Home by Nightfall (8 page)

“You spoke French,” Jessica added.

He shrugged self-consciously. “I picked up some of the language while I was there. Did I say anything bad?”

“Hell, no one around here talks French,” Shaw threw in, finding his voice. “This is Amurrica.”

Riley shot a brief, malevolent glare at him, one that Susannah had never seen before. The man she remembered and loved had been much more tolerant of his father, usually disregarding Shaw’s heavy-handed opinions and demands. Not that Shaw deserved such tolerance, she thought now.

“We won’t worry about that, Riley,” she said, taking his hand again, her eyes welling with tears. “Let’s get you up. Cole…?”

Cole stepped in and righted the chair, then gave his brother enough support to help him back into it. Riley plowed both hands through his thick, dark hair to push it out of his face.

They pelted him with offers, trying to help. Susannah didn’t know what else to do.

“Can we get you anything?”

“Maybe one of those aspirin tablets, Jess.”

“I could go over to Tilly’s and get a bottle of real whiskey.”

He waved off the attention. “Please don’t make a fuss. I—I’ll be fine. It’s happened before.” He looked a year older than he had ten minutes earlier. “But if you would not mind, I’d like to just go to my room and lie down.”

“Of course,” she said. “That’s probably a good idea. Let me help you—” Susannah turned her head and happened to catch Tanner looking at her. His expression was as cold and flat as a grave marker, and her heart felt like an icy fist in her chest.

Riley shook his head again and put up a hand. “No, really, I don’t need any help.”

“But Riley—”

He got to his feet and left the room. They listened to the sound of halting, uneven footsteps going up the stairs.

After Riley’s first demonstration of The Strangeness, as he called it, two more episodes occurred over the next week. The most mundane event or problem could trigger outbursts of inexplicable anger that made him lapse into a combination of French and English while he barked at everyone. Susannah found herself watching him more closely than ever and walking on eggshells around him. There was no way of telling what would set him off—a loud noise, or a comment or a question—almost anything. The boys kept their distance and followed him with wary eyes, now frightened of him. It was like living with a wasp’s nest, and more than ever, he felt like a stranger to her. And yet…yet, she couldn’t help but compare him to the man she had once known, and her heart ached for the slim wraith who had come back to a place he didn’t recognize.

The weeks stretched out to a month, and soon October was hard upon them.

On this gray, chilly afternoon, she stood on the back porch, feeding wet laundry through a wringer while she turned its crank. But her mind was not on her task. Despite his promise, Tanner had stopped coming to the dinner table after that first night. He always sent the boys in with one excuse or another. He made them come in but they gobbled down their food and left as quickly as she would let them. The household was in turmoil.

She missed the warmth of Tanner lying beside her at night, the sleep-scent of him that was both comforting and arousing. Though he was a man of few words, he had let his tenderness and passion speak for him when they made love. Now all she had of him in her room was the lamp he’d given her. That and the question that always lingered at the back of her mind: had he simply retired from his role as her husband? The fact that he seemed to be avoiding her wore on her heart and made it ache.

She also missed the man that Riley had once been, a banked fire that smoldered but raised gooseflesh on her with the brush of his hand.

Now she slept alone, tied to one man in her heart by obligation and memories, and to the other in her soul. Until that division—heart from soul—was closed again, she would be alone.

Just then, she heard the sound of horse’s hooves and looked up to see Tanner riding out of the yard. He didn’t stop by the porch to talk to her or to tell her where he was going, as he would have before. She followed his form until she pinched her finger in the rollers of the wringer.

She sucked in a breath and put her fingertip in her mouth.

When she looked up again, he was gone.

• • •

Emmaline Bauer wore a faded blue dressing gown that somehow complemented her faded red hair. She gestured Tanner into a chair at her small, oilcloth-covered kitchen table and spoke through a thin cloud of cigarette smoke that encircled her head. “No offense, Tanner, but you look like hell.”

He hung his hat on a finial on the chair back and slumped into the seat, propping his elbows on the table. He gave her a wry look and shrugged. “I guess I might.”

She sat across from him and studied him. “How are things going?”

“I can’t complain.”

She huffed out a wheezy chuckle. “You could, but you won’t. It ain’t your way. There’s not too much I don’t hear about, you know. And I heard that Riley Braddock is back from the grave.”

Tanner sighed slightly. “Yeah. That’s not the kind of thing a person expects. But he doesn’t know any of us, or even himself.” He glanced around Em’s little house, a onetime hunting cabin nearly hidden by trees and weeds up on Butler Road. She’d fixed up the place in the last couple of years. At least it had a ceiling now instead of bare rafters, and she’d gotten a piece or two of new furniture and painted the walls.

There had been a ruckus a couple of years ago after the women in town learned of her business here out in the woods. They’d wanted Sheriff Whit Gannon to shut her down, and he’d been presented with a petition from huffy residents in Powell Springs. But Em was firmly under Whit’s protection and he pretty much ran his part of the county the way he wanted to. Tanner knew this wasn’t work she wanted to do, but after her husband abandoned her years earlier, she hadn’t found a lot of options.

She toyed with the package of Lucky Strikes on the table. “I heard he’s not in his right mind. What’s Susannah going to do?”

“Hell, I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, much less a week or a month from now. He has some kind of fits, like bad dreams about the war. Except he’s awake. Other times he has temper explosions that no one understands. I’m worried that if he got his hands on a gun, he might shoot us all.” He sat up and rubbed the back of his neck with his hand.

She took another pull on her cigarette. “That’s a comfort.”

He shook his head in baffled wonderment. How had this happened—and why to him? He felt Em’s gaze fixed on him.

“You might not be looking for advice, but I’ll tell you this. If Susannah means even half of what I think she means to you, I’d give Riley a battle that he won’t win.”

