The Perfect Letter Read online

  He looked over at her and shaded his eyes, grimacing, giving her a glimpse of his braces, flashing silver in the hot sun. So much for his mysterious good looks. She was relieved, actually, to see he wasn’t perfect. “You better watch those things, metal mouth,” she called to him. “You’re gonna sunburn your gums if you aren’t careful.”

  Jake had looked surprised at first, then settled into a look of practiced, unruffled calm—a look Leigh would grow to know well in the months and years to come. He looked her up and down—her wet hair, her damp clothes, fresh sunburn across her lightly freckled nose, and streaks of light in her dark hair. She was suddenly aware of how tall she was, how skinny and young she felt. “Look at this, a talking horse,” he said, almost to himself. “I didn’t know they had those in Texas, Pop. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Cute and sharp. Too bad he was awful. “Better than a talking ass,” she said, and tossing her hair, she’d turned back to go into the house, leaving a trail of wet footprints behind her. She figured they would be enemies from then on, avoiding each other in the barn, at the pond, at school. Fine, she thought, if that’s the way he wants it, fine by me.

  She went into the house to work on her homework at the kitchen table, but the words swam in front of her eyes, and the algebra equations, which normally she was so good at, turned into Chinese. She’d had no idea that a boy was coming to live at the farm, and it had thrown her. She was going to have to stop swimming naked at Wolf Rock or even the swimming pool. She was going to have to start acting like a lady, like her granddaddy said, and all for the sake of a boy she didn’t even like.

  She was in the middle of planning a scheme that would get them to leave—something about putting scorpions in Jake’s bed, or his boots—when there’d been a ring at the doorbell. She’d opened it to find Jake standing there looking sheepish. “My father said I need to apologize,” he said, leaning against the doorbell and making it ring once more by accident. He jumped and stood up straight. “He says I shouldn’t get off on the wrong foot the first day with you folks. So.”

  “So.”

  “That’s it, then. See you around,” Jake said, and started to leave.

  Before he could go, Leigh called back to him, “You’re doing a spectacular job of it, you know.”

  “What?”

  “Apologizing. Saying your father is making you apologize isn’t really the same thing as actually apologizing, is it?”

  He grinned and said, “What’s your name?”

  “I’m not sure I should tell you. I’m still waiting for that apology.”

  “Tell me your name and I’ll give it to you.”

  She gave him her best stink eye. “Leigh Merrill.”

  He held out his hand for her to shake, and she took it, tightening her fingers around his, still determined to hate him, still keeping up her defenses. “I’m Jacob Rhodes. And I’m sorry, Leigh. Truly. Your granddad’s place here is lovely, if you don’t mind a talking ass saying so.”

  When he turned and went back to his father’s truck in a nimbus of dust, his jeans sliding around his hips as he walked, Leigh remembered all her anger slipping off like a snake shedding its skin. For the first time she understood what the girls at school were always fussing about. A boy like that would be worth falling for, if he managed not to ruin everything by opening his mouth.

  She went back inside to finish her homework, but it was no use; she couldn’t think of anything except Jake the rest of the day.

  Damn him anyway. He would have to be charming.

  By the end of that first week they’d established something of a routine: after their chores were done, Leigh and Jake would ride out together to the hillsides and the woods, following the trails along the stream that bordered her grandfather’s property, just a trickle in the heat of midsummer but a nice cool swimming creek in April and May. They would explore the caves up in the hills, full of bats and sometimes coyotes, but other times cool and abandoned and private, only the drip of water for company. They would ride in companionable silence, and before long the ice between them had melted away.

  They were determined to be just friends, telling each other their stories, their secrets. Leigh told Jake about her mother, introduced him to Chloe and her friends at school, helped him find his way in the halls of Burnside High. Jake told Leigh about Amy, his girlfriend back in Kentucky, the farms he’d lived on, the horses he’d ridden, the horses he’d helped his father train, his voice swelling with pride. How he planned to go into the family business when he was old enough, train his own horses, be his father’s partner. Maybe they’d even have their own place one day, he said.

