A Way (The Voyagers Book 1) Page 8

  Jessie squealed, and tried to stop her feet from touching the ground. “You know you have to carry me back to the water now, right?”

  She was only half kidding. Gerald and his sister might be polar opposites, but the one thing they shared, was their hatred for snakes. Dex kind of agreed with them.

  “Ok,” he said. “But before I do, make a deal with me.”

  He reached for her hand that had settled on the back of his head, and brought it to his lips.

  “This is our place; our secret spot, even if it becomes invested with snakes. We’ll swim out here until we are so old we can barely walk. We’ll bring our children, our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren here and tell them that this is the place where I asked you to marry me.”

  Jessie squealed for the second time in as many minutes, and this time did jump off the ground; right into his arms.

  “Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes!” She covered every inch of his face with kisses and then unexpectedly stopped, her attention caught by something just over his shoulder.

  “What’s that?” She lowered herself from his embrace and walked around behind him, as he searched their sight line to see what she was looking at.

  “What?” He asked, following her.

  “This.” She knelt down in the grass. Her hand smoothed over a spot that looked like a fire had been burning, recently.

  “It’s an exact circle,” she looked up at him, “strange.” Something else caught her attention and she began to move towards a boulder, a few feet from the place she had been crouching.

  A feeling that he had never experienced before, settled over Dex. It was one filled with dread, fear, and an unexplainable terror. He sprinted towards her, grabbed her arm, and yanked her towards him with more roughness than intended.

  “Ouch, Dex. What are you doing?”

  He released her arm. When he grabbed for her, the feeling started to subside, but still vibrated his nerves. It reverberated through his bones.

  “Sorry. We should get back to the lake. Check on Sammy.” Her expression told him that he wasn’t going to get off that easy.

  “Dex, what happened? You look like you saw a monster.” This time she was the one to grip his arm tightly.

  He placed his hand over hers, reassuringly. “It’s nothing. I thought I saw something move over there and it spooked me a little. All that talk about snakes.”

  If he wasn’t convincing himself, how did he expect to convince her? The mention of a possible snake sighting saved him from answering any more questions.

  “You’re right, we should check on Sammy.” She hurried away.

  Dex was happy to follow her and put as much distance between them, and that rock, as quickly as he could.

  CHAPTER 16

  Winter came fast and furious, the lake froze solid, almost overnight, snow blanketing every exposed surface. So much had fallen that Dex had only intermittently seen Jessie all week. In some places, he trekked through waist high snow and arrived at her house to spend a few hours thawing out by her fireplace and drinking boiling hot tea. On her sixteenth birthday, the snow started falling before sunrise. He was afraid he wouldn’t make it to her house to give her the gift he had picked out months ago. Dex wouldn’t tell her that it was Rebecca who helped him sneak it out from under her nose while she was at work. Jessie claimed Rebecca Morehouse’s slight obsession with him didn’t bother her, but he noticed the way her eyes narrowed when Rebecca sashayed by him during his weekly supply pickup from the store. He smiled at the memory. Jessie was cute. Jealous Jessie was even cuter.

  He told her he would join her family for her annual birthday supper, but he planned on taking her to the newly opened restaurant, the town’s first. He had saved for months the meager wages his father provided him, to be able to surprise Jessie and couldn’t wait to see her face.

  Dex dressed, the weather being the main influence on his attire, and was finally satisfied with his hard to tame hair. He didn’t spend that much time, knowing it would return to being a natural mess as soon as he put on his hat. He had started lacing up his boots when his father blew in through the back door, tracking snow into the room where Dex was getting ready to leave.

  “I don’t want you going out tonight. I couldn’t see more than one foot in front of me and barely made it to the barn,” his father asserted.

  “Well that’s not going to happen. You know today is Jessie’s birthday. She’s waiting for me.” Dex tugged his jacket off the back of the chair and slung its bulk over his shoulders.

