Wife Wanted in Dry Creek

by Janet Tronstad

  “Yes, but the problem is that we can only suggest actions to the tribal authorities and, so far, all we have is a breaking and entering with a possible stolen vehicle. They’re busy with other things, they say.”

  “They need to make it a priority.” Edith had a small frown on her wrinkled face. “We’ll need to add this to our church prayer bulletin if that’s okay.”

  “My sister would like that,” Katrina said. Leanne had handled their parents’ deaths differently than she had. She might even still believe in prayer, even if she hadn’t gone to church for some time.

  Katrina faced the sheriff. “You’ll let me know if you find anything about Leanne. Good or bad, I want to know.”

  “I’ll tell you what I can,” the lawman said. “If you had any idea of where she might go, it would be helpful for us to know.”

  “I wish I knew.”

  The sheriff nodded and rose up from the chair. “I better check back with the tribal police.” He looked at her again. “Try not to worry.”

  Katrina waited for the lawman to leave the room and Conrad and his aunt waited with her. Finally, they heard the sound of the door closing.

  “I need to go see my sister’s house,” Katrina said. “Maybe there’s something I will notice that the police haven’t.”

  Conrad squeezed her hand and she realized he still held it.

  “I understand how you feel, but you have your nephews to think of. You’re their only tie to their mother. They’ll need someone to be here to comfort them if—” Conrad stopped.

  Katrina gasped. “It wouldn’t make any difference. There could be a hundred people here and if something has happened to their parents, it wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference.”

  “Oh, dear,” Edith said as she put her hand over the one Katrina had lying on the table. “Did something happen to your parents when you were a child?”

  She was going to say she couldn’t talk about it, but then she looked at Conrad. She couldn’t just keep saying everything was too private. And the truth was, she wouldn’t mind if these two new friends knew. She wasn’t quite sure why that was, but she didn’t have time to question it.

  “I was twelve,” she began. She didn’t want to look at anyone so she stared across the table at the picture of the girl, Doris. “Maybe about her age. My sister was about five years younger. Our parents were Christians, always busy in the church. Then one year they decided they were going to go for six months to work on a mission project in Africa. They were excited, showing us pictures of the babies and the families they were going to help. They’d never done anything like that before. They said they were going to help save the souls of those people. Leanne and I were going to stay with our aunt Bertha while they were gone. She smelled like cats. She had lots of cats.”

  Katrina felt hoarse, as if her throat was clogged with unshed tears even though it was completely dry. “Anyway, my parents went and there was a plane crash and they died in a country we couldn’t even find on Aunt Bertha’s maps. We looked and looked, but no one knew where it was.”

  “We didn’t know what to do. Aunt Bertha kept telling us that we should be happy our parents had been doing God’s will when they died.”

  She didn’t have the courage to ask the question when she was twelve, but it had burned in her ever since. “How could that be? Didn’t God care about Leanne and me?”

  “Oh, you poor dear,” Edith murmured as she put her hand on Katrina’s arm. “He cares very much about you. It was an accident.”

  “If He cared, He would have stopped it.”

  Everything was silent and then Conrad moved his chair close and pulled Katrina to him in a hug. “I know how that feels.”

  “It’s all right. You don’t have to say that.”

  “No,” he said softly. “I know how that feels. My mother died when I was five and my father might as well have. I felt abandoned, too.”

  Katrina took a deep breath. It felt good to have told someone who understood. She looked to the other side of her and saw that Edith had gone back into the kitchen, leaving her alone with Conrad. She settled back into his arms.

  They just sat there for the longest time.

  Then Conrad felt the rubber band inside him loosen. “I never did want to talk about my parents, either. I don’t think I even understood what I was feeling. I was so young.”

  Katrina nodded. “It was worse for Leanne. All we had for family was Aunt Bertha and she didn’t really want us. When we were first staying there, after our parents had just left, she kept saying she couldn’t wait for them to come back. Leanne started crying a lot, but when we heard about our parents she stopped. Maybe she knew no one was going to come rescue us then. We were stuck with Aunt Bertha and she was stuck with us. It was awful.”

