She snapped twice.
“Keep the line open. I’m muting from my end, so no one will hear me saying anything. But I’ll hear you. This is Renee Rouse? With a gun?”
She snapped twice.
“Jesus Christ,” he said.
“What’s keeping you?” Renee yelled. “I told you to get out of the car and get over here!”
Clare slipped the phone into one of her skirt pockets and opened the door. She walked slowly and carefully toward Debba. “Mrs. Rouse, you were going to let me go. Please, I beg you, let Debba’s mother and two children go.”
“I already told you no. That’s far enough.” She waved the gun at Clare, who stopped a few feet away from Debba. From across the roof of Mrs. Rouse’s car, she could see Lilly’s back, with Whitley’s skinny legs wrapped around her waist. One of the girl’s rain boots had fallen off. Renee’s attention was on Clare, and Lilly was moving, step by step, closer toward her grandson. Debba saw her, too, and in a moment, Renee was going to realize what was happening.
Clare began to walk toward the doctor’s wife. Renee frowned and trained the gun more decidedly on Clare. “Stop right there,” she said. Clare took another step. “I said stop!”
Clare raised her arms dramatically. “Jesus!” she said. Across the barnyard, Lilly was almost to Skylar. Lord only knew what sort of sound the kids might make when their grandmother took off running. She’d better turn up the volume. “Jesus, call down Your healing power on these Your servants!” she bawled.
“Stop that,” Renee said. Debba stopped staring at her mother and turned to look at Clare.
“Bring down the power of the Almighty and save these poor sinners!” She could do this. Her great-grandfather Avery had been a dirt-road preacher in Alabama a hundred years ago. “It is sin that fills our hearts with wrath and fear and pain! It is sin that separates us from our loved ones! It is sin that makes us turn our backs on Your loving aid!”
“Stop it! Stop it right now!” Renee advanced on Clare, her arm shaking.
Clare dropped to her knees, ignoring the gravel’s bite. “Pray with me, Sister Rouse! Pray with me, Sister Clow!” She launched into the loudest hymn she knew. “ ‘Wha-at a friend we have in Je-sus! All our sins and grief to bear!’ ”
The car blocked her view of Lilly and the children, but she knew when it happened. Debba let out a strangled cry of fear and relief, and Renee spun around. She screeched, an inarticulate sound of rage, and turned on Debba and Clare. “Get up!” she shouted. “Get up!”
Clare shut up and climbed to her feet. She didn’t see Lilly or the children. “Where are they?” she asked Debba.
“Behind the bus.” Debba started to weep. “Behind the bus.” She glared at Renee. “Shoot me if you want. You can’t hurt my children now.”
“Where is my husband?” Renee Rouse’s voice dropped so that it was almost a whisper. She would do it, Clare thought. She would kill Debba. They had to tell her something. Anything. Keep her talking.
“I don’t know,” Debba said through her tears. “I told the police everything I knew. I told them. I don’t know anything else.”
Mrs. Rouse shook her head. “Turn around.” Debba stared at her. “Turn around!” Debba did as she was told. Renee jammed the gun against the back of Debba’s skull. “I’ll give you one more chance. I don’t care what happens to me. I won’t go on without my husband.”
Oh, holy God. This was going to be a murder-suicide. “Debba,” Clare said.
Debba was crying harder now, her voice muffled and wet.
“Debba,” Clare said. “You’re going to have to tell her the truth.”
Renee stared at her. “You know what happened?”
“I’ve been acting as Debba’s spiritual adviser,” she said. “She’s made her confession to me.”
“What?” Mrs. Rouse’s eye lit up. “Tell me!”
What, indeed. If they said the doctor was still alive, Mrs. Rouse would demand that Debba take her to him. And going someplace with Mrs. Rouse would be a death sentence. They had to stay out of the car, out of the house, away from anyplace she could hole up in when the cops got here. They had to be right out here in the open when Russ arrived. What could they tell her? What?
“Go ahead, Debba,” Clare said. “It’s all right. Tell her about you and the doctor having an affair.”
“What?”
“They were having an affair and Dr. Rouse wanted her to run away with him. So he took off first.” Why? “So no one would know.”
Debba, bless her heart, picked up the ball and ran with it. “Except I changed my mind. I decided to break it off. I couldn’t uproot my kids.”
Mrs. Rouse’s eyes bugged out. “You’re saying my husband had an affair with you? You slept with my husband?”
They heard the noise of an engine. A red pickup truck crested the hill, followed by a police car. Then another. No lights, no sirens, but they swooped down the hill almost faster than the eye could follow, faster than the time it took to decide what to do, faster than the heartbeats between waiting and hoping. Clare looked at the barrel of the gun, pressed into Debba’s head, and she looked at Mrs. Rouse.
“Your husband does not want you to throw your life away,” she said, knowing, of all the things she had said this horrible morning, it was the most true.
And then Russ’s pickup and the squad cars were whipsawing over the yard and onto the drive, spinning up gravel and clots of mud and dead grass, and the doors were open and men tumbled out and there were one two three four five guns all pointed toward Mrs. Rouse. Debba buried her face in her hands and fell silent.
Renee Rouse looked at the officers, at Clare, at the sky, and she lowered her gun and let it drop to the ground.
Noble Entwhistle was the first to her, drawing her away, pulling her hands behind her back, reciting her Miranda rights.
Debba touched the back of her head, feeling the absence of the gun, and turned toward Clare. She opened and closed her mouth. “How?” she finally said.
Clare fished her phone out of her pocket. “What a friend we have in cell phones,” she sang softly.
Debba started to laugh wetly, then jerked away as her mother and kids emerged from behind the bus. She ran blindly across the road, weeping and laughing, and crashed into her family.
Clare felt a hand on her shoulder and turned around.
“Are you all right?” Russ was looking at her. That was all, just his hand on her shoulder and his eyes. For a moment, she wanted to lean into him and let him hold her. Instead, she propped a smile on her face.
“It wasn’t me with a gun to her head.”
“Oh.”
“What did you think of my preaching?”
He smiled. “Pretty good for an Episcopalian. Kevin Flynn was listening, too. I think he had a conversion experience on the way over here.” He jiggled her shoulder, a small remonstrance. “What the hell were you thinking of?”
“Lilly Clow was trying to get the children out of sight. Mrs. Rouse got distracted when I was in the car, but when I got out, I was afraid she’d look back and stop Lilly. I figured if I acted strange but unthreatening, she’d keep her eyes on me for a few more seconds.”
He glanced over to where Officer Entwhistle was guiding Mrs. Rouse into the back of the squad car. “I should have done something to stop this. Had someone with her. She really fell apart when Lyle and I spoke to her Wednesday.”
“Do you honestly think anyone in Millers Kill could have foreseen she’d go around the bend?” She shook her head. “I guess this gives new meaning to the phrase ‘crazy in love.’ ”
“It’s not love. It’s dependence. He was the oak, she was the vine, all that sort of garbage.” He glanced down at the crutches he was balanced on. “You take away someone’s crutch and what happens? They fall down.”
“Poor lady.” Clare watched as Officer Entwhistle closed the car door behind Mrs. Rouse. “She must have been building up to this every day since her husband disappeared.”