by ACF Bookens
She gave my face a very light tap. “Obviously. Something is propped against it. Something very heavy.” She adjusted my head as she shifted her leg. “Maybe we could dig out.”
I clawed at the ground again. Under the top layer, it felt pretty packed, but that was worth a try. “Okay. But maybe we should start with the windows.” They hadn’t looked very big, but Mom was pretty small. “Let’s break one and see if I can boost you out.”
“I don’t know, Harvey. I think you need to stay lying down.”
I sat up and felt like my head was splitting open, but I was able to stay upright. Standing made me feel like I would vomit, but at least I could stand. “I’m okay. I don’t think I can run, though. You’re going to have to go for help.”
In the dim light, I could see my mother studying my face. The composed visage she’d put together as we began this adventure had faded. Now, I just saw the face of a woman who was worried and determined. “Okay,” she said with finality.
I studied the window a moment and then threw a rock Mom found in the corner through the window on the road-side of the building. We waited a few minutes, and when we didn’t hear anything, I crouched back down on my hands. “Up you go,” I said.
Mom leaned over and kissed my cheek before she stepped onto my back, cleared the fragments of broken glass, and went out the window. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she whispered back up to me. Then, she was gone.
I collapsed back into the dirt, my head careening with pain, and waited. I checked my own cell phone only to see that it had charge but no signal, just like Mom’s. I did think to check Wi-Fi then, hoping maybe out here someone still had neglected to put a password on their home system, but the signal for “Harris Ranch” was private. I didn’t have the mental fortitude to try combinations beyond the obvious “Huckabee,” “Miranda,” and various versions of “Maisy/Daisy.” Nothing worked.
I composed a text to Daniel, then, figuring he was the person I most wanted to talk to right then. I didn’t get super mushy – that wasn’t our way. But I told him I was so grateful for the way he cared for me and respected me, that I was looking forward to spending a lot of time with him in the future. Then, I saved it as a note marked “For Daniel” and wrote similar sentiments to Mart, Stephen and Walter, and finally my parents, letting them know that I wanted Marcus and Rocky to get ownership of the shop should I not make it.
I don’t know why I felt so certain I wouldn’t get out of there. Maybe it was the head injury. Maybe just the fact that Homer had been staid enough to kill two people and then stalk me for days. Maybe it simply felt like I was getting everything I wanted in life, finally, and now the universe was going to rip it away.
Whatever the cause, I was sad, but content. My life was great, and if it ended now, so be it.
But that didn’t mean I was giving up. I knew there was no way I could get out that window – both because I couldn’t reach that high on my own, but also because my hips were not going through that narrow hole. So I started to dig with one of the hoe heads.
I hadn’t gotten far, though, when I heard an engine start just outside the door and watched a crack of light appear at the front of the building. A few seconds later, the engine cut off, and Homer Sloan stood in the doorway. I stepped back into the shadows, hoping to buy Mom a few more moments before he noticed she was gone.
“You two okay in here?” He smiled. “Relatively speaking, I mean.”
I shrank back further into the shadows. “Homer, what are you doing?”
“For all that sleuthing, it sure took you long enough to figure out it was me.” His voice was like acid. “You are really pretty stupid.”
I couldn’t really disagree, given my circumstances, but his insults were quickening my heartrate and helping me manage the pain in my head. “Maybe. But why? Did Huckabee do something to you or what?”
His cracking laugh bounced off the wooden walls. “That man was ridiculous. A joke. He couldn’t do what needed to be done.” He took a step further into the building.
I tried to make myself look bigger while thinking, Run, Mom, Run! “So what did you think he needed to do? Did you want a raise or something?” I knew that goading him wasn’t probably my best bet, but I had to buy time somehow.
“You think this is about money. You’re just like him. I don’t care about money. I only care about her.”
Revelation struck like a hammer against the inside of my skull. “Miranda!”
