Adah caught her breath. “I know you paid for the tractor and expected Buck to pay you back.”
His face fell. She could see how much his innocence had suffered, how many years he had aged over this affair. He asked, “Who else knows about this?”
Adah shrugged. “Don’t worry. As far as I know, only this family.”
He regarded her warily, but finally asked in a low voice, “Do me a favor, then. Don’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t. I’m so sorry.” She tried unsuccessfully to stifle her questions. “How are you going to handle this?”
Ben Harper laughed. “Why would I tell you?”
She supposed she deserved that. Ben Harper knew nothing about her. Hands on her hips, she shook her head. “I hate what they did to you.”
He studied her, and his eyes showed that he hadn’t given up hope in humanity yet. There was an almost imperceptible hint of brightness on his face, and his expression slid from distrust to something more open. “Yes,” he said slowly. “I see that now.” He recovered himself and stared ahead wistfully. “I told my father. Only person I told, not even my wife.”
So Buck’s plan had worked to perfection. He’d managed to hurt the father, too.
Ben turned to Adah. “He’s going to loan me the money I lost. I borrowed from the bank to buy the tractor in the first place, so at least I can make my payments. And I’ll sell this tractor used and get at least some of the money back. I’m sure hoping word of this never gets back to my boss.”
“Don’t worry,” Adah breathed out. “Buck and Jesse will brag about it to themselves, but Mabel doesn’t want anyone to know. She’ll make sure it’s kept a secret.”
Ben’s face slid into a wary smile. “Hard to imagine they’d take orders from a woman.”
“Mabel Branch is no ordinary woman.”
He flinched. “Don’t know much about Mabel, but it’s no secret that Buck and Jesse will do anything to save money, even if it means cheating people.”
“Why, then . . . ?” Adah whispered, dry mouthed. “Why, then, do people never confront them?”
Guilelessly he peered at her then. “Years of knowing ’bout them and the things they do has left people scared.”
“Why did you trust Buck, then? Why did you make this deal?”
Deflated, he laughed again, pitifully. “That’s the same thing my father asked. Can’t say he’s exactly proud of me right now. He told me the biggest lessons in life are learned the hard way, but I’m not to make the same mistake again.”
“I’m so glad he’s helping you.”
“Yes,” he said pensively.
She glanced behind her. Ben Harper was going to survive the Branches’ scheme because his father was going to help him. Perhaps he’d see that helping her would ease his own pain. The Harper family probably hated the Branches as much as Buck hated the Harpers. Now they were most likely enemies for life. And the Harpers were powerful people and had more influence than Jack. Seeing no one in sight and not even knowing for sure what she could gain from him, she took a chance. “Would you ever consider helping me?”
“Helping you?” He seemed genuinely surprised. “What’s going on here?”
Adah gulped. What exactly was she asking? Aware of her desperation, she said, “I need to get custody of . . . Daisy.”
Ben Harper leaned back. “The girl?” His eyes lurched away. “I can’t help you, I’m sorry. I can’t do anything against the Branches. I couldn’t risk it. My wife’s expecting, my house is in shambles, and they’ve done enough harm to me and my family already.”
“I understand.”
And she did, although in that moment, she became acutely aware that a weight on her chest had been sitting immovable for some time. It had first formed when Jack Darby dismissed her, when her plans with him fell apart, and had gained shape and heft as Adah looked about her and saw no other paths to follow.
She had been slipping food to the four farmworkers Buck had hired, although their pay was without board, and she had briefly entertained the idea of asking for their help. She’d quickly discarded the idea, however. What could they possibly do? She couldn’t put any extra risk on people who were barely surviving as it was. Everyone around her had a difficult lot, and life could simply blink its eyes or shrug its shoulders and make each and every one of them sink into the silt.
The anvil in her chest took on extra weight as another possible avenue closed with Ben Harper. She had left herself utterly exposed. She resisted the urge to bury her head in her hands and weep.
He tipped his hat. “You have my sympathies, however.”
That night, when Mabel set an extra plate on the supper table, Adah expected the guest would be Esther Heiser again. Instead it was Manfred Drucker, who entertained the family with stories about townsfolk who had tangled with the police or the sheriff’s department, and every so often he glanced at Adah as if making sure she knew he hadn’t forgotten about her.
She had to endure his leering glances and outright stares that brought a chill to her skin; all the while she pretended to be unaffected and continued to force her food down. Nothing was mentioned about the exhumation of Lester’s body. Nothing was mentioned about Lester or his death at all. And yet the threat was explicit. All it had taken was Drucker’s presence to remind Adah that he was probably slowly but surely closing in. Gathering information and perhaps uncovering the truth that would seal her fate. Could her arrest come any day now?
Before he left, Adah was heading toward the stairs to ready Daisy for bed, but he stopped her, saying, “Adah Branch.”
She turned to face him.
With a face full of smug satisfaction, he said, “I’ll be seeing you real soon.”
What did that mean? Sleep that night was a place Adah would not visit. What could she do? She had no one, save a little girl who needed help even more than Adah did.
