The Fire of Home (A Powell Springs Novel) (24 page)

Jessica dabbed antiseptic on Amy’s chin, making her hiss from the sting. Then gently she pulled Amy’s lips away from her teeth to look at the damage. “Not too bad. Was Adam wearing a ring when he hit you? Your main injury is external, and you’re already beginning to bruise.”

Amy shrugged with drooping shoulders. She sat on a stool at the worktable in Jessica’s back office. “I don’t know. It all happened so fast. And it’s my fault. Bax warned me to make sure I kept the doors locked. I came in from the backyard with a basket of flowers, and I forgot. Adam walked right in a minute later. He must have been watching to make sure he caught me alone.”

Jessica let out a small whoosh. She walked to her glass cabinet and took out an aspirin powder, then mixed it in a glass of water. “Here,” she said, handing the glass to Amy. “Swish this around in your mouth, then swallow it. It’ll help with the pain.”

Amy scowled at the taste and had trouble keeping the water in her mouth due to her swollen lip. “Ugh.”

“Yes, sorry about that. Let’s see your arm.”

Amy held it out and Jess felt carefully along the break, using her touch to find the fracture. “Hmm, this feels odd.”

“It’s been broken before. But it wasn’t set properly so it didn’t heal well.”

Jess sighed. “Amy . . .”

“How is Tabitha?” she asked, deflecting any other questions or comments. Now wasn’t the time.

Her sister took the hint. “She’ll be all right, I think. I gave her a sedative and put two sutures in that flesh wound. She told me she married Adam two years ago. He must have created an entirely different life and identity while he was still living with you. They have—or had—a house on Park Place. She thinks the bank will probably foreclose on it.”

“Park Place,” Amy repeated dully. “I saw that street once. I lived in a grubby little dump in Slabtown and worked as a dishwasher.” Her memory skimmed along the images of all the grubby little dumps sh
e’d
occupied since leaving Powell Springs the first time.

“Apparently she has social connections he wanted. He worked as a secretary to Robert Burton. Now the police suspect him of embezzlement, and she’s not married to him at all. At least that’s what I’ve heard so far.”

“How lucky for her.” That she felt a sense of betrayal could be considered strange in light of how much she despised him. But of all the things he had done, and those she suspected him of doing, this was too fantastic for her to have envisioned. “She was supposed to come and board at the house. I hope she doesn’t still plan on that. It’s not her fault, but I don’t want that kind of reminder living under the same roof with me.”

Jessica went to a drawer and brought out two splints and rolls of bandage. “I don’t imagine sh
e’d
want that either.” She walked down the hall to the waiting room. “Bax, I can use your help now.”

Alarm flooded Amy. “Help? What are you going to do, amputate?” She eyed the splints. “Is that a bite stick?”

Bax appeared in the back office and Jessica chuckled. “Don’t be silly. The last time this was set, were there two people to do it?”

“No, just some old drunken sawbones. I think h
e’d
lost his license for too many deaths on the operating table.”

“Hmm, well, that’s probably why it didn’t heal correctly. Bax, hold Amy’s upper arm tight so that it can’t move, especially down near her elbow. I’m going to pull on her hand to reduce the fracture.”

“Okay.” He tried a couple of different grips. Finally he stood behind her and held her in a bear hug.

Jessica quirked her brows and smiled. She looked at Amy. “Ready?”

She took a deep breath and nodded, not knowing if this would be excruciating or just average torture.

Her sister gave her hand a mighty pull. She gritted her teeth and tears sprang to her eyes.

“Good! All right, Bax, you stay put. I can use an extra pair of hands.” She sandwiched Amy’s arm between two splints, one on the top and one on the bottom. “Now, if you’ll hold these just like this—”

He replaced Jess’s grasp with his own. She grabbed the bandages and began winding them over the wooden slats. When they were fixed, she nodded. “I’ve got it now.”

“Uh, I’ll just be out in front if you need anything,” he said and backed away from Amy with obvious reluctance.

When Jessica finished, she brought out a sling and adjusted it to fit. “This isn’t bad. I think it should be all right in about three or four weeks.”

“Three or four weeks,” Amy moaned. “There’s laundry to do and cooking, and all sorts of things.”

“I guess you’ll need help. There’s always Mrs. Monroe.”

“I don’t even know what her real name is. Her marriage to ‘Harlan’ isn’t legal. Anyway, does she really seem like the type who would have anything to do with those kinds of chores? She had a
maid
in Portland.”

Jessica gave her a sour look. “She doesn’t now.”

Bax delivered Tabitha Pratt to the New Cascades Hotel and saw her as far as the lobby. Sh
e’d
had nothing to else wear after leaving Doc Jessica’s office but her torn, bloodied clothes, and she attracted a lot of attention when she tottered to the front desk like a sleepwalker. She asked that the kitchen bring her a cup of broth and toast, and didn’t speak again, even when Bax offered to see her to her room.

He went back to pick up Amy and they drove to the house in near silence. Both women had had quite a shock, he knew. Hell, even he was unnerved.

Only by simple chance had he come to the house. “How’s the arm?”

“Oh, it’s no worse than the last time. At least I know it will knit properly now. And it’s my left wrist and not my right.”

He nodded, but didn’t say anything more. Amy seemed strangely unaffected considering what had happened today. Most women h
e’d
known would be railing and upset, cursing both Jacobsen and Miss Pratt.