“Ding, ding, ding.” He came into the room. He had something in his hand but I couldn’t make out what. “That monster beat her bloody almost every day, and her father didn’t do anything. He was too afraid. His only solution was to send her and the girls away, try to get them to go to Boston and hide, and I couldn’t have that. She needed to be with me.”
“You killed Huckabee Harris because he was trying to protect his daughter?”
“You think that’s protection. Making her go on the run, leave everything she knew behind? That’s not protecting her. He wanted to protect himself, protect his legacy.”
I wasn’t following completely. “His legacy? You mean his money?”
He took another step forward, and I saw that he was carrying a pickax. “His legacy, the inheritance he was leaving those girls.”
Now, I was genuinely confused. “I’m sorry. Help me understand, Homer. You killed him because he wanted to leave money to his granddaughters.”
He tossed the ax up on his shoulder, and I tried to hide part of my body behind the front of the truck, hoping he’d think Mom was beside me still.
“I killed him because he didn’t do what a good father should have done.”
“You wanted him to kill Rafe. Is that it? And he wouldn’t do it because he was afraid they’d seize his assets and the girls wouldn’t get anything? Am I following now?”
Homer stopped and sighed. “Yes. Now you’re getting it. He was more worried about what people would think of him than of saving his daughter. Now, isn’t that ridiculous?”
I didn’t really think avoiding murder at all costs was ridiculous, but I could see a certain form of logic in what he was saying. Twisted logic, but if he . . . “You loved her?”
“Of course I loved her. I’ve loved her since high school.”
Miranda Harris. That’s why he’d used her maiden name – he’d known her longest that way. I almost felt bad for the guy. Almost. “And she never was interested.”
“She’s not like that. Don’t make her sound all haughty and stuff. That’s not the real her. She just loved me like a brother, she said. I simply hadn’t found the right way to woo her yet. Now, though—“
“Now, you think that since you’ve killed her father and her husband she’ll know just how lucky she is to have your love.” My voice was oozing with sarcasm, but apparently, Homer was not a whiz at reading tone.
“Exactly. I saved her. She has to love me now.” He looked back over his shoulder for a minute like he’d heard something, but then turned back to me. “Your mom is really quiet back there. She didn’t strike me as the type of person who would let you take all the limelight.”
Now he was a master of observation? “So what’s your plan, Homer?” I had to distract him. “How are you going to tell Miranda about your grand gesture?”
He paused and looked toward the window, the window I had broken. “Well, I thought I could offer to take her and the girls to dinner—” He ran over to the window. “You broke the window?!” Then he sprinted over to me and looked all around. “Where’s your mom?”
“How did you know she was my mom anyway?”
“Where is she?”
“She went to get help. They’ll be here any minute.”
He grabbed my arm and began dragging me forward, the pickax swinging from his other arm. “Well, she’ll be too—”
A resounding clang sounded through the building, and I fell backwards onto my butt as the sound reverberated in my aching head. When I looked up, there was my mom, sh
ovel in hand, standing over Homer’s prone body.
“Come on, Harvey. We have to move.” I scrambled to my feet and tried to run for the door. My head hurt so badly, though, that the best I could do was a rough stumble. We made it outside, and Mom slammed the shovel handle against the door. “Run, Harvey.”
I followed her down the driveway as quickly as I could. “Mom, is help coming?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t leave you. I was almost to the road when I saw him come back, and I just couldn’t leave you alone.”
“You came back for me? Mom, you shouldn’t have.” I was speaking the truth, but I was also so happy, even though a love-sick murderer was about to kill us. My mom had come back for me.
“I’m your mother, Harvey. What was I supposed to do?”
I grabbed my head as a wave of pain and nausea washed over me.
Mom slid her shoulder under my arm and helped me pick up the pace just as we heard an engine come to life in the barn behind us.
“You have to run, Harvey,” and we did. As fast as we could right back into that wheat.