He remembered the picture of Susannah kneeling beside Riley, lame and disoriented on the floor at dinner, and the tears shimmering in her eyes. He dropped his hand to the table. “Can we talk about something else?”

“Sure.” She stubbed out the Lucky Strike in a saucer. “How are my boys?”

That was only a slightly better subject, given the circumstances. “Pretty good. A little confused about Riley, especially Wade. But their studies are going well enough, and they’re growing fast. Susannah takes good care of them.”

Em gazed out the window beyond the overcast sky, but he suspected she wasn’t looking at the jungle of weeds and wild roses that helped hide her house from the road. He knew it was hard on her—Josh and Wade had been told she was in a tuberculosis sanatorium in Colorado, and that Tanner was their uncle and guardian. Another woman was raising them. But Em believed that was better than having them know the truth about her. Once a month, Tanner stopped by to give her a progress report about them. He’d never told anyone, not even Susannah, the real story. “Have you heard anything about their father lately?”

She turned her head and gave him a sharp look. “That good-for-nothing Lambert? Robbing those dead bodies before he buried them was a low-down thing to do. I can’t be sure if it’s the worst he’s done, but Whit told me the judge didn’t give him the sentence that Whit had hoped for.”

Tanner frowned. “He won’t come back here—”

“A body wouldn’t think so. But you know that Lambert, he’s as dumb as a sack of doorknobs. Nothing sinks into that thick skull and I wouldn’t be surprised if he starts nosing around again. I had my fill of him years ago. All the jewelry and stuff he took—I don’t know how it got back to the rightful owners. Well, I
know
some of it didn’t. After that influenza epidemic, some families were wiped out altogether. Whit just keeps it in his office safe in case distant relatives turn up someday. Whit said if Lambert shows his mug around these parts, he’ll make him wish he was still in jail. At least he has no legal claim to me. I divorced him and the papers come through a few months ago.”

Tanner had had his own brush with Bert Bauer years earlier when he’d swindled Tanner out of his last dime with a phony cattle deal in Parkridge. Bauer, mean little shit that he was, had terrorized Em and the kids. One night Tanner had discovered her wandering the streets with her toddlers, a cardboard suitcase, and a broken cheekbone. Flat broke, he’d offered his protection to them all. But Em didn’t think he should be saddled down with the wife of a man who’d cheated him. She’d asked him only to see after her boys.

“How’s Whit doing? I haven’t seen him for a while.”

Em dropped her gaze to her lap and a self-conscious little smile let her dimples show. For a moment, the years fell away from her face and she looked like a girl. “He’s ever so…fine.”

Mildly amused and a bit touched, Tanner arched an eyebrow. “So it’s like that, is it?”

“What? Well, of course I see him from time to time. It’s nice that he watches out for me. It’s pretty deserted up here.” She nodded toward the loaded shotgun she kept beside the door. “I’m a decent shot, but that’s all that stands between me and some man
with a mind made up. Most of them around here know he’s a friend of mine, and it helps keep the riffraff away.” Not always, though. One day during the turmoil of the epidemic, Bauer had come here and threatened her, and she’d fired that shotgun over his head. When tall, frost-haired Gannon, with his big mustache and a voice like distant thunder, had taken Bauer into custody, he’d shaken him like a terrier with a rat. Some of the witnesses who hung around Tilly’s had said they’d heard Bauer’s teeth clack together with the force of it. Gannon had a special place in her heart, that was obvious. It crossed Tanner’s mind that her existence was a lonely one.

“He’s a
good
friend and he…he respects me. He understands why I do this”—she waved a hand in the general direction of her old iron bed, neatly made—”even though he’s never done anything more than visit.”

“It sounds like he thinks more of you than that.” Tanner gestured at the bed too. “If I was him, I’d get you away from this,” he said, tracing a finger along a crack in the oilcloth. “You deserve better.”

She withdrew, suddenly cool, and the illusion of youth disappeared. “Maybe I don’t. Anyway, it’s nobody’s business but mine.” Rising from her chair she said, “I’ve got the kids’ money for you.” She went to the kitchen area and pulled up a loose floorboard. “I have ten dollars this month.”

He knew he’d stumbled onto a touchy subject without meaning to. “Em, you know you don’t have to—”

“Just because they think their ma is as good as dead doesn’t mean I won’t provide for them.” She gave him a thin roll of one-dollar bills wrapped with a rubber band. “No one knows I’m their mother, right?”

She asked him that almost every time she saw him. “No one.”

“All right. That’s the—I—it has to stay that way.” Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat.

“What about Whit?” he asked.

“You two are the only ones. Promise me that won’t change. I don’t want the kids or anyone else ever to know.”

“I promise, Em.” He felt like a bum, and worse for taking money from her for the boys. He could easily support them, but she had always insisted on contributing. And he knew she’d feel even worse than he did if he refused her money. This was her last connection to them, and so he accepted it.

He pushed back his chair and stood, putting the tight roll of money in his front jeans pocket. “I guess I’d better be going. Look, you know I didn’t mean anything when I said—”

She put up a hand and shook her head. “I know you didn’t. We both have more than our share of worries. I didn’t mean to get snappy, either.”

Movement outside at the edge of her property caught her attention. “Oh, God, here comes Orville Forster.”

Tanner saw the balding, potbellied barber getting out of his automobile and he put on his hat. “I’d better get out of the way, then. I have to go into town and get ice for Susannah anyway.”

“He’s not a bad man. Since his wife up and left him, he just pays me to listen to his troubles and then he cries in my lap. I only wish he’d chosen a different day to come. I either feel blue or relieved when he’s finally gone. Most times, it’s both.”

Tanner smiled and pinched her chin. “I envy him. Now and then these days I wish I had someone to talk to.”