I gave Annie a sideways glance before following. I prayed she could read it.
Henry stopped suddenly in front of the door, causing me to bump into him. He didn’t even flinch. His attention, instead, was focused on Annie. “Oh, and one more thing, Mrs. Gale. We had a . . . curious . . . incident in our home the other day. Perhaps my wife told you about it. A pair of very expensive cuff links was found to be missing from my bureau. A similar pair was seen on Dr. Goodwin very soon afterward.”
Annie stiffened slightly as if an invisible string had been pulled tight. But not slightly enough.
“Seems they were used as payment for some sick child’s illness. Curious, indeed.” He raised his eyebrows and gave a small shake of his head. “As soon as things are settled with my father’s estate, I plan on launching a full investigation. Seein’ as how you’re friends with my wife and all, I figured you might be able to help. I’ll be sure to send the sheriff over to your place—you know Sheriff Marimen, right? Real good friend of mine.” His chuckle sent goose bumps down my arm. “I’ll make sure he knows to talk to you first.”
The last thing I saw was Annie’s pale face before the door slammed shut behind us.
The wake lasted for hours. Or at least it seemed that way. Everything moved in slow motion. I stopped trying to be a good wife. I couldn’t even look at Henry. How could I, even for a moment, have felt sorry for him? Have cared about his grief? He cared for no one else’s.
The colorless morning faded into a pink evening as we began our journey home. As expected, Henry did not speak to me during the car ride, but this time, his silence held no grief. Instead, it was a frightful kind of peace. All forms of pretense were gone. There would be no more pretending.
He parked the car in front of the big house and started up the steps without looking back. I knew I was expected to walk the rest of the way to the back house. But I couldn’t. Not yet.
I followed him inside. The house was dark, the only light coming from beneath the office door. He was already seated at his father’s desk, a glass of whiskey at his lips, by the time I caught up.
“It’s late, Melissa. Go home.”
“I want you to promise to leave Mrs. Gale alone.”
“And why would I do that?”
I stuck out my chin, trying to stop it from trembling. “Because she had no part in it. Do what you want with me. Whatever you see fit, whatever you see as just. I won’t make a scene, and I promise to keep my mouth shut. But I’m begging you, please, leave Mrs. Gale out of it. She did nothing wrong.”
He twirled the amber liquid in his glass with one hand while shuffling some papers with the other. “Go to bed, Melissa.”
I would not. Not until this was settled. “Henry, please—” My voice caught in my throat as my gaze landed on a now-exposed piece of paper in front of him. “What is that?”
A cold smile played across his lips. “What is what?”
I was very aware I was playing into his game. I didn’t care. “Henry—”
“Oh. This?” He thrust the yellow paper toward me.
I let it float in the air between us before snatching it. My eyes washed over the black ink. It was an auction notice. This coming Saturday. For several pieces of Mayfield land. Including . . .
“I’m sure you recognize one of the addresses.” His voice was cool. Cruel.
“But you promised,” I whispered. “You promised you’d keep my father’s land until they returned. You’d keep it in the family.”
He scoffed. “Yeah, well, you promised a lot of things.”
So it had come to this. He didn’t want to punish me. He wanted to destroy me. And he knew exactly how to do it. I had taken his dignity, so he would take my hope.
I grabbed his hands. He pulled away in disgust. “Henry, please don’t do this.” Please don’t take them away too. They’d never come back if they had nowhere to come back to. Not even my sister’s stubbornness would sway Pa’s common sense in something so black-and-white. I stared into his eyes, searching for any compassion, any of the love he might have felt at one time. There was nothing.
He took another sip of whiskey. The burning smell turned my stomach. Or maybe it was Henry himself. “Business is business, and business hasn’t been good. I had to make some hard choices. Times are changing, and we have to change with them. Get rid of anything that’s no longer—” his eyes flickered from my face to my stomach and back again—“useful.”
A beat. A moment. That’s all it took.
