In the Midnight Rain (36 page)

Nothing to worry about.

She ordered a giant root beer float for herself and a scoop of vanilla in a dish for April, and carried both over to one of the tables under the awning. And worried.

The thing was, when there was an extra, there was no question about what was happening. With a skipped cycle, however, how could you know? Especially if you'd been having wild sex for—

Her heart squeezed.

In the end, she knew what she had to do. There was another teeny little town about ten minutes up the road. She'd go there, to some anonymous drugstore, and buy a pregnancy test. No way she'd go into any store in Gideon for it; everyone in town would be speculating by nightfall.

Intolerable thought.

It was probably nothing, she told herself. Nobody ever got accidentally pregnant when they were being careful, not in this day and age. She'd never even had a scare. This would turn out to be nothing, too.

But all the way down the road and back, she remembered little things that scared her. The depth of her sleep. Her need for naps. Her voracious appetite, big even for her.

Most of all, she thought of her easy tears. She wasn't a weepy person. She just didn't think it ever solved anything. She didn't cry over milk cartons or Hallmark commercials on television. She'd never shed a tear at a movie in her life, and even at her grandfather's funeral, when she knew she'd miss him like crazy and she'd never see him again, she'd only cried a few tears.

She didn't like to cry.

And yet, over the past couple of weeks, she'd been sniffling over everything.

Doesn't mean anything, one part of her said. She'd been immersed in the emotional and passionate tale of a woman who'd loved and then lost everything. She'd gathered the tales of boys killed too young in Vietnam, and watched those they'd left behind struggle—even so many years later—with the notion of their loss. She was half in love with a man whose life had been so rife with losses that his best friend called him Job.

Half in love?
echoed that cynical little voice.

She narrowed her eyes and ignored it. The
point
was, there were plenty of reasons to feel emotional and weepy.

But when she got the kit to the cottage, her hands were shaking. Deliberately, she set the small paper bag on the counter and went back out to get her clean, folded clothes.

The test blared at her from the counter. She couldn't stand to wait for morning, and she growled, then carried it into the bathroom and paced around while she waited for the signs to appear. Yes or no.

It didn't take long.

She stared at the plus sign for a long, long time, unable to summon a single reaction. Then, without even knowing she was going to do it, she walked across the room, picked up the phone, and dialed her grandmother.

The line was crackly with distant lightning, and Ellie wondered, as she listened to the phone ring, if this storm stretched as far as her grandmother's farm. It rang four times. Ellie was about to hang up when Geraldine picked up. "Hello?" She sounded impatient and breathless.

"Hey, Grandma. Did I bring you running?"

"Ellie! I was just in the bathroom." She gave a soft hoot of feminine laughter. "I've been thinking about you all day, sugar. How are you?"

Ellie closed her eyes at the swell of relief in her, and leaned her forehead against the wall. "Well, it's been a long twenty-four hours. I'm pretty beat."

"You don't sound good at all. You been eating right?"

"I have," she said, straightening. "Listen, I just called to tell you I'm almost done here and I'll be home to see you sometime tomorrow evening. Might be late, though, so leave a light on."

"Tomorrow?" Happiness lightened her voice. "Ya'll getting this storm? I don't know if you oughta be driving if it's still this bad. They had a tornado over in Carthage, and we've had the sirens on and off all day."

"Hmmm." Ellie peered out the windows. "It's raining pretty hard, but I haven't heard anything else. I'll keep an eye on the weather, but otherwise, I'll be there."

"Give me a call and let me know when you're setting out. I'll fix you something and leave it on the stove. You still have your key, don't you?"

"Yeah." Ellie felt a sudden push of tears. "I have so much to tell you, Grandma."

"I'll look forward to it, sweetie. We'll have a nice long gossip."

"I can't wait."

The decision made, Ellie felt shaky and completely exhausted. She turned the ringer off the phone, and stripping off her dirty clothes, she showered, then fell, barely dry, into her bed. She thought about turning the box fan on, to cool her overheated body—a body, she thought just before sleep overtook her, that had another one in it. How odd.

Just as sleep edged over her brain, blurring everything, just as her muscles were falling slack—finally—a thought bolted through her. She opened her eyes and rolled over, a rush of adrenaline making her heart race. "Oh, my God," she whispered aloud.

She tugged on clean clothes, scrabbled around looking for an umbrella she'd seen in the closet, and rushed out, walking purposefully, her head down against the rising wind and wet. Through the trees and rain, she glimpsed the tin-roofed house she'd seen a dozen times. She'd never tried to get to the house itself before, but there had to be a way. Gwen got to the river somehow.

Ellie walked to the place where the chair had been set up, then walked along the bank until she spied a raked path that curved around a live oak hung heavily with moss. She ducked under it, getting even more soaked in the process, then hurried up the path.

It opened up on a small garden, planted with squashes and corn and beans—Ellie was in the backyard. She stopped for a minute, and pressed a palm to the spot just below her ribs, a place that almost hurt with anticipation.

The back door was propped open beyond a screen door, and Ellie called out in warning. "Mrs. Laisser!"

She skirted the garden and called out again, "Gwen! It's Ellie Connor."

The woman came to the door holding a dishtowel. For a long moment, she simply stood there, her hands wrapped together under the fabric, her face showing nothing. Then she seemed to come to some decision and pushed open the door.

"Come on in, Ellie. I been expecting you."

19

A
s Blue cooked in anticipation of Ellie's coming over, he felt restless and edgy, a state he blamed on the storm. All around there were tornado warnings, and although they didn't seem to hit around Gideon too often, he was worried about hail and what good-sized stones might do to the greenhouses. He'd built them from reinforced glass because they did sometimes get some hellacious hail, but you could only prepare so much.

