Old Wounds (20 page)

I need to come clean with Elizabeth about this situation with the deposition…but not while her daughter’s here. It’s going to be tricky—she’s not going to like it that I didn’t explain to her why I came here in the first place. How much did Sam tell her? I know he didn’t want her to know about that last day—he was afraid it would change the way she felt about him.

He rolled over and shoved the extra pillow off the bed.
And now I’m afraid it’s gonna change the way she feels about me. And that can’t happen.

Elizabeth stared out her window at the moon-glazed slopes. The swelling golden disk had moved out of sight now and was sinking toward the west, but its light still bathed field and woodland.
It must be nearly full. Probably why Molly and Ursa were gone. Moonlight brings out their wild side.

She glanced at the closed bedroom door.
I wish…Oh, please, Elizabeth! With Rosemary here? And what if I…what if he…?

The faint lingering aroma of Old Spice on the pillowcase mocked her.
Maybe you can dream about him.

It was no gentle rosy-hued idyll, nor was it one of the disturbingly erotic dreams that occasionally jolted her awake, to lie there breathless and troubled at the hunger in her body. No, it was the old familiar nightmare—the bad dream that had haunted her since childhood.

The bad lady at the top of the stairs was waiting for her, and now she had to climb the stairs, though her feet seemed to stick on each step, and the bad lady was glaring down at her, and the bad lady was raising her hand, and the little girl was crying, Help, Help, but no one was
—

“Elizabeth!”

And now the bad lady was grabbing her shoulder and shaking her. The bad lady was saying, “Elizabeth! What’s wrong? Was someone in here?”

She jerked awake and lay there, shivering. Slowly, reality returned. She sat up and turned, to see Phillip standing at her bedside, his left hand on her shoulder. The moonlight glinted off the barrel of the gun he held in his right hand.

She blinked, and at that moment they both became aware of the fact that he was naked.

“Sweet Jesus!” He snatched one of her pillows off the bed and lowered it modestly in front of himself. “I thought I heard you calling for help. I thought…What the hell did I hear?”

Without thinking, Elizabeth reached for him. “Put the gun down, Phillip, and come to bed.”

16.

T
HE
M
ORNING
A
FTER THE
N
IGHT
B
EFORE

Saturday, October 15

All the doubts,
the hesitation, the unspoken fear that her body, no longer young, would reject or be rejected by a lover, all these vanished like the fleeting bad dream. And when she woke in the morning to hear his soft, regular breathing on the pillow beside hers and then to feel his warm hand settling gently on her belly, it was good. It was very good.

“You said you were having a nightmare—I guess coming home and finding your house torn apart like that coulddo it. Were you dreaming ol’ Bib was coming after you?”

Phillip had propped himself up on the pillows and was watching the ever-changing scene beyond the three big east-facing windows. Mountaintops, like islands, emerged from the sea of mist below them, as the red ball of the sun slowly inched its majestic way from behind a central peak. The question hung in the air between them but he continued to study the view, giving her time, time and space to answer.

She studied him—this man in her bed. The creamy white sheets were pulled decorously high on his hairy chest and he kept his eyes on the windows, though one hand rested lovingly on her thigh. Molly and Ursa had been let out before dawn; James was deeply asleep, curled tightly on his little bed, and the house was hushed. The question hung there.

In the early morning light Elizabeth felt suddenly shy. She pulled her nightshirt back on—the long-sleeved tee that had fallen to the floor beside the bed—then resettled herself beside Phillip. His arm lifted and drew her closer as he continued to watch the sun rise. She relaxed against his comforting warmth.

“No, it wasn’t Bib I was dreaming about. It’s just a nightmare I have now and then—have had for as long as I can remember. It comes when I’m feeling stressed. Sam got used to it—he said he’d hear me calling out and he knew to wake me and save me from the bad lady.”

Briefly, she described the recurring pattern of the dream, trying to make light of it and wondering at the same time if Rosemary was awake. Phillip was watching her attentively.

“You’ve always had this dream?” He was lightly running his fingers along her arm. “Is it based on something in your past? When I was a kid I had a recurring dream about drowning, and my mother told me it was probably because our family house got flooded during a hurricane when I was four or five. But I didn’t remember the hurricane at all.”

“I think it’s from seeing
Snow White
at a young and extremely impressionable age. Evidently the wicked stepmother scared the bejesus out of me and I had to be removed from the theater—shrieking.” She laughed and captured his roving hand in hers.

Phillip had made a discreet exit from her bedroom to collect his clothes. Elizabeth dressed quickly and went to the kitchen, thankful that Rosemary was not yet up.
I’ll tell her…but not quite yet. Although I feel like it’s written in neon all over me. What a night! What a very surprising night!

She busied herself with the coffeemaker and a pan of frying sausage. She and Rosemary had tidied the kitchen the night before, while Phillip replaced drawers, rehung pictures, and righted heavy objects in the other rooms. The sight of accustomed order was reassuring.
Accustomed order…And just where does Phillip belong in the scheme of my life? I thought I’d learned to rely on myself, and then a silly nightmare has me yowling for help.

In spite of herself, she smiled. Somewhere, far in the back of her head, the Hallelujah Chorus was shouting out in triumph. She took a large blue crockery bowl and began to break eggs into it, nodding in time to the crashing chords that reverberated in her imagination.

