Chapter Eighteen
Light flickered from under the door. She knocked.
He answered, looking skittish as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, in his unbuttoned shirt and linen drawers. She kept her eyes professionally on his face, glad that she was a sufficient player of poker to keep her inside thoughts well inside. Sam Winchester, however, was conflicted and troubled, just as she had thought he'd be, with the storm winds in his head showing on his face plain as they were bawling outside. She waited. He pulled his shirt closed and stepped aside to allow her in. She almost wondered if he would decline to do so, which contributed a bit of pique to her own state of mind.
As she suspected, the lamp was turned up, the bed untouched, the books open on the table. He reached for his trousers, but she stopped him.
"We're all good friends by now, don't you think?" She took his pants from him and tossed them over the bedstead, then pulled out a chair and sat. He was unsure, though now she knew it was manners, not modesty. She set her full bottle with a thump next to the less full one on the table. He considered for only a moment before likewise sitting down, though his long legs barely fit under it. He wrapped his shirt closed.
"I suspected sleep might be a slippery fish." She glanced at the books.
"I just wanted to check some things…"
"You unsure?"
He shook his head after a moment. "No. I'm sure. I was hoping…"
"Looking for a way to extend your stay?"
He studied her, surprised and wary at her guess. "I haven't found one. Maybe— It's too risky."
She waited, but he trailed off and didn't pick up again. "You've been after him for a while."
He nodded. "I waited for him to come back. The people he came to rescue returned… some of them. But then he didn't come back."
"You don't have to tell a woman about waiting, Sam Winchester. So you came to fetch him back." Came to rescue, she noted. Yet more stories.
Sam nodded. "I was afraid he'd gotten lost, forgotten the way home."
"Still, you knew just the watering hole to wait by. For the prairie wolf to come drinking."
He smiled at that. They looked at the whiskey bottle for a moment. There was only the one glass. He filled it and set it in front of her, and took a swig directly from the bottle.
"Just you two then?"
"We lost our Dad last year."
"That's a terrible thing. No other folk?" She took the bottle from him and drank from it herself. She uncorked her full one and set it in front of him.
"Our mom died when I was a baby. He's taken care of me my whole life."
"I could see that about him. That's real nice. And I'm thinking you take care of him, too."
Sam smiled and turned the bottle in his hand. "When he lets me. When I think to."
"Now I won't hear that. Like tonight? He's sounding right taken care of."
He looked askance, not willing to confront that face on. "That's something he never needs help with." His eyes smiled, at least.
"You didn't come here to listen to me ramble, Miss Rose."
You don't think? She smiled at him. "I'm seeing to the comfort of a guest in my establishment, Mister Winchester. You are sore troubled, that is plain. Your brother is seen to, that leaves you, and I take it as a sacred duty to see to you personally."
He seemed not to hear her, or to take her meaning.
"Dean really likes it here. He's a deputized agent of the law."
"That mean a lot to him?"
"Sheriff Buell trusting him like that? Yeah. Yeah, it really does…"
"Milo Buell put the same faith in you." Sam just twitched a smile.
She tried another tack. "Had trouble with the law, maybe."
Sam drew a breath, deep. "We try to stay on the right side, but things just get away from you sometimes, you know?"
She did. "And?"
"Dean's one of the good guys, Miss Rose. He deserves…"
He leaned forward, hunching into his shoulders. She was looking at a man, but saw a boy, with all the waggle-tail devotion just pouring out of him. And again leaving himself out.
"I have no doubt he's a good man, Sam. Though aside from cold-blooded murder, I'm thinking there isn't a Commandment he bothers with."
Sam spoke softly. "Just one."
She waited for the ghosts to pass through the room, and then said, "What's in Divinity Falls, Sam?"
He considered his answer. "Our way home. What turned it into a ghost town?"
"Ghosts?" she asked.
"No, no, sorry, I mean, why was it abandoned?"
"Locusts wiped out the crops. Strange thing."
"Just that town?"
"Just that town. Where Hughes owned property. Makes sense now, knowing…"
He nodded. She bit her tongue, hoping he'd continue. He didn't.
"Home is wherever you two are together, I take it?" That at least got a nod.
"There trouble waiting for you back home? Wherever home might be?"
"Yes, but we'll deal. Doesn't matter." A sigh. "It's complicated."
"You sound like you just need a bit of respite yourself."