  “You should,” she told him. “You’d be great.”

  “You think so?”

  For Leigh, who had never had a sibling, it was like she had a brother all her own. “I do,” she said.

  Her grandfather, who hadn’t known Ben had a son to bring with him to Wolf’s Head, was less pleased. He tried to discourage Leigh from seeking Jake out in the afternoons, tried to encourage her to hang out with her friends in town after school instead of coming straight home to spend time with the boy. He didn’t think teenagers of the opposite sex should be so close—to her protests he only said, “It isn’t right, Leela, it just isn’t”—but despite his objections Leigh and Jake would rush to the barn every afternoon, saddling up a couple of trail horses and take off, not coming home sometimes until well after supper. Her grandfather never did anything but scold her, so Leigh did exactly as she pleased.

  Then came the day when they rode out to Mammoth Cave, a larger cave higher up in the hills behind her grandfather’s ranch that Leigh had only seen once, from far off—her grandfather had said he’d hide her if she ever went in there alone, that it was too dangerous. She’d never understood why, but if Jake was there, her grandfather couldn’t object, surely? So she and Jake took two good trail horses and spent the afternoon picking their way around the old cattle trail until they found the mouth of the cave, damp and yawning on the hillside.

  Inside it was dark and smelled strongly of rotten stone and stagnant water. The entrance was littered with animal bones and petrified coyote scat, but nothing moved in the dark when they threw stones inside, so whatever used to live there must have moved on. They went inside, shining their flashlights on colonies of bats hanging from the ceiling, clambering over the slippery stones. At one point they’d encountered a stone corridor that started off wide and grew gradually thinner and lower until they were squeezing their way through, unsure of where it led or if they’d be able to find their way out again. Leigh nearly panicked, but Jake was there, saying, “Almost there, Leigh. Don’t be afraid. Keep going.”

  Then, in near-total darkness, they’d sensed they were in a large empty space, a kind of room or hall within the cave. They shone their flashlights at the ceiling. “My God,” Leigh breathed. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  They’d come into a large inner chamber, perhaps twenty feet high and thirty or forty feet long. The stalactites from the ceiling and stalagmites from the floor had grown together over the centuries, drip by drip, until they touched and fused, long white limestone posts like the columns in a cathedral. Glittering chips of mica flashed their lights back at them, and they stood hushed and awed at the sight.

  “Listen to this,” Jake said, taking a deep breath and shouting, “Echo!” His voice came back to him: echo!

  “It’s like a church,” she said. “It’s beautiful.”

  “I wouldn’t know. I never went to church.”

  “Well, you’ve gone now,” she said, thinking if she ever saw God in anything, it was here. “I wonder if we’re the first people who ever came here.”

  “If anyone used to come here,” said Jake, “they don’t anymore.”

  “It’ll be our secret,” she said. “Like our own church. But better, because there’s no one but you and me to join it.”

  “Except the bats,” he said.

  “Except the bats,” s
he said, and then shouted out, “Echo!” Her voice reverberated through the cavern, coming back to her faintly: echo!

  She must have startled the bats, because suddenly the air was full of them. They swarmed around the two intruders, flitting close, and Leigh yelped and covered her head with her hands, crouching down. Jake flung himself over her, covering her up with his body. Underneath him she felt cocooned, safe. “Hold still,” he said. “They’ll go in a minute.”

  After several long seconds the bats flew off again in the darkness. Jake raised his head to look around. “All clear,” he said, but neither of them moved. It was as if they were afraid to break the spell, to break contact. She could feel the length of him pressing down on her, another cave within the cave.

  She leaned into him, leaned into his warmth, and suddenly she was aware of how alone they were, how cool it was in the cave, the heat coming off his skin under his clothes, every millimeter of the places where their bodies touched. She was not surprised, not exactly, but pleased—she realized it was something she had been waiting for, all those months.

