Salem Falls

  "Stroke, I think. The doctors talked alphabet soup. CVA, TIA, whatever that means."

  "Cerebrovascular accident preceded by a transient ischemic attack," Jack translated. "Basically, it means Stuart had a whole lot of little strokes leading up to a big one."

  Both Addie and Delilah stared at him. "You some kind of doctor?" Delilah asked.

  "No." Embarrassed, Jack busied his hands with a rack of dry glass-ware. "I've just heard of it."

  Addie crossed the kitchen until she was a few feet away from where Jack stood. "I told Stuart that you were the one who was worried about him. You did a kind thing, Jack." She reached out and touched Jack's hand with her own.

  He froze in the motion of unloading another tray of dishes. "Please ... don't." He pulled away, breaking eye contact. "The cow," Jack said, leaping into the silence, desperate to keep Addie from speaking. "Who's taking care of the cow?"

  She cursed under her breath. "That's right. I need to find someone who knows how to milk by hand."

  "Don't look at me," the cook said. "All I know about cows is that one day I'm going to be able to braise, stew, and fry them."

  "Oh, come on, Delilah. You know everyone in Salem Falls. Isn't there someone in this town who--"

  "Yes," Jack said, looking nearly as surprised as Addie to hear his voice. "Me."

  Starshine, the proprietress of the Wiccan Read, fixed a smile on her face as the tiny silver bells strung over the door signaled the arrival of a customer. A quartet of girls entered the occult bookstore, their laughter twining around them. The one with the greatest aura of energy about her was Gillian Duncan, the daughter of the most prosperous businessman in the county. Starshine wondered if he knew his daughter wore a small golden pentagram tucked beneath her shirt, a symbol of the pagan religion she embraced.

  "Ladies," she said in greeting, "is there anything in particular I can help you with?"

  "We're just looking," Gillian said.

  Starshine nodded and gave them their space. She watched them move from shelves crowded with grimoires--spell books--to the small vials of herbs--wax myrtle, mandrake root, boneset, joe-pye weed.

  "Gilly," Whitney said, "should we get something to help Stuart Hollings?"

  "Yeah. For a healing spell." Chelsea smiled at Starshine. "It looks like we do need your help, after all."

  Meg hurried over, clutching a six-pack of candles. "Look! Last time we were here, the red candles were back-ordered!" she said breathlessly, then realized that her friends were choosing among the herbs. "What's up?"

  "For the guy who had a stroke," Chelsea said. "We ought to do something."

  Starshine began to empty a small quantity of something that looked like tea leaves into a tiny Ziploc bag. "Yerba santa," she suggested. "And some willow. A nice piece of quartz couldn't hurt, either."

  She handed one of the girls the bag and went in search of quartz, only to realize that she had lost sight of Gillian Duncan. Frowning, she excused herself for a moment. Once, a teenage witch had shoplifted an entire vial of hound's-tongue.

  She found Gillian behind the silk curtain that divided the store from the private area, where stock was kept. The girl sat cross-legged on the floor, a heavy black book cracked open on her lap. "Interesting stuff," Gillian said, looking up. "How much for the book?"

  Starshine grabbed the volume and shoved it back into the shelf. "It's not for sale."

  Gillian got up, dusting off her jeans. "I thought there were rules about those kinds of spells."

  "There are. An it harm none, do what ye will. Witches don't curse or make others suffer." When Gillian's expression didn't change, Starshine sighed. "These books are back here for a reason. You aren't supposed to read them."

  Gillian raised one brow, so confident that it was impossible to believe she was only seventeen. "Why not?" she said. "You do."

  "I know," Jack soothed. "I'm going to make it better." Milking by hand was not something they'd done at Grafton, but the twins who ran the barn had given him a lesson once. Now, as he curled his fingers around the teat and rippled them downward, a sweet stream of milk shot into the pail.

  "Look how much better she feels," Addie murmured. If there was such a thing as an expression of relief on a cow's face, this one wore it now. Addie could remember nursing Chloe; how sometimes she'd be delayed for a feeding and would come to her baby, full and wet, certain she would die if not for the touch of Chloe's bow mouth.

