The Locket Page 9

  Across the short hall and through her open bedroom door, she caught sight of the belt, still coiled and waiting for her there on the foot of the bedspread.

  “Please.” Her voice quavered. “Can’t we be done now?”

  His hand found the small of her back, nudging her step after unerring step back into the room.

  They were the only two people in the house, but still he shut the door. Hands clenched over the knots that her stomach had become, Kylie waited where he’d left her, shifting from foot to foot, until he took her by the arm and brought her the rest of the way to the bed. Her feet felt oddly heavy and her legs were shaking.

  “Please,” she tried again, her desperation to stop what was rapidly approaching a point of no return making her voice crack and warble. “Please don’t spank me with the belt, Robert. I promise I won’t ever say it again. I swear I won’t.”

  “You’re right. You won’t.” Simply said, that statement was as succinct as it was impossible to argue with. Taking a pillow, he lay it along the edge of the mattress directly in front of her. “Over. Butt up high on the pillow. You’re going to want to hold on tight to whatever you can, because if you put your hands back they’re liable to get hurt if I can’t stop in time.”

  It was the first time in all her life that Kylie had ever heard someone say something so devastating that her knees actually buckled. They trembled as she stood staring at that pillow. She couldn’t move. She tried, but she just couldn’t make her legs obey.

  Eventually, he reached for her arm.

  “No.” She shook her head, but he helped to lay her over the mound of the pillow, leaving her hips propped up over the edge of the mattress. “Robert, please.”

  The tears flowed unchecked down both cheeks as he half-knelt on the mattress next to her. He took her wrists into the strong grip of one hand and, seeming to know she’d never be able to hold onto anything or indeed to hold still once he got started, pinned them to the small of her back. He used his weight, holding her firmly in place. Already her buttocks were clenching, cringing to get away from blows that hadn’t yet fallen. Already her toes were curling in, tight and tense; her shoes digging into the bare floor boards in dreaded anticipation.

  She felt the cool slither of leather against the backs of her legs as he doubled the belt in half, the buckle tucking safely into his palm. Dread became panic, sharp and spearing as she felt more then saw him raise his arm. She couldn’t take this; she’d never survive this.

  Her whole body tensed and she let out a shriek, even before his arm came sharply down. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t yet struck her. That pain was coming and she already knew, in every corner of her mind and in every fiber of her being, that it would be more than she could stand.

  In her panic, she thought she felt him stroke the back of her hair, but if he did, that sensation was lost a half second later when the fire and pain slashed across her. Her whole body jerked, and if not for his steadfast grip on her wrists, she’d have grabbed her bottom and vaulted up off the bed in two seconds flat.

  It was the quickest spanking he’d yet delivered, the belt whipping down fast and light across her flanks, nowhere near as hard as he could have made it, although it certainly felt hard enough to Kylie. She kicked and bucked, and though it was over with in mere seconds, by the time he dropped his belt on the floor, she was bawling. Unable to hold still, she writhed and squirmed against the bed until he released her hands. And then, instead of jumping straight up, she lay where he’d left her, holding, squeezing and rubbing her belabored bottom with both hands until he finally pulled her up.

  “I really wish I hadn’t had to do that,” he said, and meant it. Sitting on the edge of her bed, he pulled her into his lap and held her, letting her cry against his shoulder. He stroked her hair and kissed her brow, rocking gently until her writhing fell still and her ragged weeping diminished into sniffles and hiccups.

  * * * * *

  Kylie had no idea for how long he held her like that. One minute she was curled against his chest, feeling the steady drum of his heart beating against her, in perfect tandem with the hot pain pulsing in her bottom, and then the next thing she knew, her eyes were opening and everything had changed. She must have fallen asleep because Robert was gone and she was lying in bed alone. The pillow he had spanked her over was now tucked up under her head and a corner of the bedspread had been folded over the top of her.

