

Josh turned.

He’d never seen anyone so white. Beth’s eyes were enormous, filled with shadows to match those of the little room.

Beth didn’t even see him, all she saw was the doorway she’d tried to pretend wasn’t there, hidden as it was by the darkness. It was a room she'd tried very hard to forget.

It was easy to do. The light bulb in the fixture at that end of the hall had gone out. She’d  never replaced it. She didn’t want the reminder.

She swallowed hard.

It felt almost as if she were drawn to the room. By what she saw inside it. By memories or dreams. Her breath shook as she stepped over the threshold.

Josh watched her go by, and the look in her eyes worried him as he followed her.

The little room was shadowed and so dusty it nearly choked him. What little light entered through the once white curtains was murky and dim. In that moment he could have easily believed the room was as haunted as she was.

She moved through that pale uncertain light like a ghost. He was almost afraid she would disappear into it, fading away like smoke.

Beth stroked the smooth wood of the crib. Running her hands over it was soothing in some odd way.

“I remember hearing him cry,” she said, softly, caught in the memory. Her heart ached. “He sounded like a kitten. My mother was so tired. She was always in bed, or staring out the window of their bedroom. So I’d come in and let the sides down so I could hold him. Sometimes he was wet. So I put a fresh diaper on him.”

She looked down at the bare, plastic-covered mattress.

“He was so…little,” she said. “Sometimes he was hungry. If there was a bottle in the icebox, I’d give it to him. Sometimes he’d suck on my finger. Every day, I’d hurry home from school to make sure he was all right.”

She sighed, and the sound of it made Josh’s heart break.

“I think my teachers thought I was talking about a doll,” she said.

For the first time since they entered the room, she looked at him.

“I used to have these terrible dreams, nightmares really, of this big round thing coming down to press against my face. I couldn’t breathe, no matter how hard I fought, but even when I woke up, I never screamed. I was too afraid.”

The words she didn’t say were eloquent.

“What happened?” Josh asked.

Tears, two of them, bright in the darkness, glimmered in her eyes. She shook her head.

“I don’t know.”

The words were stark, harsh, but the next weren’t.

“One day he was just…gone. As if he’d never been. Mother was no longer dreamy. She cooked, cleaned, as if nothing had happened. This door was closed and locked. I tried to get in, but I never heard him cry after that…”

What Beth didn’t say was that she was afraid she’d be next. That one day she’d simply disappear as the baby had.

No one every spoke of it again.

*****

Flat on his back beneath the bed, Russ closed his eyes and swore silently as he listened to the voices speaking so softly yet clearly from the room down the hall.

Pushing himself out from beneath the bed, he looked at Will.

The kid’s face was stark, horrified, and yet there was both resignation and understanding there.

Yeah, he’d seen it before, too, Russ could see that.

Both he and Will listened intently, hoping and praying that Josh’s next words were right.

“So,” Josh said, gently. “What about this room?”

Russ wanted to cheer.

*****

A little nervously, Josh watched Beth’s eyes. He’d taken her off guard. Which was good.  He thought. Hoped.

For a seemingly endless moment, she looked at him, clearly taken aback.

Then.

“Can someone else use this?” she asked, her hands moving restlessly over the rail of the crib.

“With some modifications,” he said, “I’m sure someone can.”

“I’d like that,” she said, softly.

Her gaze lifted to meet his, and then turned to look around the room.

“As for the rest…”

Josh reached out, took her hand to coax her back out of the room and down the hall.

“We’ll take care of it.”

She looked at him uncertainly, her eyes big and blue, and she nodded a little too quickly.

“I’ve been watching you with the horse,” he said, to get her mind off so many men in the house.

He had no doubt that was part of what had her so unsettled. That and the room at the end of the hall.

Alarmed, Beth looked at him. “You’ve been watching? It’s all right, isn’t it?”

She wasn’t certain which disturbed her more, the knowledge that he’d been watching or the thought that she might have done something wrong. The thought that he might ask her to stay away went through her like lightning, piercing and sharp.

