Thanks for the comments and review, glad you liked it! This is a chapter I’ve had some problems with in the past, so I’m pleased that no major issues jumped out at you. Thanks again for the review, much appreciated. – J
Crime, Thrillers & Mystery / All the Blue-Eyed Angels, Chapter 6
Chapter Six
The object inside the lamb’s mouth was its heart. Once Daniel realized that I wasn’t saying anything more about my motives, he took off to search the grounds, returning with a shovel he’d found in the tool shed. With Einstein watching anxiously, he and I buried the disembodied head far from the house and returned to work. Daniel was quiet for the remainder of the afternoon, but I remembered that practiced silence from long afternoons suffering through it as a teen: He was waiting for me to break.
With the lamb – or at least the poor thing’s head – laid to rest and a fire to ease the chill inside, we spent the remainder of the afternoon cleaning and documenting the first floor with camcorder and camera. By five-thirty, we’d stacked all of the debris from the meeting room off to one side, and had swept out cobwebs along the corners, walls, and ceiling. Daniel had his group to run at seven, and so we finished things up and headed for home.
Once we got to the mainland, Daniel and I split up. He returned home to shower before his meeting, and I decided to do a little grocery shopping before settling in for an evening to myself. I pulled into the tiny parking lot of Wallace’s Littlehope Market at six-thirty, checking my reflection in the rearview mirror. Despite hours of hard, dirty work, I wasn’t a complete loss. My hair was getting too long to be civilized, but I ran my hand through until it parted and flopped and looked almost like it could pass for unkempt chic. And then I pretty much gave up. It was Littlehope, Maine, and it was May: Chances were good that George Clooney wouldn’t be out doing his shopping at Wallace’s anytime soon.
The market consisted of two rooms, one for video rentals (VHS, no DVDs in sight), the other for dry and canned goods. The frozen food was kept in a large Frigidair with prices handwritten on a piece of paper torn from a spiral notebook. The video counter was also the meat counter, and I took a minute to check out the latest releases, noting that the hot new rentals in Littlehope were movies Michael and I had rented months before in Boston.
I was considering the sandwich board suspended from the ceiling when the screen door in the front swung open, accompanied by the clatter of cowbells. I ignored it, heading for the Frigidair hoping to score some Ben & Jerry’s. The locals chatted about whatever it was they chatted about at the front of the store, but I wasn’t paying any attention until a single voice penetrated: A smoky, low, eerily familiar voice, with an accent decidedly unlike the slow, patient drawl of the fishermen who usually frequented Wallace’s.
A rush of adrenaline threatened to flatten me where I stood. Of course, it couldn’t be him – there was no way that fate would be that cruel. I continued to listen to the newcomer speak; the words were too distant to hear, but that voice… I’d heard that voice whisper words of pain and pleasure in my ear back before I really understood the concept of either. It was not a voice I was likely to forget.
I glanced at myself in the glass of the meat/video counter. I’d definitely been feeling overly generous in the car, because unkempt chic was the last thing that came to mind now. I smoothed my hair with a shaking hand, tucking it behind my ears before checking my teeth for offensive particles. Trying to be subtle, I glanced around the corner of the aisle to get a look at the man who stood at the front counter, leaning casually with his hip against the wood. He had thick, dark hair; was tall and lean in the way of an athlete who trained hard and lived well. Even from the back, even knowing that this couldn’t possibly be happening, I knew it was him.
He turned before I could decide what the best escape route might be, and when our eyes met, fifteen years vanished like so much smoke and ash. He was wearing glasses, but even behind them, his black eyes were startling: Slightly large for his face, they had no center, no softness, and the lashes were long enough, dark enough, to seem painted. Those unforgettable eyes caught mine as though instinctively drawn there, and Jack Juarez stood for an endless moment of silence before he cleared his throat and strode toward me.
He stopped not a foot away, and I could feel him coming straight through me in a surge of pure white heat. I ran a hand through my hair again and swallowed, hard enough to feel it in my ears, running my thumbnail along my bottom lip while I waited for him to break the silence that had spanned more than a decade.
“Anna Foster.”
“Hello, Jack.”
He grinned at my voice, a flash of white teeth and a spark of black eyes that did nothing to dissipate the tension. “I wasn’t sure you’d remember me.”
