Evenfall (17 page)

“What’s wrong?”

She tells him about the snake, and although she can’t see his face, she hears amusement in his voice. “Probably a black rat snake. They’re not poisonous. Most farmers like them because they’re good for keeping pests down. He was probably more scared of you.”

“I doubt it,” Andie says. She lets Cort lead her on, but she’s careful to step where he does.

She hears the rustling again, even louder this time, and sees up ahead the shadowy outline of the paddock. Something snorts, and Cort stops and sets the bag down. He pulls out a flashlight and shines it at the paddock, keeping the beam low. Andie catches movement through the wire, and then a head pops into view over the fence.

“Easy girl,” Cort soothes, moving forward. The goat bleats at him. Its face is small, with large eyes and ears so tiny that at first glance Andie doesn’t see them.

“It’s a LaMancha,” Cort says. He gives the head an affectionate pat, and the goat butts his hand.

“A what?”

“A LaMancha. It’s a kind of dairy goat. This is Clarabelle. The other one is her daughter, Clarissa.”

Andie peers into the pen and sees a tiny goat curled up quietly on the grass.

“Is she okay?”

“I think so—just tired. It’s been an exciting day for them,” he says, giving Clarabelle another scratch. “They probably
miss the rest of the herd. I’ll let them settle in for a couple of days before we try milking.”

The little goat gets up and walks over to Andie, who dangles her hand over the side of the fence. It gives her fingers a friendly sniff and tries to suck them.

“Hey,” Andie says. “Cut that out. Your mother’s over there.”

“She’s just a baby—about three months old, the breeder said. And Mama over there is almost two.”

They stand watching the animals until the doe loses interest and settles down in a far corner of the paddock. The kid curls close, making soft bleating sounds.

“Let them sleep,” Cort says.

They walk off a little distance. Cort sits down, patting the grass beside him.

“I should’ve brought a blanket—sorry,” he says. When Andie hesitates, he reaches up and pulls her into his lap. “C’mere, you. Still worried about a little snake?”

“It wasn’t all that little,” Andie says, but she leans her head against his shoulder. They sit quietly, looking up at the stars. After a moment, Cort reaches into the bag and takes out a paper carton of lemonade and a couple plastic cups.

“This should probably be champagne, but the package store was closed by the time I got there.” He pours them both a glass. “Happy anniversary.”

The words take her by surprise. She’s been letting the days here slide by, like beads through her fingers, and she’d hoped Cort would do the same. Quickly, she counts back to their first date. A month, exactly.

“To summer,” she hedges, accepting her glass and bumping it against Cort’s. He looks at her, starts to say something, then appears to change his mind.

“To summer,” he says. He tips the glass back and Andie can see the long, smooth muscles of his throat.

Around them, crickets start to chirp again, lulled into security by how still Andie and Cort are. A mockingbird starts—it sounds as if it’s singing from a bush to Andie’s right—and in the background there’s the low hum of an airplane. She can hear the goats shifting restlessly in their paddock, and when she lets herself lean back, the slow steady throb of Cort’s heartbeat.

She’s almost asleep when she feels Cort stir.

“What?” she asks.

“It’s getting buggy—we should get back.” She scrambles out of his lap and Cort rises, brushing the seat of his jeans. She expects him to head straight for the path, but instead he opens up the brown bag and pulls out a large glass jar, the kind Clara used for her preserves. He unscrews the lid, and when he passes it to Andie she can feel that holes have been punched in it.

“What’s this for?”

“Watch,” he says, and guides her up a little rise. She can smell wild roses, that deep, clove scent. At the top of the hill are the roses themselves, blurry-edged shadows.

She takes a step toward them, but Cort holds her back.

“Wait a sec,” he says. She waits, and after a minute she sees a cool flash of light. Then another. And another.

“Lightning bugs!”

“I thought we could catch a few,” Cort says. He takes the lid from her and deftly claps it over the most recent flash. Inside, the light from a single beetle twinkles on and off.

Together they fill the jar, cupping the tiny beetles in their hands and scooping them in. When it’s full, they turn for home, Andie holding the jar and leading the way. She doesn’t stumble once.

BY early morning the lightning bugs have lost their energy, sparking only intermittently from their place on Andie’s dresser.

