Chapter 10

~Edward~

My morning coffee tried to do its job: to shake the hangover of sleeping pills that lost their battle to fitful, enraged horrors that played behind my eyelids each night. I hadn't slept more than four hours at a stretch in years, but these last few months, it had dwindled to two.

Despite my exhaustion, it was a great day for painting. The bright, blue sky was larger than the earth itself; there weren't any jagged, cave-filled mountains or crumbling buildings in the way. Just flatlands of tall grass in an even line against the horizon. The only things that marred my view were my weary shed and the even wearier house across the field. I narrowed my eye at it, the other aching slightly as it mimicked the movement under the patch. Absentmindedly, I rubbed at the patch lightly, willing the ghost pain away, and maybe willing the sight before me away too. I wasn't going to think about that girl over there, the odd one with the pitiful dress and ridiculous pet.

Wasn't going to think about her naked body bathing in my pond, just yesterday.

Stirring the colors to freshen them up, I readied them to continue striping my house. My only goal for today. The radio played its boogie woogie while yellow paint stained my hands as I worked on a plank to the right of the porch, coating it cheery and insane. The brushstrokes were soothing, like rubbing your elbow to lessen the pain when you hit it just right. Each stroke making the sting a fleeting memory. I continued on that plank as far as I could, reaching up above me as much as my height and the broken chair would allow, until I gave in and looked for something better to stand on. Eventually, I knew I'd need to go into town and haul a ladder back somehow, but for now, maybe I could use one of the antique end tables in that overdone front parlor.

The shed came into view as I was about to enter the house, so I turned that way to see if there was something sturdy to put my weight on. The doors opened with bits of sawdust and debris flying through the air as I rooted around. Way in the back corner, behind a fancy car grill and some sort of rusted farm machine, was a ladder. The old kind, made of wood with round steps that fit in holes. One or two of the rungs appeared cracked, but I knew that was an easy fix. I hauled it out and stood it up, where it loomed a good two feet above my six foot frame.

A bit bothered by having to take a detour from house painting, I gathered the tools and looked for spare bits of wood, undamaged by termites, that I could use to shore up the broken steps. Driving nails into wood felt almost as good as painting until my thoughts ran to that decrepit house across the field and all the cracks and decay that surrounded it. You could tell it was a beautiful house once, majestic even, but whoever owned it didn't care about it, so I decided I didn't have to either.

It wasn't my problem.

Testing my new rungs, I jumped up and down on the wood a few times, smiling when it held my weight comfortably. A sweet satisfaction that I had fixed something broken, even if it was a bit guilty too, accompanied me back to the side of the house where I propped the ladder up and gathered my can and brush to continue.

From this new height, though, I could see that depressing house even better. I could see that the porch looked very ill at ease from the rest of the house, sagging and much more lopsided than it appeared up close, threatening to fall off and crawl away in protest of having to support that structure any longer.

Not my concern if she wanted to live in a dying thing.

Yellow switched to blue, and I stepped on the very top rung, the ladder shaking a bit but holding steady. Gripping the top to lean as far as possible, I felt a slice to my finger. My body wobbled, and I instinctively pulled my hand close to me. Fucking splinter. I made a mental note to get a rag to throw over the tips of the ladder the next time I came down.

Pausing from work to suck on the sting, I looked at the house across the way again and wondered just how many splinters she had endured there. How many were in those bare feet she paraded around on? How many pierced her thin, frail clothing if she sat on that porch? My brow furrowed, making my bad eye ache again, as I had a fleeting thought about finding some sandpaper and smoothing her steps at least.

But no, I decided, her bare feet also weren't my problem. I took my shirt off and gripped the top of the ladder with it as I reached far out with my brush. Up and down, left and right, the bite of the splinter with each stroke making me think about that fucking porch more than I wanted to. Glancing again, I saw the house was still sleepy, no curtains fluttering in open windows or stupid deer walking around. Closing my eyes, I shook my head and cursed loud, jumping down those rungs two at a time before I could change my mind.

Grabbing the tool chest, I searched and found a rough bit of paper and a scrap wood block to wrap it around.

I cursed the whole time I shuffled across the hay, as I called myself stupid and wondered just what the fuck I was doing getting involved with any other human being right now, especially this one. This solitary, fawn-like girl who only had herself. Hopefully I'd accomplish my sanding without her even knowing I'd been there, ending my obsession with her goddamned splintered flesh.

