Exposed (19 page)

But for the first time, Ivan didn’t glare. His lips stayed relaxed, not pulled tight in a scowl, and he nodded toward those who looked his way.

And to his utter surprise, he got smiles in return. Not many, but some. 

A young woman pushing a baby carriage said hello, and an older man put a finger to his hat brim. Ivan’s steps were light, his heart full. And it was all because of June, because of her moxie and determination not to let him continue to slink through his life in a fog of anger. He had no idea what she saw in him, but Ivan only hoped he could be the man she thought he could be.

Even as he passed Butch and Ralph sucking on cigarettes in the square, his mood didn’t sour. Ralph shoved Butch in the shoulder and jammed a pudgy finger toward Ivan, but Ivan ignored them and continued on toward the bank. 

June had mentioned she was working today. Last night when he’d dropped her at home, they had made plans to walk to the mine together for the next planned meeting. But Ivan couldn’t wait an entire day to see her again.

Ivan paused at the big, heavy doors to the bank and gathered his breath. He was jittery, energy zig-zagging through him demanding release. With hands slightly shaking, Ivan hid the bouquet behind his back with one hand and opened the bank door with the other.

It was hushed inside, and dim. After the brilliance of sunlight outside, Ivan had to squint. The whisper of customers and counting money slipped under the scratch of pens against ledger paper. Ivan peered through the shadowy, lamp-lit bank looking for June.

“Excuse me,” said a clipped voice at his side.

Ivan dropped his gaze to stare down into the pinched face of a stern woman. Her mouth was thin and bloodless.

“Can I help you with something?” The woman—Ms. Applebaum, declared her etched name tag—continued when Ivan didn’t respond. “Your family doesn’t have an account with us.”

So perhaps not everyone in town could be swayed with a smile. Fighting a frown, Ivan kept his tone even. “I’m here to see Ms. Powell,” he said, looking over Ms. Applebaum’s shoulder. 

There she was, standing behind a long counter. He could just see her beyond the brass teller window helping a customer. June looked up then, but confusion clouded her eyes. She flicked her gaze to her customer and back up to Ivan, a smile dashing across her lips. Ivan made to move, to walk closer to June, but a cold hand on his arm stopped him.

“Ms. Powell is busy, sir,” she said, condescension dripping from her tone. She slid her hawk-eyed gaze to the large bouquet still hidden behind Ivan’s back and reached for it. “I’ll get these to her. Lord knows she doesn’t need any distractions.”

Ivan looked again beyond Ms. Applebaum, but June had turned her attention back to her customers. There was a man waiting behind the woman at the counter. June did seem busy. Ivan let go of the flowers and let the stern older woman take them.

He was backing toward the door when someone called his name. Above June, Clayton came down the stairs, a hand held up toward Ivan.

Clayton crossed the floor to Ivan, but his eyes settled on Ms. Applebaum. “Are you helping Mr. Sokolov with a problem, Edith?”

Edith snapped her face up to Clayton, her eyes bugging for a moment. “He was trying to bother Ms. Powell. And he’s not a client here.”

Ivan glowered and opened his mouth to set Edith right, but Clayton leveled the woman with a look. “Maybe Ms. Powell is bringing us new business.”

“Oh, yes. Perhaps,” Edith demurred, her tone suddenly heavy with velvet and honey. And worry. “Is there anything you need, Mr. Briggs, before I get back to my station?”

Clayton shook his head then watched Edith slink back into the bank shadows with the bouquet in her grasp before turning back to Ivan. 

“
Are
you here to open an account?” Clayton clapped a hand on Ivan’s shoulder. “We have some top-rate loan programs for farmers wanting to expand.”

The last man the Sokolovs’ had trusted with their money was an American posing as their new fixer in Washington who’d taken every cent they’d had. Abram Sokolov had not let any but his family touch his money ever since. Not that Ivan was about to tell Clayton that.

“We’re fine,” Ivan said, his tone harsher than he meant. He softened. “Thank you, though.” 

Clayton chuckled. “I’m done for the day. Join me for a beer?” He nodded across the floor to where June was helping the next customer. “Unless you’re waiting for someone.”

Instinct told Ivan to say no. But if he had learned anything the last few days, it was that his instinct could use some recuperation. He thought of June.

“Sure,” he said with a nod.

