“What happened?” she whispered.
Her hands were shaking so much that I took the cup from her, and when she looked as though she was going to fall over, I leaned against the rock and drew her to me, her back to my front. “You passed out,” I said, and thought about all the doctors I was going to take her to. Diabetic coma came to mind.
She sipped the water from the cup as I held it to her lips. “It was like I went to sleep and had a dream,” she said. “Fire. I saw a fire. It was in a kitchen. There was a pan on the stove and it caught a towel on fire, then the wall caught and everything went up in flame. There was a woman nearby, but she was on the phone and didn’t see the fire until it was too late. There were two little children asleep in the next room, and the fire burned the kitchen and the bedroom. The children were…” Jackie put her hands over her face. “The children died. It was horrible. And so very vivid. So real! I could see everything.”
Maybe it’s because I live a good part of my life in a place of fantasy, but I knew instantly what had happened. Jackie had had another vision. Only this time she’d been awake, not asleep, and I knew she wasn’t going to like that. “This is like your dream,” I said slowly, preparing to start persuading her. “This is something that hasn’t happened yet, so I think we should try to prevent it.”
But I underestimated her because she understood instantly. Weak as she was, Jackie made an effort to stand up. “We have to find the place. We have to go now.”
I knew she was right. Since she wasn’t in a condition to carry anything, I grabbed it all, put her heavy pack on my back and my lighter one on my front. Jackie filled the cups with rainwater and doused the fire, then we put on our ponchos, went out into the rain, and started back to the truck. This time I led and this time our pace was at a jog. I was driven by remembering Nate and what a great kid he was and how Jackie’s vision had saved his life.
“Tell me every detail,” I called back to her as we half ran down the slippery trail. Her face was unnaturally white, surrounded by her bright yellow poncho.
“I saw the children screaming for their mother, but she—”
“No!” I said. “Don’t tell me what happened, tell me the details of the place. We have to identify the place,” I said over the rain, walking backward, looking at her. “What color was the house? Did you see the street? Give me facts!”
“A pink flamingo,” Jackie said, nearly running to keep up with me. “There was a pink flamingo in the backyard. You know, one of those plastic things. And a fence. The whole yard was fenced.”
“Wooden? Chain-link?” I called over my shoulder.
“Honeysuckle. It was covered with honeysuckle. I don’t know what was under the vines.”
“The house? What did you see inside and outside?”
“I didn’t see the outside of the house. There was a white stove in the kitchen. And green cabinets. Old cabinets.”
“The kids!” I yelled. How far away was the truck?! “How old were the kids? What color skin? Hair?”
“White skin, both with blond hair. About six, maybe younger.” When she paused, I knew she was thinking. “There was a baby, less than a year old. I don’t think she was walking yet.”
“She?” I asked.
“Yes! She was wearing pink pajamas. And the older child had on cowboy pajamas. A boy.”
All the saints be praised, I saw the truck. I got the keys out of my pocket, pushed the button to unlock the doors, and helped Jackie tumble inside. I pulled off the packs, got out my cell phone, handed it to Jackie, then dumped the packs in the compartment behind the seat. Seconds later, I had the truck turned around and we were heading back to town.
“Who would know this place if you described it to them?” I asked Jackie.
“Anyone who’d lived in this town all their life,” she said, and I looked at her.
“Yeah, but if we call them and explain, they’ll think you’re…”
“Crazy?”
We didn’t have time to go into that right now. “We need someone we can trust.” I was going so fast over the ruts and holes that my truck tires were hardly touching ground. I had someone in mind but I didn’t think Jackie would agree. I was sure she’d want to call Allie, but something about Allie made me think she lacked a calmness that we needed right now.
“Dessie,” Jackie said, then began pushing buttons on my cell phone. I’d saved Dessie’s number in the directory. When Dessie answered, Jackie held the phone to my ear so I could drive.