I thought of the last time I’d seen him and immediately lowered my eyes, trying to think of an appropriate response. Finally, I shrugged. “You’re not easy to forget.”
With neither of us sure what came next, silence fell. We weren’t the hugging type; in fact, the electricity between us could short-circuit half the eastern seaboard, so physical contact of any kind was pretty much out. Besides which, something had changed in Jack during our years apart. A look that had once been interpreted as aloof could now pass for dangerous, in the set of his jaw and the line of his spine. Our last night together came back in an adrenaline-stained blur, and I took a step back.
“It’s been a long time.” He lowered his voice to avoid the eyes focused on us from around the store. I moved in closer to hear him, and my hand inadvertently brushed his thigh. I pulled it back again immediately, the burn already setting in where contact had been made.
“Very long time,” I agreed.
“Almost fifteen years. Not since Mexico.”
I lowered my eyes and concentrated on the stained floorboards beneath my feet, tracing the grain of the wood. He followed my gaze and smiled at me, with kindness this time, and the tension between us lightened slightly.
“You let your hair grow out – it looks good.”
“Yeah, right, thanks. I’m really looking forward to that Miss Universe pageant next month.”
The words came out harder than I’d intended. I tried to think of some way to be civil, some solid way to have a normal conversation between two adults who’d once been lovers. And came up with nothing.
“What are you doing here?”
He shrugged, characteristically evasive. “Oh, you know – I had business.” He changed the subject again, and my confusion abruptly turned to annoyance. Jack had always taken the role of the mysterious Latin lover a little too seriously, even when we were teenagers. “Daniel mentioned you’d be in town.”
“Daniel? Daniel knows you’re here?” I thought about the six hours I’d just spent with the man closer to me than anyone, who had conveniently neglected to mention this little tidbit. I’d strangle him as soon as he got out of that freakin’ meeting. Anger management be damned.
“Of course. He didn’t tell you? I’ve been staying with him for the past few weeks.”
My eyebrows shot up toward my hairline – as did my blood pressure, I’m sure. “Wait a minute – what do you mean, you’re staying with him? I’m staying with him, and he never mentioned anything about you being anywhere within a thousand-mile radius of Littlehope.”
For a moment, he looked genuinely surprised. “I’m sorry – I thought he would have said something. I was supposed to be away for the next week, but something came up and I had to reschedule at the last minute.”
“And now you’re here.” We both stood silent while the seconds passed, and I tried to figure out where the hell to go from here. Finally, Jack shifted gears.
“So, I heard you’re teaching theology to the geniuses down in Cambridge now. I read your paper in that sociology journal last year; pretty heady stuff. I was impressed.”
I shrugged, appalled to find myself taken in by the compliment. “I didn’t think anyone read that but the poor fools forced to listen to my lectures.”
It was getting warmer between us. He gave me a wide, familiar grin, leaning back against the wall. He wore torn Levi’s and a black turtleneck topped by an oversized parka, a sign that his Floridian blood still hadn’t thickened to Maine’s standards. His hair was longer than it had been when I’d seen him last, still off his neck but long enough now that a woman could get her fingers lost in the soft thickness.
“What’s this – modesty? I don’t remember that from the old days.”
I returned his generous grin. “Why, Jack Juarez, was that a cheap shot or just your half-assed attempt at flirting?”
An elderly but impressively vigorous woman dressed in Faded Glory blue jeans and an oversized pink sweatshirt pushed impatiently past me. Her thinning gray hair was frizzed in a bottled perm, her face flushed from the cold outside. She stopped when she spotted Jack.
“How’s tricks, Dr. Juarez?”
I looked at Jack in surprise at the title and he avoided my gaze, lowering his eyes and batting long lashes at the woman.
“Fine, Edie. Everything all right? Nothing new at the house, I hope.”
“You’d be the first to hear if there was, hon.” The woman stopped for a few seconds, staring openly at me. “I know you, don’t I?”
I shrugged, feeling suddenly like the teenager I’d once been, frozen forever in this town. “I used to live here. My mother ran the county med clinic.”
Edie nodded vigorously, and I remembered her immediately. “Sure, sure. Annie, right? I worked for your mum when she first started up – how’s she doing?”