  Kylie covered her eyes with one hand, trying to wake up. Her head ached a little, and her eyes felt swollen and dry. She’d cried too much. She ought to feel foolish, in fact, for the way she’d carried on, but she just didn’t have the energy.

  Rising up onto one arm, she slipped her other hand behind her, letting her fingers gently rove over her still naked bottom. There were tender places, areas so sensitive to the touch that the gentlest caress of her fingertips felt too raw to repeat, but there were no welts anywhere that she could find.

  She crawled out of bed to check herself in the dressing table mirror. Her skin was a soft, blushing red, and along the lowest, fattest parts where her bottom met her thighs, Kylie could definitely see the darker, line-like streaks that the belt had left behind. Despite how it had felt at the time, he hadn’t left her black and blue from the waist down. In fact, there weren’t any bruises at all, just one tiny spot of discoloration that was a darker red than the rest of the surrounding skin. Maybe tomorrow that might be a bruise, but it was no bigger than a thumbprint, and in retrospect, she was grateful for Robert’s restraint. He hadn’t spanked her too long, he hadn’t spanked her too hard. She was starting to sound like the Goldilocks of spanking; she certainly hadn’t enjoyed the experience, but he had spanked her just right. A sharp and lasting reminder that would make it difficult to sit without wincing tonight at the supper table.

  Kylie let her fingers wander the redness of her bottom one last time, then she pulled the safety pins out of the back of her dress and let her skirt fall down to cover herself once more. She found her panties where she’d kicked them off her ankles sometime during the first half of her spanking, back when Robert had still been using his hand, for crying out loud, and again, Kylie felt that half second of embarrassment for the way she’d carried on.

  The sky was darkly orange, with only the peak of the sun’s lingering orb above the horizon. She lowered herself to sit ever so gingerly on the side of her bed and put on her socks and shoes. And as she was leaving the quiet of her bedroom, her hand drifted back one last time to caress a gentle, rueful rub over the tenderest spot low upon the swell of her right buttock. Yes, he could have spanked her longer and harder, but she was really, really glad that he hadn’t.

  All the main floor lamps were burning and Kylie could smell supper already cooking when she came downstairs. Her hand lightly touching the wall, she came around the corner into the living room and stopped. Robert was sitting on the sofa settee. He had brought her laundry in off the line; it was neatly folded in the wicker basket near his feet. In his hands, he held her driver’s license, with her meager twenty-five dollars and change spread out on the cushion around his hip. She vaguely remembered digging these out of her jeans’ pocket and laying them on the back porch by the washing machine before adding her clothes to the mountain of laundry waiting to be cleaned. But with everything else that had happened today, she’d then forgotten all about them.

  Robert had obviously looked at the money. Each paper bill and coin were turned date-side up. But it was her driver’s license that he studied now, lightly scratching at the plastic shrouded watermark with his thumbnail before turning the card over to read the signature that marked her as an organ donor and the barcode. He tapped the edge of the card with his thumb twice, then raised his head to look at her.

  “So,” he finally said, his face strangely void of emotion and suddenly difficult to read. “What park is this we meet in, again?”

  “Hodgekins,” she replied, just as strangely. “It’s not very big. Just a jogging path and some park
benches. I used to go there on my lunch hour to read.”

  She half expected him to hand back her useless money and driver’s card, call her a lunatic again and walk away. She almost half expected him to ask her where she got the fake ID, or what an organ donor was, or even how she’d made the watermark that shimmered lightly over her photograph.

  But he didn’t. Instead, he only grunted thoughtfully. Watching her with the utmost seriousness, his fingers lightly stroked the edges of her card over and over again. “What year was that again?”

  “2008.”

  Again, they stared at one another in silence until, with a tsk and a shrug of his dark eyebrows, Robert finally said, “Well, damn. I must make one hell of a good-looking old man.”

