Black Widows

by Cate Quinn

  “I thought she had some plan,” I whisper. “I didn’t…”

  “Blood atonement,” says Mrs. Nelson. “She wanted to atone for her sins. Get to where Blake was.”

  I don’t think Tina would hold a lot of faith in blood atonement, but I guess Mrs. Nelson imagines everyone thinks like she does. Her eyes land on mine, and there’s a whirling fury behind them.

  I need to get to Tina. She’s not moving. Her body is a broken mess. The ranch burns behind her.

  “You’ve ruined everything,” says Mrs. Nelson. “All my good work with Blake.”

  Her tongue snakes out and licks her dry lips.

  That’s when it dawns on me.

  Oh my God. She killed Blake.

  “You’re my child, too, Rachel,” she whispers. “I see that now. I’ve been blind. God didn’t want me to take the easy path.”

  The gun lies at my feet. I set my jaw, readying myself for the impact.

  There’s a noise like dripping water, and from nowhere comes Emily, soaked to the skin, lunging at Mrs. Nelson. I’m so surprised, I step back. By the time I’ve made sense of what in the heck is happening, I see Mrs. Nelson slam tiny Emily with the butt of the rifle, smashing her onto the sandy ground. Mrs. Nelson levels the rifle at me again. My eyes move to Emily, lying in the dirt coughing, blood pouring from her mouth.

  “Don’t be afraid, Rachel,” Mrs. Nelson says. “It’s a mother’s task to punish her children. This will soon be over.” She swings the gun down to Emily and takes aim.

  “You get away from her!” I don’t think about anything other than saving Emily. And since the only way is to put myself between Adelaide and my injured sister-wife, that’s what I do.

  Adelaide’s eyes flash up to my face, filled with rage. Her gun is pointed square at my heart now, her finger tightening on the trigger. Emily’s eyes widen in amazement. Guess she didn’t realize how much I cared for her until this moment. Funny how life is.

  That’s when I see Blake’s hunting rifle slide across the dirt of its own accord, passing in between Mrs. Nelson’s legs, then stopping.

  Her eyes track down confused, and then the long muzzle jerks up hard, slamming her in the groin.

  Adelaide folds forward, gasping in pain. Suddenly, there is Tina, standing behind her, both hands on the rifle like she’s taken an upward golfing stroke.

  Mrs. Nelson looks back over her shoulder, still doubled up from the low blow.

  “How did you…?” she manages.

  “You know what they say, Mrs. Nelson,” says Tina, leaning awkwardly to one side. “Good girls go to heaven. Bad girls go everywhere.” She swings the butt of the gun, making an eye-watering crack with the base of Adelaide’s jaw. Mrs Nelson goes down, hitting the desert floor hard. She’s out cold.

  “Not to mention Vegas girls fight dirty,” concludes Tina with satisfaction. Her eyes lift to mine, then drop to Emily. “You both okay?”

  “Just a busted lip,” says Emily cheerily, sitting up and examining the blood in her hand.

  “Tina, are you okay?” I’m staring at her, wondering whether to believe my eyes. “You could barely walk back there.”

  I lean down to pull Emily up out of the dirt.

  “Yeah, well,” says Tina. “I wanted Mrs. Nelson to think I’d broke a leg. You learn pretty quick how to play dead and dyin’ when you’re workin’ the strip in Vegas.” She shrugs. “It’s more like a sprain.”

  Emily stands. “Thanks,” she says, wiping blood from her face. She stares wide-eyed at Tina.

  “I saw Rachel shoot you.” She lowers her voice. “Did God stop the bullets?”

  Tina laughs. “Nah. I tampered with Blake’s gun back in Vegas. Put in blank bullets. Makes a loud bang but that’s about it.”

  “You didn’t trust me?” I manage.

  “Let’s just say I’m not a moron. I mean”—she rolls her eyes—“who goes on a road trip with a murder suspect and a loaded weapon?” She peers at Mrs. Nelson, unconscious in the dust.

