I Shall Not Want (13 page)

“Where’s he going to stay? Hmm? Are you going to pay for a room for him?”

She bit her lip. As much as it galled her to admit it, she hadn’t considered that issue.

“You see?” Russ went on. “You can’t—”

“There are two extra bedrooms in the rectory,” she said, thinking out loud.

“No.” The word was like a lodge pole driven into the ground. Immovable. She looked up at his grim face.

“No,” she agreed. “That’s not the best idea, is it.”

“Why can’t he stay in our bunkhouse?” Mike’s voice startled her. She had tuned the rest of them out. She looked at the dairy farmer. “Well, it’s not a—you know—western-style bunkhouse.” He smiled shyly. “It’s the original house on the property. Way back from the road, down by the stream. Hadn’t been lived in by anything but squirrels and chickens for the last hundred years, and let me tell you, it was a job making it habitable again.”

“Honey.” Janet laid her hand on her husband’s arm. She smiled apologetically to Clare. “We have the house all cleaned and repaired for the new hands. He would be welcome to stay there, but I’m afraid he’d have no way of getting to work.”

“No, no, that’s what makes it perfect.” Mike beamed at Clare. “The lady who bought the Petersons’ house, the house across the road? She works at your church. Her name’s Elizabeth de Groot.”

Clare felt her jaw unhinge. She stared up at Russ. “My deacon lives across the street from your sister?”

He shrugged. “I told you it’s a small town.”

The agent held up her clipboard. “This is all very interesting, but perhaps, while they hash out the housing arrangements, I might have a word, Chief Van Alstyne?” She retreated toward the admissions desk.

Russ looked at his sister, then at Clare, then back to his sister. “Don’t agree to anything,” he said to Janet. “You have no idea what you’ll be getting into.” He stalked off like a mood-reversed Cheshire Cat, leaving his frown hanging in the air between them.

“I can get Elizabeth to carry Amado back and forth if you’ll let him live in the bunkhouse,” Clare said, hurrying to close the deal before Janet decided to take her brother’s advice.

“What do think, honey?” Janet asked her husband.

Mike shrugged. “Not like it’s going to be too full now, is it?”

“Okay, then.” Janet held out her hand to Clare.

“Great.” They shook. Janet laid her other hand atop Clare’s, trapping her in a warm grasp. “Honey?” She kept her gaze on Clare. “Could you go get me something from the cafeteria? I’m starving.”

“Uh… okay.” Mike bumped off down the hall. Leaving Clare alone with Janet McGeoch, née Van Alstyne. Clare swallowed.

“I’ve heard a lot about you.” Janet’s eyes were the same blue as Russ’s.

Oh, God
. Better take the bull by the horns. “I bet you have,” Clare said. “Some of it’s probably even true.”

Janet nodded. Released Clare’s hand. “I have to apologize to you.”

Now
that
was surprising. “To me? Why?”

“When my mom told me about you and Russ, I sort of mentally cast you in the role of bimbo home wrecker. You know, the much-younger seductress who wears Victoria’s Secret thongs and nails the middle-aged idiot by massaging his ego. Among other body parts.”

Clare thought she might spontaneously combust from the heat in her face.

“But it’s pretty obvious you’re not like that.”

She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “No. No thongs.”

Janet smiled slyly. “And I don’t see you spending a lot of time massaging my brother’s ego.”

Clare laughed. And then Janet surprised her again by catching her in a hug. “My mother likes you,” she said in Clare’s ear, “and I think I like you, too.” She moved a little way apart, creating a space between them. “And if you can rescue my brother from this pit he’s dropped himself into, I swear, I’ll love you forever.”

It was close to midnight, and he was halfway back to his mother’s house, when Russ realized he hadn’t thought of Linda in hours. Since… since when? This morning? This afternoon? Panic, like a meaty hand, gripped his throat. Since before stopping at the liquor store. He hadn’t thought of her once since then. He had forgotten to remember. He steered the pickup to the shoulder of the road and got his four-ways on before the tears blinded him and he buckled over, hacking, the steering wheel cutting a groove in his forehead. He wept for his wife, and for forgetting, and for all the things he had loved and damaged.

