“I like my women with some meat on the bone,” he’d kidded her.
“Women?” she’d kidded back, one eyebrow arching.
“Woman,” he corrected.
“No problem. I like my men big and stupid.”
This little exchange had become a running joke with them, and seen endless repetition and variation over the years.
Burl was comptroller for Rolette County, having worked his way up from the entry-level accounting position he’d landed out of college. Nola and Burl were alumni of North Dakota State, Bisons through and through — Burl even insisted on owning a green car (the school’s colors were green and gold).
Some good-natured guff had come Nola’s way from her sorority sisters when she’d started dating the accounting major, but when she retorted, “CPAs do it with a long pencil,” the carping had turned to laughter, and maybe envy.
The couple married just after graduation. Burl took the job out here, one interstate exit past the middle of nowhere, and Nola signed on at the Rolla Public Library. At first, their lives were about as boring as Nola’s sorority sisters predicted. Slowly, however, things changed — they both earned promotions, Nola first, rising to head librarian with a speed that dismayed some of her co-workers.
And though she wasn’t exactly overseeing the Library of Congress, the Rolla branch brought its own challenges, and she took pride in having the best public collections of both fiction and non-fiction (for a town Rolla’s size) in the state.
Burl’s rise had been slower, his path blocked by more than a couple geriatric librarians. Still, his progress had been steady, and they always considered themselves both happy and blessed — at least until Katie came along and showed them what happiness was really about. The gifted little girl became the center of their universe, and her accomplishments in school gave Nola and Burl more pride than anything in their respective careers.
Everything was working out even better than Nola could ever have hoped. Both she and Burl came from broken families, and making their house a home was a shared goal. When her female friends would whine over petty arguments with their husbands, Nola (to her slight embarrassment and major pleasure) couldn’t report a single spat. She and Burl were simply on the same page, and Katie had only made life better. Nola made no apologies for her good luck.
Ladling soup into a bowl, Nola asked, “Washed your hands?”
Her daughter leaned toward the waiting bowl on the counter and said, “Smells good...”
“Don’t change the subject. Straight to the bathroom and wash them.”
Defeated, Katie climbed down and trotted off toward the first-floor bathroom.
“Soap too!” Nola called.
If getting Katie to wash up was the biggest dilemma of the day, Nola knew she didn’t have anything to complain about.
A potentially touchy subject had come up earlier — what Katie wanted for her birthday. The girl said she’d settle for nothing less than a little brother or a puppy. Katie didn’t really seem to care which, though Burl would probably be happy to hear that Katie, given a choice, was leaning toward the canine option...
Smiling to herself, setting the bowl of soup on the counter where Katie would sit, Nola was surprised to see the doorknob turning across the kitchen, on the door off the garage.
A glance up at the clock said it was only 6:45, and she didn’t expect Burl for another hour, at least. Which was why she was serving Katie her dinner now.
Pleased to have Burl home, she half turned to the door and said, “You’re early! How was your—”
She stopped mid-sentence, frozen at the sight of a strange man at the threshold of her kitchen. Middle-aged, a little chunky. Tennis shoes, blue jeans, and a blue jacket. Blue baseball cap pulled low almost over his eyes.
Pistol in his right hand.
Though physically petrified, Nola was mentally racing, thoughts streaking through her mind:
Katie was still in the bathroom, good.
Nearest knife in the block on the counter behind her.
Soup hot enough to throw at this intruder and burn him?
What then, the knife?
No getting to the phone for 911, too far away.
Duck behind the counter of the island, but what then? Fight or flight?
The presence of Katie in the house made the decision easy.
Nola shouted, “Katie — run!”
Then, snarling, she grabbed the pan of soup — maybe it wasn’t hot enough but it was metal and she could swing at him — and moved toward the intruder and the pistol barked.
Like a hard punch, it knocked Nola back, and she felt her balance slipping. The counter’s edge was right there, but when she reached for it, it seemed to move away and she found herself on the floor, tile cool against her flesh.
To her surprise, there was no pain. She knew she had been shot, from the noise echoing in the airy kitchen to the spreading warmth in her chest, but she couldn’t get over the lack of pain. Everything just felt numb. Something smelled bitter — cordite. Burl was a hunter.
She tried to yell again, for Katie to run, but nothing came. She coughed and realized she was spitting up blood. The man stood over her now, his eyes on her but unconcerned, as if he were looking at spilled milk and not a dying woman.
Nola tried to recognize him, couldn’t, then tried to understand why this stranger had just walked into her house and shot her.
Should have locked the door, a voice in her head said.
Too late now, wasn’t it?
Spilled milk.
Sending thoughts to Katie to run, to hide, to get out of the house, was all she could manage for her daughter — a sad desperate attempt at telepathy. She tried to talk, to ask this man why he had done this thing, but her efforts were only rewarded with more coughing.
She struggled to focus on his face again, but her vision blurred.
Was she about to die? Was Katie about to die? Was the price of her happy life these terrible last agonized moments?
He raised the pistol again, and the last thing she saw was the flash.
Katie’s hands were under the warm water when she heard her mother yell for her to run, but that made no sense — her mommy never wanted her to run in the house...
A moment later, she heard what sounded like one of the M-80s the bigger kids had been shooting off last summer, on the Fourth of July, when both her parents warned her about the dangers of firecrackers. They’d finally relented and let her hold a sparkler that her dad lit.
But this bang had been so loud, she jumped, water from the sink spraying the front of her when she pulled her hands back, making a mess Mommy wouldn’t like.
Katie was scared now. Something was going on in the kitchen, something not normal, something wrong, but she had no idea what. She crept closer to the open door.
A second M-80 exploded in the kitchen, and Katie jumped again, her hand stifling a scream. She tiptoed into the hallway, and looked out to the kitchen, where her mother’s feet were sticking out, on the floor! Rest of her hidden by the kitchen’s large island.
Standing over Mommy was a tall man who seemed to be pointing down, maybe with his hand, maybe with something in his hand; but from here, the man’s body blocked the object and Katie couldn’t see.