"I'm tired, too, Miss Rose. He's not the only…"
He studied the bottle long enough for a peal of thunder to build, roll over the town, and fade into fitful rumbling. His eyes looked up, and she was caught by the knowing look.
He looked at her with a chary regard. "In another place and time, Miss Rose, you'd be a celebrated psychologist."
"I am going to assume as you're a sweet-natured thing that was complimentary."
"It was."
"Well, then. Now we're getting back into friendly waters. What of you, Sam Winchester?"
Let's see where a shift of wind sends him. He just shook his head.
"I thought you were coming here to seduce me, Mrs. Robinson." His voice went from tenor high to base fiddle low and if she hadn't been looking right at him she'd have thought someone else was talking. The apple falls not far from the tree with Winchester men, they are a menace to all womankind, she thought, and I wonder who Mrs. Robinson was in his history. And smooth as the best charcoal drip Tennessee bourbon mint julep, that voice.
"Crossed my mind."
"What made you change it?"
"Can't say as I have."
He watched her, and she him. He played with the bottle, tipping it this way and that. "I'm bad luck for women."
"You believe in something as haphazard as luck?"
"Not really. Do you?"
"I do not."
He went silent again, looking down at his fingers drawing little circles of whisky on the table. She wanted to wait for him, to let him have his thoughts, but elder brother was busy proving how much he enjoyed the company of women, it sounded like they were putting up a barn at the end of the hallway. Sam lowered his head. Served her right for sending him in this direction, just when it appeared she was about to get him talking. But still, her responsibility.
"What was her name?" she asked.
Sam's body shifted slightly. "Jessica."
"Does it do you well to speak of her?"
He met her eyes again, from under that tangle of hair, and she was looking down into a deep well of sorrow.
"Sometimes."
They sat another while. Down the other end of the hall, the girls must have finally regained their professional dignity, and as it was two to one, they must have gained the upper hand. It was his voice that could be heard now, getting from them as good as he had given. Made Marie-Rose feel right proud. Sam was only hearing his own head.
"How long?"
"A year… Yesterday. Over a year."
"So recent? Dear Lord. And your papa, too, right on the heels." She clamped her mouth closed before she said something about poor lambs. "I suppose folk have been telling you 'time heals.'"
"Sometimes."
She sighed. "Busybodies."
"I haven't had much chance to talk about it with anyone. "
Another pause.
"Ah." She waited.
But then she found her own self speaking into the silence. "One person can't ever another know how their squash is going to grow, each one twists up different. Some men cut their hearts out, but that only works on small-hearted men."
Something must have penetrated; he raised his head to her.
"And it probably doesn't help to have that one for a brother. Not a gambling woman, but I'd lay odds on that he's been a fire-blooded colt since his first hair sprouted." She looked at her own bottle. Must have had more whiskey than she'd realized, talking her fool head off.
"Yes, ma'am. Hasn't changed. You don't think I'm wallowing?"
"I think that an insulting charge. Who says that to a man in mourning? What took her, if you don't mind my asking?"
"She was murdered. Before I could ask her to marry me."
Marie-Rose felt the blood go out of her face. Words deserted her, and she reached across the small table, putting her hand over his, squeezing hard. He clutched her fingers.
"I know I'm supposed to move on, to get… I don't know. Dean keeps hoping I'll meet someone. Another girl."
"Move on? I'm sure he means no harm, but honestly—" He was still speaking, though.
"I have met other girls, but—I can't. I try, but…"
"Everything reminds you?"
He nodded, and she saw the rising tide in his eyes. "It's not fair. There was a girl in New York, but every time she smiled I thought…"
"You were betraying."
Now the winds were blowing them both far out to sea.
"How do I start over? When does it get better?"
She drew a full, deep breath. "Some hurts aren't to be healed this side of the grave, Sam."
He looked full doomed at that, but she pressed on.
"You don't set your heart on wedding a green-grass Lawrence virgin, for one thing. She'll expect the moon never rose and the stars never shined but for the two of you, past, present and future, and that cannot be. You'll find a woman who has suffered as you have suffered. No shortage of those in the world. You'll find yourself a woman who will count herself lucky to find a man who can love a woman as much as you have loved. Your Jessica will always be a shadow by your bed, and her man will be just in the next room, to her, but all you ask is 'as much as,' never 'instead of.' You and her will learn to live peaceful with each other's ghosts."
He jerked at that, looking at her in some shock, but didn't release her hand.
