She had to abort. Taking Daisy again by the hand, she perused more windows of recently reopened shops, feigning interest in a green dress that flared on a mannequin’s calf and pretending to be interested in the return of the veiled hat. The attorney’s office, which occupied a storefront, came into view. So close; but she had to return to the truck and get back home. Daisy never asked why they hadn’t talked to the man, and Adah assumed the girl had already forgotten what they’d spoken about only an hour or so earlier.
Despite not getting to see the attorney, at least she had spotted Jesse and halted in time. She’d outfoxed the fox that had been hunting her. There was a quiet sense of having, for once, beaten the Branches. She felt relieved.
Only she shouldn’t have.
At dinner that night, over meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and canned sweet peas, Mabel asked Daisy, “How was your trip to town?”
The girl shrugged. “We didn’t do nothing.”
“We didn’t do anything,” Adah corrected softly in a whisper.
“We didn’t do anything,” Daisy repeated.
The sound of a utensil dropping made Adah jump in her seat. “You telling that girl what to say?” Buck fired.
Adah looked over the table at him. “No, I’m just teaching her how to say things the correct way.”
“The correct way is the way I tell her.” He glared at Daisy. “We don’t talk no New York City ’round here. You say ‘we didn’t do nothing’ like us farmers do.”
Daisy said, “We didn’t do nothing.”
Adah wiped her lips with her napkin and gazed down at Daisy. “In truth, we did do some things. We looked in the store windows and posted notes, remember?”
Daisy shrugged. “But we didn’t get to see the man.”
“What man?” Buck barked.
Adah reluctantly moved her gaze up and into the steaming face of her father-in-law.
Daisy answered, “A man to help us go back to our old house.”
Something came over Adah now, a stone cloak. Each second dragged. Outside the sun winked down beyond the horizon, and the daylight dimmed.
“Going back to your old house?” Jesse nearly shouted, pinning Adah with his eyes. “Like I already told you, put that idea right out of your head. That ain’t going to happen.”
Jesse’s threat chilled her, but Buck spent long moments simply staring Adah down, as if he could peer into her soul and see her sin as plain as day. He stabbed his fork into the meatloaf and broke off a bite-sized piece, then shoved it into his smug mouth. The intimidation in his unblinking eyes and wickedness in his voice dried Adah’s throat. “Well, this sure is a strange development, ain’t it? We give you a home, despite us being pretty sure you’re the best damn liar in the county and a killer to boot, and you wanna leave here with Daisy?”
Adah hated being reminded that she was kept. And now caught. Thoughts flailing, she said, “When I talked to Daisy about living in our old house, I was talking about the past. She’s confused.”
Buck guffawed, leaning forward in his chair as he chewed and then spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “The only person confused here is you if you think you can cross us and get away with it. Not after what you already done. You wanna leave here, go on ahead. Go on and git lost. Take off for Californy, like so many other idiots have done, like they’re going to be starting over fresh. Or drown yourself in the river, that’s what should’ve happened anyways. Or turn yourself back into a fortune-telling witch. Fine by us. But don’t you go getting any ideas about that girl there.”
“How dare you?” said Mabel, who was now clenching her hands together down in her lap. “I didn’t think it could get any worse!”
Buck rocked forward in the chair and pointed his fork at Adah. “Lookee here. You gone and upset the missus, the lady of this house. And you done made me mad. You done made another big mistake.” The skin over his eyes lowered in a scowl. “So listen up and listen good. From now on, you ain’t taking that girl anywhere, not even to town.” He pushed back his plate. “Come to think of it, you don’t have no business in town, neither. You can conduct your laundering business on foot around here. You walk around and knock on the doors of these here country homes. You hear me?”
Adah nodded. She had hoped for something better, but now it was exactly as she had once foreseen.
“You got all that?” Jesse asked.
Adah nodded once again, fighting the urge to shoot off a retort, her angst growing and pressing against her ribs.
Buck addressed Mabel now. “Manfred Drucker is back in town.” Adah breathed out a sigh of relief. At least Buck was changing the subject.
Mabel’s eyebrows rose. “That so?”
“Yep,” Buck said. “I ran into him in town and filled him in. He’s gonna be coming by here real soon. Then me and him is gonna have us a nice little chat.” Now he stared at Adah. “Yep, Manfred Drucker is a big shot in the sheriff’s department and an old friend of mine. His father died over there in some home in Louisville, and he was out of town when they done found Lester. But now he’s back, and he and I have some talking to do.”
Adah worked hard to remain devoid of expression, as a creeping sensation claimed her. She might still be discovered somehow, some way, especially if Buck had a buddy in law enforcement, most likely a corrupt one, too.
“What’s for dessert?” Buck asked Mabel, but his eyes never left Adah. His nose sprouted tiny red veins.
“Chess pie,” she answered. “I’ll go fetch it.”
“Not yet. You just stay over there for a spell, resting in your chair,” said Buck to Mabel, looking at Adah like a cat ready to pounce. “I done lost my appetite . . . for pie.”
