Hope's Corner

by Chris Keniston

  “I’d have thought with her being sick and all, she’d have come home sooner, but she wanted to stay in Dallas.”

  “Sick?”

  “Don’t know exactly what ailed her. Just know that her sister, Valerie, took a leave from her job to stay with her.”

  Pam’s sister was anything but a city girl. Hope’s Corner was just the right size for her. Here she was a big fish, even if it was in a little pond. What could have been so wrong with Pam to make Valerie grace the big city? And could whatever it was be the same thing that had turned friendly, competent Pam into a basket case today?

  Something had to give.

  Pam sat slumped over the steering wheel, her head resting against her arms. She hadn’t taken long to reorganize the report and drive it over to Mr. Haskell’s office. That had just been an excuse to get away. A little fresh air.

  In Dallas she’d used her makeup skills to hide the dark circles. In a busy law office, no one took time to notice if she was or wasn’t getting enough sleep. But things were different in a small town. Jeff had picked up on her mood as soon as she’d come to work. His concerned tone was almost enough to make her tell him everything. About the hurt, the pain, the loneliness, the guilt, and the paralyzing fear that lingered through the day after the terrifying nightmares had ended.

  The nightmares had been a constant in her life ever since Travis had died. At first she’d tried to keep them a secret, but Greg eventually noticed her increased anxiety. Every day he would take time from his busy schedule to check on her. Sometimes it was only a phone call, sometimes a dinner out. Always he’d ask if she felt any better. Occasionally she could pretend all was well, but she couldn’t hide the truth from him completely.

  Desperation helped her make the decision for a clean break. She’d been happy in Dallas, but everywhere she went was a reminder of the life taken away from her. The life she had lost that night. The night her nightmares wouldn’t let her forget.

  Sitting up, she leaned heavily against the seat, letting her head fall back. There was a small tear in the roof of the car. Probably from trying to shove lengths of metal lawn edging into a vehicle designed to carry rounded people not long sharp objects. “Oh, Travis. I thought moving home would make the difference.”

  Now what? She couldn’t very well spend the rest of the afternoon sitting in the church parking lot, staring at the torn ceiling and talking to her dead husband. She needed to return to work. But she was so tired of the fight, the pretense. The day after a nightmare sent her back to the dark, terrifying place she’d been after that fateful night. Tomorrow would be better. Almost normal. As long as she didn’t dream.

  “What am I going to do? I could always count on you for sound advice. Val says I need to stop. She thinks hanging on to you like this is part of the problem. How could she think that? You were everything good in my life.

  “Those first few days after moving home, I thought I’d made the right choice. I slept clear through the night. Didn’t remember a single dream, good or bad. By the third day I was convinced I hadn’t made a mistake. And then…wham, another nightmare.”

  Pam unfastened her seat belt, reached across the seat for her purse, and dragged it onto her lap. “You remember. The next day Etta Mae brought me muffins. I’d forgotten Pastor Parker and his family lived next door when I had rented the house. I was real happy to see her, but damned if I didn’t jump halfway to Kansas when she came up behind me in the kitchen and tapped me on the arm.

  “I was terrified to close my eyes that night.” She shook her head and opened the car door, but didn’t turn. Instead, she stared out the windshield at the church. “When I finally dosed off, I slept till noon. And the day after that, and the day after that. I even came to think the nightmare had been a fluke.”

  She clutched her purse more tightly against her chest. “And then it happened again. Only this time Etta Mae saw the whole thing. Do you think things would be different if I’d gone to a therapist? The police tried to tell me I needed counseling, a support group. Maybe I should have listened, but I couldn’t face it. I thought with time things would get better. I’d be okay. But it’s not getting better, and I’m not okay.”

  Her eyes focused on a blooming magnolia off in the distance. It was as if some deep part of her expected an answer, a sign. Something, anything to tell her what to do. “Val is right. I need to stop this. But I can’t let you go. I just can’t.”