Walking past the only part of the house I'd been near, that garden with the vines and trellises, my eyes widened when I saw the actual condition of the porch up close. There weren't just rough steps to sand; there were steps with huge holes in them and some steps missing entirely. I looked up at the big house, its once-white stature now gray from peeling paint and hard times, and I wondered just what the fuck was this young girl doing out here all by herself, and who left her here to fare on her own? Something she obviously couldn't do.

Not my problem, I repeated again but I set that tool chest down on the ground gently, so not to make its rusted sides collapse, and picked up the hammer and some old-fashioned iron nails.

I hammered back into place some of the fair condition steps that had gone askew, but some were just unable to be saved. With the end of the hammer, I pulled the rusty nails out of those and made a mental note to grab some wood and try to replace them and the ones gone missing altogether. Or maybe I'd just drop off the wood and let her fix them herself.

Absolutely planning on leaving, my eye caught the broken screen door, hanging on one hinge, and I sighed like someone asked me to stay after church. Stepping over the missing boards, I touched the door, and the protesting squeal of the spring as it fell open sounded like a complaint.

The main kitchen door inside was ajar, and before I could shut it, the deer nosed its way out onto the porch, its ears twitching and big eyes staring at me.

"Shoo, go away." I waved my hammer at it, but it didn't budge. Just stared and blinked. I hammered a nail into the doorframe, thinking that would scare it off, but it just kept watching me work. I ignored it and grabbed three more nails, sticking two between my lips and pounded in another to make the dirty white door with the once-fancy filigree stand straight.

"What are you doing?" I heard from inside the house and looked up the staircase where the yelling was coming from. Turning back to the door, I ignored her while her angry footsteps sounded as I focused back on my hammering. I could feel her standing in that doorway behind me, and my eye glanced back on instinct. She was a furious little thing as I looked her over, hands on hips and that see-through white dress still on her body from yesterday. My face felt hot as I turned away from the silhouette of her and continued pounding nails into the frame.

"Fixing this," I muttered around the nails.

"Don't," she stammered, a bit shaky and less determined than she sounded a moment ago.

She looked as if she were about to cry and fisted that thin excuse for a dress, her hands trembling from some emotion I couldn't place. As I looked her over, her lips pressed thin, and her throat rippled as though she was having trouble swallowing. Her eyes, shaped big and brown like the fawn's, were filling with almost-tears.

Was she upset I was helping her? Was she nervous because she thought I'd demand money she probably didn't have? Or was she distressed because she was shamed by the condition of this place?

A lone tear threatened to fall, and much as I'd done with Rose those first few weeks, I looked to rid her of it, my hand rising to push that tear away and out of my sight. The deer stayed between us, looking curious, until it jumped away when she moved. She stomped angrily, directly to where I'd been working on those steps.

"Hold up!" I barked, and I wrapped my hand around her elbow to stop her from walking on the scattered nails and missing boards. Her step faltered, and her body dropped, the porch eating her up like it was hungry to destroy itself.

Her cry of pain sent slivers of metal through me, shrapnel and debris flying through the air and landing in fleshy bits of people behind my damaged eye. My stomach lurched; my lungs closed. I kept my hold on her arm, the tightening of my fist around her pale flesh making her try to pull away from me until I came back from where I'd gone, and I realized I was hurting her.

"I'm sorry." My hand loosened the vice grip holding her, and I apologetically cradled the spot I'd shown my darkness to as I kneeled. Dropping the hammer, my other hand gently eased its way down her leg, wanting to pull it free without inflicting more damage. I could see the blood dripping down her leg through the splintered wood, and my head spun. Through shallow breaths, I told her to perch on the edge of the crater, and remarkably, she let me ease her down so she was sitting on the dead porch, one leg bent into the rotted wood and one stretched out in front of her, where the deer decided it wanted to see what a foot smelled like.

I looked up sharply when she sobbed and flicked the fawn away from her, an ugly grimace curving the cheeks of her face. The sounds she made were of a worse agony than what some torn bit of skin would cause. My curious look made her stop immediately, her teeth sucking in both lips to keep her sounds inside. Her eyes were wide, exploring my own, darting back and forth from the one she could see and the one hidden behind the black patch, my grotesque reminder.

Looking down, hiding from her, I surveyed the damage. My stomach dropped at the blood again, but on further inspection, there wasn't flesh hanging off or bone jutting out at a savage angle. My fingers pressed into her calf while I slowly slid out her leg, careful not to scrape it against the splintered boards that remained. I could feel her pulse pumping through her skin, the veins carrying her blood to the injured site. It made her skin warm, too warm, and I had the strangest urge to run my hands up farther, to touch the skin just under the hem of her dress to see if she was warm everywhere.