  It surprised her to see Jack's obvious enjoyment in something as simple as being close to the heated hide of the cow or skimming his hand up the smooth, pink udder. She realized that Jack, who could not bear to be touched, craved physical contact.

  "You grew up on a farm," she said.

  "Who told you that?"

  "You did. Look at how easy this comes to you."

  Jack shook his head. "I grew up in New York City. This is an acquired skill."

  Addie sat down in the hay. "What did you do in New York?"

  "What any kid does. Went to school. Played sports."

  "Your parents still live there?"

  Jack hesitated only a second. "Nope."

  "You know," Addie said facetiously, "that's what I like about you. You're so naturally talkative."

  He smiled at her, and for a moment, she could not catch her breath. "What I like about you is how you so fiercely guard someone else's privacy."

  She blushed. "It's not like that. I just ... well ... "

  "You want to know where I came from before I walked into your diner." He let go of the teat and stood up, maneuvering the stool to the cow's other side, so that Addie could no longer see him while he spoke. "You already know a lot, actually."

  "That you grew up in New York City and could give Alex Trebek a run for his money?"

  "Your dad could tell you some things."

  "Like?"

  "Like I don't squeeze the toothpaste tube in the middle."

  "Well, that's good to know. I wasn't able to sleep at night because--"

  Suddenly his head rose over the bulk of the cow. "Addie," Jack said, "shut up and get over here. You're about to have your first milking lesson."

  The cow bellowed, and Addie shied back. "She likes you."

  "Her brain is the size of a clam. Trust me, she couldn't care less." He nodded toward the udder again, and Addie reached down but could not draw forth any milk.

  "Watch." Jack knelt in the hay and took two udders in his hands. He began to pump rhythmically, milk raining into the bucket. Addie marked the synchronic motion and then lay her hand over Jack's. She could feel the flex of the tendons and the muscles tightening as he froze; she looked back to find Jack's face twisted in either agony or rapture at the simple fact of a human touch. He opened his eyes and locked his gaze on hers.

  The cow's tail slapped him hard across the face, damp and reeking. Addie and Jack jumped apart.

  "I think I've got it now." When she tried this time, a small squirt of milk came from the teat. She continued to focus her attention on the cow, embarrassed now that she had seen Jack with his guard down.

  "Addie," Jack said softly, "let's trade."

  They were inches apart, close enough to breathe each other's fear. "Trade what?"

  "The truth. You give me one honest answer," he said, "and I'll give you one back."

  Addie nodded slowly, sealing the bargain. "Who goes first?"

  "You can."

  "All right ... what did you do?"

  "I was a teacher. At a private school for girls. Coached soccer there, too." He rubbed the flat of his hand along the cow's bony ridge of spine, the protrusions of her hipbone. "I loved it. I loved every minute of it."

  "Then how come you--"

  "Now it's my turn." Jack moved the pail from beneath the cow. The milk steamed, fragrant and fresh, its heat rising between them. "What happened to Chloe?"

  Addie's eyes swam. Jack's fingers grasped her upper arms. "Addie--" He broke off, following her stare. To his hands. Which were touching her. Of their own
free will.

  Immediately, he let go.

  "That waitress has an ass like a--"

  "Thomas." Jordan McAfee cut his son's observation off, even as he peeked around the edge of his mug to see for himself. Then he grinned. "You're right. She does."

  Darla turned, in the middle of making rounds with the coffee. "Refill?"

  Jordan held out his cup. He bit back a smile as his son's eyes fixed directly on the waitress's cleavage.

  "You know," Jordan mused, when Darla had left them for another customer, "you're making me feel old."

  "Aw, come on, Dad. You were fifteen ... what? A few centennials ago?"

  "Do you think of anything besides sex?"

  "Of course." Thomas looked affronted. "Every now and then, I worry about people in Third World countries. And then I figure if they all started having sex, their lives would be considerably brighter."

  Jordan laughed. As a single father, he knew he had a very different sort of relationship with his son than most other parents had. And maybe it was his own fault. A few years ago, when they'd been living in Bainbridge, Jordan had run a little wild, had brought home his share of women whose names he could not recall the next day.

