As the calamitous scene played out before her, a spark went off in her head. It was a distraction, not unlike what Adah had planned for her escape. Here Mother Nature herself had taken matters into her own hands and had chosen the livestock barn instead, causing the diversion she’d desperately sought. Buck and Jesse would be frantic to save the livestock, especially the horses. They also kept hogs and chickens and a couple of goats. Not to mention that the fire could spread to the house or other outbuildings. They would be completely caught up, as would everyone around, including the police.
An act of God’s, not hers. Was this the easy solution she’d once envisioned? Was this the gift she’d imagined coming toward her? Did life really answer our prayers, only not in the ways we expected?
Thunder boomed again, and fiery light once more exploded in the sky, this time like a flower with narrow electrical petals. For a moment, everything in the landscape was distorted. Now there were several fires in the distance, and the barn roof was burning right in front of her. Everything amiss, chaos would reign as everyone tried to douse the flames on their stricken and burning structures. All in disarray. Swayed by a wave of vertigo, she reached for the wall to hold herself up.
She had but one moment to decide, one moment to leave, or she would miss her chance—one moment to choose the course of the rest of her life and Daisy’s. Did luck really fall on people like her? Of course she knew it could. She’d seen Lady Luck sprinkle her gifts about like little trinkets left on a table. Occasionally one had landed in front of her, having taken the form of Father Sparrow, the Nash brothers, or Jessamine. And Adah realized that if a gift landed in front of you, you had only to pick it up, roll it in your hand, and pocket it. Quick, before someone else stepped up and snatched it away. Why was she hesitating? Only fear and doubt and a man named Jack stood before her and destiny.
But there was never any real doubt about what she would do.
Adrenaline surging through her every cell, Adah ran back into the bedroom and threw a dress over her nightgown, stuffed her feet into shoes, then awakened Daisy, who was resistant and complaining.
“Where are we going, Mama?” the girl asked.
“Shhh,” Adah said. “I’ll tell you soon.” She pulled one of Daisy’s dresses on over her pajamas, shoved on her shoes, and lifted the girl onto her hip, gently urging Daisy to lay her head on her shoulder; then she grabbed the bag she had packed and headed for the stairs.
At the bottom of the steps, the front door called to her, and its promise of freedom beyond was something she could taste. Adah hitched up Daisy and headed for it.
“Oh no you don’t.”
Mabel’s voice. It hit Adah flat out.
Her mother-in-law moved in front of the door, blocking Adah’s exit. She stood braced in a wide stance, her face suffused with anger. She was shaking her head without speaking, and the room lit up with the power of her rage. “You leave if you want, abandon a ship in trouble. I’ve expected something like this. But you ain’t taking Daisy with you.”
Daisy had come fully awake but said nothing as Adah lowered the girl to stand beside her. It was as if even the very young could discern when something life changing was happening, and it held Daisy still and silent. She stood clinging to Adah’s left leg as though it were a life raft.
There was only one thing to do. Barely breathing, Adah moved the needlepoint bag in front of her body, reached her right hand inside, and felt for the cold, hard metal. She pulled the pistol from her bag, lifted it in one swift movement, and aimed it at Mabel’s eyes. She planted her feet on the floor with steadfast care. Then slipped off the safeties and retracted the slide.
Mabel flinched but made no other move. Adah could read how shock was hitting Mabel, how her cold-chambered heart had been pierced with new fear, how it surrounded her as if in a black vapor.
Adah was afraid her hands would be shaking and weak around the barrel, but they were steady and strong, like the small bones of her body.
“Listen to me, Mabel,” she began. “People around here already suspect that perhaps Lester killed Betsy, and that you and Buck, maybe Jesse, too, helped him cover it up by staging an accident on this farm. I’m not sure you were aware of that, and I’m also pretty certain you didn’t know that Betsy and her mother were corresponding in secret.”
Mabel’s face didn’t move, but her eyes looked stunned and filled with imaginings. Probably she was remembering the day she was party to concealing a murder.
