Angel Sister (26 page)

______

The alcohol smell came through the kitchen’s screen door as soon as Victor stepped up on the back porch. Nadine’s heart sank and the prayers she’d been circling in her head all week crashed down with it. He hadn’t been able to keep his promise. She blinked back tears and turned away from the door to stir the vegetable soup on the stove even though she’d just laid down her spoon from stirring it a moment ago.

She couldn’t look at him. Not and trust herself to keep her tongue still. She didn’t want to lash out at him. Not with Kate right behind her setting the table for supper. The last few days had been hard enough on Kate without Nadine piling more grief on her head.

All week Kate had moped around the house, a faint shadow of her normal self. At mealtimes, she picked at her food. She didn’t fuss with Evangeline. She didn’t play with Victoria or go out to talk to any of the neighbor kids when they showed up in the yard. They all thought she was sick.

Jesse Granger had even brought her a mason jar filled with daisies and Queen Anne’s lace. “Flowers for the sick,” he’d said when he showed up at the front door.

Kate looked at the flowers and said, “I’m not sick.”

“Well, something’s wrong with you.” He shoved the flowers at Kate and left.

And he was right. She was sick. Sick at heart. So Kate already had enough sorrow in her heart without being witness to Nadine’s disappointment. No, more than disappointment. Despair. He had promised. Worse, she had believed him.

Victor opened the screen door and stepped into the kitchen. Nadine kept her eyes on the vegetable soup she was stirring as though her sanity depended on it being mixed just so. The whiskey smell was strong. She’d never known him to drink so much so early in the day.

The clank of the spoon against the pan was the only sound in the kitchen. Kate had quit rattling the plates, and Victor had to be standing stock-still just inside the door. What did he want from her? Forgiveness? She had none left to give. He had promised. They had prayed together. They’d never done that before. Not about the drinking.

Not about anything, really. She had always kept her prayers private, but wasn’t that what the Bible said to do? She did pray out loud at times. She taught the girls the Lord’s Prayer. She said grace. But other prayers were between her and the Lord. In the prayer closet of her heart.

She prayed Victor through the war. She prayed for her babies as she carried them and still lost that first precious child. She prayed to live through giving birth to each of them. She prayed her girls would be healthy. She prayed for rain. She prayed Victor would stop drinking. But until he came to her in the night and asked her to, she’d never prayed with Victor. Now he had betrayed that prayer.

“Nadine. Look at me.” He didn’t sound drunk. His words weren’t slurred. When she didn’t move, he added, “Please.” His voice trembled a bit.

She couldn’t refuse him. Not with Kate standing there between them. She scooted the pot of soup to the back of the stove where the fire wasn’t as hot and carefully laid the spoon across the top of the kettle. As she turned around, she wiped her face with her apron to hide her despair from Kate. “All right, Victor.” She managed to keep the sound of tears out of her voice.

His eyes grabbed hers. “You have to trust me,” he said.

She felt like she was drowning in his eyes. Beautiful eyes. Loving eyes. “I want to,” she said. But the whiskey smell was there, sickening her and giving lie to all his promises.

“Have I ever lied to you?” When she hesitated, he went on. “I haven’t always done what I should. I don’t deny that. I’ve let you down many times, but I’ve never lied to you. I’ve never spoken a promise to you I didn’t keep. Never.”

His eyes burned into her as he waited for her to speak. She wanted to say yes, he was right. He had kept his spoken promises to her, but there were other promises as well. Promises of the heart. She didn’t know what to say. She believed his eyes, but her nose couldn’t deny the stench of the whiskey.

Again he spoke before she could find words to say. “You have to trust me. Without trust, we have nothing.”

Nadine could feel Kate’s eyes on her as she stood frozen at the end of the table watching them. Nadine had to say the right words, but when she finally spoke, her words were not because of Kate. They were true words from her heart. “I do trust you, Victor.”

“Thank you.” Relief flooded his face, but he still didn’t step across the floor to her. “I haven’t been drinking. I know you smell it on me, but I haven’t swallowed a drop. Someone broke a bottle on the anvil, and the drink splashed all over me.”

“Why in the world did they do that?” Nadine frowned.

“I guess I made him mad.” Victor attempted a smile as he shrugged his shoulders, but Nadine saw the pain in his eyes.

“Who?”

