The Locket Read online

  “Wonderful!” Kylie exclaimed, as Maybelle came back out onto the porch, wiping her hands on the hem of her apron. “This is great! I didn’t expect so much!”

  “Bring me some apples and you can have all the cherries you want,” Maybelle told her with a smile. “Like I said, a body can only eat so many before you just can’t stand to take another bite. I’ve got a pantry chock-full of canned cherries as it is. We’ll being eating them all winter and probably be growing stems out our ears come the spring.”

  “A couple jars of applesauce ought to help your taste buds recover,” she offered with a grin.

  “Exactly what I’m thinking.” Maybelle met her smile with a wink and turned to go back up the steps. “I’ve got supper on the stove, but ya’ll feel free to keep that equipment for as long as you need to. Just bring it on back when you’re done. Amos, come wash up and get the babies to the table!”

  “Thank you,” Robert called after her and waved as she and her son disappeared behind the closing screen door. It wasn’t until Kylie came back around the end of the Woody to help him lift the welder and all its accessories into the rear of the wagon, that he said, “I’ll admit, you certainly looked like you knew what you were doing when you picked out the equipment.” He paused, resting his hand on the welder before meeting her steady eyes. “But let’s just say, right now, right between us, if you really don’t know how to fix that old press, all you got to do is say so. I won’t be mad, and I sure won’t rub your nose in it. I practically dared you to say you could. Just tell me the truth: can you really use this thing, or did we just waste the last ten minutes hauling this stuff up from the barn?”

  Hands on her hips, Kylie couldn’t decide which she ought to feel more keenly: irritated because he refused to believe she might have at least one useful skill, or smugly proud of herself because this was one area in which she could easily prove him wrong. “The truth is, you’re not going to believe anything I tell you until that press is up and running and I serve you a fresh glass of apple cider.”

  He held up his hands, as if to say, ‘Have it your way; just remember, I gave you the out.’ Shutting the back of the wagon and tightening down the latches, he headed for the driver’s side.

  Kylie climbed up into the passenger’s side, not just ready but eager to prove herself. There wasn’t anything she couldn’t fix on her Granddad’s farm once he’d got done showing her how. All she needed was time and a little luck, and she’d not only have this primitive-looking welder figured out, but that broken-down cider press churning out the juice!

  As Robert started the car and shoved the stick into the first gear, Kylie stretched her arm over both cherry buckets, hugging them to prevent an avalanche of cherries from hitting the floor at their feet while the Woody bumped and jostled its way back down the long dirt driveway and onto the paved road.

  In Kylie’s mind, the biggest mistake of her life would always be synonymous with talking to strangers. The second biggest was a little less well-defined, but it occurred halfway down that lone stretch of road to home.

  The sun was long gone and the sky was black as black could be, peppered with stars that looked brighter than any Kylie could remember seeing back home. Robert had switched the headlights on, sending twin beams of pale yellow fanning out ahead of them only far enough to identify the potholes a second or two before they bounced into them. And yet, for whatever reason, Kylie was a much more cheerful passenger this time around than she had been earlier. Probably due to the cherries. They were ripe and sweet, and she popped one after another into her mouth, tossing the stems out through the window-less door and following that a second later by distance-spitting the pits at the ditch. Kylie Cherry-Seed, she was dedicating herself to planting a whole new orchard of cherry trees all along this side of the road.

  “God, she gave us a lot of cherries,” she said between mouthfuls. “Two full buckets! I wasn’t expecting anything close to this much.”

  The cherries nearly went flying when Robert suddenly and sharply stopped the car right there in the middle of the road. A cascade of cherries sloshed past her restraining arm, raining down around their feet as she grabbed first the buckets and then the hard, angular dash to keep from sliding sideways off the seat and into the windshield.

