“You decent?” he called.
He heard a short laugh. “I’m dressed, Mr. Torrance, but I’ll never make claims about being decent.”
Smiling, Grey opened the door.
Jenny stood on the far side of the room. The curtain and a mound of sopping frilly whites lay in a heap and she now wore a simple dress that hung straight enough to let him know there weren’t too many slips and layers of bloomers beneath. She was buttoning the front and he caught a glimpse of soft cleavage. From her small curl of a smile it was clear she both knew he’d seen it, and that it was intended.
Watch this one, he warned himself. Grey was not afraid of facing any man with gun, blades, or fists, but he had been brought low by women more times than he could count. Samson and Achilles weren’t the only men with weak spots.
Jenny nodded to the corner to Grey’s left. “That’s the trunk. I kept my pa’s clothes.”
“Can’t let them go?” Grey suggested.
She shrugged. “He went missing but I never had a body to bury. It’s stupid, but I… I suppose I keep hoping.… Well, you know.”
“I do,” he said. “And you have my condolences and my best wishes that he’s out there somewhere. I guess it’s fair to say that these days anything is possible.”
She nodded and bent to scoop up her clothes. He knew, though, that she was hiding the flecks of tears that sparkled on her lashes.
“He must have been a good man,” said Grey.
Without looking she asked, “Why do you say that?”
“Hard to imagine a bad man being loved that much.”
Jenny did not answer. She picked up the clothes and dumped them in a canvas-lined wooden washing bin. Grey busied himself with the chest. The lid was unlocked and inside the bin were five pairs of jeans, several shirts — most of them neatly mended — under drawers, socks, gloves, scarves, two light canvas jackets, and one Sunday go-to-meeting black suit. It occurred to him that if Mr. Pearl came home alive he’d need the farm clothes; if they found him dead they’d bury him in his church clothes. It was a sad thought.
He selected a pair of jeans and held them up, expected them to come up short, but after studying himself in the mirror he realized that he might have to roll the cuffs.
“How tall was your dad?”
“Six feet and four inches in his stocking feet. We used to make a joke of it and sometimes called him ‘Seventy-six.’”
Grey unfolded one of the shirts. The man must have been a bull. Narrow at the hip but broad in the shoulders, with long arms and thick wrists. Grey figured they’d fit just fine.
“Thank you for the loan of these,” he said. “I’ll take good care of them.”
She turned. “Pa was a good man. A decent man. He used be known as Lucky Bob. Survived the war down South, survived the Indian Wars and some of the Rail Wars. Lived through the Great Quake without a scratch. When things went bad out here, people looked to him. You could, you know. Look to him, I mean. He was that kind of man. Even when everything else was going all to hell, Lucky Bob kept his head and saw to others. When we lost the first of the wells, he was the one who organized the people here in town to share their water and help each other with their crops and herds. Even if he hadn’t been my father I would have loved him and trusted him.”
Jenny crossed to a small writing desk on which there were several photographs in hard-carved wooden frames. She removed one and stood looking down at it, her face softened by memories. Her breasts lifted and fell as she drew in a deep breath and exhaled it in a sigh. Then she turned and held the frame out to Grey, who took it.
“This is your pa?”
“Yes. It was taken two years ago.”
The man in the photo looked like a hero from some old tale. He stood with two other men, both of whom looked impressive and strong, but Lucky Bob Pearl towered over them. A big man with broad shoulders and a face that could have been chiseled out of granite. Firm chin, high cheekbones, a clear brow, and penetrating eyes that stared frankly out from beneath the flat brim of a black hat. He had an uncompromising gaze, but there was the smallest hint of a self-aware smile. That little smile was not a smirk; there was nothing mocking or condescending about it. This was a man aware of his power and faintly amused by it. Even though power and speed were promised by the lean body and the hard muscles that showed through the tension lines of his clothes, there was nothing of the bully about him. Merely confidence. Grey found that he liked the man in that photo and was damn sorry he wasn’t here in Paradise Falls. As he handed the picture back he took another and more appraising look at Lucky Bob’s daughter.
She had his strength. That was there in the straightness of her back, the lift of her proud chin, the clarity in her eyes. There was the same intelligence, the same confidence. And it occurred to Grey that he was probably doing a disservice to her in his mind by comparing Jenny to her father. Here was a woman who was powerful in her own way. In a way that was not — and could not be — defined by any man. They were individually powerful in a family that, for all Grey knew, could have been descended from heroes, kings, and queens. Stranger things were possibly in this world.
“He must have been quite a man,” he said as he picked up the clothes again. He gestured with them. “Thanks for these.”
Her eyes hardened. “You can put on my pa’s things but you make sure you remember the kind of man whose clothes you’re standing up in.”
Grey nodded, seeing the hurt in her eyes. And the challenge. Left to burn, that challenge could turn into an unfair but entirely understandable resentment. So he decided to head it off at the pass.
“Miss Pearl, I wish I’d known your pa. I didn’t, but I’ve known men like him. Not many, ’cause if there were more men like your dad maybe this world wouldn’t be in the state it’s in. That’s not flattery, it’s a fact. Men like me — we’re tough and we’re hard, and a lot of times we talk about how we’re meaner than a rattlesnake and tougher than rawhide. But the plain truth is that we all want to be men like you say your dad was. It’s humbling to stand here holding his clothes, and it will be an ice-cold day in Hell’s backyard before I make claims to deserve to be spoken of in the same breath. I know I’m not that kind of man. I wish I was, but I’m not. You say your dad stepped up when others were hurting. That’s what they call nobility. That’s honor. And not half an hour ago you stood up to six armed men to draw water for the people in this town. Ever heard the expression about apples and how far they fall from trees?” He took a step toward her and lowered his voice. Jenny watched him with eyes filled with blue challenge. “You don’t know the value of my word, so you can choose to accept what I say or not, but I tell you this, Jenny Pearl, that while I wear these clothes, I’ll not dishonor the man who owns them.”
Jenny’s eyes were locked on his and for a moment neither of them listened to the screaming wind or the pounding rain. Grey felt his heart hammering again, but this time it had nothing to do with fear or ghost rock or the risen dead. His throat went dry and he wanted to clear it, but he dared not break the spell.
The storm, however, had other plans.
There was a massive crack of thunder — many times louder than anything that had come before. It shook the whole house as if a giant had reared back and slammed both fists into it. Jenny cried out and staggered forward; Grey caught her and they ran to stand in the paltry shelter of the doorway, dreading that the whole place was coming down. The windowpanes rattled like chattering teeth. Blue lightning stabbed their eyes and not even when they squeezed their eyes shut could they hide from that glare. Grey and Jenny clung together as the fury of the storm raged and raged. They could hear the blast echoing away, rolling like a threat toward town.