The Baker's Wife (24 page)

“I know them,” Audrey said. She took the picture from Diane's hands. “They're your parents' neighbors. Cora Jean died in April.” Harlan's expression was stern and reminded Audrey of Jack's uncompromising sense of right and wrong.

Diane had turned her back to Audrey as if she was studying the other pictures on the shelf.

“Did your mom know them well?” Audrey asked Miralee.

“This is a framed photo in the family living room. Duh.”

“Maybe Harlan will know something about what happened to Julie. Let's go down there.”

Miralee said, “You think an old man who probably can't remember what he ate for breakfast will have some information about my mom that the entire police force couldn't dig up?”

“He's not that old,” Audrey defended. “Or forgetful.”

“Have at it.”

“You're too young to be so sour,” Audrey said to Miralee. “What happened?”

“Nothing you could possibly understand. All you religious people are in one big happy alliance of denial. Go talk to the old man. I'm going to the bakery.”

“What will you do there?”

“Talk some sense into the man called Jack.”

“He's not talking to anyone, honey. I'm sorry to be harsh, but if his own people can't get through his head, what makes you think you can?”

Miralee crossed her arms, but the lines of her lips softened.

“What did she die from?” Diane whispered. “Mrs. Hall.”

“Pancreatic cancer.”

A sob broke out of Diane's throat, a startling and terrible sound.

Miralee rolled her eyes. “If my mom doesn't have anyone to help her but you two, she's dead already.”

CHAPTER 22

Ed didn't know the clinical definition of
breakdown
, but he was pretty sure Leslie was having one. She had been sitting next to him for an hour with her knees pulled up to her chest. The neat stack of books at her side had spilled. Her lips moved, but Ed couldn't make out the words.

He had moved once, and she'd grabbed his arm hard enough to leave fingernail impressions in his skin. This bright girl with the good heart, as Estrella had put it, was the most terrified girl he'd ever met.

“This is all my fault . . .”

He finally made out her mumbling.

“It's totally my fault.”

He leaned in close enough for her to hear him. “What are you talking about?”

Leslie's head popped up. The pencil froze in her hands. “I need to call my mom. Do people know what's going on here? She knew I was coming before school. I need to tell her I'm okay.”

“You don't seem okay,” Ed whispered. “She'll hear you don't sound like yourself and worry more.”

“You're right, you're right. But no, wait. What if she thinks the worst? There was that explosion, he shot that gun . . . What if she's thinking I'm dead? I should call her!”

Ed put a hand on her knee.

“I mean, I might die. And then what?” Leslie started crying. “I really want my mom.”

“Shh.”

“Let her call her mom,” Jack said. He stood from his upended bucket, and the shift of his pants leg covered the backup revolver Ed had seen in a holster strapped to his ankle. The cordless bakery phone was mounted on the wall just outside the storeroom door. Jack took it out of its cradle and extended the handset to Leslie.

She looked at it as if it might be a grenade. Ed scanned the man's face for some hidden agenda. What hostage-taker allowed his hostages to use a phone? Leslie finally snatched it out of his hands and clutched it to her chest. He leaned against the wall.

Geoff got up and took a step toward Jack. “I'll just go get my cell phone,” he said to the detective.

“You stay put. You can use that phone if the battery's still working when she's finished. No cell phones. But I don't care if you call the old-fashioned way.”

“Why not?” Ed asked, glancing at his father.

“What harm will a simple call do?” Jack said. “I'm the one who doesn't need to speak to anyone. Diane's probably told everyone everything they need to know anyway.”

“Be careful what you say,” Ed told Leslie.

Jack ignored Ed. “My aim isn't to hurt anyone. Call your mom, little girl. Tell her if you're lucky, you'll be home for lunch.”

The phone buttons beeped as Leslie dialed.

“But if I don't get my wife back by twelve thirty, I'll kill this man first. Put him out of his spiritual misery.” He indicated the coach, who was still on his back with his foot propped up, eyes closed, brow pinched in the middle. “And then I'll shoot her, because she is annoying.” Jack leveled his gun at Estrella. “You have the good fortune of being third.” Leslie shrieked when the gun swung toward her. She dropped the phone, and the plastic battery door popped off when it hit the ground.

Ed scooped up the parts and fit them back together, blood pounding in his temples. His hands were sweaty.

His father took a step between them and Jack. “These people are innocent—”

“No one's innocent.”

“—of harm against Julie. God won't smile on you for punishing them.”

“I don't think you know what God smiles on. You thought your own reputation was more important than the blood of an unborn baby. Maybe you won't care when their blood is running all over your shiny floor. But it'll make an impression on your son. It's the youth who pay the highest price for sin, isn't it? Maybe I'll do Leslie a favor by taking her life. ‘The righteous are taken away to be spared from evil.' Should I shoot her first?”

“Scripture in your mouth is a twisted thing,” said Geoff. “You're doing evil here, Jack. At least call it what it is.”

“I call it
justifiable force
. Sometimes one has to break the law to save a life. Jesus said that. Not too many ways that can be misinterpreted.”

“And yet you've managed to do it.”

Leslie was speaking in broken sentences into the phone, whispering frantically as if Jack might take the phone back at any second.

Estrella's tabby cat appeared then, sauntering into the room through Jack's legs. The animal saw his friend and cried for his morning meal. Estrella moved toward the cat with her eyes on Jack, then scooped it into her arms. Ed watched Jack, wondering if he would allow Estrella to indulge her pet.

