Baby It's Cold Outside (7 page)

Someday, he’d like to know someone so well he knew what they were thinking. And vice versa. To have someone see inside his heart, realize that he wasn’t the man on the inside that he was forced to live on the outside.

You meant more than you know.

He hadn’t lied, not really. Alex had filled every one of his last few letters with details about Violet—her life, her dreams. The hope he had for someday. But then again, Alex fell in love every other day, with any dame that smiled his direction. Who knew but he had a gal at Fort Benning and then again one in the hospital in Paris?

Alex had cared for her, of that Jake felt certain. But Jake no longer felt the pinch of guilt when he stamped a postcard, slipped it into the mail.

The truth was, Alex had stopped writing to her the day he’d died in the battle for Berlin, nearly a year after the D-Day invasion.

Jake had filled in after that. Mostly postcards, yes, but a few letters that might bolster her spirits, help her believe that her country cared about her service.

Did Dottie know that right in her kitchen sat a woman who could rebuild a model MB “Go Devil” military jeep engine, from flash pan to carburetor? Did she know that she had volunteered for overseas assignment, serving at S.H.A.E.F, the Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force first in Bushey Park, London, then followed the wave of soldiers into Normandy? That she’d probably helped repair the staff cars of General Eisenhower and seen the same war, lived through the same dangers as the infantry? Did Dottie—or Gordon, for that matter—know that she’d earned a meritorious service medal?

He did.

He also knew about her four brothers, where they’d served, and breathed with relief when they arrived home. He knew about her father’s death, and her grief at hearing about it while in Berlin.

He knew that when she arrived home, she’d carried with her dreams of homecoming, hopes for a family.

And that’s when he realized, fully, what he’d done.

You meant more to him than you know.

“Keep your ankle elevated or the swelling will get worse.”

* * * * *

Do you think I want your death on my conscience?

Dottie’s own words ran in her mind as she catalogued the supplies in her pantry. A can of tomatoes, a jar of pickles, a couple tins of processed canned ham, a container of barley. She pulled out the barley and tomatoes.

The look on Gordon’s face then, a flicker of emotion, as if she’d slapped him. She drew in a quick, shaky breath.

She knew that expression too well. It could still haunt her, even twenty-seven years later.

Gordy had hiked over to her house in the storm because he heard a gunshot? She didn’t believe him for a second.

No, he’d been worried about her—and she wasn’t so frigid inside that the truth of it didn’t find her belly, warm it.

She set the ingredients on the counter then went to the back room to retrieve potatoes and onions from the bin. The chilly air tickled up her arms, down her blouse. She still wore her work attire—a skirt, long cardigan. She had a mind to go stand over the giant heating grate in the hallway, let the warm air billow her skirt up, like it had when she was a child.

Returning to the kitchen, she dumped a handful of vegetables into the sink then rooted around in her drawer for a knife. Violet sat at the table, her leg up, looking stripped.

Jake Ramsey had delivered news that turned the poor girl into a silent wreck. Dottie almost felt sorry for her.

She picked up an onion, sliced off the tail, then began to peel it, glancing up now and again at the storm billowing outside the window. In the next room, she could hear Gordon and Jake crumple paper, load in wood to the fire. Gordy, here, in her home.

How many times had she let her mind trail down dark, forbidden corridors, wondering what that might feel like? To have him in her life, instead of outside in the yard.

She would stand in her darkened bedroom, arms folded across her stomach, watching his porch light. His house sat cattycorner to hers, so that from her kitchen, her parlor, even her upstairs bedroom she could make out the glow from his yard. Sometimes, on a clear night, she even traced his dark outline as he wandered back from the barn or threw sticks to his old dog. Nelson had loved the thing—probably what made him long for his own dog.

Nelson’s cranky beagle had passed away the year he’d left. Sometimes she could still see the dog, curled up in a nest in the middle of his quilt.

Sometimes she curled up with him.

A crackle came from the hearth in the parlor, the fire sparking to life. She turned back to the potatoes, her throat filling. Oh, she simply couldn’t have houseguests. Couldn’t let the house ring with voices again. It might stir up the dust of old, happy memories.

And then, she’d choke on them.

