The River Widow(52)

He sat still, and she was aware that he did nothing but watch her silently, that he waited for her to pour it all out, until her self-awareness slowly returned, and she occupied her head again.

She heard the screen door open and close, then open and close again a few minutes later. Jack set a porcelain basin full of water on the step beside her.

“Here,” said Jack and came around in front of her, rinsing a cloth in the basin. He sat low on his haunches in front of her and gently but with assurance washed her eyes, her nose and forehead, her cheeks and lips, then her neck, as though she were a child, and then he came around behind her and gently raked his dampened fingers through her hair, pulling it back and away from her face, combing it smooth with his fingertips, and lastly forming it into something of a loose knot at the back of her head. Gratitude pooled in her body as she submitted to his touch and tears formed again. Somehow he knew what she needed: the comfort of human hands.

H e said in the softest and most sultry voice she’d ever heard, “You want to know what I think . . .”

Adah simply waited.

“. . . about you?” he finished.

Adah didn’t know if she wanted to hear this, but she was powerless when he spoke to her.

“Most of the women I’ve known were nothing like you. They were mechanical, always saying the proper thing, moving the proper way, like machines, like everything were greased and set to run just so, never giving a glimpse inside. But I knew you weren’t like them others the first time I saw you on this porch step, your hair as rich as chocolate, your shoulders held square, and your eyes in search of something that mattered to you. And when we first talked, I knew the burden you carried, the weight of thoughts that couldn’t be said.”

Adah closed her eyes. His voice sounded like the earth, as if it had been born from riverbeds and bedrock and then had slowly worked its way out of the soil and into the air. It still held that inner-earth warmth inside. Jack had turned out to be a tender heart. Inadvertently she had uncovered his secret. Jack Darby was lonely and in need of love.

He placed his hand on her shoulder, and she could feel his breath flowing over her. “Your neck is a slice of white cake.”

She blinked and then searched the lawn before her as if expecting something to pop up and tell her what to do. She couldn’t encourage this attraction. “Why must you say such eccentric things?”

“Maybe I’m eccentric.”

“It’s not something most people aspire to.”

“I’m not most people.”

“Yes . . .” She paused and waited for better words to come. “I see that now.”

The tone of his voice changed, becoming sure and level and direct. “Leave that horrible house. Get away from there. I’ll help you. I’ll do whatever I can. If you need money . . .”

Night was settling over the land now like a blanket, and something baffling was drifting down over her. Still not facing him, she said, “I can’t go. I’d be leaving a helpless little girl with people who’ll ruin her or turn her into a monster like they are.”

“Couldn’t you stay in touch?”

She reined in her voice. “They might not let me see her. I’d be completely at their mercy.”

She heard him breathe out slowly. “Aren’t you at their mercy now?”

She answered yes and was surprised she was being so candid. She turned, gazed up at him, and met that stare again. His eyes demanding attention and telling her, I’m safe. She explained to him about the crazy accusation of murder leveled against her by the Branches and now by Manfred Drucker, and Jack listened intently.

“It won’t be easy to exhume the body,” he said. “Takes a court order and lots of just cause, I think. It won’t be easy, but it’s not impossible, either.”

“That’s what I figured.”

She heard him breathe in and out again, and there was a sea change in the atmosphere, as if a coiled shell were opening up. “Adah, listen to me. There’s something I have to say to you.” He pulled in a ragged but determined breath. “You’ve woken me up. I’ve spent most of my life doing things that weren’t, in the end, all that important. I let those things pull me away from what I really wanted and needed. Now I know what I need, and it’s because of you. You’ve awakened me to the fact that my life is probably more than half over, and I haven’t done the most precious thing—loved a woman. I know you care for the girl, but now you have other things to think about, don’t you? You want to be loved, you need love, don’t you?”

Making an effort to speak, Adah said, “Love has never worked out for me.”

“That can change.”

“I trusted someone once. My husband . . .” Adah nearly choked on the word husband . Had Lester ever really been a husband? More like an enemy.

“Is there something you want to tell me?” he said, soft as a lullaby.

With her scalp prickling, the words slipped out. “Something happened to me, over and over with Les, by his hand.”

“Oh, Adah . . . I figured.”

It was the first time he’d called her by her first name. She turned away again, more thoughts falling into her mind. “I can’t let anything like that happen to Daisy.”

“She’s their flesh and blood. Don’t you think that makes a difference?”