"Just a cut," I said to her leg, easing it out straight to lie next to the other one. The deer then sniffed that foot too. "What kind of first aid do you have in the house? Where is it?" The thought of entering this house made me picture dancing around rotting floorboards and steps just to get to the medicine cabinet.

She looked resigned then, and she stared up at the porch roof instead of at me. "There's an emergency kit in the hall closet. Next to the bathroom, top of the front stairs," she said quietly, almost like she didn't want to admit it. Like she didn't want me in there as much as I didn't want to go. One look at her leg told me I couldn't just leave her to mend herself, even though I wanted to.

Making sure she was comfortable, I cautiously stepped on the boards as I made my way into her house.

The first thing that hit me was the smell. I expected musty house, rotting wood, mildew maybe. Instead, the smell of fresh strawberries hit me, like a newly baked pie. The kitchen was almost identical in size to my own, but it was filled with hanging pots and pans suspended from the tin ceiling. It was homey, cozy, until I noticed the ivy growing in through the windows and crawling over the cabinets. The wallpaper was peeling in some spots, a pattern that might've been cheery once, but was now just a gloomy, repeating landscape of barns. The drip, drip of the faucet was the only sound that greeted me.

I cut through the kitchen to get to the other side of the dual staircase that lived in the middle of the house, just like mine. Glancing around quickly, I noticed the furniture in the front room was old but unmistakingly dramatic, like what a parlor should have in it. Flowered chaise lounges and silk screens, fringed pillows and tiny silver boxes cluttering the tabletops. It was fussy, grandmotherly, and I wondered who lived here with her before she became roommates with a wild animal.

I grabbed the banister, but a stain on the floor in front of the staircase stopped me from going up. The rug there was mottled brown, the edges of the bruise spread out like something had slowly poured over it. I knew if I bent down to touch it, the fibers in the rug would be stiffer there than the well-worn parts surrounding it. It didn't look like a good stain, like a stain you got from throwing a really great party. This stain was as wretched as the house it lived in.

Skirting around it, the stairs creaked and groaned with each pass of my body weight as I climbed up, wanting to get my job over with quickly. The bathroom lay directly in front of me, and I opened the door next to it, finding a typical linen closet, filled with towels, quilts, pillows, and things that had probably been here since the house was built.

The first aid kit was on the second shelf, a scratched tin box with the familiar red cross placed on the front. I opened it to see if it contained what I needed, and although the packaging looked dated, the bandages were all still sealed. It would have to do. Pulling it all the way out, a metal picture frame fell and landed face up at my feet, revealing a picture of a woman holding a baby and a young girl. The girl was smiling even though her face seemed sad. It was a normal picture, looked to be taken with a typical 1990's disposable camera—rectangular, glossy—one everybody has some incarnation of. But when I picked it up to put it back, I realized that dress I'd become so familiar with was on the lady, fresh and new with ribbons of bright pink. The lady wearing the dress wasn't the girl I knew lived here, but the resemblance was unmistakable. I gently put it back where I'd found it, knowing how much some pictures need to be hidden.

Moving quickly down the stairs and hopping over the stain at the bottom, I reached the kitchen door and saw the fawn nestled in Deer Girl's lap, looking at her leg like it wanted to help. "Do you have any iodine? Bacitracin? Rubbing alcohol?"

"I don't think so." She wrinkled her nose. "Oh! There's a bottle of whiskey in the cupboard next to the stove."

Grabbing the whiskey, I made my way to her and kneeled on the boards. "This is going to sting." I glanced at her before pouring the brown liquid across her skin. She sucked her lips in again and groaned, watching as I washed the blood away, wiping it with a piece of gauze. "You okay?"

She nodded and let out a breath. "Yeah. Do I need stitches?"

"Not sure... it's not deep. But you might want to get a tetanus shot if you hit a rusty nail on your way down." She remained silent as I taped fresh cotton over the wound, making sure my fingers pressed carefully against the angry red flesh surrounding the cut. Her skin was sticky, the drying whiskey making light brown streaks against her pale skin. "Do you have a car?" I asked as I looked around the property, not seeing a garage.

"Yes, but Jasper always drives me. I can wait for him."

So she did have someone. Someone to take care of her? Of this house? Sure didn't look like it. Whoever this Jasper was, he was doing a piss-poor job of making sure this girl was okay. I was angry then, angry that someone could let a girl like her rot away in a house that was literally falling apart around her. Snapping the first-aid kit closed with more force than necessary, I left it on the porch next to her and snaked my arm around her waist, pulling her up slightly.

"What are you doing?"

"Someone has to drive you to town."

Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.

Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!

HB&PB