The River Widow(47)

Still gathering herself, Adah said, “I had no idea that Les was friends with . . . really anyone. So you’ve known this family for a long time?”

“Almost my entire life. I went to school with the boys.”

Adah could detect no ill feelings about the Branches coming from Esther. How was that? If Jack Darby had heard the gossip, why not this strong woman?

“I-I’m surprised.”

Esther seemed a little offended. “That we would stick together in these parts?”

Adah shook her head adamantly. “No.” But she was. Why would a fine woman like Esther Heiser be friends with the Branches? A horrible urge. Could she tamp it down? “I have to ask you something: What are you doing here with Jesse?”

A hard stare now. “Just as I thought. You judge, like everyone else.”

“I don’t. It’s just that you’re here, and then the shock that you might be dating him . . .”

Esther shifted her weight, and now she crossed her arms. “Why wouldn’t I date him?”

Groping for the right words, Adah said, “You just seem so much . . . more sophisticated.”

“I’m almost thirty-three years old, and I’ve never been proposed to. You’re younger than I am and have already been married. You have no idea how it feels. I’ve been stuck in the same place for my entire life, waiting for something to happen. I’ve left it to the Lord for many years, and now it’s time to take matters into my own hands.”

Adah frowned, more questions cramming her mind. “So it was your idea to date Jesse?”

Esther’s bristling was only barely discernible. “At Lester’s funeral, Mabel and I spoke for the first time in a long time. Really spoke.”

Adah mulled over this information. She had not noticed Esther at the funeral service or the graveyard. “Oh, so it was Mabel’s idea?”

“She had just lost one son. You bet she wants the best for her only remaining one. And she knows what I want. Let’s just say it was a meeting of the minds.”

Realization sinking into her, Adah started to see Mabel as the quiet manipulator, the master planner, the real force behind the family. On the surface Buck was in charge and had the more commanding presence, but on a personal level Mabel orchestrated everything. She had coordinated the romance between Jesse and Esther with the fervor of a thief planning his next heist.

Having a woman like Esther Heiser marry into the Branch family would be a definite triumph and would lift their position in the community decidedly higher. “It sounds like a business transaction, rather than a romance.”

Esther Heiser silently and only scarcely shook her head, as if she had been hurt. “Again, you judge. What would you know of my feelings? Or of Jesse’s?”

Regret flooded Adah. She couldn’t imagine Jesse Branch turning into anything but a less awful version of his father, but Esther had set her sights, and Adah doubted anything would deter her. “Nothing, I guess. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“You’re right. You probably shouldn’t have.”

“I owe you an apology.”

“You owe me nothing.”

Adah gulped. She watched as Esther, too, swallowed hard. Adah could not get a read on the woman.

But any new presence in her life was good news. At the very least, Esther offered some contact with the outside world.

Esther extended her hand. “I’m not one to hold a grudge.” Her countenance changed faster than any other person Adah had ever known. “No hard feelings?”

Adah took Esther’s hand. “I think maybe you’re a kind person.”

“Not at all. I simply know what you’re going through.”

Adah had no idea what Esther meant. Did she mean losing her husband, being a widow, living with the Branches, taking care of Daisy? Or something else? “And . . . ?”

“You’re all alone now, aren’t you?”





Chapter Sixteen

All alone, indeed, and without any plans to get Daisy away, Adah was shocked that time continued to tick on. Each day of her continued confinement was marked by moments of hopelessness as no ideas came to her. But May ushered in the warm weather Adah had been craving, and Daisy could spend more time outside playing rather than inside surrounded by the Branches’ toxicity.

By midmonth it was time to transplant the tobacco seedlings from the seedbeds to the main fields. These were hard, long days of labor, during which extra workers had to be brought in, and Adah joined in if for nothing else than activity and a break from the despair she held inside. Buck always took on the most desperate of men and paid them as little as he could; at least in her own small way, she was helping them.

When four colored men arrived one day in a wagon and pulled up before the house, Buck made them get down and undergo something of an inspection, and it reminded Adah of what it must have been like when slaves were put up on the auction block.

“You’re pretty scrawny, ain’t you?” Buck said to the men; then he circled them, looking them up and down. Buck’s cheeks were aflame, his posture straight. Despite his age, he appeared tough enough to jump into a boxing ring and throw punches whenever he chose to, making it clear he was always in charge.

One of the youngest in the group allowed his mouth to fall open; his nostrils flared and his chest heaved, but he spoke not a word. Just tolerated it.