“No, no,” Josh said, wishing he could kick himself for frightening her. “You’ve done wonders. Everything is fine, you’ve made strides with him that no one else has.”

It hadn’t made Russ happy, but you couldn’t argue results.

He remembered the frightened, sweating horse that had arrived at the farm, his eyes so wide the whites had showed. That proud head had tossed and they’d fought to hold him long enough for him to see the entrance to the paddock and escape into it.

“I wish I knew his true story,” Josh said, “but no one will tell me. I can’t find any information.”

He strongly suspected some folks deliberately hid what had happened, but he couldn’t understand why.

It had made the job of dealing with the distressed animal that much harder, since it was all guesswork. He wished he knew what had been done to the poor damned thing, as he wished he knew what had been done to Beth to make her so skittish and wary. Whatever nightmare she’d suffered was going to take some untangling, too.

Maybe, though, helping one would help him with the other.

The question was, which was which.

She looked at him doubtfully.

“You have helped,” he said. “More than you know.”

It was no more than the truth.

“I bought him from a dealer. They said he was wild, untrainable,” Josh said.

He thought of the beautiful animal he’d seen at the sale, of the fear and the courage he’d seen reflected in it.

“I didn’t believe it,” he said, “but until the other day it was sheer faith.”

Tony returned with the socket set and now he and Russell were at work underneath the bed, the mattress and box spring now set against one wall, freeing one end of the rail.

More than the others Russ had questioned his decision to buy the horse.

Now Josh’s faith in it had been proven.

“I don’t want you to stop,” Josh said softly, watching Beth, his eyes on her, drawing her attention until she looked at him. “Just don’t be surprised if one morning I join you, all right? I’ll let you establish a relationship with him first.”

There was an odd privacy to their conversation and yet they were surrounded by witnesses. For some reason knowing that gave her a surprising amount of freedom.

Beth looked at him, considering it.

It was more than she’d bargained for, more than she’d thought she wanted, but now she was thinking about it.

And it was his horse after all.

“All right,” she said.

Beth heard the sound of tires in the gravel of the driveway, and then Will was back. His round brown face and thick dark hair were as familiar to her as those of the others from countless hours of glancing over at the farm next door to see them working the farm, plowing the fields, pitching hay bales, or chivvying cows to the barn for milking. They were as familiar to her as anyone else and more so than some.

She looked at them.

“Unless you have dinner planned elsewhere,” she said, “when you’re finished there will be food downstairs.”

It was what you did when folk did you favors. Or so Ruth had taught her.

She remembered her foster mother with longing.

The woman had been an incredible lady, but the one thing she believed in above all else was hospitality. If you were a human being in need it didn’t matter what your race, faith, or creed was, you were welcome in her home, and there would always be food waiting to be eaten at a table in the company of others.

A good meal had been Ruth’s creed, her code of honor. No one left her home hungry.

This Beth could do and that knowledge gave her strength.

“It’ll be ready and waiting when you are,” she said.

With a smile and a nod, she left them to it, going down to her newly repainted kitchen.

She looked around it – at the warmth of the room, the clean counters and polished glass – with a smile and set to work.

Cooking was something she was good at, thanks to Ruth.

She heard footsteps on the stairs as they carried the furniture down and out the front door to the truck.

Their voices were audible outside the kitchen window as they debated the best way to secure the furniture, then tied it down.

Listening, she let the pot of sauce simmer as she grated and sliced. The sound of them was almost homey. The room filled with the scent of tomatoes and basil.

As they walked into the kitchen to Josh’s pleasure and astonishment he found Beth was as good as her word and better.

A great big pot of spaghetti sat in the middle of the table, with fresh carbonara sauce in a pot beside it, redolent with spices and thick with pancetta and cheese. There was ground mozzarella cheese and a loaf of fresh bread to go with it. She had even made a kind of sangria, with slices of lemon and orange floating in the wine.