Tempted (12 page)

“You were starving?” Everyone had heard rumors about Andersonville. They heard the rumors and crossed themselves. They heard rumors and prayed that no one they loved or knew or met in passing was ever inside that blockade.

“We were starving. We were dying of thirst. Exposure. Dysentery ran through the prison like wildfire. We were the walking dead—many of us couldn’t have held a rifle if we had to.”

“What did Jimmy do?”

“He took my bribe.”

“You had money to bribe him?”

“I sold wood that I gathered on burial duty to other prisoners.”

“Wood?” She wasn't following.

“To build fires to boil water. It was the only way to avoid sickness. It wasn’t much money. But it was enough for him to agree to my plan. I would pretend to be dead, and I would be heaped onto the cart with the rest of the bodies, and then when we were outside and I was tossed into the grave, I would get out. We would knock the prisoner on burial duty unconscious and escape.”

“Steven,” she sighed.

“It was a good plan. The only one with a gun was Jimmy. And all I had to do was lie there.”

“In a cart full of dead bodies.”

“Yes. It was a good plan if I could stomach it. And I could stomach anything at that point. I was nearly feral. As we planned, Jimmy picked the boy next to me for burial duty, because he was new and scared and small and could be easily overpowered, and I… pretended to be dead. So that morning it was just Jimmy and this boy feeling for pulses, kicking the unconscious to see if they would stir. They grabbed my arms and my legs and tossed me on the bottom of the cart. I had not thought of that. That because I was right next to the boy he would notice my body first, and I would… I would be at the bottom of that cart. I don’t know how many bodies there were. But it took hours. Hours beneath those bodies. And the sun was hot and it became hard to breathe and it became nearly impossible to hold still and I wished, at some point, buried under the dead, covered in their excrement and their blood and disease—”

He stopped suddenly, sucking in a deep breath, and she realized that she was holding her breath. She was dizzy and lightheaded, and she let that breath out very slowly, very carefully.

The sound of his throat clearing was so loud in the room she jumped.

“But then I heard the cry for the gates to be opened, and then the cart was moving down the road to the graves. And one by one I felt the bodies being lifted off me, and I was… I was not myself, Anne. I was something else entirely, and when I could get up I did—it didn’t matter how many bodies were still there, when I could move. I jumped up. There were two other men with the boy we picked. Because of all the dead. I didn’t care. I was an animal, and they were weak and scared, and I beat them until they weren’t standing. Until they weren’t moving.” His eyes weren’t closed, but they weren’t open either. “I hit them until they couldn’t come after us. I might have killed them—I don’t know. I didn’t care. I was an animal.”

“Oh sweet lord, Steven.”

“But when I was sure they couldn’t follow I ran for the woods. Jimmy followed. I was free, and I told myself it was worth it. Those hours under the bodies, what I did to those boys—I told myself it was all worth it. I had to tell myself that. I had to.”

“Of course you did. No one judges you, Steven.”

“That’s not true,” he said. “And you know it.”

“It was war. You had to survive.”

He nodded. “That’s what I believed too. That’s what I told myself when I thought of those three boys, so scared they probably would have let me go without a fight—but I beat them anyway. I got away from Jimmy not too long after that, because he was a fool and would get us both caught, and I had not survived the morning at the bottom of that cart to be captured by some home guard.”

“I can't believe you survived.”

He closed his eyes.

“It is a miracle, Steven. You being here right now, it is a miracle.” She circled around the room to where he stood. As she got closer he withdrew. Not physically, not with his body, but he distanced himself all the same. And she stopped, just on the edge of some unseen boundary. She longed to touch him, now more than ever, but it would only hurt him.

“It doesn’t feel like it,” he whispered. “It feels sometimes like surviving is another kind of prison. And I can’t determine how to escape it. I am half a man on good days, Anne.” He turned to face her. He hadn’t shaved in a few days, and in the light his beard was silver and gold. “And I wish I was more, for your sake. That is why I went to Delilah’s. I never meant to hurt you. It was the farthest thing from what I wanted. You’re going to go downstairs soon, and everything might be different. The doctor might be gone, the town might treat you differently, I don’t know. But I think you’ll need me, Anne. And I want to be what you need, but I…don't know if I can be what you want.”

