The River Widow(57)

He leaned back a notch as if some ghost or spirit had just given him a shove. “You think you can beat the Branches at what they do best? Intimidate people? They’re the masters. No one beats them at that game.”

“I have to try.” She gulped. “I haven’t seen Manfred Drucker lately, but I know he’s out there working against me, working for Buck. And Jesse has been bringing a woman around, name of Esther Heiser. At first, I thought she’d make things better . . .”

“And now . . . ?”

“It’s baffling. She’s by all outward appearances a successful and independent woman, and yet she wants to marry into the Branch family. She’s almost desperate to get married.”

“What scares you about her?”

“Did I say I was scared?”

“I can see it; it’s written all over you.”

Adah lowered her voice, even though no other soul was in sight. “She doesn’t like Daisy, and if they ever decide to kick me out, Esther will become her mother. She’ll take over.”

“So . . . what’s your plan?”

She shrugged. “I don’t have one yet.”

He reached across the space between them and touched her cheek softly, like a kitten brushing by. Adah’s breath stalled. His voice changed yet again. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”

“I don’t have time.”

“Sure you do.”

Jack turned and headed down the corn row until it ended where it almost met the woods. Then he headed down a nearly overgrown path into the trees, and Adah, unable to resist, followed on his heels. The woods were hot with pollen-filled air and no breeze.

When they came to a barbed-wire fence, Jack spread the wires for Adah to slip through.

She shot him an admonishing glare. “Private property, I presume?”

He nodded. “I have no idea who owns it. But I’ve come out here for years. No one has ever bothered me.”

Adah said, “There’s a first time for everything. If we start taking bullets from some outraged landowner, you’ll protect me?”

He snickered. “With my life.”

Adah gestured beyond the fence. “What’s over there?”

“Patience, please.”

Adah ducked through the fence, and Jack followed her through. He took the lead again, and in only a few minutes, the trees opened up to the broad and gleaming sight of a small lake more richly blue than the sky above and so still a breath could have sent it rippling.

Jack said, “We have this all to ourselves.”

Adah stared at the pristine sight before her. “How did you ever find it?”

“Just by wandering.”

Jack then started stripping down to his underclothes, totally unselfconscious, and Adah didn’t know what to do. She found a patch of willows, where she kicked off her shoes, unbuttoned herself out of her shirt, shimmied out of her skirt, and hung her clothes over reeds, then emerged selfconsciously to see that Jack was already in the water. She hoped he wouldn’t notice that her body was as white as chicken skin and that her bra and underwear were old and tattered.

“Over here,” he said, his voice ringing in the cloudless silence, and she saw the white dome of his head out in the center of the lake. She stood for a moment in silence, breathing deeply, mesmerized. There was nothing except him and the lake’s mossy smell, the sheen off the water, a line of black trees in the distance, and blinding light.

She touched the water with her toe. It was colder than she’d expected. A shiver lifted the hair on her arms, but she hugged herself and took a few steps down into water that was clearer than she had expected, too. It must have been a spring-fed lake.

Up to her thighs in water, she plunged in headfirst, immediately engulfed by the sweet water. Sounds were muffled as she pushed back up and broke the surface.

After swimming in his direction, she began treading in the blue-green water, whose surface under the sunlight appeared as if strewn with rhinestones. Adah had never been a strong swimmer, but Jack seemed completely at ease. In fact, he’d never looked more luminous. His wet hair was like dark whiskey now, and the squinting about his eyes lifted his cheeks and beamed back the brightness.

He was treading water, sweeping his arms through it, and he had droplets in his eyelashes and on his face like pearls she wanted to take into her mouth. He drifted closer and she could hear each breath. He took her wrist in his hand and drew her nearer. Her body charged with something unreasonable and joyous, but fear fell into her chest, too. Once they had done this, there could be no turning it back. Did love always come joined with a certain amount of trepidation? Along with the good feelings, was there always dread that something wouldn’t go right or that love could be lost? Love and fear seemed twined like stalks of a grapevine—so close they couldn’t be separated.

Aware of her helplessness, she glided onward. She was in his arms before she knew it, his body like oiled velvet against hers.

He ran his hands all over her goose-pimpled flesh, across her back, and down her bottom. And then his mouth—silky, tobacco rich, open, and luring. It was everything. Nothing sealed away, nothing suppressed. A line of poetry came to her so strongly she almost said it aloud. Come live with me and be my love.

From the sensible chambers of her mind, a calming voice told her to stop this, don’t do it, you’ll regret it. But another voice, one that came from a more primal place, said, I want him, he wants me, this is so right. She might have done anything he asked, but he surprised her by stopping at kissing and stroking her body. She could feel him swallowing back desire. Then he simply held her entwined while keeping them both afloat with one strong arm and his legs.