  Of all the things she expected, that came so far out of the proverbial left field that Kylie actually laughed. It came out a sharp, high-pitched, near-barking sound, and she only repeated it twice before her throat closed too tight for her to breathe much less laugh. Did this mean he believed her now? Was that too much to hope for? Swallowing hard, the only thing she could think to say was the absolute truth. “The sexiest I’d ever seen.”

  “You don’t…” again he shrugged, this time lifting one shoulder along with his eyebrows, “…wander through the parks, kissing old men as a matter of course, do you?”

  Again, that incongruous laugh coughed out of her. She shook her head. “No. You were my first.”

  His lips pursed, then smiled. He nodded twice, and then stood up. Bridging the distance between them in two steps, he took her hand and pressed her ID into it. “What say we keep it that way, huh?”

  He believed her.

  Her bottom didn’t hurt quite so much anymore. More startled than happy, she felt surreal. She let him take her hand and lead her back to the couch.

  “Four kids, huh?” he asked, gesturing for her to sit down.

  “You had a picture of them in the locket,” she replied, tucking her legs up under her and wincing as she sat sideways with her back to the arm of the couch so they could talk face-to-face. “Thank you for believing me. You’re taking this really well.”

  Now it was his turn to laugh. “No. No, I’m not, I promise you.” But still he sat beside her, his hands once more folded in his lap. “Will you answer me one question?”

  “About the future?”

  “Yes.” He held up one finger when she opened her mouth. “Only this one thing. I don’t want you to tell me anything else about us or what’s going to happen to us, at least not for another fifty years or so. Then maybe I’ll let you tell me about how we meet so I can at least be in the right place at the right time.”

  “Okay.” Kylie waited. She still felt a little surreal. He believed her. How funny that that should make such a difference to her at this point, but it did. He believed her. “What do you want to know?”

  He drew a breath and held it for just a moment before letting it sigh back out of him. “You don’t speak German. Does that mean we win the war?”

  Reaching across the cushion to lay her hand over his, she smiled softly and gave his fingers a squeeze. “Yes, we do. It happens in—”

  He threw up both hands. “That’s it. That’s all I wanted to know.”

  “But you—”

  “I don’t want to hear any details.” He abandoned the couch and walked away from her, heading for the kitchen. “It’s a small thing, I know. But I actually want to be surprised by what the future has in store for me. Whatever it is you think I want to hear, don’t tell me. Really. I don’t want to know.”

  “Okay.” She watched the back of him retreat into the kitchen and let it go. At least until he called for her to come and set the table. “You know what I wish I’d paid more attention to?” she asked, as she met him in the threshold between the kitchen and dining room, taking the bowls and silverware from his hands. “Sports scores. If I knew how certain baseball or football games turned out, I would so be taking our pie money down to the local leg-breakers and I’d be betting the farm.”

  Robert laughed. Sort of. The sound that actually rolled out of the kitchen behind her was more of a chuckle. A dark and sinister chuckle that he followed with a dark and sinister Look when he brought the stew pot to the dinner table and set it down. “No, you wouldn’t.”

  “Sure, I would,” she teased as she separated the bowls, handing one back to him.

  Discarding the bowl, he began to roll up his shirt sleeve. “Do you see this arm?”

  She backed up, her teasing smile turning into helpless laughter as she said, “I’m saying if—IF—I knew any sports’ scores—”

  “This arm is not in the least bit tired…”

  “Like the year the White Sox threw the World Ser-ies!” Kylie bolted for the stairs with a scream and with Robert hot on her heels. She ran all the way up them, shrieking with laughter and batting behind her one-handedly as Robert chased her all the way to her room, pinching her bottom all the way.

  She barely got the door slammed between them and she threw her whole body into bracing it shut, with him securely on the other side.

  “1919,” he called through the door. “It’s already happened. And if I ever see you looking at a Sports’ Sheet, you’re not going to sit for a year!”

  As she laughed herself breathless, he headed back down the stairs, muttering to himself, chuckling and shaking his head.

