“I never said that.”
Exhaling now, Adah said, “I know.”
“Go ahead and do what you want, then. I just don’t want to know anything about it.”
“You don’t want to know if Lester had anything to do with his first wife’s death? You’re marrying into that family, and you don’t want to know the truth? You’ll simply ignore it, put it out of your mind?”
“I don’t care what Lester did.”
“What if the other Branches helped cover it up?”
“Jesse wasn’t there that day. He was in Louisville on business.”
“I wasn’t aware of that,” Adah said, then remembered that Jack had told her three people gave the police the same story of Betsy’s death: Buck, Mabel, and Les. “But . . . he could still know what happened.”
“He doesn’t know anything. Jesse’s a good man.”
Adah paled, her eyes welling with tears she would never let fall. “Love truly is blind,” she finally said.
Esther smiled sadly. “Maybe so.”
“How can I talk to Kate?”
Esther blinked hard, once. “Kate Johnson. She lives in town. On Langstaff Avenue. In a pretty white house with black shutters, redone since the flood. There’s a wishing well out front. You can’t miss it.”
“Thank you, Esther.”
“Don’t thank me.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not having anything to do with this. I’ll never admit that we even talked.”
“I know that, Esther.”
“I’m just waiting on the sidelines, watching and waiting. You might be digging a hole that you’ll never get yourself out of. And believe me, there won’t be anyone willing to give you a hand up.”
Adah thought of Jack Darby. Esther was wrong. Or at least she hoped Esther was wrong. She had received vital information from two of the most unlikely sources, and today’s news was the most valuable so far. She didn’t know why, but unexpected help was coming her way. Some from a man who was enamored of her and didn’t want her to escape; some from a woman who wanted nothing more than Daisy and her gone.
Something of a road map was beginning to unroll in front of her. Would the information she’d gleaned from Jack and Esther pave a way forward? Or would one or both of them betray her? Would her trust in them be destroyed?
“Thank you anyway,” she said to Esther, who simply nodded.
Adah caught her breath. She felt winded, as if she’d been chased.
Outside, a small group of adults had gathered around the spot where Daisy and the other little girl had been playing among the tree roots. Adah rushed forward to find that Daisy and Rebecca had argued, and Daisy had pushed the other girl down. Now Mabel had hold of Daisy’s arm and was forcing her to apologize, while Rebecca whimpered into her mother’s skirts.
Mabel was saying to Daisy, “You go on and say you’re sorry again.”
Daisy’s eyes were red rimmed, and her little chin trembled. She said, “Sorry.”
“Again, and louder this time,” Mabel said, then glanced at Adah as if making sure she was registering the seriousness of what had happened.
Daisy whimpered. “Sorry.”
Mabel jerked Daisy’s arm and said to the other girl’s mother, “You can be sure she’ll get her real punishment later.”
Rebecca’s mother’s face changed, as if something had just dawned on her. Mabel stood her ground, obviously not the least bit aware of the effect she had on others. Rebecca’s mother said definitively but softly, “No real harm done. They’re just children.”
Mabel insisted, “Daisy knows better than to behave like that. The Branches know not to act that way, and we don’t raise our young ’uns to act that way.” She shot a pointed glance at Adah.
Daisy rubbed her nose and then looked at Adah and whispered, “Mama . . .” A sound that threatened to pull a moan out of Adah’s chest, and yet she had to stand frozen in place.
Rebecca’s mother said, “Kids make mistakes, and Rebecca isn’t hurt. All kids push from time to time . . . and Daisy has apologized.” She leaned down and spoke to her daughter. “You and Daisy are still friends, aren’t you?”
Rebecca had stopped crying and simply nodded. Then asked her mother, “Can we play now?”
Mabel was quick to say, “Daisy will not be allowed to play again today. In fact, I think it’s time we go home.”