  He pulled her toward him. His mouth was soft and surprisingly gentle, even with his teeth full of braces.

  “What about Amy?” she’d asked, coming up for air.

  He grinned. “We broke up when I moved away. I didn’t want to tell you, because I didn’t want you to think I was hitting on you.”

  “So you’re not hitting on me?”

  “Okay, yes, maybe now I’m hitting on you.”

  “What took you so long?”

  “I can’t remember,” he said, leaning in for another kiss.

  They kissed for a long time in the darkened cave like the last two people on earth. But that was part of his appeal, too—the secret nature of their friendship, its taste of the forbidden. Years later she would understand that more, after she’d grown up a little, that her grandfather’s disapproval had lent a special glow to all those furtive kisses, all those secret afternoons. Maybe Jake wouldn’t have kissed her if he’d thought he’d been allowed to; maybe she wouldn’t have fallen for him if he hadn’t seemed so unavailable, if she hadn’t known her grandfather would hate it right from the start.

  Of course her grandfather tried to put a stop to it. Of course he didn’t like Jake and Leigh spending all their time together. He told her he thought Jake was a distraction, something that would get her in trouble, the way her mother did, and you don’t want to end up like her, do you? You don’t need to be getting serious about boys at your age, Leigh. You’re too young, too smart to end up like Abby.

  Leigh had tried to defend her mother. “What was so bad about Abby?” she’d asked. “She was a good mother, a good daughter. I thought you loved her.”

  “I did. I do. But you have a long way to go if you think she was a good daughter.” Leigh had listened in shocked silence. Gene had never said a bad word about Abby to her before. “You have to understand. She disobeyed me. She quit school when she was seventeen and ran away, got in trouble, and she had only herself to blame for it. She could have done anything she wanted with her life, and she threw it away. I don’t want the same for you, Leigh.”

  When she was older she would realize the old man was scared, that he was afraid she’d run away like Abby had done, drop out, disappear, put herself in the path of dangerous people. But at sixteen, Leigh had only thought he was being petty and small-minded, and immediately she’d been angry and wanted to punish him. “What are you saying?” she’d asked. “Are you sorry I was born, Pop?”

  The old man had sighed. It was the first time she’d ever remembered him looking old—his face settling into a net of fine wrinkles, his sunburned skin softening into old age. “No, of course not. You know I love you. You know that I wouldn’t trade you for a bag of gold.”

  “What, then? Do you think Jake’s a bad person? That he’s using me?”

  “No, it’s not that exactly,” Gene had said. “But Jake’s a farm boy, and he’s happy being a farm boy. You have all these plans. You’ve been talking about moving to New York and becoming an editor since you were eight years old. Don’t you want to make sure that happens?”

  “What makes you think it won’t happen?” she’d asked, but she’d known what he was thinking.

  He didn’t have anything to worry about, not yet. She and Jake hadn’t slept together then, not that Leigh hadn’t wanted to. It was Jake who said he wanted to wait. His girlfriend back in Kentucky—well, he’d told Leigh, the sex had just complicated everything. They’d moved too fast, and after a while he had realized she never cared about him the way he cared about her.

  “This time I want everything to be perfect,” he’d said. “I want us both to be ready, when it happens.”

  She had been surprised, but she respected him for it: he was waiting until he was sure, until she was sure. She hadn’t known there were boys like that in the world. The losers Chloe always dated would have pounced as soon as they got the chance.

  So when her grandfather had insinuated that she was risking her future by sleeping with Jake, Leigh had exploded at him. “You think I’m stupid enough to get pregnant? Well, I got news for you, Pop: we aren’t sleeping together. Jake’s a gentleman. He’s never laid a hand on me, not the way you’re thinking. You’re the one with the dirty mind.”