I gave the stock answer, looking only briefly to Jack for help before facing facts: This was the hometown, these were the questions that would be asked. I might as well suck it up and get used to answering. “She’s in Brunswick now, teaching part-time at Bowdoin and working as a pediatric surgeon in Portland.”
The woman nodded again, seeming to take my answer as a matter of course. After another second or two of uncomfortable silence, Edie seemed to come to, smiling at me before hitting Jack lightly in the stomach. “God, she grew up gorgeous, huh? Skinny little redheaded mop turns into something like this? You got your mum’s eyes, but you’re tall like your daddy – never would’ve thought it, little as you were. I heard you were comin’ back.”
While I’d never considered my height all that impressive, I had to admit that at five-foot-four and just under one-hundred-twenty pounds for all but three days of the month, I felt damned near statuesque next to Edie. The woman probably hadn’t seen five feet since the Reagan administration. I shifted, this time looking openly to Jack for salvation. Before he could intervene, Edie continued; I wondered briefly how likely it was that the earth would open up and swallow me whole if I just wished for it hard enough.
“I know you and your mum got the hell out of here just as soon as she got you graduated, but I still try and keep tabs on all the Littlehope kids. I read that story the Courier did on you – how you’re writing that book about the fire.”
I nodded. Yet another awkward silence ensued. When Edie seemed to realize I wouldn’t be volunteering any further information about my life or anyone else’s, she excused herself and took off full-tilt for the dairy cooler, apparently as anxious to end the encounter as I was. Once she’d said her goodbyes, Jack glanced around as though just realizing where we were. Taking in my dirty clothes and general state of disrepair, he waved vaguely toward the front door.
“Listen, do you want to grab some food and head back to Daniel’s? We don’t have a lot of choices for going out, but I could make something if you want. Catch up on old times?”
I hesitated. Old home week could be a dangerous game to play – especially with Jack. But my only other option was returning to the island, which sounded about as appealing as having my foot run over. Finally, I sighed. I was dirty, and hungry, and there was a lamb’s head buried in the backyard of the only other place I had to call home. Relatively speaking, Jack Juarez seemed like the sanest option out there.
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Eddy_Curant reviewed Version 1 -
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Overall I liked this segment. It moved the story along, adding flavor to the Maine, small town landscape with its all knowing inhabitants. I also felt real tension in Anna. One thing that I didn’t understand or what the author filed to give me, was a struggle not to have dinner with Jack. Sure, they were going to the same place, but it seemed that the author had set up this tension of Anna not wanting to spark the fire with Jack, yet she just goes willingly to eat with him deciding it was better that sleeping around a sheep’s buried head. I had expected to be a little more resistance either external or internal to this decision before she accepted the offer.
Also, on a small note:
”I lowered my eyes and concentrated on the stained floorboards beneath my feet, tracing the grain of the wood. He followed my gaze and smiled at me…”
Since the story is told from Anna’s POV and the author had written in specific eye direction for her, how could she know that Jack was smiling at her right then? Perhaps she looked up and noticed the smile, of she could hear it in his voice or that she picked up on some vibe that suggested he was smiling. I think this should be cleared up a bit.
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Albur reviewed Version 1 -
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The develope of this charpter let me an little confuse. At the start I was thinking that the main idea of it was the head of the lamb, and I was wating during the reading some explanations about that. Maybe in the past charpters is the reason of bring it as main idea. As soon I realized that the dialog change the scene without explanation for the head, I was able to catch up. Maybe an litle more the drama is necessary arround what sound as the main idea.
Weaver reviewed Version 1 -
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This looked like one of those things that everyone reads and reviews and keeps coming back for more of, so I thought I’d take a look…
Your writing style is just right for this kind of story, and your narrative voice is consistent. ”Chances were good that George Clooney wouldn’t be out doing his shopping at Wallace’s anytime soon.” Just one good example of what’s engaging about your character’s “voice.”
I’m going to go back and read the earlier parts now… I look forward to seeing more in the future, too.
SnwAng reviewed Version 1 -
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Eww Eww Eww on the lambs heart being in it’s mouth. You couldn’t find anything less gross to use there. I actually scared my sister when I said ick out loud.
Other then the ickiness of it your writing was, as normal pretty good. I like Jack’s character, and was surprised when he turned out to be a doctor. I love his character, even though he seems to be a bad boy.
Anna needs to remember that fate is always that cruel. Over all a pretty good job as always
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