Steven left without looking at her, the door closing quietly behind him, and she took two shaky steps back to her bed and sat. Her mind tumbling over itself. She reached for her clothes to get dressed, but found herself staring at her stocking in her hand as if she didn’t know what to do with it.

Everything is different
, she thought.

And she might have spent the rest of the day that way—frozen in her own mind—if there hadn’t been a cry and a crash from downstairs.

S
teven had Dr. Madison pushed against the wall again. A bottle lay smashed at their feet.

“I was locking it away,” Dr. Madison was saying, though it was hard to hear him with Steven’s hand pressed around his throat.

“I don’t believe you,” Steven said.

“I don’t give a—”

“Steven,” Annie said. “Let him go.”

Steven glanced over his shoulder at her, and after a long moment, after he tightened his grip a few times, he stepped away and Dr. Madison slumped against the wall. Gasping.

“I’m getting tired of that,” the doctor said, staring sideways at Steven, who didn’t say anything.

“You’re still here,” she said to Dr. Madison.

He pushed his hair off his face and turned to her. “I am. If you still want me to be here.”

She glanced down at the broken bottle. Chloroform. Of course. She couldn't lie for him anymore. She couldn't allow him to keep drugging himself to death simply because she liked stitching up knife wounds. They were both at fault. “You can’t stay here and use that anymore."

“I was locking what I had in my room in the cabinet in the surgery. I'm going to stop. You’ll be the only person who has the key.”

He handed her a small gold key. The lock on the cabinet was mostly ornamental, and if he wanted into it, he could get in.

“I won’t,” he said, as if reading her mind. His hands were shaking.

“Are we supposed to just believe you?” Steven asked.

“I’m not asking you to do anything,” Dr. Madison snapped. “I’m asking Anne...” He shook his head. “I don’t know what I’m asking. But it will be a rather difficult few days as my body gets used to not having the drug.”

“What do you want me to do?” she asked. Unsure of how one doctored a person in that situation.

“Nothing,” he said with a tired and rather sad smile. “I’ll be doing it at Delilah’s. She's had some experience with this.”

Anne’s eyebrows hit her hairline and she tried to pull them back in line, but it was useless and Dr. Madison laughed. “I’ll be fine. Better actually, if I’m there. I’m deeply ashamed, Anne. And it’s uncomfortable to look at you and see the damage my cowardice has wrought.”

He looked away from the pity she could not hide, and caught Steven’s eye. “You’ll be here, I imagine.”

Steven nodded.

“I don't get a say?” she asked. “It is my house.”

Both men glanced at her as if they knew the truth. And both of them did. She wanted Steven here. She always wanted Steven here.

“Good,” Dr. Madison said. “I’ll come see you in a few weeks. We can discuss the future of our working arrangement at that point.”

There was a leather satchel at the door, the doctor’s coat tossed over it. He picked it up and then he was gone.

And the silence left behind was strange. The hallway was strange. The house she’d grown so used to was different. She glanced back over her shoulder at Steven. Familiar, steady Steven.

Though not so familiar right now. Not so steady.

If she had the power, she would turn back the clock. A day ago. Two. Years ago.

If she had the power in the moment, she'd go back to those days before the war, to some night with her sister in bed, with all her talk of inconsequential things. Before Anne was even aware of her own unrest. When all the dissatisfaction in her heart could be made better by the familiarity of family and routine and tradition.

It wasn't happy, but it was...safe.

Yes, if she could go back to that, she would.

“Are you hungry?” he asked, his hands in his pockets.

“No.”

“Anne, you should eat something.”

Anne ignored him and went back to her room.

Steven found Elizabeth in the kitchen, which was warm and full of the smell of fresh bread.

He thought for a moment of going to get Anne, forcing her somehow down into this kitchen with its good homey smells.

That would help her, he thought. With a sort of low-level desperation, he was making a list of things he thought might help her so that he didn't spend too much time contemplating his fear that he would not be able to help her.

“Afternoon,” Elizabeth said, glancing his way as she kneaded more dough.

