The Fire of Home (A Powell Springs Novel) (18 page)

“You caught me just in time,” Granny Mae told Amy. Although it was just after four o’clock, she had already turned over the sign in her glass front door to read
Closed
. Her early dinner patrons, including widowers Mayor Cookson and Nathan Friedman, the jeweler, went back to their respective occupations. Fragrant aromas of roasting meat and baking bread still hung in the air, contrasting sharply with Amy’s menus of late. “I’m closing up to go give Jessica a hand. Susannah Grenfell is in labor and we’re going out to the farm to deliver her baby.” All the tables and chairs in the café were neatly cleared. Beside the door stood a wicker basket that held a clean apron and some odds and ends that Amy couldn’t immediately identify.

“Oh—” The last time Amy had seen Susannah, sh
e’d
just been widowed and her last name was still Braddock. Amy didn’t like to think about when she and Susannah had been friends. It made her remember everything about those old days and added more weight to the load she carried on her heart. “I’m glad I got here before you left. Deirdre is out of that cough remedy you made for her and she swears by it.” She produced the empty bottle.

“She should be well by now. Is she still coughing?” Granny asked, heading back to the kitchen. It still looked chaotic to Amy, with baskets of onions and potatoes on the floor, a garlic braid hanging from the ceiling, and the huge, ever-stoked black stove crouching against a brick wall like some chained, living beast. But despite the overstuffed cupboards and shelves, Granny Mae seemed to know where everything was.

“Yes, and I’m beginning to worry about her. She seemed to get better for just a bit, then relapsed. She’s losing weight and her skin looks, well, almost transparent. That goopy cough plagues her night and day. And it wakes up the rest of the house. I think it’s pneumonia.”

Granny frowned as she plucked the recipe ingredients from her shelves, considering some and avoiding others. “I don’t like the sound of that. Does she have a fever?”

“I’m not sure. She
looks
feverish sometimes. I was going to have Jessica examine her, but I guess not today.”

“I’ll tell her about it. Maybe that baby will be in a hurry to get here and she’ll have some time tonight.” She rummaged through one shelf, muttering to herself, “Where on earth is that grain? Oh, here—”

She followed the same procedure as before, crushing spices, herbs, and for all Amy knew, dragonfly wings and dried mouse tails, under her pestle. “What’s in that stuff, anyway?”

“Just a bit of this and that,” she replied, as if it were some secret potion that Amy might steal. She glanced up. “You haven’t talked to your sister again, have you? She mentioned you didn’t come to dinner.”

Damn it all. Amy felt the heat rise in her face. The old woman was known for her bald-faced, uncomfortable candor. The last thing she needed was this opinionated busybody painting her into a corner. “No, I haven’t.”

Granny Mae added honey, a drizzle of some liquid, a big dose of the stuff she called grain into the batch, and kept mixing. “She was disappointed. I told her you probably had a good reason.”

“I did.”

“Well?”

Amy’s temper, which she had suppressed for years, had been pushed to its limits in the past few days. “Mae, you’re not my mother. You’re not my sister. I don’t owe you an explanation for anything I’ve done.”

“Nope, you don’t. But maybe you owe one to her. It might give you the chance to stop punishing yourself for what you did to her and Cole.”

“I doubt it.” Amy didn’t know where that had come from, but suddenly, she realized the truth of it. Not only did she feel the constant isolation of a shunned outcast, guilt weighed on her with a heavy hand.

“It’s worth a try.”

“I was going to meet her that night,” she blurted. “You talked to me when I was on my way to the hotel. But when I got there, I saw Adam at the front desk. I ran before he had a chance to see
me
. You don’t know—he and Jessica might have—I had to get away!” She looked down and realized she was wringing her purse as if it were a wet towel.

Granny Mae studied her for a moment. “Amy,” she said quietly, “do you really think that Jessica would conspire against you with
Adam
? She hates him.”

“I saw her leave the hotel right after he did!”

“Yes, she saw him, too. Have you forgotten what he did to her? He almost ran her out of town for good. Only her love for Cole was strong enough to bring her back. But you, her own flesh and blood, you failed her.”

