Chapter 9: Doubt
I spent nearly half my time under Gaunt House with Cain, which meant I struggled to keep up with college work. One day near the end of term I even convinced Albion to finish an essay for me. I told him I’d run out of time but the truth was I wanted to spend the night with Cain. I only felt right when I was with him. Each evening the other three went through their visions from the day. Snippets of visions for Liz and Jude, and slightly longer, more detailed visions for Owen. Almost every day one of them mentioned the farmer, or the blue radio, but no one ever explained the significance of those to me. Cain didn’t recount any visions during these sessions, so I figured he didn’t have them as often as the others. It made sense that his would be less frequent than the others’ fragmented visions, since his visions now showed the complete event. Part of me wanted to hear him describe a full vision and be part of the effort to prevent whatever tragic event was foretold. Another part of me was filled with dread at the thought.
Liz and Owen seemed more at peace with my presence now I knew their secret. Liz showed me photos of her nephew in Revel City. Owen explained his thesis work on sermon texts during the Enlightenment. Jude was another story. As always he wore his feelings plainly on his face, and although he tried to forgive me and Cain he had a hard time with it. For the most part he was fine, but every now and then I’d do something banal like tell a lame joke or pretend to cheat at cards and he’d be laughing―then suddenly his face would darken. It made me feel bad. Jude had always been sunshine and laughter so it hurt to see his face marred by resentment. It was also irritating. I’d warned him not to get attached, for God’s sake.
Covertly they tried to guess why I was there but I could see what they were doing. They asked me questions, trying out theories. Had I ever seen anything supernatural? What sort of dreams did I have? Did I ever experience déjà vu? Owen focused on my family history, asking about my father’s work and my own faith. I disappointed them time and time again. I didn’t know how to tell them what I knew about them, and they had no idea how isolating it was to hear their questions. Whenever they tried to work out how I was special it hurt me because I wasn’t. I didn’t belong to their little group. I wasn’t one of the divine faces Cain had seen in his vision. I was just Francesca Caravaggio, just Frankie. A mistake.
One night Jude made the preposterous remark that I might be a healer. It turned out he was talking about the time I visited him at home and played with the broken electric can opener and made the thing work again. I healed a can opener. I was disgusted he had the gall to even relate the ridiculous anecdote.
“Have you ever healed before?” Liz asked.
“No,” I muttered. “It was a stupid bloody can opener with a dickey switch. I didn’t heal it.”
In other words, shut up about my non-existent gifts already.
Later that night, as the other three departed, I remained huddled on Cain’s sofa, my arms around my knees. He came back from saying goodbye and gave me a pointed look.
“You’re not a mistake, Francesca.”
I pretended I hadn’t been thinking about it. I had a question ready.
“What are they talking about when they mention the farmer and the radio?”
“Oh, yeah, the farmer. They’ve been seeing visions of this farmer for months now. We don’t seem to make any progress with it, though.”
“What’s in the vision?”
“The guy is angry,” Cain said. “He’s sitting alone in the dark, by a bonfire. Flannel shirt, thin face. Gray hair and stubble. Weathered-looking. He’s got a little blue radio at his side and a gun.”
I reflected. “That describes about half of Augur’s Well’s farming population, right there. And they never seem to look happy.”
“That’s because of the crap that’s going down locally,” said Cain. “The tanning works being shut down. That, along with the drought last summer, means the farmers are in deep shit financially.”
“They were talking about that at college. The local suicide rate is way up. One of the girls in my class lost her father that way last year.”
“Yeah. We’ve been wondering if it’s a suicide situation we’re seeing.” Cain looked ruminative for a few moments.
“Was that what made you come to Augur’s Well from the city?” I asked. “Seeing the visions of the farmer?”
He shook his head. “No. I haven’t seen the vision of the farmer yet. I came here because, while I was unconscious, I heard voices. I can’t remember what they said, but I woke up with a strong feeling―a compulsion―to come to Augur’s Well. And I knew this place was under Gaunt House ruins.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
The story scared me. I changed the subject. “Back when I first starting coming here, why did you tell Jude to ask me out?”
Cain’s face changed. “He told you that?”
“I guessed.”