  “Lucky I swapped the bullets out though, right?” she adds. “I figured if Mrs. Nelson thought you’d actually shot me, she’d freak out. Give me a chance to sneak up.” She frowns, sweeping hair from her face. “Kinda surprised it worked,” she admits. “Didn’t think you had it in you.” She pauses, wrinkling her nose. “You know you stink of vinegar?”

  “Pickle brine,” I tell her.

  That’s when I hear sirens on the horizon.

  “I found Aunt Meg,” I tell Tina. “Or didn’t find her. She died. Years ago.” Suddenly, it feels as though my heart is breaking. Tears rise up and won’t stop. “I think…” I sob, “I think she was killing babies that weren’t born right, but she never got caught.” My chest is heaving. I let my eyes settle on the copper mountains in the distance. “I don’t know… I mean, how can there be a God when such awful stuff happens?”

  Tina slings an arm around my and Emily’s shoulders, pulling us close enough to hurt.

  “Of course there’s a God.” She smiles. “Else how could you love a couple a’ freak shows like us?”

  Chapter One Hundred Seven

  Rachel Ambrosine-Nelson

  Five months later

  Turns out, I had it wrong. We were the right wives, with the wrong husband. So we’re going to make it work, Tina and Emily and I. Marriage is all about communication. Keeping the lines open. We’ve all talked about that a lot. It’s important if you’re gonna help other women.

  We got the keys to the Homestead gates last month, and boy, you wouldn’t recognize the old place since we got to work. It looks completely different.

  When the three of us first stepped into that deserted compound, I wasn’t sure we’d done the right thing. Tina worked actual miracles with the state. I mean, I don’t even know how she brokered it so quickly, given everything was in Blake’s name and had to go through some complicated probate law. I think she pulled the grieving-widows card. But the reality of actually owning such a big place only really hit us when we arrived. Then Emily started running through all the rooms, shouting, clapping her hands, singing crazy songs. She said it was all about moving out the bad energy. Wouldn’t stop acting the clown until Tina and I were folded over, crying with laughter. Honestly, Emily is an absolute riot. Guess she never let that side of herself out before.

  She got community service, on account of wasting police time with her confession. By rights, she should have been charged with hiding the murder weapon, too, but I’ve kind of kept that quiet for her. I’ve learned it’s not always so important to follow rules to the letter. Sometimes you can make your own interpretations. Emily found Blake’s body early that morning and thought she was covering for me. I’ve told her since she should have credited me with more intelligence than to leave my own gardening ax at the scene. In any case, community service has really been the making of Emily. It’s given her a confidence she never had before.

  I suppose you could call us a refuge now. We thought we had a lot of rooms here, but shoot, they sure have filled up fast. The best thing is the women. They just get right to work, cleaning and cooking, digging and sorting. As Tina would say, shit just gets done. My folk were bred to it, I suppose, and a lot of people who come here are old Homestead people, sick of life in Waynard’s Creek. We get all kinds of women too. Recovering addicts trying to get away from their pimps. Victims of domestic violence. We don’t turn anyone away.

  I was worried about our reputation, since the media had painted us as husband killers, even after the truth came out. Turns out that was one of the things the women came to us for. They figured if we stood up to our husband, we could teach them how to stand up for themselves.

  In any case, we work real good as a team. Tina calls us the three amigos. She takes care of the legal side of things. Making sure our guests are protected. Getting all our paperwork in order. I know a thing or two about cons
truction. Growing up in a badly built house, it seems, teaches you about how to build things right, so I do a lot of that. Structural things.

  I manage our little metal and gem-mining business too. Aside from copper, there’s topaz here, and a few other pretty stones. Tina was clever with leasing us some equipment to get started, and we get enough out of the ground to make artisan jewelry. Emily found she had a talent for that, and her pieces sell for a pretty penny to city folk down in Salt Lake. She even got wrote up in the Salt Lake Tribune, how Emily Martinelli-Nelson makes fairy-tale things more or less from dirt.

  With the sale of extra copper and gemstones, it’s enough to give us all a comfortable life. Though we still like to grow and can our own food for the heck of it. Sometimes I run talks up at Brigham Young University, too, about our experiences. People seem to like to hear about them.