She couldn’t meet the old lady’s sharp gaze. “I know,” she whispered finally. “I did a horrible thing. So many lives were nearly ruined. But I paid for it. I’m still paying for it.”

Granny Mae squeezed her shoulder. “It will all get sorted out eventually. It would be good, though, if you helped things along.”

Amy nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Her self-
defensiveness, an ugly remnant of her careless youth, crept back to its corner and she shut the door on it again.

Mae funneled the cough medicine into the bottle Amy had brought. Then she pounded the cork into the neck with the heel of her hand and gave it to her. “You’re really going out of your way to take care of Deirdre, Amy. I wouldn’t have expected it.”

Amy cleared the knot in her throat and lifted a brow. She handed her a quarter. “Surprised or disappointed?”

Granny gave her an even look from beneath her sparse white brows and took the money. “Surprised. But pleased.”

Fair enough, Amy thought. “Thank you for this,” she said, nodding at the bottle in her hand. “I hope everything works out for Susannah. Give her my—if you would . . . could you tell Jessica about Deirdre?”

Granny walked them toward the door and picked up her wicker basket. “I will, and if she can’t make it over tonight, I’ll come.”

Both women were smiling when they parted.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Whit sat back in his swivel chair on the other side of his desk. “Bax, I really like you. I think you’re an honest man with a decent sense of right and wrong. Plus you’ve got a knack for this job, and you’re sincere about finding that balance between the letter and the spirit of the law. But I need to know what this is about.” He pushed a poorly spelled, ink-splotched letter across the desk blotter.

Bax had never seen it before.

Sheriff—

You shud know that you have a X-convict working for you namly by the name of Baxter Duncen. He was sent to Ft. Leavenworth for dessertion on the last day of the War, Nov. 11, 1918. Im shure he did not tell you about that part did he.

Signed,

A Concernd Citizen

He read it and sighed.

“What’s the rest of the story?” Whit asked. “I need to know.”

Bax sat in silence for a moment and stared at the cold potbellied stove in the corner of the office. It was as if he were watching his future go up in flames its window. “That was the bare bones version.”

“Is there another one?”

“Yes, but I’m curious. Is it so easy to believe this?” He nodded at the note. “An anonymous letter, written by someone who looks like he can barely hold a pen. But you assumed it was reliable information.”

Whit tipped his head and peered at him from beneath his silver brows. “I think you know me better than that. I found that shoved under the door this morning. And I don’t believe it. But
I’m
curious, too. I grew up with most of the people around here. I met you only a few months ago. Because the public puts a special trust in the men who work here, I have to check it out. They would expect that of me. Wouldn’t you do the same?”

Bax nodded, grudgingly. “Yeah. I would.”

“Then let’s hear your side of it. Then I’m going to contact the War Department and get to the bottom of this. In the meantime, you still work here.”

Bax knew that Whit was being fair, but he also knew he was on borrowed time now. Wh
o’d
want him working here after the sheriff learned the truth? Word would get around, and everyone—man, woman, and children who lost a male relative in the war—would be ready to tar and feather him. H
e’d
encountered it the couple of times that even a breath of his war record got out.

“Thanks, Whit.”

Whit leaned back in his chair. “I’m just hoping it turns out all right. But don’t thank me yet.”

Much to her surprise, Amy found that talking to Granny Mae had made her feel a little better. The woman could be as overbearing and tiresome as the world’s worst neighbor—nosy, dogmatic, and full of unsolicited advice. Now, walking home with the cough remedy in her bag, staying alert to anyone nearby, she decided that sh
e’d
received a small gift. Granny had made her recognize that seeking Jessica’s forgiveness would also lift her heart. Forgiveness wouldn’t erase Amy’s deed, but her sister needed to know that she wasn’t the same selfish, feckless girl sh
e’d
once been. Jess deserved to hear so much more than a lame apology.

She came through the back gate when she got home and she saw Bax splitting firewood in the side yard, working with a vengeance. The afternoon was mild, and although a breeze made the trees rustle, the labor was hot and strenuous. He didn’t see her standing behind him, fascinated by the graceful, machinelike precision of his work. Sweat glued his shirt to his back, and with every powerful, arcing swing of the axe his muscles stretched and contracted. The pieces of wood exploded in two under his blade. The late afternoon sun picked up deep burgundy tones in his dark hair, which lay wet on his collar. She didn’t know if he was an ex-convict, but despite her problems, she knew one thing—she had trouble looking away.

