When I was older, I got smarter. When one of my mother’s boyfriends said he wanted to share a secret with me, I’d leave. Anytime my mother took on a new boyfriend, I’d start looking around for places to sleep. I found out where the shelters were, looked for hiding places in parks under trees that I could safely sleep under, and figured out ways to stay in the town’s library after hours, which was never too hard. I’d read books all night. I’d get to know the neighbors, too—feel out where I could go in case of emergency.
“Speaking of secrets, Julia, my dear…” Lydia turned toward me. She was wearing the same type of flannel shirt as me, her gray braids piled under her cap, the tilt of her head proud and strong, as always.
“Whenever you’re ready to talk, I’m here.”
I swallowed hard. Swallowed hard again. Looked down. I felt like a kid. Felt as I always had when I’d come to Lydia’s farm for the summer, relieved beyond belief that I was with her, that I had escaped, if only for a while. I moved the egg basket from one hand to another as emotions roiled through me—fear, worry, pain, more fear.
“Jellybean Julia,” Lydia said my nickname as soft as chicken feathers, and pulled me into her arms.
Jellybean Julia bent her head and cried.
He was huge.
Absolutely huge.
Not fat at all, but huge.
Tall, with shoulders as big as a car and a chest wider than a pillow.
And he smiled at me.
From the start I gave Dean Garrett a lot of credit. That huge man with his gold and white hair and his weathered, tanned skin, and his bright blue eyes that actually looked right at me instead of skittering away like most men who lose interest in me as soon as they’re done marveling at my boobs.
He didn’t laugh when he saw me in all my muddy glory, which was another point in his favor, but the sight of a man that big, that strong-looking, made my heart leap a bit with fear. I have never been comfortable with men, except for Stash, and after my experience with Robert and my mother’s “friends,” any man who looked like he could squish my face into gel made me particularly nervous.
This man not excluded.
“Dean Garrett!” Aunt Lydia boomed when she saw The Huge Man leaning against her kitchen counter, drinking a cup of coffee with Stash. “I have not seen you in so long I was thinking about having a new concrete pig crafted and named after you!” She gave him a hug, and I watched as she seemed to disappear into his arms.
A smile stretched across his square-jawed face, his teeth white, little lines fanning from the corners of his eyes. He had that weathered, Marlboro-man look to him. I put him at around forty-two years old or so.
“It would be my honor to have a pig named after me, Lydia.” He looked at me, then back down at Aunt Lydia. “In fact, I’ll look forward to it. Put me next to Stash out there.” He looked back at me.
Wonderful, I thought. Splendid! I must look even more mangled than I thought. Perhaps it was the mud adorning my outfit that caught his eye. Or the matted hair? Perhaps the stench of chicken poop? Perhaps I had a chicken atop my head that I hadn’t noticed? The chicken was probably a great backdrop to the bruises that were still visible on my cheek and eye. I reached up and pulled at my hair, catching Stash looking at me with a smile. He winked.
“Ha!” Lydia pulled away. “Never! I have reserved that space only for Stash, who, I see, has come into my house again without an invitation. Never mind. You have brought one of my favorite people on the planet, so just this time”—she slammed her hand against Stash’s behind—“I’ll forgive you. You brought me my pie pan back, didn’t you? Finally. Dean, this is my wonderful niece, Julia Bennett. She’ll be here for a while. Hopefully forever.”
Dean Garrett crossed the room in milliseconds, his long legs eating up that floor like a tractor. For a man who was huge, with shoulders the size of, yes, a piano, he moved well.
“Miss Bennett.” He took my hand in his, and I watched it disappear. I now had no hand attached to my right arm. My heart pumped harder. Oh dear. Please don’t let the Dread Disease affect me now. Not while I’m covered in chicken poop, holding the hand of a man with blue eyes that were currently peering right into my soul and reading all my secrets.
“Mr…Mr…” I forgot his name.
“It’s Dean Garrett. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” His voice was low and gravelly, like honey over crushed rock.
It would be a pleasure to meet you if I could breathe, I thought to myself. “Yes. Of course. I mean. Yes, I’m pleasured to meet you.” I could feel the blush rising in my face. I’m pleasured to meet you? I sounded like I was having sex with his introduction. I tried again. “It’s nice to meet you, too, Mr. Garrett.”