A chill traveled up Adah’s arms all the way to her chest, but she continued playing the cards she had, the same ones she would’ve left in a letter had she gone through with her original escape plan: “Betsy had revealed that Lester was hitting her and she was planning to leave him. There’s proof, in letters, and someone nearby in town has possession of them. If released to the newspaper and the police, they will place serious doubt on your story. Maybe the police will even take a new look at the case. But even if they don’t, your reputation as a family will be ruined.”
Adah had to stop to breathe as she took note of Mabel’s pale, stunned expression, horror in her eyes.
“I’m leaving here now, and if anyone comes after me and Daisy, someone nearby will make all of those letters public. The moonshining could be exposed, too. Your lives will never be the same, and I know how much appearances mean to you.”
Mabel lifted her chin. “All I have to do is step outside and shout for Buck. They’ll stop you.”
“But you won’t,” Adah said. “I’m holding a gun on you. Don’t fool yourself into thinking I won’t use it. And even if I don’t, I doubt you could get Buck and Jesse’s attention in time. I’ll be gone as fast as that lightning has been traveling. And if you report me or try to find me, everyone in these parts will know that your son was a wife beater and probably a murderer, too. Is that what you really want?”
Mabel stood paralyzed, as if searching inside all the hidden crevices of her brain for answers, to no avail. Then a more defiant look appeared on her face; she would not give up easily. But Adah had to make her do just that. Time was of the essence.
Huffing now, Mabel said, “How can I just let you go?”
Adah answered, “You just do. Tell everyone the storm and the fire scared us to death, and you let me take Daisy to start a new life. You can tell everyone it was amicable and that we send letters back and forth. You can save your standing in the community, and you don’t really want Daisy anyway, now, do you?”
Again, Mabel didn’t answer.
“In your heart of hearts, you know Daisy is better off with me. You do love your granddaughter, I know it.” Adah gestured with the gun. “Now move aside.”
Mabel stood petrified, and Adah feared for one moment that the standoff would last too long. She couldn’t really shoot Mabel, but Mabel had to believe Adah’s threats—all of them.
After what seemed like interminable seconds, Mabel licked her lips like a madwoman but then moved aside, just as Adah had told her to. Mabel truly cared more about appearances than reality and much more about those things than her granddaughter. She would make sure the men did what she wanted.
“Thank you, Mabel,” Adah managed to say. She replaced the safeties, put the gun back into her bag, lifted Daisy, and headed for the door. Flung it open and took one look toward the barn, where in a flash of lightning and the glow from the fire, she could see Buck and Jesse pulling animals out of the barn in a frenzy. They would never notice a fleeting shadow on a night like this one. The darkness between bolts in the sky was as impenetrable as the depths of the river.
Her back turned, she started walking, then moving as fast as she could while carrying Daisy. She half-ran down the front-porch steps, then sprinted across the drive and onto the grass. She left behind the light cast by the house and the burning barn, then headed out and away and onto the road, keeping up the pace while kicking up gravel behind her. The storm snatched away all of their sounds. And then she realized that instead of running away in the mids
t of a deluge, and despite lightning still spidering across the sky and tiptoeing across the land, not one drop of rain had fallen.
Adah eventually had to stop running and settled into a brisk walk, still breathing raggedly, heavily. For the first hour or so, she worried that the Branches would come after her despite the barn fire and her threats to Mabel. What if Mabel had changed her mind after she let Adah leave?
There was commotion all around. Many people were out on the roads, either driving away from danger or going to help others. A car stopped and Adah saw Florence Wainwright and a young man who must’ve been her son inside. They told her they hadn’t been hit and were driving to check on friends nearby. They had appeared before Adah as if by another gift from God.
