Bone Gap (23 page)

She slept, she woke, she ate, she slept again. She carried the cat like a baby. The big one checked her toes and asked after her ribs and wrist, and then dashed off for work. The younger one was shy and awkward and seemed much more comfortable simply bringing her things: bags of ice, glasses of water, tea with honey. She asked to borrow a phone to call her babcia, so he brought her that, too, waving off her offer to pay them back. Eventually, her toes felt better, her ribs began to heal.

She still didn't want to leave.

They were kind to her, but that wasn't it. She felt so light around them, as if the eyes of others had a heft and a pressure that she couldn't comprehend until the pressure was gone. She ignored the boxes and the jars and cooked her favorite foods, she baked tray after tray of cookies. She worked the dirt in the garden—rich dirt wriggling with worms—bringing a sad patch of vegetables to life.

“Looks good,” said the big one, Sean.

She glanced up from the tomato plants. They had been planted too close together, and she had decided to replant a few in the hopes they would flourish even this late in the season.
The day was hot and she had taken off her sweatshirt and tied it around her waist, baring her shoulders to the sun. She had been enjoying the feeling until she heard his footsteps.

But he wasn't looking at her. He was looking at the root ball she cradled, at the garden all around her.

“It's never looked this good,” he said. “The plants, the whole garden. Everything's so green. Green as . . .” He didn't finish.

“Green as?” she said.

“Really green.”

Her eyes were green, but that couldn't be what he'd been going to say.

“Where did you learn how to do this?” he said.

“My babcia.”

He frowned at the unfamiliar word. “Bop-cha?”

“
Babcia.
Is grandmother. She has garden. She teach.”

“A garden in Poland?”

“Yes.”

She was sure he'd ask how she came to be in America, and then how she came to be in his barn, how she could trust him so fast, and she was trying to figure out how she wanted to answer when he said, “Do you miss it?”

“What?”


“Poland.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Will you go back?”

“I will be back,” she said. “But . . .”

“But?”

“I stay here,” she said, embarrassed by her need, by her inability to put it into words he could understand, that
she
could. “For little while? Is okay?”

Again, she was sure he'd ask about her feet and her ribs and her wrist, and how she'd hurt them, or maybe who had hurt her, but she didn't think she could explain that either. There had been little hurts and big ones and she could hardly tell them apart, and it all sounded crazy anyway. The sun was warm here, she knew that. The garden was green. The dirt was good. She could bury herself and be happy.

He said, “Do you want help?”

Heat burned her skin—anger or embarrassment or some mixture of both. When she'd first come, she'd overheard him talking to the younger one, Finn, about counselors and doctors and shelters for girls like her.

Girls like her.

“Toes better,” she said. “I better.”

“No, I mean, do you want help with those tomato plants?”

His eyes were dark brown, just like the earth under her feet.

She sprawled in the grass, Rus beside her, wondering what Sean was doing now. Was he looking for her? Had he found someone else to work the garden?

A shadow fell over her. Rus growled. She squeezed her eyes shut.

Of course it was the man.

Of course she had not killed him.

Of course he could not be wounded.

But she could be. He could kill her right now, she supposed, though she could hardly gather up enough energy to care.

She sat up, opened her eyes. He was a dark figure blotting out the sun.

“You're crying,” he said.

That he said these kinds of things made no sense to her. “So?” she snapped.

“Perhaps this will cheer you up.”

Because the sun was behind him, it took her a moment to realize that in his arms he held a wriggling black-faced lamb.

“Oh!” she said, the sound escaping before she could pull it back.

He smiled that smile of his, and she knew he would ask the question he always asked, and despite the sun and the cows and the hills and the wriggling black-faced lamb, she buried her hand in Rus's fur, steeling herself for her answer.

The man scratched the little lamb between the ears and did not ask the question he always asked.

He said, “Would you like to hold him?”

Roza's hand dropped to her lap, the tears still wet on her skin.

“Yes,” she heard herself say. “Yes, I would.”