I heard Stash cough to cover a chuckle in the background, but I couldn’t see him. The only thing within eighty miles of my vision was this man. And the longer he stared at me, the longer his hand warmed mine like a hot-water bottle, the longer I was caught by those blue eyes that had X-ray vision into my soul, the more my heart pattered about like a loose pinball.
I saw one corner of his mouth tilt up in a smile. “Lydia must have had you up bright and early to help with the chickens.”
He was still holding my hand.
“No. Yes. I helped with the chickens. Yes.”
“Julia moved here from back East. Finally came to her senses,” Aunt Lydia said. “She worked in an art gallery.”
Dean nodded. “That’s interesting. Who are your favorite artists?”
“My favorite artists?” I made the mistake of looking at his lips. The top one slim, the lower one full. Way full. Way kissable. Sheesh. “Uh. I. Well. I’m sorry. What was the question?”
He smiled. “Who are your favorite artists?”
Ah. Okay. I knew what an artist was. “Van Gogh. Vermeer. Faith Ringold.”
He smiled at me again, then let go of my hand. The warmth was gone. I swallowed hard. If I’d had an Adam’s apple it would undoubtedly be making a fool of me.
“And yours?”
“I’ll take Picasso and the photographer Ansel Adams.”
I nodded. Wise choices. I stared some more. The man reeked of testosterone. Stop, Julia, please stop, I pleaded with myself. You’ve just run from one man—let’s not start looking at another.
I decided I had to go.
“If you all will excuse me…I have…well, I have to take a shower.”
Now why did I say such a naked thing? I couldn’t even look at Dean. “I’ve been with the chickens and…” Brilliant again. It almost sounded amorous. I’ve been with the chickens?
“Nice to have met you,” I said, my voice quiet to my own ears. And, as if he were deaf, I said louder, “Good to meet you.”
I should start digging a hole in the floor now so I could crawl into it.
“Oh, now, honey, don’t you say good-bye yet,” Stash said. “When you’re through, you come right back on down here quick as a wink and have breakfast with us. I’m making your aunt and you and Dean my World Famous Stash’s Omelets. They are the best Oregon has ever eaten, you know. If they had an omelets contest, I would win. Damn sure of it. So you get on in that shower and we’ll see you in a jiffy.”
I managed a nervous smile as the Dread Disease slammed into me suddenly. My heart rate sped up to 23,897 beats a minute, there was suddenly no air in the house, I was freezing cold, and I felt faint. All at the same time.
I turned, managed to bump into only one chair and the side of the doorway, then stumbled through the living room. Super. Now Dean would know I was a clutz, too. The stairs now looked mountainous, and I vaguely wondered if I would need crampons to help me climb them, as the air had been completely sucked out of my lungs with an invisible siphon.
I stumbled up the stairs, then collapsed on my bed, my hands over my head.
I could feel the Dread Disease get worse, second by second, until I thought I would never breathe again, my forehead breaking out in a sweat, that familiar tremble coursing its way through my weakened limbs.
/> What disease was it? Was it the first case of leprosy in hundreds of years? Would I suffer? Would I collapse dead away in the chicken coop, and all the chickens would cover my body with eggs and no one would find me?
I would be remembered as The Woman Buried By Eggs.
And Dean Garrett would probably read about me. How humiliating.
I tried to breathe, but it didn’t work, and my head spun. Tried again. The air this time was gracious, and I felt my collapsed lungs inflate slightly.
Another breath came puffing on in, then another, and soon the sweet smell of jasmine potpourri wafted in, the curtain at the window fluttered, I heard one of Lydia’s cats meowing, and the clucking of the chickens penetrated the thick fog of frightening yuck in my head.
Now, I realized I could go to a doctor about the Dread Disease, but I didn’t want to hear that I had contracted a strange, deadly, breathing sickness from a tiny colony of ants that had somehow grown giant teeth and burrowed their way into my skin.
No, knowledge is not always good.
I heard Aunt Lydia, Stash, and Dean talking and laughing downstairs and knew I wouldn’t be able to eat at all. Not in the presence of that he-man. Although I felt exhausted, and I knew the exhaustion would take hours to shed, I could think clearly enough to know that I was not going to sit next to a man who was as tall as a tree and had blue eyes that had stripped my insides bare.
