The Steep and Thorny Way(10)

I squirmed around under the blankets for about a minute or so, digging my shoulder blades into the mattress, bumping into Fleur, until I formed a nice groove that fit the shape of my spine. With my eyes closed, I heaved a sigh that came out as a wheeze.

“Are you all right?” asked Fleur from the darkness beside me.

“You talked about Joe hiding out until he figures out what to do with his life, but what about us?”

“What do you mean?”

I shifted about again. “What are we supposed to do with our lives? Should we even bother starting the eleventh grade in September if we’re to be trapped here in Elston until we’re old and dead?”

Fleur wound one of my spiraling curls around her right index finger, gently tugging at my roots in a way that felt nice. “I thought we were going to move to New York City and become artists.”

I gave another sigh. “I wonder if there’s ever been a black female lawyer. I should look in that book Mrs. York gave me. Noted Negro Women.”

“You want to become a lawyer?”

“Maybe.” I rubbed my lips together and contemplated that potential plan. “To keep from feeling so helpless . . . maybe.”

Fleur released my curl and let it spring against the side of my left arm. “Mama hopes I’ll find a fiancé soon, probably so I’m one less mouth to feed. She says I’m getting too old for that little one-room schoolhouse.”

I grunted. “I wouldn’t allow you to marry any of the goofs here in Elston if my life depended on it. Can you imagine, always having to pretend to like all those terrible farm jokes?”

Fleur laughed so hard, she shook the bed.

I smiled, but the expression was so forced, it made the muscles in my cheeks hurt. “I mean it. I’m scared to death we’ll get stuck here.”

“We won’t get stuck. I won’t let us.”

“I’ll be trapped with my mother and a potential murderer.”

Fleur grabbed my shoulder. “Dr. Koning didn’t kill your father, Hanalee. Don’t let that terrible thought cross your mind ever again.”

“But—”

“Ignore Joe. Naturally, he’s going to put the blame on someone besides himself.”

I shifted onto my right side, away from her, and the mattress whined and rocked us about as if we were afloat on a raft at sea.

“If Joe doesn’t genuinely possess a need to avenge himself”—I wiggled my right arm and shoulder into the spine-shaped space I’d made—“then why is he here? If his family doesn’t even want him, why doesn’t he simply run off to some other place?”

Fleur didn’t answer, although I strained my ears to hear a response.

“Fleur? Why else would he be here, living like a rat in a shed, if he didn’t genuinely believe he suffered in jail for someone else’s crime? If he wasn’t furiously seeking justice?”

“Go to sleep—and stop worrying,” she said in a voice so quiet, it sounded like the wind whispering through the curtains of that open window that looked out at the stills and the empty highway.



CHILDREN IN RURAL AMERICA, 1921.





CHAPTER 4





SOMETHING IS ROTTEN


WITH MY VALISE STILL IN HAND FROM MY stay at Fleur’s, I wandered up the brick front path that led to Mildred Marks’s house, a brown bedraggled thing that seemed to have nudged its way out of the ground alongside the weeds and wildflowers that shot from the earth around it. Vines of bloodred roses curled around the porch rails, clinging tightly, as if prepared to yank the structure straight back into the earth if anything inside those walls ever required concealment. A plain white cross stood among the dandelions and the browning tufts of grasses in the front yard, although no actual body rested in that unhallowed ground, as far as I knew. Mrs. Marks’s husband lay in a grave in a field in France, buried with other fallen Great War soldiers.

I climbed up the steps to the front porch and smelled fresh bacon in the air, a scent that reminded me that I had ventured out of Fleur’s house before most people sat down for breakfast. The brightening sun warmed away the chill that hung close to the ground.

I set my valise beside me on the whining boards of the porch, where the wood looked cracked from the sun and black with winter mold. Before I could even raise my hand to knock, one of Mildred’s younger sisters, Bernice—another redhead, just like all the girls in the family—swung open the door.

Her shoulders fell when she saw me. “It’s not the sheriff,” she called behind her, and she flipped one of her braids onto her back, as if her hair disappointed her as much as the sight of me had.

Behind her, in the shadows of the long front hall, Mrs. Marks and Mildred tucked wads of money into their apron pockets and plodded toward the doorway. Poor Mildred’s hair, despite all the pins holding it down, stuck out all over the place, like an explosion of fire.

I smelled something sour and peculiar beneath the whiffs of bacon.

“What do you want, Hanalee?” asked scrawny Mrs. Marks, her hair more cinnamon-brown than red. She massaged the side of her neck and rose to her toes to see over my shoulder.

I glanced behind me. “Are you expecting Sheriff Rink for breakfast, ma’am?”

“I beg your pardon?”