  He set down his coffee cup. "Tell me the paragon's name again?"

  "Chelsea. Chelsea Abrams."

  Thomas's whole face softened, and for a moment Jordan was actually jealous of his own son. When was the last time he'd been swallowed whole by love?

  "She's got the most incredible pair of--"

  Jordan cleared his throat.

  "--eyes. Big and brown. Like Selena's."

  Just the name made Jordan's shoulders tense. Selena Damascus had been his private investigator when he'd been a defense attorney in Bainbridge. She did have beautiful eyes--a brown you could drown in. Once, Jordan nearly had. But he had not seen or heard from Selena in the fourteen months since he'd moved to Salem Falls and cut back dramatically on his caseload.

  "So," Jordan said, rerouting the topic. "Chelsea's beautiful."

  "She's smart, too. She takes AP everything."

  "Sounds promising. And what does she think about you?"

  Thomas grimaced. "That's too big an assumption. She probably doesn't think about me at all."

  "Ah, but that's something you can overcome."

  Thomas looked at his thin arms, his concave chest. "With my incredible physique?"

  "With your perseverance. Believe me, there are plenty of times I've tried to forget about you, but you keep crawling back into my head."

  "Thanks a bunch."

  "Think nothing of it. You going to ask her to the Spring Fling?"

  "Nah. I have to bone up on my perseverance first, so that when she laughs in my face I don't collapse in a heap." Thomas pushed his French fries through an ocean of ketchup, drawing Chelsea's initials. "Selena used to be great with girl advice."

  "That's because she's a girl," Jordan pointed out. "What's going on, Thomas? Why do you keep bringing her up?"

  "I just wish we still knew her is all."

  Jordan stared out the window at two dogs that were chasing each other, tails scrawling trails in the snow. "It would be nice," he agreed softly. "But I lost my best investigator a year ago."

  *

  At first, when Addie was watching Jack, she told herself it was because he was a new employee--she needed to make sure he didn't put the salt back on the storage shelf where the sugar was supposed to be; she had to be certain that he loaded the dishwasher in a way that would maximize cleaning and minimize breakage. Then she admitted that she was watching Jack simply because she wanted to. There was something mesmerizing about seeing him run a mop over the checkerboard floor, his mind a million miles away. Or listening to Delilah with rapt attention, as if learning how to make bouillabaisse was one of his life's goals. He was handsome, certainly, but plenty of handsome men had come through her diner before. What was so attractive about Jack was his exoticism--the fact that he looked completely wrong there, like an orchid blooming in the desert, yet acted as if there was no place else he'd rather be. To Addie--who felt as much a part of the diner as its bricks and mortar, and equally as unable to separate from it--Jack was the most fascinating creature she'd ever seen.

  She was figuring out a tab one afternoon when Jack looked up from wiping down the counter, glanced out the front window, and suddenly sprinted into the kitchen. Curious, she followed, to find him handing Delilah an order.

  Addie pulled it from the cook's hand. "There's no one at table seven," she said.

  "There will be. Didn't you see him? The kid with the long hair and the philosophy book--he's on his way in."

  Addie knew immediately to whom Jack was referring. The student was a fairly new regular but a consistent one. He came in at 2:20 every day but Sunday, slid into the booth in the back of the diner, and pulled a dog-eared paperback of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil from his battered knapsack. Every day for the past three weeks, without any deviation, he'd ordered a BLT, hold the tomato, with extra mayonnaise. Two pickles. A side of cheese fries, and black coffee.

  Delilah pushed the sandwich toward Jack, who picked it up and hurried into the front of the diner. The student was just sliding into his customary booth when Jack, smiling triumphantly, set his usual order down in front of him.

  The kid paused in the act of removing his book from his knapsack. "What the fuck is this?" he asked.

  Jack nodded toward the window. "I saw you coming. And you've ordered this almost every day for the past three weeks."

  "So?" the student said. "Maybe today was the day I wanted a fucking burger." He shoved the plate across the booth, so that it toppled off the edge onto the banquette. "Fuck you and your mind games," he said, and he stormed out of the diner.

