The River Widow(56)

How could the two of them, set up to be enemies, find a way to accomplish what both of them wanted? And how could they do it without the Branches knowing?

An hour or so later, the rain stopped, and the skies began to clear as if now some much kinder and gentler spirit in the heavens were breathing out fresh, warmer air. The moon appeared as a near-full silver disk in the sky, marred only by one hazy edge. One day away from being a full moon.

Adah’s thoughts drifted beyond the farm and to all the others who might be watching this moon emerge out of a storm like peace after war. Was Jack watching it, too? Adah closed her eyes and remembered his touch on her shoulder, then her neck.

Your neck is a slice of white cake.

The idea of escape came to her the next day as the ground began to dry, as she helped the men inspect the new tobacco plants for insects and worms, as she laundered a large load of clothes for the redheaded family and hung them on the line.

In the fields, the rows of plants transformed into roads that led away from here, and the sheets on the line became sails that floated vessels in the faraway seas. When Adah gazed at the truck, she saw only its wheels in imagined movement. In the silent sky she saw scudding clouds and observed how they could cross the sky and then disappear off the visible ether. When the full moon rose the next night, its face was a honed and bright map that could lead her away. The thought of leaving infused her lungs with morning-fresh air cleansed by the rains, her mind coming alive with images of bright, open spaces.

Lately she and Daisy had spent many nights on the back porch. After Daisy fell asleep, Adah sent her gaze into the yard, where the moths were beginning to come out, and fireflies blinked against the oncoming dusk. Freedom called during so many nights out there alone, the stars as her ceiling and the night air as her blanket.

Now, her hands reddened by the lye soap she regularly used for washing, her back aching from leaning over in the fields and carrying heavy laundry baskets, and her mind a tangle of troubled thoughts and new fears, one thing haunted any happy moments: Manfred Drucker was probably closing in, working to get Lester’s body exhumed. And what would be learned from an autopsy? It was too scary to stick around and find out. It wasn’t even worth getting her part of the farm if she was to be arrested. As she’d said to Esther, some things were more important than land and money. Perhaps she had been too hasty and naive when she’d thought Esther might help her; Esther might just as easily become an enemy, and there was no way to know.

Adah’s only option was to give up on the farm and the money it could provide. She had to give up on finding a legal way to keep Daisy, too. There wasn’t enough time.

She had to escape as soon as possible and take Daisy with her.





Chapter Nineteen

The next time she saw him, Adah found Jack in his cornfield, standing tall in the growing stalks like a lighthouse overlooking a sea of green. His was a beautiful farm with towering trees in the distance, straight rows in the cornfield—not a weed in sight—and another field cultivated in meandering rows up a low slope. Around it all, fresh air sweetened of earth and oak and sun.

“Why are you here?” he asked in a harsher tone than she had expected. His gaze was measured, too. Obviously Adah’s disappearing acts were not sitting well with Jack, and Adah looked down, disappointed in herself for what she had done. Jack suddenly looked as though he regretted his tone.

She looked down at her feet, squarely set in the furrow where they stood. Then she took off her hat and squinted up at him. “I have to leave here. You were right.”

She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw a pained expression sprint across his face, even though it was shaded by a hat.

“That so?” he asked. “What set you off?”

Adah bit her bottom lip. “It’s too long a story, but . . . I have to go.”

“Go where?”

She lifted her hands and then let them fall. “I don’t know yet. You don’t know me well, but I lived on the streets on my own for a long time.”

“Don’t you have some family somewhere?”

Adah shook her head. “Only Daisy.” It took her a moment to gather the words that she had only ever spoken in her mind. Somehow putting the words out there would make it even more real. And now she was trusting Jack . . . perhaps with her life.

“Go on. But you don’t have to ask. You know I’ll help you, even though it means I’ll lose you.”

His words broke open her core. She’d never expected to receive such kindness, such caring. She made herself meet his gaze, which was soft and sincere. “That’s not it, Jack. I know you’ll help me. But . . . when I say I have to leave here, I don’t mean that I’ll leave alone. I’m going to disappear and take Daisy with me.”

Looking rather taken aback, he studied her for a moment. “You mean you’re going to run away with the girl . . . ?”

She held his gaze firmly now. “I can’t think of anything else.”

He looked askance, removed his hat, and let the fresh air bathe his forehead, then slowly replaced the hat and stared her in the eyes again. “Do you realize that’s kidnapping?”

“Yes.” Adah’s voice cracked, but she was determined to show Jack how serious she was about this. “I have to do something or get something on them that would make them hesitate to come after me or even report what I’d done.”