“Where were you today, Mama?” Daisy asked as she held her doll in her lap and scooted closer to Adah.
“I went to see one of my customers.”
Daisy rubbed her eyes, which looked tired and sad. It was almost bedtime. “I don’t like it when you’re gone. I wanna go, too.”
Adah hugged the girl. “I know, honey. Maybe someday.”
“When you’re gone, all I do is wait for you to come back.”
Adah had to fight tears now climbing from her heart into her eyes. She couldn’t remember one instance of Mabel sitting down to play with her granddaughter or even letting Daisy watch her in the kitchen. Instead Mabel usually shooed Daisy away, saying, “Go play.” The girl would spend time around Adah while she did laundry, terrifying Adah that she would get too close to the boiling clothes or the strong lye soap. Often Adah had to shoo her away, too, having to ignore her wide-eyed pleading and curiosity about everything, her frequent questions.
Lately Daisy’s favorite word had been why . She wanted to know why the sun went away at night, why Miss Socks had white feet, why her grandparents made her eat things she didn’t like, and why they wouldn’t let her play on the parlor furniture.
During meals, she was required to sit and eat without speaking except to say her prayers and thank God and Mabel for the food. She had few toys, and so when Adah had found an old broken wagon beside the road one day, she’d taken it home in hopes of repairing it and painting it, but as of yet, she’d not had the time.
Once she’d asked Jesse if he would help her, but he had responded, “Hell no. I cain’t believe you carted that trash back to this house.”
She and Daisy were alone. No one knew what they were going through, as if they were marooned on an island. Linked by an invisible bond that no one else might understand. But as years passed with the Branches, would their bond break? Would pain and helplessness drive them apart? Would Daisy end up believing that no one cared or wanted to help her? What was Adah waiting for? Some benevolent spirit to swoop down and save them? She had to keep the peace, get help, get some more money or a home away from the farm, and she had to get custody of Daisy.
Now Daisy began to whimper.
“What is it?” Adah asked.
Daisy wiped her perfect button nose, now reddening, with the hem of her play dress. “My bottom hurts.”
“What?”
“I got a spanking today.”
A sudden rage snapped to life inside Adah. “Why? Let me see.” Adah helped Daisy stand, then lifted her dress and bore witness to red swollen swaths across the girl’s upper thighs.
Daisy said, “I was bringing in the eggs from the coop, and I dropped them. All but one of them broke.”
“Who did this?”
“Grandma.”
Adah’s first urge was to march into the house and demand an explanation from Mabel. Spanking was one thing, and most people believed in it, but to leave marks amounted to a beating. Surely everyone in this family had been raised with regular beatings, and it had made them into the cruel people they were today. Adah couldn’t allow it for Daisy. If hatred alone could kill, then Adah’s would still Mabel’s callous old heart with her thoughts. Blistering, seething words gathered in her mind and begged to be spoken. But then again, what could she do? Any confrontation could result in her being kicked out of the house, and where would that leave Daisy? Alone with the monsters. As Jack had said, she had to be careful she didn’t string up her own noose. If she did, she’d never get her share of the farm or anything else.
“It was an accident,” Daisy whispered, her sweet little voice breaking through Adah’s fog of fury.
Adah worked hard to catch her breath. “I know, honey. I know.”
That night Daisy fell asleep while Adah stared out the window, and the bald moon rose and lit the land with silver light that made even the shadows of branches and leaves stand out in sharp relief. There was no wind that night, and the bare fields looked how she imagined the moon would—stark and serene, calm and quiet. Shadows were absolutely black in that brightness, and now Adah knew that the ghost of a woman beaten to death walked this land along with the shadows. Her daughter abused now, too. Probably Betsy would haunt this place forever.
Beyond the moon, there were millions of twinkling stars in the sky. Adah sighed and closed her eyes. What had happened between Daisy and her was as insignificant as one tiny star in the vastness of all space, but it was, like each one of those shining lights, beautiful and special. A gift had fallen into her lap in the form of Daisy, and she had to be ever so careful what she did with it. She was the girl’s only hope.
When the house was silent, Adah reached under the bed for the wooden box of letters she’d found in the attic. She had never read the letters from Doris McNeil. But now . . . even though she was invading a dead woman’s privacy and could be opening a Pandora’s box, it was time.
The letters were housed in ocher-colored envelopes and written in black ink, with the latest on top. Each was folded in half, and Adah handled the pages as if they were some kind of holy parchment. If she stood by the window, the moonlight was bright enough for her to read by, and what she found there did not exactly provide credibility for Jack Darby’s theory, but it certainly didn’t disprove it, either.
In the last letter Betsy Branch had received from its author, who did indeed turn out to be her mother, Doris had written, Dearest daughter, if you need a rest, please come. Other letters referred to injuries due to vague accidents that her daughter was healing from. But the rest was about family happenings, church, friends, special occasions. There was nothing here that Adah could take to the police. And according to Lester, Betsy’s mother had died soon after her daughter did, so there was no way to glean any further information from her. Daisy had her father’s family and no other living relatives.
