Page 58 of The Daring Times of Fern Adair
The superintendent twisted her lips, as if feeling pity. “Of course. Your room and board allow for one call a week. I can arrange for it.”
Her room and board? The truth spiraled through her with barbed edges. “They’ve already paid for my placement here, haven’t they?”
Mrs. Crane nodded. “Through the remainder of theyear. Now, Fern, I want you to know that my greatest hope is that you’ll feel welcome here and at home?—”
Fern rushed from the room before the superintendent could finish. Before she could see her tears well and spill. Her parents had never intended to bring her home, just like they’d never intended to just tour the grounds. Lies, all lies.
She ran to her room, not wanting to go home. Not wanting to stay.
Fern didn’t belong anywhere at all.
16
The news must have spread throughout Young Acres over the next few days because the residents were even more careful around Fern than they were before. Or maybe, she started to think, they all knew her “trial week” had been pure bull. Maybe it had happened to them too. Discarded by those whom they’d thought loved them—those whom they’d trusted.
She was allowed one telephone call per week, according to Mrs. Crane, but she didn’t want to waste it on her parents. She didn’t wish to speak to them, not ever again. Instead, Fern called Buchanan’s bank.
“What are you doing phoning me here?” His voice was hushed once he got on the line, as if others were standing near him, listening.
“I’m willing to work,” she told him. “I can earn a living and be on my own. Plenty of young ladies do it these days.”
“Fern.”
“Just listen—I could be a clerk or a secretary, or, I don’t know, you could stick me in a back room and have me count change. I just can’t stay here, Buchanan. I can’t go back home either, so that leaves me to strike out on my own.”
“Goddamn it, Fern. You’re asking me to get you a job here? At my place of employment? Are you serious?”
She let out a quiet breath, not wanting him to know how much his reaction stung. “If you don’t want me to work with you, then perhaps at another branch? You know people, you could put a good word in?—”
“Be realistic. You can’t work in a public place.”
She swallowed hard. “Why not?”
The lump in her throat swelled.
His sigh was loud and staticky in her ear. “You’re making things tougher than they have to be. I hear that farm is jake. I’ll come visit you, how about that? Father’s summer fete is coming up in a few weeks, so I’ve got some things to do to help plan for that, but maybe next month. Or maybe in October when I can get a few days off.”
She bit the inside of her cheek. Her throat cinched tight until she could only manage to say, “Goodbye, Buchanan.”
Fern hung up the receiver as his voice was coming through the line.
There was no one else.No one.
Cal didn’t count, of course. She couldn’t turn to him, not when his brother was nefarious, not when they both wanted revenge on Buchanan and her father for the loss of their sister. Fern hated her brother and father rightthen, but that didn’t mean she wanted their lives destroyed. She didn’t want them killed.
By the following Friday, a large package had arrived for Fern. Margie had packed more clothes, a few books, stationary, and envelopes, and some additional things from her vanity. She’d included a note telling Fern to enjoy the country air. There was even an exclamation point. Fern cringed.
The adults at Young Acres earned a small wage by working on the estate, and Fern found an envelope in her mail slot in the first-floor corridor near the kitchen, that same Friday. Inside was her weekly pay. Two dollars.
She sat down at her desk that night and wrote a letter to Hannah Levy, thanking her for the loan a few weeks ago for her taxi fare. She enclosed the two dollars and addressed an envelope, remembering the street address Cal had uttered while he’d been bleeding in the passenger seat of his Roadster. Leaving Cal in Doctor Levy’s first-floor office, while he’d been murmuring incoherently about someone called Bets, was her last memory of him. Each day, as she settled into her new routine at Young Acres, working in the library and having polite conversations with the other residents and some of the staff, the only time her pulse beat a little faster—the only time she actually felt alive—was when her mind skipped over to thinking of Cal.
She tried to purge him from her thoughts by taking a few walks around the grounds each day. Sometimes, Caroline joined her. They’d walk slowly, and she’d pretend not to notice Caroline’s pronounced limp and staggered breathing. But most of the time Fern walkedalone, through the orchard and the vegetable gardens, or by a brook that fed into a trout pond. Walking the grounds was so peaceful and quiet, which made not thinking about Cal even more difficult.
God, he’d hate it here.
“Hello,” a voice called from a row of shrubs one morning. Fern froze, startled. A man cautiously stuck his arm out from a shrub and waved. He had a bucket with a leather strap looped around his neck, and inside the bucket were small, black berries.
Fern let loose a breath and smiled. “Hello. I didn’t see you there.”
