The River Widow(21)

Why hadn’t Daisy been born into a family of loving, sweet souls like hers?

As the floodwaters had slowly receded from Paducah and other ravaged cities, towns, and farmlands, so had any of Adah’s hope that this family could form a loving home for the young girl. Was this to be Adah’s punishment? To watch Daisy’s eyes slowly turn icy and hard like dark stones in the snow? To witness the ruination of a pure little soul and be unable to stop it or undo the damage?

No! Adah recoiled.

After the bath was done and Daisy was clothed again in a laundered dress and pinafore, the girl sat on the edge of the bed while Adah slowly cleaned her shoes with a cloth.

“I was bad,” Daisy said.

Relieved that Daisy had spoken at all, Adah moved closer and looked her in the eyes. “You weren’t. You’re still learning.”

“Because I’m bad.”

Adah sat on the bed next to Daisy, putting an arm across the girl’s shoulders. “You’re not. You’re a good, sweet girl. Maybe you made a little mistake, but you’re still—”

Daisy quickly jerked her gaze to Adah’s face. “You were bad.”

Managing to swallow while also gazing into Daisy’s eyes, Adah searched for words, then asked, “Why are you saying that?”

After a sigh, Daisy said, “Daddy said it.”

“He said I was bad?”

A moment later, Daisy nodded.

Adah rubbed Daisy’s back. “Your daddy was wrong. He made a mistake about that.”

How to explain something to a little girl, something she should never have had to witness?

“And your grandmother made a mistake today as well. She shouldn’t have done what she did.”

Daisy shrugged. Adah glanced at the doll, which Daisy had gathered into her lap.

“I have an idea,” Adah said. “Maybe we can make Dolly some new clothes. Would you like that?”

Daisy shrugged again, but her distance was waning, and she was coming back into the moment. Adah could see it in the loosening of her face and posture.

Daisy let her gaze fall gently on the doll now, and she touched it where a heart would be. “Dolly doesn’t want to live here.”

Adah whispered weakly, “She doesn’t? Why not?”

“She doesn’t like it here.”

Adah asked “Why not?” although she knew the answer. It was important for Daisy to be able to say these things, to talk to someone who would listen. Adah had watched Father Sparrow counsel church members and had witnessed the benefits when he’d managed to get them to open up and speak of their miseries. She’d seen how even one gentle, caring ear could make a difference. It was about all Adah could do now. Until . . . she figured out how to get Daisy away from here.

Daisy shrugged again. “She doesn’t like Grandma and Grandpa. She wants to go to another house with you and me. She wants to leave here.”

Adah couldn’t have said it better. Determination to remove Daisy from the Branch house was turning into desperation, but Adah had to keep her head.

Now that she knew she might be the legal owner of at least part of the flooded farm, that prospect shone like a beacon of hope. If the farm could be sold and Adah received her share, it could be her means to get away from the Branches and make a new start with Daisy. Or, if the house hadn’t been completely destroyed, perhaps it could be cleaned up and made livable again. Maybe the Branches or a judge could be persuaded to let her share of the farm include the house. Then perhaps she and Daisy could live there again, just the two of them. Perhaps Adah could find work in town and lease her part of the fields to other farmers.

The farm was the key to a different life, one centered around Daisy. The only reason the Branches were letting her stay had to be the farm, too. Most likely they wanted it all, and she had to stick around long enough to put up a fight. She had to wait it out and be as little trouble as possible while still protecting Daisy as much as she could.

Every time Adah closed her eyes, she relived the brutal force Mabel had used against her granddaughter, and reexperienced the horrified expression on Daisy’s face. Buck’s words were almost as toxic as Mabel’s actions. Daisy needed to be removed from this situation as soon as possible. But Adah had nowhere to go, no safe place to take the girl, and, more importantly, no money and no job. She’d survived with little or nothing before, but that was before she’d become a mother and had a child to take care of. She needed some luck, and then she could make a break. The farm was her best hope.

As February turned into a torturous early March, the old church building reopened, and the Sunday service was Adah’s only outing. Yet a sense of wary distance existed between the church members and the Branch clan. The congregation looked like an alliance of those who’d rather ignore anything that didn’t directly involve them. Just let it alone. They would carry on, unbothered by the bone-dusty history of the Branches. Adah slid her weary eyes over the lot of them and found no glimmers of hope.

During the first service held after the storm, she went through the motions of praying, singing hymns, and listening to the sermon, while at the same time dreading what was to come that afternoon. After church, all of the Branches would be heading over to Adah’s old house to see what, if anything, could be salvaged. Buck and Jesse had agreed to take a break from the laborious process of preparing the main fields for transplanting. Even with the tractor making it decidedly easier, it was still grueling work.