Adah read through the stack and then put each letter back exactly the way she’d found them.
It appeared as if Betsy had been enduring the kind of treatment that Adah had, that she hadn’t confided completely in anyone—people rarely talked about mistreatment or unhappiness—and Adah hadn’t, either. But if Lester had been abusive to Adah, why not toward his first wife, too? Why wouldn’t his fists have made contact with more than one woman’s flesh? But had he become so enraged he had actually killed her?
Her mind was a labyrinth of questions.
Then Adah remembered back to the night of the flood, something she rarely did now, and her ribs ached as she relived Lester’s hitting her in the face and kicking her sides. How long might the assault have gone on? She couldn’t say. It had always taken Les a long time to simmer down. And then it dawned clear. Yes, Lester had been capable of killing her: he’d killed his first wife.
So did that let her off the hook? An eye for an eye? A life for a life? Was she less a murderer because Lester had been one? Was it less a killing because he might have killed Adah, too?
She wasn’t sure, but she was suddenly able to breathe again, to pull life into her body again in a way she hadn’t done since the night of the flood. This new information about Betsy Branch, while both terrifying and horrifying, was also a gift, one delivered by the most unlikely of messengers, an unusual man named Jack Darby.
Adah eased off her tight-fitting wedding band, a thin gold circle. Not once had she removed it since the flood. It had survived along with her, and it would’ve seemed odd to others if she had already stopped wearing her dead husband’s ring. But now . . . The ring warmed in her hand, and she set it on the bedside table.
During the first year of her marriage to Lester, Adah had missed her period and after a few weeks had told Les she thought she was expecting. Her husband had slapped his hand on the table, not in anger but in happiness, and said, “It’ll be a boy this time.” He’d been thrilled for a few brief days, but when Adah began to bleed heavily and concluded that she’d miscarried, his mood had transformed. He’d hit her hard the first time a few days later, and a pattern had started t
o develop. Anything that disappointed Lester ended in his curled fist. The last thing she had wanted was a baby in the mix.
Once, she’d overheard Jessamine, who had been an expert in herbs, tell a woman how to make a homespun spermicide to prevent pregnancy. Adah had remembered the recipe and followed that advice for the remainder of the marriage, even though her apparent barrenness had angered Lester further and driven an even bigger wedge between her and all the Branches.
Her wedding ring seemed to glare at her now with one knowing eye. She would have to wear it around others for appearance’s sake. But no way would she ever again wear that ring to bed.
Chapter Fourteen
The following day, Adah returned to Jack Darby’s house on the way back from delivering clean laundry to one customer and picking up a load of dirty laundry from another. She set her laundry basket on his porch, went in search of him, and found him grooming a horse in the barn, where two stables flanked the front section.
He looked up at her, surprise on his face, and stopped what he had been doing.
“Don’t take the letter,” she said, standing in the broad, open sunlit doorway. Adah had thought about suggesting Jack take the letter to a lawyer in another city, but she’d decided it would be asking too much.
He gazed at her with one eyebrow lowered, and she had the feeling she always had around him, that she was transparent. With the prismed sunlight and soft hum of the land, they were on their own. But frankness was foreign to her, so it took her a while to form her words.
“I’m giving up,” she finally said as explanation, “at least for now. I’ll never give up entirely, but I don’t have a way out at the moment.”
And then the most profound sense of failure came over her. Over the course of the night, she’d decided she had no choice but to stay put and look after Daisy, protecting her as much as possible from the Branches until she was old enough to leave on her own. Even though she knew with some certainty that the family was capable of covering up a murder, she also felt something of relief about her safety. The Branches weren’t stupid enough to think that another accidental death on their farm would not be looked at with suspicion.
Adah was safe, or at least safer. She could stay on for Daisy. At least her purpose was clear. The events of recent months had revealed a grand picture of the enormity of nature and human life. Yet also how any one life was so small and short and ultimately . . . meaningless in the larger view of things. But even one small life could mean something over the course of its existence—a tiny breath in time. Adah had ended one life, but maybe she could save another. The idea that she had to stay with the Branches was dreadful, but it was the truth.
Jack registered what came over her, and he simply watched her for another long moment, but she found she didn’t mind his scrutiny. She had put her faith in this man with her letter; he knew what she wanted, and if he saw through her even more so now, she did not care.
He turned back to face the horse. “Does that mean you’re staying on?”
“Yes,” she answered. “I have Daisy to think about.”
She watched his smooth movements from behind and could see by the way Jack ran his hands over the mare that he loved these animals. His touch was easy but sure, and the way he handled the mare was like one would caress a child.
She bit her lip to keep from gnawing on a nail. “I’m not giving up on someday getting custody of her, but for now . . . I don’t want you to take the letter. You were right; it could backfire.”
He darted a glance over his shoulder. “What about you?”
“That doesn’t matter now. It’s all about my stepdaughter.”
He brushed the horse slowly, calmly. “Like I said, you should get away from there.”
“I can’t leave her,” Adah barely managed to say, her voice trailing off.