At last she forced herself to go inside. Stopping in the kitchen to grab a tablespoon and a glass of water, she slipped up the back stairs and carried the medicine straight up to Deirdre’s bedroom. She tapped on her door. “Deirdre?”

The patient’s response was garbled by more coughing.

Amy walked in and found her where sh
e’d
left her, lying beneath the nubby colonial bedspread, looking pasty and feverish. Even her hair looked lifeless. “I’ve brought Granny’s medicine. She said either she or Jessica will try to stop by tonight. They’ve gone out to the Grenfells’ farm to deliver Susannah’s baby. Isn’t that wonderful?” she chirped with false cheer.

Deirdre swallowed two spoonfuls of the medicine and shuddered.

“Awful stuff, huh?”

“It tastes bad, but I know it will help. It makes the pain in my chest and back ease up, too.” She took a sip of water from the glass Amy offered. “How wonderful for Susannah and Tanner.
I’d
always hoped to have children.”

Amy tidied up her night table and set the water and cough medicine on it. “You’re a young woman. You could meet a wonderful man and raise a family.” If she recovered, she thought to herself. She looked worse by the day, and Amy blamed herself for not insisting that she get medical help sooner. “Rest now, and I’ll bring dinner up in a while.”

She nodded, and Amy knew if this batch was anything like the last one Granny Mae put together, Deirdre would be asleep soon. She sat at her bedside, waiting for her to settle down. Being sick and alone in a bedroom could make a person feel abandoned, and Deirdre was spending hours up here.

Down the hall, Amy heard the bathroom door close and water running in the tub. She knew that Bax was probably washing for dinner.

After fifteen minutes, Deirdre’s cough had not calmed.
“Please, Amy, can I have a bit more?”

“Shouldn’t we wait just a little longer to give it a chance?” she asked, hesitant to give in. “I don’t know what’s in that medicine. Granny won’t tell me.”

“Please—I’m so tired.”

Deirdre looked and sounded so pitiful, she decided that perhaps one more dose wouldn’t hurt and might help. It seemed to. In another five minutes, she was finally asleep.

Satisfied that Deirdre was resting now, she left, closing the door quietly, and went to her own room to finish sorting through some material sh
e’d
found in the closet.

As she shifted things around in her chest of drawers, she came across Adam’s lined book, the one sh
e’d
brought with her from Portland—the only weapon she had that stood between her and her husband. It had a brown leather cover. She looked at its pages and studied the peculiar dates, incomprehensible abbreviations, and notations h
e’d
made. She recognized his handwriting but the information meant nothing to her. It must be important, though, if h
e’d
gone to so much trouble to hide it from her. She put it back in the bottom of the drawer and put a fold of gingham over it, then returned to the closet.

“I need to talk to you.” Bax stood in the doorway of her bedroom, his fist braced against the jamb. She jumped, her arms full of white cambric, a floral print, and lavender sachets. She hadn’t even heard his footsteps in the hall. His expression was grim and pale, as if h
e’d
just been gut-kicked by a horse.

Foreboding turned her hands icy. Oh, dear God, h
e’d
heard something bad about Adam, about her—

“Whit Gannon got an ‘anonymous’ letter this morning. I’m sure Breninger sent it to him. It has to do with my hitch in the army.”

Relieved but mystified, she jammed the fabric into the drawer and shut it. “The war has been over for almost four years. It’s history.”

He leaned back a bit and looked up and down the hallway, then walked in.

She motioned him toward a small settee that stood under the windows overlooking the rose-lined backyard. “Tom hasn’t come home and Deirdre is sleeping, finally.”

He crossed the room and stood before her, close enough for her to see dark flecks in his gray eyes. Suddenly, briefly, he put his hands on her waist and rested his forehead on her shoulder as if he bore a weight he could not carry alone. Surprised, she automatically touched the back of his head, damp and clean from a dunk in the bathtub.

“What?” she whispered. “What’s wrong?”

He sat on the edge of the settee and patted the space next to him. After she joined him, he put his elbows on his knees and let his hands dangle between them.