Victor’s eyes slid sideways to touch on Kate and then came back to Nadine’s face. “Nobody important.” Then he was looking at Kate again. “Why don’t you go fetch me a clean pair of britches, Kate, and I’ll change out back? We wouldn’t want you girls to think you were eating in a saloon tonight.”

Kate giggled, more from nerves than because anything was funny. Then instead of going straight to find his britches, she stepped around the table to the door and wrapped her arms around Victor. “I love you, Daddy,” she said. Then she turned loose of him and came back around the table to grab Nadine in a hug. “And you, Mama.”

“That’s more than she’s said all week,” Victor said after Kate ran out of the room. “Do you think the worst is over?”

“For us maybe, but not for her.” Nadine stepped around the table to put her arms around him.

He put out his hands and tried to step back. “I’ll get you dirty, Nadine.”

“Then I’ll be dirty,” she said and stepped into his embrace. “Thank you, Victor.”

“For what? Not drinking?”

“For making me fall in love with you. For coming home to me once again. For being the good man you are.”

“My father doesn’t share your opinion on that last, I fear.” Victor’s voice sounded strained. “Or so he just got through telling me.”

“He was the one?” Nadine leaned back away from him to look at his face. “He had the whiskey? But he doesn’t drink.”

“He bought it for me.”

“Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know, Nadine. Aunt Hattie must have told him I’d quit drinking.”

“But that doesn’t make sense.”

“Not much does when it comes to me and my father.” Victor sounded resigned. Then he tightened his arms around her. “But you have always made sense to me. You are the most wonderful woman in the world, and I’m the one who needs to be thanking you. My beautiful Nadine. If only I could write a poem to do you justice. My Nadine. She keeps me clean. My love for my Nadine would fill a ravine.”

“Keeps you clean? Fill a ravine? Surely you can come up with something more romantic than that.” Nadine laughed.

“All right. How about this? No eye has ever seen a prettier girl than my Nadine.”

“Better, but I don’t need poetry. I just need you.” She lifted her mouth to meet his lips and didn’t push him away even when she heard Kate come back into the kitchen.

After a minute, Kate cleared her throat. “Should I go away?”

Nadine pushed back from Victor. She looked around at Kate. “No, no. It’s time for supper.” Nadine’s face was warm and not just from the heat in the kitchen. She normally didn’t behave so wantonly in front of her children, but she’d felt like a new bride. It wasn’t a bad feeling.

Victor kept his arms around her and leaned down to whisper in her ear. “Later.” Then he grinned over at Kate. “It’s okay, Kate. We’re married.”

“Oh, Daddy!” Kate rolled her eyes at him as she handed him the clean britches. She looked at Nadine. “You want me to tell Tori and Evie supper’s ready?”

“Give your father a few minutes to change,” Nadine said. “You can put water in the glasses.”

Victor was still on the back porch washing up when somebody started pounding on the front door. “Who could that be?” Nadine muttered as Victoria came running into the kitchen. Her face was white and her eyes wide open.

“It’s Grandfather Merritt and Mr. and Mrs. Baxter,” she said.

“Do they have Lorena with them?” Kate asked with a look of hope on her face. “Maybe they’re bringing her home.” She set down the glass she was filling and ran toward the front room.

“Wait, Kate!” Nadine tried to stop her.

Nobody pounding on the door like that was there for any good purpose, but Kate was already out of the kitchen. Nadine wiped her hands on her apron as she hurried after her. She wouldn’t let Father Merritt hurt Kate again. He’d already tried to do enough harm on this day.

Evangeline was at the door, doing her best to greet her grandfather as if he’d just come to visit. “Grandfather, come in. And Mr. and Mrs. Baxter. How nice to . . . ”

Her grandfather pushed past her without a word to her. His eyes locked on Kate as he demanded, “Where is she?”

Kate stopped in her tracks at the look on his face. “Who?” The blood drained out of her face.

He crossed the space between them in two steps and was in front of Kate before Nadine could step between them. He shouted in her face. “You know who. That gypsy child.”

“Lorena’s missing?” Kate edged back a step, but he stayed in her face.

“You know she is. Where are you hiding her?”

Kate stood her ground this time. “What are you talking about?” She looked over her grandfather’s shoulder at Ella Baxter. “What did you do to her?”