“Mum, how in the world can you look so cheerful?” Rosemary was standing in the kitchen doorway, dressed, but yawning and rubbing her eyes. “It’s going to take most of the day to get those books back on the shelves. I’ll help, of course, but I’m meeting Jared at noon and—”

“Don’t worry, sweetie, Phillip’s going to help me.” Elizabeth ducked her head into the refrigerator in search of some cheese to add to the eggs. She wondered if her daughter had noticed how
beautiful
the name “Phillip” was. She hoped that she could maintain a straight face till Rosemary left for her date.

Phillip ambled into the room just as she was taking the sausage out of the pan. “Good morning!” His cheerful smile included them both. “Do I smell coffee?” Without waiting for an answer, he took a mug from the counter and filled it, pouring a mug for each of them as he did so.

Elizabeth could feel him watching her as she stirred the beaten eggs in the sizzling sausage drippings. “Rosie, would you put forks and napkins on the table? And juice?”

While Rosemary was out of the room, Elizabeth turned to look at Phillip, a thing she’d dared not do under her daughter’s acute eye. They were standing only a few feet apart: he with his coffee mug in one hand, she with a spatula. All the words that had not yet been said seemed to travel unspoken between them, binding them together.
Is this the communion of souls I’ve read about?
His soft brown eyes were locked with hers and a look of deep tenderness mixed with
Could it be sadness?
was on his face.

Her daughter seemed oblivious to the seething, middle aged emotions that roiled the very air around the table. Rosemary ate her breakfast and chatted amiably with Phillip, asking about the time he had served with Sam Goodweather in the navy.

“Pa never talked much about it; of course, he was really ambivalent about the whole Vietnam era. It seemed to me that he felt…tainted by having been in the military at that time. Once he told me that he sometimes wished he’d gone to Canada and avoided serving in a war he had grown to be ashamed of.”

Phillip looked unhappy but said only that Sam had nothing to be ashamed of. “None of us knew when we signed up how things would go. My dad was in the big one, WW Two, and I grew up feeling proud of the fact that he had fought the bad guys. Things were more black and white back then—a clearer line between good and evil. Now…”

He’s going to run his hand over his head,
thought Elizabeth, anticipating the familiar gesture that meant Hawkins was perturbed in some way.

He ran his hand over his head, as if polishing his shiny balding pate. “Now it’s really screwed up—young men and women dying in Iraq for what turns out to be ‘faulty intelligence.’ The country we were going to turn into a democracy slipping closer and closer toward anarchy…innocent civilians dying right and left…the United States,
my
country, sponsoring and justifying torture. And it’s all run by guys who’ve always managed to avoid putting their own asses in harm’s way, who have no idea—”

He caught himself and shrugged. “Sorry, Rosemary. You punched the wrong button. Let’s just say I love my country but I’m not so happy with the way it’s being run just now. Why don’t you tell me about the courses you’re teaching?”

“Miss Birdie, did you notice any strange cars coming and going yesterday? I wondered because—”

“Nary a one, Lizzie Beth. ’Course, I was gone from home what you might call the better part of the day. Me and Dor’thy went up to her brother’s place to git us some apples to can. I aim to fix me some dried apples too. Git you’ns a chair in here by the stove, Lizzie Beth. Hit’s turned off right cool this mornin’. Reckon they’ll be givin’ frost afore long.”

Elizabeth, Rosemary, and Phillip had spent the morning dealing with the chaos left behind by the unknown intruder. The books that had been flung to the floor were now stacked in neat, mostly alphabetical piles to await a thorough vacuuming. “They needed it, anyway,” Elizabeth had declared. “But not now—it’ll take most of a day. I’ll do it later in the week.” Once the rest of the house had been restored to livability, Rosemary had left to meet Jared and have lunch with him before visiting his one-time stepmother.

After a quick sandwich, Elizabeth and Phillip had gone to see Miss Birdie. Elizabeth’s little neighbor was a one-woman traffic monitor for Ridley Branch, almost always aware of any strange vehicles that passed on the seldom-traveled country road. And it was just possible that she had seen Maitland’s vehicle.

“I heared as someone had broke into yore place. I was talkin’ this mornin’ to Bernice and she said her boy had heard it on the scanner. Said the high sheriff was up yore way last night.” Birdie’s bright eyes darted to Phillip. “Hit’s a good thing Lizzie Beth’s got her a man to stay there, what with Ben off in Florida. I know you’ll take good care of my Lizzie Beth, now, won’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Phillip seemed to be blushing but he returned Miss Birdie’s gaze without wavering. “I mean to do that very thing.”

Elizabeth wondered if the other surprising event of the previous night was obvious to Miss Birdie. Her neighbor’s sharp eyes and keen intuition were uncanny at times.
Or maybe Bernice’s boy heard it on the scanner. God knows, very little escapes my neighbors.

Miss Birdie was nodding in approval. “Now, that’s what I told Dor’thy. When she heared that Ben had gone to Florida to see his mama, Dor’thy took to worryin’ ’bout Lizzie Beth way up there and all alone.

“‘They’s so many new folks comin’ into the county and all and you don’t know nothin’ about them,’ she says. ‘Shoot, Dor’thy,’ I tole her, ‘Lizzie Beth’s got her a gun and I know she ain’t afraid to use it. What’s more, she’s got her a feller. I reckon he’ll see she ain’t too lonely.’”

Miss Birdie’s eyes twinkled at Phillip. “Why, I believe—”

“How
is
Dorothy, Miss Birdie?” Elizabeth broke in, desperate to change the subject. “I haven’t seen her car here in a while. Is she looking after someone again?”

Miss Birdie’s cousin Dorothy had spent much of her life as an aide in nursing homes and, though she was now well into her seventies and retired, she continued to “see about” any of her ailing, elderly friends and relations who were in need of an energetic and bustling helper.