  Conrad started to rub Katrina’s neck. He could feel the tension in her. “I suppose that’s why you never go into churches?”

  She nodded. “I vowed I’d never set foot in a church again. How could God care so much about those people in Africa and not me and Leanne? We were right in front of His face in that church.” She smiled slightly and looked up at him. “Back then my geography wasn’t so good. I somehow thought if God was looking down on us in Ohio, He couldn’t even see the people in Africa. And the other way around, too.”

  “I suppose we all think that when we’re kids. Everything seems so far away.”

  “Leanne ended up on the Crow Indian reservation because she’d found some short-term mission project just like our parents had done. Fortunately, she didn’t have to fly anywhere or I’d have tried to stop her. But the reservation was close and I thought she might find some peace in what she was doing. Instead, she met Walker and—” She looked up at him again. “I was just so mad that she was letting that project change her life that I said some awful things about her and Walker and the reservation where they were going to live.”

  “I’m sure she’ll forgive you if you say you’re sorry,” Conrad said.

  Katrina laughed. “You don’t know Leanne. She’ll want drama.”

  “Well, we’ll give it to her then,” Conrad said and then caught himself. “I mean, you’ll give it to her.”

  Katrina was silent for a moment and then she said, “I hope we find her so I can.”

  Suddenly, there was a clatter of noise and the two boys burst into the dining room. Charley trailed behind them.

  “We ran out of cookies,” Ryan said as he held up a plate with some crumbs on it.

  “How many cookies have you had?” Katrina said as she stood and walked over to them.

  When she got to the boys, she forgot about cookies. She knelt down and looked each of them in the eye. “I want you both to know I care about you. We haven’t had much time together, but if anything ever happened I would love you and keep you and—”

  “Give us more cookies?” Zach asked hopefully.

  Katrina gave a choked laugh. “Well, no, I wouldn’t give you more cookies. But that’s only because it’s for your own good not to have them.”

  “Awhhh,” Ryan said.

  “Don’t worry,” Zach whispered loudly to his brother. “Mrs. Edith will give us some.”

  “You won’t want to be too full to eat one of my aunt’s dinners. They’re even better than cookies,” Conrad said.

  The boys looked at him in disbelief.

  “Besides, I think I remember where there are Lincoln Logs upstairs that can make a mountain.”

  “Can we crash the mountain?” Ryan asked.

  “If you help build it,” Conrad said, taking the boys away to show them the logs.

  A half hour later, Conrad walked into his aunt’s kitchen. She was washing dishes and Katrina was at the counter slicing carrots.

  “I was wondering,” he said to his aunt as he walked over to the sink and picked up a dish towel. “Did you keep those tables I had? You know the ones—”

  His aunt looked up and nodded. “I don’t know why you kept those things, but Charley put them in
the desk in the spare room.”

  Conrad took a plate from the dish drainer and began to dry it. “I spent the whole summer on those tables when I was ten.” He looked over at Katrina who glanced up from the carrots. “They were actuary tables and showed how likely people were to die at various ages.”

  “Oh,” Katrina said in surprise as she put down her knife.

  Conrad nodded. “I know. It wasn’t very emotionally healthy. You might have been mad at God, but I spent all my time worrying. And it wasn’t just about my father. I thought the mailman might be dying if he had a little cough. I wondered if my uncle was going to be able to come the next weekend. I had a lot to work through, let me tell you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Katrina said softly. “I had no idea it was so hard for you.”

  Conrad swallowed. “I just wanted you to know.”

  He’d never told anyone about those tables except his uncle Charley. “I missed my mother more than I would have thought possible. She’s what made our house a home. My father and I, we didn’t know what to do without her.”

  Conrad set the dried plate down on the counter and looked at Katrina. “I imagine you felt the same way when your parents died so unexpectedly.”

  He saw the emotion grow in Katrina’s eyes.