“Dessie,” I said, “this is Ford Newcombe. I don’t have time to go into details now but I need to find someone really fast. She’s a woman with two blond kids, a boy about six, and a girl who isn’t walking yet. The backyard of the house has a pink flamingo and a fence that’s covered in honeysuckle.”
“And a swing set,” Jackie said.
“And a swing set,” I said into the phone.
Dessie didn’t bother me with questions. She hesitated a moment as she thought, then said, “Oak. At the end of Maple Street.”
We were finally on paved roads, the rain had nearly stopped, and I looked at a sign. “We’re on the corner of Sweeten Lane and Grove Hollow right now. Which way do we go?”
“Turn right onto Sweeten toward the Shell station,” Dessie said. “Do you see a stop sign?”
“Yes.”
“Take a left, go two blocks. Are you at Pinewood now?”
“Yes.”
“Turn right and it’s the house at the end of the street on the left.”
“I see it!” Jackie said, her window down, her head stuck out in the drizzle. “I can see the swing set and the flamingo. And…and the honeysuckle-covered fence.”
“Dessie,” I said, “I’ll see you tomorrow.” I didn’t say I’d explain; I just hung up. I stopped the truck in front of the house on the end. Jackie and I looked at each other and What do we do now? hung between us.
“Maybe we should…” Jackie said.
I got out of the truck, but I had no idea what I was going to do. I walked to the front door, Jackie close behind me, and hoped some inspiration would come to me. When I reached the door, I looked at her for courage, took a breath, then rang the bell. We heard footsteps from inside, but then we heard a phone ringing and a woman’s voice yelled, “Just a minute.”
“The phone,” Jackie whispered.
I turned the knob, but the door was locked.
In the next second, Jackie started running to the back of the house and I was close on her heels. The backdoor was unlocked and we tiptoed inside. We could hear the woman laughing and as we stepped further into the kitchen, we could see the side of her through a door that led into the front room. On the stove was the pot with a tea towel beside it. And the towel was ablaze, the flames licking upward to a shelf that contained pot holders and dried flower arrangements, all highly flammable.
I grabbed the towel, threw it in the sink, and ran water over it.
When I turned around, there was a little boy, wearing cowboy pajamas, standing in the doorway, rubbing his eyes, and looking at Jackie and me. Jackie put her finger to her lips for the child to be quiet, then we backed out of the kitchen and ran around the house to the truck.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Jackie
Maybe I was jealous of Dessie, but I didn’t think so. First of all, why would I be jealous? If I were madly in love with Ford Newcombe and some woman was about to take him away, I would, yes, be very jealous. Or if Dessie were the type of woman who wanted to “do” for a man, that old Southern term that meant wait on him hand and foot, and I thought my job was in jeopardy, I’d probably try to break them up.
But Dessie Mason wasn’t like that. True, I could imagine her marrying Ford and assuming that I was to be her slave. And of course she’d move me out of the best bedroom and into the servants’ quarters at the top of the house, but I couldn’t see her firing me. No, I did too much work to be fired. I ran the house, was Ford’s social secretary, was cook and purchasing agent. I did eve
rything except have sex with him—and I was sure that Dessie would take over that job.
So why would I be jealous, as Ford constantly let me know he thought I was? He smirked at me so much I was afraid his face was going to shift to one side.
The problem I saw on that first day was that Dessie was setting her cap for him and she meant to have him. And if she got him, I was sure she’d make him miserable.
Yes, Dessie was beautiful. Actually, she was more than beautiful. She was luscious. I could imagine that over the years thousands of men had declared undying love for her. My personal opinion was that she’d probably left L.A. because there were too many beautiful women there. Her beauty combined with her formidable talent as a sculptor made her the Queen of Cole Creek. The residents mentioned her name in whispers.
So now Dessie had decided she wanted my boss and I had no doubt she’d get him. Ford was smart when it came to books, but he didn’t seem too smart about women. On the night Dessie came to dinner, Ford was after her like she was in heat. Truthfully, I thought it was disgusting.
