The Steep and Thorny Way(56)

“I’ll see if I can get my mother to take me to the restaurant tomorrow morning. I know she doesn’t want to let me out of her sight, so I’ll see if she’ll help me. And then I’ll find you and tell you what I learned. Where do you think you’ll be late tomorrow morning?”

“Here, maybe.” His eyes shifted toward the shadows surrounding the front door. “Or at the pond.”

“Bathing again?”

“I just can’t seem to get the stink of that prison off me,” he said with a chuckle that carried a weight to it.

I pushed my arm close against his. “You don’t smell like prison. You smell of these woods. You smell nice.”

He lifted his face to mine with a startled look in his eyes, and I worried I’d accidentally just sounded as though I loved him.

“I like honeycombs,” I said with a wiggle of my feet, and a second later I burst out laughing.

“What?” he asked with a smile that seemed confused.

I shook my head. “Nothing. Just proving that it might not be my skin color alone that’s a hindrance to relationships.” My face sobered. I stretched out my legs in front of me and let his arm warm mine.

We both turned our gazes toward the empty stable in front of us, and we just sat there, side by side, until the oil burned out and the lamplight died without even a sigh of warning. The sudden darkness made a small knot tighten in my lower back. I couldn’t see my own hands and legs in front of me.

“I’ll bring you some oil and food tomorrow,” I said, scooting up to a kneeling position, my knees slipping on hay. “Stay as hidden as you can. I don’t want anyone finding and hurting you.”

He nodded. I couldn’t see him in the slightest, but something about the way he breathed showed me the movement of his head.

I reached my hands into the blackness and found the sturdy slope of his shoulders, and then his neck and the line of his jaw.

“What are you doing?” he asked with a nervous snicker, pulling away a little. “You’re tickling me.”

I leaned forward and kissed his forehead, grazing part of an eyebrow with my lips.

His snickering stopped. He went still below me. I let my mouth linger a moment longer before I pulled away and sat back on my heels.

“What was that for?” he asked in a whisper.

“Christmas Eve 1921 is far too long a time to go without a kind touch, Joe.” I cupped his cheek in my hand, and then I slipped away into the darkness and found my way home.





CHAPTER 20




BE EVEN AND DIRECT WITH ME

MAMA WOKE ME UP THE NEXT MORNING by shaking my right shoulder.

“What’s this?” she asked.

I opened my eyes to find her dangling one of the clipped locks of my hair in front of my face.

“When and why did you cut off your hair, Hanalee?”

I shrugged. “I just . . . I got too warm last night.”

“Hanalee Denney!” She squeezed her fist around the curl. “Every night it’s some new cause for alarm with you.”

“I spent most of yesterday thinking Joe Adder had been murdered. What do you expect from me?”

“Stop worrying about Joe Adder.”

“Everyone in this town who’s different seems to die.”

“Joe’s not dead. Reverend Adder called this morning to tell us the body wasn’t his. The authorities in St. Johns now believe it was the body of a young rumrunner who fell off a boat.”

I pushed myself up to a seated position and didn’t make a peep about spending time with Joe in the shed the night before. “Well . . . I’m relieved it wasn’t him.”

“I know you must be”—she sat down on the edge of my bed—“confused about how you’re supposed to feel about Joe.”

“I’m just worried about him. A shocking number of people seem so passionate about wanting to hurt him.”

“After all that talk of an elopement, though . . . I don’t want you to get your heart broken.”

I picked at the edge of my quilted bedspread.

She stretched my brown curl across the width of her right thigh. “I know how it feels to be told you’re not supposed to love a certain person.”

I swallowed down a thickness in my throat and changed the subject. “Why didn’t you ever tell me Daddy was a bootlegger?”

She lifted her head. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“Who told you that?”

“Mildred said Daddy picked up a crate of whiskey from their house that Christmas Eve.”

She swiveled to her right and faced me directly. “Why must we keep dwelling on that night, Hanalee? It was just a terrible, tragic accident, for heaven’s sake.”

“But some parts about it still don’t feel right.” I wrapped my hand around her left wrist. “Be honest with me, Mama. Was Daddy a bootlegger?”

She clenched her teeth, and then she nodded. “We had trouble making ends meet after the war. Europe didn’t need our crops anymore. Prices fell.”

“And that’s what he was doing Christmas Eve?”

“Yes.” Mama closed her eyes. “He received a telephone call for a moonshine delivery, right before we were to head out to church. He was already dressed and ready to go with us, but he insisted he needed to make that delivery because the money would be good. It would pay for Christmas.”