She had been avoiding going to Jack Darby’s place, even though she was a day late in picking up his laundry. One evening as the sun was sinking low in the sky, she donned an old straw hat and started trudging down the driveway. She also had to go see two of her other customers. She saved Jack for last as she had no idea what to expect from a man who had never failed to surprise her.
The dirt roads were dry, and by the time her rounds were nearly complete, she was bathed in a layer of fine dust, her skin gritty and her hair hanging. She had dropped off a basket of clean laundry for one family and had picked up a dirty one from another, which she had then dropped off at home. Now, back out and exhausted, as she turned from the road up to his drive, she saw him sitting on the front porch as if he was waiting for her.
At first, he didn’t move as she approached, but then he stood as she came nearer, his eyes lighting up at the sight of her. Jack was becoming handsomer the longer she knew him; each time she laid eyes on him, she found more to like and explore. Lester, on the other hand, had over time become ugly in her eyes.
Jack said, “I was hoping to see you today.”
Adah stopped at the bottom of his porch steps. “Yes, I’m sorry. I should’ve been here yesterday.”
He squinted. “Are you avoiding me?”
Adah removed her hat and let the air touch her forehead, closing her eyes for a moment, remembering: Your hair is chocolate. “I’m avoiding the heat.”
He gazed out to the sky and the burning yellow hole of hazy sun. “We are having quite the early heat spell, aren’t we?”
Adah opened her eyes and looked at him. “Do you have a basket for me?”
Jack nodded once and went inside through the screen door, then came back out carrying the basket of laundry. He set it down and reached into his chest pocket, retrieving something. “I got these for you.” He opened his hand and revealed a set of worn tarot cards held together with a rubber band.
The breath caught in Adah’s chest, and her eyes flicked upward to his face. “Where did you get them?”
“Bought ’em off a trinket trader passing through. Thoug
ht you might like them.”
Adah took the deck and ran her fingers across the back of the top card as she gazed at the filigreed design. How many hands had touched these cards? How many fortunes had been read using them? How many lies had they told? How many truths had they revealed?
“Will you read for me?” Jack asked.
Adah’s head jerked up. Then she shook it fervently.
“Why not?”
“Have you ever taken a reading?”
“No.”
“Then you don’t want to.”
He eyed her curiously. “Tell me why not.”
She sighed and replaced the hat on her head. “It’s nothing. It’s everything. Most often the cards say nothing of importance and are simply a means to predict something that may or may not happen. Other times I’ve found them to be accurate, often when it’s the most important thing. But there’s no way to know if something mystical has intervened or if it’s just gibberish. Once you’ve had a reading, however, you’ll always wonder.”
“You say sometimes the reading is valid?”
Her arms remained at her sides as she lifted one shoulder. “Yes.”
“Then I’m willing to take my chances.”
Fatigue began to seep out of Adah’s marrow. Why did people want to hear about the future, even when the odds were against knowing anything? Blood draining from her face, she turned and sank down onto the lowest porch step, removed her hat again, put her elbows on her knees, and rested her forehead in her open palms.
Jack’s voice had changed into a sweet murmur. “I’m sorry. I thought you’d like the cards. I figured a present might do you some good.” She heard him laugh in an ironic way. “Guess I’m not much adept at wooing a woman. Guess it weren’t such a good idea after all.”
Eyes still closed, she barely breathed as she realized that she had hurt his feelings. A radiance emanated from Jack now, and it was all too evident that she had been wrong about him in the beginning. He’d been wary of her just as she’d been wary of him, both of them wrapped in a protective shield that was slowly peeling away. Every little layer that fell from Jack revealed something unexpectedly sweet.
“It was very thoughtful, Jack. Thank you.” Jack didn’t make any sounds of movement or say a word, and when Adah lifted her head, she breathed out, “I found evidence of moonshining because of what you said. Thank you for that, too.”
“I see,” he said slowly, as if forcing himself to change the subject along with her. “What will you do about it?”
Now Adah was the one having to stick to the new subject at hand. The sound of his voice was like a salve, a healing salve. For the first time in a long time, someone cared about what she thought and felt, and the result was like a sip of Kentucky bourbon—a velvety warmth in her chest. “I don’t know yet. I could go to the police, but I figure Buck and Jesse must have at least a few friends on the force.”
Jack nodded. “Most likely they’ve paid off a couple of them to be left alone. And if you happened to be unlucky and ended up speaking to one who’s in on the action—”
“It would do me more harm than good. Again,” Adah finished for him.
“I’d be willing to bet most of the police are on the up-and-up, but you’d never know.”
“So what use is it to know they’re making moonshine?”
“It’s always best to know as much as possible. Just wait and watch. Something might come up.”
She was so tired now. How had she made her way here? And how would she ever escape from the Branches? She glanced up to see a tiny bit of trembling at the corner of Jack’s mouth. Kindness intensified all that she’d been feeling, and a silent sob seeped from her mouth. She swallowed against a thickening sensation at the back of her throat. Something hot and urgent prickled under her eyelids. And then she did something she’d never imagined she’d do, not while sitting on a quiet porch, especially not in front of another person, and never with such great heaving movements racking her body. Whether she cried for herself or for Daisy, it didn’t matter; it was all the same.