I shrank back as he stood. “Please, Henry. I know I wronged you. I know I did. But please don’t do this. I beg you, in the name of God, for His sake, not mine—”
“God?” Henry laughed, the whiskey in his glass sloshing. “Look around, Melissa. God left this place a long time ago. Haven’t you figured that out? He doesn’t care about us. The only authority left in Cimarron County is me.”
The dim light cast darkness across the face I’d once kissed, the features I’d once found so strong and handsome.
I stepped back, tripping over my feet and landing on my rear end in the hallway.
Henry stood in the doorframe, blocking out the light from within. From my spot on the floor, he was a shadow. “Good night, Melissa.”
I rose on wobbly legs. It wasn’t until I was out of the big house that my strength returned. I raced down the drive through the moonless night, not stopping until I was inside our house with the door bolted shut behind me. Finally out of his presence, my body emptied of courage. I sank to the floor, choking on my own fear, my breath coming out in ragged waves. I clutched my stomach, fighting both tremors and nausea.
There was no mistaking his meaning. After the baby was born, Henry Mayfield was going to be rid of me. One way or another.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
KATHRYN
I wasn’t moving.
It was the first thing to hit me when I opened my eyes. I was still. I wasn’t in a car, on a horse, on a train. I was in a bed. In a house. On a street. And I wasn’t moving no more. How long had it been since I had been still?
“Kathryn.”
The room was dim, and I struggled to find the source of the voice. Rustling in the corner and then a soft click. Light. Just like that, there was light. And Helen. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, her face powdered, but not with dust. Her dress was yellow with blue flowers. It looked soft. A real dress. Not a flour sack like mine.
Only I wasn’t wearing a flour sack anymore. My skin didn’t itch. My fingers fluttered to my stomach, feeling the smooth material. It was the same green as new wheat. And the hands touching it . . . were they even mine? They were clean, the nails trimmed. My hands didn’t look like that.
“Kathryn.”
I turned my head back toward Helen, squinting. Everything about her was too bright. She was clean. Her hair was shiny. Even her teeth were glossy. It made my eyes hurt. I opened my mouth to speak and found it dry. I swallowed dust.
Helen handed me a glass of water.
A glass of clear water. Like it was the most natural thing in the world. And it should have been. But it was so heavy, I struggled to raise it to my lips. When I did, I nearly gagged. Just like her, it was too clean. And too easy.
“You’ve been drifting in and out for a week.”
Memories swam in my vision, blurry and unfocused. Helen. Forced sips of water, spoonfuls of soup, a damp cloth on my forehead. A week of fitful, dreamless sleep. And yet exhaustion still pricked at every nerve.
“Do you want something to eat?”
I shook my head. Truth was, I was starving. And if they had clean water in the house, new clothes, a soft bed, there was no telling what kind of food was in store. Maybe even pastries from that same bakery I hadn’t been good enough to stand in. But food wasn’t why I was here. “Where’s Pa?” I croaked.
Helen smoothed her dress. She stopped looking at me.
“Where’s Pa?” I repeated, louder.
“Kathryn.”
If I�
��d had the energy, I would have screamed. Told her to stop saying my name and answer the question. I didn’t come here for her. But my throat remained closed, my lips parched.
“Kathryn,” she started again. She stood suddenly, moving from her chair to the edge of the bed. She reached for my hand, stopped, then reached for it again. Her hands were ice. “Kathryn, your father, he . . . he didn’t make it.”
What did she mean? Did the truck break down? Was he stuck somewhere?
“My father did all he could, but by the time we got here, the trip . . . it had just . . . worn him out. The dust pneumonia was too advanced.”
Her words jumbled. My brain struggled to keep up. Wait. Where was Pa?
“He passed quietly. In his sleep.”
She wasn’t making any sense.
“We had him cremated, like he wanted.”
Cremated? Cremated is only something you do when someone dies. What was she talking about?
“I’m sorry, Kathryn. He didn’t suffer. Not at the end. He was comfortable. Safe. I was with him.”
Her words hit me like a kick from a horse, clearing my foggy brain. I yanked my hand from hers.