Allowing himself a good belt of bourbon, he turned the small television in the kitchen to the Weather Channel to keep an eye on things. The bourbon eased his worry, and he battered the chicken pieces and set them to frying, then sliced tomatoes, red onions, and cucumbers and mixed them with a vinaigrette heavy with herbs that Lanie had taught him to make. He made a pitcher of iced tea and made sure there was ice, then called down to the cabin.

No answer. With a slight frown, he glanced out the kitchen windows and saw her car was in the driveway. She was probably just sleeping after staying up all night, and he'd leave her to it. On the Weather Channel, they reported tornado watches for a neighboring county, but it looked like Gideon would escape. Lots of rain and wind, but not even hail warning. He flipped it off and turned on the radio, where he'd hear weather warnings, but could also get some music as well.

* * *

Gwen stood aside and let Ellie pass. "You hungry, girl?"

Thinking of her day, Ellie couldn't remember when she'd last eaten, except the root beer float at the DQ. The kitchen she entered smelled of fried meat and onions and made her mouth water, but she didn't want to overstep her bounds. "No, thank you," she said.

But as if to make her a liar, her stomach growled. Loudly.

Gwen chuckled. "Go on and sit down." She nodded toward a table shoved against the windows on one side of the room. "I don't cook a whole lot no more, since it's just me, but I lost about ten pounds a couple months ago and the doctor took to nagging me so much I promised I'd make a real supper at least a few nights a week."

Ellie settled on the edge of the chair. Her heart kept up its thready, excited rhythm, and it had been going for such a stretch now that she thought she was probably flushed the color of roses. Outside, the rain poured down, the gray sheets making a cave of the homey kitchen, a place of shelter and protection. "Mrs. Laisser—"

"Not yet, honey," Gwen said abruptly. She put down a plate of golden fried pork chops and piles of stuffing. "It's nothing but Stove Top, you know, but I like it a lot. You want some corn?"

The food smelled so good she nearly swooned. "Let me help you somehow."

"Don't be silly." Taking a pair of tongs from a drawer, she pulled out a steaming ear of corn and put it on Ellie's plate. "There's butter on the door of the fridge if you want."

"Thanks."

Gwen filled her own plate and sat down with Ellie. "You don't mind if we say grace, do you?"

"No, not at all." She bent her head dutifully.

"Will you do me the honor?"

For an instant, Ellie couldn't remember a single one of the prayers that had been drilled into her since childhood, but then there was one on her tongue, "Graciously heavenly father, for what we are about to receive we thank you. May it nourish our bodies, Amen."

Gwen was smiling when Ellie lifted her eyes. "That was nice." She lifted a sharp knife over her chop. Then she took a deep breath and said, "Now, what was it you came over to talk to me about?"

Ellie pressed her lips together. "I went to talk to Hattie Gordon yesterday, and all of her stories helped me pinpoint almost everything."

"Mmm." Gwen gestured. "Eat while you talk, child. What'd you figure?"

"I think Mabel gave up her music to atone for the sin of killing Peaches," she said, rubbing butter over the corn, "I even think I know where she went. "

Gwen lifted her head.

Ellie took a bit of the corn and it exploded into her mouth, all sweet crispness and salt and butter and she gave a soft cry. "Oh, that is so good!" She took another bite, and another, aware of Gwen smiling at her, but suddenly so hungry she was almost faint. Taking a moment to blot her lips, she explained, "I worked all night and I don't think I had much to eat yesterday either."

"Merciful heavens," Gwen said softly, "you are so much like him."

"Him?" Ellie echoed, but she knew. She knew.

"Marcus told me he was over to talk to you this afternoon."

Ellie carefully wiped her fingers, and a strange heat, anger and hurt, welled up in her. "I can understand everything," she said. "But not why you left your child."

Mabel Beauvais took off her glasses, the big lenses that obscured the still-classic line of her cheekbone and the unmistakably beautiful eyes. Few wrinkles marred the tawny skin. "An eye for an eye," she said with a sigh. "I took her son, so she took mine."

"Oh, of course," Ellie whispered.

"I wasn't thinking clearly, you know?" She rubbed the bridge of her nose. "I think about it all now and it seems like another person lived that life, loved that man, and hated him so much she could shoot him. I just couldn't think straight for loving him. I hid away and had our son and he wouldn't even marry me. Made me bear that
shame
—" She took a breath. "And I left James with his grandma, trying to think what to do... "

"Did James ever know you?"

Mabel/Gwen picked up her fork and eyed the contents of her plate with little interest. "Not as his mama. I didn't come back here for a couple of years, and by then, there wasn't much left for me to do but just be the neighbor lady. She gave me that much, anyway."

"Eat," Ellie said, and touched her hand.

The old woman raised her eyes, and there was sorrow in them. "I saw it the minute you walked up to me on those banks. You walk like him, have a lot of his same movements. And you really have his laugh, and his smile—that little overlapping tooth, that's your daddy's." She stabbed a triangle of meat and ate it. "When I saw you at a distance, it like to give me a heart attack."

Ellie shook her head, all that emotion welling up in her throat again. She poked at the food on her plate. "I can't quite take it all in."

"Guess you got a little more of a story than you bargained for, didn't you?"

Ellie let go of a helpless little laugh. "You could say that." She ate some of the stuffing, the tension easing out of her. "And we need to talk about that. About what you want me to write, and not write."

"There's plenty of time for all that, sugar. For now, let's just eat, shall we?"

Blue was putting the last of the fried chicken in the oven to keep warm when the sirens went off—tornado warning. The sound went through him like an electric shock. He opened the door to the basement. "Lanie! You hear that?"

"Get down here, child."

"I gotta get Ellie. Sasha!" his voice was harsh, and the dog came skittering around the corner. "Go," he said, and pointed. "You got the cat?"