Beneath the Apple Leaves(96)

Eveline recoiled at the foul speech. “I’ll not have you using that language in my house.”

He laughed heartily. “It’s what she is, Eveline! You didn’t know that?” His face turned smug, cruel. “Your sweet Lily ain’t nothing but a two-bit whore.”

She slapped him hard across the face, so hard she could feel the saliva from his teeth through the sting along her palm. He recovered quickly and came at her. She ducked to miss the blow, but he had her in his arms and kissed her viciously against the mouth, grabbed at her breast until she pushed out of his grip. His hands clutched her blouse. She spit out the taste of him, then wiped her mouth against her sleeve.

“Don’t act like you don’t like it, Eveline,” he said arrogantly. “You’ve been wanting me to kiss you from the first moment you met me.”

The words sickened—a nightmare thrown back into her face. The old Frank could no longer be seen. There was no kindness in his eyes and she felt like such a fool, ill with guilt at what she had imagined in her loneliness. This man before her was a beast and she missed Wilhelm so much that her heart burned.

“Take no shame in it, Eve.” He smiled scornfully. “I wanted you, too. Still want you. Especially seeing your fiery side. Claire never liked it rough. I tried, but she got all weepy.” He winked confidentially. “But you . . .” He came closer and she backed against the wall with a thud. He wiped a hair away from her face and rubbed her cheek. “You’re a spitfire, aren’t you?” She turned away and he pressed closer. “I know how to handle a woman like you. Kind of woman wasted on a man like Wilhelm.”

With that, she tried to punch his face, scratch off the gritty words, but he held her hands above her like a child’s. But then he let go and retreated slowly, his hands still up in the air in mock surrender. “That loan still stands, Eve. Growing bigger every day. You got another way to pay up, you know. Take care of it once and for all. For this farm. For those boys of yours and that cripple. Remember that.”

He left and the screen door slammed over and over again in his wake. Eveline fell to her knees and wept, missed Wilhelm with a hurt as raw as a body without flesh.





CHAPTER 49

Andrew finished tucking in the boys and came down to the kitchen. Eveline had a cup of tea waiting for him, her own mug warm in her palm as she sat at the worn oak table. Without earlier words indicating a meeting, they both knew they would talk this evening.

Andrew took the hot, brown liquid to his lips, didn’t bother to add cream or sugar. It didn’t matter that it would keep him up. He wouldn’t sleep. Neither of them would sleep. Maybe never again.

Eveline settled her eyes on her handsome nephew, the smooth features of the nose and forehead. Those blue eyes whose color and light she had never seen matched in another human save her sister. “You haven’t said anything about Lily and Claire being gone,” she finally began. Word had traveled through the town of Plum and beyond about the missing women. And theories, if there were any, were kept close to the vest. No one wanted to cross Frank Morton in his thrashing state.

Andrew watched the smooth surface of the tea, fell into its depths. “There’s nothing to say.”

“Well.” Eveline tapped her index finger on the rim of the mug. “Thought you might be worried. Mrs. Sullivan nearly having a fit.”

He grinned morosely, a simple expression full of irony and without humor. After all, Andrew knew why Lily had left. She couldn’t face him, couldn’t look at him. He thought about the last time they were together, the way she couldn’t flee fast enough. “Maybe she wanted a better life.” He sipped his drink with the same irony, savored it as if it were sweet instead of bitter. “Maybe she found a man who made her happy.”

“She found that here.”

“No, she didn’t.” He stiffened his jaw. “It’s better she’s gone.”

Eveline’s mouth fell open. “You don’t believe that, Andrew.”

He glared at her without comment and she reached for his hand. “I don’t know why she’s done the things that she has, but I saw the way she looked at you. A person could live to a hundred and never see a look like that.”

“Don’t say that,” he said sharply, and slid his hand from her touch. The weight of the words and the untruth of them grated his sensibilities like nails upon chalk. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be cross, Aunt Eveline. I just don’t want to talk about her. Don’t want to hear her name again.”

She nodded and let it go. “Are you hungry? I have some corn bread.”

“No.” Now it was his turn to talk. He shut Lily out of his mind, shoved her far away. “We’re going to lose the farm.”

“I know.” Eveline thought about Frank’s kiss, could still taste the saltiness of the mouth. She wiped her lips across her palm, drowned out the taste with tea.

“Thanks to Mrs. Sullivan’s connections in Westmoreland County, we can sell there, make enough to feed the family, pay for the necessities. Nothing more, but it would be enough.” His voice sounded like a man’s voice and the sturdiness of it, the sureness, belied the crippling fear of not saving this family.

“But not enough to pay down Frank’s loan.”

“No.”