“Don’t play Miss Innocent with me,” Father Merritt said. “I’ll make you tell the truth.” He reached toward Kate, but Nadine pushed Kate aside and stepped in front of him.

“Don’t you ever touch my daughter again. Ever.” Nadine kept her voice low, but she put every bit of force she could in it.

Then Victor was there beside her, strong and unbending. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I think it might be best if you all leave.”

“We’ll leave when we find the girl,” Father Merritt said.

“Are you talking about Lorena?” Victor said.

“Polly,” Mrs. Baxter corrected. “Polly’s gone. She was in the . . .” She hesitated and then quickly went on. “The kitchen. When I went to check on her, she was gone.”

“She stuck her in the closet again.” Kate’s voice was matter-of-fact.

Nadine looked at Ella with disgust. “You surely didn’t lock her in a closet? The poor child is terrified of dark places. No wonder she ran away.”

“It was for her own good.” Ella raised her chin and sniffed as she stared at Nadine. “She’s a willful child who needs correction. Isn’t that right, Joseph?”

She looked around at her husband, standing just inside the front door with his hat in his hands. He twisted his hatband and sounded worried as he said, “I don’t know, Ella. I’d say she’s been more unhappy than willful.” He touched his eyes on Nadine’s face and then looked back at Ella. “Could be you shouldn’t have locked her in the closet if she was scared.”

Ella whipped her head around to glare at Joseph, who stared down at his feet as if he hoped a hole might open up in the floor to let him fall through.

Father Merritt spoke before Ella could explode. “The point is, the child is gone.”

“That’s right.” Ella recovered and wagged her finger at Nadine. “Your daughter must have come into my house without permission and helped her run away. Talk about a willful child.”

“Enough!” Victor’s voice had the force of his biggest hammer slamming down on his anvil.

Everyone in the room fell silent and stared at him. Even his father was quiet as he stared at Victor with narrowed eyes and his mouth screwed up in a tight circle.

Victor pulled in a breath and waited a brief moment before he went on. “If Kate knows where Lorena is, she’ll tell us.”

They all turned toward where Kate had been standing behind Nadine. She was gone.

______

As soon as Kate realized her grandfather had come hunting for Lorena instead of bringing the little girl home, she started easing toward the kitchen. Her bare feet didn’t make even a whisper of noise on the wood floor. In the kitchen she stepped around the spot in front of the icebox where the floorboards always squeaked before she carefully pushed open the screen door and eased out on the back porch. The screen door slipped out of her hand and rattled shut. Kate pulled in her breath and froze in place as she peered back through the screen to see if anybody was coming after her. Nobody was. They were still in the front room arguing about why Lorena had run away.

That was no mystery. Lorena would do anything to get out of that closet when she heard the rats coming after her toes. After all, who could expect her to keep believing in rat-proof angel powder when the angel had deserted her? Kate hadn’t wanted to desert her. She just didn’t know what to do to help Lorena.

She hadn’t helped her today. She’d stolen a few minutes with her early that morning, but she’d had to help her mother clean Grandfather Reece’s house that afternoon. She’d been planning to go see Lorena after supper. So she hadn’t let Lorena out of the closet, but she knew who had.

Kate slipped on the shoes she’d left on the back porch before she jumped off the end of the porch and took off across the yard. Two old hens pecking in the dirt squawked and flapped out of the way. Kate didn’t look back. She just ran faster across the open field toward the woods. She didn’t hear any doors slamming. She didn’t hear anybody yell her name. She wouldn’t have stopped even if she had. She had to find Lorena and make sure she was all right.

Once out of sight in the trees, she slowed to a walk and caught her breath. She went by Graham’s little cabin first, but he wasn’t there. It was no telling where he and Poe might be. Fishing in the pond. Hunting raccoons. At the Lindell house dusting his mother’s hats. Kate looked in the direction of the big house, but she had no way of knowing for sure whether he was there or not. He could be anywhere and she didn’t have a lot of time to waste. The sun was already sinking behind the trees to the west. She didn’t want to be hunting Fern after dark.

Of course that was who had opened the closet and taken Lorena. Fern. Just the same as she’d let Kate out of the Baxters’ outhouse on Monday morning. Kate looked around and listened. She fervently wished Graham would appear out of the trees, but there was no sign of him. She didn’t hear Poe baying in the woods. She didn’t hear Graham whistling. She didn’t hear anything except some crows fussing over her head and the crickets and tree frogs beginning to tune up their night songs.