  Emily has ideas about just about everything. But besides jewelry, she is mainly good at cooking. Lately, she has been making these spectacular cakes with popping candy, which just puts a smile on everyone’s face. You need that in a home. Fun. Surprises.

  Tina and I are considering the possibility of a husband. Someone who’ll fit right in our family. Perhaps a widower with children already. We’ve discussed it, and we’d all like to raise children together. Turns out I can have children after all, and Tina is less interested in the pregnancy side of things, so that’ll fall to me. Emily isn’t interested in marrying again and prefers her independent space. She’s happier in a big-sister-type role, but she’d like to help out.

  In any case, we’ve a few things to do first. Emily is planning a trip to Italy for us. She’s always wanted to learn Italian and has been attending evening classes in the city. Tina wants to take us on this crazy road trip to Vegas. I don’t know what in the world might happen, but I’ve already told her, no tequila.

  Sometimes I think about Blake. I miss him. Even miss his certain view on things. The apocalypse, scripture. Now that us wives have begun reflecting on ourselves more deeply, I’ve started to wonder if Blake might have benefitted from some outside help. The strangest things give me comfort sometimes. Like, I got to thinking, Blake maybe went out to Waynard’s Creek because his conscience was troubling him. Deep down, he thought there was something about that graveyard that would help me if he could find it out. Tina thinks that’s crazy. Thinks Blake was covering all his bases, since he likely needed me to sign for the land and I might have refused. Emily isn’t sure either way. Guess we’ll never know.

  Sometimes I go out to the tree where I dug that grave all those years back and just think about things. People know not to bother me there. It’s a little space for myself. Funny thing is, now I have that private place, I don’t feel so inclined to keep my guard up all the time. It’s a slow process, but I’m learning to be more open. Let my wives in more.

  What we definitely don’t have space for is a husband each. I simply don’t know how I would find the time. Looking back to those early days with Blake, all in each other’s pocket, it’s too much responsibility for one woman. Better to share the load.

  It might need a little time for a new husband to fit into our arrangement, but we can train him up. They say a plural marriage is like a wheel. The more spokes you have, the stronger it is, but when you add a new spoke, it takes a while for the wheel to get its groove back.

  Well, we’ve got our groove now, and like Tina says, people better get outta our way.

  Chapter One Hundred Eight

  Emily Martinelli-Nelson

  It’s crazy to think about it now. I said I thought it would make a real good movie and we should contact producers, but I don’t think Rachel or Tina took me seriously.

  I told Tina about Aunt Meg. What Carlson and Brewer found out. “Turns out a lot of birth-defect babies were born on the Homestead,” I told her. “Like, far more than usual. Inbreeding. People who couldn’t cope with caring for a badly disabled baby would hand ’em over to Aunt Meg. At that point, those children disappeared from any records.”

  Tina had started picking at her nail polish. “Rachel said there were at least twenty graves in that cemetery with no names or dates,” she said.

  “It’s possible Aunt Meg thought she was doing them a kindness,” I pointed out. “Putting them out of their misery. The birth problems were pretty bad; they likely would have died very young. Maybe Aunt Meg thought she was sending them straight to heaven. Thought that had to be better than living not able to breathe or swallow right.”

  We were both real quiet then. I guess it was dawning on us. What actually had happened.

  “Think they can prove anything?” I asked Tina. By this point, Carlson had managed to find the coroner’s report showing Margaret Ambrosine drowned almost ten years ago. Her car washed all the way downriver and wound up in Arizona. Aunt Meg has been dead a long, long time.

  “Maybe they can prove something,” said Tina. “Maybe not,” she said. Then Tina told me how Rachel had miscarried in her early teens. That she’d secretly buried the remains and carried a fear she’d broken the law somehow. “That’s the problem with keeping things all to yourself,” Tina had said, shaking her head. “If Rachel had just told someone outside her loony cult, we coulda let her know. There’s no law against burying an early miscarriage.”

  Soon after that, Rachel took me for a long drive in the car. Told me she had something important to say.