  “What the hell was that?!” she exclaimed, staring out into the street, fully expecting to see a deer or a dog or even some dark-clothed pedestrian staring back at them in the ghoulish yellow of the headlamps. But there was only road stretching out into the distance, dotted with potholes and framed on either side by fallow cornfields. Her eyebrows puckered. “What happened? Why did we stop?”

  Setting the brake, Robert got out of the car without a word. As he came around the front of the car, heading unerringly for her side, the lights captured his tight-lipped expression and the familiar motion of his hands as they unfastened his belt and in two quick yanks, whipped it free of his pants’ loops.

  In that short second, as the realization that he was heading straight for her, with his belt held doubled in his hand with the buckle clasped tight in his palm, Kylie could have sworn the ice that poured down her spine to shiver the flesh of her bottom was starkly real.

  “What did I do?” Her mind raced as he reached her door, and she slapped along the top, trying desperately to find the lock. There wasn’t one. But then, it wouldn’t have mattered since there was no window either. “What did I do?!”

  He yanked the door open. His mouth was flat; his face, darkly calm. “Go on and cuss up a storm if you want to. So long as we’re alone, I really don’t care.”

  Kylie grabbed wildly for a solid grip on anything, but he pulled her out onto the road beside him anyway. And her hold on the side of the door did not keep him from pinning her flat against the side of the Woody, one hard hand braced between her shoulder blades while his other drew that doubled-over belt back behind him.

  “What did I do?!” she wailed.

  “Don’t you ever blaspheme in front of me again.”

  The first snap of leather across the seat of her skirt brought her right up onto her toes. Her first thought: as much as she was inclined to disagree at the time, jeans really had provided her protection from that spanking in his orchard. The thin cotton of the dress she wore now, didn’t. Not at all. Not even a little. Two broad inches of unyielding leather cracked across the surface of her bottom, wrapping both cheeks in a fiery hug and licking around the side of her hip to bite into the tender skin low down on her upper thigh.

  Kylie sucked a ragged breath and grabbed at the smoothness of the car. Robert wasn’t playing and this was as far from being a playful spanking as anything she could imagine. This was pain and it was fire, and both of those sensations were amplified a hundred times over when he brought that belt snapping down a third time.

  Her instant shriek was as ragged as her gasp had been. She snapped her hands back, trying to cover as much as she could before he struck again.

  “Move your hands,” he said, sounding so calm. Rational, even. And yet, how could anyone be calm and rational and still spank this hard?!

  When she refused to obey, the belt came snapping down again anyway, only lower this time, laying its blistering band all across the tops of her thighs. And worse still, the edge of stiff leather caught two of her fingertips. Kylie howled and grabbed at the car again, stomping her feet and shaking her hands as if she could fling off the intensity of the pain that consumed them now, too.

  He only gave her six broad strokes with that belt, but six was five more than she could bear. And the second he let her go, she shoved away from both the car and him, grabbing her pulsing, burning bottom in both hands and rub. She stamped her feet, bounced in place, gasping and howling as she squeezed and rubbed, desperate to put out the fire. Her thighs felt worst of all, and he had only hit them once. Stiff ridges of rapidly forming welts swelled across her skin. Right through the thin cotton of her clothes, she could feel them, and the surging fire that scorched up under her fingers th
e instant she touched them, had her shouting all over again.

  The heat…! She was on fire!

  Kylie bent at the waist, rubbing and rubbing and rubbing to put it out and keening loudly through gritted teeth when the fire only blazed hotter, refusing to be extinguished. She fought not to cry. She refused to cry! Not in front of Robert, never again!

  Only dimly was she aware when he opened the passenger-side door for her. “Get in.”

  She was very well aware, however, when he took hold of her arm again. She yanked free of his hand. She jerked up, shouting hoarsely into his face, “Don’t you touch me!”

  “Kylie,” he warned.

  “No!” she lunged at him, bellowing. “You don’t have the right to spank me!”

  Determined as she was not to cry in front of him, hot tears spilled from both her eyes anyway and rolled straight down her cheeks. Her voice cracked, her determination breaking all to pieces. “No right at all!”