"And I can tell you how it was for me, Sam Winchester. It doesn't get better. You get better at living with it. And after a good long time. That's what I can tell you. Now take a deep breath, Sam."
He stared at the tabletop. She squeezed his hand again. He inhaled, caught his breath, then sat back and straightened up proper. He breathed in deep then, smiling gratefully at her. She felt the tension recede. He let go, running both his hands through his hair, visibly shaking off the melancholy.
"That's very wise, Miss Rose. Do you take this good care of all your guests?"
"You don't think? You are no worse as some and a damned sight more deserving, I will say."
He smiled back at her, amazing her at how quickly he recovered his poise. She met his look evenly, knowing now that the boy might have been anxious, but the man knew what she offered and that held no fear. There was just enough bleary in his eyes to give her pause, however. He sighed, after a time, glancing at her and away, unsure. The boy and the man needed to agree and couldn't. He started to say something, but didn't. The appreciable sound of Dean's voice was currently muffled, fortunately, and the rain steady. He fought a yawn, which was a signal for Marie-Rose to help the deciding along.
"If you intend to be riding at sun up, you need your sleep, do you not?"
He nodded, and ran his hand through his mop of hair again. They sat for a while longer, pulled one more drink each from their bottles.
She stood, and went round him to pull back the blankets on the bed. He looked up at her, mournful sad and a bit groggy and she felt herself a horrible person. She wanted to tuck him in with a sweet story. Plying this forlorn child with drink and into bed? What had she been thinking? He stood, and his shirt slid down, baring his chest and shoulder, and she was immediately, powerfully and sincerely recollected of just exactly what she'd been thinking.
He crawled into bed and curled, and she pulled the blankets over him. He turned to his side facing her, pulling his pillow to his chest and drawing his legs up.
"Thank you for talking to me, Miss Rose." The little stripling was back, shoulders or no, changeable as a fish flashing dark blue-green then gleaming silver in a stream.
"Thought you'd be poorly by yourself. You did mighty good work this day. Did your family name proud. Tomorrow you take your brother home." She considered jumping out the window for talking like a mooncow fool. The treacle coming out of her mouth was the right thing to say, but good God damn, next she'd be tucking him in and kissing his forehead.
She put her hand to his head like she did for Tully when he'd been young enough to need comforting thus and not so old as to be the very Devil when getting it. Sam's eyes closed and she leaned over and damn her indeed, kissed him on the forehead. A howl of wind moaned through the window, though it was solid closed. Good thing, sounded like big brother down the hall had been reduced to pleading.
She held off a sigh as she leaned over to blow out the lamp. Then as she turned to take her leave, hoping his dreams wouldn't be bad, a hand snaked out to catch her wrist. Gently it took hold, but firmly. For an instant she felt as if he had played her, with his little boy act and his shining doe eyes, but of course she'd only played herself, for he was what he was, boy and man, and she wanted to laugh at her own foolishness, for didn't she just say changeable as a flash of water?
He held her beside the bed for the count of three heartbeats, waiting for her, and she waited for him, and then he rose up, drawing up alongside her like a rising wave of the high tide, releasing her wrist to slide his hands up her body to take hold of the sides of her face and impress his mouth against hers. And like the wind rustling the leaves of a lakeside cypress tree, he held himself against her with strength but not force, barely disturbing the drape of her shift and breathing away the lock of hair that had strayed across her face.
In the midst of being born up in the surge of those powerful arms, Marie-Rose was amazed at how he held her face, his hands not gripping, not pulling, but cosseting her cheeks like he would hold a glass bowl or a soap bubble, allowing no fear of his strength. He pressed his lips against hers wanting permission, wanting indulgence, just wanting.
She slid his shirt from his shoulders, giving that indulgence, and the great wave that had borne her up now drew her down in a heady rush across and over his body to lie beside him. He washed over her, never letting his weight bear down, releasing her smoothly to hold himself above her, their bodies touching all along, but not pressing. She should have felt engulfed and drowned, his prodigious body so strong and potent, but she did not, the way he handled her so particular. She was minded of childhood summers in a skiff on Lake Ponchartrain as powerful blue-green waves lifted the boat high, gently but irresistibly, and then falling down again: she felt the same rush of the cool wind and the sense of the majestic, the immensity of the water beneath her, safe in her little boat, rising and falling in the bottomless embrace of the lake but no fright of being overwhelmed. He buried his face in her neck; she drew his shirt down his arms. Smaller men had made her feel claustrophobic with their weight and their pawing, but had she wished she could have slid right out from under him, he was so careful with her. As it happened, she did not so wish. She tossed his shirt aside. She let her hands roam the great landscape of his back. He was shivering.