“How about if I stop by Granny Mae’s and get her to put a dinner together for us? I know sh
e’d
be happy to do it.”

Amy nodded. “Yes, that would be nice. Maybe she has meatloaf or something else that would be easy for me to eat with just a fork.”

“Okay, I’ll see about it.” He pulled up to the café and parked. “Do you want to eat here or shall I go get it?”

“I think
I’d
like to go home. You know she’ll just press me for all the details if I go in.”

“Right.” He left her in the car and ran inside.

Mae was accommodating but she wanted to interrogate Bax, too. He was able to put her off. When he got back to the car, Amy said, “That smells wonderful. What did she give you?”

“She had the meatloaf you asked for, and put in mashed potatoes, gravy, rolls, pie. You know, all good stuff. I asked her to put meals together for us for the next two or three weeks. I’ll just pick them up from her. She might be a pain in the ass sometimes, but she’s a great cook.” He gave her a sidelong glance. “Almost as great as you.”

Amy rolled her eyes and didn’t respond. They got back to the house and he helped her inside, bringing the basket with him. Not much had been disturbed during her scuffle with Adam. It had been a horrible day, but sh
e’d
be fine. She would get over it. Then she walked into the living room.

There was Tabitha Monroe’s blood on the rug. Amy began to shake. Her heart beat so fast and hard, it felt as if a litter of rabbits were trapped in her chest. She stared at the stain, and the whole experience began flying past her mind’s eye.

“Amy, where do you keep the silverw . . .”

She heard Bax’s voice but she couldn’t tear her gaze away to look at him. Her feet felt anchored to the rug.

“Amy? Are you all right?” He sounded so far away, as if she were trying to hear him over a churning, swift-moving river. She felt his hands close on her shoulders. “Amy!”

Finally she lifted her eyes to his face and words poured out, one tumbling over the other, churning like that water. “He was going to kill me. He was going to drag me upstairs and beat me with a stick of firewood or a chair leg! He hit me like that before. But this—I would have had worse than a broken arm or broken ribs. This time, this—when he was finished, I would be dead and even my own sister wouldn’t have recognized me. My skull would be crushed. My face gone. If—if Tabitha hadn’t come to the door when she did—if you h-hadn’t come home,
I’d
be dead!
I’d
be dead.” Tears poured down her face, and she trembled like a tired, old dog gazing up at the barrel of a shotgun aimed at its head.

Bax stared at her, and she saw her own horror and heartache mirrored in his face. “Jesus God,” he muttered and closed his arms around her. Shudders worked their way through her and gave way to wracking sobs. She clung to him with her uninjured arm, wailing out years of suppressed fear and cruel domination against his shoulder. He tipped his head down to hers and hugged her to keep her from being swept away with the current of her living nightmare. “Jesus God.”

That night after Bax coaxed her into letting him feed her from a fork, he followed Amy into her bedroom and helped her change into her nightgown. Then he propped her arm on a pillow and lay down beside her on top of the coverlet, fully dressed except for his boots. She tossed as much as her arm would allow, unable to sleep, until finally he got up and gave her two shots of his Canadian whiskey. That seemed to settle her. When she whimpered, he stroked her hair until she quieted. “Try to sleep,” he whispered. At last she burrowed against him, her head on his chest, his arm around her, and her splinted arm across his stomach.

For himself, Bax found little peace. Amy’s terror was contagious. H
e’d
seen war and its abominations, h
e’d
been wounded, hovered in a purgatory of dire illness, and had turned away the Pale Horse. But nothing compared to what sh
e’d
described today, and the pure dumb luck of his arrival—what if he hadn’t gotten here when he did? What if Tabitha Pratt had not chosen that moment to ring the doorbell? Amy’s description of what would have happened did not seem like an exaggeration. In the presence of authority and facing a jail cell, Adam Jacobsen had folded up and cried like a five-year-old. But when he could overpower someone smaller or weaker, he turned into a monster. Now in the cool, dim light of a waning moon, Bax grabbed the whiskey bottle from the night table and took a long drink himself.

After a while, he drifted into the shadow world of dreams and reality, but always mindful of his current task. Amy was strong. She had to be to survive the years sh
e’d
been stuck with Jacobsen. He hoped she was strong enough to overcome this.

In the morning when Amy woke, Bax had gone but he left her a note on her night table telling her h
e’d
check in once or twice during the day, as his schedule allowed. Careful of her splinted arm, she rolled toward the side where h
e’d
slept and pulled his pillow against her nose, inhaling his scent in the bedding. She wished he was still lying beside her. Sh
e’d
had a difficult night, but she knew it would have been completely intolerable if Bax hadn’t been with her. Through the mist of her pain and the horror of the day’s events, sh
e’d
felt his tender touch in her hair, the back of his finger stroking her cheek, comforting her. For all the battering her emotions had taken lately, the idea of life without Bax had become equally unendurable. She found herself listening for him when he came home—still through the back door, because h
e’d
once told her that he
couldn’t
use the front door. Sh
e’d
never learned why. He could make her laugh, something she didn’t do much of anymore. He made her aware of what it might be like to become a ripe, mature woman in every way, something she felt sh
e’d
never really known. And perhaps his best attribute was his tender heart.