Her car gave out on the Schuylerville Road. At night, of course. At least five miles from the Stewart’s on Route 117. No, Stewart’s didn’t have a garage, did they? Just pumps.

Hadley tipped her head back against the seat and breathed slowly and deeply.
I am not going to fall apart
. She was going to count her blessings. It was a 45-degree night in mid-May, instead of a 15-degree night in mid-February. The kids were safe at home, hopefully, please God, not harassing their greatgrandfather into complete exhaustion. She was—her mind went blank. She couldn’t think of anything. She tried again. It was—

Nope. That was it. She ran out of blessings after two. She opened her purse and dug out her cell phone—prepaid, thirty cents a minute—and dialed home. It picked up on the fourth ring.

“Knox and Hadley household Hudson speaking may I help you please,” her son said.

“Hey, lovey, it’s Mom. Can you put Granddad on?”

“Okay, Mom. How was police school?”

“We learned about crime scenes tonight, just like on TV. I got some yellow tape from the instructor for you.”

“Cool! Are you coming home soon?”

“As soon as I can.” In her rearview window, she saw lights. She leaned over and locked the passenger and driver’s doors. This is what becoming a cop was doing to her. Nowadays, she assumed every car on the road held a potential threat. She hadn’t been that paranoid in big bad LA.

“Hey, honey, what’s up?”

She sighed. “My car’s not working. Can you call someone to give me a tow? I’m on the Schuylerville Road, about a mile from Route 117.”

“Are you okay? What happened?”

“I don’t know. All the warning lights came on and then it just sort of… lost power. I’m fine, I just glided off the side of the road.”

“Humph. You stay put. I’ll pop the kids into my car and we’ll come and get you.”

“No, no, no.”
God
, no. Her grandfather had terrible night vision. Not to mention the assorted drugs he was taking. “It’s already close to nine. It’s a school night. I don’t want Hudson and Genny up late. Call someplace in town. I’ll wait here with the car and get a ride home on the tow truck.”

They argued about it back and forth for a while, with Hadley mentally tallying up each thirty cents as it vanished into the airwaves. Eventually, she had to threaten to get out and walk toward town if he and the kids came. That shut him up, except for the grumbling. He promised to call for a tow, and was starting in on a list of things she should do to check the car, when her phone ran out of minutes, right in the middle of “… spark plug connectors.…” She was almost grateful.

She sat back, resigned to the wait, letting herself drift in the cooling dark. She tried to recall the last time she had time to sit, nowhere to go, nothing to do. She could remember times when she was pregnant with Hudson. She’d be so tired after getting home from her receptionist gig that she’d sprawl out on the sofa, not eating, not watching TV, not doing anything. Dylan would come home from whatever party he had been working and ask her how the hell she could waste an entire evening doing nothing. She always figured she
was
doing something. She was growing a baby. Not that he would’ve given her credit for that.

Lights coming toward her, this time. She sat up to see if it might be the tow truck. It slowed down, its high beams making her squint, then crawled past, a bass line vibrating right through her closed windows. A jacked-up, giant, my-penis-isn’t-big-enough Humvee. Or were they Hummers? She couldn’t remember. God, she had a test on car recognition next week. She was going to flunk for sure.

Red brake lights bloomed in her rearview mirror. Then white, as the SUV backed up, returning. She sat up straight again. It parked on the opposite shoulder. The back door opened, illuminating the interior, showing her a brief glimpse of four men.

Oh, shit
. Why her? Why now? Why couldn’t it be some elderly couple on their way home from a revival meeting?

The guy who had exited the back sauntered across the road, the headlights outlining the fluid roll of his hips. Hadley reached inside her purse and grabbed the inactive cell phone. She held it up to her ear and began chatting animatedly with dead air. “So, you’ll never believe this, honey, but there’s an SUV stopped right across the road from me. A young man’s gotten out. I think he wants to help me. No, no, I’ll just let him know you’re almost here.”

He
was
a young man, maybe Flynn’s age, but pimped out in an exaggerated hip-hop style that would have worked a lot better if he had been seventeen. And black. And somewhere else besides the cow country outside Millers Kill. He bent down and smiled at her through the window, and she saw he was Latino. He had three studs spaced along his upper lip, and for a second Hadley forgot to be scared, thinking,
How the hell do you eat with that
?