He sat still, and she was aware that he did nothing but watch her silently, that he waited for her to pour it all out, until her self-awareness slowly returned, and she occupied her head again.
She heard the screen door open and close, then open and close again a few minutes later. Jack set a porcelain basin full of water on the step beside her.
“Here,” said Jack and came around in front of her, rinsing a cloth in the basin. He sat low on his haunches in front of her and gently but with assurance washed her eyes, her nose and forehead, her cheeks and lips, then her neck, as though she were a child, and then he came around behind her and gently raked his dampened fingers through her hair, pulling it back and away from her face, combing it smooth with his fingertips, and lastly forming it into something of a loose knot at the back of her head. Gratitude pooled in her body as she submitted to his touch and tears formed again. Somehow he knew what she needed: the comfort of human hands.
H e said in the softest and most sultry voice she’d ever heard, “You want to know what I think . . .”
Adah simply waited.
“. . . about you?” he finished.
Adah didn’t know if she wanted to hear this, but she was powerless when he spoke to her.
“Most of the women I’ve known were nothing like you. They were mechanical, always saying the proper thing, moving the proper way, like machines, like everything were greased and set to run just so, never giving a glimpse inside. But I knew you weren’t like them others the first time I saw you on this porch step, your hair as rich as chocolate, your shoulders held square, and your eyes in search of something that mattered to you. And when we first talked, I knew the burden you carried, the weight of thoughts that couldn’t be said.”
Adah closed her eyes. His voice sounded like the earth, as if it had been born from riverbeds and bedrock and then had slowly worked its way out of the soil and into the air. It still held that inner-earth warmth inside. Jack had turned out to be a tender heart. Inadvertently she had uncovered his secret. Jack Darby was lonely and in need of love.
He placed his hand on her shoulder, and she could feel his breath flowing over her. “Your neck is a slice of white cake.”
She blinked and then searched the lawn before her as if expecting something to pop up and tell her what to do. She couldn’t encourage this attraction. “Why must you say such eccentric things?”
“Maybe I’m eccentric.”
“It’s not something most people aspire to.”
“I’m not most people.”
“Yes . . .” She paused and waited for better words to come. “I see that now.”
The tone of his voice changed, becoming sure and level and direct. “Leave that horrible house. Get away from there. I’ll help you. I’ll do whatever I can. If you need money . . .”
Night was settling over the land now like a blanket, and something baffling was drifting down over her. Still not facing him, she said, “I can’t go. I’d be leaving a helpless little girl with people who’ll ruin her or turn her into a monster like they are.”
“Couldn’t you stay in touch?”
She reined in her voice. “They might not let me see her. I’d be completely at their mercy.”
She heard him breathe out slowly. “Aren’t you at their mercy now?”
She answered yes and was surprised she was being so candid. She turned, gazed up at him, and met that stare again. His eyes demanding attention and telling her, I’m safe. She explained to him about the crazy accusation of murder leveled against her by the Branches and now by Manfred Drucker, and Jack listened intently.
“It won’t be easy to exhume the body,” he said. “Takes a court order and lots of just cause, I think. It won’t be easy, but it’s not impossible, either.”
“That’s what I figured.”
She heard him breathe in and out again, and there was a sea change in the atmosphere, as if a coiled shell were openin
g up. “Adah, listen to me. There’s something I have to say to you.” He pulled in a ragged but determined breath. “You’ve woken me up. I’ve spent most of my life doing things that weren’t, in the end, all that important. I let those things pull me away from what I really wanted and needed. Now I know what I need, and it’s because of you. You’ve awakened me to the fact that my life is probably more than half over, and I haven’t done the most precious thing—loved a woman. I know you care for the girl, but now you have other things to think about, don’t you? You want to be loved, you need love, don’t you?”
Making an effort to speak, Adah said, “Love has never worked out for me.”
“That can change.”
“I trusted someone once. My husband . . .” Adah nearly choked on the word husband . Had Lester ever really been a husband? More like an enemy.
“Is there something you want to tell me?” he said, soft as a lullaby.
With her scalp prickling, the words slipped out. “Something happened to me, over and over with Les, by his hand.”
“Oh, Adah . . . I figured.”
It was the first time he’d called her by her first name. She turned away again, more thoughts falling into her mind. “I can’t let anything like that happen to Daisy.”
“She’s their flesh and blood. Don’t you think that makes a difference?”
“I don’t know. I can’t say for sure.”
“Once you got away, maybe you could forget about all of this and what happened back at your old house.” Now he touched her neck. “Seems to me forgetting is the only way to get past the bad things in life.”
How could she forget? The worst thing had been Lester, and he in turn had led to so many more bad things. What had she missed before marrying him? What signs had there been? But she found that trying to remember was like trying to recall the fleeting thoughts that cross the mind while drifting to sleep. There—and then gone. And if she hadn’t married Lester, what would’ve become of Daisy? No, she couldn’t imagine Daisy ever slipping away.
The River Widow Page 16