  “Get in the car, Kylie,” he replied, just as calm as before albeit with a steeliness that kept his shoulders squared and his jaw firmly set.

  The explosion of anger his words sparked was so hot and bright that she could almost see it. Kylie grabbed the car door out of his hand and slammed it hard enough to rock the whole vehicle. A rain-like patter followed as more cherries sloshed the rims of the buckets and bounced from the seat to the floor.

  “Go to hell!” she hissed through clenched teeth. Turning sharply on her heel, she started walking. She folded her arms tight across her chest, hugging herself fiercely to keep from rubbing as she marched away. She had no place else to go, but she didn’t care. There were no lights out here other than Robert’s headlights; she still didn’t care. She stumbled into a pothole, her ankle twanging a little as she stepped wrong, but she kept right on walking, barely even limping as she did so. After only a handful of steps, the very last tendrils of her thin-stretched will snapped all at once, and she burst into loud tears.

  She stumbled into another pothole but kept going, stubbornly refusing even to turn around although she plainly heard it when Robert sighed and said, “Kylie, come back.”

  When she only quickened her step, Robert got into the Woody, started the car and, driving very, very slowly, followed her.

  The road grew brighter as he pulled up close behind her. Her long, staggering shadow stretched out ahead of her, hiding the unevenness of the road right up until she stumbled into them. Kylie moved way over onto the shoulder, but Robert had no intention of passing. He simply followed her, creeping along at the pace she set, now and then hanging his head out long enough to call, “Come on, Kylie. Get in the car.”

  She ignored him. For three long miles, she walked and cried until she was fresh out of tears and just too tired to walk anymore. The car that had faithfully shadowed her, stopped when she did. Shoulders drooping, she stared out into the emptiness of the night. Not one single car had happened by, not in all this time. Otherwise, she’d have probably flagged them down and begged a ride. Part of her wondered if Robert would have stopped her or let her drive off with a stranger. Another part wondered why she should care if he did.

  Kylie stood there, hugging herself and waiting, but Robert didn’t offer any apology or ask her to get back in the car again. And in the end, stubborn pride and throbbing bottom be damned, it all came back to that one sad, unchangeable fact: she simply had no place else to go.

  She forced herself back to the front passenger door. She stared sulkily through the glassless hole until Robert leaned across the long seat and helpfully pushed the door open. Then he leaned back, one arm hooked over the top of his window, his right hand braced upon his thigh, simply waiting.

  “I don’t like you,” she said flatly.

  “For what it’s worth,” he replied. “I don’t really think you’re crazy.”

  “You’re a mean, self-centered, rat-bastard son-of-a-bitch,” she elaborated, glaring, just daring him to get his belt and come after her again.

  He didn’t. He simply followed her example. “You’re unbelievably stubborn and have the mouth of a navy veteran.”

  Still sulking, still glaring, and still without any other feasible option, Kylie climbed up into the car. The thought of sitting made her cringe, but there wasn’t room enough to kneel and there was no way in hell she was going to make a spectacle of herself or give him an opening to gloat.

  Moving as slowly as she could, Kylie drew in a deep breath, wincing as her bottom and, even more painfully, her thighs came into contact with the hard seat. “I really,” she winced, “really don’t like you.”

  “Yeah, well,” Robert put the car into gear and eased on down the road, this time taking great care to avoid the potholes. “When you earn the licks, you’re really, really going to get them. Whether you like me or not.”

  Just so they were clear.

  * * * * *

  For the first time in more than eight years, Kylie awoke to a rooster crow. The darn thing sounded like it was right outside her window, too.