“Having car trouble?” His voice sounded flat and faintly accented through the glass.

“I’m fine,” she said loudly. “I’m on the phone with my husband, and he’s headed over here now.” She smiled like an idiot.

“Pop the hood, I’ll take a look.”

“No, no, that’s fine—” He strolled to the front of her decrepit car. Her flashers cycled him from light, to dark, to light again.

“Open the hood!” He smiled while he shouted. It reminded her of Dylan, the way he’d yell, “What’s your problem? We’re having fun, goddammit!”

She put on her best hapless female look and shrugged. He just smiled again, fished something long and flat out of his commodious cargo pocket, and leaned against the hood. The car dipped. Hadley heard a metallic
clunk
and the hood flew up, hiding Stud Boy, who, for all she knew, was stripping down her engine.

For the first time since she had been issued her service piece, she wished she had her gun. For two months, it had been too heavy, too alien, too intimidating. Now she wished she could pull it out from the lockbox under her passenger seat and rap on her window and see the look on this guy’s face. Not, despite her firing instructor’s gung-ho pep talks about “yer best friend,” that she’d ever use it.

But, oh, she wished she had it now. Then maybe she wouldn’t feel so scared.

Stud Boy ambled back to her door without bothering to replace the hood. “I hate to tell you, but it looks bad. Your alternator belt’s broke.”

She had no idea if he was bullshitting her or not.

“C’mon, we’ll take you where you’re going. Pretty girl like you shouldn’t be all alone out here.” His smile made her flesh crawl.

She held up the useless cell phone. “Thanks, but my husband’s already on his way.”

He rapped her window with a silver ring in the shape of a skull. He held it out, as if she ought to admire it. He had letters printed over each of his knuckles. Jailhouse tats, inked in with a sharpened pen and a homemade hammer.
Oh, shit
. His smile grew broader. “If you have a husband, how come you don’t have no ring?” His fingers slid down, out of sight, and she heard the
click-click
of the door as he tried the lock.

She dropped the little-wife routine. Hardened her voice. “I’m not going with you. There’s a tow truck on the way… and the man I live with knows where I am.” She considered telling him she was a cop, but with nothing to back that up, she figured it would just make her look more scared and desperate.

He kept smiling. He released her door handle and let his fingers glide over the window, creating shapes. She realized he was miming touching her and her stomach flipped over with a nauseated lurch. With his other hand, he beckoned to the Hummer. Across the road, doors swung open and men got out.

Oh, shit
, she thought.
Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit
.

“We don’t have to take you anywhere,” Stud Boy said. “You can just hang out with us in our truck.” A short, broad Latino pressed up against her door next to Stud Boy. He had a nervous ferret face that made him look like Peter Lorre.

Click-click. Click-click
. He was trying the rear door. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the two others, dark shapes on the passenger side.

Click-click
.

“You must be getting cold, stuck out here,” Stud Boy said cheerfully. “You come with us. We’ll let you warm up.” One of the ones on the opposite side of the car said something, and they all laughed.

“You like to party?” Stud Boy asked. “We’ll have a party. We’ll make you feel real good.” He said something over the roof that she couldn’t make out, and one of the shadowy figures detached himself from her car and meandered across the road. Back to their SUV. He flung open the driver’s door and reached under the dash. Their rear hatch popped open. She thought about the handy do-it-yourself hood opener Stud Boy had produced from his pocket and knew, with the horrible sinking certainty of someone whose luck always ran bad, that the one across the road was going to pull a jimmy strip out of the back of that truck, and she was going to be screwed. In every sense of the word.

She eased her key ring out of the ignition and folded her right hand around it, letting the keys jut up between her fingers. If she pretended to play along and acted scared and helpless—God knew, that wasn’t going to take much effort—she figured she’d have one good chance to catch Stud Boy off guard. Keys in his throat, knee in his balls, then the flat of her foot to his kneecap with her weight behind it. If she could put him down—put him down
hard
so he wasn’t getting back up again—the others might back off. She swallowed. Laid her hand on her door rest.