She made herself walk away from Graham’s house. She could find Fern by herself. She wasn’t afraid of Fern. Not really afraid. That wasn’t why her heart was pounding in her chest. She’d been running. She was scared for Lorena. She was worried about what her mother and father might do to her when she had to go home. She would have to go home. She and Lorena couldn’t live in the woods the way Fern did.

She breathed in and out slowly as she hurried through the trees. Each time she heard the brush rustle near her, her heart bounded up in her throat as she imagined tramps stepping out on the path in front of her or rabid foxes or Fern with her hatchet. But she wanted to find Fern, and the only way to do that was to keep moving deeper into the woods. And stay calm so she could think. If she didn’t pay attention to where she was in the woods, she might start walking in circles and never find anybody.

She didn’t know where Fern’s newest cedar palace was, but she did know where the cedars grew. If she walked back and forth through the cedar thicket, she’d surely find it eventually. She bent down and pushed her way into the cedars and entered a different world where the thick canopy of evergreens blocked out the dying rays of sunlight. It was going to be very dark under there soon.

Kate moved as fast as she could on the thick layer of fallen cedar needles as she ducked and twisted to get through the low-growing trees. When she ran smack into a spiderweb, she yelped and slapped frantically at her hair to knock away the spider. She pulled in one deep breath and then another before she managed to calm down enough to pick the sticky web off her face.

She couldn’t let a little spider stop her. She had to find Lorena. After grabbing up a stick to do battle with any new spiderwebs, she pushed on through the trees. The sound of a screech owl sent chills down her back.

She wanted to pray. The “want to” scratched at the inside of her heart, but she mashed her mouth together and didn’t allow the words to whisper up inside her. It would do no good to pray. The Lord didn’t answer prayers. Not for people like her who went around pretending to be angels. Besides, she didn’t believe there was a God anymore. Wasn’t that what she’d told her father? That if there was a God, he wouldn’t have let Grandfather Merritt take Lorena away?

You don’t believe that. You know there’s a God and you want him to help you. So pray, for heaven’s sake
. Kate didn’t know where the voice came from, but it was there in her mind. Maybe her mother. Maybe Aunt Hattie.

A dog started howling off in the distance. It could be Poe. She wasn’t sure. It sounded so far away. She felt separated from the rest of the world here in this cedar thicket. Lost and alone.

Stop it
, she ordered.
You’re not lost. You know exactly where you are.
But the lost feeling didn’t go away as she made her feet keep moving. Somehow even while waving the stick back and forth in front of her face, she ran into another spiderweb. She hit at her dress and hair again as she felt spiders crawling all over her. She wanted to sit down and cry, and she never did that. Not boohoo crying like Tori or Evie. Never. And she still wanted to pray. So much that she could hardly breathe.

She dropped down on the cedar needles under the trees, pulled her legs up against her chest, and laid her forehead down on her knees. “Dear Lord,” she whispered. “I don’t know if you’re really there or not, but if you are, I could use some help. I don’t know what to do. I thought you wanted me to help Lorena, but then you didn’t stop them from coming and taking her away. I thought you’d help me. And now I don’t know where she is. If you’re there, if you’re listening, please help me find her. Please help me know what to do. And don’t let the spiders get me. You know how much I don’t like spiders.”

No answer came falling down out of the cedars over her head, but she felt better. She stood up and started walking again. She still felt a little lost but not nearly so alone. She could almost see the words in her Grandfather Reece’s Bible.
And lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.

She wasn’t to the end of the world. She was right in the middle of Lindell Woods, and it wasn’t dark yet. She had time to find Fern. And Lorena. She didn’t know what she would do then, but there wasn’t any use letting her worries race on ahead of her.

She smelled the pungent odor of newly cut red cedar before she stumbled across a freshly chopped stump. She touched the sticky sap oozing up from the bark on the stump and looked around. In the dimming light, she spotted other stumps here and there among the cedars. She had to be close.

Fern hadn’t exactly cleared out a path through the cedars. The cut cedars were more like stepping-stones through a creek. Then there were dozens of cut stumps, and rising up in front of Kate a wall of green cedars piled on top of one another higher than her head. She’d seen Fern’s cedar palaces before, but never one this big or this green. Usually Fern had already deserted the place by the time Kate came across it, and the dead cedars shed their needles at the slightest touch.

