Dream a Little Dream (20 page)

She sped blindly back to Heartache Mountain with her stomach twisted into a knot. Old memories came back to her of Dwayne’s faith healing. She remembered a woman who’d had one leg longer than the other, and she could see Dwayne now, kneeling before her, grasping her longer leg at the shoe.

In the name of Jesus Christ, heal! Heal, I say!

And everyone watching on television saw the leg get shorter.

What they didn’t see was the small action Dwayne had performed when he’d first knelt before her. As he’d lifted her longer leg, he’d surreptitiously slipped the back of her shoe down on her heel, and when he’d cried out to heaven, he’d simply pushed it back up. From the audience it looked as if her leg were getting shorter.

Rachel remembered exactly when her love for her husband had turned to contempt. It was the night she discovered that he wore a tiny radio transmitter in his ear during the healing services. One of his aides sat backstage and whispered the details of various illnesses audience members had noted on the cards they filled out before the broadcast. When Dwayne called out the names of people he’d never set eyes on, as well as precise facts about their illnesses, his fame as a faith healer had spread.

It had spread to a woman with wooden parrot earrings who somehow believed Dwayne Snopes’s widow could heal her dying granddaughter.

Her fingers convulsed on the steering wheel. A short time earlier, she’d been daydreaming about making love with Gabe again, but reality had just hit her in the face. She had to get out of this town soon, or she’d go crazy. The chest was a dead end. She needed to find Dwayne’s Bible and pray that it would tell her what she wanted to know.

Except she didn’t pray anymore.

Edward’s soft sigh drew her back. They’d pulled up in front of the cottage, and she realized she had forgotten about the ice cream. She regard him with dismay. “Oh, baby, I forgot. I’m sorry.”

He stared straight ahead, not protesting, not saying anything, merely once again accepting the fact that life had handed him the short end of the stick.

“We’ll go back.”

“Don’t have to. It’s okay.”

But it wasn’t okay. She turned around and headed straight to the Ingles grocery store where she bought him a Dove Bar. He dropped the wrapper in a trash can by the front door, licked the chocolate, and they set off across the parking lot toward the Escort.

That was when she saw that all of its tires had been slashed.

R
achel got
up before six the next morning, even though she hadn’t slept well. Barefoot and wearing her customary sleeping attire, a pair of panties and a man’s work shirt she’d found in her closet, she padded into the kitchen.

As she put on a pot of coffee, she watched the buttery early-morning light splash through the back windows and make a crosshatched pattern on the scarred old farm table. Outside, dew sparkled in the grass, and the daylilies turned up their bright-orange trumpets. The pink crepe myrtle tree at the edge of the woods seemed blurred in the morning light, rather like a fanciful older woman in a feathery boa.

After the ugliness of last night, her eyes misted at the simple beauty around her.
Thank you, Annie Glide, for your magical cottage
.

If only this beautiful place could fix her troubles. She had no money to replace the Escort’s tires, and she didn’t know how she’d manage. Getting to work wouldn’t be a problem. It was a long walk, but she could make it. But what about Edward? Last night Kristy had come to get them, and each day she took him to and from the day-care center, but she’d be moving soon, and then what?

Rachel had to find the Bible.

The morning was too precious to spoil with any more worry, especially when she knew she’d have plenty of time to do that later on in the day while she worked. The coffee was done, and she poured it into an old green mug that still bore the remnants of a Peter Rabbit decal, then carried it toward the front of the house.

This was her favorite time of the day, before Edward awakened, when everything was new and fresh. Sipping her coffee in the creaky wooden rocker on the front porch while the rest of the world slept was more precious to her than all of the luxuries of her old life with Dwayne. Then she could dream her new dreams, the little ones. A small backyard where Edward and his friends could play, maybe a garden, and a dog. She wanted him to have a pet.

She slipped the dead bolt on the front door with her free hand, turned the knob, and pushed open the screen. As she stepped out onto the porch and drew the clean mountain air into her lungs, a feeling of almost indescribable bliss came over her. No matter what else happened, she had this moment.

She turned toward the rocker, and her euphoria evaporated. Her mug clattered to the wooden floor, sending hot coffee splashing up onto her bare feet and legs, but she barely noticed. All she could see was the single crude word someone had painted in red on the front of the house, right between the windows.

Sinner
.

Kristy came rushing out onto the front porch, her long cotton nightgown flapping around her legs. “What’s wrong? I heard—Oh, no . . .”

“Bastards,” Rachel hissed.

Kristy’s hand flew to her throat. “It’s so ugly. How could anyone in this town do something so ugly?”

“They hate me, and they don’t want me here.”

“I’m calling Gabe.”

“No!”

But Kristy was already running inside.

The beautiful morning had turned into something obscene. Rachel cleaned up the spilled coffee with an old dish towel, as if spilled coffee was the worst outrage on the front porch. She was heading inside to get dressed when Gabe’s pickup roared up the lane, tires spitting gravel. He parked it at a sharp angle and threw himself from the cab just as Kristy emerged from the front door in a seersucker robe.

Gabe looked as if he’d thrown on his clothes. His hair was rumpled and he’d stuffed bare feet into a pair of battered white sneakers. Only the day before they had been making love, but now he was regarding both of them with his take-no-prisoners look.

“Gabe, I’m so glad you’re here,” Kristy cried. “Look at this!”

But he’d already seen the ugly graffiti, and he glared at it as if the power of his vision could annihilate the image.

“You and I are paying Odell Hatcher a visit this morning, Rachel.” His eyes stalled on the long expanse of bare leg extending from beneath her shirt, and it took him a moment to recover. “I want the police patrolling up here.”