  She rolled from her stomach to her side, pulling the pillow up over her head and nearly suffocating on the musty smell that suffused both the mattress and all layers of bedding. By the time she was done coughing, there was no point in trying to regain that blissful, oblivious state of sleep where her dreams were filled with fun things like televisions, walkmans, computers and surfing the World Wide Web; she was awake now. And from the sounds that trickled up from the main floor—the clumps of heavily booted footsteps, the clatter of cups and spoons, the rattle of metal dishes on the stove—she knew Robert had beat her to it.

  Sliding her legs over the side of the mattress, she heaved herself upright. Wincing, she reached back to rub, but there was only the mildest tenderness from the night before. As much as she would have loved to hide out in her room all day, she had never been any good at doing nothing for hours on end. The time had come, she supposed, to start earning her keep.

  Crawling back into the same dress as the day before and tying on her sneakers, she trudged downstairs. Already the smell of fresh coffee was winding its way through the lower half of the house, and there was Robert, sitting at the head of the table, nursing a jadeite mug of jet black liquid in both hands. A second had been placed before the same chair she had occupied yesterday. She didn’t say a word, but shuffled outside to find the outhouse. On the way back, she stopped to check on the chickens, which were enthusiastically hard at work excavating a nest of ants and reducing the level of greens inside their pen to barren plant stems. She discovered three eggs among the brush and returned to the house to find Robert still sitting at the table, exactly where she’d left him.

  “Good morning,” he said as she swept past him.

  “Get bent,” she replied, and disappeared into the kitchen with head held high.

  Thank God for gas stoves. If it had been a coal-burning one, she never could have managed breakfast. As it was, when she turned the handle to ignite the flame, the stove only hissed at her. It took nearly five minutes of testing each of the six burners and ultimately failing to find any part of the unfamiliar appliance that seemed built to hold a pilot light, before she noticed the bowl of matches on a nearby spice shelf.

  So long as she wasn’t reduced to asking Robert for help, she was fine. And after that, breakfast was a breeze. She whipped up pancakes from scratch, sending prayers of thanks to Nana, who had taught Kylie everything she knew about cooking and who had never in all her life fixed anything from a box. Leaving the batter to rest, she brought in some apples from the orchard to stew into a kind of fruity syrup with some honey and cinnamon which she found in the pantry. The only thing lacking from the meal would have been a pitcher of freshly squeezed orange juice. As she set a hot plate of pancakes topped with sweet, soft apples in front of Robert, she found herself looking longingly out the window at the orchard across the street.

  “Shoot, honey,” Robert said, her handiwork winning an appreciative smile from him. “I wasn’t expecting gourmet
.”

  “Don’t call me that,” Kyle said, effectively erasing his smile. “You haven’t got the right to do that either.”

  She stalked back into the kitchen to fix herself a plate as well and ate it standing up with her back propped against the sink.

  She was almost halfway through her short stack when Robert finally gave in and asked, “You going to be mad at me all day?”

  “I’m thinking about it.”

  And that was pretty much it for conversation, right up until he brought his empty plate and coffee cup into the kitchen, reaching around her to lay them in the sink. “I knocked down the rest of the wasps’ nest.”

  “Good for you.” Stuffing another piece of pancake into her mouth, Kylie stared straight ahead and chewed sullenly.

  He nodded once, as if that was the answer he’d been expecting, and then shrugged with one shoulder. “Just be careful if you go out there today. There could be other nests in the barn, or they might try rebuilding in the same spot. I might need to knock them down a couple times before it’s safe out there.” When she still didn’t look at him or say anything more, he turned to go. “Let me know what you decide about that whole being mad thing.”

  She stabbed her fork into her last, large wedge of pancake, using it to sop up the last of the apple drippings and stuffed the whole thing into her mouth so she wouldn’t be tempted to say something so mean and spiteful that it started World War III right here in the kitchen. She chewed, glaring at the far wall until her eyes hurt from the force of her staring. She didn’t even watch him leave, but she heard it when the front door closed behind him and his heavy steps retreated down off the porch.

  The thing about eating while mad: it made everything taste like sawdust.

  CHAPTER FIVE