“They’re the most bloodthirsty people in these parts.”
“I can handle myself.”
He stopped brushing and simply laid his hand on the horse’s neck. “The way I figure it, justice was done when that river swept your husband away. No matter how it happened, he got what he deserved.”
No matter how it happened? Adah’s spine stiffened. What did he mean by that? What did he know or suspect?
He turned again to face her. “Go for a ride with me.”
His mood shifts were rather startling, and she could hardly believe his words. “A ride? I can’t. I have to get back home.”
“What’s your hurry?”
Adah didn’t answer.
“They’re watching you, aren’t they?”
She blinked. “I’m practically a captive.”
“What are you afraid they’d do if you came back late?”
She gazed up at him and met that gaze again. His eyes were open and candid like a door to his soul while also communicating to her, I’m safe . “I don’t know. I’m worried every day about what they’ll do to Daisy.”
“Hurt her?”
Adah nodded once. She paused and waited for better words to come. “If not by beating her, then by killing her on the inside.”
“You want something on the Branches?”
Baffled, Adah finally nodded again.
He said, “Go snooping around. There’s other rumors about what the Branch clan is up to. I’m not sure how you can use the information, but you never know . . .”
She shuddered. “I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to spell it out for me.”
“Rumor is they’re making moonshine and have been since Prohibition days.”
The old log curing barn, of course. She said a slow “O-kay.” Here was another thing that made perfect sense. Even with tobacco farmers faring somewhat better than others, the Branches seemed to positively prosper during these times, and the selling of illegal moonshine to supplement their income had to be the reason.
“So when’s the last time you did something nice and easy?” he asked. On his face was a lovely expression of hope and expectancy.
Adah gulped. He was standing before her so honestly vulnerable, and he had been so helpful. He had told her the truth, a truth they now shared. There seemed little reason not to let down her guard a bit.
“You’re not afraid of a little nice and easy, are you?”
“Should I be?”
He laughed, and it was the first time she’d heard him laugh, an amused low-pitched chuckle. “Come on. Come with me. We won’t be gone long, I promise.”
Adah stood by silently, unable to summon a protest, as he saddled a chestnut mare for his mount. Another horse, a gray gelding, would be Adah’s for this ride, and she moved forward to saddle him herself, showing Jack that she knew what she was doing. She had learned how to handle a horse and ride with Chester and Henry’s family before leaving them in Virginia.
Adah was wearing a faded calf-length print dress that was too big for her and old brown oxfords, not exactly riding attire. But she gathered the skirt up to her knees and swung into the saddle. They rode to the back of his farm and soon left behind all signs of human life as they entered a wood. Jack took the lead, and she followed. The horses were sure and sound animals, and her gelding had a nice gait that she soon fell into.
Jack was following what looked like old wildlife trails. This land, lusher and dimmer than the farm, was marked by streams down every small green gully. They passed an undersized herd of deer that regarded them, flicked their ears, and then bounced away as if propelled by springs. Occasionally Jack stole a glance at her over his shoulder, and she could tell he was sizing up her skills, making sure she knew how to handle a horse.
Why was she doing this? Why had she agreed to take this time with Jack when the most important thing right now was getting back to Daisy as soon as possible? Why did she trust Jack? She couldn’t say why, but she simply understood, as if by instinct, that he would not betray her. She might have been a bit intrigued by him, too. It was more than his rugged attractiveness. He held something inside, something she wanted, even need
ed.
The wind rushed in through the trees and moved her hair, the sun was still and warm through the branches, and the land was damp and sprouting new life. She had a momentary sensation of frozen time, as though her light and spirit were a permanent part of the landscape. So many moments went unnoticed, and suddenly, for this brief one, she was thankful for everything that had brought her to this place and this second and this sensation—an awareness of her unique life. However imperfect, it was hers alone. And if personal sacrifices were a part of it, so be it.
They stopped in the dappled shade of a stand of maples, Adah reining in her horse next to his. She looked up to the sun through the lacing of tree leaves, then closed her eyes and felt the warmth on her face. As a bird crr-reek -ed in the branches over them, Jack asked her where she was from originally.
“Nowhere,” she answered and then changed her tone. Jack had been nothing but kind to her, and yet she still disliked revisiting her past. “Back East, originally.”
“What did you do before you married Lester Branch?”
“I was a reader. Of the tarot cards.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Interesting.” He paused. “Do you still do it?”
“No. After I got married, Lester disapproved and took away my cards.”
He paused, digesting that information. “Interesting,” he said again.
The woods seemed to release something in Jack; he wanted to tell her about himself. He said he was born in Galveston, Texas, just before the infamous 1900 storm virtually washed that city away. His father, an oysterman, had been aboard a boat and had never been found.
“I’m so sorry,” Adah said.
He shrugged as if it were something long gone and no longer felt, but she could see the leftovers of that old pain in his eyes. “Not your fault.”
“Do you remember the storm?”
“Barely even remember the sea. My mother left those parts right after it for Lubbock, where she remarried a man who worked at a bank.”
The River Widow Page 13