  “I don’t care if it’s your goddamn wedding day and she’s waiting for you at the church you ain’t going anywhere.” His father’s face was turning crimson with anger and he advanced towards Dex, his fists clenched.

  This was out of character for the usually calm man. Dex couldn’t even remember if his father had ever raised his hand to him. He tried a different approach from the combative stance he had taken at the beginning of their conversation.

  “Look, I’ll be careful. If it gets too crazy, I promise I’ll turn around.”

  Dex twisted the knob and opened the front door, the howling wind doing most of the work. His father slammed his fist against it to shut it.

  “You aren’t hearing me, Alex.”

  Great, he’s using my real name, Dex shuddered.

  “Jessie will have another birthday, but if you leave this house you won’t.”

  What is his problem? “You know what? I’m seventeen, and I’m going to see my girlfriend on her sixteenth birthday. If you stop me from taking the sleigh, I’ll walk.” Dex raised his voice to match his father’s anger.

  He removed his hand from the door. “Just sit for a minute, Dex.” His father was back to using his nickname, adapted real name.

  Dex hoped that was a good sign, lowered himself back into the chair, and waited for him to continue.

  “I know you love Jessie, anyone that has met either of you knows that, but right now it’s not a good idea to get so serious. Maybe wait a few years.”

  “Too late pa, we’re already serious. I asked her to marry me two months ago and now that she’s sixteen that’s going to happen as soon as possible.” Dex said. The statement caused his father to flinch and lower his head.

  “Son, if you marry Jessie now, it will destroy her. If you love her, you will wait.”

  He wasn’t making sense. Dex’s thoughts were racing. How could marrying the missing part of him, destroy her?

  “That doesn’t make any sense, it’s not like either of us are going anywhere.”

  His father flinched again. This time so hard the table that they were sitting at bucked underneath their hands.

  “Do you remember when Mary Samantha was born?”

  What did Jessie’s baby sister have to do with this? The more his father spoke, the more confused Dex became.

  “Sammy, sure I do. I don’t know how you do. You were gone for days around the same time.”

  Dex had no idea where his father had disappeared to the month Sammy was born. He and his mother had been there the day after, helping Jessie and her mother. He couldn’t remember seeing Jessie’s father, Jed, during that time either.

  “When Sammy was born, I was with Jed. We were looking after something.”

  “Ooookay,” Dex said slowly. He was starting to get impatient.

  “We weren’t sure Sammy would end up being who we thought she was, but now that she’s older we are pretty confident she is.” His father moved to put his hands on Dex’s shoulder, but changed his mind and returned them to the table.

  “So, Sammy is who? You do know this has nothing to do with Jessie and me, right? Can I go now?”

  “Dex, it has everything to do with you and Jessie, and Peter, and Gerald.”

  Before he could ask again, what his enigmatic father was talking about, the front door blew open. This time the snow blasting into the warm room was pushed in by Gerald, with a panicked look in his eyes.

  “Dex! Have you…” Gerald sto
pped, trying to reclaim his breath from the fog that had formed in the cold air around his head. Snowflakes were glued to his eyebrows, lids and upper lip. “Have you seen Jessie? Is she here?” He looked wildly around the room.

  Dex jumped up. “What do you mean, is she here? I was just trying to leave to go pick her up.” He shot an accusatory look at his father.

  “She decided to walk over here and then come back to the house with you in the sleigh. She was worried you would have a hard time in the snow. She left before pa could stop her so he sent me after her to bring her back.” He paused to gulp back more frozen air. “I was only a few minutes behind her, but there is no way in this snow I could’ve beaten her here.”

  Gerald continued running through the details, but Dex could hear nothing over the loud hum in his ears. He pushed past his friend and ran out into the raging blizzard.

  “JESSIE! JESSIE, WHERE ARE YOU? JESSIE!” He screamed until his throat was raw. Where was she?

  His feet felt like they were stuck in quicksand as he tried to plough through the relentless snow. Where was she? He set off in the direction he hoped was towards her house, Gerald’s foot prints had already disappeared.

