The River Widow(44)
He persisted. “I bet you do.”
His skin was flushed, and a sad, heated look flooded his face. Jack’s gaze fell over her in a way that spoke of kindness, maybe even loneliness. She sensed that he might be starting to care about her. What had she done? And yet his openness nudged at her heart. Such honesty was rare.
Quickly she said “I need to go back now,” which broke the spell that had fallen over them.
Upon their return to the barn, Adah unsaddled her mount, and as she was saying goodbye to the horse, Jack’s presence closed in behind her. His proximity brought on a chill, or was it a tingle? He was close enough behind her that she could hear him inhale sharply and feel the air he exhaled on her shoulder. His breath smelled of the earth.
“Your hair is chocolate,” he said.
She froze. Then spun around.
His lips were still, his brows bisected his face in a straight line, and his eyes asked for a response. It was the first time she could remember having absolutely nothing to say.
Your hair is chocolate. His words swooped around in her head, silencing all else, and his stare paralyzed her body. The grip of his eyes held her fast. Deep down, there was a quiver, a finger tapping at a door she thought she had closed for good.
The power of his steady, intense attention pulled her into his face. He was a mix of a cowboy and a king, and he drew her inside the open doors of his insistent eyes.
The world came to a stop, and in that tiny wink of time, nothing existed but the two of them. He held her gaze with a steady stare, as if he was absolutely sure of himself, as if he had read that deep down she needed adoration and he was the only one who could give her what she craved.
Finally she said, “Excuse me,” and managed to walk away, leaving him standing in the barn, staring after her once again.
After midnight Adah silently left the house through the back door and crossed the broad, open patch of land between the house and the old log curing barn; her body and shadow were distinct and sharply outlined like ink on the moonlit lawn.
The image of Jack standing there looking at her had not left her mind. Had she wanted him to come after her? Should she have gone back?
Both of the dogs rushed up to greet her, and one of them looked anxious. It was out of the ordinary for someone from the house to be outside in the middle of the night.
She reached down to rub the dog’s head. Please don’t bark.
With the dogs on her heels, she tried the doors of the curing barn and found them chained and held together by a padlock. Funny, she’d never noticed that the Branch men kept the door barred. Nothing else on the farm was so fortified, meaning that what lay inside had to be of importance.
After picturing the hook on the hall tree where Buck always hung his keys, Adah crept back to the house and located the keys, gently took them down, and then retraced her steps toward the back of the house.
A sound of creaking wood on the stairs. Adah’s heart catapulted and she swung the keys behind her.
“Mama,” said Daisy, standing about halfway down the stairs and rubbing her eyes. “I woke up and you were gone.”
“Shhh,” Adah whispered. “Everything’s alright. I’ll be there in just a few minutes.”
“Are you coming back? I want to hear a story.”
“Of course. Wait for me in bed. I’ll tuck you in. Give me just a few minutes, okay?”
Daisy turned a moment later and seemed to float up the stairs, a small sleepy princess returning to her bed of flower petals. Adah waited a few minutes to make sure that no one else was up; then she resumed her quest, nearly running across the lawn to the curing barn again, fumbling through the keys until she located the right one, inserting it into the padlock, and turning it until she heard the click and the lock popped open.
After slipping the chain off and laying it on the ground, Adah opened one of the double doors. Inside, the black obscurity was broken only by slivers of moonlight leaking in between the logs where the chinking needed repair. Not enough light for her to see. She took a few tentative steps while reaching forward with outstretched hands.
She bumped against something and ran her hands over it. A table of sorts stacked with objects covered by a tarp. Carefully she pulled back the tarp, and her hands landed on what felt like quart-sized mason jars. Some were lightweight, as if empty, but others were filled and heavy with liquid, and she thought she smelled alcohol. To be sure, Adah grasped one of the full ones, unscrewed the lid, and breathed in the scent. Definitely moonshine. Adah replaced the lid and put it back where she’d found it, then fumbled around long enough to determine that there were stacks of similar jars on several tarp-covered tables. When her foot brushed up against something on the floor, she crouched down and explored, finding what seemed to be bags of sugar, enough for several families to bake pies and cakes for years to come.
Obviously the old log curing barn was used to store and perhaps age the moonshine, and the still was probably located somewhere back in the woods near the creek. She didn’t even need to find the still; the amount of liquor in the log barn surpassed what would be considered appropriate for personal use. The Branches were indeed breaking the law, making and selling white lightning.
Quickly she felt her way back through the doors, then looped the chain to hold the doors closed. Somehow the chain slipped out of her cold hands and landed coiled on the ground, metal against metal, making a loud clinking sound.
She stopped breathing and instinctively fell to her knees as one of the dogs let out a confused, muted, growling type of bark. How had she let the chain fall from her hands? How could she have been so careless? Now she would be found out, and what excuse would she have for having gone snooping?