Jane scurried ahead of them. She shut the bedroom door and backed against it.
“What’s in there?” one of the men asked. He had a droopy mustache that could have belonged to a dime-novel cowboy.
“Two sick children,” she said. She was amazed her voice didn’t shake. “Who need to see the doctor.”
The fancy suit indicated his men should sit Jon at the table. They released his arm, and he rubbed his wrist, watching them all the while with wide, white-rimmed eyes.
“That’s what I mean. We’ve already been through this, but you didn’t listen. You’ve got kids. What do you do if they don’t listen to you?” He stared at her. “You wallop ’em.”
She hugged Mary so tightly the baby started to cry, a thin, mewling version of her usual full-lunged bawl. “Don’t you touch my children,” Jane said. “Don’t you dare touch them.”
The young man touched his chest. “What kind of a person do you think I am? I don’t hurt kids.” He nodded to the man with the droopy mustache, who grabbed Jon’s wrist and prized his hand flat. The fancy-suited man pulled a gun from beneath his jacket. Jane opened her mouth to plead, to shriek, when he reversed the gun in his hand and smashed the butt end against Jon’s index finger.
Jon screamed. The third man leaned against his shoulders, forcing him into the chair, while the droopy mustache pushed his hand open. Jane saw the young man’s arm rise, the carbon gleam of the gun’s handle, like a ball-peen hammer, and then he smashed it down again, shattering Jon’s middle finger.
Her husband screamed and wept and howled. Mary wailed breathlessly, and from behind the bedroom door, Jane heard Lucy cry out and Peter stumble from his bed. The man in the fancy suit looked at her, eyebrows raised. “Well? Go settle ’em down.”
She sidled through the door, closing it behind her. “Shh. Sssh.”
“Mama, I can’t see!”
“Get back into bed, Peter.”
Lucy’s voice was weak and clogged with phlegm. “Mama?”
“Daddy’s had an accident. He hurt his hand, but he’ll be all right. He didn’t mean to wake you up. Everything’s fine. Go back to sleep now.” She stepped through the door and latched it behind her.
Jon was rocking in the kitchen chair, hunched over his hand, moaning again and again. “Since we’re all friends, I’ll consider this a lesson learned.” The man in the fancy suit slid his gun back into its holster. “You’ve been good hosts over these past months, and this is a real good stop along the trail. I’d hate to have to kill one of you.” He looked at Jane. Smiled a choirboy smile beneath dead eyes. “So I trust this is the last time we’ll have to have this conversation.”
Jane nodded.
“Good. Let’s go, boys. Ted’s got the next watch, so we can catch some shut-eye.” He smiled at Jane. “I suggest you do the same, missus.”
Jack died at ten o’clock in the morning.
After that she stopped thinking, stopped feeling. She trundled around, a mechanical mother wheeling on a track; wipe off Lucy’s nose, coax Peter to eat something, balance Mary over the steaming pan, take one child to the privy, take another, clean up Lucy’s lunch after she vomited it all over the floor, bathe the baby to cool her fever, bring Peter paper and pencils.
She didn’t tell the other children about their brother. She lost track of Jon. He was insubstantial, somehow, a ghost flitting through the rooms. They were all ghosts, waiting for darkness to come and set them free.
The men left half an hour before midnight. Three trucks, lights out, rumbling over the lane and away down the road. As soon as they were gone, she and Jon went to the barn and harnessed the horses. They worked quickly, silently. She didn’t want to talk with him, and she didn’t want to think why. It was important, the most important thing in the world, that he be gone, that he fetch the doctor, and once that happened, everything would be all right. Everything would fall into place again.
“Janie,” he said, perched on the buggy seat. There was that in his voice that would shatter her like the bones in his fingers. If she let it.
“Hurry,” she said, and turned to the house. Inside, she stoked the stove, put the kettle on, opened another can of liniment to rub into Mary’s chest. She was up in the nursery, and even from the kitchen Jane could hear her, rattling and choking, fighting for each breath.
She checked in on the olders before heading upstairs. Peter was sleeping. His breathing was easy, and except for his pallor and his listlessness, she thought him well on the mend. More rheum had run from Lucy’s mouth and nose onto her pillow. Jane swiped it off-she had changed the pillowcase three times during the day-and laid a hand on Lucy’s forehead.
She was cool. Jane crouched down beside her daughter’s bed. She put her other hand on Lucy’s chest. Which was silly. Cool flesh was a good sign. No fever. She waited. She waited for Lucy’s chest to rise and fall. Nothing happened.
“Lucy.” She shook the girl. “Lucy, wake up.” She shook her harder. “Lucy.” She sat on the bed, scooped her daughter into a sitting position. Lucy’s arms and head flopped. “Lucy.” She shook her, hard, and pressed her ear to her daughter’s mouth. Nothing. She pushed Lucy’s hair, sticky from the phlegm and greasy from days in bed, away from her face. Her sweet face. The girl was so proud of her thick brown hair. She would have to wash it, Lucy would hate to-but she couldn’t see anymore, not the dirty hair, not the still face, as the tears blinded her eyes and she curled around her little girl and sobbed.
Sometime later, she came to herself again. The kettle was singing on the stove. She tucked Lucy into bed, flipping the pillow around so her head rested on the clean side. She took the liniment from the kitchen table and went upstairs. Mary was lying in her crib, her eyes open but unfocused, the way she looked some mornings right after she had awoken. Beneath her gown, her chest and belly flexed. Dragging a breath in. Forcing a breath out. Jane opened the gown, rubbed the liniment in with firm strokes, and lifted her from the crib. She wrapped her in a light quilt and settled into the rocking chair, cradling her baby girl. She had nursed her in this very chair. Not so many months ago. She looked down. In the shadowed light, Mary’s eyes met hers. Her little body eased as she relaxed into her mother’s arms. Soon, the doctor would be here. Soon, everything would be all right. Jane cuddled her baby close. The weight, the heft of her. The life of her. She began to rock.
Chapter 41
Tuesday, April 3, and Wednesday, April 4
After Officer Durkee had removed Allan Rouse to the station for booking, Clare, backed up by the just-arrived Lyle MacAuley, insisted Russ get checked out at the hospital. He left, under protest, in his deputy chief’s care.
She wanted Mrs. Marshall to go, too. “I don’t think you should be alone,” she said. “And I certainly don’t think you ought to be driving home this late at night all by yourself.”
The older woman patted her arm. She had actually hugged Allan and Renee as they left, a shining example of Christian forbearance Clare wasn’t certain she could have emulated. “I’ll be fine, dear.”
“You’ve had a pretty big shock. Please, at least just let me call Mr. Madsen and have him take you home. You can wait here until he comes.” She looked around at the Rouses’ well-made furniture, their family pictures, the books and magazines in the glass-fronted cases. She wondered what had been earned, and what had been stolen from Jane Ketchem’s money.
Mrs. Marshall did that mind-reading thing again. “What am I going to do with the trust money?”
Clare didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Money isn’t good or bad in and of itself. It’s what you do with it.”
Mrs. Marshall bit her lip, scraping a spot in her lipstick. “It might as well have been a blood payment for my brothers’ and sisters’ lives. For my parents’ lives.”