Tears welled in her eyes. “Kathryn, please.”
“Shut up.” They were the first words I’d spoken that had flavor. I could taste them on my tongue. I sat up, feeling an ache travel down to my foot but refusing to give it the attention it demanded.
Helen slid from the bed, backing toward the wall.
I struggled to stand on my own, gripping the bedpost for support. My foot was red, angry, bruised into a mess. My shoe. It wasn’t on my foot. It wasn’t on this ridiculous pink floor. She’d taken it. She’d taken my shoe. And Mr. Hickory’s sock. And my pa. “I should have been with him. Not you! I’m his daughter.”
“Kathryn—”
“Does Melissa know? Did you bother to tell her? Or was this one more way you could have him all to yourself?”
“I wrote her a letter. About you, about James. But I haven’t . . . I couldn’t bear to send it.”
“You couldn’t bear it?” I wanted to laugh. But not enough to actually do it. “You are so selfish, Helen. You know that? My pa couldn’t see it, but I could. You only care about you. My pa had a whole other life before you. Besides you. And you couldn’t stand it.”
Helen wept openly now, covering her face with her hands.
It almost broke me. Almost. How dare she cry? Those tears were rightfully mine. But I was too angry to back down. And not just at her. “You did this to him! You brought him to this place, forced him to leave his home, lost his daughter along the way—”
“We looked everywhere for you!” Trails of black mascara rolled down her face. She looked like a fancy raccoon. “For over an hour we roamed those dunes, looking for that handkerchief.”
A sudden coldness seized my gut. “Handkerchief?”
“Yes,” she sniffed. “The blue-and-white one. Your pa knew it was the brightest thing you had, that it would be the easiest thing to spot in the dirt.”
I swayed, suddenly dizzy, and gripped the bedpost with numb fingers, sweat chilling my forehead. “Pa didn’t know I had that hankie. It was Melissa’s. She gave it to me before we left, but I didn’t tell anyone.”
Helen opened and closed her mouth several times. “Well, he must have seen it.”
I shook my head. “No. I kept it in my pocket. Because I knew he’d make me give it back if he saw it.”
She blinked, twisting her pale hands together. Beneath her flowered dress, her chest fell and rose rapidly.
I couldn’t breathe. My nightgown was too tight. And sweaty. But still I was cold. Heart-pounding, shivering cold. “You saw me, didn’t you?”
“Kathryn—”
“I had the handkerchief across my face, trying to keep the dust out of my nose. When I came to, it was still there.” I took a wobbly step forward. “You saw me. In the ditch . . . and you left me there.”
The words lingered on my lips. They had been so hard to say and yet so easy. “You left me there,” I repeated, louder. “You left me there.” It was out in the open. She couldn’t take it back. I couldn’t take it back. But I wasn’t surprised. I was relieved. The game was over. We could stop pretending now.
“I had to!” Helen rushed toward me, causing me to fall backward into the bed. Her nails dug into my shoulders. “He would have made us go back!” Makeup smeared, her face was no longer perfect. It was red, splotchy, scary. “Don’t you see? We’d come so far! We were so close to being free! When I saw you, I thought you were already gone. Or else very close. And if he’d found you, hurt or sick or dying, he would have made us go back.” She released her grip on my arms, her body collapsing into itself. “That place was killing us, Kathryn. Killing him. We couldn’t go back.”
The air in the room, so clean and fresh, smelling of powder and honeysuckle, suddenly felt dirty. I pulled away from her and retched. Nothing came up. There was nothing to come up. I was empty.
“Please, Kathryn. You have to understand. I was trying to save him. I loved him. I thought if I could just get him home—”
“Home?” I exploded, finding my voice again. “Home? You took him from his home, Helen! Stole him from it!”
She collapsed on the floor, sobbing. She grabbed at my legs as I stood and stepped away, wincing as my bad foot made contact with the soft carpet.
