Clouds without Rain (24 page)

“I’ll have you both know the house is spotless,” Branden said.

“Then you’ve hired it done,” Cal challenged.

“Three Amish sisters,” Branden said, celebrating.

“Now you’ve just got to stay out of the place till then,” Robertson laughed, and then coughed heavily, wincing in pain.

“All right, then,” Cal teased. “Why are you flying to Arizona?”

Branden smiled broadly. “Caroline bought a new, two-seater sports car. A Miata. We’re going to drive it home with the top down, before classes start.”

Cal stood up and walked out, laughing. They could still hear him out in the hall as he left.

Robertson poked his toe at the package lying at his feet and whispered, “Hand me that box before you go, Mike.”

With Branden gone too, Robertson pushed weakly on the boot box beside him on the bed, and said, “This is for you, Missy.” He looked at her and thought she seemed genuinely surprised. Perhaps bewildered.

“Just open it,” Robertson whispered.

When Missy took the boots out of the box, her expression was of delight mixed with awkward embarrassment. She didn’t speak, but set the boots on the bed beside the sheriff, waiting.

Robertson reached for her hand and said, “Missy, without you, I’m as useless as a train ticket to Aruba.”

Missy began to cry.

Softly, Robertson pleaded, “Don’t cry, Missy. Please don’t cry.”

She popped a tissue from a box on top of one of the regulators and dried her eyes as best she could.

“Let’s go dancing, Missy,” Robertson breathed. “Lessons on Thursday nights. Dances on Saturdays.”

“Line dancing?” she asked, clearing her throat with difficulty.

“Cowboys don’t line dance,” Robertson said. “This would be couples progressive dance. Country-western.”

Missy drew near to him and spoke softly with flowing tears, as one hand brushed lightly over his short gray hair. “I hear you and Irene Cotton used to do that,” she whispered.

Robertson pulled her hand closer and managed only to say, “You and me Missy. I’m hanging on. Just you and me.”

1

Saturday, November 2
Dawn, Holmes County, Ohio

 

CURLED up in her black down parka, Martha Lehman lay on her side, back pressed firmly against the polished wood door, knees drawn tightly to her chest. The white block lettering on the door read Dr. Evelyn White Carson, Psychiatrist. Martha was aware only of the rough, cold carpet pressing into her cheek and of long, ragged breaths that repeatedly dragged her out of a trance. Thus, for an hour, before sunrise bled pink hues through the window at the end of the second-floor hall, she lay in a stupor, hounded again by a dreadful loneliness.

In wakeful moments, with a fervor born of an all-too-familiar pain, she renewed a childhood vow. Silence, she thought, had never betrayed her, and it was Silence she’d cling to now. Silence had brought her to Dr. Carson as a child, and Silence she would trust again. Then, it had been Carson who had understood the wordlessness. The sorrow and isolation of a mute child. It will be Carson, now, she prayed, who will remember.

Thoughts formed only intermittently, in a cold, tortured nightmare of helplessness.

Silence again, she vowed—now, more than ever before.
The snap and pop of blue cotton shirts and black denim vests in a stiff winter breeze, clutching at her from a clothesline.

Alone again, and safe that way.
Menacing, cracked lips that sternly mouthed, “Save your little sisters.” A childhood nightmare, empowered, somehow, to hurt her again.

How had She known?
A man’s blue shirt tore loose from the clothesline, enveloped her face, and smothered her, its weight unbearable, its odor a familiar horror. On weak child’s legs, she struggled to carry the burden of an adult, and managed to breathe only in gasps.

Too soon for Her to have known it. And yet She had.
The wind began to whisper judgment from the clothesline. Shirt sleeves snapping near her eyes. Wagging fingers, all of them.

Fallen like Babylon, Martha Lehman.
“So, choose, young Martha,” an urgent voice pleaded. “Choose the better way.”

Sonny, what have you done?
The frowning congregation walked out of the barn, all their faces down, all their backs turned. No one dared to believe it possible. To accept the hell it signified.

The cold tracks of tears on her cheeks slowly awakened her. She unclasped her knees and felt a binding stickiness between her fingers. Unzipping her parka, she instinctively pressed her palms to her belly and felt the stickiness there, too. Sitting up, she brushed hair from her eyes, smearing her forehead. She looked down in confusion and saw her white lace apron stained dark red. Gasping, she fell back on her side, knotting her fingers into the bloody fabric.

Vaguely, now, she recalled brief snatches of last night’s disastrous conversation with Sonny’s mother. She dimly remembered driving away in the snow. A sleepless night of confusion and frustration. Her decision to go back. The blood. Running. Fleeing in the storm.

But these were indistinct memories. Perhaps more dreams, she thought, as she lay motionless. Mere impressions. As if her mind had conjured events that her heart could not allow.