If Adah had been surprised by the ferocity with which Mabel doled out punishment and shame earlier in the day, she was shocked by what happened later that evening. After supper, Mabel announced that Daisy would spend the night out in the barn as penance for her actions at the picnic. Daisy sat like a deflated balloon, but Adah found it impossible to hold back her thoughts against such extreme punishment.
“No child should be forced to sleep outside by herself.”
Mabel’s face reflected a moment of regret, but she seemed to push it away as easily as swatting at a fly and retorted quickly, “She won’t be outside. She’ll be in the barn.”
“The barn at night is no place for a little girl.” All sorts of awful visions of Daisy later that night swirling in her head, Adah asked, “What if she gets scared? Has a nightmare? Gets cold?”
Mabel had to look away for a moment, but she soon turned back, determined as ever. “Then she’ll think twice before she bullies a friend again. No, sirree.”
This from a family of bullies. Adah had to hold on to her stomach with both hands. “Mabel, please don’t do this. It’s too harsh. Please. Let her sleep with me, and we can keep her indoors tomorrow as punishment. Or anything else.”
Mabel leveled a hard stare at Adah. “You best stay out of this. This ain’t any of your business.”
“Mabel, please. She thinks of me as her mother. Let me deal with this.”
“The way you’ll deal with it is to do nothing. You ain’t like us; we been bred a different way than you was. Daisy’s getting out of control under your hand, and let me remind you that both of you are eating and sleeping and living here under my good graces. That’s the only reason you’re still under my roof.”
Buck, who had been observing this interaction, said, “And under our rules.” He grabbed an old tin can and spat in it.
After dusk Mabel led a weeping Daisy out to the barn, allowing her to take a blanket and pillow with her and admonishing Adah to stay out of it. And so Adah went to bed that night after listening to Daisy call out for her—“Mama, Mama!”—for an hour and sob in between her calls.
Sleep was impossible. Instead she battled the sheets for hours, the air in the room suffocating her. Alone in her bed, she went from hugging pillows to hugging herself. She got up and opened the window. Beyond, only an empty farm, night birds crying out, the rumble of a faraway truck, the smell of summer and grass filtering in through the screen.
This was the landscape of her misery, and the night was playing out over a hundred hours. She tried to imagine how a four-year-old girl, who was probably terrified, would get through such a night. She closed her eyes and wondered if she could send love across a distance. Could feelings be conveyed on air currents? Adah clenched her eyes shut, trying to let Daisy know that she loved her and that even if she wasn’t able to protect her right now, someday she would protect her from everything.
When the house became silent, Adah slipped out of bed and, wearing a robe and a pair of shoes, left the house and went straight to the barn. She found Daisy curled up in an empty straw-covered stall, fast asleep, her head on the pillow, her arm clutching the blanket against her chest, her breathing deep and regular. It seemed that crying had finally led to exhaustion.
One of the dogs lay beside Daisy, his back to hers. The other dog was up and sniffing Adah’s hands, begging for attention, but he had probably been lying with Daisy, too. She had to stifle the urge to gather Daisy into her arms and make a dash for it into the woods. But what then? With no transportation, no one waiting for her, and not even the money she had hidden back in the house
? She wouldn’t get far.
Heart fractured, Adah stared at the girl for a long time, and then decided it best to leave her be until morning. At least Daisy had the company of the dogs, and bringing her indoors might’ve gotten her upset again, and it certainly wouldn’t have boded well for either of them with Mabel and Buck.
Adah headed back to the house, and the sensation of being watched hit her long before she reached the porch. It raised the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck. Her eyes caught sight of a shadow in one of the windows; it shifted and then pulled back. The dark shape of someone who hadn’t wanted to be seen.
Adah never paused, just kept walking, putting one foot in front of the other, showing no reaction. There was no doubt in her mind, however. One of the Branches had been watching her every move.
