See Jane Fall (6 page)

“This shoot just got a whole lot tougher,”
she sighed aloud.

Jane shook her head, deleting the messages.
She wrote back to tell Laney she hoped she felt better soon and
reassured Samara that all would be ready for her upon arrival.

Her phone dinged angrily in response:

Where were u, Jane?! U know I hate it when
LL is sick. Don’t piss me off.

Ding again, and the next text showcased all
of Samara’s charm:

Don’t forget I can fire ur ass, Janie.

Jane raised the phone over her head as if to
smash it on the floor, then took a deep breath and lowered it back
down slowly. Her thumbs flew as she typed a quick response.

Sara, cell service here is terrible. Have
contacted local government to ask for
improvements since
you’re coming to town. Getting things ready for you. Hope

Laney feels better soon. -J

A minute later she received a two-line
message back:

My name is SAMARA. Don’t fuck with me,
Jane.

She wrote back:

My bad. Sorry, Samara. Have to go finish
unpacking your bags now. –J

Jane turned the phone over, swallowing
painfully against the indignant lump in her throat. With Laney
down, Samara was on the warpath. Great. Just great.

She shoved the phone into her back pocket
and braced her hands on the windowsill staring down at them, at
their freckles and whiteness against the medium-toned wood.

I miss my parents.

Tears welled up in her eyes, and she
blinked, wishing them away. After almost fifteen years, she’d
learned that tears didn’t help anything. Tears didn’t resurrect
your parents or change that fact that an uncle wasn’t a father, no
matter how much they looked alike. Tears didn’t change the fact
that Jane had had to grow up in the shadow of her profoundly
beautiful cousin, always outshined, always second best. She took
her phone back out, and clicked on music, then on her ’60s
Playlist, then on Peter and Gordon, then on “I Go to Pieces” and
let the music swell around her as she lifted her gaze to the
mountains beyond the meadow.

Do you hear the longing, Janie?

She took a ragged breath, wrapping her arms
around her body and sighing heavily. She didn’t like where her life
had ended up. She didn’t like that her cousin owned her, as though
her parent’s untimely death had forced her into indentured
servitude to the closest branch of her father’s family in payment
for them taking her in. She didn’t like it that she’d given up her
own dreams in order to please her beloved uncle. She didn’t like it
that she’d sold out her ambition in exchange for the monetary
comfort of a well-paying position with her shrew of a cousin. Here
she was, in one of the most beautiful places on earth stuck making
sure that Samara’s underwear was neatly unpacked into a bureau, and
her favorite lip gloss was ready on her bedside table. If Samara
had her way, Jane would wipe her backside too.
What kind of life
is this?

She sniffled lightly, wiping her eyes with
the backs of her hands.
I’m just tired, and I know Samara will
be a handful without Laney. Buck up, Jane. Turn off the waterworks.
You’ll be okay. You have two days to get your head around
it.

The song ended and she glanced down at her
phone, realizing it was four-forty. Lars would be here in twenty
minutes, so she would just have to do the rest of the unpacking
tomorrow, and then maybe he could show her the shoot locations.
Samara liked to see pictures of her locations prior to her arrival
so Jane would have to get some good pictures and send them before
Samara arrived on Tuesday morning.

Jane closed the door to the second bedroom,
which looked like the aftermath of an explosion of clothes,
jewelry, shoes and makeup. She’d been able to re-make the bed in
the master bedroom with Samara’s sheets, and she had gotten most of
her cousin’s lingerie and pajamas sorted out. Everything that
required a hanger was neatly hung in the closets. Tomorrow Jane
would unpack everything else, down to Samara’s last toiletry,
arranged just so in the bathroom so she wouldn’t have trouble
finding anything.

Jane paused in the bedroom, looking at
herself in the mirror over the bureau. She took off her glasses and
folded them gently, leaving them on the basin. She looked tired and
drawn.
Two hours of sleep will do that to you.
Glancing
down, she noticed that all of Samara’s travel makeup was in a large
fabric pouch open in front of her.