  First off, she was hemming and hawing ’bout what happened with Adelaide. Rachel explained to me how the police had missed Blake’s fingers in that jar, ’cause Blake’s mom hadn’t done the canning process right.

  “After she killed Blake, Adelaide must have snuck into my storehouse while we were sleeping,” said Rachel. “Thought she was awful smart, since canning would destroy any DNA she might have left and whatnot, and the evidence would make me the obvious suspect. But if you don’t get the seal properly clean, the contents spoil,” Rachel continued, sounding, if I’m honest, more pleased about Adelaide’s second-rate canning abilities than was strictly appropriate. “You get a cloudy brine. Can’t see what’s in your jar. Eventually, the sediment will settle back down, but I guess that hadn’t happened when the police searched the ranch. Canning is a little bit of an art form. Not everyone gets along with it.”

  She sort of smiled to herself at that. I decided Rachel should be allowed this housekeeping victory over Mrs. Nelson after all she’s been through.

  After telling me all this, Rachel looked real serious, and I figured we were getting to the reason she’d driven us out together.

  “You know what?” She frowned. Not a Rachel frown, where she tries to stop her face from crinkling halfway through. A proper honest-to-goodness brow furrow I had never seen on her before. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

  No “with God’s forgiveness,” nothing like that. Just a plain old apology. I hadn’t realized Rachel had it in her. I smiled.

  She looked across at me from the driver’s seat, still frowning. “I kinda tricked you. I mean, when you first came for that family dinner with us, I kinda put on a show, pretended everything was great. Truth was, I wasn’t ready to share my husband at that point.”

  “Don’t feel bad,” I say. “You loved Blake. You wanted to get him what he wanted.”

  She pauses.

  “It wasn’t just that. I really wanted you to join the family.”

  “You did?”

  “Sure. I mean, sister-wives, right? What could be greater? And you seemed so sweet, and…sorta artistic. I really admired it.”

  “You did?” I was straight amazed to hear that.

  She took a big breath, let it out.

  “It was much better with you there,” she concluded. “Even though we didn’t get along so good, it was better. But I should have told you. I should have told you that Blake had some control issues and debts. That I have a certain way I like to run a household. Can you fo
rgive me?”

  “Well, sure I do.” I smiled at her. “On the one condition that we go get some ice cream.”

  “I know just the place,” she said, “on the Brigham Young campus. The peanut butter cup is the best thing you’ll ever taste. We’ll bring a quart tub back for Tina.”

  Over ice cream, Rachel told me some things about Blake I’d never heard her say before. How when they first got married, he hadn’t been so uptight about becoming self-sufficient and preparing for the end. Like something had misfired in his brain. I don’t know if Rachel’s right about that. Maybe she was a little bit right. Mainly, I think the stress of three wives just wore him down. Those days he kinda moped around or lay on the couch not moving. I think it was plain old guilt. Like he’d persuaded us all into this marriage and then couldn’t really deliver his side of the bargain. He’d get all riled up with some crackpot scheme to try to fix things, then just fail all over again. Catholics understand a thing or two about guilt, so I know what I’m talking about.

  As we bought more ice cream packed up to go, Rachel told me about the plan to buy the Homestead.

  “We can turn it into a sanctuary,” she said. “A lot of women who fled the Homestead are still locked in abusive marriages, no way out. They’ve got no social security, no ID, no fixed address. Can’t earn money and have to rely on their husbands. We can give them a fresh start. A place to be themselves.”

  I told her I liked that idea a lot.

  Not long after that, Officer Brewer came by to supervise my community project and confirmed Rachel had a special claim to the land—some loophole in native land law that made her a settler and entitled to buy it from the state at cost, less than half market price. Also, for compassionate reasons, Vegas Real Estate wouldn’t be claiming back the money they loaned to Blake, which left us more or less enough to buy the Homestead outright. I didn’t really understand all the details. Between you and me, I think Brewer and Carlson pulled a few strings.

  Officer Brewer also filled me in on what happened to Adelaide Nelson after she was dragged away spitting blood and swearing vengeance.