Dead Until Dark (Sookie Stackhouse #1)(61)

Jason was staring at me. It was the first time we had talked openly about my disability.

“How do you stop from going crazy?” he asked, shaking his head in amazement.

I was about to try to explain putting up my guard, but Liz Barrett returned to the table, newly lipsticked and fluffed. I watched Jason resume his woman-hunting persona like shrugging on a heavy coat, and I regretted not getting to talk to him more when he was by himself.

That night, as the staff got ready to leave, Arlene asked me if I could baby-sit for her the next evening. It would be an off-day for both of us, and she wanted to go to Shreveport with Rene to see a movie and go out to eat.

“Sure!” I said. “I haven’t kept the kids in a while.”

Suddenly Arlene’s face froze. She half-turned to me, opened her mouth, thought the better of speaking, then thought again. “Will . . . ah . . . will Bill be there?”

“Yes, we’d planned on watching a movie. I was going to stop by the video rental place, tomorrow morning. But I’ll get something for the kids to watch instead.” Abruptly, I caught her meaning. “Whoa. You mean you don’t want to leave the kids with me if Bill’s gonna be there?” I could feel my eyes narrow to slits and my voice drop down to its angry register.

“Sookie,” she began helplessly, “honey, I love you. But you can’t understand, you’re not a mother. I can’t leave my kids with a vampire. I just can’t.”

“No matter that I’m there, and I love your kids, too? No matter that Bill would never in a million years harm a child.” I slung my purse over my shoulder and stalked out the back door, leaving Arlene standing there looking torn. By golly, she ought to be upset!

I was a little calmer by the time I turned onto the road to go home, but I was still riled up. I was worried about Jason, miffed at Arlene, and almost permanently frosted at Sam, who was pretending these days that I was a mere acquaintance. I debated whether to just go home rather than going to Bill’s; decided that was a good idea.

It was a measure of how much he worried about me that Bill was at my house about fifteen minutes after I should have been at his.

“You didn’t come, you didn’t call,” he said quietly when I answered the door.

“I’m in a temper,” I said. “A bad one.”

Wisely he kept his distance.

“I apologize for making you worry,” I said after a moment. “I won’t do that again.” I strode away from him, toward the kitchen. He followed behind, or at least I presumed he did. Bill was so quiet you never knew until you looked.

He leaned against the door frame as I stood in the middle of the kitchen floor, wondering why I’d come in the room, feeling a rising tide of anger. I was getting pissed off all over again. I really wanted to throw something, damage something. This was not the way I’d been brought up, to give way to destructive impulses like that. I contained it, screwing my eyes shut, clenching my fists.

“I’m gonna dig a hole,” I said, and I marched out the back door. I opened the door to the tool shed, removed the shovel, and stomped to the back of the yard. There was a patch back there where nothing ever grew, I don’t know why. I sunk the shovel in, pushed it with my foot, came up with a hunk of soil. I kept on going. The pile of dirt grew as the hole deepened.

“I have excellent arm and shoulder muscles,” I said, resting against the shovel and panting.

Bill was sitting in a lawn chair watching. He didn’t say anything.

I resumed digging.

Finally, I had a really nice hole.

“Were you going to bury anything?” Bill asked, when he could tell I was done.

“No.” I looked down at the cavity in the ground. “I’m going to plant a tree.”

“What kind?”

“A live oak,” I said off the top of my head.

“Where can you get one?”

“At the Garden Center. I’ll go sometime this week.”

“They take a long time to grow.”

“What difference would that make to you?” I snapped. I put the shovel up in the shed, then leaned against it, suddenly exhausted.

Bill made as if to pick me up.

“I am a grown woman,” I snarled. “I can walk into the house on my own.”

“Have I done something to you?” Bill asked. There was very little loving in his voice, and I was brought up short. I had indulged myself enough.

“I apologize,” I said. “Again.”

“What has made you so angry?”

I just couldn’t tell him about Arlene.

“What do you do when you get mad, Bill?”

“I tear up a tree,” he said. “Sometimes I hurt someone.”

Digging a hole didn’t seem so bad. It had been sort of constructive. But I was still wired—it was just more of a subdued buzz than a high-frequency whine. I cast around restlessly for something to affect.

Bill seemed adept at reading the symptoms. “Make love,” he suggested. “Make love with me.”

“I’m not in the right mood for love.”

“Let me try to persuade you.”

It turned out he could.

At least it wore off the excess energy of anger, but I still had a residue of sadness that sex couldn’t cure. Arlene had hurt my feelings. I stared into space while Bill braided my hair, a pastime that he apparently found soothing.