  “I’ve never told anyone before how bad it felt,” Katrina finally said. “It was a long time before I cared about anything or anyone after they died.”

  Katrina looked away from him and started cutting carrots again. He understood she needed some quiet. He turned back to the dishes.

  After a few minutes, his aunt spoke.

  “Conrad, I was hoping you might spend the night here. We have the sofa even if the boys are in your room. They’re predicting thunderstorms and everything just seems so unsettled,” Edith said.

  He nodded. “I was planning on it. I’ll need to go back and get my toothbrush, though.”

  Until recently when he’d bought the old Gossett place and started fixing it up, he’d been staying with his aunt and uncle.

  “Keep dry,” Katrina said quietly.

  He nodded. The truth was he wouldn’t mind going out in the cold and wet. He wasn’t used to telling someone about his mother’s death and he still felt raw inside. For him, storms were sometimes more comforting than a sunny day. At least he knew the bad weather was already here so he didn’t need to wonder when it was coming.

  “Bring some clothes for church tomorrow,” his aunt called out as he walked toward the door.

  He nodded.

  “I’ll need to get my camera, too,” Katrina said. “To take pictures of the heart sign.”

  “We can get that tomorrow,” he said as he turned the handle on the door and then stood there. “I usually stop by the station on my way to church anyway so I’ll just go early. I don’t open up, but it’s habit. I like to check anyway.”

  “You’re careful about everything,” Katrina said.

  “I suppose so.” He opened the door and stepped out quickly so the cold would not come in the house. He looked up and saw that the sky was deep gray in the east. They probably were in for some thunderstorms.

  He put his jacket collar up for the walk back to the station. He wished he had more comfort to offer Katrina. All he could do was pray, though. He was glad that no one had ever told him that his mother’s death had anything to do with the will of God. He didn’t have any good answers for Katrina on that, but he knew God never intended for her and her sister to feel as though they’d been abandoned.

  He opened the door to his gas station before he realized the reason he was so intent on making a home here in Dry Creek was because he’d never had one with his father after his mother died. Fixing up that old house was taking a lot of energy, but he felt hopeful with each nail he hammered. He wasn’t just remodeling a house; he was remodeling himself. Someday soon, he’d be a new man and his house would be a true home.

  Chapter Seven

  Katrina woke up with a start. She didn’t know what had awakened her. The curtains on the bedroom were closed, but it was dark outside anyway. There was no rain or traffic noise. She lay stiff in the bed until she remembered she was in Edith’s home. Then her cell phone rang. It must have rung earlier.

  She thought it might be from the sheriff so she quickly flipped on the night-light and stood up. Edith had given her a cotton flannel nightgown to wear and she was grateful for it because of the temperature. The wood floor was chilly on her bare feet, but she didn’t hesitate to walk over to the dresser where she’d put her purse last night.

  She pulled the cell phone from her purse. She saw it was five o’clock in the morning. Then she pressed the talk button. “Hello.”

  There was a moment’s hesitation and then a whispered voice asked, “Katrina? Is that you?”

  “Leanne!” Katrina was wide awake now. “Where are you?”

  “I can’t talk loud,” her sister continued in a low voice. “I don’t want anyone to hear me. I stopped to get gas and I opened your glove compartment and found your business card. I would have called earlier, but I—”

  Leanne paused and Katrina could hear the sound of men’s voices.

  “Are you all right?” Katrina asked.

  “Yeah, they were just a couple of truckers,” her sister finally answered. “I’m somewhere along the I-90 freeway heading east. At a pay phone by the restroom.”

  “Get off at the Dry Creek exit,” Katrina said. “I put a sign up with the boys’ names on it so you’d see it.”

  “Oh, no,” Leanne hissed. “You’ve got to take it down. I need to find you before Walker—”

  The men’s voices came closer again.

  “Are you all right?” Katrina asked. “Did Walker threaten you?”

  The voices receded.