And so began Adah’s true imprisonment. Even with Jesse tailing her earlier today, she should have taken her chances and headed out of town. Once she’d spotted him, she might have been able to lose him. At least then she and Daisy would’ve had a chance.
Chapter Eleven
Within three weeks, Adah had managed to secure four customers—the large family, elderly couple, and bachelor, whom Florence had mentioned, and another family, one of freckled redheads who lived off the main road on a small farm. The matriarch of the redheaded family had taken sick and couldn’t do either her laundry or her household chores. Adah didn’t tell the Branches that she did that household’s laundry for free. She couldn’t bring herself to charge those who were down on their luck, and often she did a little cleaning and cooking for that family, too.
Now her days were filled with hard work. It took most of a day to do one family’s laundry, and she took over the duty for the Branch family as well so they could save the money they’d been spending on their washerwoman. Electric washing machines had become popular, but the family hadn’t purchased one yet, so Adah did the work using three galvanized tin tubs: one for scrubbing the clothes on the rub board and the other two for rinsing. She boiled the whites in a cast-iron pot set up in the backyard on bricks with a fire under it. She starched the shirts. When the washing was completed, she hung everything on the line and ironed the previous day’s laundry, folded it, and prepared it for return to her customers. Mabel often watched out the window.
It was honest, pure labor that pumped her heart, opened her lungs, and strengthened her arms and shoulders. She took pleasure in making soiled things clean, hanging clothes on the line with the sun on her back, and folding the scent of fresh air into the items she carefully placed in baskets to return to her customers. Wearing her wraparound housedress, apron, and oxfords, she walked the roads, shifting the basket from one hip to the other to better tolerate the weight. At night, she let a satisfied sense of exhaustion take her away into sleep, blocking the worries that she often was too tired to contemplate.
Of all her customers, Adah most enjoyed visiting the older couple and often sat with them for a spell on their front porch, watching birds flit about and squirrels climb their large dogwood tree. The old man still wore his overalls every day, and the woman wore a dr
ess and old pumps with square heels. They told her about their grown children, who were providing support, and their grandchildren, who came to visit every Sunday. Sitting side by side in rocking chairs on the porch, the couple still held hands and gazed at each other lovingly.
Foremost in Adah’s mind were always her thoughts of keeping Daisy close and wondering what Buck had told Manfred Drucker. What were they planning? It wasn’t long before the gears in Adah’s head started to crank out an idea of her own. Now that she had been banned from going to town, she would have to find an intermediary to go see an attorney for her. She couldn’t send a letter—she didn’t know the exact addresses of any attorneys, and even if she did, no one could have written her back at the Branch farm. Mabel checked the mail every day and wouldn’t hesitate to open anything that came for Adah, especially if it came from an attorney.
Thinking through her options, Adah realized she couldn’t do anything to disturb the peace of the loving couple she had grown to care about. Her next thought was to ask Florence Wainwright, but she daren’t ask someone who had already confessed to being fearful of getting on the Branches’ bad side. She couldn’t implicate the two families, either. She wouldn’t have been able to forgive herself if she were ever found out and the Branches learned who had helped her.
Thus her thoughts fell on the bachelor, name of Jack Darby. He was a strong, silent, and solid type who rarely spoke to her when she either picked up his laundry or returned it. His hands revealed him to be a man who worked his own farm without much help, and they’d seen a lot of sunlight. He held them steady and still at his sides as if he bore no pretense. She’d never heard much about him and guessed him to be something of a recluse.
So why would he stick out his neck to help her? Her sense was that maybe he would. When she’d first introduced herself to him, his jaw tightened just ever so slightly when she said her name was Adah Branch . And one day when she’d been walking away, down the gravel drive that led to his farmhouse—a small single-story house, painted white with black shutters and with the obligatory front porch—his basket of dirty laundry on her hip, she’d looked over her shoulder to find him standing on his porch, watching her as she walked away.
The day after her decision had been made, she walked to his farm—a forty-five-minute stroll through powdery sunshine that poured warmth on her shoulders. With no laundry to return to him that day, her goal was to befriend the man.
His truck was gone, and so she sat on his porch steps and waited. Soon she began to lose heart as she lingered alone, a desperate woman seeking an accomplice. The sun had crossed the sky and hung well into the west, spilling bright beams of light.
And then he pulled up and stepped out of his Huckster truck cab. For a moment, he held there in silhouette, but then he removed his hat, which was made of soft felt, sweat stained, and curled around the edges, and he came straight up to her.
“Mrs. Branch?” he said.
She had guessed his age to be about forty, as there were fanlike folds at the corners of his eyes. He had china-blue eyes set in a face bronzed by the sun and topped by dense waves of windblown caramel hair, and a hard-set jaw. A crescent-shaped scar arched over his left eyebrow, and the scent of wood smoke and horsehair bled from his clothes and skin. His nose was just slightly off to one side, as if at one point in his life he’d been in a fistfight.
She stood and said “Mr. Darby. How are you?” as she looked at him in a new light.