  So Travis Dawson is dead. Pamela Sue Wharton Dawson is a widow. And on any random day she morphs into a woman who’s scared to death of something, or someone. But what?

  Jeff had spent most of the evening chatting with his mom and dad, and knew little more about Pam than he had after working with her this week. “Such a nice girl,” his mom had said. “Always the smart one in the family,” his dad added with a proud smile. Jeff’s dad often gloated over the successes of his flock as though he’d fathered every one of them himself.

  If Jeff wanted to know more, short of asking Pam directly and possibly stirring up more trouble than either of them could handle, Jeff was simply going to have to find another source.

  Turning left off the main road, he pulled into the parking lot of the Last Chance Café. Every time he drove by, he wondered why Redding Foster had saddled the town restaurant with such a ridiculous name. Most of his life the café had been known as the Hope’s Corner Café. Three years ago Redding had decided the restaurant needed some panache and had came up with what Jeff thought was the hokiest name. If they had lived in a dime-store novel or a film noir, the name worked perfectly. But in small-town Texas, it was just plain clichéd.

  “How’s it going, Pastor?” Redding flung the white dishrag over his shoulder and hurried to the door to greet Jeff, handing him one of the gold-trimmed plastic menus. Another of Redding’s ideas meant to add flare to the ordinary country restaurant. It might have worked had he used a photo of the actual café for the cover. But the detailed drawing of a modern glass structure perched precariously on the edge of a cliff as the surf crashed against the rocky shore below seemed absurdly out of place in landlocked East Texas.

  “Had a hankering for some of your sweet potato pie.”

  “Now that’s quite a compliment, seeing as how your mama makes the best sweet potato pie in the county.”

  Jeff offered a broad smile and followed Redding to a nearby table. “Does the men’s baseball team still come in after the games?”

  “Yep. Should be here any minute.” Redding eyed him curiously, furrowed his brows, then shrugged a shoulder, and smiled. “You thinking about going back to the game?”

  “Nah, just wondering is all. How about a little extra whipped cream on that pie?”

  “You got it. Coffee too?”

  “Please.”

  “Coming right up.”

  Jeff looked out the window at the main road. He remembered, when he was a boy, Hope’s Corner had only one traffic light. In college, whenever someone joked their hometown was so small you’d miss it if you blinked, his mind would always wander home. Now storefronts spanned Main Street from one side of town to the other, and the street boasted a whopping three traffic lights.

  With a push of people moving farther out to the country to escape big city suburban sprawl, the population of Hope’s Corner had grown from close to four hundred, when he was a kid, to over two thousand. There was a time when he knew every one of the eighty or so families living in or around town. Now he didn’t even know how many families lived in Hope’s Corner. He wasn’t sure how it had happened, but the outside world was slowly closing in on their little corner of the world.

  His dad always said, “If you’re not growing, you’re dying.” That probably applied to towns too. But at least some things didn’t change. The men’s baseball league still played ball every Thursday night, and Pam’s brothers, Bo and Jake, were still on the team.

  By the time Redding brought Jeff his pie and coffee, the first of the players were laughing their way through the front doo
r and bumping past each other to a group of tables in the back. Miscellaneous nods and greetings were directed Jeff’s way as each man crossed the room. Some stopping to chat longer than others. He’d played ball for years with half the team. Even played on the adult league the summer between college and grad school.

  Billy Ray Edwards flopped in the seat across from Jeff. “Hey, man. Long time no see.”

  “I’m at the same place every Sunday morning.”

  “Yeah, well.” Billy stuck his little finger in his ear, closed one eye and maneuvered his pinkie as though he were digging for gold instead of searching for something to say. “You know how it is.”

  “I gather from the mood the team won?”

  “You bet!” The gold in his ear forgotten, Billy lit up.

  “Hey, Jeff!” Jake Wharton bellowed from the doorway. Pam’s brother Jake stood six foot three, weighed 250 pounds, and was as bald as a cue ball. Even in a soiled baseball uniform, the guy looked more like an out-of-place biker than a banker. Wearing a grin as wide as Main Street, he strode in Jeff’s direction.