She picked up a rag, wiped her hands, then pressed the rag to her burning eyes.

“Mrs. Morgan? I just wanted to say I’m sorry, again, for destroying your fir tree.” Violet’s voice emerged soft, with a hint of fear. “I—I’ll find you a new one and plant it in the spring.”

Dottie steeled herself, found her librarian voice. “No, that’s okay. It was dying anyway.”

She’d always feared really saying that out loud. It felt easier, in a way, to stand at the cold window, staring out into the blackness, and admit it now. “It was an old tree.”

“How old?”

She drew in a breath, scooping the chopped onion into a pot. “I planted it about a year after Nelson was born. So…I guess it’s about—”

“Twenty-five years old. I can do the math. And that’s not very old for a tree.”

“No, I suppose it isn’t.”

She heard Violet draw in her breath, as if measuring her words.

“I remember when Nelson used to invite his football pals out here to study. My brother Johnny always came out, told us about how you’d make Snickerdoodles for them.”

Dottie picked up a potato, began to curl the skin off, her movements too choppy for the long elegant curls Nelson used to steal. “How is Johnny?”

“Good. He and Hattie are expecting.”

Over the past five years, Dottie had become better, more adapt at steeling herself against happy news. “That’s wonderful.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Dottie saw Violet glance into the parlor. She wore a look of almost panic, as if the last thing she wanted was for Jake to return to the kitchen.

Dottie knew all about that. She would never look at Gordy again if she could manage it. Never have to face conversation. They’d go to their graves separated by the marsh and the specter of the past between them.

It was just her terrible fortune that Gordy never married. Dottie might feel less guilty, less ashamed if he had.

Dottie washed the potato then cut it into bite-size cubes. “Who is Alex?” she asked, pity more than curiosity leading the impulse. She’d spent years trying to divert her attention from Gordon Lindholm.

Violet adjusted the ice on her ankle. She probably needed snow on her knee also—it looked roughly the size of a muskmelon under those trousers. “He was a solider I met at Fort Meade. We’ve been corresponding for years. Especially during the war. We exchanged greeting cards the last couple years. I—I made the mistake of inviting him to Frost for the holidays.”

“And this Jake fella?”

“I—I don’t know. A friend of Alex’s, I guess. I’m not sure why Alex sent him here—especially since he already sent back my last letter.”

Dottie wanted to groan, but she held it in, watching her breath disintegrate on the cold window. “I’m sorry, Violet.”

“I was fooling myself…. I told myself that he was just healing from the war—I knew lots of GIs who had battle fatigue. I thought maybe if I gave him enough time, if I kept writing to him, someday he’d show up here. He stopped sending me letters after the war—mostly sent postcards. But they came almost every month, with messages like…he was thinking about me.” She pressed a hand to her mouth. “I’m such a fool.”

Oh, Violet. Dottie wanted to tell her that believing a man’s words had been her first mistake too, but perhaps that would be too cruel. She dumped the potatoes into the pot then dried her hands. She wanted to go to her, perhaps take her hand, but for now all she could do was meet her eyes. “It sounded like he truly cared for you, from what his friend said.”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ve been lying to myself for years. The truth is, he didn’t want me—if he had, he would have hopped on a train.”

“It doesn’t mean he didn’t care for you. Maybe he couldn’t come. Maybe he was injured, or…” Or, in prison.

The word darted into her brain, and back out. Prison.

Dottie shook the thought away again.

“There is someone out there for you, Violet.” The words didn’t come from inside, but rather were plucked from one of Dottie’s storybooks. Still, they sounded right in the moment, and as if her heart wanted to believe it, inside her pulsed the strange urge to hold Violet’s hand, to clasp it between hers.

Instead, she folded her arms across her chest.

Violet shook her head. “I don’t think there is anyone out there for me, Mrs. Morgan. See…I’m turning thirty in a couple of weeks.”

Thirty. At thirty Dottie had already become a widow. Not that she’d told anyone about the death notice from the prison. But, by thirty, she’d stopped believing in happy endings too.

Still, Violet didn’t carry the mantle of shame that hovered over Dottie. “There are plenty of good men out there.”

“No,” Violet said softly. “No one like Alex. He—he seemed to understand me. Or, I thought he did.”

