He released her slowly, keeping his hands up so he could grab her or knock her down. Her eyes darted to the kitchen doorway as she counted off everything that stood between her and Solace escaping out the front door. Through the front room. Up the stairs. Into Solace’s room. Pick her up. Carry her downstairs. Out the door. The door. Had he already locked it for the night?
“Don’t try it, Janie.” He stepped close to her. She could feel the heat of his body. “If you run, I’ll have to stop you. I’ve never laid a hand on you. Don’t make me do it tonight.”
“I don’t want to die,” she whispered.
“I do.” He turned, then, away from the door to the front room, away from the stairs, and for a moment she watched without understanding as he laid his hand on the door to the back porch. Where the woodpile was.
The hatchet.
Then her hand closed around the skillet handle, wet and hot and slithering with soap, and she raised it and she swung it and she smashed it against the back of his beautiful dark hair with all the strength of her days of lifting feed and lugging wash and toting children. She smashed it, and smashed it, and smashed it, as he toppled to his knees and fell unstrung to the floor. Blood and soap froth and water splattered across the floor and over her apron and still she smashed the skillet down, over and over, pounding out her fear until she stopped suddenly and staggered back.
Everything was quiet.
She looked at him, sprawled on the linoleum tiles, and wondered if he was dead. She was afraid to move close enough to tell. The only things she had ever killed in her life-except your children-were chickens, and they liked to jump around after their heads were cut off.
She looked at the skillet in her hand and saw the blood and hairs sticking to it. It almost fell from her nerveless fingers. She plunged it in the sink.
Then she sat down and flopped over and put her head between her knees and breathed. She sat that way for a long time, until she registered the blood splatters on her apron, and then she sat bolt upright. She was going to go to jail. No. Jail was for thieving or running whiskey. She was going to go to the chair. She had murdered her husband. She was going to be taken away from her home and her daughter and strapped in the electric chair and fried. And Solace, her comfort, her joy, her only child, would grow up knowing that her father had been killed and her mother had done it.
“No,” she said, and was surprised she had spoken out loud.
She had told Jon she wasn’t ready to die. She had told him she wouldn’t leave Solace. Her little girl needed her.
So. She looked at her hands. They were shaking. She grabbed them and squeezed them tight. Her little girl needed her. What she did in the next few hours would mean the difference between growing up with a mother who loved her or growing up under a stain of guilt and shame.
She looked at-her mind slid around the name “Jonathon”-the body on the floor. She would have to get rid of it. And any signs of violence in the kitchen. She thought. And thought. And thought some more.
She went upstairs to the linen closet and pulled out one of the old, stained sheets she used on the bed during her monthlies. She opened Solace’s door and listened for a moment to her daughter’s slow, even breathing. Then she carried the sheet downstairs and spread it next to Jo-the body. She squatted next to him and rolled him over. When she saw his open eyes, she almost lost her supper, but she closed her eyes, swallowed, and kept on. She rolled him again until he was smack-dab in the middle of the sheet, and then she twisted it around him, tying a thick knot at each end.
She stepped out onto the back porch. At its far side, it led to the privy, which led to the old tack room, which led to the stables, where they garaged the car. She went through the rooms, opening each door, and into the garage, where she swung the back door of the Ford wide. Jon had left the stable door open, and she considered closing it before she began, but figured that would look strange to any neighbors who might notice the car going out later. She would just have to brazen it out.
Back in the kitchen, she grabbed the sheet behind the fat knot at its head, and pulled. The homemade shroud bumped over the doorsill, out onto the porch. She hauled the body across the floor, through the narrow walkway in the privy, down three steps to the old tack room, and, taking a quick look around, into the shadows next to the car.
This, she guessed, would be the hardest part. She pulled on the knot until it-he-was in a sitting position. She squatted down and wrapped her arms around the waist. Like seeing his open eyes, the familiar feeling of embracing his middle came close to undoing her, and she had to clamp her teeth against a bubble of sound, half moan, half sob. She heaved him over her shoulder and staggered into a crouch, the best she could do against his weight. His dead weight, she thought, and then had to shut her mouth against a hysterical laugh. She slid and shoved him through the back door onto the floor.
She sponged up the splatters on the kitchen floor and door, scrubbing them until they were spotless. Then she finished the washing up: the plates, the pots, the glasses, and the skillet. She dried everything and put it away, just like always. She gathered several pieces of wood from the back porch and stoked the fire before untying her apron and tossing it into the stove. She almost dumped the dishwater down the drain, but thought better of it. Instead, she picked up the basin and lurched to the privy, where she dumped the water into the pit below. She pumped more water into the basin to make sure it was well rinsed, and sloshed that into the two-seater as well.
She went upstairs. Solace was still sleeping soundly. She was a good sleeper, never fussing after her story time, never rousing to demand a cuddle or a drink of water, unlike Lu-she stopped herself.
In her vanity mirror, she checked her appearance. She was looking for anything telltale: a bruise or a smudge of blood. There was nothing. It startled her, how normal she looked. No telltale lines of guilt. She wasn’t even pale and washed out, as she might have expected. Well, not after all that hauling and cleaning.
She pulled a pair of Jon’s pants right over her dress, tucking the skirt in around the too-large waist. Then she shrugged into one of his coats, clapped his hat on her head, and, at the last moment, took his wallet from the dresser top and slipped it into the coat pocket.
She paused at the bottom of the stairs. Took a deep breath. Pictured Solace in her bed, her round cheeks still babylike in sleep. Then she turned on the outside light and left the house.
She slammed the door. She jingled her keys and slammed the car door, too, doing everything she could to attract attention to her make-believe Jonathon. She started the car and backed it out of the garage, shifting it into first and rolling down Ferry Street, toward the river. She turned right, then right again, up Wharf Street. At the head of Wharf was the new cemetery. Its gates were closed and locked, as they were every night at sundown, but to her left, outside the cemetery proper, a stub of a driveway led up to and alongside the caretaker’s one-room utility shed. She pulled the car in next to the shed and turned off the ignition.
This was the most dangerous part of her plan, the part she was leaving in the hands of God, who hadn’t been noticeably kind to her.
She shucked off the hat, coat, and pants and dropped them in the back, atop the still, sheet-shrouded form. She slipped out of the car, closing the door just far enough to hear the snick of the latch. Prying off her shoes, she ran in stocking feet as fast as she could until she reached the head of Ferry Street. She flew down the cold, grainy sidewalk, and when she was within shouting distance of her own house, she shoved her feet back into the shoes and walked, panting for breath, to her next-door neighbor’s.
Mrs. Creighton greeted the bell. “Why Mrs. Ketchem. Whatever are you doing here? Is everything all right?”