Bone Deep (31 page)

Sarah stood
back
and watched in morbid fascination. She should stop Tom, pull him off
before he killed Reed
, but a primitive part of her relished every
blow and
hoped Tom
would
kill him.

It took the sound of a
n approaching
car and the glare of headlights flooding the yard to shake her
free
from her detached observation. “Tom, stop. You’ll kill him
.
”
She moved closer and grabbed
Tom’s arm the next time he raised it.
It was like trying to hold back a
steel piston
.
He tore free and
once more
slammed his fist
into Reed’s face, the impact of flesh on flesh making a squelching sound.

“Stop
now,
”
she said again.

Tom
stopped. Kneeling over his former guardian, he heaved deep, hoarse breaths
and
stared
into
the wrecked face.

After a moment he look
ed
up at her. “Are you all right?” Tom rose and stepped over Reed’s body to touch the front of Sarah’s shirt with one bloody hand. “He cut you.”

Charlie Burkett climbed out of his pickup and ran toward them. “Fire engine’s on the way!” He looked at the man on the ground. “Je
hoshaphat
! Who is that? What happened?”

“Arthur Reed. He set the barn on fire and held a knife on me,” Sarah said.

Charlie looked at the
conflagration
. “You didn’t get the livestock out?”

“No. I couldn’t.”

“Cripes.” He looked from Reed’s mangled face to Tom,
whose
arm
was
wrapped around Sarah’s shoulders, then back to the burning barn. “It’s too late to put it out with buckets. All we can do is wait for the fire truck to get here.”

The three of them st
ared at the leaping flames that
engulfed the
lower part
of the barn.
They could feel the searing heat even from this distance
.

“I woke up when Arnie started barking and whining.” Charlie said. “Went to shut him up and saw
the light
over here. I thought maybe it was a grass fire so I had Mary call the fire department before I came over.”

“We should wet the
area
around the barn.” Tom pointed to the licks of flame that were
starting to crawl across the grass
.

They gathered buckets from the house and Sarah worked the old hand pump
in the yard
while the men carried pails of water to douse the fire fanning
rapidly across the yard
. As sparks and embers rained around her, she pumped until her arms ached. When
at last
she heard the wail of the fire engine, she thought she
’
d never heard so blessed a sound.

The rest of the evening was a blur. Sarah remembered the flashing red lights of the fi
re engine and more
neighbors
arriving
to
see if they could help
. It
appeared one wall of
the barn might collapse out onto the yard. The firefighters fought
it
with the spray from their hoses and finally it toppled inward with a crash
. The
shower of sparks
shot
high into the sky.

Sheriff Ziegler arrived and
questioned both Sarah and Tom
. She repeated what she
’
d told Charlie. “He set the barn on fire and held a knife on me.”
And
Tom gave the same brief response. The sheriff took the knife as evidence, looked at the savagel
y beaten, barely breathing man
on the ground and wrote something in his notebook
.

“All right then.
Seems pretty cut and dried to me,
”
he said.

An ambulance arrived to transport Reed to the emergency room. The driver wanted to take Sarah too. “You should have that cut stitched and those burns
on your hands
treated.”

“
They’re not bad, o
nly a little singed. I don’t want to go to the hospital.
I have a first aid kit here.
” She stood firm, clinging to Tom’s hand.

The ambulance driver shook his head, but closed the door of the van and drove off, lights flashing.

Mary Burkett and Edna Peterson ushered Sarah indoors to
tend
to her
injuries
. Edna brewed tea
, while
Mary washed and sealed the cut with butterfly bandages then rubbed ointment onto Sarah’s reddened, blistered skin. Mary also
tended Tom’s injuries, rinsing
blood off his face and hands, packing his swollen knuckles in ice, bandaging a cut on his forehead and giving him another bag of ice to hold against his swelling eye socket.

The sky had turned the gray-pink of dawn before the firemen were satisfied the last of the smoldering embers was out. They finally drove away, leaving charred ruins behind. The stench hung in the air in an invisible, choking cloud.

Tom
wrapped an
arm around Sarah’s waist as she swayed with exhaustion in the middle of the muddy, soot-covered yard. Some of the neighbors stopped on their way to their cars to offer Sarah condolences on her loss and promises of assistance in rebuilding.

The Petersons tried to ignore Tom
’s presence at her side. T
he Burketts acknowledged him, and Charlie even shook his hand. People’s reactions to
Tom
were as varied as their personalities. Some didn’t even stop to say goodbye, simply drifted away to their cars and pickups now that the show was over.

When the last person had left, only the sheriff remained. “I may need to ask more questions in the next few days, especially if Reed doesn’t
survive
. The man wasn’t looking too good when they took him away. Don’t worry though. I’m sure it will be clear to any court this was a case of self-defense.
I
f ever a man deserved a beating it’s that fellow.”