Clearly Homer was not precious about his truck – Huckabee’s truck, because I suspected this was the one Miranda remembered – because he careened right after us, sliding that truck into a low gear and plowing right into the wheat.
I remembered something about zigzagging to avoid capture and told Mom. “We’re not dodging bullets, Harvey. Just run straight for the road.”
He was gaining on us, though. I could hear it . . . but then I heard another sound, a gunshot. Then voices.
The engine cut off, and Mom and I collapsed into the wheat just as Dad and Daniel ran up. “Where did you come from?”
“I got your text,” Dad said to Mom.
“And I got yours,” Daniel added. If I hadn’t already felt so nauseated, I certainly would have then. I hadn’t meant to send that. In fact, I thought I had been in my Notes on my phone, not the messages. Gah!
“Oh,” was all I could say.
Daniel bent down and wrapped his arms around me, pulling me to my feet as he whispered. “I want to spend a lot more of my days with you, too, Harvey.”
This would have been the spot in a romance novel where we kissed, but given my nausea, I held back for another time. “Where’s Homer?”
“The sheriff has him,” Dad said with a wave over his shoulder toward the truck. “He’s being arrested as we speak.”
I turned slowly – my head spinning – and saw the sheriff leading Homer back to his patrol car. “Looks like he’s got this under control. Let’s go.” I really, really wanted to avoid a conversation with the sheriff, especially when my head felt like a small creature was trying to burrow out from behind my right eye socket. “Come on.” I started toward the car.
But Dad put a hand on my arm. “The sheriff is on his way over, Harvey. He needs your statement.”
I looked at my mom, and she shrugged. I’d definitely seen her feet moving toward the car, too.
“We’re here, Harvey.” Daniel wrapped his arm around my waist. “You’re not alone.”
I took a deep breath. He was right. I wasn’t. I smiled, felt the shrew in my brain dig in further, and leaned hard against Daniel. “Let’s get this over with.”
The sheriff’s face was a hard plane when he walked over. “Harvey, Sharon,” he took a deep breath and then his voice boomed across the field, “what on God’s green earth were you thinking?”
I could tell in the set of Mom’s shoulders that she had just shifted into “take no prisoners” mode. “What was I thinking? I was thinking that someone was threatening my daughter, and no one was doing anything about it. That’s what I was thinking.” Her voice was quiet but cutting, like a thin sheet of ice.
Dad put a hand on her shoulder as if to say, “Ease back, Sharon.”
“I was doing something, Sharon,” the sheriff said through clenched teeth. Then, he let out a long breath. “But if my daughter was threatened, I could be fierce to protect her, too.”
Mom gave a curt nod and looked away. I was pretty sure I saw tears in her eyes.
“But Harvey, you gave me your word, and you almost died. That blow to the head alone . . .” He stopped, took another long breath, and said, “But you’re okay. You’re okay.”
I looked at him closely. He wasn’t the kind of man who would cry in this sort of circumstance, but I could see the quiver in his jaw. Oh, I felt terrible, and not just from the shovel to the head. “I’m sorry, Tuck. I really am.” I wanted to explain how I’d gotten caught up in the excitement of doing something with my mom, how I didn’t want to disappoint her. But I didn’t want to make her feel bad or responsible for something that was my choice, so I stayed quiet.
The sheriff put a hand to my throbbing cheek. “I need your statements, but first, an ambulance is in order. I’ll get your statement now, Sharon, over here.” He pointed back toward the house. “Harvey, I’ll get yours at the hospital.”
I tried to protest, tried to say I was fine, but given that my vision was now doubling and my nausea increasing, I figured I probably needed to get some attention. “Okay,” I said as I dropped to the ground among the wheat again. “I’ll just wait here.”
12
By the time the doctors were done scanning and palpating me – that expression always sent my skin crawling – I was thoroughly exhausted and even more thoroughly ready to go home. Fortunately, despite my parents’ intense pressure on the doctor to the contrary, she released me to bed rest.