But I would take it upon myself to shower. Dropping Aunt Lydia’s clothes on the floor, I turned the water on, shampooed and rinsed my hair, then scrubbed any possible fleck of chicken poop off my body.
I toweled dry and put on my jeans and my one nice white blouse, although I certainly wasn’t going down to breakfast. That would be too scary with Dean there.
I slipped on silver hoop earrings and my watch. And a little lipstick.
Although I certainly wasn’t going down to breakfast. Way too scary.
Lydia came up, saw me sitting on the bed.
“I knew I would find you hiding up here.”
“I’m not hiding.”
“You are hiding. You must draw up your courage from the bowels of your uterus and come join us at breakfast.”
“I’m not hiding,” I said, trying to sound rational. “I am enjoying a nervous breakdown. I should be done in a couple of months. But until I’m done I’m not hanging out with any men, especially men related to Paul Bunyan. Does he have his blue ox outside?”
Aunt Lydia groaned. “Funny. Now that you mention it, he does. Although he calls it a truck. Don’t be scared of him, Julia. He’s a good man. A man who is not afraid of his testosterone. He rules his testosterone and does not let his testosterone rule him. His balls are made of steel, you can tell by the way he moves.”
Steel balls?
“Moved here several years ago. He’s a farmer and a rancher. Attorney, too, so he goes into the city for weeks at a time sometimes. Some big hotshot. I don’t know. Stash does.”
Great. A rancher. Farmer. And an attorney. Oh, yes. I’m sure he would be excited to dine with someone like me. A nervous, paranoid, blushing, clutzy, bruised, muddy, plump, overly endowed ex-fiancée who left her wedding dress hanging from a tree and who sounds like she’s been getting it on with chickens.
“All I know is that he is a damn good poker player. He beat Stash many times, and he’s almost beat me. He’ll play for quarters, not pennies, like all the other cowardly people in this town.” Lydia snorted, then grabbed my arm. “I’m drying your hair.”
“No, please, Aunt Lydia. Tell him I’m sick. Tell him I have leprosy. I’m certainly not going down to breakfast.”
“You do look a little pale, Julia. Which is why you need to pump your womanhood full of eggs and cheese. They will restore the equilibrium in your inner core, which is what you need. And those jeans look good on you.”
“I’m fat.”
“You’re not fat. You’re curvy. Men like something to grip in bed, Julia. They like handfuls of warm woman. Mouthfuls, too, now that I think about it. But men are pricks!” she shouted, pointer fingers in the air again, as if she’d just remembered. “Sleeping with one of those skinny models would be like sleeping with a fence post with a head. You attracted to fence posts? Me neither. Now get in there so I can dry those curls of yours or I’m calling Stash in to do it.”
“You wouldn’t.” But I already knew.
“I would. Sure as I would paint the north outbuilding orange, I would, which is what I’m going to do tomorrow. Now move.”
I stood up, my knees still a bit weak from the attack of the Dread Disease.
“And, by the way, after breakfast, can you help me paint the back shed green?”
“Sure, Aunt Lydia.” I’d work all day if I could. Nothing like work to take your mind off the fact that you’re going to be hunted down by your ex-fiancé at the same time you’re fighting off a Dread Disease and Paul Bunyan and his great big steel…thingies, who is down in the kitchen.
I shivered again. I wouldn’t go there. Wouldn’t think about steel balls. If I did, I wouldn’t be able to eat the sausages.
“So you don’t like sausages?” Paul Bunyan asked me from across the table.
Stash had, indeed, prepared Oregon’s best omelets. Avocado. Shrimp. Sour cream. Some type of sauce. Tomatoes. Spices. Delicious. Or at least it would have been had I been able to eat much.
Stash was on my left, Lydia on my right. Stash had also brought over blueberry muffins. “I cooked them for you, sweetie,” he told me, giving me a hug before settling me at my seat. “You’re my sweet blueberry girl. Always have been, always will be.” Then he told Paul Bunyan about how I ate so many blueberries one night that they had to drive me to the hospital at two in the morning because my stomach hurt so bad that the doctors thought I needed an appendectomy.