After the sheriff’s cruiser
drove off
, Sarah and Tom were finally left alone to face the smoking destruction of the barn.

“Are you all ri
ght?” Tom asked. “Why don’t you
have a bath and lie down?”

“What are you going to do?”

“Bury them.” He nodded at the pile of rubble.

“You don’t have to do that. You should rest too.”

“I want to take care of it. I need to do something to make up for...” His hands clenched at his sides and he stared at the ground. “I’m sorry for making all of this happen.
Reed
was right. I should have stayed away from you. I’ve brought you nothing but trouble.”

Sarah grabbed his shoulders and forced him to look into her eyes. “No! Forget everything that man ever said. You did nothing wrong. Not ever.
He
made this happen
.
I don’t know how many more ways I can
tell you
. I’m happy you came here. You’ve”
—
she hesitated over the melodramatic words, but they were the truth and he needed to hear them
—
“brought my heart to life again.”

She
took his hands,
lifted them to her mouth and kissed the back of
each one
.

“We’ll take care of
burying what’s left of Edison and Millie later
. Right now I have something more important for you to do. I want you to come inside with me. I
need
you to hold me.”

His eyes were glistening as he nodded.

They bathed together in a steaming tub of water.

Tom traced the slice across Sarah’s chest with a finger then leaned in to place a suturing row of kisses along it. She removed the bandages from his hands and carefully washed his swollen knuckles and battered face.

They gently kissed and touched everywhere, reassuring each other that they were safe
, and a
fterward they lay down to
rest
while the sun
marked
the passing of another day.

Chapter
Seventeen

“Are you ready for this?” Sarah asked.

She and Tom
sat in the parked
Plymouth
watching
the people milling around the picnic tables, the grill
and horseshoe pitch in the Brodbeck
s
’
yard. It was a fine October day,
probably
the last chance for an outdoor event, and a large portion of the community had turned out for it.

Tom nodded, but
Sarah could see the tension in his face
.

They got out of the car and walked toward Betty Brodbeck, who was cutting cake at the dessert table. At least there was one friendly face to welcome them. Betty laid down
her
knife
,
embraced Sarah and took Tom’s hand. “I’m so glad you could come.”

“Thank you for inviting us.” Sarah was grateful to her for much more than the invitation.

Betty lowered
her voice. “The best way to get people to stop gossiping is to let them get to know Tom. I know it’s kind of like being on trial but if you’re going to stay around here, you have to do it.” She
squeezed his hand
. “So why don’t you grab yourself a
bottle of pop
from the wash tub and I’ll introduce you around.”

Sarah watched Betty le
a
d Tom from group to group. Clutching a bottle of Orange Crush dripping with melted ice, Tom stuck out his hand to one person after another. Betty was a hard-headed
woman
and no one dared cross her by refusing to greet Tom. In thirty minutes she went farther toward
encouraging
Tom’s acceptance into the community than Sarah could have in months. But then
she herself
was still considered an outsider from
Chicago
.

Betty could enforce their politeness for today, but deep-seated prejudices would not be so easily abandoned. And h
ow much ground would be lost when the judgmental townsfolk learned
Sarah was pregnant?

She
’
d driven to the doctor in
Camden
the previous Friday to take the test
and gotten the results by mail
yesterday. It
had been
a week of wondering, worrying and keeping her anxious secret from Tom. She
knew
he
’d
sensed her tension all week.
He’d sometimes watched
her with a worried frown.
But she hadn’t wanted to say anything until she knew the results.

When she received the envelope from the doctor’s office, she had closed herself in the bathroom
with it
. She read the announcement that her life was about to change over and over until the words blurred in front of her eyes.

L
ast night
hadn’t felt like the right time to tell Tom. He w
as anxious enough about attending the
gathering
at the Brodbecks’ house and there was no point in adding to his worries. She would tell him soon, but for now the news belonged to her alone. The idea of a child growing inside her filled her with
both excitement and dread
. Her feelings were so conflict
ed
she couldn’t begin to sort them out. The only thing she knew with absolute certainty was that when she
told
Tom, she mustn’t reveal any
reservations
. He already
considered himself unworthy of her. She certainly didn’t want him to
sense that she feared having his child. But
,
to be honest,
she did.

S
arah
watched Betty introduce Tom to stiff-necked Esther and Carl Blanch, who barely nodded before turning away. Together she and Tom were already crossing one hurdle, gaining grudging acceptance in this community. The idea of having a child who would always have to fight bigotry was frightening. Sarah pictured a day, six or seven years in the future, when her little boy or girl would come home crying because the other kids
teased
about being the
freak’s
bastard. Her heart ached for the persecution her child
might
suffer.