I’d never liked Helen. I didn’t like how she looked at me, how she looked at my father. I didn’t like how she walked around our dugout, doing the things my mother should have done. And I certainly didn’t like how . . . Helen she’d tried to make everything in our lives. But now even those fake bonds between us were severed. She was no longer a Baile, if she’d ever really been one at all. She was just Helen Barrett. And I hated her. I hated her for what she’d done. Hated her for who she was. But most of all, I hated her for being the only person within a thousand miles who should have cared about me . . . but didn’t.
I almost cried then. Instead I looked down at the mess of a woman at my feet. “Oklahoma didn’t kill him, Helen. You did.”
Ignoring her wails, I stormed from the room, forcing back tears of my own. Tears for the throbbing in my foot, for the father I’d lost, for the journey I’d made, for the God I’d wanted to find but who, it turned out, wasn’t worth finding at all.
Most of all, I cried for the ending—and new beginning—that suddenly wasn’t.
The house was so stupidly big, it took me ten minutes to get out. Even then, I wasn’t really out. I was in the yard. I guess it was a yard. The absurd, enormous, magnificent yard. Even in the fading light, the grass was bright green, like someone had painted it. There were trees with actual leaves and a tall brick wall and a garden. A lush, full garden with roses and lettuce and corn. So much color and beauty in a world without Pa didn’t make sense.
I grabbed on to the nearest tree and took several large breaths. My foot was throbbing. I needed to get out of here. But I wouldn’t get far without my shoes. There was no telling what she’d done with them. They were probably in the trash somewhere. Maybe if I was quiet, I could sneak back in and look for them without anyone seeing me. Without having to see Helen. I was so angry and so desperately sad, I was afraid I would hurt her. Or collapse in her arms. I wasn’t sure which would be worse.
I took a step toward the house, then stopped. Even if I found my shoes, then what? I didn’t have any money to get home. I didn’t know how to get to the station or find the right train to hop. I didn’t even know how to get out of this ridiculous house. And my foot hurt. So did my chest. So did everything.
“Good evening, Kathryn.”
I jumped as a fire suddenly flared nearby. The orange glow rose and met the end of a cigarette, illuminating the silver hair of its smoker briefly before burning out and shrouding us both in darkness once again.
The man at the door. It seemed like a million years ago.
“I was wondering if you were ever going to wake up.”
> “I was tired.”
The man laughed softly. “Yes, I imagine so.” He moved toward me, a dark shadow in an even darker twilight. Then came the rustling of his jacket and the sound of flesh against metal as he patted a bench I hadn’t realized was there. “Sit.”
I straightened, ignoring the protest in my foot. “No thank you.”
“Suit yourself.” A long sigh and the tip of his cigarette flared again. “So you’re my granddaughter.”
No, I’m not.
“Helen talked a lot about you.”
Sure she did.
“I’m glad I got the chance to finally meet you. I didn’t think I would.”
Because your daughter left me for dead.
Another long pause, another drag on his cigarette. “I’m sorry about your father, Kathryn.”
I took a step back as if burned. “You didn’t even know him.”
“He was sick when he got here. The cough . . .” He cleared his throat as if just talking about it made it catching. “I’d heard physicians talk about it, those who’d been to the Dust Bowl—that’s what they’re calling it, you know? The Dust Bowl. I read it in the paper.” He waited for me to say something, to respond, but I had nothing. Like giving our plague a name was what really mattered right now. After a few moments, he continued. “But to experience it for myself . . . I just want you to know I did my best. Did everything I could.”
I wanted him to stop talking, but I didn’t have the energy to yell. All that anger from before, the only thing keeping me going, pushing me past the pain, began to fizzle, leaking into my body as sadness. A sadness that threatened to drown me.
“He used to ask me to take him out here. On days he was feeling strong. He’d come out here and sit on this bench, staring up at the sky. And he’d talk. About Oklahoma, about you and your sister. But mainly you. Oh, how he loved to talk about you.”
I clutched the tree at my back, focusing on the rough bark at my fingertips, the smell of wet leaves. Anything to take me away from here, from his words and his memories. Memories of my father that should have been mine.
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