Carolina Moon

hair, just a light stroke. It made her yearn to burrow in, cling tight. Deliberately she lifted her head, smiled brilliantly. “Why are we talking about Tory Bodeen, anyway? Let’s fix ourselves some supper, and eat in bed.” Slowly, her eyes on his, she drew down the zipper of his jeans. “I always have such an appetite when I’m with you.”
    Later, he woke in the dark. She was gone. She never stayed, never slept with him in the most simple way. There were times Wade wondered if she slept at all, or if that internal engine of hers forever ran, fueled on nerves, and on needs that were never quite met.
    It was his curse, he supposed, to love a woman who seemed incapable of returning genuine feelings. He should cut her out of his life. It was the sane thing to do. She’d only slice him open again, and every time she did, it took longer to heal. Sooner or later there’d be nothing left of his heart but scar tissue, and he’d have no one but himself to blame.
    He felt the anger building, a black heat that bubbled in the blood. Leaving the lights off, he dressed in the dark. His fury needed a target before it turned inward and imploded.
    It would have been smarter, more comfortable, God knew more sensible, to have booked a room in a hotel for the night. It would have been a simple matter to have accepted her uncle’s hospitality and slept in one of the overly fussy, decorated-to-death bedrooms Boots kept ready in the big house.
    As a child she’d often dreamed of sleeping in that perfect house on that perfect street where she’d imagined everything smelled of perfume and polish.
    Instead, Tory spread a blanket on the bare floor and lay awake in the dark.
    Pride, stubbornness, a need to prove herself? She wasn’t sure of her own motives for spending her first night in Progress in the empty house of her childhood. But she’d made her bed, so to speak, and was determined to lie in it.
    In the morning there would be a great deal to do. Already that evening she’d gone over her lists and made a dozen more. She needed to buy a bed, and a phone. New towels, a shower curtain. She needed a lamp and a table to put it on.
    Camping out wasn’t quite the adventure it used to be, and having simple tastes and needs didn’t mean she didn’t require basic comforts.
    Lying there in the dark she used her lists, in much the same way she had used the sheer white wall. Each item mentally ticked off was another brick set in place to block out images and keep herself centered in the now.
    She’d go to the market and stock the kitchen. If she let that go too long she’d fall back into the habit of skipping meals again. When she neglected her body, it was more difficult to control her mind.
    She’d go to the bank, open accounts, personal and business. A trip to the Progress Weekly was in order. She’d already designed her ad.
    Most of all, while she set up the store in the next weeks, she needed to be visible. She’d work on being friendly, personable. Normal.
    It would take time to weather the expected whispers, the questions, the stares. She was prepared for it. By the time she opened for business, people would be used to seeing her again. More, much more important, they would become used to seeing her as she wanted to be seen.
    Gradually, she’d become a fixture in town. And then she would begin to explore. She would ask questions. She’d begin to look for the answers.
    When she had them, she could say good-bye to Hope.
    Closing her eyes, she listened to the night sounds, the chorus of peepers, so cheerfully monotonous, the sharp and jarring screech of an owl on the hunt, the soft groans of old wood settling, the occasional sly riveting of mice making themselves at home behind the wall.
    She’d have to set traps, she thought sleepily. She was sorry for it, but she didn’t care to share her space with rodents. She’d put mothballs under the porches to discourage snakes.
    It was mothballs, wasn’t it? It had been so long since she’d lived in the country. You put out mothballs for snakes and hung soap for deer and protected what was yours, even though it had been theirs first.
    And if the rabbits came to nibble at the kitchen garden, you laid out pieces of hose so they thought it was the snakes you shooed away with the mothballs. Else Daddy’d come home and shoot them with his .22. You’d have to eat them for supper, even though you got sick after because you could see how cute they were twitching their long ears.