“Worn out,” Andie says. “Like us.”

Cort lays his leg across hers and nuzzles her ear. “Don’t even think it.” He rubs her neck and she groans in pleasure.

“Mmm, that feels good.” Maybe it’s because she’s tired, but the next words spill out before she thinks. “God, I wish summer could last forever.”

He slides his hands to her shoulders, kneading them gently. “Who says it can’t?”

“My bank account, for one.” The money she’d deposited when she’d arrived in town is almost gone, and she’ll need to find a job soon. The thought of sending out her CV, applying for positions, facing the inevitable rejection, makes her shoulders tense up. She takes a deep breath, flips over on her stomach so that Cort can reach her whole back, and tries to relax.

“Why not look around here?” he says casually. His hands increase their pressure, their rhythm slow and languid, sliding
up and down her spine. “There are plenty of museums and schools in the state. You could live at Evenfall, save up some money, and pay off your loans.”

“Great plan,” she says. “Except for the fact that it’s going up for sale.”

“Then live with Gert. She could use the company.”

“Right,” Andie says. “I’ve already proven I couldn’t last a day there.”

“Then live with me.” His hands stop moving.

She buries her face in the pillow, takes a deep breath before turning over to face him. She’d had a feeling this was coming ever since the lemonade last night. Still, it would be easier if she weren’t naked.

“Look, I’m flattered,” she says gently. “Really. I am. But there’s a bunch of reasons why it wouldn’t work.”

“Like what?”

“Well, for starters, you live with your folks,” she says, trying for humor. “Let’s be realistic, okay?”

“Say yes and I’ll be out of there tomorrow.” Cort’s face has such an eager, hopeful expression that Andie has to look away.

“Cort, I’m sorry,” she says. Even as she’s saying it, she knows the words don’t help, not even a little bit. “I thought you understood I was only here for the summer.”

“That was before,” he says. “I figured things had changed. You’re telling me they haven’t?”

She reaches out to touch his arm, but he brushes her off. “You don’t feel something special here? I know you do.”

“Look.” She pauses, choosing her words carefully. “I’ve
had a lot of fun this summer, with you. But we both know this is just a temporary thing. I need to be in a big city, for my career. And there are too many differences between us for this to work long term.”

“Name one.”

She can’t believe he’s making her spell it out.

“Well, there’s your age, for a start.”

“That’s it? That’s what’s got you so upset?” He smiles, and it pisses Andie off a little, that he thinks it’s funny. She’s a little less careful when she speaks this time.

“That and the fact that we have totally different lives. I mean, I don’t see myself living in Hartman for the rest of my life, in the same house I grew up in, but you seem to have no problem with that.”

He stops smiling, and is off the bed searching for his jeans before she’s finished. “Come on, Cort. Give me a break here. You asked.”

“I guess I’m too young, or maybe too dumb for you. I don’t have the fancy degree or the big bank account. Is that it?” He pulls his T-shirt over his head. Andie wants to reach out to him, but she feels impossibly exposed. She stays in bed, clutching the sheet up to her chest.

“You know you’re not dumb. But young, yes.”

“Guess I am, since I didn’t pick up this was just a summer fling for you. Glad I could help out. Anything else you need before I leave? Another fuck, maybe?”

“Cort…” She stands up, pulling the sheet with her, but he’s already at the door. “Where are you going?”

“Home. At least I know where that is.” He clatters down
the steps. There’s a whistle for Nina, the slam of the door, and a few moments later the truck’s engine starting. Tires crunch gravel as the truck pulls out of the yard.

There’s a tightness in Andie’s chest, a heaviness that wasn’t there a few minutes ago. She finds her shirt and shorts under the bed, where she’d kicked them last night in her hurry to undress, and pulls them on. Downstairs, the house is too quiet, as if it’s holding its breath. She’s not really hungry, but when she sees the peach tart, still on top of the refrigerator, she takes it down. She doesn’t use a knife, just pulls off a piece of the crust and eats it. It’s featherlight and sweet. She takes another bite, then throws the whole tart in the trash.

IN her dreams, Gert is dancing with the southern boy. He’s tall and slender and his legs work perfectly fine, but something’s wrong. She can hear their feet tapping on the hard wooden floor of the church hall and realizes the rhythm doesn’t match the music the band is playing.