I looked up into those blue eyes again. Cool. Smooth. Yet friendly.
I caught myself. Breathe, Julia.
“The sausages?” Dean asked again, smiling at me across the table.
I jumped. I had stared at him, not answering.
“No. Yes.” I shook my head. I wondered if there was a Mrs. Paul Bunyan? Was she as big as him? “I do like big sausages.”
Oh, deliver me, Lord. Had I said I like big sausages?
I heard Stash’s fork drop to his plate with a clatter. There was a dead silence around the table. Then Lydia snorted.
I heard Stash trying to control his laughter. He sounded like a hyena who was being muffled with a pillow. I felt the blood rush to my face. Aunt Lydia had found a sudden interest in her napkin. It covered her whole face. Her shoulders shook. She made odd meowing sounds.
“Well, what I meant…” I protested. I looked into Paul Bunyan’s eyes. They were laughing, but his mouth was very still. “I meant that I do like sausages, any sausage.”
Aunt Lydia snorted.
“You know, there are different types of sausages….” I sputtered, still trying to save myself. “Bavarian sausages, German sausages, French sausages, California sausages. I didn’t really mean big…really didn’t mean…”
Stash made a sound like a donkey braying. Lydia answered with her own high-pitched choking sound.
“But I don’t like spicy sausages….”
Please, I told my mouth, oh please, stop.
“Nothing spicy,” Paul Bunyan said, those lips moving over his words like hot syrup.
“Right.” We needed to get away from this conversation.
“So,” Stash said, tears floating in his eyes. “That’s a good thing for you to remember, my boy, Dean. She likes sausages of any kind.”
Aunt Lydia didn’t even try to pretend anymore, her laughter filling the room like sweet flowers on a cold winter day.
“But nothing spicy.”
“Never,” said Stash, laughter spilling from his mouth like caramel corn from a paper bag. “Women are picky about these things. Some women like one type of sausage, some another. Spicy sausages. Big ones, small ones, sausages from differe
nt countries. There’s just no pleasin’ these gals sometimes, Dean, no pleasin’ them at all.”
“Well, I like your sausage, Stash,” Aunt Lydia said. “I like it right fine. Right fine.”
I stared, astonished. Then I laughed. I couldn’t help it. For all the time that Aunt Lydia was fighting with Stash, this was the first compliment I’d heard her give him in a long time. The tension rolled right out of my body with that laugh. I looked at Paul Bunyan, who did not seem the least bit embarrassed about my sausage comment. His eyes were still on me, but now they had a look in them, a considering look, a curious look.
“But you must remember!” Lydia boomed, holding her fork high in the air.
“I know, I know, darlin’,” Stash said, still laughing. “Men are pricks!”
5
Caroline Harper’s house was a study in surprise. Her home is actually a pole barn, painted brown on the outside. From the front, all you can see is a door and a tiny window. There’s a red and white sign in that tiny window that says GUNS ARE LOADED. Outside another sign says NO TRESPASSING.
It looks like the kind of place where methamphetamine might be manufactured. At the very least, it looks to be a hideout for wicked criminals. I asked her about the signs later, when we were having tea over a lace-draped table, and she said they added humor to her life. The old man who lived here before her was slightly insane. He had twenty-two cats, was rumored to eat a full garlic clove a day, and made his own whiskey. He lived to be 104. Caroline knew him, liked him, and kept the signs in memory of him.
At first I was sure I had gotten the wrong directions from Lydia. Surely no one like Caroline Harper lived in such a depressing, dark, scary-looking place. And Aunt Lydia had said she lived in a dollhouse. This wasn’t a dollhouse.
But Lydia had mentioned the signs, so I slammed the door of the truck closed and proceeded with caution.
And there’s where the surprises started.
Caroline opened the door, a smile lighting her gentle features. She wore a red cotton dress that on anyone else probably would have looked frumpy, with its square neckline and flared skirt. I would have looked like a giant blood clot. But on Caroline, it looked stylish and hip and lovely. She had pulled her hair back into a ponytail, her cheekbones gracious curves. Her right eye winked at me, but slowly, gently. She hugged me as I walked in the door. And then I stopped.