Sara broke the eggs into the bowl, not listening to Nell's words so much as the cadence of her voice. She was thinking about Jeffrey and trying to put logic to what had happened last night. Sara knew that both her biggest strength and her biggest weakness was that she saw things clearly in black and white, but right now, for the first time in her life, she was seeing the gray. She had been tired last night, and upset by everything that had happened. Had she really seen the sear mark? The more she thought about it, the more she convinced herself that she had not. But her gut still told her to go with what she had first thought. And why would Robert keep covering the wound unless he really had something to hide?
"Sara?" Nell said. She had obviously asked a question.
"I'm sorry," Sara apologized. "What?"
"I asked did Robert recognize the man?"
Sara shook her head. "I guess not or he would've said something."
"It hasn't made the papers yet – we only get a weekly here and it's not due until next Sunday – but I heard on my walk this morning that it's Luke Swan. The name won't mean anything to you, but we all went to school with him. He used to live a couple of houses over." She pointed toward the backyard. "Possum was born here and I grew up across the street – did I tell you?" Sara shook her head. "We moved in after his mama died. I couldn't stand the woman -" she knocked three times on the wooden cabinet under the sink, "but it was nice of her to leave the house to us. I thought Possum's brother would make a stink, but it all worked out." She paused for breath. "Where was I?"
"Luke."
"Right." She turned back to the stove. "He lived here a few years before his father lost his job, then they moved over by the school. He didn't exactly run with our crowd."
Sara could guess she meant the popular crowd. The same groups had been at her own school, and though Sara had been far from popular, she was lucky enough not to have been picked on for it.
Nell continued, "I heard he's a troublemaker, but who knows? People say all kinds of things after somebody's dead. You should hear Possum talk about his mama like she was Mary Poppins, and that woman was never happy a day of her life. She was a lot like Jessie that way." Nell poured four pancakes onto the griddle. "I heard Jessie's at her mama's."
"Yes," Sara confirmed.
"Good Lord," Nell mumbled, taking the bowl of eggs from Sara. She beat them with a fork, then dumped them into a frying pan. Even though Sara had graduated in the top ten percent of her class at one of the toughest medical schools in the country, she always felt inadequate around women who could cook. The one meal she had prepared for her last boyfriend had resulted in the throwing away of two pots and a perfectly good garbage can.
Nell said, "I ebb and flow with that woman. Maybe it's because Robert and Possum throw us together all the time and expect us to make happy. Sometimes I think she's not that bad and sometimes I just want to pop her upside the head to knock some sense into her." She tapped the fork on the edge of the pan before setting it on a napkin. "Right now I just feel sorry for her."
"It's an awful thing to have happen."
Nell flipped the pancakes with a spatula. "Bobby's a real doll but you never know what they're like until you get them home and take them out of their packages. Maybe he sucks his teeth. Possum started doing that a few years ago until I threatened to beat him with a bat." She put the pancakes and some of the eggs onto a plate and handed it to Sara. "Bacon?"
"No thank you."
Nell took three strips of bacon out from under a napkin and put them on Sara's plate. "I was hating her something awful until a few months ago. She had a miscarriage. I was over at her house every day making sure she didn't do something stupid. Liked to tore the both of them up. She's wanted a kid ever since I met her. We're talking back in junior high school. Never been able to have one, though."
Sara poured syrup onto the pancakes. They were all perfectly round and the same thickness. "What stupid thing did you think Jessie would do?"
"Take too many pills," Nell said, flipping the pancakes one by one. "She's done it before. If you ask me, it was just to get attention. Not that Robert seems all that inattentive, but you just never know, do you?"
"No," Sara agreed around a mouthful of bacon. Until last night, she never would have guessed that Jeffrey was capable of threatening her. She could still feel the breeze from his fist passing just a few inches from her head as he punched the wall. "Would she ever cheat on him?"
"Ha," Nell laughed, filling up her plate. She sat down across from Sara, pouring a liberal amount of syrup over the pancakes as she talked. "If she did, it'd have to be with somebody up in Alaska. Robert knows everything that goes on in this town. He'll probably take over for the sheriff if the old fart ever retires. Hoss has held the office since before dirt. I think the only way he'll leave is feet-first. Hell, knowing this town, people'd still vote for him, even if he was dead."
"You don't have a police force, it's only the sheriff's office?"
Nell took a bite of egg. "You know how small this town is? If we had both, there wouldn't be anybody left to work at the gas station." She stood up. "Juice?"
"I'm fine."
Nell got two glasses out of the cabinet and put them on the table. "Mind you, if Jeffrey was around, Hoss would have retired years ago."
"Why is that?"
She poured the juice. "Heir apparent. Robert's father was half useless, but better half useless than being stuck with Jimmy Tolliver. That man was a monster. Jeffrey won't talk about it, but that scar under his shoulder came from his daddy."
Sara had seen the scar, but not wanting to open a conversation about scars, she had never asked about it. Now she asked, "How?"
Nell sat back down. "I was standing right there," she said, taking a bite of pancake. Sara waited while she chewed, wishing for once that Nell would get on with it. Finally, she swallowed. "May said something smart-ass and Jimmy just laid into her. I mean like a fury. I've never seen anything like it. Never hope to see it again, knock wood." She rapped her knuckles on the table.
Sara swallowed, though she had nothing in her mouth. "He hit her?"
"Oh, hon, he hit her all the time. It was like she was his own private punching bag. Jeffrey, too, when he was home. Not that he was home much. He spent most of his time out by the quarry, trying to get away from it. He'd just sit out there and read until the sun went down. Sometimes he'd sleep out there unless Hoss found him, then he'd make Jeffrey sleep at the station." She drank some juice. "Anyway, this one time I was there, they were hauling off on each other and Jeffrey tried to step in between them. Jimmy backhanded the shit out of him and Jeffrey went flying – and I do mean flying – across the room. Cut his back open on the stovetop. This was back when they had those knobs with the sharp metal edges, not like now where it's all just buttons and dials."
After a while, Sara said, "I didn't know." She tried to imagine what it must have been like for Jeffrey growing up in that kind of environment and could not. Like most pediatricians, she had seen her share of abused children. Nothing made her more angry than a cowardly adult who took out his or her frustrations on a child. As far as Sara was concerned, they should all be left to rot in jail.
"Takes a hell of a lot to get Jeffrey angry," Nell continued. "I guess that's a good thing, though maybe not. You've got to wonder about him holding that in all the time. He hates to argue. Always has. You know he had an academic scholarship to Auburn?"
"Jeffrey?" Sara asked, trying to absorb this new information.
"Part of it was football, but they don't give you a full ride to warm the bench." She gave a surprised laugh, as if she could not believe what had just come from her mouth. "Don't ever tell Possum I said that, but it's the God's truth. The minute Jeffrey got to Auburn, he hated football. He would have quit the team if Hoss'd let him."