Beneath the Apple Leaves(107)

The kitchen was double the degrees of outside and Lily’s face flushed. She leaned against the table and drank in long gulps from the water Eveline offered.

Eveline stroked the sweated hairs from Lily’s forehead. “You all right, child?”

Lily nodded. “Just hot.” She rubbed her small belly absently as she always did.

“Go on and get some fresh air, Lily,” Eveline directed. “Too hot in here. Not good for the little one.”

“Better not.” Lily shook her head. “I’ll be all right.”

“No, the air will help,” Eveline insisted. “Besides, if Frank was anywhere close, we would have heard his spurs jingling.”

Lily laughed and took her water outside. She had been cooped up for so long that the sudden onslaught of pure sun seared her pale skin. She edged around Eveline’s garden, smelled the zinnias that colored in a fanned rainbow around the fence. She settled her hands under the growing belly and went to the old apple tree stump. She lowered herself, one hip at a time, and sat upon the rings of the cut trunk. She touched the sap, felt it still sticky against her fingers. She remembered when she used to climb this tree. It hadn’t been so long ago she had dreamed of this farm being hers and here she was. She patted her belly. It was a new life for them all.

Lily leaned her head back, felt the full strength of the brilliant sunshine upon her face and closed eyelids. A wind drafted. Her braid jerked hard, nearly bent her neck to her shoulder blades. Another jerk and she screamed, her body suddenly yanked up from the hair roots.

Frank held her hair like a rope, wound and seized it in his fist.

“Help!” Lily screamed. Frank pulled again and she shrieked.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Lilith. I don’t,” he wheezed, his breath shallow and moist. His skin heated as if with fever and he wiped his nose on his sleeve, pulled tightly so her head was against his chest and her ear next to his mouth. “Just want my wife back. You hear me?” He jerked her hard for a response.

His arm moved in front and Lily felt something sharp bite. Her pupils strained to see. The light reflected sharply off the knife blade held at her stomach.

Lily closed her eyes, her body limp with what was to come as if she knew it would end this way all along. But not the baby. She couldn’t let him hurt her baby.

“Please, Frank.” Eveline appeared. Will and Edgar were at her side and she pushed them behind her skirt. “Please,” she begged. “It doesn’t have to be this way. Let Lily go and we can talk. We’ll figure this out.”

“Figure it out?” he screeched, then stumbled to regain his footing. “Claire!” he yelled. “Claire, you get out here now!”

Frank stepped back, pulled Lily with him. She began to cry. “Please, don’t hurt me. Please. The baby.”

He pulled her hair hard and she cried out. He put the blade under her neck. She felt the cool metal against the lines of her throat. He was going to kill her. She thought of Andrew. Below her panic, she was thankful he was not here to see. She cried for her baby. Cried for that life more than her own.

Frank growled into her ear, “Been wanting to slice your throat for as—”

An enormous crack shattered the air, reverberated from the very ground. Frank stumbled forward, crumpled over Lily’s stooped body and collapsed into a heap.

Andrew dropped the crowbar and grabbed Lily, clutched her to his chest. Frank Morton twisted on the ground, his back curling.

Andrew’s arm shook at Lily’s shoulder before he moved from her side, his eyes filled with the first hate she had ever seen in them. “Don’t, Andrew,” she called. But he was deaf to her voice, his footsteps weighted with rage.

The young man’s face twisted as he landed a swift kick to Frank’s ribs. “Get up!” he ordered, his body rigid as he readied to deliver another blow.

Will and Edgar hid their faces behind Eveline’s skirt.

Lily winced. “Please, don’t—”

“I said get up!” Andrew was blind to the world, to the faces turning away, his focus singular against the man on the ground. He landed a swift, harsh kick to Frank’s wrist that clutched his bruised side.

Frank coughed into the dirt, his lungs spluttering. He rolled to his back, his face purple with hacking, his face dripping with pain and sweat. His broken hand trembled and reached for the clouds.

Andrew’s gaze fell to the knife thrown in the grass. The silver gleamed in the light, promised a resolution. He stepped toward it, bent to grab the handle.

“Stop, Andrew!” Eveline shouted. She broke from her sons and pulled at Andrew’s sleeve. “Don’t touch it.”

Her nephew blinked spastically, the need for revenge driving him like a caged animal. “Look at him,” Eveline directed. Disgust pitched her voice and she stepped back from the writhing body. “He’s sick.” She didn’t need to say more.

“I ain’t sick!” Frank climbed to his knees and coughed, his mouth wide and gasping for air. He clawed his chest, the wheezing loud and suffering. He clambered backwards clumsily. “Tell Claire to get ready!” he threatened. His lungs hissed, the veins in his forehead and neck blue and bloated as he tripped over his feet. “I’ll be back for her. Just wait.” He coughed endlessly, spit blood to the dirt as he found his way to the lane. “Get you, too, Lily. You wait!”