  “He just got really mad when I told him I’d lent you the car,” Leanne said. “I’ve never seen him like that. He punched a hole in the wall and almost hit me. Then he said I needed to leave or I could be hurt bad. I was scared. That car is so old it’s not worth anything. I took off in your car. He tried to follow me. I think he thought I was going to meet you, but I didn’t know where you were.”

  “Is Walker still following you?” Katrina asked.

  “I don’t think so. I lost him when he had to stop and get gas in his pickup. Then I pulled off and rested for a while behind a warehouse. I figured if he cooled off some maybe—”

  Katrina heard a door slam in the distance.

  “Look, I’ve got to go,” Leanne said. “Kiss the boys for me and I’ll be there in a few hours.”

  Katrina looked at the clock again. “We’ll probably be at the church.”

  “You?” Leanne said in astonishment and then the men’s voices came closer and she hung up.

  Katrina pressed the cold phone to her cheek as she listened to the dial tone. She was so glad her sister had finally called. Maybe she did owe someone her gratitude.

  “Thank You—” she whispered. She looked up and then she swallowed. “Thank You, God. Whoever’s up there on duty. Thank You for keeping my sister safe.”

  Well, that felt strange, she thought. She wasn’t ready to do any forgiving, but she was grateful that Leanne was safe thus far. If God had something to do with that, she’d acknowledge it. That was only fair. Now that her sister knew to come to Dry Creek, she’d probably be here before church was over this morning. Maybe even before it began.

  Katrina walked over to the window and pulled back the curtains. It was dark outside. There was an edging of frost around the window, but she could see Conrad’s gas station from here. He had lights over the gas pumps and they lit everything up enough that she could see the whole building. The windows of the garage showed nothing but black inside, though. She wished Conrad had parked Leanne’s car outside, but he clearly hadn’t. He had brought the key to the car back with him last night and laid it on the dining room table.

  The one thing she could do for Leanne right now was to go take that sign off the freeway. She�
��d need a car to do that. And she’d have to get dressed.

  Suddenly, the thought struck her that Conrad might not lock his building at night. It would be foolish not to, she knew that. But Edith had made the remark earlier today that most people didn’t lock their doors around here. At least, the older woman had added, not unless there was a rodeo in Miles City.

  Apparently, the rodeo was a big thing around here. Cowboys would come from all over and townspeople took extra precautions. She’d also heard that a woman, Lizette Bowman, came in from the ranch she shared with her husband, Judd, and opened her small bakery. She’d make enough of her legendary doughnuts to keep the rodeo men and everyone else happy for a few days.

  Leanne could love this little town, Katrina told herself as she sat down to put on her jeans. If Walker was threatening her, maybe Leanne would keep herself and the boys away from him. Maybe they could come to Dry Creek and make a home here.

  It was a fantasy, Katrina knew that. Moving to Dry Creek was what she would like to do if she could. The buildings around here might be a bit weathered and windblown, but the people were rock solid. She’d made the mistake before of thinking that her sister would feel the same way she did; she didn’t want to make that assumption again, even though she believed that if her sister got to know people like Edith and Conrad, she would be drawn to them. Of course, life was never that simple. Even for her, half of her was drawn to Dry Creek and the other half wanted to run away.

  Katrina finished putting on the same ivory top she’d worn yesterday. Edith had lent her a comb and she tried to straighten out her hair. She’d also given her a toothbrush and Katrina planned to stop at the bathroom and brush her teeth and get herself ready to go outside.

  Conrad had a blanket wrapped around himself and he was lying on the sofa. He’d gone to bed in the clothes he’d worn all day long. He didn’t have any nightwear with him and he liked the weight of his clothes, especially when the weather was cold like this. Besides, he wasn’t totally at ease. The wind had blown some earlier and the fate of Katrina’s sister kept twisting around in his mind. That’s why he wasn’t fully asleep when he heard the footstep overhead. It sounded like it was coming from the bedroom Katrina was using and, at first, he thought she had simply gotten up in the night to use the bathroom.