Steady as the Snow Falls (6 page)

Beth tucked herself into a ball as her heart pounded faster. He was only thirty-one years old. She took a breath, her body shaking, and took another.
You barely know him. Get ahold of yourself.
It didn’t seem to matter that she’d physically known Harrison Caldwell all of one day. All Beth could focus on was that she did know him, and that made him matter. He was a person. She tried to swallow and couldn’t. He was a person and that made him important.

Never married, no children. There had been a woman—Nina Hollister—who’d been with him for years, and when he lost everything, she went with it.

He quit playing football five years ago.

Rarely seen in public for the past three, said to live in the Midwest, but that was unconfirmed.

Her mind tripped over the one fact she couldn’t compute, not yet. She’d blinded herself to it. The truth was a dark taint, an oozing blob of black she couldn’t outrun for long. And how did Harrison feel, living inside of it? Breathing in the darkness, choking on it. It was true that with the advancement of science and medicine, what Harrison had wasn’t as life-threatening as it once was, but it was still there, working its evil magic. Destroying.

If Beth thought about it, dwelled on his reality, she wouldn’t leave the house all day, and she would never return to Harrison’s home. And that would be wrong, that would seem like she was judging something she didn’t understand—plus there was the issue of being sued. Little things she’d noticed yesterday made sense where they hadn’t prior, and it put an ache in her throat.

Beth uncurled from where she was lying and left the bed, her legs and arms sore along with her heart. Heavy. Sad. Flashes of him pictured and cataloged throughout the years besieged her as she stumbled to the bathroom. His happy brown eyes as a child, the determination in his jaw as a teenager. How he exuded confidence and drive during college. The cocky flare to his grin as his professional football team won and won and kept winning. When Beth’s eyes were too exhausted to read, she watched clips of games, something she hadn’t had any desire to do before. Harrison made it interesting, his movements graceful and strong, his form fierce and unconquerable on the football field.

He wasn’t good at football—he was brilliant.

She brushed her teeth, staring at her puffy face and eyes in the mirror. The more recent photographs showed a broken man. Physically struggling, but also mentally, emotionally. Bitterness honed into his features, glaring from his eyes, thinning his mouth. Beth spit out the toothpaste and cursed, putting her weight on her wrists against the countertop.

She mashed a finger to her short nose and made a face at herself. “Stop feeling sorry for him. You have work to do. Get to it,” she told her image.

Resolved to separate her emotions from her job, Beth spent the morning going over her notes, jotting down questions, rereading articles, all with a stiff face and a sick sensation in her gut. Even the two cups of coffee, hot and robust, fell flat against her taste buds. When it was time to go to Harrison’s, she stopped in front of the door that led to the attached garage, her instincts telling her not to go. Nausea grew. Beth inhaled and exhaled. She’d told herself the same thing yesterday, but for different reasons. And she’d gone.

Beth left the house.

The drive took hours at the same time it took seconds. Hills and trees, all bedecked in glittering white, surrounded her. She could feel her heart pounding, powerful and filled with dread. Her fingers tightened and relaxed on the steering wheel, again and again. The sky was blue and cloudless, but she knew there was snow in the forecast again for later that day. Yesterday she was afraid because she hadn’t known what to expect—today she was afraid because she did.

Everything was different. The house took on an ominous cast. The windows were eyes, the door a mouth posed in a shriek of horror. The landscape turned barren. Tree limbs became arms, reaching for her, reaching for life to steal and keep as its own, until it was dead like the tree. It was all twisted, warped.

It was worse inside.

The walls cried with sorrow. Their pain could not be covered up with memories. Memories for no one to witness, or enjoy. She imagined Harrison coughing up blood, and that blood seeping from the corners of the ceiling to drip down its length. Pooling on the floor, alive and venomous. His skin broken out in oozing sores, red and angry and vengeful. Beth had a perverse impulse to check the cupboards and refrigerator, to prove there would be paltry supplies, barely enough on which to survive. He was waiting, biding his time. He’d given up.

She understood then—the house was a coffin, and he was the corpse within.

Beth stood in the foyer, imagining unseen disease crawling along the walls and floors, heading straight for her. She wanted to turn and flee, and she couldn’t.

Harrison found her like that, still as stone, unable to move, her eyes continually shifting over her surroundings. He wore a red shirt that clashed with his hair, and black jeans. White socks covered his feet, but no shoes. His eyes seemed blacker, bleaker. Older. Like they had seen his destiny and knew there was no way to bypass it. She stared at his face, seeing beyond the skin and into his insides, picturing the rot. What was it like, living with something that was slowly destroying him? Did he hurt all the time? Was he currently in pain? He had to be exhausted, mentally and physically. The thoughts he must have…

What was it like to meet his demons and know they could one day slay him?

“I wasn’t sure if you would come back.”

“I told you I would.” Her voice lacked strength.

Understanding tightened his features as he studied hers. “But you thought about staying away.”

“Yes.” She clenched her hands into fists, an unconscious motion, the action that of someone illogically afraid of the unfamiliar. Beth loosened her grip, immediately feeling bad.

His eyes dropped to her hands, a muscle bunching in his jaw. “You can’t catch it by touching things.”

“I know that.” Beth’s voice was a whip, sharp and striking. Her mind went back to the coffee she drank the day before, the mug she used.
Stop being crazy
, she told herself. It didn’t change her thoughts. She didn’t know him as a man, as a person, and therefore, she couldn’t trust him.