Florence made no comment about Adah’s and Daisy’s attire—pajamas and nightgown hanging out from under their clothes—or the bag Adah carried, and when Adah asked for a ride to the docks, neither Florence nor her son asked one question. As Adah and Daisy hopped into the car and they drove away, Adah couldn’t help turning around in the seat to look for Buck’s car or the pickup truck, but the road behind them was empty.
It was clear to anyone who saw her what Adah was doing. How fortunate that she and Florence had met at the funeral and had understood each other perfectly.
Then a squad car was coming at them from the opposite direction, lights flashing, sirens howling, and Adah stopped breathing. It was all over now. When the headlights of Florence’s car lit the figure inside the oncoming vehicle, it was just a black silhouette, but as the car passed by, Adah recognized Manfred Drucker through the driver’s side window. His hands were clenching the steering wheel, his body leaning forward as if he could power the automobile with the strength of his determination.
A huge swell of nausea made her eyes water as she waited for Drucker to turn around. If she’d seen him, he could’ve seen her. She would be caught and trapped. But Drucker simply kept driving. He was probably headed out to check on his old friend Buck Branch, who was fighting a fire and whose inattention had allowed Adah and Daisy to escape.
The rest of the way, Adah could scarcely believe it. They were going to get away.
Florence spoke only once more, when Adah and Daisy stepped out at the docks, saying simply, “Good luck.”
Flooded with elation, Adah searched the dockside. Even if the Branches decided to come after her, they would look at the train station or the bus station in the morning. They’d never know that Jack had given her this escape plan instead. After she had bribed her way on board a loaded barge heading out at dawn, exhilaration poured through her. She had outfoxed them. In the end, aided by a big dose of Lady Luck, she had bested the Branches.
On board and safe, her only regret: Jack. The man who had appeared before her, cracked her shields, and stepped inside . . .
Oh God. She did not mean to think of him.
Epilogue
At the train station the next day and on the other side of the river, the man in the ticket booth asked Adah where she and her daughter were heading.
“West,” Adah answered. “Any train heading west.”
On board a fast train an hour later, Adah held still. She had never been this far west; each new step was into uncharted territory, one step farther from the past. More clapboard houses, more farms—some dirt poor—more small towns, each with its own flavor. One sign read, “Josephine’s Chicken, Best in Country.” Work lines, food lines, and power lines. Copses of trees. Deserted factories. Dogs, mules, and cats. A man cranking the engine of a very old truck to life. Another man on a bicycle. A church steeple. Stained glass. Then stretches of seemingly empty land.
The clacking rhythm of the train broke thoughts free from her brain, and Adah relived the moment when she’d turned the third tarot card the previous night. The first two cards had not been very revealing, but the third and most important one had been the six of swords, which showed a woman and a young child being rowed across a body of water toward land. The woman’s head was covered, implying her sadness, but she was moving away, toward a place of peace and tranquility. The woman was leaving, going somewhere distant and new, into a different life, a child with her.
No doubt remained going forward: once in a blue moon, the cards foretold the future. Once in a blue moon, they held true.
Although she labored to keep her sorrow curled inside, there were too many moments when it pushed itself out beyond the boundaries she’d tried to build. When she looked at Daisy, she could keep it separate, outside. But when she gazed beyond the window and thought of him, it burned to life inside her.
At night a sea of stars swam overhead, and the air was warm enough to lower her window and breathe. They would take new names as mother and daughter and live with their secret. She would find a small safe place and hope for peace of mind. She would do honest work and get Daisy a pet—a cat or dog or bird. Perhaps a rabbit. They would find a cozy home with a garden, where they would grow vegetables and flowers. She would cook again. There would be their lives before and their lives after. They had crossed over and now could be any people they wanted to be. She indulged in her fantasies, convinced she would make them come true but also hoping to bury the flame of regret, the fear of having made the wrong choice.
