Page 61 of The Daring Times of Fern Adair
He followed. “I guess I don’t.”
She’d disappointed him somehow, and that pricked, like a needle jabbing just beneath her skin. Why did she care what he thought? Why did she care what he thoughtof her? Frustration simmered and bubbled, and in a snap, all reluctant and secret delight to see him shifted to irritation. How dare he come all this way to make her feel like she was doing something wrong? This hadn’t been her choice, after all.
“I don’t need you to take me anywhere. I’m working in the library here, earning a wage.”
A library that one or two residents visited every week. It was a tomb for books, not a library. Mrs. Crane had asked her to devise an organizational system for books no one wanted to read. Her work was a pointless, busywork job, though Fern couldn’t bear to tell Cal that. She could hardly bear to admit it to herself.
“Just answer one question. One question, and I’ll quit asking,” he said. His voice was a little farther behind her now. He’d put some distance between them. “Do you want to be here?”
Fern stopped walking and stood, facing the gusty wind, arms crossed against her chest. She could lie. Calwould hear it, of course. He’d hear it, and he’d accept it and walk away. The truth, as difficult as it was, was also somehow easier.
“No,” she whispered.
He ambled up beside her, taking time with his strides. As if there wasn’t a rainstorm about to catch them out in the open.
“Then, what are you still doing here?” His voice was as soft as hers had been.
This answer, at least, was simple. “I have no money yet. Nowhere to go.”
“You’re gonna let that stop you?”
She gawked at him. “Money is essential, Cal.”
“I can float you some dough. And I know a guy at the Central Library over on Michigan. I could talk to him. If, you know, you like books.”
Wind drove into them, rustling his jacket and playing with the stiff brim of his fedora.
“Why would you do that?”
He cut his dark eyes from hers and fished into his pocket for his cigarette case. “You saved my hide that day outside the factory. You could’ve run after I was hit, but you didn’t.”
Was that how he remembered it? That she’d savedhishide? He’d thrown himself on top of her. And afterward, when he’d been bleeding…
“I couldn’t have left you like that.”
He lit the tip of his cigarette and pocketed the silver lighter. He took a drag and held her stare. “I guess I can’t leave you like this.”
“I’m not bleeding,”she joked.
This time, the corner of his lips twitched. “Nah, but this place will kill you slowly. Go on. Get your stuff.”
Her stomach twisted. “I…well, Mrs. Crane, she…”
Fern wasn’t a prisoner here. There were no guards. Her room and board were paid for the remainder of the year, but she hadn’t been committed, not exactly. This was a place where people chose to stay. And she could choose not to. Fern looked up at the brick-and-stone main house.
Cal waited. Rain drops darkened his hat and shoulders. She hadn’t even felt them falling until right then. She nodded, breathless even though she’d yet to move.
“Give me ten minutes.”
The rain whipped through fast, like a few great shakes of a blanket—hectic for a moment, then quiet as the dust and dirt settled. The Roadster’s wipers squealed across the windshield in a steady rhythm, clearing the last speckles of rain. Cal drove northwest, the rolling plains spread out before them. A few autos had pulled to the side of the country road to wait out the storm, but Cal didn’t let his foot up off the gas.
Mrs. Crane had been alerted to Cal’s presence while Fern was packing her valise. She couldn’t take everything that Margie had sent to Young Acres, so she chose only what she would need and figured the rest could be mailed back to her mother. She’d taken a few extra minutes to say goodbye to Caroline, who’d been sad to see Fern go but also enthralled by the idea of a handsomeman coming to take her away. Lena, it appeared, had spread the word.
The superintendent had been anything but enthralled. She’d promised to call the police since Cal was not a family member. Mrs. Crane had only been worried, of course, but to be on the safe side, Cal and Fern hadn’t lingered.
So far, no police lights had appeared on the horizon behind them.
“You’re quiet,” Cal said. He rolled down his window now that the storm had passed. She did the same, and the cool breeze shuttled down her collar and over her scalp. Fern breathed in the rain-scented asphalt and fields. There was something relentlessly alive and electric about that scent.