Harrison’s expression scorned, even as it said her reaction was one he’d endured before. “What’s changed from yesterday? I’m the same. You’re the same.”

“It’s not the same,” she denied. Weakly. Shamefully.

Shadows shifted over his features, drifted into his eyes. “And now you know why I’m here, without a television, without contact with the outside world. You’re the embodiment of every prejudice I got tired of dealing with.”

“I’m sorry, I just—I’ve never known anyone before with…it.”

“That you know of. Most people don’t announce it.”

“I’m sorry,” she said again.

His upper lip curled, telling her what he thought of her remorse.

Beth took a deep breath and continued. “You said you hired me because I didn’t know who you were.”

“Yes.” His eyes went back to her hands and stayed there. “And that’s true.”

“But that isn’t the only reason, that isn’t why you specifically contacted me. You tricked me.” The words sounded petulant.

“How did I trick you?” His gaze hadn’t left her hands. He seemed fascinated with them.

“You must have researched me. How else would you know about my degree, that I was freelance? How else would you know that I had no idea who you were? How many others have you done this to?” Her pulse was out of control, in tune with her thoughts.

Harrison’s gaze finally lifted, and it was bitingly blank.

“You lied by omission. You had me sign a contract under false pretenses. What is this—some kind of sick game to you?” Beth had gone too far. She knew it as soon as the words left her mouth, as she watched the color leave his skin. What she said was cruel, and she stunned herself by it.

“I’m s-sorry,” she stuttered. “I don’t know why I said that. I didn’t mean that. I shouldn’t have said it. That was mean to say.” Beth shook her head. “I don’t know what to think, what to do.”

“Nothing.”

Beth blinked. “What?”

“You think nothing. You do nothing.”

She laughed shakily, running her eyes along the bare walls and empty spaces. Looking everywhere but at Harrison, and then she did, and she couldn’t turn her eyes past him. “You make it sound easy, like my world wasn’t just rocked by being introduced to yours.”

Other than a flicker in his eyes, Harrison had no reaction. “Would you have said yes to writing the book if you knew who I was beforehand? If you’d known what I have, would you have even considered working for me? Would you be here right now?”

“I don’t…” Beth looked down, swallowed. Her throat had a lump in it that seemed to grow as he spoke. “I don’t know.”

Harrison stepped closer, a thoughtful look on his face as he casually crossed his arms. He was mocking her. His stance, his expression. Calling her a fool without saying a single thing. “Let’s look at it this way then—who in their right mind would agree to write a book about a person they know nothing about? Who would sign a contract on nothing more than assumptions and promises? Who would show up at a stranger’s house in the country, knowing nothing about the person inside?

“I could have lied about having money, about needing someone to write my story. I could have been any kind of monster, and you willingly stepped into my lair.” Harrison’s chest raggedly lifted and lowered, belying the calm he’d strived to exude, but his eyes were unwavering from hers. Drinking in her unease, sinking into her soul. His look demanded an answer.

“You’re right. It was stupid of me,” she said quietly.

He expelled noisily, swiping a hand across his mouth. “Not stupid. Desperate. Hopeful. I understand them both.”

Beth looked into his deep eyes, the disquiet fading from her bearing as she did. He looked harmless, a shell of the man from the pictures. She tried to put herself in his place, but her brain refused. It was too close; he was too close. A sick man stood before her, talking to her, his breaths already counted beforehand by some invisible plague. A man who couldn’t fight fate. It was messed up, and wrong.

Strangest of all, she wanted to touch his face, wipe the hidden pain from it. Beth clenched her fingers, then locked them before her, making sure she didn’t reach for him. She couldn’t stand others hurting. It made her heart cry. And Harrison would probably deny it until he no longer could, but there was a crack in him, and it was full of an unhealable ache. She felt it, in the air, in his words. It reached for something, anything, to ease it, and there was Beth. Standing so close, feeling more than she should.

He dropped his gaze. “I hired you to write a book. My health should have nothing to do with that.”

Beth straightened. “What do you want me to write about then?”

Harrison lifted his eyes to hers, and they were laced with emotion, dark and light and raw. “Me. I want you to write about me. I am not what’s destroying me. I am me.”

Beth’s shoulders slumped. Never had she heard truer, rawer words. He’d opened his chest and given her a tiny chunk of his heart in telling her that. The book—he’d told her to read his favorite book because she couldn’t write about him if she didn’t know him.
Him
. He showed her the trophies because he’d earned them. Harrison Caldwell. There were hints of the man before her, shown in the emptiness of rooms, and broadcasted in others.

Guilt crawled up her throat, heated her face. She was as bad as every gossip in town, basing opinions on some truths, but not all, and not the important ones, the ones that should matter. She was prejudiced like all the others she told herself she was different from. Beth knew what it was like to have lies told about her, misconceptions that hurt. In every tragic tale of her and Ozzy spewed about around town, she was the villain.

Look at the man
, she told herself, and when she did, she had to look away. His expression was calm, but his eyes were stricken. She couldn’t bear to see it, and Beth wasn’t ready to wonder why.

“You would think, with how long this has been around, that people would be more open-minded about it, or at least act accordingly. This isn’t the eighties or nineties anymore, and yet, not much has changed as far as preconceptions. I’ve hired others who’d known, before I moved to the area. Many refused, some wouldn’t come to my house, others would, but they didn’t last long. The few who actually agreed wanted to turn the book into the disease.”