FINN SPENT THE NIGHT WRAPPED IN FEVERED DREAMS
that he could barely remember upon waking, so he spent the next morning and the rest of the day refusing the pain pills and insisting to anyone who would listen that he was fine, he was absolutely fine, he didn't need skin on his legs, he was ready to go. He was released in the early evening, and not soon enough. Sean picked him up, drove him home in a silence so absolute Finn felt as if he were wearing a helmet packed with lamb's wool. He was relieved when Sean dropped him off, when Sean didn't bother stopping inside to eat.

Finn went first to the fridge to get a couple of apples, then to
the barn to check on the mare. If she'd been scared of him yesterday, she wasn't today. She nosed his forehead and snorted into his hair and stomped her hoof for her treat. He fed her the apple and stroked her mane and said he was making it official, her name was Night. She nodded her royal head and then shook it, as if to say,
I told you my name a long time ago, and you're just figuring it out? I like your apples, but you're not very bright.

“As for you,” Finn said to the goat, who had eaten his apple in one gulp, “you are what you do. You are Chew.”

“Meh!” said Chew, which Finn took as agreement.

After he'd fed and watered the animals, he hobbled to the garden. And a sad, sad garden it was. Leaves droopy and yellowing, rabbit holes everywhere. He had worked as hard as he could on that garden, and yet everything was dying. Just one more way he'd disappointed his brother. But he plucked the weeds and filled in the rabbit holes and watered the garden, too, just in case there was something to salvage, something under the surface that couldn't be seen.

At least the horse wasn't mad at him.

He went into the house to check on Calamity and the kittens, kittens he found sleeping in a messy, boneless heap at the bottom of his closet. They would need names too, but right now they were simply the Kittens. He grabbed the saucer of water Petey must have left on the floor, refilled it. He scraped out a can of cat food onto a plate and set the plate by the closet door. Then he stripped off his dirty clothes and wrapped his bandages in
plastic. He showered as best he could with one leg sticking out of the bathtub, dried off, dressed, and tried to occupy himself with dinner and with books and with Kittens until the darkness came and he could see Petey again. Petey was mad at him, but maybe she wouldn't stay that way for long. He should bring something to her, a gift, but what? Some of the Kittens would need homes, but they were too little to give away. And he had nothing else.

But wait. He did have something. He went to the bathroom and took the jeweled box from the shelf. He took out all the bandages and swabs and put them in an old mug from the kitchen. Sean kept the bathroom so clean that the box didn't have a speck of dust on it, but Finn wiped it down anyway. He opened the lid. He couldn't give her an empty box, even a nice empty box.

He brought the box to the kitchen table, sat with pen and paper, all those stupid prep books. He wrote, then crossed out, balled up the paper, threw it in the trash. Wrote some more. Wrote again until he had something that could work, something that said a little of what he felt, even though he was just scratching the surface.

When the clock read ten thirty-five, and Finn couldn't wait anymore, he folded the sheet of paper and slipped it into the box. He went back to the barn and led Night into the yard. Despite his wounds, and the ache in his bones, he hauled himself up on the mare's back and rode to Petey's house, happy to see the glow of the fire in the beeyard, calmed by the hum of the bees. Petey was sitting cross-legged on a blanket, poking at the fire with a stick.

“Hey,” he said as he sat down next to her.

“Hey,” she said. “I thought maybe you wouldn't come.”

“Why not?”

She shrugged and jabbed the fire. “Because of your leg.”

“My leg's fine.” He brushed the hair from her face. He'd been here a total of nine seconds, and already he couldn't keep his hands off her.

But her eyes glittered in the firelight, her expression unreadable. He said, “Are you still mad?”

“Mad at what?”

“You were mad yesterday.”

She shook her head. Jabbed the fire.

“Is it something else?”

Again, she shook her head. Jab. Jab.

“Are you sure?”

Jab. Jab. Jab.

“I have something for you.” He held out the box.