  “You should have seen us. Billy here hit a line drive straight between old Hooter’s legs.” Jake’s beefy hand smacked Billy on the back with such force, Jeff was surprised their friend hadn’t flown across the room. “Three runs came home while they were doing the Keystone Kops routine in left field. Man, you shoulda been there.”

  “Sorry I missed it.”

  “Enough to play again? There’s nothing in the Good Book that says you can’t join us next week.”

  “It’s been too long. Last thing I want is to be the one in left field dropping the ball.”

  Jake laughed louder and slapped Billy on the back again. “You gotta catch it before you can drop it. At least join us in the back for a drink. You know most of the guys.”

  “Thanks, I think I will.” With a cup of coffee in one hand and pie in the other, he tried not to drop anything as the players moved about, pushing tables and pulling chairs and slapping him on the back, as though they hadn’t all lived in the same town almost their entire lives. His mom was right; he needed to get out more often.

  Now his only problem was how to steal Jake or Bo away long enough to find out more about Pam. He probably should have waited to visit Jake at home or called him on the phone. Coming here to casually bump into Pam’s brothers seemed like a great idea when he was pulling out of his mother’s driveway. At the time he hadn’t given any thought to the fifteen other guys who’d be hovering within earshot.

  “Pammy seems real happy working at the church,” Jake said after a few minutes.

  Jeff wasn’t sure, but the way Jake looked at his beer instead of at him gave Jeff the impression that Jake had been looking for a way to talk about Pammy as much as Jeff had. The two high school buddies didn’t see each other very often anymore, but back in school, Jeff could always tell when Jake had something on his mind, and tonight didn’t seem any different.

  “She’s an answer to prayer. I was seriously thinking of talking old lady Ballard out of retirement.”

  Jake let out another deep, rolling laugh. “That woman has to be a hundred if she’s a day.”

  “Exactly.”

  Jake pulled a chair from an empty table. Turning away from the boisterous crowd, he flung a leg over the seat, straddled the chair, and with his arms hanging over the wooden back, he lowered his voice. “I’m kinda glad she took that job. We’ve been worried about her.”

  Nodding his head, Jeff strained to hear over the raucous crowd beside them.

  “She’s had a real rough time of it since Travis died.”

  This was exactly the sort of conversation Jeff had been hoping for. Jake nodded toward an empty table a few feet away. His half-eaten pie forgotten, Jeff grabbed the cup of coffee and followed.

  “Life for Pammy hasn’t been easy these last couple of years.” Jake looked across at the men laughing and joking. “Remember when she used to look more like my kid brother than a sister?”

  Jeff smiled and nodded.

  “Spitfire, she was. Never thought I’d see that die.” Jake turned his attention back to Jeff. “You know much about what happened to Travis?”

  He shook his head. “I was still at seminary. All I remember hearing is her husband died in some kind of accident.”

  “Hmm. That’s the story Mrs. Dawson told. None of us saw fit to contradict her, but it wasn’t exactly an accident. He was killed.”

  “Killed…” Jeff wanted to say something more profound, comforting, but the inside of his mouth had turned to cotton.

  Jake lowered his voice. "Carjacking,"

  Carjackings and murders weren’t the sort of thing the people of Hope’s Corner dealt with. Even with the town’s growth, until Frank Buckner, the worst crime spree Jeff had known of was when the Hansen boys and a few misguided friends thought painting the statue of the town founder, Archibald Perry, green, gold, and purple in honor of Mardi Gras would be a good idea. They’d barely had time to start on the second statue of his wife, Hope, who the town was named for, when they were spotted by Billy Ray as he drove around trying to put his colicky twins back to sleep.

  No, a carjacking was the sort of gossip that would keep a town like Hope’s Corner gabbing for months, maybe years. In time Travis would be remembered more for how he died rather than how he lived. He couldn’t blame Mrs. Dawson for keeping quiet that part of her son’s death. “What happened?”