  Dex looked around frantically: the snow stinging his eyes, the cold wind stealing his breath. He forced himself to calm his anxious breathing and to think. He knew Jessie, she was impulsive, but she wasn’t reckless. She wouldn’t let herself be buried in the snow, which could happen quickly if she became disoriented. Through the snow, beside him, Gerald appeared. Next to him, he saw his father. In his hands was one of the kerosene lamps from their kitchen table, swinging violently in the blistery wind. The light it was throwing was making no impact through the driving snow. Dex knew what direction they should go to search the snow caked landscape. He had a theory where Jessie might be.

  “She would go to the closest shelter if she knew she was in trouble,” Dex yelled to Gerald. His voice conveyed a sureness he didn’t possess.

  They headed towards, what Dex hoped, was the Dickson’s barn, a five minute walk on a good day. On this night, it took over fifteen minutes to even get close to where he estimated the structure could be. What if she wasn’t there? If she was stuck somewhere, outside in the storm….He shut off his mind to all scenarios and focused on getting to his neighbor’s barn.

  The dwelling sat on the far edge of a field from the house Mr. and Mrs. Dickson and their four children lived; all younger than Dex, Jessie and their siblings, minus Sammy. He thought one of their names was Jack. The older children had used the barn to play in when they were growing up, prior to Peter falling off the low barn roof and breaking his arm. Now it was rarely used for anything other than storage for long forgotten items. The last time he had gone near the dilapidated building, all of its windows and the only door had been boarded up to keep out curious children. Dex hoped there was another way in.

  “Do you see it?” Gerald called, trying to keep up with Dex, as he ran in slow motion, through the blizzard. “Are we going the right way?”

  “I hope so. I can’t see it, yet,” Dex called back, without losing his stride.

  The lantern Dex’s father had brought with him had long since blown out and lay abandoned in a snow bank. Instead, to help, he walked about five feet from him, covering the ground Dex and Gerald couldn’t. Finally, after what had felt like hours, Dex could make out the dark shape of a building in front of them. As they approached it, he could tell that the door had not been opened during or before the storm, maybe not in years. The board that had been nailed across it, was firmly in place. He tried pulling on it anyway, but the stubborn nails holding it in place gave away only slightly. She wasn’t in there, she couldn’t be. She had to be.

  “Jessie!” He screamed; pounding his frozen fist on the rough wood. His gloves forgotten in the bin at his house, his boats unlaced, jacket wide open.

  “Jessie are you in there?” The angry wind was the only answer he heard.

  Gerald and his father were beside him, yanking on the handle attached to the barn door, pulling at the plank. It was starting to creak loose. Dex left them to their struggles, to assess the rest of the building. To his relief he saw an opening in the wall where the aging wood was pried away. He leaned down, digging away the snow that had accumulated to force a bigger space for him to enter. He was aware he was saying Jessie’s name over and over again. He stopped. Over the sound of his own voice Dex heard a sound that wasn’t the wind.

  “Dukie??” Dex shouted through the crack in the wall above where he was digging. The dog barked again from just behind the wall.

  “Duke, is that you?”

  He dug faster and finally had enough room to crawl into the barn. The feeling that was left in his fingers, was gone. Dex was able to wedge himself between the ground and the barn wall and wrestled himself to the other side. He was out of the wind, but remained in the cold.

  There, wrapped in her brown winter coat and hat pulled down over her ears, was Jessie. Her brightly colored knitted scarf, stark against the dark dreariness of the barn, hung loosely around her neck. She smiled weakly at him, embarrassed, running her gloved fingers through her dog’s mane.

  “Hi,” she said, sheepishly. “That wasn’t too smart, was it?” Even in the dimness of her emergency shelter he could see her eyes were shining with dampness.

  “Jessie! What were you thinking? Didn’t you hear me yelling outside?” He ran to her and landed on the floor beside her, covering her with his embrace. He could see the blue tint in her lips. She shivered.

  “I heard you, you just couldn’t hear me. Dex my feet are so cold, I don’t think I can move.”