And that was the charade that wheedled a man into a girl’s heart, wasn’t it?

“How’s your leg, Violet?” Jake stood at the door and for the first time, Dottie saw him the way Violet might—tall, broad shoulders, dark hair, eyes that held concern.

She knew a man like that once.

Gordy stepped up behind him, his mouth a tight line. “We got the fire going, but I took a gander outside, Dottie. I really think I can make it back to the farm.”

Oh, how had it come to this? Her begging him to stay?

Shoot.

“No, Gordon.” She sighed and stood up, drawing her cardigan around her. “It’s a bad idea. You’ll never make it across the slough in this storm.”

The furnace kicked on again, the motor downstairs humming as the stoker came to life.

“Dottie, listen. I can make it home—”

She rounded on him. “Of course you can, Gordon. Why listen to me? I’m just a tired old woman, working my jaws to keep myself company. What do I know about storms? Please, trot out into the snow so we can stand by the window all night and worry ourselves to death. Heaven forbid you actually care what I think.”

He didn’t answer. Not verbally. Just stared at her, with those hazel-green eyes she could never forget.

Never really wanted to, if she were honest.

“I care about you, Dottie.” He said it so quietly, with so much confidence, just like that day in the barn when the sun bled out along the prairie behind him.

She turned away. See, just an hour with this man and her past rose to strangle her. Having him all night in her home would certainly open all the old wounds.

But the thought of him perishing in the snow just might destroy her.

She looked away from him, retreating to her sink. “The storm will let up by morning. I have plenty of room here.”

He caught her arm. “Would it be better if I slept in the barn?”

The barn. He would say that. And then, just like that, she saw him, peeking out from behind a hay bale, scaring her.

Gordy Lindholm, you stay away from me!

But they’d played tag, right there in the shadows of the barn until he pinned her, one hand on either side of her shoulders, against the corral. Sometimes she could still see his smile, the heat in his youthful hazel-green eyes as he lowered his lips, brushed them to hers, quick, dangerous, tasting of fresh apples and the sweat of a summer afternoon.

Twelve, she guessed, she might have been the first time he kissed her.

“No, I don’t want you to sleep in the barn,” she said quietly, casting a look at the two young people who clearly couldn’t unravel their nonrelationship. Good. She had her own problems understanding it, and she’d been in the middle of it for nearly twenty-five years.

“Just get me two more potatoes from the bin and take off those boots. They’re turning my kitchen floor into a pond.”

* * * * *

Violet wanted to crawl under Dottie’s floorboards and hide. So much for bringing back the star—if Violet could just make it back to town tonight, she’d never bother Mrs. Morgan again.

She could hear Gordon in the back room, rifling through the potato bin. Dottie stood at the stove, opening her canned tomatoes.

Jake had taken the cloth from her ankle and exited to retrieve more snow.

What a fool she’d been to harbor those fairy-tale fantasies that had landed her here, in this cold, ornate castle, her ankle on fire, her head burning, with Alex’s messenger hovering over pitiful, rejected her as if she might crumble.

She was a soldier, after all. Okay, not a soldier, but she’d spent the night in worse situations—like that night in Berlin, when the wind dipped down to fourteen below zero, tunneling through her barracks and hollowing her out with the moan of it.

Of course, that night, she’d received the cable from home about Father’s passing.

I thought maybe if I gave him enough time, if I kept writing to him, someday he’d show up here.
Her own words made her cringe and turn away as Jake re-entered the room, his cheeks flush with cold. Oh, he was a handsome man, she noticed that now too. Dark brown hair, impossibly blue eyes—the kind of blue that could stop her on the sidewalk, and they bore an emotion she couldn’t place as he came toward her. Pain? Regret?

On the stove, the teapot whistled to life. The kitchen dwarfed Violet’s back home, twice the size, with cheerful yellow paint, light blue cupboards, and wallpaper covered in daisies and cornflowers.

Dottie had a four-burner gas stove, with an oven and two warmer slots, and a tall, two-door Kelvinator icebox. In the corner sat a round Maytag gas-powered wringer washing machine on rollers. Her large porcelain sink overlooked a window and beyond that, the snowy night.