Kate reached out and felt the cedar walls. The trees on the bottom felt dry and brittle, but the top trees were soft and green as if they’d only been cut that day. Fern had to be close by, and she didn’t like people messing around her palaces. Kate thought about all the stories she’d heard on the school playground about kids being swallowed up in Fern’s cedars never to be seen again.

She never believed the stories. When she asked what kid, nobody could come up with one single missing kid, but that didn’t make the idea of it any less scary. Or keep them from believing it might happen, and now maybe it had. To Lorena.

Kate held her breath and listened. She heard the screech owl again and another dog barking in the distance. This one definitely not Poe. It wasn’t a hound. Bugs were chirping from among the cut cedars and a whippoorwill sang its name not far away. Kate could almost feel night falling around her as she stood there.

“Lorena.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. There was no way Lorena would hear that even if she was right on the other side of the cedar wall. Kate opened her mouth to say Lorena’s name louder, but then she shut it again as she stared at the barrier of cedars. She had the uneasy feeling they might all fall on top of her if she made too much noise.

She started walking along the wall. There had to be a way inside. A faded pink flour sack hung over an opening at one of the corners. Kate reached to pull it back and then hesitated. Fern might be waiting on the other side of the cedar wall for Kate to stick her head through the opening. She’d have her hatchet.

The back of Kate’s neck suddenly felt very bare, but she swallowed hard and got down on her knees to push back the flour sack and crawl through the low opening. Fern had never actually killed anybody. At least not that Kate knew about. But that didn’t mean it hadn’t happened. Hadn’t she been finding out about other things she’d never known about before now? Fern chopping somebody’s head off could be one of those things nobody in Rosey Corner talked about.

“Lorena? Are you in here?” Kate kept her voice low as she gingerly crawled through the opening. Her heart was pounding so hard she thought it might jump out of her chest.

“Kate!” Lorena piled into Kate and started hugging her before she got all the way through the opening. “I told Fern you’d come.”

“Wait, sweetie. Let me get in here. We don’t want all these trees to fall on our heads.”

“Don’t worry.” Lorena giggled as she backed up to let Kate scramble the rest of the way through the opening. “Fern says none of her palaces have ever fell down while they’re green. Just after they turn brown.”

Kate looked around as she sat down and let Lorena crawl into her lap. It was lighter inside the cedar room than outside under the cedars because the space was open to the sky where the first stars of evening were appearing. A wooden table sat in the center of the cedar room. Its legs had been sawn off to make it low enough so the blocks of wood around it could serve as chairs. A couple of quart mason jars sat on the table. One was filled with daisies and black-eyed Susans. The other one had water in it. To Kate’s left against the cedar wall a gray-looking sheet covered a mound of more cedars. Fern was nowhere in sight.

“It’s pretty, isn’t it? Me and Mommy and Daddy and Kenton could have lived here.”

“But there’s no roof.” Kate was breathing easier without Fern and her hatchet to worry about. She kissed Lorena’s head. The little girl’s hair smelled like cedar, but then everything smelled like cedar in here.

“Fern likes stars.” Lorena looked up at the sky. “I do too.”

“What does she do when it rains?”

“She takes a bath,” Lorena said as if Fern had figured out the perfect way to live.

Kate had to laugh and then Lorena was laughing too. It was all just too crazy. Sitting out in the middle of the woods in a batty woman’s cedar palace as night fell. Yet she didn’t want to go home where people might be waiting to grab Lorena away from her.

She tightened her arms around the little girl. “Whatever are we going to do, sweetie?”

“I don’t know, but I told Fern you’d think of something.” Lorena didn’t sound a bit worried.

“Where is Fern?”

“She went to get something for us to eat,” Lorena said. Then she looked over Kate’s shoulder. “She’s back now.”

Kate jerked around and couldn’t keep from jumping. She hadn’t heard even a whisper of noise as the woman came through the cedars, but there she was standing a few paces behind Kate, holding a sack and the hatchet. Kate tore her eyes away from the hatchet and tried to think of the right thing to say, but Fern spoke first.

“They’re coming.” Her voice was flat without feeling. But then a look of sadness settled on her face as if she knew her cedar palace couldn’t keep them away.