  He wrapped the scarf tighter around her neck and started rubbing her legs, arms, her back, any part of her he could reach.

  “I was worried about you, trying to make it to my house by yourself. The snow really wasn’t that bad when I left.” She tried to explain herself but knew she was failing. She pressed her face into him, pushing herself closer, searching for warmth. “I thought I could just wait in here until it stopped. Duke was keeping me warm. I didn’t think, I’m sorry.”

  Dex gratefully pet the dog. Good boy.

  Gerald and his father had finally managed to force their way through the main door of the barn. Dex and Jessie didn’t hear them standing behind them until his father spoke.

  “Jessie! What made you think it was a good idea to wander out into the middle of this? You put yourself in danger. You put Dex and your brother in danger.” His father tried to sound stern, but Dex could tell he was too relieved to scold someone that was like a daughter to him. He turned to Gerald, “you and I can go back to the house to get the horses.”

  Gerald squatted down beside his sister and removed his jacket. He lifted the thick knitted blue sweater he was wearing over his head and handed it to Jessie. “Here, put this on,” he said softly.

  Jessie took it from him, pulled it over her head, and moved back, deeper into Dex’s arms.

  “We won’t be long. Can I trust you both to stay put?” His father asked.

  Jessie and Dex nodded in unison.

  “Good.” He and Gerald retreated. Swallowed up by the weather, they pushed the door shut behind them.

  Dex and Jessie sat in silence for a few moments, listening to each other’s breathing, before either of them spoke again.

  “Happy Birthday.” Dex kissed the top of her head. He could feel her smile against his chest. He wrapped his opened coat around her.

  “You kept your promise, Dex,” she whispered, almost to herself.

  He stroked her cheek, happy to feel it warm beneath his touch; her shivering had subsided.

  “You said you would always find me.”

  CHAPTER 17

  The party of four arrived back at Jessie’s house, where her parents reprimanded her a little more harshly than Dex’s father. Her mother put a kettle on the stove to make them tea, their favorite, to help warm up their frigid insides. It wasn’t the birthday surprise that he planned for
her sweet sixteen, but he didn’t think he had ever seen her look more beautiful. Jessie radiated with light as she rubbed her damp feet together beside the fire, the redness gradually faded from her cheeks. Her parents insisted that Dex and his father stay the night and Jessie left her spot by the flames to help her mother prepare their room.

  “I love you,” she mouthed silently before she left.

  “Always,” he replied the same way.

  Dex gathered the empty tea cups to return them to the kitchen. He was on his way back to the front room when something made him stop, just outside the doorway. He heard his father and Jessie’s, talking in hushed tones, and didn’t want to make his presence known to them yet.

  “You need to tell him soon, Benjamin,” it was Jessie’s father who spoke first. “Sammy turns seven in fifteen days. We’re running out of time.”

  “I started to tonight,” Benjamin replied. “If anything had happened to him, we would’ve had to start all over again. He and Jessie don’t think. Their relationship is dangerous. We should’ve stopped it years ago.”

  Dex felt his warmed up blood return to ice. What were they talking about? What could they possibly think was dangerous about his and Jessie’s relationship? Dex knew both his parents and Jessie’s had been married when they were the same age as their children were now. Even as he tried to convince himself that was the issue the two men were discussing, he sensed it was something much more substantial than that.

  “You know, as well if not better than I do, that there was nothing we could’ve done to stop it. It was what we both wanted and now it’s probably the only thing that will get him to agree to what he needs to do,” Jed said. Dex could tell Jessie’s father had gotten up from his seat at the table, to poke at the fire. “The sooner he knows, the easier it will be on both of them.”

  “What if they run? That’s what I would do. What I did. I need to figure out the right way to go about this, make him see, to understand…..” His father’s voice trailed off like he had forgotten what to say or how to say it.

  “Just tell him the truth, Ben. Dex is a smart kid. He’s always been smart. He’ll do what’s right, you have to trust him.”