  From her vantage point by the swinging doors, Addie watched Jack begin to clean up the food. He angrily wiped mayonnaise from the plastic seat and stacked the pieces of the ruined sandwich back on the plate. When he turned around, he found Addie standing beside the table. "I can take that for you," she said.

  But Jack shook his head tightly. "Sorry I lost you a customer."

  "It wasn't intentional, I'm sure." Addie smiled a little. "Besides, he was a lousy tipper."

  There was something in the tense curve of Jack's shoulders and the flat blank of his eyes that told her he had been slapped down before when he'd only been trying to go out of his way for someone. "Some people don't know what to do with an act of kindness," Addie said.

  Jack looked directly at her. "Do you?"

  What kindness would you show me? she thought, and shocked herself. Jack was an employee. He was as different from her as night was from day. But then she thought of how, that morning, he'd taken over the grill for Delilah and had made pancakes in the shape of snowmen, then slipped them onto Chloe's plate at the counter. She thought of how they would move around the empty diner in tandem after closing, clearing and sorting and shutting down for the night, a dance that seemed so smooth they might have been doing it forever.

  Suddenly she wanted to make Jack feel what she had felt lately: that this once, there was someone on her side, someone who understood. "Stuart's been coming here for years, and every morning I pretend I have no idea what he's going to ask for, although it's always the same--ham and cheese omelette, hash browns, and coffee. Jack, I know you were only trying to help," Addie said, "but on the whole, customers don't like having assumptions made about them."

  Jack stuffed the dirty wipe into the waist of his apron and took the plate back from her. "Who does?" he said, and walked into the kitchen, leaving Addie to wonder if his response had been a wall to make her keep her distance or a clue to help her understand.

  In Meg Saxton's opinion, phys ed was an inhumane form of humiliation. It was not that she was hugely fat, like the people Richard Simmons visited because they couldn't even get out of bed. Her mother said she was still growing. Her father said there was just enough of her to love. Meg bet neither of them had had to suffer through s
hopping at the Gap with their friends, pretending there was nothing that interested her on the sale rack so that they wouldn't see her picking from the size fourteens.

  The two girls the phys-ed teacher had picked came front and center, with a confidence that said they were used to standing there. Suzanne Abernathy was a field hockey captain; Hailey McCourt had led the soccer team to a district championship last year. They stared down the group of girls, sorting the athletes from the losers in their minds.

  "Sarah."

  "Brianna."

  "Leah."

  "Izzie."

  Gilly was picked--she was no athlete, but she was quick and smart. The choices narrowed, leaving only a small huddling puddle of girls who had little coordination. Meg shivered each time a name was called, as if each time one of them walked away, a piece of protective armor had been removed.

  Finally, only two girls remained: Meg, and Tessie, the Down syndrome kid who'd been mainstreamed this year. Hailey turned to Suzanne. "What do you want? The retard or the tub of lard?"

  Laughter rained down on Meg. Beside her, Tessie clapped her hands with delight.

  "Tessie, you're with Suzanne," the phys-ed teacher announced.

  As the ball was set into play, Meg stared at Hailey, thinking of boils and leprosy and third-degree burns, horrible things that would take away her honey hair, her Cover Girl complexion, and leave her in the same boat as the rest of the misfit world. Then the ball came directly toward her. "Saxton!" Hailey yelled out. "To me!"

  Meg lifted her foot--how hard could it be to kick a soccer ball?-- and let loose with such force she slid and landed on her butt in the mud.

  The snickers of the class didn't take away from this slow-motion moment, the ball spinning skyward like a missile. Meg was a little stunned at how far it went, even if it was soaring in the complete opposite direction from Hailey. The ball continued so far out of bounds that it landed on the baseball field.

  Hailey walked past Meg, deliberately splattering her with even more mud. "If you can't shoot straight, hippo, pass the ball!"

  "Hailey!" the teacher said sharply. And then sighed. "Meg, go get it."

  Meg jogged off, painfully aware of Hailey whispering about the way she looked while she was trying to run. One day she'd be reincarnated as an anorexic. Or a supermodel. Or maybe both at the same time. Head down, Meg concentrated on the fire in the pit of her lungs and her belly, instead of the tears pricking the backs of her eyes.