The River Widow(7)
But still she breathed and her heart kept beating. She creaked open her eyes. She was alive even if she didn’t want to be. In her mind, Les’s body, that dent in his temple, the absence of breath, all of it by her hand. That truth would scream and reverberate in her head from this day onward.
And yet there were so many shades of right and wrong, and who was to say which shade made the turn from goodness into sin? One thing was certain, however: no judge or jury in McCracken County would’ve let her off the hook with a self-defense exoneration. If she hadn’t floated the body away, the well-connected Branch family would’ve exerted all the pressure they could to make sure Adah was convicted of murder.
Lester’s family history in the area went as far back as the first election for trustees in 1831, and distant relatives had had a hand in the construction of the Paducah market in 1836. Their forebears had been present when Grant occupied the town during the Civil War and had remained staunch supporters of the Confederacy. The limb of the family tree that led to Lester had never given up its prejudices, and Lester’s grandfather had been one of the first Ku Klux Klan members in Paducah.
And now God or someone else had intervened, sending that surge of water to come at the very moment she was releasing Lester to the Lord. It swept Les away and had also delivered a nature-made indictment of its own, whisking Adah down the river, too. So why had she lived?
Daisy. Thoughts of her stepdaughter made Adah’s chest clench, as if a hand had reached in and squeezed the blood right out of her heart. Affection for Daisy had grown slowly at first, but then love had struck like a thunderbolt.
Daisy was dark haired and dark eyed like her father, and although she was but four years old now, she had a soft, sweet soul. She loved to pet the ducklings and chicks and handled the hens’ eggs as though they were precious gifts. She had cried when Les had to shoot an old mule gone lame. Adah had taught her to press wildflowers between the pages of books, and Daisy did so, only to cry afterward and exclaim that they had killed the flowers. No matter how Adah explained that a picked flower was already in essence dead, it did no good. Daisy must have inherited her gentle nature from her poor dead mother.
What would happen to Daisy now?
Adah carefully managed to lie back, and as the level of water below her steadily rose, she ignored the pain racking her body and watched the sun cross the sky through the patchy clouds that changed shapes over her head. Below her, icy, mucky water carried everything from bloated dead bodies of goats to power poles, window frames, and what looked like a car door. Above her, birds streaked fast across the patterned gray and blue beginning to break through. The sight was lovely—a gorgeous after-the-rain day—but the weight of a million rivers lay on her. What would she do now that she harbored a secret, one as dark as the depths of the river on no-moon nights?
A hum of low voices reached her ears, and Adah sat partway up to look around. Two men in a johnboat were drifting by her, no more than a hundred yards away. They had not seen her. Were they looking for people who needed rescue or just surveying the flood? Either way, if she called out, no doubt they would come to her aid. Exhaustion seeped out of her pores, and she wasn’t sure she could make a sound pass beyond her parched lips. Was it worth the effort to go back and face a life in which she had committed murder? Could she live with such a secret?
Swimming up from the murk of her brain, more thoughts of Daisy. The little girl would be left alone with the Branch family.
The johnboat was almost out of sight.
“Help!” Adah cried with less strength than she’d hoped. “Help!” she yelled louder and louder, over and over, until she was heard.
“Ho, there. We’re a-coming,” said the man in the stern as he dug in the oars and glided in her direction.
She tried to answer but could form no more words. She gave them a feeble wave instead.
“We’ve seen a goat in a tree, a dead dog on top of a house, and now you,” the older of the two men in the boat said as they reached her.
The younger one helped her slip down, her bones groaning in protest, while the older man held on to the side of the barn. She sat in the bow facing the men. They introduced themselves, a father and son from the higher-ground Heath area, out to help those in need. They were strangers to Adah. The city of Paducah was home to thirty-five thousand residents, and in the three years she’d lived just outside the city limits, she’d met few others beyond Lester’s family and the people who attended their church.
The father, who introduced himself as Chuck Lerner, took off his olive-and-red-plaid jacket and handed it to Adah. She slipped her arms inside and into the heat remaining from Chuck’s body. Heaven to be somewhat warm again.
He said that workers had built two hundred of these johnboats in just one day for search and rescue. Then he pummeled her with questions she hadn’t the strength to answer. Her first encounter with humans since the dawn of a new life, and she was struck dumb. She wanted to say the right thing but couldn’t pull anything out of her brain or heart or even the frigid air.
The two men exchanged glances.
The boy said, “She’s scared out of her senses.”
“Confounded, I’d say,” replied the older man.
Adah swam upward into more complete awareness as her body warmed, and she found the strength to study the men who had rescued her. Clearly related, both had boxy faces, kind gray eyes, and soft brown hair—features that came together into comforting assemblies. Flannel shirts and wool pants, and the boy still in his hefty jacket—these things indicated they were better off than she and Lester had been, but the muddied work boots and callused hands showed they also worked hard for a living.