He stared at the ground, fidgeting his hands together in discomfort. He’d never looked this flustered before. More scarring was visible on his arm as he twisted his hands together like that―well, his wrist, really. It gave me an unpleasant feeling in the pit of my stomach. I sneaked looks down at the scar, trying not to let him see what I was doing. It was on one wrist only, as far as I could see. And it didn’t look like a cutting wound either; more like an old gouge wound or burn. That was a relief. Maybe just another scar from his accident?
“Jude liked you,” he said at last, pulling me back to our conversation. “A lot. I could see that. But he was confused. He thought liking you might cause a problem. In the end I just told him to ask you out.”
I frowned. “Really?”
Cain didn’t look at my face and I wondered briefly if he could be lying. “It’s true,” he said, lifting his eyes to mine. Okay, maybe it was true.
“I wish you hadn’t. It made things much more complicated.”
“I know. I didn’t know what else to do. I don’t always have the right answers.”
“Was it really necessary to expedite things for him and me?” A sardonic edge crept into my voice. “Couldn’t you just have let it go?”
He glanced away again. Aha ... Cain was holding out on me. He hadn’t lied but he hadn’t told me everything. “What, Cain? Did you think it would change something? Make me part of the group or something?”
Still, he vacillated. “Or something.”
“Did it work?”
He gave a half-groan, half-laugh. “No.”
“Why, then? Why’d you really do it? Did you think it would stop me causing trouble? Or that we were a break up waiting to happen, and once Jude and I split up I’d leave?”
He’d been shaking his head while I guessed, almost laughing at my persistence, but for a split second Cain looked disgusted. With me? Or himself? “I wanted you to be with Jude,” he told me flatly, “because then I would be forced to get over you myself.”
“Oh,” I said in a small voice.
My pulse careered out of control, but Cain was oblivious. He sighed. “I don’t know how to explain it. When you appeared that first night, and I woke up and saw you, I thought you’d found me by yourself. I thought you’d come to tell me something; to ... guide us somehow. Then Jude appeared, and I realized he’d brought you. Too late. I was already totally thrown. Ripped wide open. Like all my focus disappeared in one blinding moment.”
I exhaled, trembling. Couldn’t he hear himself? After telling me, reassuring me that I wasn’t a mistake, he was now confessing this to me? It confirmed that I was a mistake, after all. He thought I’d been sent to him, a messenger, another saint, perhaps. But I’d turned out to be an accident. A distraction.
“I tried to make a sacrifice by telling Jude to ask you out. I hoped you’d both fall in love, and then I could get back to normal. I would have to stop thinking about you all the time because nothing could come of it. I wouldn’t even be able to show what was going on inside me because you’d be his and I didn’t want to hurt hi
m.” He laughed mirthlessly. “I hoped it would just stop going on inside me. I didn’t realize you would force the truth out of me like you did.”
That was hardly fair. “I didn’t force anything out of you.”
“You did. I didn’t know what damage you might do when you brought those other people here that night. I had to stop you.”
I stopped breathing. “You told me ... to stop me?” I repeated, feeling a little ill.
He shook his head. “No, of course not. I told you for my own selfish purposes. Because of how I felt, I couldn’t let you mess everything up.”
“What does that mean?”
He stared at the ceiling. “Well, imagine if you’d succeeded when you came here with your friends. Say you’d shown some outsiders this underground cavern, and they all wanted to bring their friends to this cool spot. It wouldn’t be exclusively ours anymore. The authorities might even get wind of it and decide it’s unsafe, block it up or fence it off. In the end, though, that wouldn’t matter. We’d still all be together―Owen, Liz, Jude, and me―and we’d find somewhere else to meet.” Cain looked at me. “But there was no way I could have convinced the rest of them to allow you to stay. Not after pulling off a stunt like that. And you already meant far too much to me to let you get yourself thrown out.”
“It would have been my fault, though. I would have deserved it.”
He smiled. “Of course. But I still couldn’t allow it to happen.”
“After you told Jude it was okay to ask me out, did you then tell him a few weeks later to dump me?”
Cain’s mouth fell open. “Jude told you that?”
“No. I’m a good guesser. Am I right?”