There was a change in his perusal of her in return, and it seemed to slow his movements, as if something about her presence today was unsettling.
He nodded and said, “I’m well.”
Adah asked if she could sit and talk to him for a while, and he made a sweeping gesture, indicating two old wicker rocking chairs sitting on the front porch. He eased into one chair and moved his hands between his knees, holding the hat down between his shins. She hadn’t expected him to be uncomfortable or that she would need to lead the conversation. But that was quickly made clear.
She said, “I hope I’m not bothering you.”
“Not at all,” he answered.
She sat in the other chair, which creaked as though no one had put weight on it for some time, and groped for something to say. “I’ve been wondering: How long have you been in these parts, Mr. Darby?”
He paused before answering. “About six years. Makes me rather new here, like you, Mrs. Branch.”
“Please call me Adah.”
He sat still, waiting.
She continued: “Well . . . where did you come from, and why here?”
He set the hat in his lap, moved his hands to the top of his thighs, and said, “I was a tugboat pilot for twenty years. Went up and down that river over yonder so many times I lost count. I saved up some money so when I got tired of living on the water, I could find some solid ground. This place seemed as good as any.”
Adah gathered her words as his eyes fell heavily on her. There was something disquieting about him, and over the course of a long awkward silence, she feared she’d made a mistake coming here.
And then his stare changed to something almost kind. “How can I help you today?”
A bit anxious, Adah decided to spare the man her false and clumsy attempt at friendship and get right to the point. “I need someone to do a favor for me.”
He straightened as if his interest had been piqued. “What kind of favor?”
“Before I get into that, may I ask you a question?”
He looked almost amused. “Shoot.”
“When I first met you and told you my name, you flinched when I said Branch. I take it you’re not friends with my in-laws.”
He sat up even straighter. “You got that right.”
“What happened between you?”
“I once sold them a horse, and we agreed on the price. They paid me some when I brought the horse over to them, but they never got around to paying the rest of what they promised. I went to see the old man about it, and he denied ever agreeing to the price. All of them’s liars and cheats.”
Adah let the information sink in. This was better than she’d hoped for. Not only did Jack Darby dislike the Branches, he’d had some personal conflict with them. Maybe here was someone who would help her.
Jack was studying her reaction. “What about this favor?”
Adah said, “It’s a simple one, really. I need to talk with an attorney in town; however, I have no means to get there, and I’d like to keep the rest of the Branch family out of it. What I need is for someone to take messages to one of the lawyers. I have money to pay for it and for your time as well . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she had to stare at her hands. She should’ve rehearsed what to say in advance; she became inexplicably tongue tied. How to explain it better while also giving nothing too dangerous away? Even though she now knew that Jack Darby was no fan of the Branches, she was still taking a chance. Would he stay quiet, or would he run to the Branches with everything she said, hoping they’d reward him by finally paying him what they owed? Thoughts hung inside her head like the cobwebs that shrouded her secrets. How many lies would a person tell over a lifetime?
She looked up to watch how he absorbed this information. There was no change in his body’s posture or movements, but his breathing had slowed, and the folds about his eyes had creased down a little more. There was a slight squint as he stared at her. He spoke slowly and carefully. “You want to get help from an attorney in secret.”
He was watching her every breath, and she saw something in his eyes like horse sense. She felt quite transparent before him and found it unnerving. This meeting was not going as expected. She studied his hands, large compared to Lester’s, thick skinned and brown. He held them perfectly still on his thighs.
She let her eyes travel to his face. “Yes. I don’t aim to make any trouble for anyone. I just need to get some information.”
He seemed to survey her again, gathering information from her , but she didn’t feel viewed in a harsh
light. “Then why don’t you want the Branch folks to know about it? Is something wrong?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
He ignored her answer. “If something’s wrong, it could be a matter for the police, not an attorney.”
Her face caught fire. “It’s not a police matter.”
His eyes never left her face as he just sat.
“I know it’s a strange request, but the situation is a bit unusual.”
“How so?”
“It’s family business, and I don’t aim to air out our dirty laundry for others to see. It’s nothing all that important, really, just something I’d like to know, to learn about.”
“If it’s not important, then why are you looking for help from a perfect stranger?”
Adah blinked hard. “I don’t know very many people around here. Almost everyone is a perfect stranger to me.”
“Why do you need to see an attorney?”
Adah couldn’t pull words out of her brain.
Then Jack Darby waited for a few more moments and finally said, “This makes no sense, Mrs. Branch. Sorry if I offend, but this makes no sense.”
The day had been long, and the lengthy walk back loomed like a sudden heavy burden. She was tired and had no need to be drilled with questions. His gaze was beginning to annoy, and she was getting nowhere.
She said softly, “Maybe it only has to make sense to me.”
He continued to study her.
She tried to appear confident, not like her entire plan was about to fall apart. “I’ll pay you for your time. I’ll pay you for every bit of information you pass along.”
“I think I know what’s going on here.”
The River Widow Page 10