There were darker-than-usual circles under
her eyes, so she opened one of Samara’s concealers and ran a thin
strip of beige cream under her eyes.
Better.
She took out
the mascara and swiped her lashes.
Hm.
She rummaged around
until she found some bronzer and brushed lightly over her
cheekbones and the tip of her nose as she’d seen Ray do for her
cousin a million times.
There.
She picked up a tube of
Burt’s Bees tinted and glided it over her lips. Not a vast
improvement, but it’s not like she was working on a top-drawer
canvas. Anyway, she felt better.

She took off her cap and looked at the mop
of brown waves that framed her face in soft, unfashionable curls.
She opened a can of Samara’s mousse and squirted a plump puff of
white onto her hand, rubbed her hands together, then drew them
through the curls, making them look more styled and manageable,
pushing them off her face into elegant waves.

She took off her sweatshirt. The plain white
cotton tank top underneath was not crisp but still clean, hidden
under her sweatshirt all day. She fished around in her leather bag
until she found an olive green, cropped, cabled wool cardigan
sweater and threw it on. She liked the way the bottom of the
cardigan skimmed the top of her jeans, making her waist look
smaller. She took off her socks and loafers and found her favorite
brown leather flip-flops in the bottom of her bag, slipping them
onto her pedicured feet. Folding her cap in thirds, she shoved it
in her back pocket, and pushed her phone in the other.

Walking into the living room, she took out
her sunglasses and put them on, tossed her backpack on one
shoulder, her bag on the other, then went outside to sit on a
concrete step and wait for Lars.

***

Before Lars had time to get out of the pickup
and help her with her bags, Jane had tossed them into the flatbed
and opened her own door. He looked over to see her face peeking up
at him, wide smile under her trendy sunglasses as she pulled
herself up into the front seat beside him.

“Hi!” She wasn’t wearing that old Red Sox
cap, and her hair looked slick and styled, the waves swept off her
face. She wasn’t wearing her sweatshirt anymore either, and he
could see that the pale skin of her chest was dotted with cheerful
freckles as he caught the appealing swell of her small breasts
under her tank top.
Perfect handfuls.
Well, well, Jane
Mays.

“Heya,” he grinned at her with his sexiest
smile.

“
Heya
?” She busied herself buckling
up, her sunglasses making it hard to read her face.

“It’s what we say.”

“Okay. Heya, Just-Lars. Thanks for picking
me up. Where we headed?” The belt clicked closed and she ran her
fingers through her hair from her forehead to her nape without
glancing at him.

Huh. Not even a look?

“I’m at your service, Miss Mays. Dinner?
Sightseeing? Hotel?” He drawled the last word suggestively.

“Sightseeing?” she asked, a pert smile
accompanying the incredulity in her voice.

He cleared his throat, furrowing his brows.
He wasn’t accustomed to his efforts at being sexy and charming
going unnoticed. “It’s too late to hit the park, plus we’re doing
that tomorrow…but, beautiful downtown Gardiner is at your
disposal.”

She fiddled around in her bag, looking for
something, all but ignoring him. “Umm…okay. Sure, why not. You lead
the way.”

He watched as she fished a Nikon D3X out of
her bag. Interesting. It was possibly the best handheld
professional camera that Lars knew of, and he saw an awful lot of
cameras in his line of work. She must be pretty serious about
photography to have spent several thousand dollars for a camera
like that.

“Some camera.”

“My baby.”

My baby.
He hadn’t expected her to
say something like that. It made his breath catch. It made him
think of kissing her, touching her, feeling her fingers running
through his hair as she murmured
baby
low in his ear. Did
she have any idea how sexy her voice was? When he glanced over, she
was caressing the black plastic casing of the expensive camera.
Lucky goddamn camera.

For crissakes, Lars, get yourself
together.

“Hey, um…I found this for you,” he said,
slipping a CD into the player and choosing his favorite.

“Hey! The Kingston Trio!”

She turned her face to him, beaming as she
pushed her sunglasses up on her head. His eyes slammed into hers
and he realized that the sweater she was wearing was the same color
as her eyes
.
He hadn’t noticed the color before, probably
because of her glasses and cap. But, they were sort of an earthy,
olive-y green with gold flecks, and he realized he’d seen that
color a million times before in the park—in the forest and woods,
in the mosses and meadows. Just never in another person. It
unnerved him how familiar they seemed, and how singular.