First of all, Dessie made a big production of showing Ford a sculpture she’d created. It was good, true, and maybe I was being petty when I thought she was presuming too much, but I didn’t think a sculpture of Ford’s late wife and mother-in-law was something she should have made without asking his permission.
But since she did make it, why hadn’t she shown it to him in private? Why did she have to make a big production in front of other people and make Ford cry like a baby? That poor man had tears rolling down his cheeks from the moment he saw the sculpture until the lid was put back on.
I’m sure I’m just being cynical, but I bet she’d never made an uncommissioned sculpture for a poor man. It was all too much of a coincidence that Ford was rich and she’d made a 3-D portrait of two women he’d written millions of love words about.
When he told me he was going to her house on Sunday to discuss casting the sculpture in bronze, I was anxious to see how many other pieces he’d order from her. Ford and Tessa had already littered the garden with about fifty hideous little concrete statues, and I’d seen Dessie looking at them with calculating eyes. She’s probably planning to replace them with something of hers that she’ll charge Ford six figures for, I thought.
I told myself that none of it was my business. Ford had a right to have an affair with or marry any woman he wanted to. My job was to—Well, the truth of the matter was that I was beginning to wonder exactly what my job was.
For the last week, any time I mentioned research, Ford changed the subject. He said he was working on something else and he’d get to the devil story “later.”
But I felt that the truth was, he was afraid for me. Since we’d both decided that my devil story was probably based on something I may have seen when I was a kid, I wasn’t unhappy when he didn’t pursue it.
Besides, I was happy working on my photography studio. And, okay, I was happy living with Ford. He could be very funny sometimes, and if anything had to do with books, he was a great companion. Every night while I fixed dinner, he read to me from one of the many books on photography he’d ordered, and both of us were learning a lot.
And his generosity was boundless. I made out an order for the bare essentials of photography equipment I’d need, but Ford added to the list and upgraded it until the total price was something that made me sick to my stomach.
“I can never pay this back,” I said, handing the list back to him.
Ford shrugged. “We’ll work out something.”
Earlier, I would have thought that meant sex, but I’d come to realize that Ford didn’t think of me in that way. Actually, I was beginning to think he thought of me as the daughter he’d never had. And, truthfully, that was beginning to depress me. So, okay, maybe I’d been pretty adamant about there being no sex between us when I first met him. But at the time I’d been engaged to Kirk, and when I left for Cole Creek with Ford, I’d just been ripped off by a man. My distrust of men was understandable. But since then…Well, since then, I’d come to find Ford rather attractive. But ever since we’d arrived in Cole Creek he’d been lusting after other women, first Rebecca and now Dessie. All I could do was be his assistant and his business partner.
On Saturday our little household was shaken. First of all, I was in a bad mood about the way Ford had made a fool of himself over Dessie the night before. I didn’t mind his crying in front of everyone—that was kind of sweet—but I did mind the way he couldn’t stop looking at her. She had on a dress that showed her enormous breasts about as much as was legal, a wide belt that cinched in her spreading waist, and a full skirt that attempted to camouflage a rear end that had to be forty-five inches around. Dessie talked and laughed all night, but Ford just sat there nursing a beer and looking at her. He stared at her little pink toenails until I moved the chair she had her feet propped on, so she had to put her lacquered toes out of sight under the table.
But no, I don’t think I was jealous. I think that if Dessie had acted like a woman on the verge of falling in love, I would have been happy. Or even if I’d seen that she was in lust with Ford it would have been okay. But Allie told me that everyone in Cole Creek knew that Dessie was sleeping with her twenty-five-year-old gardener. One time I saw her looking at Nate, and both Nate’s grandmother and I stepped between her and the beautiful boy. When Dessie laughed, it was the only honest emotion I saw on her face all evening.
Anyway, Saturday morning I wasn’t in a good mood, so I decided to take my camera and go shoot some flowers. But just as I was leaving, Ford showed up and insisted he go with me.
