Free The End of Always: A Novel by Randi Davenport Page B

accident. But I knew he touched me on purpose. And when he could not touch me, he watched me, and it felt as if his gaze was another kind of touch.
    When my basket was empty, he came over and took it from me and then took my hand and helped me down from the ladder. He would never have dared do this if the others were there, but he had me alone and there was nothing for it but to go along. I shrank from him but he did not notice or if he did, he did not care.
    “Who says chivalry is dead?” he said. He was very pleased with himself, as if it took a big man to take the hand of a girl whom he has frightened. He knotted his fingers in mine. I tried to pull my hand away. He tightened his grip and walked with me to the wall, where another duffle waited. The first had come from the Hotel Vanderbilt, which was a mean little place that gave itself airs, and the second came from a private household, for it was tagged with a surname. I knew it would be filled with underpants and all the other things I did not like to touch. But it gave me a good reason to pull free of William Oliver’s hand, and this time he did not try to stop me. I squatted down and unknotted the cord on the duffle and lifted it and shook it out over my basket. There is such a thing as the greater of two evils.
    I found only sheets and pillowcases. William Oliver watched me. He rocked back on his heels and when I lifted the basket, he took it from me and put his arm around my waist and propelled me over to the ladder. His hand was heavy on my hip and he bent his cheek to my hair and sighed deeply. My heart pounded. I did not know what time it was. I did not know when anyone else might come. I had no idea what he wanted. But that was not true, for I knew exactly what he wanted, or at least I thought I did.
    In the end he returned the basket to me in great haste and made for the soap bucket, as if all along he had had no other intention but to study his inventory. I looked out to the yard and saw Inge in her dark gray coat walking toward us, her lunch pail glinting in the sun.

7
    O f all the stories she told me, my mother never said anything about how she met my father. She never said anything at all about love. She told me about dwarves who lived under the hills or crowded the beach in their merry thousands, terribly dangerous to the girl who came upon them alone. She showed me a garnet bracelet she had brought with her from the island, its little faceted stones set in gold. When I was little, she had me convinced that this bracelet had been made by the white dwarves that flew around like tiny birds when they were not busy making jewelry. But the bracelet disappeared when my father lost his job at the mill and my mother never mentioned it again.
      
    Mrs. Muehls raised geese along with her chickens. If you went to her house in the daytime you would see the geese facing each other with their red bills nearly touching and their gray feathers flat as a smoothed sheet, too stupid to move out of each other’s way. Mrs. Muehls also raised two daughters, both so short and thick that it looked as if their shirtwaists had been upholstered to their backs and then stitched down at the waist so that nothing could escape. The girls were married now and gone from home, but Mrs. Muehls made sure they returned to her house every week for Sunday dinner, where my mother said Mrs. Muehls lectured them on their shortcomings while insisting that all she meant was that she was concerned for their well-being.
    Now Mrs. Muehls stood on our back steps with a sugar sack in her hand. Her shape stood out sharply against our white yard, her breath frosty around her head. When Martha opened the door, Mrs. Muehls held the sugar sack before her and explained that her daughters had outgrown their skates and Mrs. Muehls had been just about ready to throw them away when she recalled that we were here, poor motherless lambs, and at just that moment she decided not to throw the skates away but had