Somewhere In-Between by Donna Milner Read Free Book Online Page B

would forget, although she cannot remember where. Julie reaches out to take the hand being offered, but hers stops mid-air as her gaze travels from his expressionless eyes down to the red bandanna knotted at his throat—and to the carved pendant hanging below. The moment passes in frozen silence, in heartbeats that stretch time like taut elastic, which snaps as the French doors behind her swing open.
    â€œHey, Virgil,” Ian calls out. “It’s about time you met Julie.”
    Julie’s arm drops to her side, the hand trowel falls to the ground with a soft thud. “I’m sorry,” she says, her voice coming out a choked whisper. Willing herself to lift her leaded feet, she turns and walks out of the garden, each step a weighted trudge.
    Ian reaches out to her as she comes up the steps. “Julie, what…”
    She shakes her head and pushes past him and hurries across the wraparound porch toward the back of the house. At the corner, she glances back to see Ian rush down to where their tenant remains standing, his hat in his hands, in the garden row. Without a word, Virgil reaches into his pocket, pulls out a roll of bills, and hands his rent money to Ian.
    In the mudroom, Julie closes the door behind her and with shaking hands pulls off her garden gloves and tosses them on top of the washing machine. Dirt skitters across the smooth white metal and falls to the floor. She shakes off her rubber clogs and kicks them into the corner. The back door opens.
    â€œJesus, Julie, what the hell was that?” Ian demands.
    She whirls around to face him. She does not want to have this conversation, but there is no avoiding it, no way not to break their unspoken truce. For the last nine months they have both become adept at the careful manoeuvring around the minefields of words. They have fallen into a polite routine in dealing with each other, any conversations between the two of them now about the housekeeping of life, about the day-to-day details of existence while skirting the edges of the reality. Well, reality has just exploded in her face and she can’t hold back.
    â€œThe pendant. Didn’t you notice his pendant?” The words sound so much harsher, more accusatory than she intends.
    Ian shuts the mudroom door with a soft click as if suddenly aware of how loud their voices are, as if the subject of their first verbal conflict since moving here might hear them.
    â€œPendant? What pendant?” His expression changes from anger to confusion. “What are you talking about, Julie?”
    â€œThe crow! It’s exactly like the one...” she stops mid-sentence as the truth strikes her. Of course the pendant would mean nothing to Ian. He had no idea that Levi Johnny used to wear an identical carved crow—his spirit guide—around his neck.
    Ian hadn’t seen him take it off that night and place it around Darla’s neck for good luck. Ian couldn’t have, because he wasn’t there the night Levi Johnny killed their daughter.

7
    Every single day, whenever Julie allows her thoughts to stray there, whenever she lets down her guard and imagines a different conclusion to that October night, she spirals into the futile never-ever-land of what-might-have-been.
    Standing behind the locked bathroom door she splashes cold water on her face in a futile effort to tide the flood of memories. She hears the back door close as Ian leaves the house—most likely going over to Virgil’s cabin. To apologize? To ask him to leave? She doesn’t know. What she does know is that she could not share the real reason for her strong reaction to their tenant. So she had told him she was simply startled by Virgil’s crow pendant, a pendant similar to one that Levi Johnny wore. It would be too cruel to tell him that Darla was wearing it the last time she saw her alive.
    â€œCouldn’t he just go?” she had asked Ian.
    â€œWhy? Are you going to blame everyone who