He has some good points, but he can also be the most infuriating man on earth. By the time I got him outfitted, the sun was high in the sky, which meant I wouldn’t get interesting shadows on the flowers, and I wished with all my might I’d let him spend the day with Dessie. Let her do whatever she wanted to with him.
Worse, when we finally got on the trail, he complained every step of the way. We didn’t go more than a mile, if that, but to hear Ford’s grumbling, you would have thought we’d hiked thirty miles on a survival trek. He ate and drank every step of the way, grunted and groaned over every twig in his path, and even whined about cobwebs across the trail. I felt like smacking him!
In the end, though, it was good he went with me because I had another one of those disaster-dreams. Only this time I was fully awake. Sort of awake. I think I blacked out for a few minutes. When I came to myself, Ford had a fire going and had heated water in a cup, and he started feeding me one of those pseudo-nutritional bars he eats by the dozen.
He was the one who figured out that I’d had another vision, and the second he said it, I knew he was right. Thirty minutes before, he’d been lying down, with all the energy of a dead slug, but suddenly he was a jet engine. He grabbed both packs, put one on his back, one on his front, and started running back to the truck. Yes, running.
When he got behind the wheel of the truck, I had to hold on for dear life. He was asking me a million questions about my dream-vision, but I could hardly concentrate for fear he was going to turn the truck over. What really amazed me was that he drove like that with one hand on the wheel and didn’t seem to think it was at all unusual. All his books ran it home that he (in a fictional guise) wasn’t like his redneck relatives, but all he needed that day was a cigarette in his mouth and a rifle across the back window, and I would have put him up against any Billy Joe Bob in the U.S.
In spite of my head repeatedly hitting the roof of the truck, I managed to get Dessie on his cell phone. I called her because I felt sure she wouldn’t care about anything outside herself. Allie would have asked me a hundred questions, none of which I wanted to answer.
Thanks to Dessie, we found the house of my dream-vision in record time, then slipped in the backdoor and put out the fire before the house went up in flames.
I must say that the whole thing was exhilarating. The wild ride, then accomplishing a task that saved the lives of two chil
dren…Well, truthfully, it turned me on. I wanted to get naked, pour champagne over my body, and make love until the sun came up. With Ford. Yeah, that shocked me a bit, but when we were laughing on the way home, it seemed possible that we could end up fooling around. Maybe not all night with a man his age and in his physical condition, but still…
At my suggestion, we stopped and got pizza and beer and took it home, and I was contemplating the best way to suggest that we could…Well…
But when we arrived at that beautiful house, Dessie was on our front porch with a basketful of champagne and smoked oysters, and she was saying how she’d been so worried about Ford that she’d just been sick. Her accent had deepened into Classic Southern Belle, and she’d even managed to pull in her belt another notch. I wondered if she’d had a colonic.
Ford gave me an I’m-helpless-to-do-anything-about-this look, so I said I was tired and wanted to go to bed. He started to get all fatherly on me, but I pushed his hand away from my forehead, and went upstairs. I had to close all my windows to keep from hearing Dessie’s exaggerated laugh as she and Ford sat in the garden talking for most of the night.
Even if I wasn’t jealous, I was certainly lonely on Sunday. Because he’d stayed up so late, Ford didn’t get out of bed until noon, and even then I could see that his mind was elsewhere. I made him a big cheesy omelet, put it on the plate in front of him, then went outside to the garden to reread one of the new books on photography. I’d meant to go to church, but the truth was that I was feeling so lazy I couldn’t seem to work up any interest in going. At twelve-thirty I called Allie but no one answered the phone.
It was while the phone was ringing that I heard Ford’s car and looked out the window to see him driving away. He hadn’t even said goodbye!
I sat down on the little upholstered chair by the telephone and suddenly felt bereft. No, actually, for the first time, I felt like an employee. Yes, I know he gave me a paycheck, but still…