Stranger At The Crossroads. Gena Dalton

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      “I could use a glass of iced tea,” she said. “Or a really cold Coke.”

      He glanced at his hands, then over his shoulder at Stranger and Tara.

      “I’ll keep an eye on them,” he said, in an absent tone. “Why don’t you go ahead.”

      Darcy kept walking beside him. If she left him out here alone he would only fall deeper into his sad funk.

      “They’ll be fine. We’ll only be gone for a few minutes.”

      He was silent for a moment, then he seemed to bring himself back to the present with an effort.

      “Tara’s really weak,” he said.

      “She won’t step on Stranger now that we’ve moved him.”

      Darcy kept going, and he stayed beside her.

      But he said, “Help yourself to anything in the house.”

      “What should I bring you?”

      “Anything. I don’t care.”

      Just outside the door of the barn, he stopped, glancing toward some battered benches under the shed row as if he’d like to sit down. His shoulders slumped, and he stared into space.

      Darcy stopped, too, and looked at him. The haunted expression on his face broke her heart. She couldn’t, she just couldn’t leave him out here alone with his ghosts.

      “I’d feel like an intruder,” she said, careful to keep her tone neutral and not plaintive, “in your home.”

      He threw her an exasperated glance, opened his mouth as if to speak, then snapped it shut. They started walking again, out into the sunlight and then across the yard.

      “I need to call somebody about my trailer anyhow,” he said, as if to prove he had his own reasons for escorting her into his house.

      He made an impatient gesture with one hand.

      “I’d go change that tire myself but I’m not going to leave Tara right now.”

      “It won’t take five minutes for me to drive you to it if that’s what you want,” Darcy said.

      He frowned and hesitated before he spoke.

      “No.”

      They reached the house and went up the two low steps. Jackson held open the door into the screened-in back porch. Darcy walked ahead of him into a large, square kitchen.

      “I’ve got lemonade, Coke, Dr. Pepper, bottled water…”

      Darcy stood still, looking around in amazement. An iron cookstove that burned wood filled a brick-lined corner of the room. A huge worktable was in its center. Old pie safes and cupboards stood in strategic spots. There were no counters, no built-in cabinets at all.

      “This is like walking into a time warp!”

      “No,” Jackson said, throwing the words over his shoulder as he crossed the room, “there’s a refrigerator and a microwave. And a toaster.”

      There were. And stacks of paper plates and cups on one end of the worktable.

      “And I assume no dishwasher, either,” Darcy said lightly.

      He paused at the door of the kitchen, but not to respond to her teasing.

      “Bathroom’s that way,” he said abruptly, gesturing to the right.

      “Thanks. I’m just grateful that you have one.”

      He didn’t pick up on that small effort to be humorous, either.

      “I’ll make a couple of calls while you wash up.”

      His tone said that was all the polite small talk he could take right now. He disappeared into the depths of the house. Darcy heard a door close.

      She followed his path into a narrow hallway, turned right and found the bathroom. It was nearly as fascinating as the kitchen, with its single, columnar sink and huge, claw-footed tub that had also been rigged to serve as a shower.

      As in the kitchen, everything was clean. Only a razor with shaving supplies, a toothbrush on a shelf near the sink and a towel hanging crookedly on a rack testified to the fact that somebody lived there.

      Maybe he was the outdoor kind who hated to be inside under a roof. He probably spent most of his time with his cattle and horses—she had vaguely noticed several nice-looking ones in a pasture and some in a pen nearer the barn.

      Maybe his life contained only the bare necessities because he didn’t care about anything more. Maybe he deliberately worked himself into a stupor outside all day and came inside only to collapse and sleep.

      Exactly the same life as hers.

      She realized that with a shock. Her house might seem homier than his because of the furnishings she’d chosen in happier days, but the way she lived in it was totally debilitating and controlled by hopeless regrets. She’d lived that way for a year and a half.

      Only today, after all that time, had she discovered how refreshing it could be to forget about loss even for a short, short while.

      That sudden thought made her feel disloyal. She wasn’t forgetting about her darling son and her husband. Not at all. She could never forget them.

      Quickly, to distract herself, she washed her hands again, very thoroughly, took a clean towel from a stack on a small table by the window and dried them. She hurried toward the kitchen.

      A door down the hall remained closed. She assumed that was Jackson’s bedroom. The open, arched doorway across from the kitchen gave her a glimpse of the living room.

      She stopped and looked in. It had the same old-fashioned, unused feel as the kitchen. A large stone fireplace was centered on one wall, with several pieces of well-made leather furniture, their cushions shaped by age and much use, facing it. The longest sofa had a pillow propped against one arm and a quilt thrown across the back.

      On the opposite wall, looking as incongruous as the big refrigerator did in the kitchen, an ancient oak table held some very expensive-looking stereo equipment. CDs, their plastic jewel cases catching the sunlight from the windows, were everywhere—in stacks on the table on the floor, on the seat of a chair.

      It was the same as a wall of full bookcases in an acquaintance’s house. Or the tack room of a stranger’s barn. How could anyone resist such a true glimpse into someone else’s personality?

      Darcy walked in and picked up the case on top of the stack in the chair. Muddy Waters. She rifled through the stack quickly, struck by the wide range of choices and the fact that they mixed time and genres as did the furnishings in his house. Delbert McClinton, Jimmie Rodgers, Doug Sahm, David Ball, Howling Wolf, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Bill Monroe. Jerry Garcia’s short-lived band, Old and In The Way.

      Lots of blues. Lots of high, lonesome sound.

      “You СКАЧАТЬ