“You know about the scars on my back,” he said, staring at the floor.

How could she forget? H
e’d
barked at her and given her a murderous glare when sh
e’d
mentioned them. “I thought maybe they were from the war.”

“There’s more to it.” He seemed to be studying the grain of the hardwood floor at his feet. He looked up at her. “A lot more.”

She nodded to keep him talking, but her foreboding turned into dread, not for herself, but for him.

He released a deep sigh and began. “I was like every new-made patriot when America joined the war in Europe. I didn’t wait to be drafted. I joined the army to beat back the Huns, just like the recruiting posters demanded.”

Amy said, “I remember some of that. I got involved myself, selling Liberty Bonds, organizing parades, and scrap drives—oh, all kinds of things.” She pleated a fold in her skirt. “That was before I—well, before.”

He let out a bitter chuckle. “I couldn’t wait to get there. I was going to send the kaiser’s helmet home to my folks. I was going to help win the war. Be a big hero. Oh, I had all kinds of plans. Yo
u’d
have thought I was twelve instead of twenty-five, playing cowboys and Indians in the front yard, for all the bragging I did. I thought it was going to be all glory and glamour that would make my family proud, and my girl, too. Polly wanted to marry me before I left. But I told her
I’d
be home before she knew it and w
e’d
do it up right.” He sat back and put one clenched fist on the arm of the chair, but he didn’t meet her eyes. “Huh, was I wrong.” He began thumping the chair arm with that clenched fist, slowly, quietly.

“I got to France and saw the Western Front. The battlefields, the combat—
nothing
was like I thought it would be. The American Expeditionary Force was in a lot better shape than those poor bastards wh
o’d
been there from the beginning, the French and the British. But it was hell on earth.
I’d
heard the expression in my life, but it wasn’t until I saw the trenches that I really understood what it meant.

“We fought in that bloody mess for two miserable years. I killed men I didn’t know, men I might even have been friends with under different circumstances. And I saw soldiers standing right next to me drop with a bullet in their foreheads, or blown off their feet with severed limbs flying in every direction. I was wounded myself, patched up, and sent back to the front.” He sighed. “Finally, early on the morning of November 11, 1918, word came down that the Germans were pretty much worn out. Their own civilians were starving, and an armistice had been negotiated and declared a few days earlier. The war was
over
. It was signed at five o’clock that morning and announced to the world. At eleven o’clock it would be official. Even though it had been signed, General Pershing and other officers in high command had ordered that we were to keep fighting until eleven. By now,
I’d
been promoted to sergeant and I reported to a lieutenant who was willing to put his men through that meat grinder no matter what the cost. H
e’d
made the army his career and he wasn’t about to disobey. In fact, we knew that he saw a real chance for promotion by sending his men out to die. And all around us, near and far, I heard shells and guns still firing. It was business as usual.”

Amy stared at him. “Dear God . . .” Sh
e’d
never talked to anyone who had given her a firsthand account of being in battle.

“It was freezing cold and foggy. Around nine thirty, we were ordered to cross the Meuse River. Over half of the men in two divisions had already gone over and were shivering on the other side, as dull-eyed as cattle. I started over, and then—” He looked at her for the first time since h
e’d
begun his story. “I said
no
. I wasn’t going. The war was over, in ninety minutes—the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month—it would be official.
I’d
had enough.
I’d
done my duty, scraped through with my life, and I was not going to sacrifice it or anyone else’s to make some glory-hungry officer look good.”

“What happened?”

He raked his fingers through his hair. “That lieutenant, his face was almost purple from screaming at me. He said if I didn’t cross the river h
e’d
shoot me himself for desertion and dereliction of duty. I turned around and started walking away. He was following me and kept yelling at me.”

“And he shot you?” she demanded, outraged at the disregard for human life. “
In the back?
”

“One bullet from him, and one from a German sniper on the other side. He must have seen his opportunity and taken it. Then the sniper shot the lieutenant, clean and neat, right through the head.” He shrugged and held his hands open on his knees, as if still trying to believe it himself. “I knew I was bleeding but it took me a while to realize that not all of the blood was mine. I had brains sprayed all over me.”