The Steep and Thorny Way(76)

“Am I alive?” I asked with a terrible croak in my voice.

“Yes.” Fleur laughed and kissed my cheek, and her touch eased a dull pain that nibbled at my right leg and my back. “You’re badly banged up, you poor thing. Your right leg is broken and stuck in a cast, and your left wrist is sprained and wrapped up in bandages. But”—she sat down beside me and stroked my hair with the tips of soft fingers—“you’re alive.”

“Was I . . .” My mind sped back to Daddy, appearing out of nowhere in the middle of the road, and Sheriff Rink, sending us careering off the pavement. “Was I . . . Did the car . . . D-d-did it—?”

“No one’s really quite sure what happened to you. Mildred said she saw the sheriff drive away with you, but Dr. Koning found the wreckage of that car, and he said he doesn’t . . .” She lowered her eyes. “He doesn’t know how you would have made it out of that pile of metal alive.”

“Uncle Clyde carried me home?”

She shook her head. “They don’t know how you made it home. Your mother discovered you lying on your front porch when Dr. Koning was getting dressed and telephoning Deputy Fortaine. Laurence and Gil had shown up a short while earlier and claimed you talked about a murder. Your mother thought someone had beaten you badly and left you there.”

“Joe!” I tried to sit up, but the muscles in my back and my neck screamed at me to stop.

“No, no, no.” Fleur lowered me back to my pillow by my shoulders. “Don’t try to get up, sweetie. You don’t need to worry about Joe.”

“Is he dead?”

“No.”

“How is he?”

“He’s recovering. Mildred found him, fainted dead away, with a noose tied around his neck. She thought he had been lynched to death, but then he came to and said the last thing he remembered seeing was you and a gun.”

“Oh . . . yes . . . the gun,” I said with a sigh that sank me deeply into the mattress, and only then did I realize I must have been under the influence of morphine or some other substance that shrank the pain into those tiny nibbles. My eyelids—two thick flaps of lead—pushed with all their might to stay open. “I shot a bullet past Joe’s ear to make him . . . to stop them from . . .” I closed my eyes and jumped at the sound of the stable door banging open, while Joe and I cowered in a stall.

“Hanalee?” asked Fleur.

I opened my eyes, and it took a moment before the terror from the night before left my tingling nerves, and for the air to become easier to breathe.

“Where is he?” I asked.

“Joe?”

“Yes.”

“He’s at his parents’ house, recovering from the shock of what happened.”

“No, that’s not good.” I tried to sit up again.

“Lie back down, Hanalee.” She wrapped her arms around me and hugged me back to the bed. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

“They’re going to hurt him,” I said with my face pressed against her cheek. “They’re going to send him off to people—people who’ll try to change him.”

She let me go and sat up straight. “No one’s going to hurt Joe.”

“We planned to get out of this place, he and I. I wanted to take you, too, and Mama. I imagined all of us living together, free and peaceful, with nobody bothering us about anything. We could marry who we wanted, be what we wanted to be . . .”

She smiled and pulled on a lock of my bobbed hair.

I reached up and nudged my fingers between hers.

For a brief moment, I saw Joe again—in the dark—dragged across the ground with his wrists tied behind his back. The rustle of feet scraping across twigs in the dirt bothered my ears. The smell of torches burned my nostrils.

I tried to shift my position on the bed, attempting to turn onto my right side, but the nips of pain bit down harder. A shaky breath left my lips. “Is the sheriff dead, Fleur?”

“Yes.” She squeezed my hand that held hers. “He is.”

“The car?”

“Dr. Koning believes he died as soon as the car hit the tree.”

I nodded, and a bitter taste scoured my tongue.

“Joe told Dr. Koning and the deputy that he thought you shot at him on purpose,” she said, “to make him faint and look dead. He feels terrible if your injuries came about because of ending up inside that patrol car.”

“You’ve talked to Joe?”

“He and his parents were over here this morning. Mama and I came over, too. Everyone’s trying to make sense of what happened.”

“Who’s running Elston now?”

“Deputy Fortaine is taking over, although not everyone’s pleased with that arrangement. His Jewish blood and lack of Klan support . . .” Fleur pressed her lips together and gave a shudder. Strands of fair hair swayed against her face. “I know . . .” She drew a deep breath. “I know Laurence was there last night . . . dressed in Klan attire.”

“Yes.” I grunted and arched my back, for pain suddenly gnashed into my leg. “He was.”

“My mama . . . Sh-sh-she . . .” Fleur shifted away from me.

“What?” I asked, opening my eyes, settling back against the mattress. “What about your mother?”