She dropped the stick and took it, stared at the jeweled box winking blue and red and purple in the light of the fire.

“It was my mother's. She called it her beauty box. She kept makeup and stuff in it.”

“I can't take your mother's box.”

“Sure you can. We weren't using it anyway. I mean, we were, for bandages and whatever, but I thought it would look better in your room. I thought it would be better with you. Look inside.”

She did. She took out the piece of paper, opened it. Read.
She touched her mouth with her fingertips. Her voice was softer when she said, “Thank you.”

He put the paper back in the box and set it aside. He turned one of her hands palm up and, with his thumb, drew little circles where the lines formed a star. “Thank
you
for taking care of Night for me.”

“Night?”

“The mare. I finally named her.”

“Night,” she said, testing the name. Petey looked over at the horse, standing some yards away next to a tree. “I bet that's what she wanted all along.”

“Probably,” he said. “I'm sorry about her. About chasing her. I mean, I scared her, I think. And maybe I scared you. I didn't mean to.”

Petey didn't say anything, but she didn't pull her arm away either.

“And I hope I didn't wreck your moped.”


“You didn't. That thing's a tank.”

He pressed his lips against her wrist, then her forearm and the inside of her elbow. “I missed you. I know it was only twenty-four hours, but . . .”

A pause. Then, “I missed you, too. Are you . . . are you sure your leg's okay?”

“Are you sure
you're
okay?”

She blinked, and for a second he thought she was blinking back tears, but then she leaned forward, cupped his face in her
hands, and kissed him, so he must have been wrong, must have been seeing things.

“You brought a blanket this time,” he said.

She nodded, hugging herself. “I know that we were inside last time, but since we met outside—”

“We met in nursery school.”

“I mean,” she said, “this is where we first—”

He interrupted her with another kiss. “Are we celebrating something?”

“Just . . .” She seemed to be having trouble getting the words out. “Just that you're here.”

His wounded leg burned, but not as much as the rest of him, and he pressed her back onto the blanket. They kissed until his brain spun, until her limbs fell loose and soft and open, until the moon hid its face behind a veil of clouds. She pulled off his shirt and he pulled off hers, and the bra with it, lingering over her breasts, tasting the salt and sweet of her. She was so beautiful in the firelight, glowing like an ember, and he thought he said it out loud,
beautiful, beautiful
, but he couldn't be sure. He wanted to hear her say his name, he wanted to make her feel so good she'd never leave him, he wanted so many things he lost the words for them all. He unbuttoned her jeans and slid them away, and the wisp of white cotton she wore underneath, his lips tracing a path across her belly, the half-moons of her hip bones, down one thigh, up the other, and back to the center, where he kissed, and kissed, and forgot where he was and who he was and
who he had hurt and who he had not saved. She clenched the blanket in her fists, and sighed, and breathed his name, and if she hadn't said it out loud, he wouldn't have known what to call himself, because everything was her.

When it was over, he kissed his way up her body and reached for her face. Felt the tears on his fingertips.

“Petey?”

She pressed both palms over her eyes and started to cry, and kept crying, and he didn't understand, he didn't understand. He thought he had done it right, or at least done it okay, but maybe he had done it wrong, maybe it wasn't what she wanted, maybe he should have asked her out loud, he'd never thought of asking her. He didn't know how he would have asked that kind of question—how do you ask that kind of question when you've completely lost the power of speech?—but maybe she hadn't wanted anything at all, maybe he'd . . .
made
her, and the thought of that brought on a wave of nausea so strong he wished the horse had stomped him to death. “Petey, I'm sorry. I'll never . . . If you didn't want . . . I'm sorry, I'm sorry.”

Finally, wordlessly, she grabbed for her clothes, tugged them on. He didn't know what else to do, so he did the same, wishing she would just say something. But Petey swiped at her cheeks, reached into the shadows beyond the blanket, and pulled a worn canvas bag onto her lap. She dug around inside the bag and found a stack of pictures, which she handed to Finn.