The Saints of Swallow Hill(98)

She frowned and said, “Huh. She ain’t said a word. Least not to me.”

“I heard her come downstairs, and thought maybe she and I could have some coffee and talk.”

Cornelia’s mouth bent in a crooked smile, and she said, “Talk? She ain’t much on talking case you hadn’t noticed.”

Del hadn’t shared his thoughts with anyone about Rae Lynn, and fact of the matter was, Cornelia would make a good ally. She might know something that would help him understand Rae Lynn’s caginess about her past.

He said, “I noticed. That’s why I thought it might be good to try. Sudie May thinks the reason she doesn’t appear to know I exist is to do with another man.”

Cornelia raised her chin in a knowing manner and said, “Ah. So you care about her. And?”

“And what?”

“You care about her, but how much? Do you mean as in no matter what?”

He tried to make light of it. “That sounds like a ‘for better or for worse’ sort of question.”

Cornelia said, “Well?”

“What difference does it make how I feel if she’s got someone already? You got any ideas where she’d be going?”

Cornelia went to the table and sat down. She hugged herself, but was quiet.

Del persisted and said, “Whatever is going on, I’d like to know, so I ain’t got my hopes up for nothing.”

“It ain’t up to me to say. It’s her business.” She spotted the note and picked it up. “She left a note. Here, it says, ‘Be back before noon. Rae Lynn.’”

Del saw his future disintegrating. All of his planning, how he’d been thinking for some time now began to collapse, holding up no better than the scrub brush he’d been burning off for weeks now.

“Is it another man?”

“You could say that, but it ain’t like you think.”

“How is it, then?”

Cornelia said, “All I’ll say is, if where she’s going has anything to do with what she’s told me, you might ought to hurry.”

“Is she in trouble?”

“I ain’t sure, but I’m going with you. I reckon I ain’t got time to dress.”

“Not if we want to catch her.”

Cornelia grabbed the pencil Rae Lynn left next to her note and added her and Del’s names below Rae Lynn’s. She gathered her nightgown and housecoat around herself, and they left the house.

They climbed into Amos’s truck, and Del said, “Where would she be going, exactly?”

“Harnett County is all I know.”

On the trip home, he’d noticed Rae Lynn’s driving was sedate. His was not. Cornelia clung to the dash and the door as he pushed Amos’s truck, which vibrated and rattled loud due to the speed, so much so, conversation was impossible. The road was good in spots, bad in others, and the only other traffic they saw was a mule-drawn wagon heading in the other direction. The sun had just broke over the horizon when they spotted another truck just in front of them, maybe a half mile away.

Cornelia said, “That’s her.”

They hung back, and as the sun rose higher, it drenched them in warmth. They went slow, kept their distance. They passed a tiny sign that said HARNETT COUNTY, and the truck in front of them crept along even slower.

Del said, “We might have to pull over and let her get ahead some. Her driving like this, it’s bound to start looking suspicious if we stay behind her and don’t pass.”

Cornelia said, “She’s slowed down ’cause she’s scared, I’d imagine.”

She immediately smacked her hand over her mouth, then lowered it. “I shouldn’t’ve said that, but it’s God’s honest truth.”

“Why would she be scared?”

“I can’t say, but I think we’re gonna find out.”

Maybe Rae Lynn had made a poor choice in a husband like Cornelia. He didn’t want it to be true, to think of someone treating her the way Otis treated his wife. It made him grit his teeth, but worse would be if she was married. After all the women he’d been with, none affected him the way she had. He pulled off on the side of the road, and they sat watching the truck shrink, and shrink, until it was barely a dot.

Cornelia said, “Better go again before we can’t see her no more. She might turn off somewheres, and we wouldn’t know.”

Del got back on the road and drove fast until the truck reappeared as a dot again. He wondered how much longer this would go on and his answer came a few minutes later, when the dot disappeared. He floored it.

“Damn, where’d she go?”

Cornelia was gripping the dash once more and said, “She must’ve turned.”

He hunched over the steering wheel, speeding along, trying to avoid potholes. They came to a dirt road, and ahead, there was nothing, not even a small cloud of dust. She had to have turned here, so he did too, and pressed on the gas again. The road was nothing like what they’d been on. While many were getting better, most were in the shape of the one they were on now, and Amos’s truck shuddered, and bumped, and lurched until Del finally had to let up on the gas before he risked damage to the underside. Cornelia had turned a little green as it was. She leaned forward, hand to her mouth.

He said, “You all right?”