Sara hesitated. "Shouldn't we stay in a hotel?"
He laughed, helping her as her foot caught on some loose gravel. "There aren't any hotels here except the one behind the bar that truck drivers rent by the hour."
"Sounds romantic."
"Maybe for some of them," he suggested, leading her up the front steps. Even in the darkness, Sara could tell the house was one of the ones that had been allowed to fall into disrepair. Jeffrey warned her, "Watch that board," as he slid his hand along the top of the door-frame.
"She locks her door?"
"We were robbed when I was twelve," he explained, jiggling the key in the lock. "She's lived in fear ever since." The door stuck at the bottom and he used his foot to push it open. "Welcome."
The smell of nicotine and alcohol was overwhelming, and Sara was glad the darkness hid her expression. The house was stifling and she could not imagine spending the night, let alone living here.
"It's okay," he said, indicating she should go in.
She lowered her voice, "Shouldn't we be quiet?"
"She can sleep through a hurricane," Jeffrey said, closing the door behind him. He locked it with the key, then, judging from the sound, dropped the key into a glass bowl.
Sara felt his hand on her elbow. "Back this way," he said, walking close behind her. She took about four steps through the front room before she felt the dining room table in front of her. Three more steps and Sara was in a small hallway, where a nightlight revealed a bathroom in front of her and two closed doors on either side. He opened the door on the right and followed her through, closing the door again before he turned on the light.
"Oh," Sara said, blinking at the small room. A twin bed with green sheets and no blanket was pushed into the corner under a window. Posters of half-naked women were taped around the walls, with Farrah Fawcett given a place of prominence over the bed. The closet door was the only departure from the decorating scheme: a poster showed a cherry red convertible Mustang with an exaggerated blonde leaning over the hood – probably because the weight of her enhanced breasts prevented her from standing up straight.
"Lovely," Sara managed, wondering how bad the hotel was.
Jeffrey seemed embarrassed for the first time since she had met him. "My mother hasn't changed things much since I left."
"I can see that," she said. Still, part of Sara was intrigued. As a teenager, her parents had made it clear that boys' rooms were off-limits and Sara had therefore missed the experience. While the Farah Fawcett poster was predictable, there was something else to the room, some sort of essence. The smell of cigarette smoke and bourbon did not exist here. Testosterone and sweat had muscled it out.
Jeffrey put her suitcase flat on the floor and unzipped it for her. "I know it's not what you're used to," he said, still sounding embarrassed. She tried to catch his eye, but he was busy sorting through his duffel bag. She realized from his posture that he was ashamed of the house and what she must be thinking about him for growing up here. The room looked different in light of this, and Sara noticed how neatly everything had been arranged and the fact that the posters were hung equidistant, as if he had used a ruler. His house back in Grant County reflected this need for orderliness. Sara had only been there a few times, but from what she had seen, he kept everything exactly in its place.
"It's fine," she assured him.
"Yeah," he said, though not in agreement. He found his toothbrush. "I'll be right back."
Sara watched him leave, pulling the door shut quietly behind him. She took advantage of the situation and quickly changed into her pajamas, all the while keeping her eye on the door in case his mother walked in. Nell had not sounded exactly complimentary when she had talked about May Tolliver, and Sara did not want to meet the woman with her pants down.
Sara sat on the floor and went through her suitcase, looking for her hairbrush. She found it wrapped up in a pair of shorts and managed to remove her hair clip without tearing out too much of her curly, tangled hair. She looked around the room as she brushed her hair, taking in the posters and the various items Jeffrey had collected throughout his childhood. On the windowsill were several dried bones that had once been in a small animal. The bedside table, which looked homemade, had a small lamp and a green bowl with a handful of loose change. Track ribbons were scattered on a bulletin board, and a milk crate held cassette tapes with song titles typewritten neatly across the labels. Across from where she sat was a makeshift bookshelf of two-by-fours and bricks, stacked end to end with books. Where Sara had been expecting comic books and the occasional Hardy Boys, she found thick tomes with titles such as Strategic Battles of the Civil War and The Socio-Political Ramifications of Reconstruction in the Rural South.
She put down the brush and picked up the least intimidating-looking textbook. Flipping to the front, she found Jeffrey's name, followed by a date and course information. Thumbing through the pages, she saw where he had taken copious notes in the margins, underlining and highlighting passages that were of interest. Sara was slightly shocked to realize that she was completely unfamiliar with Jeffrey's handwriting. He had never left her notes or written lists in her presence. Contrary to her own cramped printing, he wrote in a beautiful, flowing script, the kind they no longer taught in school. His w's were impeccable, transitioning neatly into adjoining vowels. The loops on his g's were all the same identical pattern, as if he had used a stencil to make them. He even wrote in a straight line, not diagonally like most people did without a baseline to follow.
She traced her finger along his notations, feeling the indentation the pencil had made in the page. The words seemed almost engraved, as if he had gripped the pencil too tightly.
"What are you doing?"
Sara felt a flicker of guilt, as if she had been caught reading his diary instead of a textbook from long ago. "The Civil War?"
He kneeled beside her, taking the book. "I majored in American History."
"You're just full of surprises, Slick."
He winced at the name as he slid the book back into place, lining it up carefully so that it was flush with the others. A thin line of dust marked the exact spot. He pulled out a slim leather-bound volume. Gold letters stamped the cover, saying, simply, LETTERS.
"Soldiers wrote these to their sweethearts back home." Jeffrey said, thumbing through the fragile-looking book, turning to a page he must have known from heart. He cleared his throat and read, " 'My darling. Night comes and I lay awake, wondering at the character of the man I have become. I look at the velvet sky and wonder if you look up on these same stars, and pray that your mind holds on to the image of the man I was to you. I pray that you still see me.' "
Jeffrey stared at the words, a smile at his lips like he shared something secret with the book. He read the way he made love: deliberately, passionately, eloquently. Sara wanted him to continue, to lull her to sleep with the deep cadence of his voice, but he broke the spell with a heavy sigh.
"Anyway." He tucked the book back into place, saying, "I should have sold these back when the classes ended, but I didn't have the heart."
She wanted to ask him to continue, but said, "I kept some of mine, too."
He sat down behind Sara, his legs on either side of her. "I couldn't afford to."
"I wasn't exactly rich," she told him, feeling defensive. "My father's a plumber."
"Who owns half the town."
Sara did not comment, hoping he would drop it. Eddie Linton had invested well in real estate down by the college, which Jeffrey had found out on a couple of landlord calls about soon-to-be-evicted noisy tenants. She supposed by Jeffrey's standards the Linton family was wealthy, but Sara and Tessa had grown up with the impression that they should never spend more money than what they had in their pockets – which was never much.