“You, um, you asked for them earlier.”

Her eyes twinkled as she nodded at him,
bright and pleased, and it made his quick stop at home to rummage
through his CD collection totally worthwhile.

“‘Chilly Winds,’” she murmured. “Good
song.”

“Yeah,” he whispered, anxious not to break
the moment.

“Wow, this is dreamy,” she sighed, sitting
back against her seat and staring straight ahead at the meadow and
mountains beyond, listening to the soft guitar riffs and gentle
harmonies fill the truck.

He leaned back against his seat too, and
tried not to turn his head to stare at her, but couldn’t help
stealing glances as she mouthed the words, her head tilted away
from him at a gentle angle.

She was right; it
was
a dreamy song,
and it
felt
incredibly dream-like to be sitting beside her,
sharing the mellow love song while the late afternoon sun caught
strands of her loose curls and turned them from brown to gold. She
looked over at him and his stomach fluttered. He wished he could
figure out the deal with her—with how she made him feel.

“
Out where them chilly winds don’t
blow…”
she sang softly, taking a deep breath. “Thanks for this,
Just-Lars.”

“I aim to please.”

“You succeed,” she murmured, holding his
eyes for an extra moment as her cheeks flushed pink. Her lips
twitched into a slight smile and she blinked at him, as though
seeing him for the first time.

He stared back her, unable to look away,
lost in those mossy-green eyes, wondering what she was
thinking.

“Where’s the case?” she asked softly.

His breath came out in a rush, like he’d
been holding it. “Home.”

He took a shaky breath and grinned back at
her, grateful that her question had broken the intimacy of the
moment. He turned the key in the ignition and pulled out of the
dusty area in front of the cottage, headed back toward town.

“Does this one have ‘Take Her Out of Pity’
on it?”

“Yeah, umm…track six, I think.” He glanced
over as she leaned forward and pressed the fast forward button on
the CD player.

The banjo and guitar started and Jane sang
along, softly but faithfully, as she looked down, playing with the
buttons and switches on her camera:

I had a sister Sally; she was younger than I
am. Had so many sweethearts, she had to deny them. But as for
sister Sara, you know she hasn't many. And if you knew her heart,
she’d be grateful for any… don’t let her die an old maid but take
her out of pity…Sara’s almost twenty-nine, never had an offer…

He looked over at her. At the end of the
verse, she shrugged her shoulders in delight and resumed the chorus
with gusto, still staring down at her camera. It was as if there
was a hidden message in the song that only Jane Mays could hear and
enjoy. He was glad she was looking down; he was glad he could keep
stealing glances of her unobserved.

“What’s up with this song, Minx?”

She turned to him, surprised at first, then
smiling mischievously. “Minx?”

Man, that voice.
“The way you’re
smiling. Like the cat that got the cream.”

She shifted her body toward him. “This song
is about an old maid who can’t get a man…named Sara.”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“Sara’s my cousin’s name.”

“Huh. Okay. You’re not a fan of your cousin,
eh?” He stopped at a stop sign and looked over at her, amused.

“Wait ’til you meet her.”

“Does she work for Miss Amaya too?”

Jane’s eyes widened in surprise and the
twinkle died as surely as a fire dowsed with a bucket of water. Her
smile faded too as she turned away from him.

“I’m sorry. Did I say something wrong?”

“She
is
Miss Amaya.” she
muttered.

“Samara Amaya is your
cousin
? Wait.
You said your cousin’s name is Sara.”

She nodded once, reaching over to turn off
the CD player.

Lars pulled into a parking space on Main
Street and faced her. “I’m sorry, I’m trying to understand. You’re
Samara Amaya’s
assistant
.”

“
And her cousin
. Sara Mays’s cousin.
That’s her real name. Our fathers are brothers.
Were
brothers.”

“Huh.”

She turned to look at him, facing him
squarely. Her shoulders were rigid, and her eyes were
guarded…almost worried, like she was waiting for—for what? What had
she said? Were.
Were.