  * * * * *

  Kylie would have been infinitely more comfortable in her jeans and t-shirt, but she wanted to make a good, reconciliatory impression on the neighbors she’d already offended. So, with a fresh-baked cherry pie in one hand and a bucket of apples in the other, she headed across the street to apologize to Braden.

  The driveway was a good twenty or so yards further down the road, and as Kylie made her way to it, with the sun warm upon her back and shoulders, she found herself eying the orange orchard. It wasn’t quite as overgrown as Robert’s, so mentally disabled or not, Braden was obviously working hard to keep the place kept up, but he wasn’t harvesting. The trees were all heavily laden with hundreds of oranges ranging from bright in color to partially green. She could smell the sun-ripened scent from Robert’s front porch, so while she wasn’t looking forward to the crow feast she had coming, it did make the long walk down Braden’s dirt and gravel driveway easier.

  It was a half-mile, winding walk through the bisected orchard before Kylie spotted Braden’s huge blockish form way back among the trees. He was cutting grass in the orchard with an old push mower. He was whistling as he worked. Or at least trying to, sometimes blowing shrill notes, but mostly blowing wet-sounding air. It sounded cheerful enough, although she couldn’t recognize the song. Judging by the sweat that had soaked through the back of his coveralls and under his arms, he must have been waging his one-man battle against the knee-high grass most of the morning.

  She was debating whether she ought to call out to him and wave, or quietly make her way over there and hope he didn’t start crying the minute he saw her. Unfortunately, as she turned off the dirt road and stepped carefully over a collapsed section of barbed wire fencing, Braden decided the grass couldn’t get any shorter around his current tree and changed direction. He froze the instant he spotted her. Before she could put the apples down to wave at him, he abandoned his mower and took off running for the house she could barely make out in the distance, clear on the far end of the orange orchard.

  “Mama!” he wailed.

  Cringing inwardly, Kylie kept walking. She fully expected she’d not only have to do a lot of fast apologizing when she finally reached that distant house, but in all likelihood she’d still get thrown off the property. Maybe even wearing her peace-offering pie.

  As she came up out of the trees, drawing closer to the house, she could see Braden had taken refuge on the porch, having squeezed his burly size in behind a bent old woman in a rocking chair. With a blanket across her bony lap and a cup of coffee cradled between joint-swollen, arthritic hands, she gruffly barked at her cowering son
, “Get on out of there. What’s wrong with you, boy?”

  That was her cue, right there. Wincing a little, Kylie raised her voice, since her hands were both full. “Hi.”

  The old woman swiveled around and looked at her in surprise. She started to push her lap blanket aside and stand, but Kylie quickly stopped her.

  “No, no. Please don’t.” She came as far as the bottom of their weathered and peeling front porch steps, then stopped. After looking down at her peace offerings, she then once more met the old woman’s eyes. “Good morning, ma’am. Braden.” When she glanced at him, Braden put up both his hands, warding her away, but he didn’t look scared now so much as merely extremely cautious. She tried to take that as a good sign; at least he wasn’t angry. “My name’s Kylie Morgan, ma’am. I wanted to apologize for the misunderstanding that I had with your son yesterday.”

  “Well, isn’t that nice of you.” The old woman reached up and behind her, patting her knobby hand at the air until she encountered her son’s arm. She followed the line of it to his hand, tugging until he obligingly edged back out from behind her chair. “Look at what she brought you, boy. Where are your manners? Don’t keep the lady waiting; go on and help her now.”

  Eyeing her, Braden inched as close as the topmost stair. When he stopped moving, Kylie gently advanced one step and held out the bucket of apples. “Here. Robert said this is what you came for. I’m very sorry I jumped to the wrong conclusions, and I’m really, really sorry that I hit you.”

  Braden’s expression slowly began to metamorphosis, the set of his eyes and mouth turning grim as caution gave way to a sulk. “You hurt my head.”