  “Leigh—”

  “You don’t like Jake because he’s the help. You think I should date boys with money, boys from rich families or with important daddies, is that it?”

  “I never said—”

  “I can’t believe you’re such an elitist. All that talk about pulling my own weight, following my ambition, it was just bullshit, wasn’t it?”

  Gene had blanched; she’d never dared to use profanities in front of him before.

  “Here you are trying to breed me off like one of your mares, only the best bloodlines, the best pedigree. I might as well go on out to the breeding shed and let you pick my husband for me.”

  Gene’s face had gone completely white then. “Enough, Leigh,” he’d said quietly, but when she started to say something else he’d cut her off, his voice booming through the house: “That is enough.”

  She went silent. She’d gone too far now, and she knew it, but she was angry. She wanted to find a way to take back her words, but she couldn’t, she wouldn’t—he had no reason to think Jake was wrong for her, none but one, that Jake was the hired help. He wasn’t good enough for Gene Merrill’s granddaughter because he wasn’t from a wealthy family, because he wasn’t going to college or making any other grand plans. That was what galled her. That her grandfather, secretly, was something of a snob.

  She’d been about to say something else to this effect, but her grandfather had cut her off with a sharp jab of his hand. “I want you to put an end to it. That’s it. I’m finished with this discussion,” he’d said. “Put an end to it, or Jake and his father are off this farm tomorrow. Don’t test me on this, Leigh. I’ve said my piece, now I expect you to obey.”

  Before she could have said anything else, he was out the door, leaving Leigh behind to scream at the walls in frustration. Why wouldn’t he listen? Why did he have to be so unreasonable? She’d started to have an understanding of what Abby had gone through with Gene all those years ago. The old man had said his piece, and that was the end of the discussion.

  After that she and Jake were never allowed to be alone together. Gene must have said something to Jake’s father, insisted Ben put a stop to their romance or else, because Ben made sure to load Jake up with chores every day after school, mucking stalls, working the racehorses, even letting him break a few of the yearlings. Keeping him too busy for romance.

  Always, always she and Jake still managed to find each other again, after supper, late at night, a few minutes in the hayloft, where they could talk in secret, where they could kiss and cling to each other, promising their love, making plans for the day they’d get out of there, the day they’d break free. Instead of keeping them apart, Gene’s orders only cemented
their connection to each other.

  It was only a few days after Gene issued his decree, in fact, that Leigh and Jake slept together for the first time. She’d come home after school one day and found Jake gone. His father had sent him into town for some feed and other supplies, and Leigh, disappointed yet again, had gone into the house to do her homework and sulk. Her grandfather must have seen her bedroom door closed and knocked twice, softly. “Just checking in,” he said, opening the door a crack.

  She could see his face, tanned from the sun, out of the corner of her eye. He looked sad, but she would not give him her forgiveness, not yet, not after what he’d said and done. “Just checking that I’m alone, you mean,” she said. She was lying on her stomach with her math book open in front of her. She wouldn’t look him in the eye.

  “Watch your tone, Leela,” he said. “I put up with a lot of sass from you, but you know I’m right about this.”

  “You are not right about this.”

  “Enough,” he said. Then he stomped back up the hallway and down the stairs while Leigh, in frustration, flung her book at the closed door.

  She stayed in her room right through dinner and would have stayed in there all night if there hadn’t been a knock on her window just past eleven, when she was starting to get sleepy and hungry, when the big house seemed as silent and lonely as a tomb. Then the tap, tap of pebbles hitting her window. She looked out, and there was Jake standing in the bright moonlight, in a clean blue T-shirt and jeans, grinning at her like a crazy fool. She raised the sash a little and said, “Are you nuts?”

  “Must be,” he said. “Come on out here.”

  “I can’t. He’ll hear me.”

  “Climb on out the window.”

  “Oh sure, no one will hear that.”

  “The longer we argue about it, the more likely he is to hear you.”

  Leigh groaned. “All right. Hold on.”