Clayton’s eyebrows shot up. The man was obviously surprised. “Right. Well, follow me then.”

The two men passed Butch and Ralph again on the way out, this time loitering next to the bank door. Butch had a hand at his forehead, and both of them reeked of stale booze.

“What are you doing here?” Clayton growled at Cora’s brother.

Butch stood straight, his hackles rising. But it was Ralph who responded. “Free country, isn’t it?”

Butch sneered at Ivan. “Unless his comrades attack us again with that poison fog.” His breath was warm and sour and made Ivan’s lip curl.

Muscles bunched in Ivan’s neck, his hands bent into fists. “I was sick as you, Butch Murphy.”

“I don’t remember you being sick. Either way, you won’t catch me at the next shindig. I can just see the whole town huddled together for the Mountain Pearl Dance. Sitting ducks for the damned Commies, that’s what you all are.” Then Butch shouldered past Ivan and Clayton and staggered across the street. 

A car had to swerve around him, but Butch just jammed a finger into the air toward the driver. The two men stumbled onto the grass, and Ivan watched as Ralph tried to help Butch sit down only to have the brute of a man push him off.

“God, if I could run that sorry bastard out of town,” Clayton said, eyes still on Butch and Ralph. “That beer is earned now, yeah?”

Ivan met Clayton’s eyes and huffed a laugh. He tried to bury Butch’s accusation about the cause of the sickness, tried to think of June, but his steps were jerky as he walked beside Clayton.

Yet something happened on the short walk toward the bar. Ivan was able to cast off the anger he’d felt toward Butch. With a little work, the strain in his neck relaxed and the heavy clouds in his eyes cleared. As they walked through town, people stopped to say hello to Clayton, to give him a warm smile or a nod of the head. But people nodded and smiled at Ivan too. 

Surprise warmed him—it felt nice, this acknowledgment.

A few weeks ago, seeing Clayton chat like this with folks would have grated on Ivan, made him suspect Clayton of wanting something. An ulterior motive. But now, he saw a friendly man simply being friendly. It was strange, Ivan thought, to see the town through a different lens, without anger. Strange, but heartening.

The door to the bar was red and creaked when Clayton pulled it open. It was dark inside, dust motes hanging in the air and music floating low from a jukebox. Ivan recognized the song from a film he’d caught a while back, “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.”

A few men sat in deep booths nursing beers, but Clayton pulled up a stool at the long, wooden bar top. It was warm inside the bar, and snug. Ivan had never been in before, though it seemed Clayton was familiar with the place. 

Theodore Dickinson looked up from his paperback and slid a coaster between the pages to mark his place. He stood from where he’d leaned back against the mirrors behind the bar and nodded toward the two men.

Ivan and Teddy had been in the same class in school and got along reasonably well. He hadn’t seen him in years, though. For some reason, Ivan had thought he’d left town for college, but apparently he was wrong.

“What’ll it be?” Teddy asked. 

Clayton glanced at Ivan. “Schlitz for me. Ivan?”

“Same,” Ivan said. To be honest, he wasn’t much of a beer drinker. There was always vodka in his house—the sort of smooth, herbaceous vodka they got specially shipped in from an old friend based in Washington—but never anything else.

Teddy poured the beer into glasses and slid them toward the men. Then he poured one for himself and leaned over his elbows against the bar, facing them.

“Unexpected,” Teddy said after taking a drag of beer. “That’s the word that comes to mind.”

Ivan frowned in confusion, then understood with a glance at Teddy’s face. The scruffy-faced man looked between Clayton and Ivan and back again. “Yeah,” Ivan said. He wouldn’t have expected he and Clayton Briggs to be sharing a beer either. He raised his beer with a nod and took a long drink.

“So,” Clayton said, obviously searching for something to talk about. “How’s the farm?”

“Pretty good.” This didn’t seem the moment to bring up the fact that nearly the entire town had stopped buying from them.

Teddy laughed to himself and stood up when the door opened. Two other men walked in, and Teddy came out from behind the counter to take their drink orders. The two men stared at Ivan, mouths hard and suspicious, but Ivan willfully ignored them and turned back to his beer.

Clayton peered around then leaned in closer to Ivan. “You’re coming tomorrow night, right?”

Ivan nodded and busied his hands shredding a napkin.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said about needing to really control our abilities before anyone else knows.”