Chapter Twenty-One
The next day, Adah, jittery with anticipation, walked the roads to deliver laundry to a customer. The sun had already reached its apex and was sliding down the sky. After she dropped off the laundry basket, she hitched a ride into town, and the old farmer driving his pickup truck never asked about her business. They made the short journey in silence. She was taking a chance going to town after being warned not to, but it was a chance she was now willing to take.
Once there, Adah removed her apron, folded it, and brushed the dust off her clothes, then walked swiftly to Langstaff Avenue and found the cottagelike house with a wishing well in front. After only a moment’s hesitation, Adah walked to the front door and knocked. If Kate Johnson still had any letters . . .
A blonde woman wearing a housedress and old T-bar shoes and carrying a baby on her hip answered and looked at her curiously through the screen door. Her hair was mussed, her face flushed, and she seemed slightly winded, as if Adah had caught her cleaning or cooking.
“Hello,” Adah said. “I’m Adah Branch. Could I bother you for a moment of your time? I’m a friend of Esther Heiser’s.”
“Yes, I know who you are,” Kate said after a short hesitation. She opened the screen door with her free hand as she hoisted the baby, who appeared to be nearly a year old, higher up on her hip. “Come in.”
“Thank you. I’m so sorry to bother you during your busy day.”
Adah followed the woman into a house strewn with toys and children’s books, with laundry stacked on the sofa and the smell of food mixed with the odor of diapers.
“I hope you don’t mind the mess. My three-year-old is taking a nap, so at least it’s quiet. But I wasn’t exactly expecting company,” Kate said as she set the baby down in front of a set of blocks on the rug-covered floor.
Adah grasped her hands together as she glanced about and fought off the urge to beg the woman for help. She had to remain composed and focused. “I’m so sorry to intrude, but I didn’t know of another way to contact you.”
Kate nodded. “Let’s sit for a spell.”
She led Adah into a dining room that opened to one side off the living room, where she could still watch the baby. She shoved aside books and baby burp rags and a sleeping cat on the round oak tabletop. As she slumped into a ladder-back chair, she pushed back her hair, which was falling down into her face in coils that reminded Adah of question marks.
With serious but open, kind eyes, Kate asked, “What can I do for you?”
Adah didn’t know of any other way around it except to begin. “This might seem an odd topic of conversation, but . . . I understand you were a friend of Betsy Branch’s.”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“She was my husband’s first wife.”
Kate nodded. “I’m sorry about your loss, by the way. That flood was the devil’s making.”
“Yes. Thank you.” Adah paused, then, not wanting to waste any of Kate’s time, went straight to the point. “As you know, Esther is marrying into the family, and she and I have become . . . friends. Esther told me that Betsy corresponded with her mother through you and that you might still have some letters.”
“I see,” Kate said, then sat up straight in the chair. “Yes, I do have letters. I couldn’t just toss them out once Betsy died, and I didn’t want to pass them on to your . . . husband.”
Adah, struck by how well things were going, cocked her head. Did Kate Johnson know something about Lester that no one else did? “Why do you think Betsy wanted to receive letters from her mother here instead of at home?”
Shrugging, Kate glanced into the living room, where the baby was still at play. She looked back pensively. “I don’t know. I never asked. Betsy asked me for a favor, and I did it.”
“You weren’t curious?”
Kate shrugged again. “Sure I was, but Betsy became my friend mainly because I never pushed myself on her. She told me what she wanted to tell me, and that’s all.”
“What did she tell you?”
Kate’s face fell. “Why all these questions? Why all of this sudden interest in Betsy and her mother?”
Adah had to refocus. “After our farmhouse flooded, I found a box of letters from Betsy’s mother in the attic, and I’m saving them for Daisy. When I heard that you had others, I thought it would be nice if I could pass them all on to Daisy when she’s older. After all, now the girl has lost both parents . . .”
“I see,” Kate said. “Well . . . I find that a lovely sentiment.” She looked as if in deep thought. “I do think Betsy would’ve liked that; however, I have no idea as to the content of those letters.”
“What do you mean?”