Jack paid it little attention.
His
eyes were on the coach, who'd rolled onto his belly when he heard the cat's demands for attention, then pushed himself back into a corner, favoring his bad foot.

Estrella turned around and saw him. “What?” she said.

“Like I said, I don't like cats.” He rubbed a shaky hand across his brow.

“Lots of men say thees,” Estrella said, waving Coach off. “You want cats to be dogs, all worshipping you.” She carried the animal to a cupboard in search of a bowl.

Ed thought Coach might have wanted cats not to exist at all. At least not that one.

Jack chuckled. “You're afraid of
cats
.”

Coach didn't answer.

Jack's amusement grew. “What is this? A side effect of your sobriety? Part of that ‘depression and more' that is
not
your spiritual struggle?”

“It's all . . . it's all related.” He held up a trembling hand to shield his eyes from Estrella's pet.

Ed felt confused at the sight of his confident mentor cowering in the presence of a four-legged fur ball.

Jack laughed. “He's afraid of cats! And he thinks it's a medical condition!”

Geoff said, “A lot of people are afraid of cats.”

“A lot of people in service to
the devil
,” Jack retorted.

“Shut up, Jack,” Geoff said.

One of the fluorescent lights overhead flickered.

“He's partly right,” Leslie said. “Hitler. Genghis Khan. Julius Caesar. History shows they might have been ailurophobic.”

“Been what?” Estrella said. She had a bowl in hand. The cat batted at it.

“Abnormally afraid of cats.” Coach's voice wobbled. Sweat showed through the front of his shirt

“No medication for that, is there, Coach?” Jack was shaking his head.

The cream was out in the kitchen. Estrella seemed caught between Coach's bizarre fear and Jack's imposing figure at the doorway.

Coach straightened his shoulders as if that would help to stop the tremors in his arms. “Therapy—”

“Is an exercise in self-centeredness.”

“It works for me. Exposure therapy—”

“Yeah, let's have us some of that,” Jack said. In three strides he reached Estrella and seized the contented cat by the scruff, snatching it out of her arms. The bowl fell to the ground when Estrella protested, but Jack lifted the surprised animal out of her reach. It froze in the shape of a C, and its tail went rigid. Its yellow eyes caught the lights overhead as Jack tossed the cat into the center of Coach's sweat-soaked shirt.

Ed found his feet while the animal was airborne. His instinct was to separate the cat and the coach, though the flailing, snarling pair needed no help. The cat drew blood across Coach's chest just by bouncing off of him. The wide-eyed feline pounced on Leslie's books as it escaped and sent papers sliding over the floor.

Coach's limbs jerked for long seconds after the animal had vanished, and Ed feared he was choking on his own air. What was the right first-aid procedure for something like this? Ed crouched next to him, lost, while his father moved in, a calm force able to inject peace back into Coach's body with a simple touch.

“Cured? No? Maybe you should try prayer,” Jack mocked.

“Or getting shot in the foot,” Coach gasped. “A good distraction.”

“There's a reason why people suffer,” Jack said. “And it's not because you have the wrong meds. It's because of sin.”

Coach tipped his head back into the corner where the walls met and closed his eyes. Geoff placed a hand on his knee.

“God's world is simple. Get it wrong; pay the consequences. Get it right; be blessed.”

“So tell me, Jack, where did I go wrong?” Coach placed his palms on his diaphragm and took deep breaths.

Ed's mind was racing, dodging the insanity—not to mention the cruelty—of Jack's argument.

“What about that blind man?” he said. “Someone asked Jesus who sinned and made the guy blind. And Jesus said it wasn't sin that caused it, but that God wanted to show his goodness through the man.”

Ed saw the corner of his father's mouth lift.

“You are
loco
, boy,” Estrella murmured as she tried to coax the cat out from under one of the shelves.

“You think God caused the blind man's suffering,” Jack challenged.

“Caused it? I don't know. But I guess he allowed it. For a purpose.”

“Yes, to be healed,” Jack said. “And the man was healed. Let's talk about the ones who never get their so-called ‘healings.' Who, perhaps, don't deserve them.”

“Not all of God's promises are for this life,” said Geoff, looking at his son.

“So shoot me,” Coach said. “Because I'm getting tired of waiting for God to show up.”

Jack fired his pistol through the coach's other foot without measuring his aim. Leslie screamed and dropped the phone. She wouldn't stop her screeching. Frantic cries of another person came through the telephone's earpiece.

This was the chaos that snapped Ed out of his self-imposed wallowing in what he thought had been divine punishment. Senselessness morphed into sense. In the space of two seconds, he had a revelation: What if his own humiliation wasn't divine at all, but merely a distraction from what he was supposed to be doing? What if all
this
, this insane ordeal, was not a consequence of his own sin but a chance for God to do something amazing, if only Ed would participate?

All right, then. What was he supposed to be doing?

CHAPTER 23

Her mother was dead. Cora Jean Hall, gone before she was sixty-five, before her only surviving daughter could find her way back home. Standing in Juliet's living room amid death and threats of death, Diane took the news as a sign: she should go knock on her father's door and beg him to kill her.

Not literally; she didn't believe Harlan Hall was capable of physical harm the way she was, though he could spear heart and lungs with his eyes alone. And she'd hoped to make the request with a diamond necklace cradled in the palm of her hand, outstretched.
Here's the object that took over my life. Here's the thing that
made me do it. I'm so sorry, but I think it's best if you don't forgive me
. She only needed her father to agree, to declare the remainder of her existence here on earth a pointless waste. Then perhaps, when she physically died, God might say she had been punished enough, though she would understand if he didn't.