“Thank you,” he said, watching the thin woman work, the muscles in her arms standing out against her dark skin. “For your help.”

“I didn't help you,” she said. “I helped Annie.”

“Well, thank you for that.”

She put the dough in a bowl and covered it with a towel before turning on him with her floury hands on her hips. “I realize I might be outta line, but the way I see it Anne's all alone in this city. And so am I, and she's been looking out for me for a while, so I'm gonna do the same.”

“You're not out of line,” he said. “I'm glad she has a friend.”

Elizabeth laughed. “Anne, me and the whores, we all get on.”

“The whores?” he asked. She waved him off.

“I can get scarce around here and I can keep my mouth shut,” she said, ignoring his question. “I know how things are. But if you ain't gonna do right by her, I'm gonna have to raise a fuss.” She lifted an eyebrow, giving him an impressively superior look. She paused, waiting for an answer. But he didn't have one. “Do I need to raise a fuss?”

“No,” he said. “I'll...take care of Anne. If she'll let me.”

“Yeah, well, I figure that's your problem. Fresh bread is made. Side meat is ready to be fried. She likes the raspberry jam and lots of it.”

After one more hard look, Elizabeth went back into her room. Steven stared at her door for a while and wondered if he shouldn't ask Elizabeth to take care of Anne.

Don't be such a coward.

Anne said she wasn't hungry, but her body needed fuel and he’d found after Andersonville the habit of eating, the industry of meal time, to be useful in his pretending to be all right.

So he fried up the side meat and found some bread. The smell of the pork and the coffee made his stomach growl. The smell of bacon cooking would make anyone hungry. He added that to the list of things that would help.

The sun was lost behind the mountains to the west, and there was a cold breeze blowing down Market Street. Change was in the air. Snow.

He put the food on a plate and put a little sugar in Anne's coffee, a treat he knew she liked, and took it all upstairs to her room.

He rapped on the door and it opened slightly.

“Anne?”

He could see her on the bed. A tiny lump under the blankets.

“Anne—”

“I'm sleeping.”

“Clearly not.”

He walked into the room, as he had all night and the better part of the day.

“I don't need to be bullied,” she snapped at him. The tears in her voice clawed at him.

“I wouldn't dream of bullying you.”

He set the coffee on the table beside her bed, and then sat in the rocking chair as if he intended to eat all the bacon and all the toast himself.

His Anne liked food. His Anne would not be able to resist this feast of smells.

But she was silent while he ate. He knew she was crying, could hear her sniffling, the muffled hiccup of her breath.

I'm here
, he thought.
I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere
.

“I don't—” she sobbed, and stopped.

He set down the bacon and looked at her.

“Why do I feel this way?” she asked. “I've seen men die. I've watched their blood drain out of their bodies. I've held their hands while they cried for their mothers. Why can't I stop crying?” she wailed.

He set down the tray and crossed to her bed. It seemed utterly natural to fall to his knees at her bedside, to root for her hand under the covers. It was small and clammy and he held it between both of his.

“I don't know,” he said.

“That's a terrible answer.”

He smiled briefly. Her glasses were crooked on her nose and he reached up to settle them on straight. She blinked at him, her watery eyes wide and lovely. From her glasses, his hand found her hair and he pushed it off her forehead. It was sweaty, and he knew it wasn't from the heat of the room, it was the reaction in her.

“I thought I was going to die,” she said, and his instinct was to shush her, because these things were so hard to hear and he didn't want to know how scared she'd been. It was uncomfortable and he would feel better not knowing it. It was awful but it was the truth.

It was his truth, too. So he stroked back her sweaty hair and looked her right in the eye and let her talk.

I'm here
, he thought.
I'm not going anywhere
.

“I thought when he lifted that gun that he was going to shoot Stella. And then me. And I'm so relieved—” Her face crumpled and she curled up into herself, his hands holding hers caught against her body.

“I am too,” he breathed against the fuzz of her hair, the heat of her scalp. He kissed her forehead just above the rim of her glasses, and her head jerked back. They were face to face, and again he didn't think. Couldn't think. He leaned down and kissed her.