Adah’s torment was a vision of Jack, and her mind replayed the scene over and over—his waiting on the courthouse steps and worrying, fretting, and hesitating, looking at his pocket watch, until it dawned on him that she wasn’t coming and she had changed her mind without explanation. Later, of course, he would learn that there had been a fire on the Branch farm and that Adah and Daisy had left town. Then he would figure out she had taken the opportunity to flee, disappearing like fog burns off the river in the morning, leaving him behind. He would figure out she had chosen Daisy over him.
She would stop somewhere along the way and send him a letter, explaining what had happened. Would he understand? Would she ever see him again? Would a path ever reveal itself?
She closed her eyes, opened them again, and raised her window. She could see Jack’s face in the reflected light on the glass, as if he were still looking for her even then. But she couldn’t think of that; instead she made herself imagine him with his horses, walking in his cornfields, and after a hard day’s work, sitting on the porch looking out on the land he so loved.
Jack had once said that forgetting was the only way to get past all the bad things in life, and Adah hoped that he would forget about the short chapter of his life that had featured her. If not, when he looked back on the season of romance, would he feel grateful or regretful? Would he view it as luminous and lovely or colored with confusing shadows and shades? There would be pain in his heart, as there was in hers, and she knew that hurt could cripple and bring one down to a place where up seemed impossibly high and out of reach. Would he ever seek love again, or would he keep the possibilities at a distance, beyond the reach of his arms? She had to hope that she and Jack were the kind of people who believed that each and every life, even their own, was worth fighting for and living for through thick and thin. They were survivors.
And yet she was not ready to lose the spell Jack had placed on her or bid farewell for good. She had the feeling that he would walk with her throughout the rest of her days on earth and find a soft place in her memories that she could sink into from time to time.
When morning broke, and with Daisy still soundly asleep with her head in Adah’s lap, Adah set her hand on the girl’s back, feeling her breathe. She gazed beyond the window, where bright-red and orange slabs of light were beginning to emerge from blue and lavender shadow as the sun wheeled up beyond the horizon. She breathed in and out and watched the day break as she imagined people before her had done for millennia.
H er heart beat at the same slow, steady pulse as the hearts of people before her had, all those other people who had raised children. She could’ve been here a thousand years earlier, and the feelings would have been the same. Adah lost herself for a moment in the newnes
s of freedom, the joy of it, drawn to the wonder. It was worth everything. Two small shadows would emerge from the dark and into the light of liberty. A new life awaited them. As each new year was added, she imagined one from the past could fade away. She had to believe the past could be buried, especially when the future loomed free.
Would Daisy recover from all she’d seen and experienced? Perhaps enough care and love would accomplish that. Would Jack forgive Adah in his heart? Would he forget his sorrow, given time? Adah hoped to overcome the haunting of Lester’s death. Could sorrow and pain someday lose their power, falling into the fathoms and fathoms of former seasons and distant memories?
She let out a hard-held breath. Had she made the right decision? The last question lingered unanswered for only a moment, until Daisy heaved in a big sleeping breath, and a soft little smile appeared on her lips, as though she was entering the first scene of a bright and sweet dream.
Adah moved her hand to Daisy’s head and stroked her hair, then became utterly still.
Her hands were lined and scarred and looked older than her thirty-one years. They had read cards and cooked and scrubbed and carried wood. They had turned the pages of books, touched love, and been betrayed by it. They had touched death, too.
Now they held a human life.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks always to my agent, Lisa Erbach Vance of the Aaron M. Priest Literary Agency; my editor, Jodi Warshaw, at Lake Union Publishing; and editor Amara Holstein for her insightful and helpful input. The entire team at Lake Union continues to help me improve my work, and I will always be grateful.
Thanks to Brent E. Taylor at West Kentucky Community and Technical College for his fine historical review, and John E. L. Robertson, author of Paducah, Kentucky: A History , who took the time to speak with me. My gratitude to Nathan Lynn and Susan Baier of the McCracken County Public Library for help with historical details and assistance in finding a reviewer, and George Dearen of Campbellsville, Kentucky, for his firsthand experience with and willingness to share information regarding tobacco farming.
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