As she might have guessed, he did not just admire and enjoy a woman, as did his firely brother; he worshiped, he venerated. He kissed her neck, her cheeks, her eyes. He breathed in her hair, and whiskey-warm breathed out against her neck, his tongue slow and patient, lightly used on earlobes and throat. Guaranteed to make a woman sing hallelujah and go loco with impatience, for he rushed nothing. His unlacing of her chemise was opening a tabernacle, and he set to attending to each of her breasts like he would kiss the head of his first newborn child. He had that rare hunger that could only be sated by satisfying hers, and he worked with a will.
She let her hands and mouth and body attest that she welcomed his weight and his strength and that he need not fear her fragile and that she welcomed the heart's pain that could not be separated from joy and she would not remonstrate if he cried out a name that wasn't hers. That skin that had looked of museum marble was supple and warm and she breathed on the little hairs on his arms to raise them up. He tasted of Castile and linen starch and eucalyptus.
They moved against each other, river merging with stream, turbulent joy found in learning each other's currents. He was surefooted, but still she felt hesitation, conflicted by the lightning storm still crackling over the tempest-whipped sea. She used what she knew to draw him out, to give him license, to show him she neither feared the great strength of his body nor the great hurt of his past so he could let the wind and wave work together, and she could let her fire and earth join with it.
But strong as a field ox though he was, and young and exceedingly hale, comes the moment when even the most robust constitution must bow before the imperfection of the flesh. The exertions of the day and the lateness of the hour and the whiskey betrayed him, and he sounded a small whimper of frustration. She ran her fingers into his hair, and raised his head, to bring his eyes to hers. She saw not frustration or disappointment there but full disgrace, and she smiled, and kissed his mouth and kissed his nose.
He slid off to the side, breathing labored, and made whisper a mournful apology. She put her arms around his head, let his arms slide around her. In another amazing display of his peculiar and unusual upbringing, his embrace was asking her to remain. And as the night had been right full of peculiar and unusual, she found herself remaining.
She pulled him close and held him there and she whispered to his ear:
"No cause to be afflicted, Mister Sam Winchester. No doubt in my mind you are a passionate and dedicated lover of women and should I live a further thirty-seven years I shall never hope to again have in my bed a body as beautiful and a heart as boundless as yours. But sleep you need and sleep you shall have, for your life and the life of the brother you hold dear depend upon it. Now I shall tell you this: if you truly wish to please me, Sam Winchester, here's what you can know. I have been a widow lo these last eight years when Mister Claude Dumaine took fever and left me bereft. And in all the years after as I have made my way as best I could, I have bedded many a man, some good, many rotten, and most just ordinary. But the one thing I miss, what I truly miss of married life is to wake up in the early morning with my man next to me heavy, sweaty, and warm as a hound dog in the noon sun, drowsy and wanton and hard as a blacksmith's mallet and with no flowers, no poems or fuss just to take hold of me and roll on top and drive on in and barrel straight down the line express special with no more control than stampeding horses till he bursts like a noon-day cannon grunting like a rutting boar hog, moaning like wind through a ravine and I'm yelping like a whole Cheyenne war party and 'a very good morning to you, my dear.' Then he falls asleep on top of me panting and dozing so's I'm like to suffocate. You want to please this woman in bed, Sam Winchester? Now you know how."
His breath was unsteady and she couldn't tell if he was about to laugh, or cry, or snore. He receded, turning to curl around her, wrapping her up, and she could see his eyes shining in the moonlight.
"Thank you," said his voice in her ear.
Silly creature, thanking her for doing her business. She pulled the blankets over them both, as she didn't trust herself to speak. Were she to speak, she might say something importunate about how changing so quick from a magnificent stallion of a man into a beautiful, dear little boy while they were entwined together sweat and linen and skin was downright flummoxing. She was askew to stroke his hair, which was just as well, as that would be far too precious. So she turned herself to spoon into him, molding herself into the living wall of his body, like a mottled pearl nestled in a warm, strong, wet oyster shell, and she drew his arm across her like a curling ocean breaker falling endlessly down. He exhaled a sigh, touched with soft murmurs. She looked out the window at the blue-white moon making a showing through thinning storm clouds, wondering if she'd lost her mind recently and no one had had the good grace to tell her.
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