After a long moment, Kate said, “Betsy wasn’t happy; that was easy to see. I have no idea if it had to do with Lester. I never probed, and I believe she was getting letters here because her mother was sending her money. That’s why she didn’t want her husband—your husband—to know about it. She read her mother’s letters here, then left them with me. I’ve held on to them, untouched.”
“So even after Betsy died, you never read them?”
“No, I did not. Those letters are private—sacred, even. I wrote to Betsy’s mother shortly after Betsy died, and my letter came back as not delivered. Later I learned that Doris died of a heart attack a day or so after hearing of her daughter’s demise. It’s a heartbreaking story, one I haven’t been able to forget.”
Adah observed Kate’s still-obvious grief in her glistening eyes. “You must have cared a lot about Betsy.”
Kate blinked. “I did.”
“And I care a lot about her daughter. Now I’m the only parent she has.”
“I see.” Kate sat for a few moments more, then slowly rose and left the room while Adah suffered through even more anticipation. Was she soon to be in possession of ammunition she could use against the Branches?
Kate reentered the room and set a bundle of letters tied together with a white ribbon on the table in front of Adah. “I’ll be glad to see these leave this house. They’ve haunted me, but I resisted the urge to read them. I have a feeling you won’t.”
Her eyes pooling with grateful tears, Adah looked up at the woman. “I will read them. I don’t want to lie to you about that.” Then Adah had to stick with her story, difficult as it was to lie to someone of Kate Johnson’s character. “I will read them to make sure what’s inside is suitable for Daisy to someday read.”
“I understand.”
Adah stood and wrapped the bundle of letters in her apron.
Walking away from Kate, Adah knew she had accomplished something significant. She hadn’t been followed. No one seemed to be paying any attention to her as she walked back through town, looking upward at telephone and power lines that connected the buildings like the outstretched filaments of spiders, and she began walking toward Lone Oak.
She would stop at Jack Darby’s house and read the letters. She daren’t take them back to the house with her.
Even though Adah was able to catch a ride with another passing farmer, it was still nearly an hour before she could sit on Jack’s front-porch steps and open the first letter, postmarked most recently. Trembling, Adah unfolded i
t and began quickly reading. H eart thumping up high in her throat, she saw that Betsy’s mother had enclosed money for her daughter and granddaughter to move to Louisville. She had warned her daughter to be careful and come straight away, as fast as she could.
Adah sucked in a hot, shaky breath. The money was not there, so Betsy had taken it. And now it was evident: Betsy Branch had been in the process of leaving Lester when she was killed.
Adah skimmed through other letters and soon learned all that she needed to know. D oris had written such things as A good man never strikes a woman ; He could do some permanent damage, or he could kill you ; That place in that man’s house is no place for you and Daisy ; and Don’t think twice. Leave him. We’ll make do here .
There was no reason to read more just then. Adah slipped the last letter she’d skimmed back into its envelope and looked to Jack, who had come in from his cornfield and now stood before her.
She gazed up into his backlit silhouette, his face in shadow, and said, “I have it, Jack. I have something here.”
As he came closer a strange euphoria fell over her. His shape, his movements, the anticipation of his close proximity made her giddy. Pushing those feelings aside, she stared out into the yard that was gathering the twilight. She watched the first firefly blink in the blue-gray air.
He sat beside her while she relayed securing Esther’s help and then getting the letters from Kate, and he listened in silence, without even nodding his head.
He removed his hat and fanned himself with it. “There’s no definite proof that Lester killed her. It certainly provides a motive, though. These show without a doubt she was packing up and giving up on him.”
Adah nodded. “But I’m not going to the police or the sheriff with this.”
He rubbed his chin, the beginnings of an evening stubble catching the sunlight.
“What I need is leverage, something to bargain with. When I make my escape, I want there to be something I can hang over them so they don’t follow me or report Daisy as having been kidnapped. I can always threaten to expose them as moonshiners, but I’m not sure that’s enough.”
The River Widow Page 20
