Free Dangerous Neighbors by Beth Kephart Page B

blown in, ruffling the old hen’s feathers.
    He had no business speaking with her.
    He knew it. So did she.
    He was from another side of town. He was from another place.
Dangerous neighbors
, her father had said.
    “Baker’s stepped out,” Katherine informed him. “Come back tomorrow.”
    His eyes were the color of a river at night. He smelled like straw or hay, like the tang of a goat’s warm hide, like the eggs warming in his pocket. Katherine studied him, decided against deciding he was handsome, though he was—undeniably he was. This close up he was even more handsome than he’d seemed from her bedroom window, for this was when it struck her: he was the boy with the pig.
My name is William
. She ignored him, best as she could. She stared back out toward the street. Anyone passing mighthave thought she’d known him—that a poor boy and a banker’s daughter had gotten themselves into a tangle. Not possible. She felt him studying her face, the fade of freckles across the bridge of her nose, the space between her two front teeth. Her unwillingness to be charmed or to be charming. The lie she was so obviously keeping.
    “Warm for November,” he said, almost a game now, to see if he could force a conversation, get her to say something, at least, about the wisdom of a muff in warm weather.
    “It is.”
    “Birds don’t know what to do”—he stopped, looked for a reaction—“in weather like this.” The hen sat up straighter. Katherine blinked, gave nothing away, didn’t want him to guess that she’d seen this boy once, months ago—felt, indeed, that she already knew him.
    Now she watched William glancing back into the shop, toward the gleaming display case and the three glass-domed cake trays, the bowl of glacé cherries, the polished register, the pair of metal tongs. She saw him press his face harder against the door so that he might see even deeper into the shop, and now, afraid for what he might see, for how he might expose the sisters and their subterfuge, Katherine tried to distract him.
    “The hen,” she asked, “is it yours?”
    “It was lost,” he said. “I went and found it.”
    “So that’s your game?”
    “My game?”
    “What you do?”
    “I rescue lost things. Horses, cows, pigs, dogs. Dogs, mostly. Doesn’t pay too bad, either. You should try it.”
    He laughed but she didn’t. The hen didn’t stir and William wouldn’t turn. He just stood there, beside Katherine, so close that she could touch him, so close that she saw every inch of what he saw, beyond the bakery door. She leaned forward, despite herself. Felt his sweet breath upon her ear—warm, she thought; she should not have thought it. She took it in, like he did—the row of buttons in the far corner of the shop and how they flared with the sun. The whispering of voices; the rustling of skirts against hands and knees; the single word, “Anna.” Katherine could see her own sister dressed unseasonably in cream, her hair a wilderness, the baker’s fingers low on her neck, the buttons across her chest loose and handled. Bennett was a good head and a half taller than Anna. He had to lean down to take her in, and so she was on her toes, her face spooned up toward him, oblivious to all things but his kisses.
    Katherine felt William at her side turn and assess her differently. She felt her face go hot, her eyes go hard as marbles, her whole self deflecting his questions.
Don’t ask me
.
    “Come back tomorrow,” Katherine finally said. “Bakery is closed for the moment.”
    “As you please.” He stepped back out onto the walk,took a gentleman’s bow. He said nothing, and he could have; she was defenseless. He doffed his hat and took the hen and the hen’s eggs back to whomever had lost them, and what she felt then, what she registered for later—for now, for right this minute at the Centennial, her last day ever, an hour before her flight—was that he did not walk away in triumph, pleased for her shame, pleased with