“The town’s turned mean,” Kristy said softly. While Rachel stood silently, she told him about the tire slashing and what had happened at the Petticoat Junction Cafe. “It’s as if Dwayne Snopes broke people’s hearts, and the only way they can get back at him is to take it out on Rachel.”

“The police won’t care,” Rachel said. “They want me gone just like everyone else.”

“We’ll see about that,” he replied grimly.

“I don’t want you gone,” Kristy said.

“You should. I’ve been so selfish. I hadn’t realized . . . This is going to spill over and affect both of you.”

Kristy’s eyes flashed. “As if I care.”

“You just worry about yourself,” Gabe said.

Before she could argue with them, the screen door creaked and Edward appeared. He held Horse at his side by one long ear and rubbed an eye with his fist. His faded blue two-piece pajamas were too short in the leg, and the decal of kick-boxing Dalmatians on the front was so cracked and faded Rachel felt ashamed of not doing a better job providing for him.

“I heard a mean voice.”

She rushed to his side. “It’s all right, sweetheart. It was just Mr. Bonner. We were talking.”

Edward spotted Gabe. His mouth set in a mulish line. “He’s too loud.”

Rachel quickly turned him away. “Let’s get dressed.”

He let her take his hand without protest, but as she opened the screen door he muttered a word that she fervently hoped Gabe hadn’t heard.

“Butthead.”

By the time she and Edward were dressed, Gabe had disappeared, but as she entered the kitchen to help Edward with his breakfast, she caught sight of him on the front porch with a can of paint and a brush. She poured milk on Edward’s cereal, then went out to him.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Yes, I do.” He’d covered the graffiti, but it still showed through. “It’s going to take a second coat. I’ll finish it up after work.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“No, you won’t.”

She knew she should insist, but she didn’t have the stomach, and she suspected Gabe knew it. “Thanks.”

Not long after, he poked his head in the house and told her to get in the truck. “We’re going to see Odell Hatcher.”

Twenty minutes later, they were seated in front of Salvation’s chief of police. Rail-thin, with sparse, grizzled hair and a meat-hook nose, Hatcher regarded Rachel over the top of a pair of black plastic half glasses as he took down the information Gabe gave him.

“We’ll look into it,” he said when he was done. But she detected a glimmer of satisfaction in his eyes and guessed that he wouldn’t extend himself more than he had to. Hatcher’s wife had been a Temple member, something that had no doubt embarrassed him after the corruption was uncovered.

She decided it was time to go on the offensive. “Chief Hatcher, your department confiscated my car the day Dwayne ran off. There was a Bible inside, and I’d like to know what happened to it. It’s a family piece, of no value to anyone, and I want to get it back.”

“The car and everything in it went to cover Dwayne’s debts.”

“I realize that, but I still need to know where the Bible is now.”

She could see that Hatcher didn’t want to extend himself in even the smallest way; however, it was one thing to ignore the televangelist’s widow, but quite another to do it with a member of Salvation’s most prominent family watching.

“I’ll check,” he said with a grudging nod.

“Thank you.”

Odell disappeared. Gabe got up and wandered over to the room’s only window, which looked out onto a side street that boasted a dry cleaners and an auto-parts store.

He spoke from the window, his voice low and troubled. “You worry me, Rachel.”

“Why?”

“You’re reckless. You plunge into things without any thought to the consequences.”

She wondered if he was talking about yesterday. So far, neither of them had alluded to what had happened.

“You’re too impetuous, and it’s dangerous. So far, no one has actually tried to harm you, but who knows how long that will last?”

“I won’t be here long. Once I find the money, I’ll leave Salvation so fast . . .”

“
If
you find the money.”

“I will. And then I’m going as far from here as possible. Seattle, maybe. I’ll buy a car that runs, and a pile of books and toys for Edward, and a little house that feels like a home. Then I’ll—”

She stopped speaking as the police chief reentered the office and set an official-looking document in front of her. “Here’s a list of everything we found in the car.”

She gazed down at the neatly printed column of items: window scraper, registration papers, small chest, a lipstick. On it went, listing everything that had been in the car. She came to the end.

“Someone’s made a mistake. There’s no mention of the Bible.”

“Then it wasn’t in the car,” Hatcher said.

“It was. I put it there myself.”

“That was three years ago. People’s memories are funny.”

“There’s nothing funny about my memory. I want to know what happened to that Bible!”

“I have no idea. It wasn’t in the car or it would have been listed on this report.” Hatcher regarded her with small, cold eyes. “Remember that you were under a lot of stress that day.”

“This doesn’t have anything to do with stress!” She wanted to scream at him. Instead, she took a deep breath to steady herself. “The chest that was in the car . . .” She pointed toward the report. “It ended up back at the house. How did that happen?”

“It was probably considered part of the household furnishings. The car was sold separately at auction.”

“I put the chest and the Bible in the car at the same time. Someone in your department screwed up.”

He didn’t like that. “We’ll increase patrols around the Glide cottage, Mrs. Snopes, but that won’t change the way the town feels about having you back. Take my advice and find another place to live.”

“She has as much right to live here as anyone else,” Gabe said softly.

Hatcher pulled off his half glasses and tapped them on the desk. “I’m just stating the facts. You weren’t around when Mrs. Snopes and her husband nearly tore this town apart. They didn’t care who they took money from as long as they could feather their own nest. I know you’ve had a hard time lately, Gabe, and I can only guess you’re not thinking straight. Otherwise, you’d be more careful in your choice of friends.” The disrespectful way he regarded Rachel told her he believed Gabe was supporting her in exchange for sex. Since that was exactly what she’d proposed at one time, she supposed she shouldn’t feel so offended.