  “Don’t know all the details. According to the police, Travis was dead by the time the cops arrived. Pammy was barely hanging on.”

  “Shot?”

  “I wish. Some bastard beat her to within an inch of her life. They said it was a blessing Pammy didn’t remember what happened. We’d hoped, since she didn’t remember the attack, that meant she’d been unconscious for most of the brutality. But when she started mumbling in her sleep, pleading out loud, we knew, even if she didn’t remember, she’d been conscious for some of it.”

  The anger Jeff had felt on the front lawn days ago returned full force. Needing something to do with his hands rather than punch the nearest wall, he reached for the coffee cup. “Where were they when it happened?”

  “Their garage.”

  Jeff almost spilled the cup he’d been toying with. No wonder the woman was scared to death. If you’re not safe in your own home… “Was it that bad a neighborhood?”

  “Nope. The police think the guy saw them someplace and followed them. Slipped into the garage behind them.” Jake lifted his drink, hesitated, then set it back down. “I know the world is full of sickos who get their jollies beating up on other people, but you don’t expect one of your own to ever cross paths with them.”

  “Was she… assaulted?” Assaulted. Some professional he was. Couldn’t even use the word rape. Not when it was someone he knew.

  Jake raised a shoulder in a slow shrug. “At the time Pammy said no. So many damn laws nowadays. Without her permission, no one would give us any details. Not the cops, not the doctors. Really pissed Dad off, but there was nothing any of us could do. She was conscious and lucid.”

  “Exactly what did she tell you?”

  “Nothing. She barely spoke to the police. She refused counseling. She wouldn’t talk about that night to anyone. Still doesn’t.”

  Well, that certainly shed a little light on Pam’s jitters. If she didn’t seek out professional counseling, fear could grow deep roots. “Did they ever catch the guy?”

  “Nope. Car probably made its way to a chop shop. There was no physical evidence left behind to give the police a solid lead. The creep might have been a mean son of a bitch, but he knew what he was doing.”

  “And Pam hasn’t been to a counselor since?”

  Jake shook his head again.

  Damn. The woman needed help. Real help. Not the pretentious trappings of assistance he wore. He’d already been responsible for the death of one woman. He didn’t need the responsibility of another. Even if Pam’s life wasn’t in physical danger
anymore—if she didn’t get real help and soon—eventually she would lose her life as surely as if the carjacker had left her dead on the cold concrete slab of her garage.

  “We were hoping moving home would be enough.” Jake’s words broke through Jeff’s thoughts. “You know, the safety of the bosom of your family and all that. She doesn’t like us fussing over her, says she doesn’t need nursemaids. After Mom died, Bo, Val, and I made a habit of having Friday night dinners at Dad’s. Now that Pammy’s back home, she comes too. It gives us a chance to see for ourselves how she’s doing, without her feeling we’re checking up on her. For the most part she seems to be looking better, but a couple of times something dragged her back to the way she looked when she still lived in Dallas.”

  “How was that?”

  “Old.” Jake looked up, his eyes settling on Jeff’s. “Dark circles under her eyes, pale, tired, and scared. I know it has to do with those nightmares.”

  “Nightmares?”

  Jake nodded. “After she got out of the hospital, Val went up to Dallas to stay with her. Every night Pam would wake up screaming and then refuse to go back to sleep. She wouldn’t tell Val what the dreams were. Said she didn’t remember them once she woke up.”

  “When did they stop?”

  “Don’t know that they ever did. We think that’s why she finally agreed to move home.”

  The two men stared at each other in silence for a long few minutes. Jeff had known by the way Pam spooked that there was something ugly in her background, but he hadn’t been prepared for this.

  “Has she said anything to you?” Jake asked. “Confided in you?”

  Jeff shook his head.

  Jake sighed and leaned back in his seat. “I’d thought, maybe, you being a pastor and all, she’d tell you what’s too horrible to tell the rest of us.”

  “I know a couple of good trauma counselors in Poplar Springs. If you’d like me to give you their names—”