“No. I didn’t tell him to dump you ... but I suggested he put a bit of distance between the two of you. I had to protect him.”
“Protect him?” He gave a terse nod. “You wanted to protect him?” I glanced down at my own thin brown arms, trying to work out what could be dangerous about me.
“From falling in love with you.”
“I wasn’t intending to hurt him,” I said. “I suppose it was wrong of me to go out with him when it was you I really cared about, but I wasn’t doing any of it maliciously. I wasn’t planning to do anything awful to Jude.” A thought occurred to me. “Ohhh. You knew. You could tell I was interested in you even when I was with Jude.” I cringed inwardly. “You tried to warn Jude not to trust me. Okay. You did the right thing. For the record, I liked Jude. I mean, I didn’t love him, but I wasn’t trying to hurt him. But he was just a temporary diversion from you, really. So, yeah, it might have been painful for him if you’d allowed us to date any longer.”
“Are you being deliberately obtuse?” Cain asked. “Do you really not understand?” I frowned. “I wasn’t trying to protect him from you. I wanted to protect him from me. If I’d allowed it to go on Jude would definitely have got hurt because I couldn’t watch you together much longer. I didn’t know how long it would be before I stepped in between you and tried to make you come apart. I was already insanely jealous. Every time I saw you smile at him it made me feel sick. It was pure self-interested envy.” He sounded angry with himself. “But I couldn’t stand to see you together. If I couldn’t have you, then I couldn’t stand to see him have you. I told myself I was warning him for his own good, because plainly you didn’t feel as much for Jude as he did for you. But the truth was that I selfishly, recklessly wanted you for myself.”
He dropped his face into his hands but I basked without conscience in this beautiful admission. I jumped at him, finding his lips. Cain slid his hands into my hair and gripped me close. It wasn’t enough. It was never enough for me to simply kiss him. I felt wild in his presence, like I was just barely holding back a poorly trained animal, and if she got out of the cage she might tear flesh and spill blood. But Cain had no knowledge of the animal and he pulled back to touch my face tenderly. For God’s sake. I could barely regulate my breathing and he was stroking my cheek.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I messed things up. I should never have tried to control things like I did. I told myself I was doing it for the right reasons.”
“It was probably a good thing you interfered because I would have hurt Jude sooner or later. Even if you didn’t want me, I wanted you, selfishly and recklessly.” I copied his words exactly, savoring them. “It might have been worse for Jude if it went on longer. I kind of knew I wasn’t really into him. I even told him not to get too attached.”
“You’ve got a good heart, Francesca. You care about how he feels.”
I grimaced. “Yeah, such a good heart. Such a good heart that I ditched poor Jude without a second thought as soon as you showed me you were interested.”
“I was at breaking point, seeing you two together,” he confessed. “That night when you took him into one of the other rooms ... to kiss him?” I winced at the memory. “I knew what you two were doing. I wanted to leave it alone; to ignore it, just let it be. But I went looking for you, anyway. When I found you together I could have happily hit Jude’s face. I wanted to rip you away from him and give you a kiss you’d really remember. I wanted every thought and memory of Jude to evaporate out of you and to make you totally, completely mine.”
He played with my fingers absently as he spoke. How he could do that and still think straight? I wasn’t thinking straight. I blushed to think that was all it took―just Cain touching my fingers while he thought out loud―to make my whole body scream out for him. I got up and paced the chamber.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Taking a breather.”
“From?”
“From the way you make me feel,” I said, a note of bitterness in my voice.
That silenced him but a moment later he held out a hand to me. “Come back here.”
I refused to meet his eyes as I sat beside him, careful not to touch him. Cain slid his arm around my waist and I froze. What was he doing? Was he trying to make me implode? Did he want to see how just flustered and shaky he could make me? I scowled, sitting rigid beside him on the sofa.
“Oh, come here,” he said with a laugh, pulling me close.
There was no point trying to resist. He put his lips against my neck and when I turned my face towards him, relenting a little, he sought my mouth for a fierce kiss.
“Stop. You’re doing it again,” I protested weakly.
He shook his head. “You do it to me, too, Francesca.” He kissed me once more, but then grew still. “I doubt myself,” he said. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if I should give in to it without understanding.”
Yeah. I got that.