“I want my girl, Murdock,” she said. “I used to be a nurse, and I’m a good friend of Nell’s, a responsible citizen. I’ve met Merry’s mom and dad. I know it’d be best if I had complete charge over her till they can come get her. Hanoi’s gone over to your place to get her now; then he’s comin’ back here to pick me up. I hope to God you didn’t leave that child alone.”
“I know all about the miscarriages, Rosalie. The botched adoption, the felony.”
“I’m appealing that,” she said.
“You also intend to appeal a murder charge?”
“You can’t prove that.”
I glanced down at the shoes, and she shoved me against the stepback so hard it rocked backward, hit a chandelier, and toppled against a bulky upright piano stacked haphazardly with dishes. I scooted around on the floor and pulled myself up on the piano bench. She landed against a sofa leg, grimacing, holding her lower lumbar.
“Was it so bad, Rosalie?” I said, breathless, mad. “Were you so desperate for a child that you had to kill Nell Hopper for the chance to kidnap her niece? Why murder? Why not just a kidnapping charge? Why didn’t you just take Merry and flee?”
Her cat eyes darted around the shop, then landed on me. “Nell had to be gotten rid of and it was too easy. I went on and on over that walnut piece, asked her to show me how the desk folded out. On the way up, I dropped a quarter. She picked it up and... well, she had to be gotten rid of. That’s all. She woulda been the first one to go blabbing to the police. I’m the only neighbor, I woulda had a good half day to get away if you hadn’t come along, nobody woulda known—”
She tried to get up, and I lunged forward, snatching a shoe off her foot as she headed for the front door. She stopped and turned around. “I did not intend for Merry to find Nell Hancil was supposed to flag the girl down on her way back from the store, keep her at the trailer. He botched everything.” Her voice collided with a thunderous boom. “I had a right! It was my right to be a mother, it is not a sin to love a child!” She was hobbling toward the door. “Merry was all I ever wanted.” I watched her shadow limp into the rain.
A flash of lightning skittered across the shop, illuminating the entire room with a sharp white blaze, and for an instant I saw the step-back lying on its side against the piano, shards of porcelain scattered beneath it. A jagged edge split the middle of the lower cabinet, and the bottom drawer was jutting a third of the way out.
I crawled toward the stepback and slid my hand into the shallow dark crevice, feeling a packet of folded papers rubber-banded together. I pulled out the packet, took off the rubber band, and unfolded a set of drawings. The one on top was a drawing of a baby dragon in a playpen by America Joyce Brumbeck, age three, and there were more she’d drawn at ages four, five, and six. Dragons in ballerina costumes, standing on their heads, blowing bubbles. Beautiful dragons. All of them were labeled at the top: To Uncle Jeb.
I sat on the lower stairstep flipping through the drawings, looking for something more. I turned the first drawing over and found a note written in black ink:
Dear Jeb,
Our agreement with my sister has worked out for the best. She has your eyes.
I wrapped the drawings back in the rubber band, picked up the shoe, and walked out onto the porch, letting the sacred, undeniable truth sink in. The truth that Merry’s real mom and dad were Nell Hopper and Jeb Murdock, that the folks she thought were her real parents, the doctors, were Nell’s sister and brother-in-law. The agreement.
No wonder Nell had bought the stepback. She’d wanted something of Jeb’s for her daughter.
I was surprised Jeb had fathered a child, not surprised he’d never told me. I guess I’d always been afraid to ask, afraid to believe the possibility existed. My strongest ties with Jeb had always centered around his work, where I’d held up the investigative end of his criminal cases. It was something he’d said I had a knack for. That had been Jeb’s saving grace, his way of making congenial conversation.
He’d also had eyes that could stir you. And that was the real surprise, that I hadn’t figured it out sooner, looking at his reflection in Merry’s brown-eyed gaze.
I drove home through a pouring rain as fast as I could to check on Merry, my stepdaughter. I figured Rosalie was crouching somewhere under a thicket of briars waiting for the ever-reliable Hancil to come to her aid.
The poplars in Prudie’s front yard were swaying like palm trees. The El Camino, still packed, was illegally parked across the street. I wiped the raindrops from my eyes as I jogged across the yard.
“Prudie! Merry!” My knuckles banged against the door just as Prudie opened it holding a crusted bottle of rum. I fell into the living room scanning the house for Hancil, who was sitting at the kitchen table with a case of the hiccups, holding a tall drink of what I took to be Prudie’s triple Long Island Tea. I could tell he was intoxicated by the way he tried to stand up to greet me. Merry was sound asleep on the sofa, Prudie’s striped afghan wrapped around her.
The sheriff was there within half an hour to escort Hancil to the squad car. He slurred claims of being guilty but henpecked, a defense I suspected would not up hold up in a court of law.
Two days later, after the burial, the doctors Brumbeck stood beside their white rental car thanking me profusely for the care of their daughter. “I guess I’m goin’ to Guatemala,” Merry told me; then, “Friends write each other, it’s a rule.” She sounded like a proper schoolteacher.
I bent down to her level. “I’ll always be your friend, Merry, but I’ve got to know one thing. Why do you draw dragons all the time?”
She eyed me, then tilted her head. “Because people are afraid of them. Some people even think they’re not real. But if you find one and get to know it, they aren’t so bad after all, and they can even be your best friend.” She beamed as if she’d just revealed the secret of the universe.
“Really?” was all I could get through the lump in my throat. She nodded and handed me a drawing — two dragons holding hands, each with the letter M stamped on their bulging yellow chests.
Merry waved to me from inside the car while Prudie stood on her porch sniffling and wadding a blue Kleenex. I could’ve sworn I heard her elderly voice mutter, “God bless America.”
Till Death Do Us Part
by Patricia Hughes
Granny Grace couldn’t stop my sister’s wedding, but she did succeed in postponing it: she died. Despite Savannah’s histrionics, Grandpa refused to put his mother on ice while he jetted off to give away his eldest granddaughter into connubial bliss. So instead of flying east for New York nuptials, I headed west to pay my final respects to Granny.
Donner House presided over its acreage with nothing but a single tree to block its view of grazing cattle and pumping wells. I had no sooner climbed the steps than I had the first indication that this trip was going to be even more bizarre than usuaclass="underline" an icy hand touched my shoulder. I know that sounds like something Nana Nelle might say, but that’s what it felt like. I decided I was overwrought.
Nana greeted me warmly. “It’s high time you got here, Dallas.” (Mother had this thing for naming daughters after the place where she met their fathers. I’ve always been grateful she didn’t meet Daddy in Bull Head City or Buffalo.)
“It’s nice to see you, too, Nana.”
“Do something with your sister!”
I would have preferred an easier task, like teaching ballet to a longhorn.
Savannah had locked herself in what used to be her bedroom and was doing her best to get into the Guinness Book of Records for nonstop bawling. I had raised my hand to knock when Savannah screeched, “That old goat planned this! She didn’t have to die now!”