She tries to tell the boy this, but he won’t listen. Instead he moves her faster and faster, so that their feet are flying, but the sound they make is still a steady clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop.

She moves her head on the pillow, opens her eyes, and squints against the early morning daylight seeping in from beneath the window shade. She lies quietly, letting her body recollect what her brain already knows, that she’s not twenty-four anymore. The dream of dancing lingers at the edge of
her consciousness, a sharp contrast to the aches and pains that take up familiar residence in her limbs. Which is why it takes her a moment to realize she can still hear the sound of feet on a hardwood floor.

The noise is coming through the open kitchen windows and sounds like a hesitant woman in high heels—a few steps, a pause, then more steps. “Hello?” Gert calls. “Andie?” The footsteps stop.

She rises from bed, irritably brushing her loose hair over her shoulders and pulling on her robe. It’s not enough that her dreams are mysterious; now her mornings have to be, too. “I’m coming,” she calls, though no one has asked.

She looks through the kitchen window but can’t see anyone. A shiver of unease runs down her spine. Gert doesn’t believe in ghosts, not anymore, although there was a time in her youth when she hoped, even prayed, to be haunted, would have traded a life’s worth of sleep for a single moment of contact with the small creature whose cries filled her dreams. All nonsense, she tells herself, marching across the floor and throwing open the porch door.

She’s prepared for almost anything except what she finds—a nanny goat and its kid. The mother gazes calmly at her, yellow eyes unblinking. The kid takes one look at Gert and utters a single bleat, jumps off the porch steps and races in circles of either terror or glee, Gert’s not sure which.

The goat surveys her shrewdly for a moment before apparently deciding Gert’s no threat. It goes back to eating the few straggly morning glories that deck the porch’s railing, unmoved by the kid’s bucking and kicking.

“Stop that,” Gert scolds, pulling the morning glories from the goat’s mouth. It pulls back, then releases the vine to Gert’s hold and moves to the next plant.

“Shoo!” Gert lets the screen door bang shut, setting the kid off in a fresh paroxysm of leaping. The goat, surprised, stops in mid-mouthful. Purple and blue flowers dangle from its teeth.

Gert passes her hand over her eyes, draws a deep breath, and tries to remember how her life has come to this, how she, who once lived overseas, who commanded a staff of twenty, who ran an emergency room with surgical precision, has somehow become an old woman on a caved-in porch not five miles from where she once started out. When she looks again, the goat has given up on the flowers and is sampling strips of paint that curl from the cottage’s walls. The kid, emboldened by Gert’s stillness, has clambered back onto the porch and is nosing inquiringly at her bare legs. When she doesn’t move, it takes a mouthful of her robe and sucks on it experimentally.

Gert exhales. She’d call someone to help, but who? She’s supposed to pick up Florence Gilbert this morning. It’s their turn to collect the altar flowers and bring them to the town’s shut-ins, then up to the hospital. But there are limits to what Gert is willing to do, even in the name of Christian charity. Calling Florence to say she’s been detained by a goat is one of them.

She tugs the hem of her robe, now a soggy, crumpled mess, out of the kid’s mouth. It’s clear who’s responsible for this, and she’s pretty sure where to find him. Cort McCallister
is a farmer’s son, but he knows nothing about keeping goats. That sorry fencing of his is the reason Gert’s standing here with a handful of dead flowers and a wet bathrobe to boot.

Andie may be an adult, and what she does her own business, but enough is enough. Gert’s been willing to turn a blind eye to Cort’s pickup truck rattling in here at all hours, but no more. This morning the whole charade comes to an end.

She eyes the goats, both of which are now focused on the porch’s plastic folding chairs. In the time it will take her to call over to the big house and explain things, the cottage might not be standing, she decides. Best to just bring the problem there and wash her hands of it.

She hurries inside to change, pulling on khaki shorts and a white shirt. Rather than take the time to plait her hair she leaves it down—she’s never cared for ponytails on women her age, and if she can’t braid it it might as well be free. She slips her feet into canvas sneakers—the left one has a hole cut out for her bunion—and peeks outside, half-hoping she’s imagined the last few minutes.