Daniel offered to give me a ride home, and by the time we got back into town, I’d convinced him that I would recover better at the bookstore. “After all, I’ll just worry about it if I’m not there. Better for me to see what’s going on, right?”
Bless the man’s heart, he must have figured arguing about this was worse for me than giving in because we stopped at home where I changed into yoga pants, my favorite “Got Books?” T-shirt, and a Salisbury U sweatshirt and then went to the store.
Marcus must have been forewarned because when I arrived, a wingback chair had been pulled up by the register, and he had added a small table, a cup of tea, and a very soft, sugar cookie. I was especially grateful for the cookie because I was famished, but eating felt like chewing glass. At least this glass was sweet.
I took up my position with a low stool under my feet and proceeded to greet my “adoring public” as Mom described them. She and Dad had gone to my house after giving an official statement at the police station, changed and come right to the store to help Marcus out while Daniel gave Mayhem and Taco a stroll. Mom greeted everyone who came in and handed them the cards I’d recently had printed up to tell people we could order almost any book they wanted before suggesting that they stop over and say hello to their “hometown hero.”
I was less than thrilled with this moniker, but I didn’t have the will or the energy to argue. Besides, we were already getting some special orders from her efforts, perhaps driven by a fear of disappointing such an enthusiastic greeter. She was going to be great as part of Mart’s PR team.
Since I was on strict orders from the doctor and everyone I knew to not move around a lot and to rest as much as possible, I was funneled all the book recommendation requests. Someone wanted a great book of essays, and I recommended Jo Ann Beard’s The Boys Of My Youth. A young girl got up the nerve to ask me, with a good bit of encouragement from her dad, what my favorite picture book was, and I had to recommend Piggies by Audrey Wood. But by far, my favorite request was from a quiet young woman in her twenties. She wanted to read something that would make her feel “all the things,” she said. I asked her for a few minutes to consider, and she headed to the café for a cup of coffee.
I pondered that request hard. I’d been feeling a lot the past few days – forgiveness, excitement, terror – and I didn’t think I could come up with a book that could carry that much of the human experience within it. But then, I thought of Uwem Akpan’s Say You’re One Of Them, a collection of short stor
ies by a Nigerian priest that had left me profoundly optimistic about our hope as human beings while still bringing me to tears at the tragedy of what we, as people, do to one another. When the young woman came back, I placed the book in her hands after asking Marcus if he’d grab a copy for me, and said, “This book will change you.” She smiled and thanked me as she headed to check out.
I took a deep breath. I was reminded that this was the best part of my job, this opportunity to share the stories I loved so much. Plus, sitting this way, I felt a bit like a legendary wise woman dispensing insight from her throne. I could get used to this.
As the day came to a close and the customer stream got thinner, I sat back and closed my eyes. I thought about Homer, about the way love had driven him to murder, and I thought about Miranda, about the way love had driven her to victimhood. I even considered Rafe, the way that maybe, somehow, his mistaken sense of love for Miranda had led him to control her. I wasn’t willing to grant, though, that he had been acting out of love. No, only something very broken makes someone act that way.
I opened my eyes and looked over at my parents as they helped Rocky wipe down tables and empty coffee carafes. Sometimes love just takes a while to flesh out, I realized.
At that moment, the bell over the shop door rang, and I smiled to see Daniel returning with Mayhem and Taco. He’d taken them out to the beach to run for a while, hoping that would mean they’d both sleep really well tonight. He pulled the stool out from behind the counter and sat down next to me. I was very glad to see him, and I also dreaded this conversation.
“The dogs look plum tuckered,” I said as I watched them collapse, side by side, in the large bed in the front window.
“Oh yeah, they ran hard. Those commercials with Basset Hounds on the beach lie. There is no grace in that combination.”
I laughed and then winced. My head was still throbbing.
“Still hurting, huh? Did the meds help?”
The doctor had given me a prescription for some really high dose painkiller that Mom had insisted on getting filled and then practically shoving down my throat.