Ivan stared at the napkin. “I’m just saying they could jump to conclusions about us, about the danger we pose.”

“And I agree with you. Trust me, if you saw what I’ve done …,” Clayton trailed off and stared off somewhere unseen. “We need to keep training. Really learn the downsides to these powers.”

“And the extent of them,” Ivan added. “I have no idea how far my power goes.”

“A lot of us don’t, I think. Meg’s power ….”

“Yeah,” Ivan agreed. He didn’t want to admit it out loud, but Meg’s power terrified him.

“We have no idea where these powers came from. If the fog was just some fluke, or”—Clayton cleared his throat—“something more.”

Ivan frowned and took his time with his beer. 

“You mean, a Soviet attack,” he said, his voice low. What would happen to his family if the people in town went from suspecting them to truly believing? 

Clayton paused, then nodded.

“You know my family didn’t—”

“No,” Clayton interrupted. “Of course we don’t think you or your family have anything to do with it.”

“We?” Because Clayton certainly didn’t mean Frank.

“I,” Clayton said. “I don’t think that. Cora either.”

“But a lot more do.” Ivan was fairly sure two such people had just walked into the bar.

Clayton stared at his hands. “They’re scared. It’ll blow over. But you’re right, if they knew what happened to us in that fog ….”

Ivan nodded. Clayton was a good man. Trustworthy. “I don’t know where these powers”—he whispered the word as Teddy came back around the bar—“come from, but it doesn’t make sense to come from … them.”

Clayton waited, so Ivan explained.

“We have abilities, Clayton. Superpowers. Why would an enemy give us such power?”

“You two talking powers?”

Ivan wrenched his head up and started to deny it. His heart hammered. He’d lectured everyone at the mine to keep their secret safe, and now he was the one to blow it. A groan rolled up his throat.

“Don’t worry, he’s one of us,” Clayton said to Ivan.

Ivan’s eyebrows shot up, and Teddy grinned. He poured himself another drink.

“It’s some sort of protective field,” Teddy said, then shrugged. “Or, that’s what I think it is. I haven’t had much that needs protection, but I accidentally cast it around myself about a week ago and my dumb dog couldn’t get near me.”

Ivan looked between Teddy and Clayton. “How’d you find out about it?”

Teddy scratched the back of his neck. “I’d had a bit much,” Teddy said, lifting his beer up. “And I started telling someone about it and luckily Clay was there. He said you’re all keeping it hush-hush.”

Teddy took another long drink. “Never thought I’d see you with powers though, Ivan. That explains you two here together.”

“It’s been to our benefit to have Ivan join us,” Clayton said. “He adds a perspective others don’t have.” 

Teddy snorted. “That’s an awful nice way to say Ivan’s always been an outsider, Clay.” 

Clayton spoke over him and looked at Ivan. “And it’s been good to get to know you. Before you came to the mine you always seemed so ….”

“Rotten,” Ivan finished for him.

The two men clinked glasses. Teddy barked out a laugh and turned away to pull more beer for customers. June invaded Ivan’s mind. No, not invaded. She was already there. 

He had been rotten, something dark and heavy inside of him. But that was before June.

“I noticed the flowers you brought to the bank,” Clayton said quietly. “Unless they’re for Edith.”

Ivan stayed quiet. It was so new, this connection with June. He both wanted everyone to know and wanted to keep it to himself. He was selfish that way.

“You know, June has been invaluable at the bank. She’s gotten more customers to sign up for checking accounts in two months than Edith has in a year,” Clayton said. “I mean, if that’s who you were bringing the flowers,” he teased.

Ivan smiled into his beer. “So what were your ideas for practicing at the mine?”

Clayton gave Ivan a mock salute, but his eyes were light, and started discussing ideas. Yet Ivan was only half listening.

He’d given up—on this town, its people. Hell, the entire world. He saw nothing but disappointment. But that was before June opened his eyes. 

This beer with Clayton was proof enough. Kindness really was everywhere if he cared to look.

He could barely sit still. He had to see her. Kiss her again. 

Kiss her forever.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

June

June felt eyes on her. She glanced up, mid-way through counting old Mary Stewart’s money.

She blinked in confusion, but then a smile reached across her face. Ivan was there, right there. Her smile kept reaching until she was fairly certain it lit her eyes and every inch of her. It was the same smile she’d awoken with, the same that had followed her all day.